Edmonton Is Making Its Alleyways a Great Place to Live

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

most people seem to accumulate shit up to their carrying capacity, whatever that may be.

we have no garage (just a parking pad off the alley), no attic (we're in a 3-flat), and our basement is all built-out finished space except for a shared utility/storage room at the very back where all of my bike stuff is (i'm kind of a bicycle nut), and we manage to get by just fine.

how does our family of 4 do it? we simply have way less rarely/never-used crap than your typical suburban american family.

Yeah, we have way too much crap in the rarely/never-used category. And much of it is due to my parents... they love estate sales/auctions/consignment/antique/junk stores/etc. for finding cool, quality items... and they unload much of it on us... which is very nice, but it has become overwhelming. All of that stuff, to go along with my own hoarding tendencies (bikes as well, along with books and magazines, camping gear, kayaks, and just a bunch of random stuff that I should have parted with prior to our last move)... and I've lost my garage.

I'm at carrying capacity

[eschaton]

The primary reason we moved out of our old home in 2014 (which was a small rowhouse) was our son was getting out of babyhood and there was no way given the layout of the home to give him a private room. He would either had to share a room with his sister (likely the third floor, which was a big open loft the size of two bedrooms) or we would have to put him in a room with no privacy at all (technically a bedroom, but needed to access both stairwells and the second-floor bath).

But the secondary reason was just...so much shit.

I have historically been somewhat of a minimalist when it comes to possessions, although once I got into the aquarium hobby I accumulated a lot of gear. But this is nothing compared to my wife, who honestly has some borderline hoarding tendencies which are only tempered by her desire to keep things tidy. The house looked neat, but if you opened up any cabinets, there was just endless stuff she hadn't really used in decades. Add to this the continuing avalanche of toys well-meaning relatives gave us, and we were slowly getting boxed in by boxes.

Now we live in a house which is arguably six bedrooms, without a guest bedroom in sight. One of the "extra bedrooms" was made non-functional by the previous owners when they decided to put a wall-to-wall closet which took up 1/3rd of its depth. It's mostly used for storage and my daughter now does online classes in there. Then on the third floor the bigger bedroom is used as a playroom (mostly by my son) and the smaller one is used by us as an office.

The house works for us now, but I do hope once the kids are out of the house I can convince my wife to downgrade. I'll still be reasonably young when my youngest turns 18 (52), and I have no desire to age in place in an overly-large home like so many empty nesters.

[MolsonExport]

Time for another thread, entitled: Snout-houses cause suburbs to become horrible-looking environments, everywhere.

[Doady]

I did a photo series on snout houses here. I really hate them, even as a suburbanite it is mind-boggling that people would defend them, I think the garage in back is a huge improvement aesthetically. Most people don't park the garage anyways, maybe it is actually more convenient to park outside, so I don't think it interferes with the suburban lifestyle, even in cold climate like Canada.

[Crawford]

I don't like street-fronting garages, but in sprawl America this is mostly a class/economics thing. Attached garages are the norm, but the upper middle class gets the side entry garages (because bigger lots) and the middle/lower class gets the front entry garages. Snout homes aren't built because they're attractive but because the lots are tiny, allowing for greater affordability.

Also, some of the most urban, transit oriented stretches in America are full of houses with street-facing garages and driveways. Think of the most affluent and urbane parts of SF:
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8028...7i16384!8i8192

Pretty ugly, but obviously desirable.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I don't like street-fronting garages, but in sprawl America this is mostly a class/economics thing. Attached garages are the norm, but the upper middle class gets the side entry garages (because bigger lots) and the middle/lower class gets the front entry garages. Snout homes aren't built because they're attractive but because the lots are tiny, allowing for greater affordability.

right, i fully understand with how we end up with them (snout houses).

i'm simply expressing my opinion that narrow lot suburbia is an order of magnitude more attractive when the garage is placed off of an alley at the rear of the property as opposed to taking up 75% or more of the front facade of the home.

and if i were forced to choose between the the two, i'm taking the home with the alley garage every single time, pragmatic conveniences of an attached garage be damned.

neighborhood aesthetics matter to me. they just do.


LOTS of other people are not nearly as bothered by snout houses as i am.

LOTS of other people also listen to celine dion's music.

there is no accounting for taste.

[Crawford]

To me, it's function. There's no functional difference between putting two or three cars in the front, back, side, attached, detached, whatever. It's still the same crappy autocentricity, leading to denuded, depressing drive-by environments.

But people want some degree of auto accommodation. Even in NYC, there's a price premium for attached parking. New curb cuts are basically impossible in Manhattan and landmarked portions of brownstone Brooklyn, but they're occasionally grandfathered on sites where there were existing cuts.

This row of newish townhouses, in Cobble Hill, has two with curb cuts and three without. The two with the cuts are significantly more valuable, and were allowed because they replaced a warehouse with two cuts. And the city isn't allowing this much anymore, so these two will retain a huge price premium:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/10...!4d-73.9919839

These newer townhouses, in Williamsburg, appear to have no curb cuts, or parking. But they replaced a warehouse, and were able to use the adjacent condo parking garage, which they can directly access via private corridor from their homes:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/1+...!4d-73.9658289

This Dumbo mega-townhouse has parking behind the gate, and was able to grandfather parking over the cobbled street, which doesn't need a curb cut. Probably adds $2 million+ to the value:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/55...!4d-73.9874514

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Time for another thread, entitled: Snout-houses cause suburbs to become horrible-looking environments, everywhere.

