tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post1070551514455984210..comments2024-03-27T04:02:47.206-04:00Comments on Old Urbanist: Fall and Rise of the "Euro Block"Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-83359579220434335232016-01-05T14:47:11.796-05:002016-01-05T14:47:11.796-05:00I think it's because the tenements were genuin...I think it's because the tenements were genuinely constructed as free-market operations to house the low-income. The Euro blocks were constructed by would-be residents. <br /><br />The tenements were constructed by money-grubbing developers looking to maximize return on investment, and serving customers with very little income -- so maxing out bedrooms-per-square-foot without worrying about amenities (because their customers' alternatives were shacks without plumbing). I commented on another post that tenements are an example of market-driven housing specifically designed to serve the low income.<br /><br />I don't think the tenement would have arisen if not for a genuine and very fast *boom* in New York's population and jobs. Slower-growing cities built nicer factory housing because they had to attract workers who had the option of going to another city.Nathanaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-56866225360517036082015-11-07T18:07:08.139-05:002015-11-07T18:07:08.139-05:00I've noticed that there is another kind of use...I've noticed that there is another kind of use of the EuroBlock or enclosed courtyard in America: college campuses. They're not as dense as their European counterparts, but they're there.Matthew M. Robare https://www.blogger.com/profile/01238656296410351634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-36824069575456032562015-10-19T22:49:45.487-04:002015-10-19T22:49:45.487-04:00Nice blog
nha xinh
biet thu depNice blog<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://thietkenha.asia/" title="nha xinh" rel="nofollow">nha xinh</a><br /><a href="http://nhaxinhcenter.com/" title="biet thu dep" rel="nofollow">biet thu dep</a>thiet ke nha dephttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13079495896964228424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-45729980579512387492015-07-26T11:41:24.490-04:002015-07-26T11:41:24.490-04:00I agree with most of the post, but not with the en...I agree with most of the post, but not with the end, where you're blaming the inferiority of the New Law tenement for American urban renewal and suburbanization. Postwar developments on this side of the Atlantic have abandoned the euroblock, just as those of New York abandoned the New Law tenement. Stockholm's turn-of-the-century housing stock, including my building (built 1907), is all euroblocks, but once you go to the 1940s-era and newer neighborhoods, you get much more inert modernistic green space, and then towers in the park.Alonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17267294744186811858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-31111705312200010902015-07-21T17:33:48.241-04:002015-07-21T17:33:48.241-04:00"I too wonder what led to the divergent habit...<i>"I too wonder what led to the divergent habits: American regulations, as discussed, were entirely *proscriptive* (describing what *not* to do rather than setting an example for what *to* do), but European regulations weren't particularly *pre*scriptive either. "</i><br /><br />Sorry for the late reply, Marc. I've been pondering this also. The European regulations weren't really all that different so far as I can glean. One possibility that bears further exploration is that the courtyard buildings seem to have been built, in many though not all cases, by cooperative associations of citizens (as reflected today in the contemporary German "baugruppen"). When multifamily buildings are the product of citizen initiative, the resulting design generally seems to be better than what you get with pure speculative apartment construction. Just one possibility. <br /><br />And yes, there is one example I am aware of of contemporary Mietskaserne-style development -- look at the northwest quadrant of Hoboken, NJ on Google maps. The courtyards are not publicly accessible though, at least not for the most part. Charlie Gardnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-53487412321533949072015-07-03T21:30:55.531-04:002015-07-03T21:30:55.531-04:00It probably does count for something... although I...It probably does count for something... although I think in NYC the first phase of development was typically row houses with little to no front setbacks (or even tenements in the Bronx/upper Manhattah?).<br /><br />In Australia and New Zealand lots often seem pretty deep so you can build an additional house in the back as you describe, but in Canada and I guess the United States they tend to be shallower.<br /><br />In Hungary (and formerly Hungarian towns in Transylvania, Serbia and I think Slovakia), the traditional development style, even in tiny villages was narrow but often very deep lots. The house was single storey and built right up to the street and sometimes touching it's neighbours. They often had an "L" shape with a single room wide extension stretching well into the lot, sometimes that's where the livestock was kept.<br /><br />Before even converting the property to a second storey, it seems the homes would often expand into multi-family forms with courtyards, or something similar to a half "bungalow court" but with the individual units attached together.<br /><br />https://www.google.ca/maps/@46.781366,23.590146,283m/data=!3m1!1e3<br /><br />The point is, sharing walls along side or rear lot lines, and having shared courtyards, and zero front-setback, was already established as a building pattern before even the second storey was added. As a result, building 3-7 storey courtyard buildings, a stage mostly just reached in Budapest, probably seemed like a natural evolution of similar single storey formats.