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> "Just get rid of the large ornament and generally useless front lawn." walking (my dog) around my neighborhood, which has a surprising number of different se

> "Just get rid of the large ornament and generally useless front lawn." walking (my dog) around my neighborhood, which has a surprising number of different setback standards, has led me to think about this issue abnormally often. some blocks designate as much as ~40 ft of setback, requiring large front lawns, while others have ~10 ft, with just a strip of greenway as a buffer between the street and building. observing that, i've settled on 12-15 ft setbacks being an ideal transition from public to private space in our urban landscapes: 4-5 ft of parkway, 4-5 ft of sidewalk, and 4-5 ft of vegetation to the building envelope. this provides plenty of greenspace and the requisite public walkway right through that greenery, while also maximizing the space left for housing. for unusually space-constrained blocks, you could remove the parkway, put the sidewalk right on the curb and get this down to 8-10 ft of setback. on top of this i'd convert all on-street parking to protected micromobility lanes and narrow neighborhood car lanes to 9 ft max. this would minimize the amount of urban space dedicated to cars, while still providing car access, and also allowing a diversity of mobility options. the last but most difficult change i'd suggest is requiring all car parking be underground, accessible via a single underground alley down the lengthwise spine of each block (houses with basements could have entries directly from the underground garage to the basement, for instance). this drastically reduces driveway cutouts and cross-modal intersections, thereby reducing cross-modal collisions, injuries and deaths, while also minimizing the surface area dedicated to driveways and parking.

throw0101a 5y ago
From A Pattern Language by Alexander: > 112. Entrance Transition: Make a transition space between the street and the front door. Bring the path which connects street and entrance through this transition space, and mark it with a change of light, of sound, of direction, a change of surface, of level, perhaps by gateways which make a change of enclosure, and above all with a change of view. Part of the reasons why large setbacks are defined may be because a lot of these places have roads in front of them where cars zoom by, and so the distances are used for safety in case of a car going out of control and/or to have the noise of the cars be more muffled. If the area(s) in question had more gentle streets then vehicular traffic can be more gentle. * https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/11/21/a-45-mph-world.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/11/21/a-45-mph-worl...
- clairity 5y ago
  yah, that’s why we’d want to narrow the car lanes and put trees right along the street: to aid traffic calming. by removing street parking (and putting it in the mid-block underground alley), you also make the street less about cars and more open to people (the safe streets concept).

throw0101a 5y ago

From A Pattern Language by Alexander: > 112. Entrance Transition: Make a transition space between the street and the front door. Bring the path which connects street and entrance through this transition space, and mark it with a change of light, of sound, of direction, a change of surface, of level, perhaps by gateways which make a change of enclosure, and above all with a change of view. Part of the reasons why large setbacks are defined may be because a lot of these places have roads in front of them where cars zoom by, and so the distances are used for safety in case of a car going out of control and/or to have the noise of the cars be more muffled. If the area(s) in question had more gentle streets then vehicular traffic can be more gentle. * https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/11/21/a-45-mph-world.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/11/21/a-45-mph-worl...

clairity 5y ago
yah, that’s why we’d want to narrow the car lanes and put trees right along the street: to aid traffic calming. by removing street parking (and putting it in the mid-block underground alley), you also make the street less about cars and more open to people (the safe streets concept).