How would this negatively impact those with disabilities?
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The rest of the world is doing just fine without wide boulevards.
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My rule of thumb: If it will support $10 a bottle pressed juice businesses, then the development will get done. Hayes Valley supports development. But when you reduce traffic on a street, then the person selling the $10 juice has much fewer potential customers.
The streets as shown in the graphic wouldnāt accommodate common american buses with wheel chair lifts, or efficient housing ramps.
Not unsolvable, but if part of the answer is āreplace all public transportāā¦ Wellā¦ Thatās harder.
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That is a big obstacle, especially in an earthquake zone. The older densely-packed buildings are the ones that collapsed into each other and burned in Kobe. Obviously better buildings would help, but still, try putting out a fire or doing rescues in two buildings that have partially collapsed and fallen into each other across a picturesque alleywayā¦that is also the escape route for those further inside.
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Why not go all the way like this city? http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/31/travel/kowloon-walled-city
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Because we donāt want people driving cars.
If people want parking, they should build it under the buildings, which is what happens to new construction in SF because there is already no room for parking.
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Itās all very well being able to cram in more bodies, but you have to think of the psychological impact of doing so as well (not to mention all that other stuff others have already brought up).
As someone who lives in a town where we have long rows of Victorian terraces opening directly on to the pavement, with a car-choked road next to it and no greenery what so ever unless Iām willing to walk a mile to the nearest āparkā (a patch of wilted grass just big enough to place a 100 metre path around the perimeter for joggers), I can tell you itās one of the most soul destroying places Iāve ever experienced. I would (possibly literally) kill for just a few inches of dirty grass and those weird trees that have been pruned back to nothing but a leaf covered trunk to break up the monotony. In fact I think I had more greenery when I lived a year just down the road from Kings Cross & St. Pancras stations in the middle of London.
Also those dog owners that let their pets use the grass verge as a toilet donāt magically start picking up after their beloved pooch if itās not there, they just let them befoul the pavement instead. It just adds to the soul sucking despair.
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Move to Burbank.
Or donāt do it to every street. Not every street in SF needs to be wide enough for every potential vehicle on the road. People can go over a block or four.
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Replace the car choked roadway with non-car green space.
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I know what yer getting at, but when you increase density and decrease accessibility, and the answer for the alter abled is ātravel four more blocksāā¦ The ADA is gonna come down hard and fast.
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I would like that a lot, but these āhuman scaleā streets donāt seem to be too friendly to that idea either. Also what of the elderly, disabled, or others with health problems? Promoting walking is a good thing but not everyone is physically capable of doing so.
Why is this premised on not building upwards? Itās not like we donāt know how to build in earthquake zone.
Also, who makes the money from this scheme? The city for selling the roadway? The developers? Hey, guess what! They want prices to be as high as possible. They arenāt going to flood the market with cheap homes. Flood it with expensive ones? Sure. Cheap? No way. How many high density cities with a good standard of living also have cheap housing costs?
And how about the folks that live there now? Think they will allow ātheirā road to be taken away? All in the name of pushing down the value of the home underwater with their 30 year mortgage?
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Then how do cities like Barcelona, which have them in places, survive?
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Why does every city need to be built to accommodate cars more than people?
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Considering that you can get around san francisco fine without a car, but if you want to head pretty much anywhere else that isnāt on BART, youāre shit out of luck, making San Francisco even more car-unfriendly (which it already is) sounds unappealing.
But you know what could be done? Building up. Everyone goes, āoh no, super high risesā, like thatās the only option. Seriously there are large swathes of San Francisco that could go up to three or four stories, like sooo much of the older, denser parts of London. There is no reason for the avenues to be so suburban. That would probably be a zillion times more effective than squeezing more room out of the streets. But itāll never happen, because of NIMBYism. And of course, allowing for more housing would hurt the bottom line of people who make money off ridiculously inflated property prices.
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Because very few people can afford to live in san francisco, but lots of people work there. (But not just there) The bay area itself has about 6 million people spread out over 3.5ish thousand square miles, and thereās a giant body of water in the middle of it all, which means that unlike most metropolitan areas, itās not centered on anything, and so instead of a wheel, radiating out, what you end up with is multiple hubs. Thatās a really big obstacle to public transportation. But especially the low population density, because you end up running either very few trains/ferries/etc what have you at very limited times, or you go connect very few points, or both, because there arenāt enough people traveling the same routes to sustain it.
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Not being an urban planner I have no idea, though a quick look at Google doesnāt seem to indicate that itās a car free utopia. I guess the old and infirm (or young and infirm for that matter) just donāt live in those parts of the city.
What do they do in your city? Only walk as far as it takes to get to a curb to get into a car? What did they do before cars?
