5 ms·

This might be a good thing for the environment, but fixing “boring” is very questionable in my opinion. Now you’ll simply have driveways that are 2-4x wider th

by DougN7 7y ago

This might be a good thing for the environment, but fixing “boring” is very questionable in my opinion. Now you’ll simply have driveways that are 2-4x wider than before (which also means more rain run-off) and less lawn. That sounds boring and ugly IMHO.

bluGill 7y ago
Short term yes. However duplexes start enable the next level. Public transit needs a certain level of density to become useful, so longer term people can think about getting rid of a car. Density also means that while there is more solid pavement on lots, there are less lots overall, and less roads between the lots, and less driving from place to place. So globally this is an environmental win even though locally it is worse.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  What actually happens is that the roads get clogged by all the people in cars, and then no one want to ride buses because if you are stuck in traffic anyway, why also add an extra 15-30min waiting for a bus to be stuck in traffic behind other people's cars?
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    Because I'd rather spend 15 minutes on my phone waiting for a bus + 30 minutes on my phone on the bus than 30 minutes driving a car through traffic.
  - msteffen 7y ago
    Seattle made a bunch of lanes bus-only and my understanding is it helped with both congestion and transit use
Frondo 7y ago
The rain runoff can flow into the bioswales the city is already building all over; it won't just run into the city sewers. As for needing to build wider driveways, and that making it boring, I realize there's a certain kind of subjectivity here but I don't think that what we're going to end up with is literally "duplexes with double-wide driveways replacing single-family dwellings on the same-sized lots." The front-runner for the 2020 mayoral race has an architectural background and has been talking about ideas like introducing an LA-style design review board to Portland, to ensure that new development has to pass aesthetic review in addition to environmental review. I guarantee you that six months after something like that were enacted, every architect in the city would know exactly what they needed to do to keep the city interesting as well as weird.
- clairity 7y ago
  i heartily support raising density limits, but i’d caution against adding a design review board like we have here in LA. imho, it doesn’t add any more harmony or interestingness, while adding cost and delay to projects. we have whole classes of buildings that can no longer be built here because they’re not in style any longer.
  - Frondo 7y ago
    That's fair, I've never lived in LA so I don't know what problems it caused; only that the architect I know who's running for mayor liked it and felt it improved the city. He said that one of the problems he sees with development in Portland now is that the developers are under no constraint to make their buildings visually interesting at all; as an example he's cited, lots of the new apartment/condo buildings go up with a nearly uniform front structure for the entire length of a city block, when varying materials or architectural features would add little cost but make the structures more pleasant to walk by, drive by, etc., a facet of city living that is hard to pin down quantitatively but makes a subjective difference. I haven't lived in Portland in a while so I can't speak first-hand to this alleged blandness of new construction but I do remember the last time I was there seeing a lot of new stuff that was essentially undecorated, and of course it's cheaper that way but compared to lots of the development that is designed with more variety, I know which I'd choose. Maybe there's a middle ground, I don't know, I just know this is a situation where the market will converge on construction that probably isn't ideal for very-long-term city construction, but there isn't really an adequate feedback mechanism to force people to make prettier buildings. The city's under such housing pressure that people would live in unpainted cement blocks if someone built those. (Okay, I love brutalist architecture, especially some of the Soviet monstrosities, and I'd live in one in a heartbeat, but that's definitely me and even those had some style.) Seems like a place where a regulatory authority could do well, but maybe not a cookie-cutter of what LA has. It's just, these buildings are going to be around for a long time; now's the time to make them look good.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      Beauty is in the eye or the beholder. If people want a beautiful place to live enough they will pay for it. Thus the concern means that you are wrong: people do not agree with your ideas of beauty (remember, this is competing concerns: they may like it, but not enough to pay for it)

by DougN7 7y ago

bluGill 7y ago

Short term yes. However duplexes start enable the next level. Public transit needs a certain level of density to become useful, so longer term people can think about getting rid of a car. Density also means that while there is more solid pavement on lots, there are less lots overall, and less roads between the lots, and less driving from place to place. So globally this is an environmental win even though locally it is worse.

lonelappde 7y ago
What actually happens is that the roads get clogged by all the people in cars, and then no one want to ride buses because if you are stuck in traffic anyway, why also add an extra 15-30min waiting for a bus to be stuck in traffic behind other people's cars?
- DuskStar 7y ago
  Because I'd rather spend 15 minutes on my phone waiting for a bus + 30 minutes on my phone on the bus than 30 minutes driving a car through traffic.
- msteffen 7y ago
  Seattle made a bunch of lanes bus-only and my understanding is it helped with both congestion and transit use

Frondo 7y ago

The rain runoff can flow into the bioswales the city is already building all over; it won't just run into the city sewers. As for needing to build wider driveways, and that making it boring, I realize there's a certain kind of subjectivity here but I don't think that what we're going to end up with is literally "duplexes with double-wide driveways replacing single-family dwellings on the same-sized lots." The front-runner for the 2020 mayoral race has an architectural background and has been talking about ideas like introducing an LA-style design review board to Portland, to ensure that new development has to pass aesthetic review in addition to environmental review. I guarantee you that six months after something like that were enacted, every architect in the city would know exactly what they needed to do to keep the city interesting as well as weird.

clairity 7y ago
i heartily support raising density limits, but i’d caution against adding a design review board like we have here in LA. imho, it doesn’t add any more harmony or interestingness, while adding cost and delay to projects. we have whole classes of buildings that can no longer be built here because they’re not in style any longer.
- Frondo 7y ago
  That's fair, I've never lived in LA so I don't know what problems it caused; only that the architect I know who's running for mayor liked it and felt it improved the city. He said that one of the problems he sees with development in Portland now is that the developers are under no constraint to make their buildings visually interesting at all; as an example he's cited, lots of the new apartment/condo buildings go up with a nearly uniform front structure for the entire length of a city block, when varying materials or architectural features would add little cost but make the structures more pleasant to walk by, drive by, etc., a facet of city living that is hard to pin down quantitatively but makes a subjective difference. I haven't lived in Portland in a while so I can't speak first-hand to this alleged blandness of new construction but I do remember the last time I was there seeing a lot of new stuff that was essentially undecorated, and of course it's cheaper that way but compared to lots of the development that is designed with more variety, I know which I'd choose. Maybe there's a middle ground, I don't know, I just know this is a situation where the market will converge on construction that probably isn't ideal for very-long-term city construction, but there isn't really an adequate feedback mechanism to force people to make prettier buildings. The city's under such housing pressure that people would live in unpainted cement blocks if someone built those. (Okay, I love brutalist architecture, especially some of the Soviet monstrosities, and I'd live in one in a heartbeat, but that's definitely me and even those had some style.) Seems like a place where a regulatory authority could do well, but maybe not a cookie-cutter of what LA has. It's just, these buildings are going to be around for a long time; now's the time to make them look good.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Beauty is in the eye or the beholder. If people want a beautiful place to live enough they will pay for it. Thus the concern means that you are wrong: people do not agree with your ideas of beauty (remember, this is competing concerns: they may like it, but not enough to pay for it)