[Recently, we explored why modern streets are so wide and why wide streets have so many drawbacks. Now, we look into the world of possibilities when a street is narrowed. The below is a guest article by Steve Dombek, originally published on his fantastic blog Narrow Streets SF.]
We will transmit this City not only, not less, but greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.
– Derived from the Ephebic Oath, Athens, 4th Century BCE
I took the image below outside my apartment on the 1400 block of McAllister Street between Scott and Pierce.
It’s a pretty ordinary street in San Francisco. The buildings are primarily three-story Victorians divided into flats. The other properties consist of two corner apartment buildings, an assisted living facility, and a surface parking lot.
Measured from building to building, the public right-of-way is 68′ 9″ — a common width for residential streets in the city.
(2) 15′ sidewalks
(2) ~8′ parking lanes
(2) 12′ driving lanes
I want to highlight the total space we’re setting aside for cars in the current setup. When we multiply the width of the lanes (38′ 9″) by the length of the block (425′), the result is more than 15,000 square feet of space for cars, just on a single block of McAllister Street.
Remember that San Francisco is suffering through an affordability crisis caused in large part by a massive housing deficit. We need space for a lot more units than we have, and no one wants to build up.
Let’s pause here briefly and ponder a question: What type of places make a city great? To answer, it’s helpful to think about the difference between “Places” and “Non-Places”. Nathan Lewis defines them:
Places are areas where things happen. This includes:
- Houses
- Offices
- Factories
- Warehouses
- Beaches
- Marinas
- Parks
- Museums
- Restaurants
- Shops
- Theaters
- Schools
- Hotels
- Sports fields
- Train stations
- Plazas/central squares
- Gardens/yards/courtyards
In short, if you “do something,” like work or sleep or go shopping or have a picnic or a party, it’s the place where you do it. A destination. The location where people interact. Places are universally pedestrian places. Nothing happens while people are in their cars. Cars are just the means to get from one Place to another Place.
Non-Places are areas of the city where nothing happens. This includes:
- Parking lots
- Useless greenery (not a park, but landscaping where nobody goes)
- Roadways and other transportation infrastructure
- Areas around buildings which are not “destinations,” and often have no real purpose
When we look at traditional cities outside of North America we can see a consistent pattern — lots of “Place” and very little “Non-Place”.
The high ratio of “Places” to “Non-Places” explains why Traditional Cities generally feel more pleasant than American cities.
The basic pattern continues to work even in modern times. Here’s Tokyo:
Looks pretty nice, right? Now let’s say we wanted to emulate a similar traditional pattern here in San Francisco in order to maximize the amount of “Place” in our neighborhoods. We have the space to do it — but it would require us to stop parking and driving on so much of it.
Before
Present-day McAllister St with two 15′ sidewalks, two roughly 8′ parking lanes, and two 12′ driving lanes.
After
A narrowed McAllister, now consisting of two 15′ Narrow Streets For People. Houses and shops have replaced the central roadway at a width of 38.75 feet.
Both the Before and After diagrams are exactly the same scale. But in the new version, we trade the wide street and segregated sidewalks for the following:
- (2) 15′ Narrow Streets For People
- (1) 38.75′ Buildable Space (new homes, shops, etc.)
We can now reuse the old center roadway — nearly 40′ across — in a more productive way. Assuming we build to three stories, we now have 45,000 square feet of buildable space where people can live, work, shop, and relax — just on the 1400 block of McAllister.
The old segregated sidewalks (each 15′) are wide enough to become our new shared streets, built at a comfortable scale for people. Drivers respond to narrow streets by avoiding them when they can, and by moving very slowly — no more than about 5 mph — when they need to use them for local access.
Here’s how McAllister might look at about 15′ wide.
Not too bad, is it? The drab concrete sidewalk gets upgraded to brick or stone. Telephone poles and utility boxes are placed underground to clear the space for people and the occasional car. If we want, we might add some bollards like we see here in the Netherlands for protection against the occasional vehicle…
The architectural inspiration for our new houses comes from the English town of Berkeley. I like how they’re each a bit different from one another…
…but we can really take the architecture in any direction we want, so long as it conforms to a few form-based rules. Maybe you prefer something more classic San Francisco…
Whatever the case, we can grant individual home buyers / builders plenty of leeway to choose their own architectural style as long as it meets our basic form — houses side-by-side and up against the street.
