4 ms·

I feel like I missed something. Why is it that off-street parking must be subterranean? Is it more expensive to make the building a floor of two taller and use

by Fargren 13y ago

I feel like I missed something. Why is it that off-street parking must be subterranean? Is it more expensive to make the building a floor of two taller and use the first floors for parking? Is this illegal somehow?

ams6110 13y ago
Might be illegal, if there are height restrictions in the zoning code. Also a lot of cities now add in requirements to have street-level retail so that buildings are not featureless walls or concrete parking ramps at street level.
- spc476 13y ago
  A friend of mine used to be an architect, and I asked him once if it was possible to build a mile-high building. He said that it was technically possible but economically unfeasible because it would be hard to rent all the space. The base of the building (X number of floors) would have to be huge, and most people want to rent suites (office or living space) with windows, leaving the deep interior bare of renters. Perhaps a ring of stores, with the interior of the first floor or two as a parking garage, which are less desirable anyway?
  - x0x0 13y ago
    the burj khalifa got to 2700 ft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Many towers have multiple floors (I've seen as many as 10) of parking. Turning radiuses and building services (elevators, water, sewerage, cooling, electrical) limit the ability to restrict parking to interior cores, though automated parking systems might allow for this. Utilizing interior cores for warehousing/storage might also make some level of sense. I've also seen numerous buildings with large interior multi-floor (often the full building height) atria -- some quite beautiful in fact.
sjs1234 13y ago
"She builds it as tall as the legal height limit for that zone too."
spc476 13y ago
I was wondering the same thing. The office building I work in has the first four floors devoted to a parking garage, with floors 5 to 10 as office space. Why couldn't the same be done for housing?
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  Because it's hideous? People walking around don't want to walk past the blank walls or ventilation grates of parking garages. An attractive urban pedestrian environment needs to have something _different_ and _interesting_ every few dozen feet. That's why streets with many narrow storefronts are the most crowded with pedestrians.
  - iyulaev 13y ago
    That's why streets with many narrow storefronts are the most crowded with pedestrians. Correlation != causation.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      Correlation + causal explanation gives you a pretty strong link, however. You can also directly compare regions in which monoliths break the flow small/frequent storefronts. The relationship, in my casual observation, holds very strongly. You can disrupt the pattern by providing street-level temporary equivalents, e.g., street fairs / farmer's markets, and the like. And obxkcd: http://xkcd.com/552/ http://xkcd.com/552/ "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'."
  - spc476 13y ago
    Here's the building I work in: https://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=26.200547,-80.149577&spn=0.009241,0.012252&t=m&z=17&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=26.200361,-80.149577&panoid=5HmWm0fNWGVR0KLEjGk0kQ&cbp=12,276.97,,0,1.5 https://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=26.200547,-80.149577&spn... You can see the garage entrance to the left, and the garage wraps around behind the main entrance (a five story open air atrium) to the right hand side. It doesn't have to be hideous.
icambron 13y ago
This is basically what sjs said, but you're only allowed to build the building so tall (zoning rules often crazily restrictive about this). So if you put your parking above ground, you'd have to have fewer units.
bproctor 13y ago
Yeah, I don't understand this article. My building has a 1 story basement, street level is retail space, the next 6 floors are parking, and above that 24 floors of apartments. You can't easily tell from the outside what is apartments and what is parking without looking close. I also live in Seattle only blocks away from where this guy is talking about.

by Fargren 13y ago

ams6110 13y ago

Might be illegal, if there are height restrictions in the zoning code. Also a lot of cities now add in requirements to have street-level retail so that buildings are not featureless walls or concrete parking ramps at street level.

spc476 13y ago
A friend of mine used to be an architect, and I asked him once if it was possible to build a mile-high building. He said that it was technically possible but economically unfeasible because it would be hard to rent all the space. The base of the building (X number of floors) would have to be huge, and most people want to rent suites (office or living space) with windows, leaving the deep interior bare of renters. Perhaps a ring of stores, with the interior of the first floor or two as a parking garage, which are less desirable anyway?
- x0x0 13y ago
  the burj khalifa got to 2700 ft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Many towers have multiple floors (I've seen as many as 10) of parking. Turning radiuses and building services (elevators, water, sewerage, cooling, electrical) limit the ability to restrict parking to interior cores, though automated parking systems might allow for this. Utilizing interior cores for warehousing/storage might also make some level of sense. I've also seen numerous buildings with large interior multi-floor (often the full building height) atria -- some quite beautiful in fact.

sjs1234 13y ago

"She builds it as tall as the legal height limit for that zone too."

spc476 13y ago

I was wondering the same thing. The office building I work in has the first four floors devoted to a parking garage, with floors 5 to 10 as office space. Why couldn't the same be done for housing?

thrownaway2424 13y ago
Because it's hideous? People walking around don't want to walk past the blank walls or ventilation grates of parking garages. An attractive urban pedestrian environment needs to have something _different_ and _interesting_ every few dozen feet. That's why streets with many narrow storefronts are the most crowded with pedestrians.
- iyulaev 13y ago
  That's why streets with many narrow storefronts are the most crowded with pedestrians. Correlation != causation.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Correlation + causal explanation gives you a pretty strong link, however. You can also directly compare regions in which monoliths break the flow small/frequent storefronts. The relationship, in my casual observation, holds very strongly. You can disrupt the pattern by providing street-level temporary equivalents, e.g., street fairs / farmer's markets, and the like. And obxkcd: http://xkcd.com/552/ http://xkcd.com/552/ "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'."
- spc476 13y ago
  Here's the building I work in: https://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=26.200547,-80.149577&spn=0.009241,0.012252&t=m&z=17&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=26.200361,-80.149577&panoid=5HmWm0fNWGVR0KLEjGk0kQ&cbp=12,276.97,,0,1.5 https://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=26.200547,-80.149577&spn... You can see the garage entrance to the left, and the garage wraps around behind the main entrance (a five story open air atrium) to the right hand side. It doesn't have to be hideous.

icambron 13y ago

This is basically what sjs said, but you're only allowed to build the building so tall (zoning rules often crazily restrictive about this). So if you put your parking above ground, you'd have to have fewer units.

bproctor 13y ago

Yeah, I don't understand this article. My building has a 1 story basement, street level is retail space, the next 6 floors are parking, and above that 24 floors of apartments. You can't easily tell from the outside what is apartments and what is parking without looking close. I also live in Seattle only blocks away from where this guy is talking about.