McDuffie Street Corridor Design City of Anderson, South Carolina

The McDuffie Street Corridor Design is a physical design proposal for the downtown of the City of Anderson, focusing on streetscape, building use, public space, and other urban design features that promote the quality of livability on the McDuffie Street corridor. The project, closely parallel with Main Street, covers nearly 62 acres on the east side of downtown. It contains three major streets serving downtown traffic, which are McDuffie, Manning Street, and East Whitner Street. The Planning and Development Division at the City of Anderson city has given serious attention to this project. The zoning administration planner decided the project boundary according to current development patterns that downtown Anderson is undergoing. The transportation planner, Michael Gay, set up the basic tone for the project by revealing potential opportunities for infill development and road diet. The city is concerned with underutilized land, abandoned buildings, and over-wide streets on the project site. For example, one issue that is catching their attention is the currently undesirable contrast between the Main Street atmosphere and the situation found on the intersection between N. Manning Street and E. Whitner Street. The unattractive scenery discourages civic activities and devalues the surrounding property. The project answers the city’s concern, while offering a broad vision of a robust downtown with a richer urban fabric. Mixed use and higher density are encouraged and traditional design is suggested. Moreover, using detail-oriented blueprints, it examines the built environment at a human scale. Ideas and strategies adopted in those plans are derived from Jane Jacob’s philosophy and New Urbanism principles