Nah. Autocentricity causes suburbs to become horrible-looking environments, everywhere. Snouts are just a market response in high(er) cost markets.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

To me, it's function.

To me, it's aesthetics.

i would much, MUCH, MUCH rather call this street home: https://goo.gl/maps/4ocS1i4brPLQ72NCA

than this one: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.8361...7i16384!8i8192



i mean, i detest the second example so strongly that if i was out home shopping with a realtor and we drove into that neighborhood, i'd tell him to just turn around and drive right the hell on outta there.

no way, no how!

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

LOTS of other people are not nearly as bothered by snout houses as i am.

LOTS of other people also listen to celine dion's music.

there is no accounting for taste.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i mean, i detest the second example so strongly that if i was out home shopping with a realtor and we drove into the neighborhood, i'd tell him to just turn around and drive right the hell on outta there.

I'd smack him across the face too. Hard.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

most people seem to accumulate shit up to their carrying capacity, whatever that may be.

we have no garage at all (just a parking pad off the alley), no attic (we're in a 3-flat), and our basement is all built-out finished space except for a smaller shared utility/storage room at the very back where all of my bike stuff is (i'm kind of a bicycle nut), and we manage to get by just fine.

how does our family of 4 do it? we simply have way less rarely/never-used crap than your typical suburban american family.

Suburban folks have so much shit they've used once and will never use again stored in their garages.

My old boss was doing some renovations to a new house of his...he ended up buying his buddies old truck. He bought a truck because he happen to be doing some work that warranted a truck over a three week period. It was around 4,000 dollars. Now it sits in his driveway doing nothing when he could have gone to home depot and spent 200 for those weekends....:S

[memph]

Originally Posted by eschaton

One of the reasons garages are used to store so much crap in modern suburban houses is the relative rarity of both basements (many homes have slab foundations), along with usable attic space (modern pre-manufactured roof trusses typically do not allow for the conversion of the attic to even a semi-habitable space). So unless you want to live like a hoarder, your garage will be stuffed with shit.

Tract housing in Canada almost always has basements, but you'd still want to make room for the garbage bins, bicycles, lawnmower, winter tires, BBQ and sports equipment in the garage. A lot of people can still park their cars in their garage, but a lot of houses have 3-4 cars (adult children/grandparents living with the parents are more common in suburban Toronto and basements are often rented out) so you still see a lot of houses with cars parked in the driveway, and I assume those are typically the more commonly used cars, with the less frequently used ones being kept out of the way in the garage. This is less true of Calgary and Edmonton though where suburban homes typically have fewer adult inhabitants.

[memph]

Originally Posted by Crawford

To me, it's function. There's no functional difference between putting two or three cars in the front, back, side, attached, detached, whatever. It's still the same crappy autocentricity, leading to denuded, depressing drive-by environments.

But people want some degree of auto accommodation. Even in NYC, there's a price premium for attached parking. New curb cuts are basically impossible in Manhattan and landmarked portions of brownstone Brooklyn, but they're occasionally grandfathered on sites where there were existing cuts.

This row of newish townhouses, in Cobble Hill, has two with curb cuts and three without. The two with the cuts are significantly more valuable, and were allowed because they replaced a warehouse with two cuts. And the city isn't allowing this much anymore, so these two will retain a huge price premium:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/10...!4d-73.9919839

These newer townhouses, in Williamsburg, appear to have no curb cuts, or parking. But they replaced a warehouse, and were able to use the adjacent condo parking garage, which they can directly access via private corridor from their homes:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/1+...!4d-73.9658289

This Dumbo mega-townhouse has parking behind the gate, and was able to grandfather parking over the cobbled street, which doesn't need a curb cut. Probably adds $2 million+ to the value:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/55...!4d-73.9874514

How much of that is about having private parking of any kind (detached garage, attached garage or driveway) vs having to rely on on-street parking though?

It's pretty hard to pick out a difference in the value of a detached vs attached garage in suburban Toronto real estate listings.

[memph]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I don't like street-fronting garages, but in sprawl America this is mostly a class/economics thing. Attached garages are the norm, but the upper middle class gets the side entry garages (because bigger lots) and the middle/lower class gets the front entry garages. Snout homes aren't built because they're attractive but because the lots are tiny, allowing for greater affordability.

Also, some of the most urban, transit oriented stretches in America are full of houses with street-facing garages and driveways. Think of the most affluent and urbane parts of SF:
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8028...7i16384!8i8192

Pretty ugly, but obviously desirable.

The suburban Toronto equivalent would be these:
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7937...7i13312!8i6656

You can get around snout houses on narrow lots though. The parking on these is still front-loaded but with the porch/house pulled forward, the garages aren't as aesthetically dominant.
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.4849...7i16384!8i8192

I think the Japanese approach is the one that makes the most sense though. Make the streets much narrower so that the lots can be much shallower, and therefore don't have to be as narrow to compensate, and then use that extra width for the garage without the garage having to be as visually dominant since the "house" portion of the structure would still be at least half of the ground level frontage (ex 50x50 ft lot with 2 car garage, minimal setbacks and small rear patio).