BART TOD: Stoops

In my last post, I wrote of touring transit-oriented developments (TODs) along the BART system.  A friend joined me in the travel.  Our goal was to gather insights that might be useful during the upcoming review of the proposed Petaluma Station Area plan by the Petaluma City Council.  In this post, I’ll dig deeper into some of the TOD design details, specifically the approach to stoops.

A few months ago, I wrote that a longstanding assumption about mixed-use TODs was breaking down.  Urbanists had long anticipated that the ground floor of most mixed-use structures could be retail.  However, changing consumer patterns have reduced the need for retail, with the result that less retail space is needed.  For many projects, the market is demanding that much of the first story be residential.

But the relationship between sidewalks and buildings is different if the use adjoining the sidewalk is residential instead of retail.  If the space is retail, having pedestrians peak inside is desirable.  It’s called window shopping and is a precursor to commercial activity.

If the space is residential, having pedestrians peak inside is undesirable.  It’s called voyeurism and is a precursor to criminal complaints.

Instead, residential space requires a perceived separation from the public space of a sidewalk.  In his book “Pockets Neighborhoods”, Ross Chapin writes about the need to create transitions with elements such as low fences, landscape buffers, and front porches.

But TODs typically don’t have as much room for transitions as pocket neighborhoods.  Creativity is required.  In the Petaluma Station Area plan, the consultant team offers a couple of transition suggestions for first story residential space.  They suggest small enclosed gardens.  And they suggest stoops, between the back of sidewalk and the front door.  (Depending on the other site conditions, stoops can also facilitate tuck-under parking at the rear of the residences.)

But there is drawback to either solution.  They require space that could otherwise be included in the square footage of the home.  One can argue that private gardens and/or stoops offer a sense of place that creates more value than mere square footage, but developers and lenders often disagree.

In the Petaluma Station Area, the owner of the land closest to the SMART station is already suggesting that the proposed promenade approaching the station is wider than necessary and can be narrowed to create more building space.  One could expect that stoops will be the next target.

With the background in mind, my friend and I noted the transitions at the BART TODs.  We were mostly disappointed.

The photo above is of a stoop at the Pleasant Hill TOD.  To be fair, there isn’t much need for stoops at the Pleasant Hill TOD.  Much of the ground floor space is dedicated to retail or other non-residential uses.  Only a few first story homes require separation from public sidewalks.

Which is a good thing because this stoop configuration has minimal effectiveness.  All it truly accomplishes is vertical separation, which is good, but not enough.  With the minimal horizontal separation, as soon as a resident exits the interior space, he is effectively in the public realm.  Nor does the configuration allow space for plants or other decoration that might enhance the separation.

But as mediocre as the Pleasant Hill solution was, the Richmond solutions were weaker.  The photo is of the first block leading away from the BART/Amtrak station.  The architecture differs on the two sides of the plaza leading away from the station.  To the left, small entry porches offer a minimal public/private separation, although even less than the Pleasant Hill solution.

But it is to the right that there is truly no public/private separation.  The unadorned front doors are perhaps a foot from the back of the sidewalks, creating an interaction that is likely uncomfortable on both sides of the door.  Residents probably must feel that they are an unacceptable part of the street life.  And pedestrians must feel as if they are intruding on private life.

In “Walkable City”, Jeff Speck writes that humans have a genetic disposition to prefer the boundary between woodland and savannah, where they can control the risks from either habitat.  In an urban setting, the genetic preference becomes a desire to occupy comfortable, well-framed sidewalks at the edge of the public realm

The Richmond solutions, particularly on the right side, take away that safe place.  On the sidewalk, pedestrians feel that they are encroaching on the homes.  But if they move into the plaza, then they lose the safety of the boundary.  It’s a solution that takes away any comfortable places.  The result is an underused plaza.

Fruitvale, with its full retail use of the first story, largely ducks the public/private problem.  But to the small extent it remains, it has been addressed elegantly, with Spanish-inspired steps leading from the plaza to the residential stories.

There are few immediate lessons for Petaluma from these stoop observations.  The Station Area consultant has already identified good solutions, which need only be retained when the plan is adopted.

Instead, the concern could be longer term.  When a developer proposes replacing the solutions in the Station Area plan with alternatives such as at Richmond, will a future City Council stand firmly by the plan?  Or will they yield to the political expediency that any development is better than no development?  Arguing firmly in favor of the design details in the Station Area plan could be a task for urbanists over the next two decades.

Scheduling Notes

Saturday, May 4, 11am – A small group will gather in Petaluma to take Jake’s Walk.  All are welcome.  Be at the corner of B and 10th Streets at 11am to participate.

Monday, May 6, 7pm – The Petaluma City Council will take up the Petaluma Station Area Plan.  The meeting will be in the Petaluma Council Chambers at 11 English Street.

