Sublime

Which leads us to Shoup’s second key recommendation, that on-street parking be priced at a level that results in an 85 percent occupancy rate at all times.44 This number may seem a bit low, but it corresponds with roughly one empty space per block face, just the right amount to ensure Daddy Warbucks a spot near the furrier. Because it is precisely

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Minimum density is 20 units per acre: The voter initiative locks in at least 20 units/acre (~50 people/acre) as the minimum average density. This is similar to beloved neighborhoods such as Marina in SF, Centrum in Amsterdam, Kensington in London, and Historic Charleston in South Carolina. Even though people love these places, we’ve built close to ... See more

Affordable housing would be far more attainable if our infrastructure encouraged walking and alternative forms of transportation. Parking minimums are one example of how car-centric infrastructure works against this goal. A standard parking spot occupies as much square footage as a small studio apartment, and that’s without factoring in the drivewa... See more

When we built our new house in Washington, we too did our best to clear the shelves of the sustainability store. We put in bamboo floors, radiant heating, double-thick insulation, dual-flush toilets, a solar water heater, and a twelve-panel 2.5-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system. A pine log crackling in our high-tech wood-burning stove supposedly c

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The cities with the most congestion are often the cities that provide the best alternatives to being stuck in congestion. Of the ten cities ranked worst for traffic in the 2010 Urban Mobility Report,18 all but three—Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta—have excellent public transit and a vast collection of walkable neighborhoods. Indeed, these seven cities

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The problem is to hamper excess duplications at one place, and divert them instead to other places in which they will not be excess duplications, but healthy additions. The other places may be at some distance, or very close by indeed. But in any case they cannot be fixed on arbitrarily. They must be places where the use concerned will have an exce

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What sorts of new street uses and street buildings are possible? The general aim should be to bring in uses different from residence, because lack of enough mixed uses is precisely one of the causes of deadness, danger and plain inconvenience. These different uses can occupy entire new street-side buildings, or merely the first floors or basements

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