More Garages and Alleys

I received so many thoughtful comments on the last alleyway post that I thought I might contribute a few more examples from modern American suburbia.  In the comments, several people noted that the Orlando example I chose was poorly designed (I can't disagree), and that better examples of street-and-alley configurations exist.  After doing a few Google maps "fly-bys" of a number of cities, however, if better examples do exist they are not abundant or easy to find.  More typical is this example from Raleigh, NC at right: in this neo-traditionalist neighborhood, homes are painstaking replicas of Craftsman bungalows and foursquares on small lots.  Unlike the Orlando example, however, the developer has incorporated green space in the form of generous median strips, resulting in the streetscape shown at right (the central circle contains a white gazebo which, as far as I can tell, is purely decorative, as it appears to have no entrances).

When it comes to the rear alley, though, a familiar sight is seen: the attached garage and impervious paved driveway occupying the entire backyard.  In the aerial shot it appears that every single property conforms to this design, even where there is clearly sufficient space for a backyard between garage and house (even accounting for mandatory rear setback).






And here's a New Urbanist example.  There are some efforts to create small backyard spaces behind detached houses and rowhouses, but overall the vast majority of the land behind homes is occupied by garages and pavement (this is Kentlands, MD Lakelands, MD).

Here is Kentlands, showing considerably more attention to backyard spaces (thanks for catching my mistake, Laurence):

This is a New Urbanist-inspired development not far from Kentlands, showing clearly the presence of a decorative fringe of front and side yards, with rear spaces reserved almost exclusively for vehicle access.  The ratio of pavement to inhabitable built footprint appears to exceed 1:1.

Not only suburban greenfield development but also urban infill  follows this format.  This is a block of new townhouses in southeast Washington DC, built in a traditional architectural style.  The planner has provided a small common area within the block, but again there is no private outdoor space except for a few rooftop patios.

By contrast, here are a couple blocks in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, just north of the infill townhouses in the previous image, featuring both fronting streets, backyards and alleys: 

If anyone is aware of better examples of street-and-alley neighborhoods in modern developments, please let me know!

Urban Reads

If you're looking for some new reading for yourself or a person you know who's interested in history, cities and urban planning, a reader has kindly sent along to me a list of 50 of the best books on urban history.  The classics are on there, including Jacobs, Mumford and Reps, but there are many lesser known titles as well covering everything from Chinese urbanism to American infrastructure.

Along the same lines, last month Austin Contrarian compiled a list of recommended readings on urban economics, including the Death and Life follow up The Economy Of Cities, which is worth reading alone for the provocative theorizing about the urban origins of agriculture, but which goes far beyond that to illuminate the economic basis for many of the conclusions in Death and Life.

I could add many others to these lists which I've enjoyed over the past few years, but would invite commenters to share their own recommendations.

Suburban Follies: The Rear Alleyway

For a few years running James Kunstler has had on his website an "Eyesore of the Month" feature, which catalogs various failures in architecture and urban design.  In a similar vein, every now and then I'd like to focus on some more mundane poor design decisions, beginning with one that's been mentioned here before: rear access alleys, with reference to a new subdivision in Orlando that's typical of the type:

Unlike the typical late 20th century suburb of detached houses on large lots with front-facing garages (the much-derided "snout house" typology), this suburb clumps houses together in batches of six, and, in a presumably New Urbanist gesture, places the garages in the rear of the homes along ten-foot lanes, as can be seen above.  From the fronting street, the result looks like this:

The street is only about 20-25 feet wide, but ponder in this case: what is this street actually for?  On-street parking is unneeded due to the ample garage and driveway parking in the rear, and from the street layout it appears that the most of the fronting streets are duplicative and unnecessary in providing access to the rear alleys.  If the intention were to create a more pedestrian-friendly street, it matters little since, in this large single-use neighborhood ringed by wide arterials, there is nowhere to walk to.  And as for private outdoor space:

The garages and driveways in the rear have destroyed that greatest of suburban attractions: the grassy private backyard.  And this in mild Florida, where a backyard is a year-round amenity.  The house is now an island surrounded by pavement on all sides, except for the ornamental front and side yards.  Remove the garage, driveway and alley, bring the property line to the midpoint of the alley, and a spacious backyard is created at the sole cost of having to park one's car on the street.

This design idea appears to have caught on in recent years.  While visiting a friend in a very similar development in Birmingham, I was told that the local homeowners association actually prohibited parking on fronting streets altogether!  This officially reduces fronting streets themselves to expensive ornamentation, as symbolic access roads to the functional access roads in the rear.

