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Using land efficiently doens't mean everything has to be contained in a certain area. Manhattan is still extremely efficient with land use, transportation, etc., even if some things get trucked away elsewhere. For example its residents use very little oil for commuting, and very little overall per capita.
The per capita part is essential. Manhattan has a lot of people, and it uses a lot of oil directly or indirectly. But that has to be weighed against how many people live and work there.
As for your personal preference for lower-density areas....let me just say I'm a Seattle Mariners fan, since we're throwing out random stuff that has nothing to do with sustainability.
Maybe we can agree that at minimum, federal/state/local governments shouldn't tell Americans we can have dense, mixed-use areas, and let the market figure that out. That would change 99% of the zoning in the US, which legislates sprawl essentially.
NYC alone is 2.5% of the population, and that's just one city. It's not all dense and mixed-use but a lot of it is. There's plenty of other areas as well. I'd consider both neighborhoods I lived in to be pretty dense and certainly had mixed use in Seattle.
Of course, the best example of getting out of the way and letting the market decide is always Houston. Really nowhere else will you find McMansions, high-rise office towers, mini-warehouses, big box shopping, mixed-use apartment over retail high rises all in one neighborhood like you will in Houston. Gotta love it. Absolutely nothing stopping you from dropping that 42 story apartment tower right next to a bunch of rowhouses with big box shopping a block two blocks away. And wouldn't a diner in a parking garage be cool? Who knows, but it's across the street. Fancy $10,000 initiation private social club next to a tire shop and public storage? It's Houston man. That's just how it rolls. And we haven't even left the neighborhood. Cohesive? Certainly not. It doesn't get more organic than Houston though. Houston doesn't exactly have no zoning as there's still a lot of stuff that looks and smells like zoning but isn't called zoning, but it's as lax as it gets. Meanwhile, San Francisco is finding new and fabulous ways of ensuring the zoning laws keep that nasty density out. City council raises building height, quick envoke the pier authority and get it back down to a reasonable 40 feet.
No, not Houston. They require a ton of parking. And neighborhood committees can be nimbys from hell.
I'm in favor of opening up the rules so small-town and urban formats are allowed in more places. And developers are pretty good at figuring out how much parking is needed vs. wasteful, which then lets the market drive prices down. But I'm also in favor of zoning (to avoid the more serious incompatible uses) and growth management (to control sprawl).
No, not Houston. They require a ton of parking. And neighborhood committees can be nimbys from hell.
I'm in favor of opening up the rules so small-town and urban formats are allowed in more places. And developers are pretty good at figuring out how much parking is needed vs. wasteful, which then lets the market drive prices down. But I'm also in favor of zoning (to avoid the more serious incompatible uses) and growth management (to control sprawl).
In other words, you like zoning but only your type of zoning. You don't actually want to let the market decide anything.
Really, nothing is stopping places from doing away with parking minimums. Sacramento doesn't have any parking minimums downtown. Neither does Portland. In 1994 Seattle did away with parking minimums in urban centers and has expanded it since to urban villages. In addition, anything within 1/4 mile of a bus stop with where a bus stops every 15 minutes had its parking requirements reduced by 50%. Here's a map of the urban villages. All together, 36.5% of the city effectively has no parking minimums at all and much more than that has the 50% reduction.
Of course, developers still build parking and parking is still the favorite strawman for why places are so damn expensive. I'm a bit skeptical that a parking garage makes an apartment in Portland rent for $500/mo more myself. That number seems high. On the other hand when I was in Belltown it was $400/mo to park in my building. Too rich for my blood but it's not like a spot ever opened up in the time I was there anyway so clearly people do want to spend $400/mo to park. I see people paying that kind of money for a parking spot and start thinking about how much money I could make with a parking garage... but then that would never pass design review in either Portland or Seattle, both of which have parking maximums in downtown that artificially increase the cost of parking.
Velo is, of course, within a urban village and thus has no parking requirements. Apparently they got the parking wrong and built too much of it and it's the damn car's fault. On the upside, since they built too much parking now there's more free bicycle parking which they didn't build enough of.
How do you figure? That shrink-wrapped meat on the styrofoam platter in your local grocer might have been wrapped there but it wasn't grown there. The electricity for your house might be delivered there but it isn't generated there. Cities are black holes for resources. The city and people within them consume a lot and produce lots of noxious waste.
But that's true of anyplace that doesn't grow its own food; all but a few rural areas consume stuff from thousands of miles away. A large suburban area (or whatever term you prefer; what I mean is lower density built up area) consumes imports resources just as much and uses some resources at a higher per capita rate.
Sustainability has its roots in Forestry, where the concept of sustain yield was developed centuries ago. Here is the definition from the Society of American Foresters.
1. the yield that a forest can produce continuously at a given intensity of management —note sustained-yield management implies continuous production so planned as to achieve, at the earliest practical time, a balance between increment and cutting 2. the achievement and maintenance in perpetuity of a high-level annual or regular periodic output of the various renewable resources without impairment of the productivity of the land —see ecosystem management, long-term sustained yield (LTSY)
Urban areas are NOT sustainable.
They require huge inputs of energy, resources, and money from well outside their "footprint". The ecological impacts of urban areas are seen far beyond the "footprint". For example the city of San Francisco has flooded the twin to Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park for cheap power and water. California refuses to develop coal and nuclear power yet, imports massive quantities of coal and nuclear generated electricity from Utah, Arizona, and other states.
