At 11:28 AM 08/28/2003 -0500, Michael D. Barrett wrote: >There was a recent update on the Inclusionary Zoning ordinance being >worked on right now by various committees. I generally support the >measure, but one glaring omission continues to irk me: No discussion >of rents being jacked up to pay for car space.
Mike makes an excellent point, to which I would add the following comments: "Besides the density bonus there is talk about skinnier streets, expedited review process for the proposals, developers developing their own parks, no sidewalks on one side of the street, etc." shows a recognition that excessively wide streets cost excessive amounts of money. But it's ridiculous that sidewalks on one side of the street are proposed to be eliminated when excessive parking for each bedroom/unit is not. Besides the fact that people that need affordable housing are also less likely to be able to afford to own and operate a car, sidewalks are the cheapest long term transporation investment you can make. The ones in front of my house are 75 years old, get used every day by AT LEAST as many pedestrians as the number of cars that use the streets in front of my house, and the sidewalks have needed no maintenance in 3/4 of a century (and if/when they do, it'll be me, not the city, that pays for it). the lifespan of asphalt streets vary, but I doubt if any has ever lasted even a third as long before it needed reconstruction (not merely resurfacing, which must typically gets done even more frequently). What makes housing affordable is not just the cost of construction, but also how much of a household's income can be spent on housing (vs transportation, e.g.). And sidewalks (in compact, mixed land use neighborhoods) are one of the things that make NOT owning (or at least using) a car more feasible. How much money can you really save by not using a car, even if you already own one? Well, my wife spent $110 on parking at UW last year, when most of her colleagues spent between $500-$900 for the year. How did she do it? well, she didn't drive her car every day. In fact she hardly drove it to work at all, and had an incentive not to: she had to pay for parking by the hour, not the year. this meant a substantial savings to us over the course of this year and last year (that we have put back into our house). To this rant about sidewalks, I'd add that sidewalks have to GO somewhere, which is why I'm always amazed and disgusted every time I see a proposal for a development in the city with no connections to anything outside of it other than the one collector/arterial street built for cars and not people that's invariably included. _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