<br /><br />There are American cities where you had 2nd units behind single family homes, either attached or detached. You see this in older working class parts of Cleveland and Buffalo, and I also saw it in small towns in Vermont and New Hampshire, and Fredericton, New Brunswick seems to have these too. Perhaps the overall pattern of these is still "single family-like" so courtyard apartments would have been too much of a contrast, or maybe it's just a matter of these neighbourhoods never having reached that point in intensification. It does seem like subdivision has occurred in cities like San Francisco and Philadelphia, and possibly Pittsburgh and Salt Lake City, but at the level of the block.<br /><br />One interesting city to look at is Los Angeles. There it's quite common to have 2nd units behind existing ones, and some neighbourhoods have reached the stage of further intensification. That has meant courtyard buildings, but with small side setbacks, and front setbacks that often match those of the remaining neighbourhood SFHs. The LA courtyards seem to be narrower, perhaps because they can still get light from the side and rear lot lines.NickDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07006815196885883516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-14810237740310797962015-07-03T10:29:44.952-04:002015-07-03T10:29:44.952-04:00Thank you for writing this post! I lived in a cour...Thank you for writing this post! I lived in a courtyard building in Munich for 2 years and marveled at how pleasant it was. I would love to see developers in the U.S. adopt this style.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-27692398703223794482015-06-30T23:52:16.566-04:002015-06-30T23:52:16.566-04:00I wonder how much this has to do with land subdivi...I wonder how much this has to do with land subdivision practices in the US compared to Europe. In the US, it seems like almost always, there's just one house centered on a lot, and if you want to build two houses on a piece of land that fronts a street, you have split the frontage in half, giving you narrow strips. In Europe and older parts of the Boston area, it feels like subdivision was a lot more ad hoc, and it was a lot more common to have two houses on a lot (front and back), or flagpole lots, or other such arrangements. As cities got denser, it also meant things like having a separate building in the courtyard in the center of a block, and from there, it's not a huge leap to the standard mietskaserne. crzwdjkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06394805356595604336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-38518990586083949142015-06-30T20:24:27.399-04:002015-06-30T20:24:27.399-04:00This is a wonderful post, and I've been ponder...This is a wonderful post, and I've been pondering the contrasts it discussed ever since I used to download and create custom buildings for SimCity 4, where I first noticed the stark difference between the European tenements and the New York tenements!<br /><br />I later got to experience the difference between the two types of tenements in person, and the contrast was always striking: while it's possible to make apartments within NYC tenements charming, even appealing, these days thanks to electric lighting and other amenities, I still find it odd to wake up, go about, and go to sleep in some of the deeper-within-the-tenement NYC apartments because the different times of the day *all feel the same* due to the body's reduced ability to sense the position of the sun and other elements.<br /><br />Contrarily, I was amazed the first time I stayed in a Warsaw hostel located towards the back of an old Mietskasern (of which the city unfortunately has few left, thanks to WWII). Every morning I woke up in rooms flooded with sunlight, and throughout the day the apartment-turned-hostel - which faced the courtyard and had no street frontage - felt every bit as bright and airy as a freestanding building! I can't forget the shock at how different that place felt from the typical NYC tenement!<br /><br />As discussed in the post, I'm always amazed at how *useless* NYC airshafts and light wells really are in contrast with Mietskaserne courtyards. They may offer light and ventilation (and I suppose back before there were dryers you could hang your laundry in them as well), but otherwise they offer *none* of the benefits of a courtyard. Note that we can't even fully credit the shafts for offering light and ventilation: in the NYC tenement apartments I've stayed in, almost all the inhabitants had gotten into the habit of perpetually screening the windows facing the light shifts; their awkward, narrow shapes make privacy difficult.<br /><br />I too wonder what led to the divergent habits: American regulations, as discussed, were entirely *proscriptive* (describing what *not* to do rather than setting an example for what *to* do), but European regulations weren't particularly *pre*scriptive either. <br /><br />There's an additional benefit to Mietskaserne: their ability to provide shortcuts across blocks (essentially reducing block size) by offering one or more courtyard porticoes that connect to the courtyards of adjacent Mietskaserne, allowing one to pass through a block from courtyard to courtyard. This was a particularly thrilling discovery of mine in Wroclaw, and I liked to see how far I could get without having to traverse any streets!<br /><br />This ability is almost nonexistent in NYC tenement blocks, which is very unfortunate because it's something the city's long blocks sorely need. Instead the city is saddled with mostly-inaccessible leftover space - that perennial "open space" that we Americans love to fetishize but don't actually know how to put to good use.<br /><br />Finally, I'm wondering if there are any examples of contemporary Mietskaserne-like developments done at the *small scale* (i.e. multiple Mietskaserne contributing to a single block, as in the Berlin example)? The Texas Donut format is an encouraging trend, but due to regulations (parking mins, FAR, building codes, etc.), financing policies, and plain old habit, these donuts almost always are built at the scale of an entire (very large) block, as the example above shows! Moreover, their courtyards are often not accessible to the public like those of prewar Mietskaserne, eliminating any possibility for nonresidents to cut through very large blocks.Marcnoreply@blogger.com