An interesting exercise for teachers would be to take an urban area and have the students discover where their electricity is generated, where their water comes from, where their polluted air and water is dumped, and so forth.
For urban areas to talk about sustainability is pretty funny!! People want to believe that they are green and good. That is fine, so they lie to themselves about their impact on the environment.
Sustainability has its roots in Forestry, where the concept of sustain yield was developed centuries ago. Here is the definition from the Society of American Foresters.
1. the yield that a forest can produce continuously at a given intensity of management —note sustained-yield management implies continuous production so planned as to achieve, at the earliest practical time, a balance between increment and cutting 2. the achievement and maintenance in perpetuity of a high-level annual or regular periodic output of the various renewable resources without impairment of the productivity of the land —see ecosystem management, long-term sustained yield (LTSY)
Urban areas are NOT sustainable.
They require huge inputs of energy, resources, and money from well outside their "footprint". The ecological impacts of urban areas are seen far beyond the "footprint". For example the city of San Francisco has flooded the twin to Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park for cheap power and water. California refuses to develop coal and nuclear power yet, imports massive quantities of coal and nuclear generated electricity from Utah, Arizona, and other states.
An interesting exercise for teachers would be to take an urban area and have the students discover where their electricity is generated, where their water comes from, where their polluted air and water is dumped, and so forth.
For urban areas to talk about sustainability is pretty funny!! People want to believe that they are green and good. That is fine, so they lie to themselves about their impact on the environment.
Out of sight...out of mind.
What do you mean by urban areas? You mean built up, right? Which includes "cities" and "suburbs".
What exactly is your point? Are you saying that we all should just go back to the pre-industrial era?
No, not Houston. They require a ton of parking. And neighborhood committees can be nimbys from hell.
I'm in favor of opening up the rules so small-town and urban formats are allowed in more places. And developers are pretty good at figuring out how much parking is needed vs. wasteful, which then lets the market drive prices down. But I'm also in favor of zoning (to avoid the more serious incompatible uses) and growth management (to control sprawl).
I don't quite get this love affair with developers on this forum. Developers are in it to make the most money possible. If that means eliminating parking to build and therefore sell more units, so much the better. Dump the parking problem on the city. Clog the city streets, so street sweeping, snow removal, emergency vehicle access, etc become difficult. The developers don't live in these projects they build. They move on to the next project and never look back.
I don't quite get this love affair with developers on this forum. Developers are in it to make the most money possible. If that means eliminating parking to build and therefore sell more units, so much the better. Dump the parking problem on the city. Clog the city streets, so street sweeping, snow removal, emergency vehicle access, etc become difficult. The developers don't live in these projects they build. They move on to the next project and never look back.
Part of it is they see more housing units as a plus; that's one of the reasons on this forum and elsewhere for parking requirement opposition. I expect city streets to full of parked cars*, the objection of running out of street parking I can understand better. Street parking is banned if the street isn't wide enough for emergency vehicles.
Other times it's more just being anti-car or anti rules to benefits rather than pro-developer. His post said nothing about developer, just the urban form he likes; "certain old-urban look/layout" etc. I've said previously I might prefer developers build less parking so as not to eat up green space.
*Don't know where to look, but it appears that Denver has a lot more street spaces than I would have assumed:
What do you mean by urban areas? You mean built up, right? Which includes "cities" and "suburbs".
What exactly is your point? Are you saying that we all should just go back to the pre-industrial era?
Nope, but urban areas need a "land ethic". That includes their activities in areas that supply them with resources they need to continue existing.
They destroy thousands and thousands of acres of land outside their footprint and then profess to practice sustainability!! In the meantime....and this is a classic example. The city of San Francisco passed a resolution that the four Snake River dams in Washngton state need to be removed for environmental reasons. They also informed the American people, that the Hetch Hetchy project inside of Yosemite National Park will NEVER be removed!!!
Part of it is they see more housing units as a plus; that's one of the reasons on this forum and elsewhere for parking requirement opposition. I expect city streets to full of parked cars*, the objection of running out of street parking I can understand better. Street parking is banned if the street isn't wide enough for emergency vehicles.
Other times it's more just being anti-car or anti rules to benefits rather than pro-developer. His post said nothing about developer, just the urban form he likes; "certain old-urban look/layout" etc. I've said previously I might prefer developers build less parking so as not to eat up green space.
*Don't know where to look, but it appears that Denver has a lot more street spaces than I would have assumed:
Actually, he said this about developers: "And developers are pretty good at figuring out how much parking is needed vs. wasteful, which then lets the market drive prices down." I've never seen any evidence of this and I've been following developer stuff for 30+ years here in Louisville. They usually propose fewer spaces than anyone else thinks necessary, and the last thing they'd want to do is drive prices down. Let me finish with a quote that was in my local paper yesterday: "Uh-oh, Lafayette is coming down with a case of Boulder-itis. Remove parking spaces and people will magically start walking and riding bikes everywhere. Doesn't work in Boulder, isn't going to work in Lafayette." A dailycamera.com reader on Lafayette residents and business owners upset over a plan that would reduce parking on South Harrison Avenue."
The area of Denver you chose is as you can see a neighborhood of large homes; most of them probably have garages.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 05-11-2016 at 12:18 PM..
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