Local "Planning" Follies - part 8 - Alternatives to Sprawl

Alternatives to Sprawl

Part of a series. See Local "Planning" Follies Part 1 - The state of play in land use planning for links to all posts.

(c) by Mark Dempsey

The following section describes alternatives to typical suburban design. More compact, mixed use, pedestrian-friendly design maximizes the value of scarce real estate. Making more of the typical suburban sprawl dense development pattern is not what this means. The design alternative can look like the apartments below, in McKinley Park. Notice that there are offices to the left and single-family homes to the right.

McKinley Park Offices (on the left), apartments (center), and housing (right) in one block.

Far from harming home values, single-family homes next to such buildings in McKinley Park are the most valuable (per square foot) in the region, says the Sacramento Bee.

The typical struggle between developers and environmentalists is portrayed as “growth” vs. “no-growth.” That is not necessarily true, however. In this set of pictures, you will see a place we built more than 50 years ago that minimized environmental impacts for development, not just then, but today too. 

You will also see an extraordinarily valuable bit of real estate because of how it was built. This is a look at McKinley Park, a pre-1950's Sacramento Neighborhood that is still a desirable place to live (Desirable! heck I can't afford to buy a home there!).
Here, you can see it's a large park

surrounded by homes

offices

shops and restaurants,

and some homes that qualify as mansions, in my book.

With this large park surrounded by homes and businesses, you might think there would be lots of off-street parking—there's not. There are a total of 31 parking spaces for the park itself (Actually, these are for a later addition to the park. The park itself was built with no off-street parking of its own).Yet I've never had any trouble finding a parking space—even though the park is packed most days I've visited (these pictures are from a Monday late afternoon). I park parallel onstreet where there is plenty of parking.

In contrast, most sprawl parks have huge parking lots. The message is clear (“Sorry, little Johnny, you'll have to wait until your chauffeur...er Mom arrives to drive you to the playground.”)

So how do McKinley Park's businesses and apartments provide parking? They put it behind the buildings, down alleys. 

Parking behind apartments

The alley pictured backs up to businesses and apartments.

There are lots of big houses--very expensive mansions—but right next to them are several styles of apartments. Here are a clutch of one-story cottages on a large lot with alley parking behind them:

The park itself is a healthy place, full of joggers and cyclists. Why? Because not only does it have a nice, decomposed granite jogging track circling the park, but the neighbors can get there on foot, on streets that look like this:

 

Notice that the mower strip, trees, and onstreet parking are a barrier to the passing traffic, while the sidewalk is at least 5' wide. Notice too that the street lamps are 10' - 14' tall, which means they have pedestrian-friendly light (not the blinding light of sprawl streetlights). Walking down such streets is invited. You do not walk next to fast-moving traffic, indian file on a narrow sidewalk (no conversations, please!), soon to be spotted by the folks with Uzis in the guard tower....But I exaggerate.

In contrast, although suburbia can be pleasant, it subtly discourages pedestrians:

The suburban neighborhood I live in (through the windshield of my car).

This is a neighborhood with trees as old as McKinley Park's. Note that they don't form a canopy over the sidewalk and street like the line of trees in the mower strips in the McKinley Park neighborhood. Note too that the roadway itself is a forbidding 40' wide. It takes a brave pedestrian to cross the incredibly wide streets in sprawl.

This is a tertiary, neighborhood street, not a thoroughfare, but its travel lanes are as wide as freeway lanes. The message to drivers is so clear (“Go faster!”) that current traffic engineering standards require suburban neighborhood roads bend every 1,000'. Hence: spaghetti streets.

The “collector street” connects sprawl residences to jobs, schools, parks and shopping. One anti-sprawl apologist (James Kunstler) calls them “car sewers.” Personally, I believe they inspire set design for all post-apocalyptic films. Do I exaggerate? Take a look at this and see for yourself:

Is Mad Max coming? 

In contrast, McKinley Park streets are much narrower, and even when the sidewalk is next to the road (the larger turn radius at the corner and the roll-over curbs are likely a later street “improvement”), the onstreet parking shields pedestrians from passing traffic.

Mixed Use

Studies, and common sense, say that if we really want to cut the traffic, we need to make different destinations (home, work, shops, etc.) within the same neighborhood, like McKinley Park. That cuts inter-neighborhood traffic. To really get people out of their cars, we need pedestrian friendly streets so people can walk to these different destinations.

Here is an example of a modern development that has revisited the traditional pattern of building small shops under residences:

This has shops under residences or offices. Such buildings can even be on major thoroughfares with relatively little parking. Businesses like this are typically smaller; not like big box stores, or offices. The mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly pattern does work for even big-box development, though. One example would be San Francisco’s Union Square where hotels, shops and offices several stories high surround the public square.

Development Behind Thoroughfares

Building behind main roads can be residences, not commerce or offices—although even here some mixed use is possible. In any case, if commerce, offices or transit in such neighborhoods are to be viable, they must have customers—and enough of them—within a walk. 

Transit and neighborhood commerce are the reasons compact housing is necessary. Suggested densities would be roughly 11-13 units per acre (ten is duplexes). 

Such compact building in New Urbanist neighborhoods would also look very different from sprawl apartments. The homes in the picture above are in a downtown Sacramento development called “Metro Square.” It was so popular, it sold out in a single day, even before the hot housing market arrived. 

Another low-impact model of denser building would be to make the density non-uniform. You can build four mansions and an eightplex of about the same mass as the large homes to achieve this. The McKinley Park apartments at the beginning of this post is this kind of mixed-density building.

Lower Density Residences

Finally, even less-densely built single-family homes can have a scattering of denser units (see the flat over rear garage below). This is only slightly denser than the current suburban standard that permits a duplex on corner lots.

Ideally, these too would respect pedestrians, providing wider sidewalks and narrower streets. Garages can be behind the homes, rather than fronting the street. Homeowners either have a driveway that reaches the back yard garage, or alleys to reach their garages.

Street Design

We need to ensure that all the streets are pedestrian-friendly. This means wider, set-back sidewalks, narrower streets, and shorter street lamp posts. [Note: in a bit of good news that came along after this writing, the state of Calfornia requires all new development to have those pedestrian- and bike-friendly street designs known as "Complete Streets"]

The Alternative and The Market

Not only do people pay premiums locally for such building--McKinley Park gets the highest per-square-foot price in the region--they also pay premiums for such development elsewhere, whether in Kentlands (Maryland), Orenco Station (Oregon), or Seaside (Florida).

Of course with more destinations within a walk, this development also reduces traffic, offering residents the healthier alternative of a daily walk. In any case the higher value would be enough to indicate a win-win potential for the community and any builder willing to make traditional neighborhoods.