While the dataset is kinda small, I think it makes a lot of sense. This is something right out of Jane Jacobs' "Eyes On The Street" idea from "The Death And Life Of Great American Cities":
> “A city street equipped to handle strangers, and to make a safety asset, in itself, our of the presence of strangers, as the streets of successful city neighborhoods always do, must have three main qualities:
> First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects.
> Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.
> And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers. Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street. Almost nobody does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by watching street activity.”
I love it. Simple, elegant.
Would love to hear if anybody has any divergent thoughts about how this sort of p2p peer-surveillance/protection mechanism works in other complex systems!
Jane Jacobs' work is famous, but yet still under-appreciated, and her ideas IMO under-implemented.
For the most part we're still stuck with half-assed bastardized versions of Le Corbusier's shitty ideas about the Radiant City, even though we've already seen terrible results from it across the board.
One thing that disappoints me is that American cities are experiencing a huge resurgence in urbanism, but yet most of this comes in the form of isolated towers attached to parking garages, not any structures that would encourage street life or "eyes on the street" to any substantial degree. Huge apartment buildings are going up in "revitalized" downtowns throughout the country yet the streets are as ghostly and empty as ever.
> Huge apartment buildings are going up in "revitalized" downtowns throughout the country yet the streets are as ghostly and empty as ever.
Are there cities in particular that you're thinking of? This is decidedly not the case where I live (in fact, the most common complaint I've heard is that it's getting too crowded, especially downtown). On a more theoretical level (given that I don't have _recent_ experience living anywhere else), I don't even see how the influx of residents implied by these new apts wouldn't increase street activity to at least some significant degree.
Take a look at Streeterville/Lakeshore East in Chicago (lakefront downtown) and Tobacco Row in Richmond (riverfront warehouse district). High rises and lofts, with amenities in skylobbies or at the bottom, and ample parking in garages. Despite beautiful parks adjacent, the sidewalks around these areas are always empty, and there is very little street-facing retail.
The converted lofts in Fulton River District (warehouse district in chicago, same price point) seem to be increasing foot traffic though, despite it being an area where you need a car to get anywhere. Parking in this neighborhood is on the street. Still very undeveloped commercially though, aside from "restaurant row"
A big chunk of Jacobs' work is concerned with why parks are a necessary but insufficient condition for vibrant cities, especially in the book mentioned in the GP (Death and Life of Great American Cities). IMHO it's eye-opening and pleasantly brief (particularly by the ponderous standards of city-planning literature).
Some examples off the top of my head - and apologies if you or anyone reading this actually live in these places, but I won't mince words ;)
Seattle: downtown is absolutely deserted during non working hours because of a foolish desire to separate residential and commercial areas. Businesses in these zones suffer since they can either only cater to office/daytime traffic or residential/nighttime traffic and never both. Downtown is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as dangerous during off-hours because it is completely deserted.
Even in residential areas this doesn't get much better. Belltown, a highly urban neighborhood full of highrises, has practically empty streets. You can walk down a main thoroughfare in that neighborhood in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday and see maybe 4-5 people as far as the eyes can see. The design of these buildings are largely monolithic with attached parking, creating a relative dearth of retail and commercial use. There is still no grocery store in the neighborhood since literally none of the many highrises were designed with large enough retail spaces to house one - which might explain the lack of street life - you must use a car to access even basic supplies (or rely on modern workarounds like delivery grocery). There are no hardware stores, no grocery stores, a single run-down pharmacy... it's as if someone heard the word "retail" and thought "bars and restaurants" only.
As compared to another Seattle neighborhood, Fremont, which is also urban, but features high foot traffic, the presence of both housing and offices in the neighborhood, a plethora of businesses supporting everyday needs, and a highly active street life. Or Capitol Hill (arguably a neighborhood in decline) where the neighborhood is anchored by the community college, major grocery stores, and nearby hospital staff, creating high foot traffic (street "watchers") at all hours.
