The animated graphic goes visiting.

A number of people have paid me the nice compliment of either linking to or (better yet) actually showing, on their own sites, this animated graphic:

I think that's great. The more people who see the moving image of urbanism the better.

One commentor at Miniver Cheevy remarked:

It's a neat graphic, but I am evidently too slow to grasp the point. Which is better, parking in front or in back? Without having thought deeply about the subject, I lean toward centralized parking shared by multiple buildings....

Well the reader gets the idea very well indeed and actually even advances things somewhat.

But he does raise a point about which the graphic is explicitly silent: "Which is better?" Which site plan (and that's the term for overall layout of building, road, sidewalks on a particular property) is "better?"

My answer:

It all depends on your goals. If you want a walkable neighborhood, you get one answer. If not, then another.

The graphic is value-free.
It does not tell what to do or what is good for you.
It merely points out the consequence of a choice.

Let me put it this way. If you do not care about pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods, then the graphic, and the urban planning lesson it sets forth, is not relevant to your life. And I assure you that I am not trying to persuade anyone that they should want pedestrian-oriented neighborhood.

But I start from the assumption that to a degree, a great number of people want a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood. In that case they have to understand that they will never get it without adherence to the graphic and the three rules which expand on the graphic. There are no "ifs, ands or buts." Unless you start from the graphic/three rules and design your towns and cities in substantial compliance with them, you will never get a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood. Period. There is no escape. It is an immutable law. But don't take my word for it. Go take a look around you. If you notice a walkable "main street" environment which ignores them, I will buy you lunch. (In Seattle.)

Comments

[Matthew Amster-Burton]

David, I love the graphic, but something about it has been bugging me, and I hate to admit that it was a snarky anti-urbanist comment on another blog that made me figure it out.

The suburban phase of the graphic looks like almost any suburban commercial environment I can think of (except that many of them don't have sidewalks). Big parking lot, big store somewhere in the distance.

But the urban phase doesn't ring as true, for two reasons. First of all, putting parking behind the store doesn't seem that common. I'm trying to think of examples of it, and I can only think of a couple in my neighborhood (Broadway), such as the parking lot behind the Bank of America at Broadway and Thomas (future site of a farmer's market!). One good reason not to put the parking in back is that it encourages putting the entrance in back as well.

Two other places to put the parking and still be urbanistic about it are above and below. Some developments (like the Harvard Market QFC complex) do both. Fine. But there's a fourth option that is surely the most common: no parking at all other than metered parallel parking.

There's a Pattern Language entry about how much land can be devoted to parking before the neighborhood becomes unurban. I think, in typical precise Alexander fashion, he says nine percent, but the exact figure is less important than the fact that in order to have an urban neighborhood, you can't have unlimited parking, at least at street level.

I'm always telling people that the world's greatest neighborhoods are terrible places to park, and it's no coincidence. (I am a fun guy to hang around, as you can tell.) Part of the reason you don't see much parking in back, of course, is that if this is a successful urban neighborhood, someone is going to come along with a more valuable use for that land than parking.

Don't get me wrong--I think there's a big gob of truth in the graphic; it's the kind of thing that can make people smack their heads and say, ah ha, that's what I like about this environment. And it's more than a little silly to fault an animated GIF for oversimplifying an issue. But good pedestrian environments are places where it's somewhat hard to drive--not, ideally, by design, but by happy side effect: you've built an environment so popular to enjoy on foot that, gosh darnit, there isn't enough room left to park all those cars, and you have to drive slowly because of all the jaywalkers.

I care because I sometimes get into a conversation with someone who says, "Live in the city? But it's noisy, dirty, hard to park, expensive," and so on, and they seem to think my response will be, "No it isn't." Instead I say, "You're right, but look at everything I get in return!" As I see it, if you want to live the urban lifestyle, you don't just have to park in back; sometimes you can't park at all.

[David Sucher]

Matthew's comment is very astute. Perhaps the size of the parking lots needs to be changed. But I would suspect -- here's a good question for a planning seminar -- is the ratios of parking in suburban and urban cities. I would bet that they are not as far off as people imagine; the only difference is that in cities the cars are hidden in garages.