I'm not entirely sure how to account for this.  Did the ugliness of garage-fronted streets finally become so intolerable that buyers became willing to sacrifice even their backyards for the illusion of a car-free environment in the front?  I don't know and would be interested to hear anyone's thoughts, but for now, one more shot from Orlando:

This is the village of Hogsmeade from the new attraction The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando's Universal Studios, a replica of the movie version of a fictional medieval town from J.K. Rowling's series.  Apparently this one traditional city street and its associated rides have revived the theme park's fortunes, sending attendance soaring by 68% and turning a $35 million quarterly loss into a $45 million profit.  One could argue this success is purely due to the books and movies, but why were those such a runaway success?  Nathan Lewis can tell you.

Zoning: The Other Reasons

Nathan Lewis and Benjamin Hemric have written some great commentary on last week's zoning post on the origins of zoning and the concerns that may still drive its popularity today.  If zoning does not preserve property values, as research suggests and even zoning's defenders admit, what are some of these other concerns?  As they suggest:

1. Protection against the effects of "congestion," which in practice means automobile traffic and parking spillover.  This partially accounts for opposition to higher-density projects which are clearly indicative of increasing property values: for example, new luxury apartment towers in Queens' Long Island City neighborhood, where existing residents demanded large quantities of garage parking even in the absence of city parking minimums.  Traffic associated with "apartment houses" also made in appearance in the Euclid v. Ambler decision as a justification for density limitations. 
2. Exclusion of the poor, for both quality of life and economic reasons.  The latter point relates to property taxes: even if upzoning increases land values, it may be that net property tax revenue, per resident, will fall, resulting in a decline in the quality of city services and the necessity of a tax hike.  Exclusionary zoning could then be seen as a way to keep property taxes low -- at least for so long as the mounting externalized costs of a very low-density development pattern can be postponed.
3. The "neighborhood character" argument, which Benjamin Hemric alludes to and which is captured in this 1994 paper and in the old Disney animated film Benjamin mentions (The Little House).  This I think gets at the heart of what zoning means when it states an intention to "conserve" the neighborhood.  In essence, the neighborhood as it exists meets the density preference of the existing residents, and that any further densification would result in a perceived decline in quality of life, regardless of any increase in property values.  Cashing out by selling and moving away is not always a desirable solution if one has a long-term investment in unique neighborhood institutions and amenities.  To some extent this is the same argument advanced by the foes of gentrification.
4. Finally, protection from harmful or noxious uses.  Although this reason is far less significant than it was 100 years ago, when promoted as a pre-emptive measure against a select group of activities it has a certain logic as an efficient alternative to costly and drawn-out nuisance lawsuits.

As to each of these justifications, several questions could be posed, such as: Is this goal a legitimate end of the police power?  If it's a legitimate end, does Euclidean zoning actually help achieve it?  And if so, is it the best or most narrowly tailored way of achieving it?  Are there unintended consequences or other negative side effects associated with the regulation?  Could the same concerns be addressed more simply and less intrusively by some other approach?  And so forth. 

In answer to the last of those, Benjamin's suggestion of reviving a variant of the original, 35-page 1916 New York zoning resolution is an interesting one.  He's not the only one to have this thought: a 1993 City Journal article on New York's modern zoning code, still very relevant today, had positive things to say about its simplicity, predictability and clarity.  I do have some thoughts of my own on all this that I'll get around to in a post or two.

Cars, Pedestrians and Safe Streets

Is New York really the 13th most dangerous large city in the country for pedestrians?   A study reported on earlier this week at Streetsblog shows New York, somewhat surprisingly, to have a pedestrian fatality rate comparable to such car-friendly cities as Atlanta, Houston and Los Angeles. 

Regardless of the reason for these findings, the study I think does show one thing clearly: to reduce pedestrian fatalities to near zero, a city has around two options:

The Modernist solution: total pedestrian segregation.

• Remove pedestrians from the city to the extent possible, or segregate them.
• Remove cars from the city, or greatly constrain them.

Reflecting the first option is the idealized auto-dependent city of the early Modernist period, at right: a mocked-up American version of the Corbusian Ville Contemporaine filmed for the 1939 World's Fair, where all pedestrians are strictly segregated in recognition of the incompatibility of high-speed traffic arterials and human beings on foot (a more  localized example is the enclosed mall).  On the other hand, a car-free city such as Venice also has, unsurprisingly, a very low pedestrian fatality rate.