Vancouver (Canada) suffers from the same problems. Yaletown, an upmarket urban neighborhood full of highrises, is nearly deserted except a single street that leads to the transit station. Much of this is because said highrises have zero retail or mixed-use accomodations, creating huge dead zones where the only people traversing it are the ones heading directly toward, or directly away from, home. It's not quite as bad as Belltown in Seattle, but it's not great.
In fact other neighborhoods in Vancouver's urban downtown core suffer even more egregiously. Many of the older (read: 90s) buildings were constructed before any substantial transit coverage as added to downtown, and their residents were car-reliant to the point where the streets surrounding mid- and high-rises don't even have sidewalks (see: the West End), and some of these buildings lack even basic street-facing entrances (street frontage reserved for garage facilities, naturally), forcing pedestrian visitors to come through the side like second-class citizens. Even though transit coverage in these areas is now excellent, the lack of street traffic remains because of the fundamental architecture of the streets and buildings.
I've also lived in Toronto and some of its neighborhoods suffer from this too. Practically the entire waterfront area is a veritable wasteland of highrise condo buildings. Clean-cut glass skyscrapers loom over almost-deserted streets because of insufficient (and sometimes a complete lack of) retail and commercial spaces. Take a car from the garage to access almost everything you need for everyday survival. Their only saving grace (and source of street activity) are the commuters waiting for streetcars or buses.
Anyways, rant aside, here are some commonalities I see between these places:
- A rejection of mixed-use developments. The primary driver of emptiness here is because there is nowhere to go - no grocery stores, no coffee shops, no nothing. Where mixed-use is embraced, everyone wants to host trendy businesses like bars and restaurants (which help improve property value for the building) but not the everyday businesses (pharmacies, grocery stores, barbers) that drive the most street traffic and serve as traffic anchors.
- A large-lot monolithic style of development. These buildings feature large set-backs from the sidewalk, with hedges, fences, or low walls facing the sidewalk. The implicit message here is "keep walking, bud", instead of "come on in and visit [X]". More importantly, because these buildings tend to be whole-block developments, when a single building fails to embrace commercial use or is otherwise poorly designed, it creates a massive dead zone on the street that seems to go on forever. IMO large-lot "complexes" are the worst thing to happen to American urbanism, ever.
- A disproportionate amount of space dedicated to parking. Many of these buildings lack commercial and retail space because it's occupied by parking structures. Many of these buildings lack even proper residential street frontage because that space is for a garage gate.
> streets surrounding mid- and high-rises don't even have sidewalks (see: the West End)
> some of these buildings lack even basic street-facing entrances (street frontage reserved for garage facilities, naturally)
Uh... I live in West End now, and what I see is the opposite. Proper sidewalks everywhere, few above-ground residential parking lots. I mean, we're talking about streets, right? Not back alleys.
Portland's mixed-use zoning regulations have been a great solution to the dead spots you note around garages.
Off the top of my head, they require wider sidewalks and some kind of storefront on the first floor, both of which make the streets more welcoming. Apartment buildings are even subject to this, I believe, as well as offices and garages.
I would certainly not mind if many of Portland's zoning laws made their way to other cities, but I fear the (relatively) heavy-handed regulations would be denounced as un-American.
I'm an Architect and I've worked on projects in Britain, France, Italy, Korea and the US (NYC). America has the most prescriptive and least flexible zoning and building regulations I have seen.
That may be true, but generally speaking, if you look around US cities you'll see far fewer mixed use zones that blend commercial & residential. Besides major metros (cities with actual skyscrapers) and small towns, in my experience it is not common for cities to allow (or perhaps they do allow it, but it isn't encouraged or developers don't believe it makes sense) mixing of residential units in commercial blocks. I'm reasonably well traveled in the US and never noticed this until I went to New Orleans for spring break one year. That was the first city where I saw mixed use like this, and it actually confused me when I was looking for businesses and they ended up being interspersed between houses.
