In the last 24 hours, I’ve seen the same basic vision as articulated Patrick Condon earlier this year in The Tyee reinforced by observations of Michael Geller (in the second paragraph of the post below), by Elizabeth Murphy in today’s Sun, and, by guru-in-chief, Peter Calthorpe – the guy who coined “Transit-Oriented Development” – in Metropolis Magazine:
MCP: What’s the future of the American suburb?
PC: I think it will densify along its arterials. There’s a huge potential to correct the mistakes of the last sixty years. And that’s to take those god-forsaken strip commercial zones and turn them into mixed-use transit corridors, thereby bringing a range of housing types, providing additional opportunities for transit, and creating walkable destinations. That’s what’s happening in Los Angeles. …
For example, the L.A. region is investing forty billion dollars in new transit lines, and almost nothing in new highways. To compliment that they’re converting most of that classic Sunset Strip world into mixed use corridors.
.
A caution. The idea of mid-rise development (four to six storeys) along mixed-use corridors served by transit seems to get an immediate buy-in at community meetings.
Opinion holds that mid-rise buildings are ‘human scale’ while highrises create inherently alienating environments. But mid-rise streewalls also change the scale of the street – and arguably have as significant an impact on scale, or, depending on how it is done, even more.
Here for instance are two new mid-rise buildings that have appeared in Seattle on Broadway – the main corridor of Capitol Hill:
.
Since these two condos are opposite each other, the impact on the corridor is amplified, particularly when compared with the original scale of the this streetcar village:
A block away:
.
There is a livability issue too: why put dense residential buildings on busy streets, where the impacts of air quality and noise are more severe? Why not, as in the West End and Kerrisdale around 41st Avenue (right), have
one- and two-storey commercial buildings along the transit corridors and the apartments on the side streets?
Doesn’t that separate conflicts while still keeping residents in walking distance of services? Doesn’t that avoid the dilemma of mixed-use that comes when people live above, for instance, restaurants and bars?
Isn’t that, in fact, the Vancouver style that evolved when the streetcar neighbourhoods were rezoned in the 1950s, and the low-rise apartment buildings and highrises replaced the old single-family homes that had converted into boarding houses?
Why has that not been considered as an option?
Well, there’s a reason – to be considered in another post.
In my humble..
The corridor problem is a lack of termination, which is an intersections problem. A Blackson Twist will help you there.
I also don’t like the car/non-car space ratios in the streetviews above. 50% ROW non-car is my rule of thumb.
The obvious reason is that the streets in behind are currently occupied by single family houses that would be demolished to densify.
And you are correct – the intensification on arterials is quite a bit opposite to past zoning practice – i.e. height restrictions on downtown shopping streets to retain sunlight (esp. E-W streets) – Robson St., Granville St. and presumably Davie St. also has a height restriction.
But I guess that’s what got “bargained away” in satisfying the NIMBYs.
PS – now show a comparable before and after with a tower and 2-4 storey podium form.
Presumably those advocating for mid-rise streetwalls instead of towers and podiums know what they are asking for – but sometimes I wonder… (I also look to the 1300 block of Hornby and wonder)
The four story, wood frame, residential on commercial, street wall building built along arterials is something of a mixed bag in Vancouver. Some along 4th Ave seem OK. But some I see on Main do not look like nice places to live. The street is too noisy for it to be enjoyable and there just isn’t enough separation between the very busy public realm and the private realm. This can be awkward for people on the sidewalk too, to look up into people’s living rooms. I see those buildings and I wonder whether a two story commercial building wouldn’t be better, perhaps with a large set back, forming a patio, before some residential floors. One excellent example is the Chapters building which is three high ceilinged commercial floors and something like six or seven residential floors. Admittedly one of the reasons that this works so well is that if faces an open area, but this building type holds promise for narrower streets if there isn’t too much traffic. The quantity of traffic seems key. There are plenty of examples of dense European mid-rise cities where the streetwall is a multiple of the street width and they seem appealing and very livable, but they seem to be in areas with low traffic. Seems to be leading to a rule: serious traffic needs some width or some separation from everything else. That rule will butt up against another known rule: too much street width is a wall.
(Agree about 1300 Hornby. This is a real downer spot for reasons I can’t fully get a grip on although bad buildings has got to be one of them.)
Mid-rise or high-rise is a false dichotomy. There are reasons to prefer either form, economic, cultural, etc. We can interact with things at ground level. Human scale is better measured horizontally than vertically, especially when what’s up there can’t even be seen from the street.
The problem with Patrick Condon is slow transit.
It would be easier to agree with Elizabeth Murphy if she didn’t say things like this:
“The Canada Line was already at capacity during peak hours when it was first opened, even without upzoning.”
