Nathan Lewis looks at how to make a pile of dough by bulldozing a big-box shopping center and replacing it with a dense urban neighborhood:
I took the example of a shopping center in Binghamton, New York. Binghamton is probably not a good place to do this, because nobody needs another nine million square feet of floorspace in Binghamton. However, since all shopping centers are basically the same, we can use that example. At a density of 100,000 people per square mile, reached in some Paris neighborhoods, 15,000 people or a third of the entire population of Binghamton could live here. However, those 15,000 people already have houses, so we don’t need to build any more in Binghamton. In a place like Darien, Connecticut, however (an upscale New York City suburb), lots of people might like to live in a place like this (good schools), and pay a premium for it, especially if it was within walking distance of the train station.
Bulldozing this thing is pretty easy, because its mostly just parking lots anyway, and the buildings themselves are rather insubstantial.
This photo is about 800 meters across, and the land plot is about 93 acres. That is quite large, actually.
Here are some of our design goals:
1) We are assuming that we have to interface with Suburban Hell as it exists, so that means lots of parking needs to be provided, and a way for automobiles to get in and out easily. Parking will be in enclosed, multistory parking garages, mostly integrated into multi-use buildings.
2) Our land use plan is something like this:
- 60% building footprint
- 30% parks, courtyards, yards, gardens, and other public and private open space, which consist of Places, not “green space”.
- 10% roadways, broken down into:
- About 20% of streets are Arterial Streets, with two to four lanes of dedicated automobile roadway in the middle, probably some trees or grass as a buffer, and sidewalks on either side. No on-street parking.
- The remaining 80% of streets (by length) are Really Narrow pedestrian-centric streets, of 10-30 feet wide, no segregated automobile roadway, no sidewalks, and no green buffers.
3) Building height is generally 3-6 stories, a typical Traditional City height.
4) Some buildings can be taller, particularly those which are adjacent to Arterial Streets. This would be more of a Manhattan-style Hypertrophic approach. Big buildings and big streets go together easily. So, you can add your 35-story highrise apartments and offices here too, if you want.
5) The treatment of the perimeter is an interesting design point. How should our neighborhood interface with the rest of Suburban Hell? Put a wall around it? (Lots of walled cities are very nice.) Put a green buffer around it? It might be nice for it to be separated from the rest of Suburban Hell, like its own little island of Traditional City fabulousness. Shall we put a row of buildings along the existing very large automobile roadways? I opt here for a combination of some park space along some streets (isolation), and some buildings along other streets. One nice thing about park space is that you can decide to build on it later if you want. Ideally, although being long and skinny and serving as a buffer, this will be usable and enjoyable as a park, not just a wall of shrubbery.
6) Block size is roughly 100-200 feet along the short side and 200-500 feet along the long side.
So, here we go:
The darkened areas are parks. The small darkened area on the left is a paved town square. You could add some smaller squares and parks here and there as well. The wide, double-lined streets are Arterial Streets. The single black lines are Really Narrow Streets.
Although most of the streets here are Really Narrow pedestrian streets, almost all of the blocks have at least one side adjacent to an Arterial Street. An entrance to enclosed parking can be put on the side facing the Arterial Street, so that cars can enter and exit without having to drive on the Really Narrow Streets. Vehicles will be allowed on the Really Narrow Streets, but, seeing as they would have to share the road with people walking, and also there’s no place to park there, the main reason that motorized vehicles would be on the smaller streets is for deliveries and dropoffs.
This site has about four million square feet. At 60% building footprint, and an average height of four stories, that would mean about 9.6 million square feet of space here. That is a lot, although some of it would be used for parking.
This makes sense if it’s within walking distance of a train station to NYC, but otherwise, how are people getting to work with no parking and hence no cars? If the perimeter business are to interface with the rest of the city, they’d need parking to the the others get here. If those “arterials” get any traffic the two choke points are going to cause problems.
It’s all well and good for your laudromat, dentist, florist, gym and some restaurants etc. to be within walking distance, but you’ve got to get to work, which means dealing with the outside world. (“the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market”)
I google-mapped “murray hill ny train station”. Why aren’t there taller apartment buildings within walking distance? I can only assume zoning, rent control and other regulation. Murray hill rents are high, by my standards anyway. You’d think there’d be more quantity supplied.
On parking, I see there’s more to it.
Parking is surprisingly complicated.
I’ve been thinking about this “Traditional City” concept lately after I was tuned into Andrew Price’s blog. I think they have discovered some true principles about how cities can be designed physically to stop repelling normal middle class people.
Of course, urban planning isn’t the only problem with our cities, and it isn’t the only reason families are discouraged from living in urban environments.
Neoreaction blogs would be a great place to discuss these concepts further, because they seem like the only place where urban pathologies are discussed openly, and where a better synthesis of traditional city design and social reform might be promoted.
When I see an “urban planner” refer to suburbia as “hell”, I can’t help thinking that most normal people seem to like suburbia just fine.
So what does this guy think of normal people, if he thinks they like living in “hell”? How much does he care about producing an environment they WILL enjoy, rather than one that punishes them until they enjoy what he thinks they ought to?
Marc Pisco:
This is a case of voice vs. exit. There are some who want to punish suburbanites and force them into the cities. But others like Nathan Lewis want to provide a different type of urban environment in an effort to correct some of the perceived flaws of current cities and to attract suburbanites who might choose an urban lifestyle if it better met their needs.
The type of traditional city he advocates doesn’t exist in the US, so it is tough to tell whether such a design would attract taxpaying residents. But it does make an interesting thought experiment. Me, I don’t think it will work without finding a way to nullify the problems caused by diversity (e.g. crime, bad schools, etc.).
”Me, I don’t think it will work without finding a way to nullify the problems caused by diversity (e.g. crime, bad schools, etc.).”
No shit. “True principles about physically designing cities to stop repelling normal middle class people” should have one entry above all:
1) Keep The Camp of the Saints away.
The rest is not insignificant, of course, but matters little if the first rule is not met. Avoiding looking like Kazakhstan never hurt anyone.
KK:
That’s the truth. But maybe some of these concepts would fit well in places where: a) there is no Camp of the Saints and b) there is (or ought to be) a demand for more housing. These places could be resort destinations (ski villages, beaches, etc.) or gentrifying cities or cities with insufficient housing (Silicon Valley, Seattle, Brooklyn, DC, etc.). Maybe even bedroom communities for commuters outside nastier cities would work, but the trick would be to keep the disruptive elements away.