Generally speaking the US does not mix single-family residences (1-4 units) with commercial. However with multi-family residences (> 4 units) mixed use is the norm.
The driving force is the fact that most single family homes are owner occupied, while multi-family housing is not (that is to say, while condos and coops may be owned, the building itself is not)
Whoops, you're right. I should have said 'Based on my experience of working in NYC, America has the most restrictive regs...' US States have about the same power over regulations as individual European countries have in the EU.
I think Houston is a bit of evidence of what can happen when you leave the zoning to its residents... I would not take Houston to be the prototypical Unamerican city, yet, there is it with no zoning laws but it begets a suburb called a city.
My vision would be something akin to mixed use zoning as in Seoul or Tokyo, but I guess the abuse american cities experienced from defacto mixed zoning in the 19th century hasn't dissipated, but one can hope it will but adopt reasonable mixed zoning.
If it were truly no zoning in practice, I think Houston might actually be densifying faster than it currently is. But large parts of it are saddled with rules (both private- and public-sector) explicitly requiring low-density housing. A lot of the city was developed in big chunks as master-planned neighborhoods laid out by a single developer. In addition to setting up the initial lots as low-density housing, most of these developers added deed restrictions that prohibit higher-density redevelopment. In effect the deed restrictions end up creating a kind of perpetual "zoned single-family-home" status for much of the city. The city has added its own bit to that, with requirements in some areas that tend to also favor or require low-density development: minimum-setback rules, minimum parking requirements, etc.
The minimum parking requirements in Houston are absolutely insane. It's 7-10 spaces per 1000 sq ft of business. A small 2000 sq ft restaurant would need about 20 parking spaces directly next to the business. It's just unbelievably wasteful and makes developing a walk-able city next to impossible.
The simple problem in Houston is the generally white, left-wing NIMBY crowd. Case in point-- a mid-rise multi use commercial/residential building was going up near Kirby Drive and the upper-middle class residents of the area fought it tooth and nail because it would lead to more "congestion" in the area. I say "left-wing" because it's a fact. This particular neighborhood votes overwhelmingly democrat. Yet out in the more 'conservative' suburbs such as the Woodlands, mixed use higher density housing is being welcomed and encouraged by residents. It's a classic limousine liberal situation -- they want all of these 'great' things until it interferes with their view or they ability to not have to wait an extra five minutes at the Starbucks. Extreme left wing mayor Anise Parker, for example, draws much of her support from these groups, yet refuses to address the infrastructure issues that would make these developments more feasible -- she spends political capital on bike trails in parks, but refuses to maintain roads that would make these higher density developments more palatable to existing residents. For example, one of the main arteries in Houston is Westheimer Road -- I've driven in smoother roads in Beirut than this one. The problem with high density development isn't the developers, it's the NIMBYs who were their first and object to their zone of exclusivity being encroached upon by typically younger, more urbanized new arrivals. This is ironic because generally the left wing in cities promote this kind of thing, but Houston's political makeup is actually rather unique. So if you are a 'left-winger' not from Houston, I don't mean an insult. Houston's left is a special breed.
Another reason for the development of Houston's suburban 'cities' such as the Woodlands is because the climate in the city proper is comparatively more anti-business. Tasks like getting permits approved is a Kafka-esque process, not to mention the endless regulations that make running a restaurant, shop or other small business in the city limits so painful. Interestingly, in the Woodlands for instance, that 'city' center resembles something one might see in Portland -- walkable, bike friendly roads, high density residential and retail, mixed with greenspace and office buildings. More telling is that the woodlands is privately developed. Exxon is actually building their new headquarters in that area and housing prices have already started to skyrocket.. There's a demand for an 'urban' experience. Unfortunately, the political power in Houston itself misses the forest for the trees.
