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  #41  
Old Posted Aug 7, 2014, 10:34 PM
jd3189 jd3189 is offline
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It will probably take a generational shift in order for cities to be more interested in building these types of neighborhoods with that kind of density.

One of the main reasons these types of neighborhoods still exist anywhere in the US is because they are usually populated by minorities of national, racial, or sexual background. Walk through the densest parts of Flatbush in Brooklyn and you will mostly see Black/Hispanic Caribbeans, Orthodox Jews, Sunni Muslims, and some Europeans and shops and restaurants that cater to cultures most Americans probably never heard of. Practically a place that is completely different from the rest of the country that identifies itself with the least diverse suburbs and more independence with big name stores on large parking lots and single family homes in gated communities.

Aside from the regulations that prevent old-style walkable places from being built, the majority of Americans still don't desire to live in the city. Even if they wanted to, cities are now becoming increasingly expensive and the vast amount of resident units are only available to those who are higher than middle class.

I think that in the future the US should adopt a widespread development style that will focus on catering to both urbanites and suburbanites:

Existing major cities( mostly cities in the Sunbelt and the Rustbelt) around the country should continue to become dense by building infill and relying on immigrants and lower class people( or lower class yuppies or college grads) who have not been entirely corrupted by "car culture" to live within the city and give it some traditional urban character that would support mass transit and density. The ultra rich can continue to live in the CBD, but the rest of the city should be middle to low class people who are not dirt poor but are willing to give life to the city like we see in the major urban areas in the country. The demand of those people to live without a car either because they can't afford one or don't want one should power the demand for many lowrise residential and commercial buildings with little parking in the form of parking garages or underground or no parking at all. If parking must be needed for outside visitors who live in the urban area, park and ride systems should be rampant around the metro area's suburbs, which goes on to the second part of my plan...

Suburbs can continue to grow and expand. However, they have to be more dense and have a similar walkable environment to the old streetcar neighborhoods with sidewalks, parks, and some connection to public transportation. Strip malls would decrease most of their existing parking lots and suburban areas with long stretches of wilderness in between should be the focus of more development if it is environmentally safe to do so. I'm sick and tired of walking through "green ways" that serve no purpose but are in between two nearby areas of interest. Those random plots of swamp are rampant in the South, especially in Atlanta and Miami suburbs. Luckily, separate suburbs with good densities will be connected by commuter rails through many "park and ride" stations that will form a "wheel with spokes" around the central city, or a"ribbon", depending how the urban area is shaped. The older suburbs will become more urban first, which should be the focus of more walkable development. The exurban-type sprawl can be there for those people who really love their cars and space and can afford it, but those places will not dramatically increase in growth, thus sprawl will be regulated near existing suburbs that surround the central city.

In all, that's just my take in it. Sorry for taking this thread a bit out of topic, but I feel that this should be the mode of development for the nation since America can never be like Europe, but we need to limit our unsustainable appetite. This vision doesn't completely forget about the car, but it focuses and trying to bring the car in equal footing with the ,bicycle,bus, train, ferry,etc as the majority of our cities start to put the average pedestrian first in the core, and build everything else to cater to many different people who live in the US, who are largely the diverse middle class people that have made this nation great.
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  #42  
Old Posted Aug 7, 2014, 10:41 PM
strongbad635 strongbad635 is offline
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There are tiny bits of this type of development going on in some cities that are rebounding at the appropriate scale (Portland, Baltimore, Denver, Cleveland, Atlanta). But the vast majority of urban infill and even dense greenfield development isn't of this type, and probably for a few reasons.

1.) The big builders tend to win out, and they want to maximize their return on investment, which means buying the largest lot possible and building one gigantic project rather than ten small, charming projects.

2.) The trend now is away from traditional architecture and toward modern buildings that relate very poorly to the street. In every major American city we're seeing an invasion of glass and steel tumors that present blank concrete walls, HVAC grills and reflective tinted glass to pedestrians.

3.) A lot of these small historic buildings we love so much violate either the on-site parking requirement (which as a card-carrying Shoupista I would say needs to be abandoned) or the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires a lot of infrastructure for elevators and other accommodations for the disabled, basically encouraging sprawly, one-story America.

4.) Fire departments and traffic engineers are being allowed to design and retrofit our cities. They see urbanism through such a myopic lens that the end result is wider streets, more setbacks, no building discipline, over-engineered buildings from the inside to the outside, and the complete opposite of the kind of tightness that people love so much about real urban spaces.
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  #43  
Old Posted Aug 10, 2014, 7:57 PM
edluva edluva is offline
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it's a lot easier for narrow low slung infill to be built in pre-auto cities like SF or Philly because established car-free neighborhoods (narrow lots, small setbacks, streetwalls, lack of demand for parking) provide a legacy for continued undeterred zoning of modern low slung infill. there is no need to require developers to build small and tight because they are already constrained by lot sizes, and simple economics takes care of the rest.

the same thing occurs in european cities. in older city centers low slung, narrow infill continues to replace the historic low slung infill which occurred before it, whereas larger "american looking" projects go up where larger swaths of land open up (usually outside the older, more established neighborhoods). even where there happens to be a generous amount of open space in the city center you still generally don't see modern versions of greenwich village tenements voluntarily go up in central London or Copenhagen.



for example, the above pic is a recent development in central London on seward st near the barbican, which itself is a huge brutal development. for more examples just look at the enormous block-large developments going up in the docklands or olympic village. They look no different from any big-lot North American infill, and only demonstrate that this has been the norm in europe for decades.

the challenge lies in getting newer post-war cities (LA, Portland, Denver, even Chicago with its relative lack of hyperdense infill) to zone larger residential plots for subdivision, and then alter ADA and fire codes (good luck with the latter two). As I've mentioned in my thread post, California is laying ground for the eventual removal of auto parking requirements through its recent removal of LOS (Level of Service) from the environmental review process. but modern economics ensures that large urban lots will invariably be developed into mega-block structures for the foreseeable future. small scale landowners and developers have long gone extinct.

Last edited by edluva; Aug 10, 2014 at 8:31 PM.
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  #44  
Old Posted Aug 10, 2014, 10:29 PM
memph memph is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by edluva View Post
it's a lot easier for narrow low slung infill to be built in pre-auto cities like SF or Philly because established car-free neighborhoods (narrow lots, small setbacks, streetwalls, lack of demand for parking) provide a legacy for continued undeterred zoning of modern low slung infill. there is no need to require developers to build small and tight because they are already constrained by lot sizes, and simple economics takes care of the rest.

the same thing occurs in european cities. in older city centers low slung, narrow infill continues to replace the historic low slung infill which occurred before it, whereas larger "american looking" projects go up where larger swaths of land open up (usually outside the older, more established neighborhoods). even where there happens to be a generous amount of open space in the city center you still generally don't see modern versions of greenwich village tenements voluntarily go up in central London or Copenhagen.
Has that ever happened though? I'm pretty sure Greenwich Village and many other neighbourhoods like it started out as single family/rowhouse neighbourhoods, so that's why lots are narrower.
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