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I agree that Santana Row is particularly well done... but I think the author is reminiscing for something more like downtown Palo Alto. What he misses is a few
by mattrp 7y ago
I agree that Santana Row is particularly well done... but I think the author is reminiscing for something more like downtown Palo Alto. What he misses is a few things:
a) Palo Alto can hold onto its old town feel because it’s literally the epicenter of Facebook, google, sand hill road and Stanford university. Some random town in Florida isn’t going to have all that.
B) in places like Florida, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Houston, etc, it’s simply not feasible to constrain parking when a good part of the year no one wants to walk a half mile or more to get groceries.
There are other ways for places to be nice and not look like an early 1900s town center... I’d submit Austin as an example: it’s totally car centered but has lots of intriguing and distinct neighborhoods and plenty of variety while also being quite suburban and housing quite a lot of strip mall retail.
The small downtown can also be very restrictive and expensive for lower income families. For example, in New Jersey, and eastern PA there are quite a few quaint little towns. Oh sure their town centers are full of small restaurants and dog grooming, pharmacies and banks, but conspicuously absent are grocery stores. I know of whole towns with 10-40k residents and not one grocery store. It’s worse in places like Chicago where lack of access to quality fresh produce has been linked to higher rates of crime.
These small towns create high rates of NIMBY-ism and while they do retain their turn of the century charm, I would suggest that it’s just as Hollywood as the new urbanism but in different ways.
I think we can all agree strip malls probably weren’t the best invention and new urbanism isn’t perfect but at least developers are trying to do something appealing rather than just put up another crappy building with nail salons and vape shops.
- pkroll 7y agoIn Chicago, is the link between crime and lack of access to decent produce one way, or the other? Nobody wants to put grocery stores (or most stores) in high-crime areas.
- bluGill 7y agoHard to say. Most people who I've seen speculate tend to conclude that both are dependent variables and the cause is something else. (generally something along the lines of poor people making bad choices - whatever bad choice means to the group speculating)
- mattrp 7y agoI don’t know but there’s actually a name for it: food desert [1]. But think about all that we just learning about gut health and mental health.. it kind of makes sense. I think the author does make an interesting point that modern development land-use leaves little for actual buildings, but I think for many cities they have been far more preoccupied with not letting big chains in because they don’t want the sprawl that it’s created a situation where chains end up in the suburban perimeter while the core becomes even more car centric to reach these retailers. In recent years smaller footprint stores like aldi, Walmart’s neighborhood market, and lidl have been able to come into these areas. It’s possible that more last mile delivery like Prime Now could help but I think we have a long way to go before the author’s utopian vision of an ideal city is realized. 1.https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press_releases/2013/august_2013/ayor_emanuel_announcesreleaseoffooddesertdataandnewinteractiveef.html https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press...
- mc32 7y agoI guess we might find out over the next few years. The new DA in SF isn’t pursuing shrinkage/theft under $950 (due to Prop 47). Of stores shutter due to losses at least we can say it contributes to the desertification.
- microtherion 7y ago> I think the author is reminiscing for something more like downtown Palo Alto As a compromise, there is something like downtown Mountain View, with one dense street, and parking lots in the back lots of each block.