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It doesn't matter where you personally drive to. You said:
I exaggerated a bit, but at least surface parking is not necessarily part of the urban landscape. [Both cities' garages aren't an obvious part of the landscape; they're rather hidden]. Neither city has much if any surface parking in its center, London a bit more so than New York and they clearly have "urban landscapes".
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I wasn't thinking of urbanlife78's remark.
I think he was confusing photography art with what I actually like in a city. I obviously enjoy urban areas with people in it, but I also enjoy waiting for that right moment to take a photo with the least amount of people, no people, or only people in the background.
Except that you can't help responding to it because you can't deny your belief in an entitlement to control what does not belong to you. You have no defense to the indefensible. I agree that you have a problem recognizing boundaries - like respecting other people's property and your lack of standing regarding their property. It's quite obvious that you feel an entitlement to dictate how other people's property needs to be modified to meet your vision. I don't know why you feel such an entitlement but I do know that folks that share your lack of respect for boundaries are why good fences make for good neighbors.
IC_deLight, how do you feel about parking minimum, lot size, and setback laws that are common in suburban areas?
I think I'll propose Patricius's law: "No matter what the original topic, the probability of a thread in the urban planning forum morphing into a debate about urbanity and the urban fabric increases exponentially with time".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete.
IC_deLight, how do you feel about parking minimum, lot size, and setback laws that are common in suburban areas?
I can't speak for him, but I think all those laws should be repealed, along with laws mandating higher density and New Urbanist development patterns. To protect liberty and property rights in the sphere of urban planning, a general deregulation is required, which is quite different from the common urbanist program of keeping the regulatory apparatus but changing the regulations to suit their desires.
Urbanist libertarians do exist, believing that in the absence of restrictions market competition will gravitate towards NU developments. While I'm not one of them, I believe in the principle of "there's more than one way to skin a cat". New development can be regulated non-coercively by making any prospective buyers agree to XYZ before the owner lets them buy the property. This process is consensual with both parties agreeing to abide by it, as opposed to zoning which is imposed top-down on unwilling parties. Planned communities fit in well with this process, and it has the advantage of being independent of the politics of the day.
I think I'll propose Patricius's law: "No matter what the original topic, the probability of a thread in the urban planning forum morphing into a debate about urbanity and the urban fabric increases exponentially with time".
I can't speak for him, but I think all those laws should be repealed, along with laws mandating higher density and New Urbanist development patterns. To protect liberty and property rights in the sphere of urban planning, a general deregulation is required, which is quite different from the common urbanist program of keeping the regulatory apparatus but changing the regulations to suit their desires.
Urbanist libertarians do exist, believing that in the absence of restrictions market competition will gravitate towards NU developments. While I'm not one of them, I believe in the principle of "there's more than one way to skin a cat". New development can be regulated non-coercively by making any prospective buyers agree to XYZ before the owner lets them buy the property. This process is consensual with both parties agreeing to abide by it, as opposed to zoning which is imposed top-down on unwilling parties. Planned communities fit in well with this process, and it has the advantage of being independent of the politics of the day.
Huh? You do realize developers are making money hand over fist with new urbanism projects? Also in an urban planning forum, why would you suggest getting rid of everything that has to do with planning?
I think I'll propose Patricius's law: "No matter what the original topic, the probability of a thread in the urban planning forum morphing into a debate about urbanity and the urban fabric increases exponentially with time".
The probability approaches 1.
Quote:
I can't speak for him, but I think all those laws should be repealed, along with laws mandating higher density and New Urbanist development patterns.
The more common situation in my experience, is higher density and new urbanist development require variances from the usual zoning rules. That doesn't mean with lessening of zoning and planning restrictions you'd get mostly denser/new urbanist development but likely you'd get more. I can't think of too many places with maximum lot sizes, or law mandating only multi-family housing. My city has zoned part of a commercial street to place its parking in the back, so that might count as new urbanist zoning. Though "new urbanist" is rather nebulous.
Regarding Forest Hills in Kitchener, yeah, I'm pretty sure those are duplexes. Aside from the double widths driveways, the fact that there are two doors on the same side of the buildings and none on the other side suggests either top/bottom or front/back duplexes. They would probably be about 1000sf each, which is not that small for multifamily. Also the census data says there are about that many duplexes in that city block+2 adjacent ones, and those buildings are the ones that look most likely to be duplexes. They're pretty similar to the 4-plexes in parts of Brampton which I also don't really like for the way they dealt with parking. It is a cheap way to provide a lot of parking I guess... but I also generally think that multi-family should go mostly in places where people are likely to have fewer cars for this reason. http://goo.gl/maps/MXHCG
Forest Hills is not my idea of a walkable suburb, but I wouldn't use the size of the parking lot and amount of cars as an immediate judge of that. First of all, the size of the parking lot is probably determined more by parking requirements than demand. Many of the cars also likely belong to employees and are just sitting there all day, even a customer might have their car in the parking lot for 20-30 minutes, while someone walking will probably be take just 1 minute to get from the store entrance to the residential streets. If you look closely, you will see one person getting their bike and 2 people putting stuff into their cars, suggesting 33% bike and 67% drive. 3 people is a very small sample size though, so really it's hard to tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people drove.
Having lived and knowing people who lived in similar neighbourhoods though, it is an improvement over some American suburbs in terms of walkability. Aside from a decent amount of people walking/biking for leisure, you will occasionally have people with access to a car walking or biking to those commercial areas (usually not, but sometimes, yes), and it's good for teenagers since they don't have to beg their parents for a ride. My high school had easily a couple hundred (out of 1500) students walking to the shopping plaza for lunch break during the nicer parts of the year.
You know how good the bus service is there? The area looks compact even if not that dense, so it looks easier to serve by public transit than say the Long Island views I presented, where there'd more directions of travel needed to covered.
You can't blame that on the suburbs. People fled the cities for many reasons, with crime, congestion, cost of living and pollution being three of the main ones.
You know how good the bus service is there? The area looks compact even if not that dense, so it looks easier to serve by public transit than say the Long Island views I presented, where there'd more directions of travel needed to covered.
if someone wants to pull the map from the pdf, it would give a good idea of the bus map for the region. Though based on the placement of the bus stops in google maps, I imagine it is pretty good.
You know how good the bus service is there? The area looks compact even if not that dense, so it looks easier to serve by public transit than say the Long Island views I presented, where there'd more directions of travel needed to covered.
There's an express bus route with 15min peak/30min off peak/weekend frequencies going on Fischer Hallman stopping and McGarry and Highland connecting to the University of Waterloo, Conestoga Mall and small shopping centres. Bus 25 on Queens Blvd is also 15min peak/30 min off peak (except 60min on Sunday) and connects to downtown Kitchener. In the case of the express bus, "peak" means 7am to 6pm and everything in between, so really most of the day, and for bus 25 it's for about 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon.
There's 3 other bus routes that are less frequent (30min peak/60min off peak I think) on Greenbrook, Highland and Westmount, these connect to the other main mall (Fairview Park), Wilfrid Laurier University plus additional connections to Downtown Kitchener and the University of Waterloo. All in all, I think it's pretty good for a suburban neighbourhood.
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