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Old 02-27-2016, 02:13 PM
 
Location: Centre Wellington, ON
5,738 posts, read 5,962,368 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Katarina Witt View Post
Possibly, but still, there are few grocery stores even in little "Main Street" places, such as my hometown, a mill town near Pittsburgh. Even in the days when steel was booming and the downtown was the major shopping area, there was one small grocery on the main st. but the supermarkets were in more residential areas. Ditto the burb where I live now, which does have a "Main Street" actually called Main Street. No groceries, though a few specialty food stores. When we first moved here, there was one grocery in the general business area, but off the main drag a block or so.

There are a few grocery stores on the edges of downtown Denver.
Here in Ontario the small towns will usually have a small grocery store in downtown or at least at the edge of downtown, so still centrally located for the town's residents. Typically about 10-20k sf, so bigger than the typical mom & pop grocer but smaller than the typical suburban big box supermarkets. They'll typically have surface parking though, especially since they also serve surrounding rural areas.

Ex this Foodland store:
https://www.google.ca/maps/search/gr...7i13312!8i6656

Once the town's population gets into the 5,000-10,000 range, it can support a bigger supermarket which will often get built at the edge of town. Ex St Marys has a Foodland in a small strip-mall at the edge of downtown, and then there's a bigger newer Loblaws at the eastern outskirts. That's pretty typical for an Ontario town that size.
https://www.google.ca/maps/search/gr.../data=!3m1!1e3

In Toronto's older neighbourhoods, there's a lot of grocery stores on main streets mixed in with other retail with row houses right around the corner from the main streets. Many are mom & pop scale, and then you'll also have some of the bigger chains at the "urban format" scale (10-15k sf), and finally some bigger stores at 30-60k sf which often have surface parking unless they're downtown or maybe one of the other high density nodes. A lot of those bigger stores with surface parking were on formerly industrial sites though, where zoning did not allow for residential uses, so once industry started moving out those sites were available to retailers at a low cost. If there was more competition from residential uses they might have been developed differently.
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Old 02-27-2016, 02:18 PM
 
2,552 posts, read 2,448,617 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Malloric View Post
Realistically you really need city supplied parking in those cases, which is not present in Berkeley but is in other places. And yes, it works. Instead of having parking, development is assessed a fee in lieu of providing the parking which pays for. That's done in quiet a few Main Street-ish areas in the Bay Area.
I agree with you there.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Katarina Witt View Post
As you well know, there are few grocery stores in downtown business districts, probably because few people live there, and the grocers in particular like to go where the customers are. This "no grocery store downtown" is an issue on many city forums, and gets brought up here occasionally.

The scenario you describe is common in many strip malls. There will be a few spots for "Joe Blow's customers only" right near the door of Joe Blow's, and the center of the lot is for anyone. Businesses in central business districts that have parking generally do not want patrons of other businesses parking there, and will ticket people who do so.
This thread is about walkability, so I was describing a mixed-use district, like a main street, rather than a modern CBD that may be largely devoid of residents. Without residents nearby, it's hard to have any businesses that work outside of office hours; I can think of several coffee, pizza, and sandwich places that close at 2 or 3 pm for that reason.

It's worth noting that I didn't specify that the shared parking should be private, such as is the case in strip malls and shopping centers. Though, to branch off Malloric's point, via business district associations, a parking-in-commons model could be done without the city, so long as the city was willing to let zoning play along.

What I was attempting to describe was a situation in which parking-in-common would result in higher utilization and, potentially, suffer fewer peak hour congestion issues than every business supplying its own lot.
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Old 02-27-2016, 03:24 PM
 
2,639 posts, read 1,980,147 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by darkeconomist View Post
I agree with you there.

This thread is about walkability, so I was describing a mixed-use district, like a main street, rather than a modern CBD that may be largely devoid of residents. Without residents nearby, it's hard to have any businesses that work outside of office hours; I can think of several coffee, pizza, and sandwich places that close at 2 or 3 pm for that reason.