By contrast, in dense urban areas where large numbers of pedestrians and high-speed traffic share the streets, it appears a certain rate of pedestrian deaths is inevitable regardless of the measures which are taken to redesign street layouts.  Presumably this is due to induced pedestrian traffic: as an urban environment becomes more pleasant for pedestrians, pedestrian activity will rise in response, resulting in a numerical increase in fatalities even as the per capita fatality rate falls.  If the new pedestrian volume does not come at the expense of more dangerous automobile use (e.g. if people drive to the pedestrian-friendly area), the number of total transit-related fatalities may remain essentially the same.  Possibly this explains why cities of such varying pedestrian friendliness have roughly similar fatality rates: New York (1.9/100,000); Houston (2.0); Los Angeles (2.0); San Francisco (1.6); Atlanta (1.6); Philadelphia (1.7); Denver (1.7).  

Running the gauntlet, 3rd Avenue, NYC.

This is why I think Jane Jacobs was on point in when, in terms of improving the city's streets and other public spaces, she referred to "an attrition of automobiles by cities" (Death and Life, p. 474) rather than today's "efforts to improve pedestrian safety."  The difference may seem minor, but Jacobs' statement identifies the culprit not as insufficient accommodation for people on foot — which implicitly acknowledges the primacy, or at least inevitability, of the automobile — but the automobile itself, the culprit behind pedestrian deaths along suburban arterials and urban streets alike.

Jacobs envisioned a long-term strategy in which pedestrians would, bit by bit, encroach upon and reclaim the public realm from the car.  This is quite different from a modern Complete Streets approach, which at best seeks equality for pedestrians, rather than privilege, and which at worst, as Strong Towns Blog has shown, results in over-engineered, car-friendly thoroughfares where sidewalks and bike lanes are little more than an expensive afterthought.  To fully address street safety, the conception of the role of the car in urban settings could stand to take a bit more inspiration from Jacobs' point of view.

See also:  Are Narrow Streets A Realistic Objective?

(h/t Pedestrian Observations).

Streetcar Visions: Transportation in Bob Dylan's Music

Greenwich Village, but not a true narrow street.

Over at The Infrastructurist, Eric Jaffe has a great post up in recognition of Bob Dylan's 70th birthday that anyone with even a passing interest in Bob really ought to check out.  Combining infrastructure and Bob Dylan?  Yes, it can be done, and with fascinating commentary on each of the chosen songs.  At the cost of giving away my own longtime interest in Dylan's music, and for the sake of doing a purely fun post, I thought I'd add a list of my own on transportation in Dylan's songwriting (the former a subject I don't write about much, since it's done so well elsewhere by the pros). 

Without further ado, the modes of transportation ranked by their number of mentions in Dylan's five plus decades of songwriting, added up using Dylan.com's lyric search:

Trains: 39
Ships and boats: 33
Cars:  17 (including two Fords, two Cadillacs and one Buick)
Trucks: 10 
Airplanes: 6
Horseback riding: 6
Buses: 3
Horse-drawn vehicles: 3
Motorcycles: 2
Streetcars: 2
Subways: 2
Taxis: 1
Bicycles: 1
Monorails: 0

...and walking: 128

Is Dylan a walking man at heart?  He's certainly no couch potato:  constant, almost compulsive walking appears in many songs, especially those on more recent albums.  Despite the relative scarcity of mentions of personal automobiles (13% of all non-walking mentions), one looking for a pro-urban bent in Dylan's lyrics is likely to find more of a mixed bag: although negative characterizations frequently accompany mentions of cities in general, specific urban settings come off memorably well.

Common Sense on Street Design

The Scottish Government has recently put out a policy statement on street design which represents a major step forward for the cause of narrow streets. Although the authors can't resist including a few suggested street layouts, the key change here is the rejection of the very idea of standardized street widths, which may seem like a minor point but which in fact is a repudiation of the 170-year history of government-mandated street dimensions in Great Britain:

"Width between buildings is a key dimension and needs to be considered in relation to function and aesthetics. There are no fixed rules on street widths but account should be taken of the variety of activities taking place in the street and of the scale of the buildings on either side. . . . Rigid standards on street widths should be avoided and new streets should be laid out with consideration given to the relationship between scale and the nature of the space created."

On designing for pedestrians:

"Walking is the most sustainable form of transport. Streets should be designed, not only to allow for walking, but to actively encourage it to take place. The propensity to walk is influenced not only by distance, but also by the quality of the walking experience. All streets should offer a pleasant walking experience."

On the economic utility of aesthetics in design:

"Places need to look good and work well in the long term. Design costs are only a small percentage of the overall costs, but it is the quality of the design that makes the difference in creating places that will stand the test of time. Well-designed places last longer and are easier to maintain, thus the costs of the design element are repaid over time. . . . The long term success of places can be as dependent on visual appeal as durability. The quality of the design and its appropriateness to an area can have a significant effect on the extent to which a place is liked and well-used."

One wonders how these ideas will play out on the ground, but this seems to me like a promising sign given the source of the document.