Cities grapple with ‘car-happy’ development
Citizens striving to protect their neighborhood's or community's quality of life often find themselves opposing most, if not all, proposed new developments in the Greenville area.
And who can blame them? After all, communities across the nation have seen the charming, pleasant characteristics of their towns degraded over and over again by a new-development paradigm that emerged roughly at the time of World War II.
Before that, we designed communities to make people happy. But since then, our primary development imperative has been to make our Fords and GMs happy. Our pickup trucks and sedans have vastly different needs than little Judy and Aunt Suzie. Cars like vast spaces for enormous asphalt parking lots and high-speed roads. People like modest, safe, human-scaled, slowspeed, quiet places.
As Fred Kent once said, whatever a traffic engineer tells your town to do, do the opposite and you'll improve your community.
By focusing on making cars happy, we have unintentionally made it harder to live without a car, because happy cars make it so much more difficult and unpleasant to be a pedestrian, a transit user, or a bicyclist. Therefore, a growing number of us are increasingly dependent on car travel and are increasingly obligated to argue for the needs of our SUVs instead of our kids. It is a vicious cycle, because the more we improve conditions for cars, the more we need our cars, and the more, in turn, a growing army of us plead for improved conditions for cars.
Note, too, that because “improved” conditions for cars undercut the quality of life for people, there is a growing desire to flee the degraded, car-happy communities for remote, sprawling locations, locations that lock people into even more car dependency because trip distances are now so enormous.
We are, then, trapped in a vicious cycle. And become our own worst enemies. This helps to explain why it has become so very common today for citizens to loudly protest against nearly all development — development that for the past 60 years has suggested to citizens that, once again, the proposed project is another crappy, car-happy, community-tarnishing project to be inflicted on us.
It doesn't have to be that way. Even the not-in-my-back yard "nogrowthers" can become pro-growth if we return to designing for happy people instead of happy cars.
For example, let's say a new development is proposed in our community. Due to its car-friendly design and remote location, it is expected to produce a great many new car trips.
But instead of deciding to spend an enormous amount of public dollars to widen our roads or install new intersection turn lanes to "accommodate" the new growth (thereby harming our quality of life and small-town charm), a community can choose to draw a line in the sand.
Your growth can happen here, but only on our terms.
We welcome your new development if it exemplifies some or all of the following:
1. Building within the heart of our community a development that either replaces an underused property (such as a parking lot) or refurbishes and reuses a vacant building.
2. The development is modest, quiet, and human-scaled. A new development that is modest in height and not a skyscraper (no more than five stories). That uses a modest parking lot behind its building. That pulls the building up to the sidewalk to provide a vibrant, walkable ambiance. That does not create noise problems for nearby properties. That does not use glaring, obnoxious signs or lights. That builds modest, narrow streets with low design speeds.
Indeed, modest building setbacks and narrow streets are the fundamental building blocks of place-making.
That is, instead of creating an oversized no-man's-land where only a car could be happy, the new development creates intimate spacing that delivers a sense of place. A sense of community. A place where people feel pleasant, sociable, safe, and proud of their towns.
3. The development uses buildings that respect the public realm, instead of turning its back on it. An entrance faces the street. Traditional building design and ornamentation is incorporated (instead of bland, boxy design). Generous sidewalk-level windows are used. The building fits into the context of the neighborhood.
Ultimately, by following the above principles, a great many of the "nogrowth" NIMBYs (Not in my back yard) can become pro-growth "YIMBYs" (Yes, in my back yard).
If a property owner finds the design rules unacceptable with our small-town streets, perhaps the property owner should consider not building in our town. We are fiercely proud of our community, and want to retain our charm. We refuse to be a doormat and let you have your way with us.
We insist on building and protecting a quality habitat for people, not a habitat for cars.
Dom Nozzi has a bachelor of arts degree in environmental science from SUNY Plattsburgh and a master’s degree in town and transportation planning from Florida State University. For 20 years, he served as a senior town and transportation planner for Gainesville Florida, and was briefly the growth rate control planner for Boulder, Colorado. Today, he maintains a consulting practice in and writes and speaks about street design, urban design, and quality of life.