Don't recall who said it, but it was commented that lively downtowns tend to border on lively urban neighborhoods.

That is, the liveliness of an adjacent neighborhood spills over into downtown.
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Old 02-27-2016, 03:43 PM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
90,316 posts, read 120,259,082 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by darkeconomist View Post
I agree with you there.



This thread is about walkability, so I was describing a mixed-use district, like a main street, rather than a modern CBD that may be largely devoid of residents. Without residents nearby, it's hard to have any businesses that work outside of office hours; I can think of several coffee, pizza, and sandwich places that close at 2 or 3 pm for that reason.

It's worth noting that I didn't specify that the shared parking should be private, such as is the case in strip malls and shopping centers. Though, to branch off Malloric's point, via business district associations, a parking-in-commons model could be done without the city, so long as the city was willing to let zoning play along.

What I was attempting to describe was a situation in which parking-in-common would result in higher utilization and, potentially, suffer fewer peak hour congestion issues than every business supplying its own lot.
I don't think you're being realistic. Take my suburban city. It has a mix of business such as you are describing, except no grocery stores. There's very little excess parking to share. There is a bank that has a few spaces where people sometimes park when the bank is closed. Parking is a HUGE issue on Friday nights, which seems to be "go out to eat night", also the Street Faire night in summers. Council is always talking about doing something and never doing anything.
Take a look at this link if you're interested. There is a map showing the public parking.
Welcome to Historic Downtown Louisville, Colorado
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Old 02-27-2016, 03:54 PM
 
Location: Oakland, CA
28,226 posts, read 36,719,617 times
Reputation: 28561
Quote:
Originally Posted by darkeconomist View Post
I agree with you there.



This thread is about walkability, so I was describing a mixed-use district, like a main street, rather than a modern CBD that may be largely devoid of residents. Without residents nearby, it's hard to have any businesses that work outside of office hours; I can think of several coffee, pizza, and sandwich places that close at 2 or 3 pm for that reason.

It's worth noting that I didn't specify that the shared parking should be private, such as is the case in strip malls and shopping centers. Though, to branch off Malloric's point, via business district associations, a parking-in-commons model could be done without the city, so long as the city was willing to let zoning play along.

What I was attempting to describe was a situation in which parking-in-common would result in higher utilization and, potentially, suffer fewer peak hour congestion issues than every business supplying its own lot.
This is how it works on my "main street." It is a neighborhood street, I live roughly 1.5 miles from downtown, and my neighborhood is served by its main street, for me it is about 1/2 mile away to the middle of the street. There are about 70 businesses on the street. There are a couple of banks that have their own parking lots, with about 5-10 spots, there are a couple of restaurants that have a few spots too. The bulk of the neighborhood is served by the city operated lot of about 60 spaces, it is metered from 9-6 Monday through Saturday. There is also street parking, with the same metered hours. And a couple of surface paid lots. There is also a huge garage (300 spots) for Kaiser as it is also in the neighborhood, but I don't know if people use it at night for patronizing the street. There is also a mid-sized grocery store (not suburban sized but not mini urban either) with its own surface lot of a few dozen spaces. It closes fairly early and has a sign up to use its parking after business hours. Into the evening it is common for the restaurant and bar patrons to park there.

If I was already in my car coming back from elsewhere I'll drive over to the street. Parking is "hard" but not impossible. There are a few spots in the adjacent residential. It has never occurred to me to use the paid lot at Kaiser, even though it is very empty in the evenings. I guess free parking always wins. The paid surface lot is always fairly empty as well in the evening.

Lately they have converted a few of the curbside parking spots into bike parking, which is welcome. Lots of people live in easy biking distance.

