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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 d
by bcrosby95 7y ago
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.
- kn0where 7y agoBait parking is the sad reason. People are more likely to park and go into the store if they can see from the road that there are available parking spaces.
- domador 7y agoMaybe they need automatically-updated signs in the front that announce the number of parking spaces available in the back.
- non-entity 7y agoI 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
- lotsofpulp 7y agoBecause 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.
- JJMcJ 7y agoTypically 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.
- themaninthedark 7y agoIn suburbs, the sidewalk is supposed to be installed by the contractor who is doing the building. Some of them "forget" and the inspector doesn't notice/care.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- JJMcJ 7y agoUnfortunately many shopping centers that build out to the sidewalk will display a blank wall with ventilators and so forth facing the sidewalk, and the real entrances are in the interior, facing the parking. In one way this makes sense since almost all customers arrive by car but it certainly makes the street visually unappealing. EDIT: I wrote "arrive by foot", obviously it is arrive by car in suburban locations.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jschwartzi 7y agoThis also means that if you arrive on foot you have to walk around to some back alley or something in order to access the building, which defeats the whole purpose of fronting the shop directly on the sidewalk. Or they'll drop or raise the sidewalk in relation to the walk-up entrance and put a railing up making it impossible to access any shops from the sidewalk. As much as developers think they're favoring sidewalks they're really just paying lip service to the idea.
- JJMcJ 7y agoMany centers have no entrances on the street. All of them face inwards to the parking area. Lip service - just fooling the planning departments which sometimes seem to fall for the dumbest ideas.