“Streetcars are $30 to $40 million per km…”
“If transit funding is funnelled into only a few very expensive corridors, service in the rest of the transit grid will be reduced, neglected and inadequate.”
Something else I’d like to see as variety along these corridors (I live not far from where the above pictures were taken) is more 2-4 story commercial buildings. All of these have residences starting on the second floor, which not only puts pedestrians at an uncomfortably intimate distance from the residents, but eliminates the chance for say a dentist’s or an architect to have office space there in the business district. Everything is either retail or residence, with little chance of good, non-retail employment existing in that area.
Unfortunately, no one has yet come up with a cookie-cutter “retail on ground level, office space on floors 2-3” model which seems to be the prerequisite for getting anything built in Seattle. If you can’t build 1000, you can’t build one.
I realize that several comments are on form, look and feel as if nothing else mattered when in reality, several things do. Mid-rise as a form is the very expensive ~per unit~ because a substantial cost of a multi is in the underground and lower floors concrete structure, and mechanical systems. Building two, 7-storey structures is vastly more expensive than build a 14-storey, and impacts affordability and housing choice markedly. And then there’s the additional land cost, which is so high now, to often be a deal-breaker in financial viability of building.
Out of fashion as it may be, but economics is still a pillar of sustainability. Except when we’re building things like space stations.
yes however there are situations where one 14-storey tower might have fewer units than a single seven-storey building You have to look at it from an FSR point of view, and in that area, point-and-podium towers vs. a lower building with a large footprint might result in a similar rating.
The question of highrise vs midrise density is one of setback requirements between towers, not one of actual building type. Of course high-rises have the potential to achieve higher FSRs. Build a 6 story midrise. Now add another story on top. Now add another one. Now do that until you hit 30 floors. Of course there is massively more FSR available. Not quite 5 times as much, because you lose space to elevator shafts and column thickness, but still a heck of a lot more. The trade off is now you just have a giant slab that will have major visual and shadow impacts.
Usually the “proof midrises can have just as much FSR” are based on comparisons with widely spaced towers-in-the-park style high-rises, and hence carry implicit assumptions about building spacing. Or in our case, maybe short podiums and point towers. Raise that podium to the same height as the midrise would be getting and fatten up the tower and watch the FSR go up. But again, tradeoffs with visual impacts and shadows.
I feel like this type question would be better framed as “For a target FSR of X within this study area, what are the different building forms that we could use to accomplish this?”, in which case the preferred building form can be better addressed with a proper apples-to-apples comparison.
Moving beyond just the target FSR for the area, the question could also be framed, what is the target livability for the area. Certain increases in FSR could both decrease and increase livability. And for a certain level of livability, different FSR’s might be accommodated in different building forms.
I absolutely agree, although I would add the caveat that livability should be discussed in the context of both the local area in question as well as how it affects the region as a whole.
I’m not sure that costs are this simplistic. I understand that having a four story wood frame building on one level of underground parking, even if the parking footprint is larger than the structure, is more cost effective than a taller building on a smaller footprint with multilevel underground parking. There are also some cost inflection points at around, I think, 7 and 14 stories due to changes in mechanical systems and wind resistance. So I don’t think that there are necessarily vast differences in costs.
I once read in some urban economics context about why buildings aren’t all the same height if the economics drives their construction. Of course there are obvious reasons why there would be different heights, but it made the point that the market and the economics can be very local and shift from project to project and or course some developers just get it wrong.
I wonder this too, Gord – why we don’t try to replicate the West End model (I live there and love the quiet residential streets and the busy commercial streets). The cynic in me thinks that people realize the city is going to densify so they begrudgingly accept density in the places they value the least – the noisy arterial roads that they will never live on – in the hopes that it will preserve the character of their street.
You may be on to something, Gordon. I have actually always loved the way buildings in the Mediterranean world often step graciously back from the street to open up the street wall, and I think the Vancouver/West End strategy appeals to me for similar reasons (e.g. see how the buildings on the west side of Via Mecenate in Rome make such an incredible difference to that street).
I keep comparing the Broadway and streetcar village street perspectives above with Bv Saint-Michel in Paris, which is also in that roughly 75 foot width, facade to facade. Broadway imitates Saint-Michel in almost every significant way: there is a rough 1:1 building height to street width ratio, and the ground-level commercial space even has that “two-storyness” (or 1-1/2 level storyness) of a typical Parisian mid-rise street.
Aside from the very different ways we allocate street space in the US, I can’t help but to notice what a difference the actual architecture plays. Even with the articulation of balconies, Broadway’s new buildings emphasize the horizontal and vertical bands and bulkiness of those warehouse-loft style buildings. It is as if a kind of New Urbanist mannerism has merged with modernism to produce a “New Brutalism” – visually domineering buildings that too literally and abruptly define the street wall.