Starving Steve

Originally Posted by Starving Steve

In car-friendly Scottsdale, Arizona, the parking lots are behind the stores, and the stores front very fast-moving traffic along arterials running perpendicular to each other, and bounding (one mile) X (one mile) squares of the city. There are entrances to the parking lots behind the stores from the arterials, but the entrances do not block the traffic along the arterials, and the traffic flows at 45 mph to 50 mph ( 70 to 80 kph ). Stop lights are no closer than one-mile apart. There is no truck traffic, and bus traffic is very limited......... The traffic moves unhampered by ridiculous speed-traps and four-way stops.

Behind the parking lots are residential areas, mostly single-family homes on large lots and on wide tree-lined streets, but also low-rise condominiums near to the stores. Access to stores (of all types) in the bounded squares ( 1 mile X 1 mile ) can be by driving, walking, biking, senior citizen motorized-scooter, or by the recently invented segways. ( Yes, Scottsdale has segways ! ) The maximum distance between shopping strips and a home is one-half mile.

Everything is low-rise, mostly one-story. Even condos and apartments are low-rise. The parking lots do not have parking garages. Everything is user-friendly and car-friendly and mostly one-story and with unified (co-ordinated) architecture. There are no delays; no parking rules; no parking games; no parking signs; no parking-meters; no meter-maids; no parking fees; no stop-lights and no traffic jams at least within the 1 X 1 squares.

Signage is minimal: the name of the shopping strip on one sign, maybe 15 or 20 feet tall, and then the names of businesses and stores in gold letters ( all co-ordinated ) above each store entrance...... Nice, nice, nice!

Scottsdale's parking lots are mostly black asphalt-paved, which I think is a mistake. White porous pavement would work best, especially in a hot desert climate. Maybe white compressed gravel would be ideal in Scottsdale.

Finally, Scottsdale's downtown was small and with very few tall buildings. It was in the downtown where I observed gatherings of people in the parking lots behind the stores: i.e, art fairs, flea markets, lunch gatherings, picnics, meetings, demonstrations, performances, etc. And the downtown appeared to be in a 1 x 1 square, too..... Seniors traveled, even in the downtown, on their segways, bikes, motorized-chair scooters, or by walking. And in the downtown, traffic lights were far apart, like one-mile apart, so traffic flowed. There were buses and horse-carts, but even in the downtown, there were not many public-transit vehicles..... Truck-traffic was noticeably absent. Perhaps trucks deliver in Scottsdale at night or in the early morning?

The bottomline is that cars and people, shopping centres and businesses can co-exist together, if the density of the city is kept low.....The "Scottsdale Revolution" in city planning--- and it is a revolution in city planning--- is that the city needs to expand outward, and the open-space of the countryside needs to be brought into the city.

And yes, solar buffs could place solar panels into the parking lots behind buildings, especially in the desert climate of Scottsdale.

Four more points:

First, the desert washes which go through Scottsdale have a large area of open space along-side them in order to absorb flash-flooding from thunderstorms. This open-space adds to the beauty of the city.... Compare this approach to flooding to that of Los Angeles where the Los Angeles River is cemented into a channel, with gang-writing (tagging) along its cement walls, and with garbage and shopping carts tossed or dumped into the cemented ravine.

Scottsdale has very wide medians in the middle of its arterials, not only for traffic safety, but for a display of desert vegetation, including giant seguaro cactuses with arms that stick outward from their trunks. Very lovely!

Third, street lighting is minimal. There is no "light-the-night" in Scottsdale. Also, electric lines wherever possible are buried. For the most part, utility poles do not line the streets, and electric wires and telephone lines do not hang over stores and houses.

Fourth, as urban density is kept low, land values are kept low. This makes for low and affordable house prices and low and affordable rents--- both for commercial and for residential rents. Low-density cities are livable cities.

Students in urban geography and urban planning: Just hand a copy of this to your professors and walk-out. Don't even dignify their lectures about high-density planning by listening to such dribble.