But more critically, while we want to improve the graphic, let's remember that it is a cartoon, a simplification, a pedagic model. Its title is that "Urbanism starts..."It is not a site plan per se. Its purpose is to start people thinking like architects and developers and to understand that the very first decision in design is to figure out how to move the cars onto and off the site.

Nonethless, Matthew's observation is a worthy one; if/when I figure out a simple graphic way to show the variety of ways in which a city can accommodate cars -- and the city will indeed continue to need to accommodate many cars -- I will do so.

[Reg Cæsar]

The city's cars may be hidden in garages, but are the garages themselves hidden? There are several downtown garages in my city which are veiled by decorative façades; that may fool the eye, but can't hide the fact that the space is dead anyway.

One ratty old exposed garage (which was probably pretty snazzy 50 years ago) was torn down and replaced with Lawson Software's new HQ. This looks like a normal block-sized office building, with commercial and pedestrian activity at ground level on all sides. But, mimicking chicken cordon bleu or a sushi roll, it consists of offices wrapped around an internal parking ramp.
(Ironically, this building displaced a sushi bar in the ratty old ramp.)

This may be the best way to arrange a high parking capacity in a tight downtown. But is the high capacity itself still exacting a toll on the street life?

[Alan Sullivan]

Hello, David. Without addressing the larger issues about the car and the city, I would simply like to raise a question about your graphic. It seems to me that the location of the parking is beside the point. It's the location of the pedestrians that's important.

In your urban version, which you deem superior, storefronts presumably face each other across the street, giving pedestrians doubled choices in close proximity. That's what makes the environment seem more welcoming. But the trouble is, pedestrians must cross traffic to utilize those opportunities. Or, if the storefronts are at the rear, pedestrians must cross vast lots to get from one row to another.

In Florida I've seen commercial developments that have extensive parking along busy streets, but walkways interpenetrate the commercial strip at the core of the property. Pedestrians can access all storefronts without fighting traffic. And the parking lots are fingered with greenspace, which makes them more like 'park lots' and provides much-desired shade in the hot climate.

I have never seen such a layout for a mixed commercial and residential zone, but it strikes me that such an approach to land use would create a self-contained neighborhood, a kind of urban village--a high density knot in a low density region. This style of suburban development might solve some of the conundra that trouble you. But the problems can only be finessed-- not solved-- in existing, high density areas.

[David Sucher]

Reg.
Good question. The solution is to design parking structures with retail at the sidewalk level so that the building reads as an ordinary urban building. I'll post an example.
Alan.
I am not sure I get it. Sound to me like an ordinary shopping center, with sidewalks from the buildings at the center of the site through the parking lot to the street. I don't imagine it creates much street life?

[Alan Sullivan]

I don't want to get hung up on the example, which I would have to draw, in all likelihood, before the cleverness of its particular layout would be evident. I haven't even tried to explain it fully.

My main point is that your graphic doesn't show the other side of the street. Through-traffic and pedestrians don't mix well at all, yet the other side of the street is integral to the effect you find desireable. I'm asking whether it doesn't make more sense to put the pedestrians between buildings, with parking lots behind the buildings (from the pedestrian point of view) and the busy streets beyond the lots.

A verbal cross section could be drawn as follows: street-- parking lot-- outer walkways-- buildings-- main inner walkway-- buildings-- outer walkways-- parking lot-- street-- parking lot-- etc. I'm assuming a cross section of long rectangular blocks here. This is not a concept for squares.

[Alan Sullivan]

PS. For higher density areas, your retail-facade parking-ramp idea is excellent. I've never seen a development like that. An opportunity to make one was missed in the recent River Walk redesign of downtown Fort Lauderdale. There are lovely pedways twined through multi-layered retail space and communicating along the bank of New River (which is actually a winding but navigable canal). But separate parking ramps have been built to serve the commercial area. They're farther away than they need to be, and they're really soulless structures. A more integrated approach could easily have been done.

[David Sucher]

Alan.
Honestly, I still don't get it.
Sure streets have cars on them. "Real streets" are for both e walkers and drivers. And Yes, there are conflicts between pedestrians and drivers; That's why one of the sub-rules is "On-street parking is essential." Merchants need it. Moreover, on-street parking is one of the simplest and easiest and most important tools of "traffic calming."