My mom used to complain about having to pay to park at CVS (its only parking is the city lot). But it is what it is. It works well. But there are always detractors who complain about the lack of free parking. But the neighborhood has been thriving for well over 100 years (there is one 100+ year old business, the grocery is I think 80 years. There are many restaurants that are 30+ years old. And some newer stuff mixed in too). Not many vacancies either. So something is working.
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Old 02-27-2016, 07:45 PM
 
Location: Centre Wellington, ON
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jade408 View Post
Is that suburban growth honest growth or growth by design. We have develop,net rules that prioritize limiting the amount of traffic (level of service in planner speak) so this makes it impossible to build anything somewhere that is developed, forcing "sprawl."
I wasn't really trying to say that high rates of suburban growth are inevitable, mostly just trying to explain why they have been this way and how that can affect municipal finance and tax rates.

It's true that the way level of service is dealt with when measuring development impacts encourages more suburban growth, along with other policies. From 2000 to 2010, the average urban core has arguably lost population (about 1% loss) while the typical metro area as a whole grew by about 10%. That's probably changed somewhat, my guess is the average urban core is growing a little now, although there's obviously a lot of variation with cities like Memphis, Birmingham, Detroit and Cleveland continuing to lose population while Seattle, New York, DC and Miami are booming.

Policy changes related to level of service, infrastructure funding, zoning, parking requirements, housing finance, etc would lead to even higher growth rates in the core. However, I suspect the outer suburbs would still be growing faster than the metro average in most cities, although maybe the urban core would be growing faster than average too, with built-out suburbs growing slower than average.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jade408 View Post
Secondly you don't need to be urban to be walkable. One of the most popular neighborhoods in my city has a main commercial street with mostly 3 story buildings and some housing on top. Maybe 1 building adjacent will be a multi family place. The vast majority of the near by streets are residential single family. But it is walkable. The train station is in the middle of the neighborhood and has surface parking. It is not a very urban neighborhood, or that dense. But it is wall served by transit and very walkable. It is very popular with younger more affluent families (the price has essentially doubled in the past 6 years). There are some empty lots nearby and denser development is planned within 1/2 mile of this Main Street.
I guess it depends on what you call urban. If you're talking about the neighbourhood I think you are (Fruitland), typical lot sizes are around 3000 sf and many census tracts are around 20,000 ppsm and up to 30,000 ppsm or so. Maybe not as dense as central SF but still quite a bit denser and more urban than the typical suburb.
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Old 02-27-2016, 08:12 PM
 
Location: Vallejo
21,669 posts, read 24,814,702 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Katarina Witt View Post
I don't think you're being realistic. Take my suburban city. It has a mix of business such as you are describing, except no grocery stores. There's very little excess parking to share. There is a bank that has a few spaces where people sometimes park when the bank is closed. Parking is a HUGE issue on Friday nights, which seems to be "go out to eat night", also the Street Faire night in summers. Council is always talking about doing something and never doing anything.
Take a look at this link if you're interested. There is a map showing the public parking.
Welcome to Historic Downtown Louisville, Colorado
Especially since on one particular block they've taken out, from streetview, effectively all of the street parking. I mean, street parking obviously can't accommodate the demand there so it spills out to the residential areas which maybe isn't so bad because it's fairly small and most of them seem to have off-street parking and decent lot sizes but still an annoyance.

San Mateo downtown has the big central parking garage (basically a midblock garage that runs the length of two and a half city blocks), Main Street garage which is part of the movie theater complex. Draeger's (the supermarket) has its own garage but also purchases exclusive parking from the city. Then there's Central Park Plaza which didn't participate and provided its own parking, which is kind of nifty as they park on the rooftop. It's a bit on the periphery which is probably why San Mateo's zoning allowed it even though it's less obscured than most of the parking in the area. There's a bunch of parking in Downtown San Mateo, which is more like an oversized main street than a real downtown. Mills and Palo Alto Health on the periphery of downtown as well as 101 S. Ellsworth (office building) all have their own parking facilities as they'd overwhelm the neighborhood parking. Often you do get pushed out to the overflow lots though. They do a pretty good job of disguising the parking in San Mateo but there is an awful lot of it.

