Rollin Stanley on St. Louis & Urban Planning

Rollin Stanley, Executive Director of the St. Louis Planning & Urban Design Agency, joined a group of over twenty people at Grbic on Sunday for a discussion of Jane Jacobs’ classic book, Death and Life of Great American Cities. For a couple of hours we had great discussions of the book, St. Louis, sprawl, and modern design.

In October 2004 the Riverfront Times did an feature story on Stanley. Randall Roberts writes:

Rollin Stanley has bold plans for St. Louis. If he had his way, downtown’s one-way streets would be eliminated, buildings would have to retrofit their basements to include showers for bicyclists, and bike lanes would meander alongside major thoroughfares. Stanley envisions a pedestrian paradise where workers, residents and visitors can window-shop and run errands. He also wants more teeth put in Missouri’s planning and zoning laws; currently, his department isn’t required by law to examine, approve — or see — any proposed deviation from the zoning guidelines and comprehensive land-use plan.

Yesteday was my first time meeting Rollin Stanley and his wife Ann. Vary rarely am I immediately impressed with anyone – much less a city official that has to be somewhat political. The Stanley’s are a pleasant exception! While I didn’t necessarily agree 100% with what Stanley had to say it was certainly in the high 90s.

I feel better knowing Rollin Stanley is in town and making a difference. While change at City Hall will not be immediate I have much greater confidence in the long term prospects for the City of St. Louis.

Since the weather was so nice on Sunday and the location was just under two miles from my house, I decided to ride my bike. I felt really urban showing up on my bike.

In case you are curious, this is not an old bike newly painted. It is a brand new bicycle from Kronan Cycle in Sweden. Mine is a single speed with coaster brake but the 3-speed model would make life much easier. I’ve only had this bike a few months but I really enjoy the looks from people.

– Steve

The downside to on-street parking

I was awakened at 4:45AM this morning by the reminder that on-street parking has a downside – hit and run accidents. Although, in this case the suspect(s) fled on foot.

The white Ford you see was parked behind my car on my side street. A neighbor says a girl was driving the other car you see and a guy was driving a pickup in the opposite direction – he let his truck roll into a parked van. Both ran (literally) after the accident – the pickup was left running!

My first concern was my car which was thankfully unharmed. Generally my streets are pretty quite but you do get the occasional speeding driver or one that ignores the stop signs. Last week another neighbors car was hit slightly in the middle of the day when a couple of drivers ignored the stop signs.

Makes me think of Seattle where such intersections wouldn’t have stop signs at all but roundabouts in the middle of them – forcing drivers to slow. St. Louis is trying a few such roundabouts here but I’m not sure if we can give up our stop signs. Just think of the economy – the clutch alone would last much longer if we didn’t have all these stop signs. Plus, we might actually lower our exhaust emissions by not having so much stopping and starting (for those of us that actually stop at stop signs).

UPDATE 7:45am:

Three hours later the city towing service arrives to begin pulling the cars off my tree lawn. The operator says we had lots of accidents last night…

The pickup was allowed to roll into the parked van, it was still running when the suspects fled. Police are still investigating and writing up their report.

Roundabouts USA website

– Steve

Hey, get the lead out!

Childhood lead poisoning is a serious issue in St. Louis – one the city is not taking lightly. Check out the brief Lead Safe St. Louis website and you’ll find a link to Lead St. Louis Action Plan from November 2003.

The Action Plan (in PDF format) aims at eradicating childhood lead poisoning by 2010. Unlike many other city documents, this plan has clear goals, strategies and timeframes. Kudos!

The staff of Lead Safe St. Louis has the task of bringing together several city agencies that all deal with the issue of lead. Let’s hope they meet their goals!

– Steve

Wired Magazine: Roads Gone Wild

In the US, traffic engineers are beginning to rethink the dictum that the car is king and pedestrians are well advised to get the hell off the road. In West Palm Beach, Florida, planners have redesigned several major streets, removing traffic signals and turn lanes, narrowing the roadbed, and bringing people and cars into much closer contact. The result: slower traffic, fewer accidents, shorter trip times. “I think the future of transportation in our cities is slowing down the roads,” says Ian Lockwood, the transportation manager for West Palm Beach during the project and now a transportation and design consultant. “When you try to speed things up, the system tends to fail, and then you’re stuck with a design that moves traffic inefficiently and is hostile to pedestrians and human exchange.”

Full Story

It takes five houses to create a village?

Dogtown Village is a series of five infill houses in the Dogtown Neighborhood of St. Louis which is formally unknown as Franz Park. Gee, I thought a Village was bigger but then again I don’t name developments for a living.

?

The city website doesn’t date their entry but these are only a year or two old. As you might guess from past posts, I have no issue with added density – it is much needed. I also don’t have any issue with raising prices in the neighborhood – as long as we don’t eliminate affordable housing. But, I have major issues with walking down the sidewalk and looking at driveways and garage doors. If I wanted to see that I’d move to the suburbs. Yes, these examples are more urban than a wide ranch house with front garage but I have higher expectations.

The Lustron House above, located at Forest & Glades, will be razed for four homes like the ones shown above if the developer, Western Continental LLC, gets their way. This house is in a Preservation Review District so the Cultural Resources Office & Preservation Board would have to approve of the demolition before a permit could be issued. While I love the Lustron houses I know they are certainly not the most urban of structures. But, I don’t think four garage doors facing the street is an improvement. I say let the metal house stay! [note: this parcel does not have a public alley]

The same developer, Western Continental LLC, wants to build three of the same type house on this site at Reber & Sublette in the Southwest Garden Neighborhood. The white alley building the rear of the property would be razed. The three proposed houses would face the long side of the parcel – Sublette. This does several things – snubs the houses facing Reber and introduces more garage doors to the public view.

Part of the idea of having alleys is to get garage doors off the street. Why we’d want to suburbanize our city is beyond me. But, in this case it gets worse. The developer is asking the city to vacate 5ft of the Reber right of way and 9ft of the Sublette right of way. The impact on Reber will not be significant but on Sublette it will be a disaster. To sandwich these houses onto this site the developer wants to move the public sidewalk to the curb – eliminating the tree lawn. Front garage doors, three wide driveways and no tree lawn. Yikes! Can’t we do better than this?

Don’t get excited, the above is not from St. Louis. This is Chicago where urban friendly infill is commonplace. Including basement, this new condo building has five floors and I believe 2-3 units. A garage is in back off the alley. Note the existing house in the left of the picture for a sense of scale.

Above is another Chicago infill project containing two units. As with most of these, space is so tight they finish the basement as living space. The important thing is these buildings add to the public life on the street – not take away from it like garage door projects do.

Much like our classic two-family flats, this two-unit Chicago condo building works well in an urban context.

As a general rule of thumb, if a property has an alley I don’t think the street facades should be allowed to have a garage door.

– Steve