But let's put the question another way. Can you offer an example of a street (designed the way you suggest) that is filled with pedestrians? A real street in a real city? That would help root the discussion.

[Alan Sullivan]

PPS. I take back "never seen one." Actually there are some instances in downtown Minneapolis, come to think of it. Skyways also enable pedestrians to pass over traffic there, which is nice.

[David Sucher]

Btw, Alan, that sort of parking garage -- "sandwiched" or "skinned" with retail at the base -- is becoming the default design in most west coast cities. I simply don't think you'd get a permit for a single-purpose garage in a CBD without some pedtrian-friendly treatment. The first time I ever saw it (or noticed it) was in Seattle and then in Boulder Colorado about ten years ago and now it is commonplace in any city where they care about sidewalk life. The beauty of it is that it impacts the functionality and economics of a garage so trivially and yet has a HUGE impact on the way the city feels.

[Matthew Amster-Burton]

Alan, you'll notice is that urbanist/new urbanist types tend to recoil in horror from car/ped separation schemes, not because we love stepping out into traffic but because we recall just how badly these plans have generally fared. I'd love to be able to cross the street without fearing for my life at the hands of a devil-may-care red light runner, but any big solution to this problem tends to run into a couple of real-world brick walls.

First, when cars and peds are separated, it's always cheaper to move the peds off the street rather than the cars. Building tunnels or bridges for 6000 pound SUVs costs a lot more than a ten foot wide skybridge. The problem is, all the cool stuff is on the street.

So why can't we move the cool stuff off the street along with the pedestrians? One reason is structural: it's one thing to support the weight of a bunch of even the most corpulent pedestrians, and quite another to support retail outlets fronting on a skybridge. But the real reason, and the reason a midblock pedestrian alley is doomed as well, is that cars and peds are going to the same places and both want convenient access. If they don't get it, they'll go somewhere else. The result is our current imperfect mixture.

I'm not so sure that it's as important as carfree-city advocates claim to get cars away from peds completely. There are plenty of measures that make crossing the street not so bad. You can build curb bulbs. You can maintain parallel parking (I have an ongoing friendly discussion with the City of Seattle's parking czar on this topic; the city likes to remove parallel parking so that buses can go faster, and I think this is generally a mistake). You can do a road diet and turn a four-lane road into a three-lane road with a left turn refuge. You can make sure the signal cycles are short. And you can turn a blind eye to jaywalking, which is probably my favorite traffic calming device.

I enjoy places like this much more than any place I can think of with no cars at all.

David, your question about the actual parking ratios in suburban vs urban environments is a good one. I was mostly talking about surface level parking, but it's still an interesting question. My guess is you'll still find that the suburbs offer a lot more parking, but I have nothing to back that up. I wonder if Anne Moudon would have that kind of data.

[David Sucher]

Matthew.
I would bet that the Urban land Institute would have all that sort of data.

[Alan Sullivan]

I haven't been getting out enough (i.e. I haven't been to the West Coast in many years.) What do you think of diagonal parking?

[David Sucher]

Diagonal parking. Well you haven't been getting out much! :) Is it considered an innovation in out there in farm country? :)

And do you mean in a parking lot? Or as on street parking? And in the latter case as diagonal IN? Or diagonal facing out? So many issues!

Bottom line is that it is useful if you don't have enough width for 90 degree parking but then again it requires a separate entrance. So nothing is free.

On-street, it creates an even greater buffer between pedestrian and the traffic stream, which is good. But it does require/assume a commensurately wider right of way. so it is not applicable except in towns with bounteous streets, such as those in the midwest etc.

[Matthew Amster-Burton]

I don't like diagonal parking. It tends to be unkind to the sidewalk. In the worst case, car noses or tails actually extend onto the sidewalk (there's an obnoxious example of this a few blocks from me, Harrison between Broadway and Harvard, if you car). In the best case, there are cement stops to prevent that, but you get a zig-zag that fails to define good space on the sidewalk. I'm agin it.

[bkmiller]

On the other hand, diagonal parking can civillize streets that are too wide. My town (Vacaville, CA) has diagonal parking, and it works well. Of course, Vacaville is a farm town grown into suburb (Vaca=Cow :) ), so...

Plus, many people have trouble with parallel parking. Diagonals are a good compromise.