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Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

theamericanconservative.com

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Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#41

Post by pjc50 »

DataWorker wrote: post #30
drewcoo wrote: post #14

As often is the case, cars are the elephant in the room. In the alley? We have rebuilt our urban spaces for cars instead of people. Now we wonder at what we've lost but have trouble connecting it to the automobile because t's ubiquitous and most of us can't imagine it otherwise.

Before there were cars there were horses. Some places are dense and cramp, the countryside is spread out. Talk of car cities or waling cities is mere confabulation. Some prefer dense cities, some the sprawling countryside of farms and having the nearest store an hour away. Why can’t people be free to live in less crowded, less crime ridden, less dirty and noisy locations if they prefer that?

They can - but they shouldn't expect it to remain cheap forever to commute by car into the city they don't like.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#42

Post by throwaway2048 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #31
throwaway2048 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A settlement isn't a court deciding that they are liable, its the MGM Grand paying out rather than taking a risk of the court case (likely would generate a ton of bad PR).

I can’t imagine avoiding bad PR (for something that clearly wasn’t the hotel’s fault) is worth $800M. They must have thought there was some possibility of legal liability, at least the the cost to defend with lawyers. But there shouldn’t be, in a sane world the suit would have been tossed immediately.

What they thought is mostly irrelevant, acting as if this is some kind of precedent and that hotels are now responsible and prepare to have your bags and rooms searched every day is stupid overblown alarmism.

The payment was large because they had liability insurance that covered 7/8ths of it, and the plaintiffs realized it would be very easy to get them to pay at least that amount out.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#43

Post by turk73 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #9
mc32 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On addition some narrow alleyways are a bit dangerous —they are narrow and in the event of emergency they can find themselves blocked off (when fire escapes empty to them, as they usually do).

If a modern developer doesn't address liabilities first, they would quickly be out of business. Hence, design is restricted to the parameters of what one can successfully defend if sued. Fire departments and fire codes are especially difficult to design around in tight spaces, as they can basically veto any construction that doesn't allow ample room for fire trucks to get around. The city also doesn't want to get sue…

It is sick that our society is making architectural decisions based on liability as described. A surveillance society is an ugly, anti-human place. We are not only headed there, we are there.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#44

Post by dwoozle »

chasing wrote: post #23
drewcoo wrote: post #14

As often is the case, cars are the elephant in the room. In the alley? We have rebuilt our urban spaces for cars instead of people. Now we wonder at what we've lost but have trouble connecting it to the automobile because t's ubiquitous and most of us can't imagine it otherwise.

Yup. It's the main reason many European cities and Manhattan feel so engaging and alive in comparison to other US cities (just using my experiences). In walking cities you interact with the city itself -- you can stop and look at things closely, walk into a small store you've never noticed before, run into a friend and chat, or pause and just people watch. In car cities everything's far off and viewed through glass,…

What I noticed when I lived in Manhattan is that I CONSTANTLY ran into people I knew, everywhere. Despite living in San Francisco much longer, and the city being much smaller, I ran into acquaintances far less often.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#45

Post by carapace »

I was walking with my mom and her dog up Brotherhood Way in San Francisco and we tried to take a shortcut through the new development on Summit Way to get into Park Merced. (There is no shortcut, BTW. There are some abandoned could-have-been-stairs but, as I say, they are abandoned.)

Anyhow. The houses are each quite nice but the neighborhood itself is terribly soulless. It's like a locker room for people. The vibe was so creepy it was like a horror movie. You can check it out on street view: https://goo.gl/maps/ZGANULkeqQjKF6Yy6

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#46

Post by bcrosby95 »

chasing wrote: post #23
drewcoo wrote: post #14

As often is the case, cars are the elephant in the room. In the alley? We have rebuilt our urban spaces for cars instead of people. Now we wonder at what we've lost but have trouble connecting it to the automobile because t's ubiquitous and most of us can't imagine it otherwise.

