Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Urban Planning
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 12-06-2011, 10:10 PM
 
Location: Centre Wellington, ON
5,738 posts, read 5,962,368 times
Reputation: 3089

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg View Post
"Dense suburbs" is a contradiction in terms in the United States. It's not something that translates from Canadian into American.
How about Orange County? Looking around google streetview, much of it looks very dense.

These homes for example are probably on lots similar in size to the many of the Canadian examples. The lots seem a bit wider, but since the house is closer to the street, I think the lot is also shallower. Also, it seems like houses in suburban California are more likely to sacrifice backyards and have less of the setback from the street, but the street (curb to curb) are often a bit wider and it's less common to have living space above the garage.

Quote:
Originally Posted by nei View Post
My take would be to remove the garages. I'd rather a little more living space than garage space. You can always you use you use your basement for storage. Where I live roughly gets the same amount of snow as Toronto, and few homes have a garage. Removing the garages would probably be unpopular, but I do think the neighborhood would be better off without them.

My main gripe is that it looks almost as much space is used for cars (garage, driveway) than the house footprint. The asphalt block is kinda ugly. If you must have a garage, put the houses close to the street with little or no setback. Then the driveway becomes shorter. What some houses do here is have a driveway the length of a car, like a parking space, but those houses have no garage. The saved space could be used to create a bigger backyard or an even denser neighborhood. I thought of the back alley, too, but I don't like it either because then you lose a backyard. If there's no backyard, I'm not sure what the point of suburban homes are.
I was mostly thinking of having no garages for asthetic purposes, since so many people keep their cars on their driveways and use their garage for storage anyways. Some older suburban houses (50s-70s) have attached carports instead of garages, so you could have something like that, but with the house extended over the carport... basically a garage without the garage door.

When it comes to saving space, I think if there living space above the garage (as in some of my examples), eliminating the garage won't save much ground area, especially if there are two levels above the garage, kind of like the Maple example. On the other hand, all the ashalt definitely seems hard to justify.

Last edited by memph; 12-06-2011 at 10:46 PM..
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 12-06-2011, 10:29 PM
 
Location: Philaburbia
41,745 posts, read 74,732,146 times
Reputation: 66683
If a suburb is dense, isn't already adopting an urban model?

Dontcha just love these ridiculous discussions about semantics ...

Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg View Post
"Dense suburbs" is a contradiction in terms in the United States. It's not something that translates from Canadian into American.
Maybe not in your little world.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-06-2011, 10:33 PM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
90,316 posts, read 120,259,082 times
Reputation: 35920
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg View Post
"Dense suburbs" is a contradiction in terms in the United States. It's not something that translates from Canadian into American.
I disagree with that. Virtually every city I'm familiar with has at least one suburb that's high density. Oak Park, IL, the old areas of Aurora, Englewood, Littelton, Wheat Ridge, Edgewater, Arvada, Colorado; New Brighton, MN, many of the older burbs of Cleveland, and many more. I'm talking multi-family housing, downtown shopping areas, and the like.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-06-2011, 11:42 PM
 
8,680 posts, read 17,206,810 times
Reputation: 4685
Quote:
Originally Posted by memph View Post
How about Orange County? Looking around google streetview, much of it looks very dense.

These homes for example are probably on lots similar in size to the many of the Canadian examples. The lots seem a bit wider, but since the house is closer to the street, I think the lot is also shallower. Also, it seems like houses in suburban California are more likely to sacrifice backyards and have less of the setback from the street, but the street (curb to curb) are often a bit wider and it's less common to have living space above the garage.
Personally I'd call the neighborhood you linked "the seventh layer of hell." Row after curving row of tile and stucco, utterly unwalkable (sidewalks minimal where present at all, snaking feeder-street layout), stuck in an OC golf-course condo development. Eurgh.

It's "dense" perhaps in the sense that there isn't much open space, but it lacks actual density of use and of population, and the design of the neighborhood inhibits its function other as boxes to drive to, drive from, and sit inside in between driving sessions. The worst of all possible worlds.

Considering the small size of the units and its location on the outer edge of a fairly expensive city, I'm thinking this is a "drive till you qualify" development. They're wedged together (by suburban standards) so people can still tell themselves they live in a single-family suburban home while enjoying relatively few of the advantages associated with that status, and none of the advantages of a properly designed neighborhood of similar structural density. But I'm sure the developer made a mint turning that hillside into housing.

Quote:
I was mostly thinking of having no garages for asthetic purposes, since so many people keep their cars on their driveways and use their garage for storage anyways. Some older suburban houses (50s-70s) have attached carports instead of garages, so you could have something like that, but with the house extended over the carport... basically a garage without the garage door.

