The irreducible essence of city-ness

This animated sketch shows what I believe to be the irreducible & essence of "city-ness." The relationship between street and building and parking lot determines our feelings about a place. All else is refinement and epilogue.

Click image to enlarge. (And don't be alarmed if it loads slowly.)

(If anyone has photos which would illustrate these two conditions -- and I ask not because I can't find some good ones literally a block from my own office but because it would be nice to see what others see -- I will happily send a copy of City Comforts for each and any photo I use. Please contact me at david-at-citycomforts.com)

UPDATE: John Massengale's comments are good ones. My goal in creating this sketch -- and btw where are the photos? two books for each photo?:) -- was to have an easily-understood tool to set forth the basic pitch. So I am all ears for suggestions on how to get across the idea. The Three Rules set it forth in words and the accompanying sketches on the back cover of City Comforts do it fairly well. But I thought it would be fun to use the web's capabilities -- principally the morphing power -- to show the profound transformative (or destructive) power of such a simple thing as where to put the parking. I still think it's a good idea, notwithstanding John's points. (His comment about a German rule is intriguing and is definitely something I'd like to see.)

Comments

[John Massengale]

I know they say New York City is the exception that proves nothing and everything, but I'm looking out my back window here in New York and I don't see any parking.

A problem with your definition for me therefore is that it says New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston . . . London, Paris and Rome don't have "city-ness."

This is not just a matter of size. Traditional urban form above 20 or 30 units to the acre will almost never have parking in the rear. Greenwich Village, a low-rise place, is 80 to 120 units per acre: 20 to 30 is more like the courtyard apartments of Los Angeles -- and they don't park in the back.

[David Sucher]

I apologize; I thought it too obvious to have to explain that very high-density neighborhoods (a rarity in the USA) would have (whatever parking they do have) parking "somewhere else" than at the street level. The whole point of my sketch course is to explain that it is IMPOSSIBLE to have city-ness if the parking is is in front and that it has to be "somewhere else."

[Francis Morrone]

Where I grew up, in Oak Park, Ill., there are examples of both these parking schemes right across the street from each other. On one side of the street is a beautiful old Marshall Field's store from the 1920s, converted into a Borders Bookstore; its parking is in the rear, as the building fronts splendidly on the main street. Across that main street is a 1990s Whole Foods Market--with the parking in front. The Whole Foods (in a building otherwise graced with all manner of "traditionalist" touches) could easily have been designed with parking in the rear, but clearly wished to invoke the spirit of modern suburbia!

[winifer skattebol]

FYI: CUNY conference tomorrow:

http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/cius/conference.htm

David's question should be submitted to my classmate Kennedy Smith, head of "Main Street" of the National Trust. I'll email her and see if she'll comment on the blog.

[David Sucher]

Parking in the back is a metaphor for parking "somewhere else."

[John Massengale]

At the risk of nitpicking, the diagram implies a more concrete relationship than that, I think. I can see it now: I'm at P & Z meeting, and one of the commissioners tells me I have to move the underground parking to behind the building because "City Comforts says so."

Sidebar: German cities are more prescriptive than ours in the form buildings must take. They used to require underground parking directly connected to the building lobby. Then they decided this pulled too many people off the street, and many cities now require that drivers exit to the street before entering their building.

[claxton6]

Photos of two Borders stores in Ann Arbor, one downtown (with a parking structure in the background) and one at the city edge (with a lot in front).

http://theotherleading.com/temp/a2borders.html

[Jarrett]

A good definition of "redeemable suburbanness" (parking in back) as opposed to "future economic wasteland" (parking in front). But I agree w/Massengale. A picture of urbanness would have a way different parking ratio!