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You consider it a fair design. I look at it as a waste of space. All it does is replace "car" with "bike". It even says so, with "Residential bike parking shoul
by dalke 11y ago
You consider it a fair design. I look at it as a waste of space. All it does is replace "car" with "bike". It even says so, with "Residential bike parking should have the same space-syntax relationship to the front door and kitchen as car parking does in a contemporary house in the suburbs."
Look at how much hallway space it needs to have a cycle path, plus bike parking. It adds, what, 2-3 meters of hallway width? Plus there's space inside the apartment. Is all that space really justified? A normal apartment bike room can store a much higher density of bicycles. Even more if there are hangers, or multi-level racks.
Using that 'same space-syntax relationship', if the weather outside is horrible so the children play in the hallway, do the cyclists get priority? On a bicycle lane they do. But inside an apartment complex?
With these mega-wide hallways, what if someone wanted to put up planters rather than using the parking space? Would that be okay? Or use it to store something other than a bicycle? (Eg, kick bike, tricycle, recumbent tricycle, stroller, wheelbarrow, luggage cart.) If not, why do bicycles get priority?
In my apartment building the solution is easy - we can't keep anything in the hallway.
Consider more specifically. "The apartment entryway is designed with space for a bike."
Yeah, no. In winter my bike has slush and road gravel on it. Why would I want to bring that inside? Right now I leave it in the bike room, which has a cement floor. Expressed using the same 'space-syntax', I walk in through the front door, not the garage door.
- WorldMaker 11y agoBy "fair design" I don't necessarily mean "practical", I'm implying "interesting" and "conversation starting" and "worth examining/talking about".
- WorldMaker 11y agoAlso, the specific context here was "Given semi-protected sidewalks this design seems to provide equal access to both bicyclists and pedestrians".
- WorldMaker 11y agoYou do have some interesting questions here about hypotheticals if one was to try to build something like this. Yes, these hallways you would probably not want to carpet if you expect people to ride in them with dirty bikes. They'd probably be something easy to clean like concrete or tile or plastic. I think that children playing would probably get priority over bicyclists much as such things happen in neighborhood cul-de-sacs. Also, if there is some explicit ownership of the "bike parking spaces" in front of/near a unit then I absolutely would expect people to use them as they see fit, including things like planters, assuming such things don't impede the other uses of the hall (biking, walking). Most buildings consider hallways common space that units have no ownership of. There's nothing wrong with maybe giving some ownership to part of a hall. It could add to the sense of community of the building. (In my own condo building our car parking spaces are owned by unit owners, so our spaces will sometimes get used as temporary workspaces or child toy storage zones when our cars are out parked on the street, so long as we don't block other spaces and stick to our area. If I decided to set planters on my space while my car was in the shop, I certainly could.)