The recovery of urbanism

Graph title: Sharing factor What is the difference between New Urbanism and traditional, “old” urbanism? The answer has to do with one big systemic thing — the rise of suburbia — and with one ubiquitous technical thing — the response to suburbia’s technological icon and instrument, the automobile. Because conditions have changed so much in the past 100-plus years, the New Urbanism must position itself to compete against conventional suburbia. “Old” urbanism did not have to do that; there was no competing model to the way traditional villages and urban neighborhoods were made and grew. Manhattan (from which magical island have emanated many harebrained, if amusing, nontraditional urban theories) is the signal case in point. Manhattan is dense and transit-saturated and it boasts continuously excellent frontages because its structure contains virtually no explicit technical provision for parking. Manhattan is a product of “old” urbanism. For most of the history of Manhattan’s development, no model insisted on accommodating vehicles as is now commonly mandated in the suburbs. vehicle-oriented standards prevail In the 20th century, suburbia became the dominant system. Suburban ways became entrenched legally, economically, and culturally. They became technically entrenched as well, with the triumph of vehicle-oriented standards. The suburban system is perpetuated through excessively simple design protocols, particularly those dealing with cars. For better and for worse, New Urbanism, if it is to compete with suburbia, now must accommodate a suburban-level complement of cars, even while plotting the transition to a more desirable, less car-dominated future. Designing thoroughfares for vehicles in motion is a high challenge. The truly defining issue for New Urbanism, however, is how to find satisfactory solutions for masses of cars in stasis. The places where these machines lie undead are deadly to pedestrian activity —the lifeblood of satisfactory urbanism. New Urbanism must therefore offer sophisticated and realistic ways of providing parking more efficiently; these methods must prove competitive with the excessive, simplistic parking standards of suburbia, so that we can begin to undercut and move away from harmful standards. The morbid impact of masses of parked cars can be blunted through three kinds of techniques: reduction, allocation, and masking. Reduction in number of parking spaces can be achieved by better matching the parking supply to time of day. In a mixed-use environment, there are a variety of uses, and their parking demand peaks at different hours. Offices (high daytime use) and lodging (high overnight use) share spaces relatively easily. Combinations of residential, office, and retail allow overlapping to varying degrees. The table above, from the SmartCode, indicates reduction factors that have generally proven sufficient. For a shared parking strategy to work well, the spaces must be intelligently allocated — in their ownership and management, connections, and locations. Overlapping will be feasible only if the spaces are not designated for a single use. In practice, municipal parking lots or structures, being neutral turf, are better than private ones. On-street parking is best. Unassigned privately-owned parking reserved for a specific building may fall prey to poltroonish or greedy owners, loan officers, leasing agents, or insurers. It is best for the vitality of the urban fabric if parking is not connected, especially off-street parking, to a specific destination building. Walking from parking to various uses makes the pedestrian environment more lively, and supports retail along its paths. Be aware that a mandatory walk between parking and destination will cause bitter complaint unless the walk itself is interesting. One cannot assume that people will tolerate separation of parking from destination simply because the destination itself is worthwhile. Excellent frontages, lively shops, and the length of walk between parking and destination all support one another; if one fails, the whole setting falls apart. On-street parking is essential. Not only does on-street parking increase the number of spaces available. It also forms a “steel line” of parked vehicles; this offers so much subliminal protection for walkers that, as a rule, pedestrian activity will not flourish unless there are cars parked between travel lanes and sidewalk. Thousands of shops on old main streets died because those thoroughfares were stripped of on-street parking by traffic engineers. (One should also not discount the attractiveness factor: A line of parallel-parked cars exposes the more varied side profiles of vehicles, rather than the blunt exhaust-pipe ends seen in parking lots.) With the exception of a forecourt for hotel dropoffs, off-street parking must be to the rear of buildings. This is accomplished handily enough if the block is large. Otherwise, the parking must be masked by thin “liner buildings,” which conceal the vehicle storage without much parking capacity. Masking, the third of the techniques for blunting the negative impact of parking concentrations, will be discussed in the next installment. Copyright © 2007 Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell. Libraries, universities, institutions, and businesses may not circulate, hire, print, use as a teaching aid, or reproduce this article and/or images without the prior written permission of the authors.