Yup. It's the main reason many European cities and Manhattan feel so engaging and alive in comparison to other US cities (just using my experiences). In walking cities you interact with the city itself -- you can stop and look at things closely, walk into a small store you've never noticed before, run into a friend and chat, or pause and just people watch. In car cities everything's far off and viewed through glass,…

The crazy thing is a minor change could make many suburbs much more walkable: put the stores on the street and parking in the back. Not sure why they started doing the reverse. I've lived in a lot of California suburbs that are still within walking distance to shops (~1 mile), but the experience is so bad because of the way they've arranged parking.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#47

Post by Analemma_ »

mattlondon wrote: post #37
CalRobert wrote: post #26

It's illegal to build things without enormous parking lots and roads around them in most instances now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvUByM-fZk includes an illustration of how this even results in the destruction of nice, walkable places when old buildings are renovated in to apartments.

Quite a lot of developments in the UK - certainly in London - are proposing zero parking. We had a (now shelved) plan near where I live to build 700 2 & 3 bed apartments in a new development with zero parking spaces in the design. This strikes me as blindly optimistic that of those 700 apartments (that will likely have between 2 or 3 people or more per apartment on average, so somewhere like 1500-2500 people) absolut…

Eliminating parking requirements is also starting to gain traction in the US: Seattle did it [0], and it's underway in Los Angeles [1]. Unfortunately it tends to make NIMBY opposition to development even more intense than it already is ("They'll use up all the street spaces!"), but fingers crossed we can keep this trend going.

[0]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/sea...

[1]: https://la.curbed.com/2019/8/6/20698162/parking-minimums-dow...

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#48

Post by carapace »

"Building Living Neighborhoods" https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm

Christopher Alexander (of Pattern Language fame)

> Our goal is to help everyone make our neighborhoods places of belonging, places of health and well-being, and places where people will want to live and work. This has become possible through the use of Generative Codes, Christopher Alexander's latest work in the effort to make possible conception and construction of living, beautiful communities that have real guts -- not the sugary sweetness of pseudo-traditional architecture.

> The tools offered are intended for the use of ordinary people, families, communities, developers, planners, architects, designers and builders; public officials, local representatives, and neighbors; business owners and people who have commercial interests. The processes here are expressed in the belief that the common-sense, plain truth about laying out a neighborhood, or repairing one, is equally valid for all comers, amateurs and professionals. They help people build or rebuild neighborhoods in ways that contribute something to their lives. Many of the tools have their origin in 30 years of work published in Alexander's The Nature of Order.

This is the site that made me believe that the "unit" of human society is the neighborhood.

('"Atom" is the smallest amount of a phenomenon that evinces all of its properties.' G. I. Gurdjieff)

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#49

Post by icebraining »

DataWorker wrote: post #30
drewcoo wrote: post #14

As often is the case, cars are the elephant in the room. In the alley? We have rebuilt our urban spaces for cars instead of people. Now we wonder at what we've lost but have trouble connecting it to the automobile because t's ubiquitous and most of us can't imagine it otherwise.

Before there were cars there were horses. Some places are dense and cramp, the countryside is spread out. Talk of car cities or waling cities is mere confabulation. Some prefer dense cities, some the sprawling countryside of farms and having the nearest store an hour away. Why can’t people be free to live in less crowded, less crime ridden, less dirty and noisy locations if they prefer that?

> Before there were cars there were horses

There was never a time where the average city dweller had a horse, let alone two or three. In 1915, there were est. 20M horses in the US, for ~100M people. There are way more motor vehicles per person nowadays.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#50

Post by broabprobe »

This reminds me again of why I am obsessed with A Pattern Language[0]. Building close together, setting maximum building height, quiet backs, etc. This may be a naive opinion but I think if development regulators in cities followed many of the patterns in A Pattern Language those cities would be much more enjoyable to spend time in.

[0]http://caper.ws/patterns/

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