My own experience hasn't seen much correlation between politics and NIMBYism in Houston. I don't know much about the Woodlands, but I've spend a good number of years in Clear Lake, which is conservative and opposed to development of anything other than suburban-style, single-family homes (it was also privately developed, by a subsidiary of Exxon, who set up the anti-redevelopment deed restrictions). That's done mostly through the weird quasi-municipal-politics of the homeowners' associations though rather than "regular" politics. The homeowners' associations seem to be almost all controlled by people who really want to maintain a kind of wealthy-suburban-enclave feel, and are scared that allowing apartment complexes to be built, or relaxing anti-rental regulations, might result in "the wrong kind of people" moving in to their neighborhood.
I agree the west-side are pretty anti-development, but again that seems to go across the whole political spectrum, from liberals in Montrose to conservatives in River Oaks. Even John Culberson (R, 7th district) has gotten himself involved in west-side NIMBY causes.
Yeah, here in Singapore I've witnessed several instances of really "Wait, why would you do that?!" urban redesign by the Urban Redevelopment Authority. I would assume that the people working in there must be passionate about urban spaces and would've read Jacobs, but it seems otherwise. (Stripping of street life because of regulations about painting old shophouses, etc)
I think part of it comes down to the fact that a lot of these places were never urban - they may have had big buildings but the people never experienced street life in the way older American cities - and most European cities - have experienced it (see: Boston, NYC). As a result urban planning is too much an exercise in theory and too little based on pragmatic experience.
Another component is that Radiant City-esque designs look better on paper. You have tall, majestic buildings where architects can go wild without the constraint of adjacent buildings, and ample parkland appeals to our intuitive sense of what must be pleasant, but isn't in reality. In areas where urban decay has been especially problematic, these designs afford residents a sense of safety - they are safely ensconced in towers of glass and steel and may enter and exit with their cars. In many American cities avoidance of the street is sadly still a feature, not a bug.
From what I've read, that is the case for Brasilia. Looks great on paper. They got to start from scratch in the middle of the jungle, kind of like Washington DC when L'enfant had similar blank slate. In any event, while Brasilia looked good and grandiose on paper, it was nowhere near human scale.
It actually works surprisingly well in the residential "superblocks" because the apartment buildings are all raised on pillars so you can walk in a straight line between any two arbitrary points within a superblock, there are plenty of trees and parks, and the local commercial zones are easily accessibly by foot. But then when you get to the center with the bus station and government buildings it's a mass of huge roads and wide open spaces choked with exhaust fumes that's very unpleasant to walk around.
> I would assume that the people working in there must be passionate about urban spaces and would've read Jacobs
That's honestly something of a silly assumption. You'll find that a lot of entirely qualified and legitimate experts in a given field will not have read well-known books in their field: their expertise is very often the consequence of sheer experience. It's the rest of us, who can't rely on experience for know-how, who turn first to books or are recommended books.
In the case of urban planning, it is a damn shame, because Jacobs' work constructively criticizes a lot of received wisdom that such experts are simply passing down without much modification. But generally speaking, it's not really a huge problem.
> yet the streets are as ghostly and empty as ever.
This probably has a lot to do with transit. Unless you are making a very short hop, the primary reason to be on the sidewalk is that you are walking to or from a train.
While this didn't involve a currency, it reminds me of the concept of supplementary currencies, where a token is used to exchange an abundant resource for a scarce one, with better overall allocation. I supppse in this case, the resources were parking spaces and security. Luckily there was a coincidence of wants, and so no token was needed.
Slum sanitation and bus tokens in Curitiba are the classic example of the sort of supplementary currency I mentioned, for anyone interested:
> “A city street equipped to handle strangers, and to make a safety asset, in itself, our of the presence of strangers, as the streets of successful city neighborhoods always do, must have three main qualities:
> First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects.
> Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.
> And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers. Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street. Almost nobody does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by watching street activity.”
I love it. Simple, elegant.
Would love to hear if anybody has any divergent thoughts about how this sort of p2p peer-surveillance/protection mechanism works in other complex systems!