Redwood City does a similar thing but went to much less elaborate, no expense spared lengths. They've got a midblock surface lot and then just a big parking garage that's obviously a parking garage. San Mateos are all obscured. Santa Rosa, same deal. Some stuff like the US Bank building (and other offices) have no parking but there's the adjacent D Street Garage and another one on 2nd Street plus some surface lots that the city operates. Others like Barnes and Nobles do. Again, San Mateo really stands out as I've never seen anyplace that goes to such great lengths to disguise the parking. I mean, obviously you can't completely do it but it's really not readily apparent. If anyplace is the counterpoint to cars "tearing apart" the urban fabric, it's San Mateo's downtown.
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Old 02-27-2016, 08:37 PM
 
Location: Vallejo
21,669 posts, read 24,814,702 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by memph View Post
I guess it depends on what you call urban. If you're talking about the neighbourhood I think you are (Fruitland), typical lot sizes are around 3000 sf and many census tracts are around 20,000 ppsm and up to 30,000 ppsm or so. Maybe not as dense as central SF but still quite a bit denser and more urban than the typical suburb.
Fruitvale. And no. That's the ghetto.

Not exactly sure myself, but I'd say Piedmont Ave/Temescal/Rockridge. Higher density = Uptown or MAYBE Pill Hill, although we're a long way from seeing that aside from the hospitals. Uptown just isn't within half a mile. I'm not sure either, to be honest. Absence of apartment buildings sounds more Rockridge, which is far as I know there aren't any plans for density. Also, Rockridge isn't all that popular with younger, more affluent families. It's popular with older, very affluent families. Which is why I'd say more around Piedmont Ave but then it's not like apartments are that rare. Grand Lake has lots of apartments. Temescal maybe. But that's more popular, as far as I know, with young hipsters than young families, not to the extent that Pill Hill and Uptown are but I'm not really sure it's considered family friendly yet. Also mutl-family isn't that rare in Temescal.

Last edited by Malloric; 02-27-2016 at 08:55 PM..
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Old 02-27-2016, 10:11 PM
 
18,487 posts, read 15,447,872 times
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Originally Posted by Freak80 View Post
Only in temperate climates.

Do you really want to walk more than a few hundred feet in a Houston or Phoenix summer or a Minneapolis or Buffalo winter?
In/after snow storms, I walk to campus, even when it's closed because everyone is too afraid to drive.
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Old 02-28-2016, 02:38 AM
 
Location: Oakland, CA
28,226 posts, read 36,719,617 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Malloric View Post
Fruitvale. And no. That's the ghetto.

Not exactly sure myself, but I'd say Piedmont Ave/Temescal/Rockridge. Higher density = Uptown or MAYBE Pill Hill, although we're a long way from seeing that aside from the hospitals. Uptown just isn't within half a mile. I'm not sure either, to be honest. Absence of apartment buildings sounds more Rockridge, which is far as I know there aren't any plans for density. Also, Rockridge isn't all that popular with younger, more affluent families. It's popular with older, very affluent families. Which is why I'd say more around Piedmont Ave but then it's not like apartments are that rare. Grand Lake has lots of apartments. Temescal maybe. But that's more popular, as far as I know, with young hipsters than young families, not to the extent that Pill Hill and Uptown are but I'm not really sure it's considered family friendly yet. Also mutl-family isn't that rare in Temescal.
Rockridge was pretty popular with younger families about 4 years ago, they it got really pricey. But on the rental front the families are younger. Now many of those people are buying on the west side of 24. But honestly, Piedmont Ave/ Temescal/ Rockridge are all quite similar from a density / walkability /amenities / transit perspective. Though Rockridge is less dense. Oakland has a lot of neighborhoods with walkable main streets: Fruitvale, Diamond, Laurel, Grand Lake (and Trestle Glen, Crocker Highlands are walkable to lakeshore), the Glenview and the aforementioned ones.

I live east of Piedmont Ave. A pretty dense part of town (not as dense as denser parts of SF, but dense enough for good transit and walkability).
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