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Californian’s mythical love affair with the car is so ingrained in our cities that it seems assumed that that is what our economy runs on. Cities chase after auto-malls for sales tax dollars and retail establishments need parking for the weekend before Christmas to feel secure. We have to break out of this – and we sure aren’t the first or only ones to say it. I don’t love my car. It’s useful to get out of town to the mountains or to pick up a sledgehammer at the hardware store. But I’ll give it up if I have a viable option.
We are just starting to envision a new project at 316 G Street in West Sacramento’s Washington neighborhood. The site is a little over half an acre and we would like to build small, economic units there that we hope will add lots of creative people to the neighborhood.
There are a couple London Plane trees that I would like to see saved and turned into greenspace. But how can we fit all the parking on there? If we go by the requirements, we will need almost 40 spaces - goodbye trees, goodbye greenspace, hello parking lot. Another goal is to get people living right on the street, not having the parking there. Even if we tuck the parking under the housing it leaves a big blank space for cars in the middle. I think we are going to have to stack the parking in a garage, reduce the parking with a Carshare or bike parking program, or come up with some new solutions to actually build a urban project with greenspace. It is important enough to have greenspace on the project site that we have to work out the parking issue.
Ultimately, if we continue to follow this line of thought and action, the contribution over time actually becomes a reduction of the car’s stature in our urban environment.
Steve
1 response so far ↓
1 E // Jan 22, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Man, I had some comments all typed up and then I hit Post Comment and they got lost in cyberspace somewhere… oh well. I’ll try again: Great ideas on keeping trees and keeping parking recessed/minimized where possible. I think your insights on project design speak to the “demand” side of the equation in terms of walkability and reducing the car’s stature. The other side, which is obviously out of your control but one to which you make a valuable and incremental contribution as you continue your work in West Sac, is the overall situation with respect to WHERE do people walk, and is it easy to walk there, and if they don’t walk, is there adequate transit, are the streets safe to walk on, etc. The location of people’s jobs, and where they get their goods and services, is critical. It will be interesting to see what kinds of retail, new industries or job centers, etc pop up in that area. I’ve heard a lot about biotech coming to West Sac. New jobs dowtown don’t seem to be developnig as quickly as the high-rise condo thing, and even those are stalling out for the time being. In your favor is also a proposed new streetcar line that would link both sides of the river, and they’re also widening the Tower Bridge to make it more comfortable/safe for peds and cyclists.
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