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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

#71

Post by mattlondon »

CalRobert wrote: post #60
mattlondon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that NIMBY response was the same here. In London generally on-street parking is already at- or over-capacity, so adding an extra couple of hundred to a thousand people wanting to park their car in the surrounding 3 or 4 streets is not just NIMBY-style petty complaints of "I don't want someone parking outside my house" and so on, but more "there physically isn't enough space for even more people to try and park i…

"get a reality check, this isn't going to work". If I gave out free hot tubs then there would pretty quickly be a hot tub shortage. The problem is that parking is the leasing of public land for insanely low amounts for private property storage. You are forcing everyone around you to pay for your private property storage because you don't feel like paying for it yourself. After all, can I pay the council the £100 a ye…

I'm not defending parking on street parking, and I am not saying we should force developers to add parking (I just find the fingers-in-ears ignoring of the issue frustrating), but with respect I think your views on the parking are a bit maladjusted.

That's because you could use your same argument about any public service. We pay for it in spades through income and council taxes.

Deliberately semi-quoting your argument:

You get public services for an insanely low price (healthcare, firemen, police, libraries, schools) for your own private benefit. You are forcing everyone around you to pay for you to not die/not have your house burn down/not get robbed/learn/get your kids educated etc because you don't feel like paying for it yourself.

Can't afford your own healthcare/fireman/police/library/school? Then perhaps we shouldn't let you use them unless you are willing to pay market rate for the service.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#72

Post by greggman2 »

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,…

Manhattan? Manhattan seems like a grid made for cars. Not place full of "nooks an crannies". I'm not saying it's not nice but it doesn't seem to fit the article at all. Most European cities are a wonderful mess of winding roads. Manhattan is mostly a grid. They don't seem comparible.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#73

Post by telchar »

greggman2 wrote: post #72
chasing wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Manhattan? Manhattan seems like a grid made for cars. Not place full of "nooks an crannies". I'm not saying it's not nice but it doesn't seem to fit the article at all. Most European cities are a wonderful mess of winding roads. Manhattan is mostly a grid. They don't seem comparible.

Still, the ratio of people to cars is striking when visiting from more suburban areas. Many places seem like a sea of cars and pedestrians are very out of place.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#74

Post by keiferski »

greggman2 wrote: post #72
chasing wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Manhattan? Manhattan seems like a grid made for cars. Not place full of "nooks an crannies". I'm not saying it's not nice but it doesn't seem to fit the article at all. Most European cities are a wonderful mess of winding roads. Manhattan is mostly a grid. They don't seem comparible.

Lower Manhattan is older and European in style. It’s only a grid above Houston (pronounced ‘How-ston’, not ‘Hew-ston’ like the city in Texas.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#75

Post by dnr »

greggman2 wrote: post #72
chasing wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Manhattan? Manhattan seems like a grid made for cars. Not place full of "nooks an crannies". I'm not saying it's not nice but it doesn't seem to fit the article at all. Most European cities are a wonderful mess of winding roads. Manhattan is mostly a grid. They don't seem comparible.

Downtown, like below 14th st, feels a lot more like that, and even more the further south (i.e. older) you go. Midtown and uptown not so much.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#76

Post by ProfessorLayton »

greggman2 wrote: post #72
chasing wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Manhattan? Manhattan seems like a grid made for cars. Not place full of "nooks an crannies". I'm not saying it's not nice but it doesn't seem to fit the article at all. Most European cities are a wonderful mess of winding roads. Manhattan is mostly a grid. They don't seem comparible.

It isn't about whether the roads are in a grid or full of nooks and crannies per se, but that the city itself wasn't planned around the existence of the automobile, either deliberately or because the automobile didn't exist yet.

A good example of this is parking minimums, which make Manhattan-style density literally impossible in places like the SFBay.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#77

Post by reaperducer »

greggman2 wrote: post #72
chasing wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Manhattan? Manhattan seems like a grid made for cars. Not place full of "nooks an crannies". I'm not saying it's not nice but it doesn't seem to fit the article at all. Most European cities are a wonderful mess of winding roads. Manhattan is mostly a grid. They don't seem comparible.

Manhattan's grid was laid out in 1811, a hundred years before the automobile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811

Lower Manhattan has plenty of nooks and crannies. My father had a secret street that he would park on when he needed to visit Battery Park City. It was a little-known street maybe one or two blocks long that was perfectly legal to park on but that hardly anyone knew about because it didn't go anywhere. I went with him a few times, and we were the only car to park there.

Plenty of nooks and crannies can be found, even in grids. There are always irregularities and sacred cows to be worked around.

Also, Chicago has a lot of nice nooks and crannies. Including an ordinance that requires that a cattle path be maintained through some of its downtown skyscrapers, and an old barn at the end of an alley.

https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2009/04/08/the-loops-mos...

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#78

Post by lotsofpulp »

non-entity wrote: post #61
bcrosby95 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand why in many suburban areas there will be sidewalk for miles, and then it will just cut off for maybe a mile or so, just to have the sidewalk pick back up again on that same road

Because laws requiring sidewalks went into effect after some land was developed, and the city would have to pay for the land owner to put a sidewalk in.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#79

Post by JJMcJ »

non-entity wrote: post #61
bcrosby95 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand why in many suburban areas there will be sidewalk for miles, and then it will just cut off for maybe a mile or so, just to have the sidewalk pick back up again on that same road

Typically the road w/o sidewalks was put in earlier, when sidewalks weren't required.

Or there is a change of jurisdiction, and one didn't require sidewalks and one did, often city vs. unincorporated county land.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#80

Post by rdiddly »

greggman2 wrote: post #72
chasing wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Manhattan? Manhattan seems like a grid made for cars. Not place full of "nooks an crannies". I'm not saying it's not nice but it doesn't seem to fit the article at all. Most European cities are a wonderful mess of winding roads. Manhattan is mostly a grid. They don't seem comparible.

Yeah Robert Moses had a big influence, but there are still some areas that are more like what the article describes. They just tend to be little pockets off the beaten path that you almost have to stumble into.
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