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Well, that makes sense. Actually, you CAN live in Denver w/o a car if you want to/have to. About 14% of Denver residents do. But it's a lot easier with a car.
On the NYC forum, there's a bit more questions on the difficulty of having a car than not having a car. Though there's those that ask about living near the center of the city and commuting toa suburban job by public transit that are impractical by transit. Though many of those are masochistic commutes by car as well.
The majority of Bay Area cities have exemptions for downtown/transit proximity for minimum parking as well. It's very common here. I'm not aware of any of them having parking maximums like Seattle does downtown though.
Looks like Boston has parking minimums just about everywhere except for small sections near downtown.
Oddly, the North End has parking minimums, even though the article mentions that 2/3rds of the residents don't have cars. I assume the reason is to protect the on-street parking of the current residents that do have cars, but they are a minority interest. Of course, there's not much new development in the North End.
Yes, I agree it was hyperbole that parking minimums prevent Manhattan-like densities, Boston never had or will have Manhattan-like densities (though the North End is close), but the rules do make Boston-like densities difficult or result in any open space between buildings getting paved.
That's not my main objection, at least. Don't feel like going into them in detail again but I have described them before.
Generally, the kids playing on residential streets discussion is on streets where car traffic is going at roughly strip mall speed or slowed to that speed or less (see for example, the traffic calming on the woonerf thread)
I don't recall your specific objections to strip malls. Some people objected to walkers/bikers having to interact with the drivers, who are driving at the same or lower speeds than drivers in a woonerf where little kids are supposedly allowed to play all the while cars are driving around.
A Target is residential parking? Businesses? Office buildings? Garages underneath an apt. building are are bad? On-street parking is bad, too? Cherry-picking pictures of buildings with no parking visible (which means nothing, esp. in that SF house, I'm sure there's parking lurking outside the edges of the picture) is bad? Well, yes it is. It's dishonest. So is the picture of the garage with no house evident. And OMG, curb cuts! The horror! It appears that the mere sight of a car is offensive to the author of this article, but she doesn't like garages either. I'm not impressed.
The Target example in the article is pretty bad. There is almost no getting around providing tons of parking at a Target; it's just the nature of the store. As for the rest of the examples, I'm not sure what she's asking for. If the people living in the locations are satisfied with the looks and amount of parking, then what is the problem? And what is she suggesting as the solution? If none of the residences are close to the occupants' workplaces and the city transit system is not sufficient enough to transport the residents between home and work/groceries/essentials, then they most likely will need a car. Where are they supposed to park the car when they are at home? I don't often consider someone to be anti-car, but if she doesn't like garages and doesn't offer up any solutions for where the cars should go, then I have to say she seems to be against cars.
A Target is residential parking? Businesses? Office buildings? Garages underneath an apt. building are are bad? On-street parking is bad, too? Cherry-picking pictures of buildings with no parking visible (which means nothing, esp. in that SF house, I'm sure there's parking lurking outside the edges of the picture) is bad? Well, yes it is. It's dishonest. So is the picture of the garage with no house evident. And OMG, curb cuts! The horror! It appears that the mere sight of a car is offensive to the author of this article, but she doesn't like garages either. I'm not impressed.
Jeez, look at the residential parking examples, then. I didn't see a criticism of on street parking maybe I missed.
If you find the digbats attractive or the courtyard apartment with parking the same as the ones with ok, but I thought they were good points.
Given an entire article complaining about an alleged law you'd think they would have the intellectual honesty to identify this law. They didn't. This is nothing but an anti-car rant.
I looked up Danielson Grove and watched a video about it. What these homeowners end up with is a shared detached garage. They have to park in the shared detached garage and cross the private street in the elements to get to their own house. So they've eliminated any private space in the back of the house (no backyard) and there is no private space in the front either. From another source: "Kirkland requires that cottages have at least 400 square feet of open space reserved per unit. The open space is often provided in a series of large common areas, of which the units are usually clustered around. Depending on the lot size, a development might have anywhere from 4 to a maximum of 24 units. There is no minimum lot size requirement per unit, but the density cannot exceed twice the maximum number of units allowed by the underlying zone." Kirkland, Washington: Cottage Housing Ordinance | HUD USER It's pretty apparent this is set up as condos or some HOA from hell because of the shared "front yard" (courtyard) and required "open space", detached garages shared by multiple "cottages", and the driveway to the detached garages. They must have mentioned "sustainable" a few dozen times to appeal to head nodders. See, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhYdN-dr3b0 at about 2:00
The Target example was pretty silly. First it's quite obvious that this article isn't just "anti-car", it's also anti-big box store. Second, the author's point about the sidewalk was simply false. Sure the sidewalk parallel to the store front on the outer edge of the most distant parking may require some walking (the drivers parking out there have to walk too, so?) but the same sidewalk continues around the corner perpendicular to the store front and intersects the parking lot entrance at the store front. One might as well make the same complaint about having to traverse or walk around the large "open space" greenspace fronting the store off of Halsey. https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5325.../data=!3m1!1e3
This was a case of dishonesty with the camera. The "side sidewalk" is conveniently eliminated from the photo. The author simply does not like cars or big box stores. The author played the same games with the camera for the Mcminville, OR office building.
The author claimed "Before parking minimums, buildings in Cascadia could be built to the property line because parking wasn’t a constraint." This ls likely untrue because of setback ordinances/regulations. Moreover, density solely for the sake of density (which appears to be what the author is promoting)- is arguably the root cause of the complaint at least as to residential structures. When the buildings were single story and accommodating a single family (or built before the advent of the car), on-street parking would have been sufficient. When you build multi-story, multi-family housing there is a much greater effective number of people per horizontal square space but the same amount of street parking for the same horizontal space. There isn't sufficient street space to accommodate them any more even in places where street parking was allowed.
The other locations identified by the author probably don't permit on-street parking at all. The author doesn't like parking underground, garages facing a street, parking beneath a building, parking lots ... the author is pure and simply anti-car, period.
Jeez, look at the residential parking examples, then. I didn't see a criticism of on street parking maybe I missed.
If you find the digbats attractive or the courtyard apartment with parking the same as the ones with ok, but I thought they were good points.
I never knew what the term "dingbat" meant until I saw that blog, and I had never seen the term before until recently on this forum. We don't have those out here. However, I don't get the beef. My own house has a similar garage over a bedroom. The cars are tucked away that way w/o taking up even more space for a garage! Note the courtyard building in Seattle doesn't show the street; we have no idea how crowded the street is with cars. Not the Brooklyn picture shows cars parked tightly on the street. The woman is a fraud.
The Target example in the article is pretty bad. There is almost no getting around providing tons of parking at a Target; it's just the nature of the store. As for the rest of the examples, I'm not sure what she's asking for. If the people living in the locations are satisfied with the looks and amount of parking, then what is the problem? And what is she suggesting as the solution? If none of the residences are close to the occupants' workplaces and the city transit system is not sufficient enough to transport the residents between home and work/groceries/essentials, then they most likely will need a car. Where are they supposed to park the car when they are at home? I don't often consider someone to be anti-car, but if she doesn't like garages and doesn't offer up any solutions for where the cars should go, then I have to say she seems to be against cars.
Exactly! Isn't that what many on this board said to me about the apt. my daughter and her bf looked at in downtown Denver that had no parking? (Except the manager suggested they rent a spot for one car at a lot across the street and sell their other car.)
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