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| Uptown Whittier's parking garage makes room for storefronts. Easy! |
«My gut has been telling me that two hypotheses about urban planning and
blogging are probably true. The first is, you get farther with honey
than with vinegar. In other words, I'd rather find things I like and
praise them, than find things I don't like and criticize them. Keeping
things positive is good. It makes people think instead of feeling
defensive. The second hypothesis is that prevailing attitudes make
changing cities really hard in a lot of places and therefore, progress
should be celebrated even when that progress is very small or
incremental.»
«In that spirit, I'd like to celebrate the beautiful incrementalism of
mixed-use parking garages. As Jeffrey Spivak noted in the May/June 2013
issue of Planning Magazine "more garages are incorporating mixed uses, by adding stores and
restaurants, and developers don't want customers' first impressions to
be of some ugly, generic facade" (p. 23).»
«The beautiful thing about a
mixed-use garage is that it's an improvement for people who are trying
to get around on foot relative to a lot of conditions that are common
today. First of all, a given amount of parking can be handled with
relatively little land compared to a surface lot. That means
destinations aren't as spread out and walking distances are shorter.
Secondly, by adding storefronts to a garage, there is no interruption in
the sequence of interesting things for people on foot to look at. In
this way garages can fit more gracefully into an urban environment and
avoid disrupting it.»
A way to improve the social/economic profit of single-use infrastructures, like any other transport station.
«As we strive towards a more sustainable future with less driving and
more efficient land use, it's worth remembering that mixed-use garages
can make a place better for both cars AND pedestrians. In a lot of
contexts, that's real progress.»