When it comes to saving space, I think if there living space above the garage (as in some of my examples), eliminating the garage won't save much ground area, especially if there are two levels above the garage, kind of like the Maple example. On the other hand, all the ashalt definitely seems hard to justify.
In California, where homes don't have basements, the garage serves that purpose. Carports were popular for a while but are generally unpopular because you lose the storage space, you don't find them much except for mid-century developments.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-06-2011, 11:55 PM
 
Location: Washington D.C.
13,693 posts, read 15,610,182 times
Reputation: 4054
The D.C. suburbs are building high rises in the suburbs now. Plans are in motion for corridors that span miles with nothing but high rises and low rises instead of houses. Also, discouraging car usage all together is the plan in the D.C. suburbs. Give people the option to live without a car comfortably. To absorb growth, the suburbs will have to start focusing on multi-family soon instead of single family homes around the country. That is the only way to preserve what little farm land is left and stop sprawl around urban areas.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-07-2011, 12:11 AM
 
8,680 posts, read 17,206,810 times
Reputation: 4685
MDAllstar: If these neighborhoods are transit-centric, high-rise/mid-rise, and mixed-use, at what point do they stop being suburban and start being urban neighborhoods? It sounds like a lot of the folks here who like suburbs would not recognize a neighborhood like that as "suburban" in any way.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-07-2011, 01:42 AM
 
Location: Vallejo
21,669 posts, read 24,814,702 times
Reputation: 18896
Quote:
Originally Posted by memph View Post
So you think you would need a garage PLUS a 20 foot driveway PLUS 2 lanes of on street parking?...

Anyways, most side street in Toronto's suburbs are around 25-30 feet curb to curb. The ROW is about 50-60 feet which includes the sidewalk and green strip and then there's a setback of about 15 feet from the edge of the ROW. The images I posted in the original post have embedded links to streetview btw.

As for garages, wouldn't it be enough to just have a large storage area?
Sure, as long as I can park my car in the "large storage area" it sounds fine.

I'd personally rather have less road and more other stuff for many reasons. First, roads are wasted space and ugly. Green strips are also wasted space but at least look better than the 44' minimum curb to curb width here. If the point is to cram in more sardines, ROW and setback are low hanging fruit that can easily trimmed. Go from 44' to 24' of road and 40' of setback to 20'. I honestly wouldn't miss that at all, and I'd still have my driveway, large storage area, and two lanes of parking. 24' would be a squeeze for three cars abreast, and you'd have some wheel hanging over the sidewalk which is probably unacceptable to some but doesn't bother me.

Here's an 80 foot ROW in San Francisco's Sunset neighborhood.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-07-2011, 01:54 AM
 
Location: Washington D.C.
13,693 posts, read 15,610,182 times
Reputation: 4054
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg View Post
MDAllstar: If these neighborhoods are transit-centric, high-rise/mid-rise, and mixed-use, at what point do they stop being suburban and start being urban neighborhoods? It sounds like a lot of the folks here who like suburbs would not recognize a neighborhood like that as "suburban" in any way.
Well, the question was should dense suburbs adopt a more urban model? So, I responded by saying the suburbs in D.C. are adopting an urban model. I guess they wouldn't be considered suburbs by the traditional sense but the urban development will never match D.C. though. It's not wide enough.

Urban development that just runs along major corridors unlike D.C. that covers miles in every direction is not urban to me. It's a strip of urbanity. You can walk east and west of these corridors and run into single family homes eventually. In D.C. in the core, there are no single family homes for miles. I guess it depends on your definition of urban. To me, D.C. is urban. The suburban strips of urbanity aren't urban like a city.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-07-2011, 02:25 AM
 
Location: Vallejo
21,669 posts, read 24,814,702 times
Reputation: 18896
Wburg, that's a perfect example of where I have no idea why you think a sidewalk is necessary. Ignore the fact that it's on a golf course in the middle of no where for a minute. Most of those "streets" are stubs with five houses on them... more of a private driveway. The actual streets do have a pathetically small and totally unnecessary one-person sidewalk. Once you get to the thoroughfares, there are wide sidewalks with lots of landscaping well away from the road.

If it weren't for the location, I would say it could really benefit from some pedestrian cutouts but otherwise isn't at all bad. Given the location it's pretty obvious no one uses their feet to get anywhere. The location is prime example of "do not get." If you put that type of construction somewhere that wasn't at the very absolute edge of the exurbs, it wouldn't be that bad. I really do not understand it where it is either, however. Why not drive another mile? Better yet, San Juan Capistrano isn't far away which actually has some character. Given, I doubt you'd get as much sardine for your money as in OC golf course hell.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-07-2011, 09:22 AM
 
Location: The Port City is rising.
8,868 posts, read 12,510,725 times
Reputation: 2604
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg View Post
"Dense suburbs" is a contradiction in terms in the United States. It's not something that translates from Canadian into American.
historically many suburbs in large metro areas had hirises, often NOT TOD - not particularly close to rail transit (sometimes not even with frequent bus service), tower in the park layout and very auto centric. I thought THAT was what the OP was talking about. The kind of very dense SFH developments the OP showed is not common in the US afaik - I think Ive seen a bit like that in queens NY and the few postwar developed parts of brooklyn (and some tear downs in said areas) but they arent technically suburbs.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Urban Planning

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top