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Just to clarify, I was talking about tightly built 5-7 story tall buildings like Greenwich Village or Paris with some taller buildings (but not skyscrapers) thrown in. Not the Financial District or the lower UES.
But, in practice they come across as a little soulless
It is doubtful DC will ever be an artistic hotspot like nearby cities such as Boston, Philly, NYC, etc. or international ones like London and Paris but I suppose that is fine as long as there is still affordable housing thrown in the mix. But any way, I always thought that was kind of the point of these neighborhoods, a little soulless as you said, but done in a way as if to poke fun of itself the rep the city sometimes gets. I mean, with things as bureaucratic as they are, it is hard to focus on anything else: just build and go (I mean, after all that red tape, it is tiring, lets just do it, never mind the extra, lke artistic flair). In fact, the only place I have seen that is more bureaucratic than DC is China when I lived there, and look at those buildings over there (uber soulless). For some reason, overly bureaucratic mindsets seem to lead to soullessness, or at least there seems to be some odd correlation.
but I'll take DC's human-scaled nature and stately openness any day of the week.
Imo DC's street's are way too wide for it to be human scale. It looks like a city built for cars, not people. The openness is nice, but you could easily add a few floors to the buildings and preserve that openness while giving the city a lot of extra space. And honestly, adding a few more floors would make the street seem a tiny bit less wide, making it seem more human scale. It would also frame the monuments better.
I'm not calling for throwing out the height cap, just pushing it up a little bit.
Imo DC's street's are way too wide for it to be human scale. It looks like a city built for cars, not people. The openness is nice, but you could easily add a few floors to the buildings and preserve that openness while giving the city a lot of extra space. And honestly, adding a few more floors would make the street seem a tiny bit less wide, making it seem more human scale. It would also frame the monuments better.
I'm not calling for throwing out the height cap, just pushing it up a little bit.
It looks like a city that was intially built for cars but at some point, urban developers/planners/etc. must have said "Opps, lets make some bike paths and more walker friendly paths." But evidently drivers did not get the memo and act as if it is a car-centric city, which could not be further from the truth these days.
Imo DC's street's are way too wide for it to be human scale. It looks like a city built for cars, not people. The openness is nice, but you could easily add a few floors to the buildings and preserve that openness while giving the city a lot of extra space. And honestly, adding a few more floors would make the street seem a tiny bit less wide, making it seem more human scale. It would also frame the monuments better.
I'm not calling for throwing out the height cap, just pushing it up a little bit.
That's a decent argument and I also wouldn't mind if the height limit was a little higher as well. However, I know that DC's wide street grid is similar to that of Versailles and Paris with the wide boulevards and Chicago with the somewhat wide residential side streets. Both DC and Chicago are extremely walkable, however, it seems that it's "easier" to have a car in both cities than in Philadelphia or Boston, both of which are well known for their closely tight streets even in some of the commercial areas. Paris seems to have tighter side streets as well if I'm not mistaken. As I said, I love DC's airyness but I will admit that I wouldn't mind if the City had a couple of neighborhoods with a street width and intense structural density similar to Boston's North End or Philly's Old City or Greenwich Village in Manhattan.
Imo DC's street's are way too wide for it to be human scale. It looks like a city built for cars, not people. The openness is nice, but you could easily add a few floors to the buildings and preserve that openness while giving the city a lot of extra space. And honestly, adding a few more floors would make the street seem a tiny bit less wide, making it seem more human scale. It would also frame the monuments better.
I'm not calling for throwing out the height cap, just pushing it up a little bit.
Yeah, I agree. I think it has to do with DC's history. DC was laid out with a grand European capital street grid. But, for most of its history DC was just a parochial backwater, with the federal government just a small institution. There wasn't the need/demand to have the built environment match Paris, Berlin, Vienna, etc. So DC filled in with modest row houses with little front yards. Then the government took off in the 1930s and the city went through a growth spurt from 1930-1950s. However, then mass suburbanization hit and the city spent the next 50 years focusing on office development (most of it bland) as retail/residents fled to the suburbs. Most housing built in DC during this time was suburban-style. By 2000, DC was basically a rump 9-5 city with monuments and office buildings, but only the civic activity of a modest city. It is really only in the last 15 years that the city has emerged as a residential and retail spot. Growth has resumed and the middle class is returning. But now, we are in the age of zoning and historic preservation. The modest row houses are now historic treasures and won't be redeveloped as apartments the way Paris, NYC, even DC did in the late 19th/early 20th century. Instead the city is largely limited to "compatible infill" development along a few main streets and some underdeveloped zones (NoMa, Waterfront, down the road Hill East, Anacostia, McMillian, Walter Reed etc).
For better or for worse, DC is polishing up it's existing city structure, but not fundamentally altering the built environment of the city. DC now has the regional population and economy to be built out like a grand European capital (even Brussels, a lesser Euro capital, has 2x the population of DC in the same land area), but it has no desire to double or tripple it's population the way cities did from 1880 to 1930.
This preserves DC's character and makes it a less chaotic place to live. But, there is a little part of me that would love to city see DC grow into a Grand Euro-style capital city, like Berlin or Madrid. Not NYC, HK, Tokyo mega city. Oh well. NYC is our iconic global city and that is fine. But, I just wish we had a less hectic, but still grand world city like in Europe. No skyscrapers and Times Square style mega rush, but still dense, briming with cafes, streetlife, densely packed side streets, immigrant neighborhoods, a world class urban transport system and grand civic spaces (Trafelger Square, Covent Garden, Champes-Eleysee, Bd. Saint-Germain, Hausman, Regent Street, etc).
i wish DC had streets like the latin quarter in paris. DC and pretty much all american cities are a pain in the ass to walk around in compared to areas like this, and the buildings here are only 6 stories
But, I just wish we had a less hectic, but still grand world city like in Europe. No skyscrapers and Times Square style mega rush, but still dense, briming with cafes, streetlife, densely packed side streets, immigrant neighborhoods, a world class urban transport system and grand civic spaces (Trafelger Square, Covent Garden, Champes-Eleysee, Bd. Saint-Germain, Hausman, Regent Street, etc).
Oh no doubt that would be great! And yea the OP's concerns are very valid. But for the time being, I'm actually pretty happy with what we have right now. Maybe it's just because this winter was terrible but it seems like over the past few weeks there have been tons of people out and about. Hopefully over the next few years this will continue to grow and develop.
D.C. is a southern city.
This is a big reason why the city is the way it is.
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