IMO the phrase that best captures this is "human scale".
Human scale places can be crowded with people, but waiting at traffic lights or cruising for parking are inherently frustrating and anxiety-inducing. In a crowded place you're at least around other people, but trying to find the exit from a parking lot is just a waste of time.
More generally, the question of how to retrofit some semblance of organic, human-scale urban spaces onto the car sprawl suburban/exurban miasma is a very difficult one. Unless and until local governments get much more serious about deliberately planning walkable, appropriately-scaled towns, these sort of faux-urbanist mixed-use developments are the best we can hope for.
Yeah. Pretty much. I don't often use "human scale" because I feel like it's a bit of a buzzword, and some people use it to imply we should never build big buildings or big stores or whatever. I don't think we shouldn't have skyscrapers or big apartment buildings or Costco or Walmart. It's more that we're *missing* the bottom half of size/scale. So I guess I'd say I don't want to replace everything with human scale but bring back much more of it where we've lost it.
i also think some of this frustration is just that being in a car means a lot of waiting around. Like, waiting in lines if you're trying to get into a store would be just as aggravating, no matter the scale. But it's far less often - maybe the barber or clubbing are the few places your experience it. Heck, one gripe about riding busses or trains is people hate waiting - even if it's like 5 minutes, it just feels like a waste. But because of the scale of using a car and ways to control its speed, it's nearly unavoidable. You wait at a red light. You wait for a pedestrian to cross. You wait to get on the highway, or to get a parking spot.
If the problem is congestion, the urbanist "solution" is a "road diet" that eliminates passing lanes, forcing drivers into a single-file stop-and-go crawl -- and a "complete streets" approach that turns every street into an obstacle-course for drivers as it puts more pedestrians in harm's way (where they're nonetheless ostensibly less likely to get killed) -- and then adds dive-bombing two-wheeled gnats to the (oh-so-"vibrant") mix.
Moreover, we need to distinguish between the brutal massification of, say, a Costco, and the overall tapestry of suburban life. After all, the best mom-and-pop eateries are in those much-maligned (often smaller-scale) strip malls. Having a car puts a vast assortment of them at your doorstep -- assuming that you don't (on principle) hate to drive. What's so sacred about that dinner being accompanied by a walkable waddle? Especially when it comes at the price of living like "The Honeymooners" -- the appropriately-named Ralph and Alice "Crammed-in"?
Anyone who can't find their way in and out of a parking lot ought to listen to the Beach Boys' "Fun, Fun, Fun."
It's "sprawl" only when you're looking down on it.
PS: The true analogy for the anomie of those "big box" operations is with the massive old urban department stores (or a trip to a first-run theater downtown) -- and the jammed, screeching subway ride (on some remote planner's arbitrary, fixed route and schedule) that one must plan for and endure to get there and back (tightly bound to a timetable if one stays out late!). Is that truly what we need in order to have any semblance of a social life?
Perhaps there's no accounting for taste, but I'd rather hop in the car.
IMO the phrase that best captures this is "human scale".
Human scale places can be crowded with people, but waiting at traffic lights or cruising for parking are inherently frustrating and anxiety-inducing. In a crowded place you're at least around other people, but trying to find the exit from a parking lot is just a waste of time.
More generally, the question of how to retrofit some semblance of organic, human-scale urban spaces onto the car sprawl suburban/exurban miasma is a very difficult one. Unless and until local governments get much more serious about deliberately planning walkable, appropriately-scaled towns, these sort of faux-urbanist mixed-use developments are the best we can hope for.
Yeah. Pretty much. I don't often use "human scale" because I feel like it's a bit of a buzzword, and some people use it to imply we should never build big buildings or big stores or whatever. I don't think we shouldn't have skyscrapers or big apartment buildings or Costco or Walmart. It's more that we're *missing* the bottom half of size/scale. So I guess I'd say I don't want to replace everything with human scale but bring back much more of it where we've lost it.
i also think some of this frustration is just that being in a car means a lot of waiting around. Like, waiting in lines if you're trying to get into a store would be just as aggravating, no matter the scale. But it's far less often - maybe the barber or clubbing are the few places your experience it. Heck, one gripe about riding busses or trains is people hate waiting - even if it's like 5 minutes, it just feels like a waste. But because of the scale of using a car and ways to control its speed, it's nearly unavoidable. You wait at a red light. You wait for a pedestrian to cross. You wait to get on the highway, or to get a parking spot.
The usual urbanist hype!
If the problem is congestion, the urbanist "solution" is a "road diet" that eliminates passing lanes, forcing drivers into a single-file stop-and-go crawl -- and a "complete streets" approach that turns every street into an obstacle-course for drivers as it puts more pedestrians in harm's way (where they're nonetheless ostensibly less likely to get killed) -- and then adds dive-bombing two-wheeled gnats to the (oh-so-"vibrant") mix.
Moreover, we need to distinguish between the brutal massification of, say, a Costco, and the overall tapestry of suburban life. After all, the best mom-and-pop eateries are in those much-maligned (often smaller-scale) strip malls. Having a car puts a vast assortment of them at your doorstep -- assuming that you don't (on principle) hate to drive. What's so sacred about that dinner being accompanied by a walkable waddle? Especially when it comes at the price of living like "The Honeymooners" -- the appropriately-named Ralph and Alice "Crammed-in"?
Anyone who can't find their way in and out of a parking lot ought to listen to the Beach Boys' "Fun, Fun, Fun."
It's "sprawl" only when you're looking down on it.
PS: The true analogy for the anomie of those "big box" operations is with the massive old urban department stores (or a trip to a first-run theater downtown) -- and the jammed, screeching subway ride (on some remote planner's arbitrary, fixed route and schedule) that one must plan for and endure to get there and back (tightly bound to a timetable if one stays out late!). Is that truly what we need in order to have any semblance of a social life?
Perhaps there's no accounting for taste, but I'd rather hop in the car.
BREAK UUUPPP THAT SCALE!! You’ve gat a nice megafone there, thanks.
Good show. Reminds me of writing from 14 years ago, which got around but started here: http://www.myurbanist.com/archives/1547