Tuesday, May 14, 5:30pm – Petaluma Urban Chat will convene at the Aqus Café to continue the discussion of “Walkable City”.  All are welcome, whether or not they’ve read the book.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Book Review: “Pocket Neighborhoods”

A friend recently suggested “Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small-Scale Community in a Large-Scale World” by Ross Chapin.  During an upcoming vacation, I’ll be near several of the projects that Chapin cites and am hopeful of convincing my travel companion to make some detours.  To prepare for the trip, I read the book.  I’m glad I did.

Chapin’s thesis, although somewhat buried by the way the book is organized, is that there are many ways to build better and stronger communities by how we organize our physical surroundings.  Chapin’s professional involvement has been as an architect, land planner, and developer.  Therefore, his primary focus is on new-built projects and on the inspirations that led him to doing his own pocket neighborhood projects.

But after mostly exhausting that topic, he continues into related topic such as co-housing (a pocket neighborhood with a common house for communal meals), community gardens, modifications to existing large lot single-family home lots to create infill neighborhoods, and removal of fences to join together the backyards of neighbors.  I could have wished for more details on most of the topics, but found every topic insightful and worthy of inclusion. 

To me, the test is whether his ideas can be applied to the North Bay.  The answer is that they can be and have been.

An early inspiration that Chapin describes is the bungalow court of Southern California, opposing rows of single family Craftsman-styled cottages facing a common court.

Sure enough, there’s a bungalow court in Petaluma, on Keller Street immediately behind Volpi’s.  It post-dates the initial bungalow court concept and reflects a trend toward economy.  The cottages have southwestern architecture and lack the Craftsman details.  Plus the individual cottages have merged into opposing rows of shared wall apartments.  But the concept remains much the same and an orange tree in the court give homage to its Southern California origins.

Similarly, another pocket neighborhood concept that Chapin describes is the Dutch “woonerf”, a narrow street detailed for pedestrian use and usable only by cars traveling at a walking pace.  Although not truly a woonerf, Coady Court in Petaluma has much of the appearance of one.  The couple of times that I drove into the street, the setting encouraged me to drop my speed to nearly a walking pace.  The absence of a cul-de-sac bulb further inhibits traffic.

With neat homes pressed close to the street, Coady Court has the appearance of a neighborhood that bonds together to celebrate holidays and to help in the daily life.  I’m sure that the City and the Fire Department would object if the residents tried to convert their street to a true woonerf, but I’d be on their side.

I don’t know anyone who lives in the bungalows or Coady Court, but I’d love to hear stories about either.  If you have information, please share.  And if anyone can point out other similar neighborhoods in the North Bay, please do so.  Summer evenings are great opportunities to tour interesting housing alternatives.

Then there is the question of whether Chapin’s ideas can be applied to future Petaluma situations, to which I offer an enthusiastic affirmative.  Without even considering new greenfield construction, I can point to several retrofit ideas that could be readily applied.

The backyards in my neighborhood adjoin in odd ways, but I’d still be willing to consider a back fence removal plan, similar to the one Chapin describes in Davis. 

A block away are a pair of unused alleys that should ripe for a neighborhood alley reclamation similar to Baltimore one presented by Chapin.

And I’m intrigued by the idea of converting the backyards of oversized but underutilized single-family lots into new pocket neighborhoods, similar to the Seattle area project described by Chapin.  I can’t point to any particular lots, but suspect there are numerous opportunities in the neighborhood along East D Street, near the future SMART station.

No book is perfect.  I can offer several criticisms of this one.  It was odd to have Ebenezer Howard described as the originator of many New Urbanism concepts.  In the standard New Urbanist dogma, Howard’s “Garden City” ideas were fatally flawed and opened the door to drivable suburbia.

As Jane Jacobs described Howard’s concepts in the “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, “His aim was the creation of self-sufficient small towns, really very nice towns if you were docile and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending your life among others who had no plans of their own.”  That doesn’t make him sound much like an originator of New Urbanism.

I don’t mind Chapin picking up and dusting off Ebenezer Howard.  Howard was a well-meaning if slightly daft English gentleman whose biggest problem was that people took his ideas and ran with them without considering the consequences.  But the speed with which Chapin moves Howard from gutter to pedestal is neck-snapping.

More significantly, Chapin’s subtitle is a more accurate description of his direction than the title itself.  Much of the book had more to do with creating communities that it did with pocket neighborhoods.  I had the sense that he’d promised his publisher a 200-page book and found himself struggling for topics after 120 pages, so began casting a bigger and bigger net.

But overall, those are quibbles.  The content was meaningful and thought-provoking.  And the inclusion of the topics beyond pocket neighborhoods felt appropriate even if slapdash.  Every few pages offered an “ah-hah” moment, although I was continually flipping back to the introduction to see if I’d misunderstood the roadmap.

“Pocket Neighborhoods” is recommended.  I’m looking forward to visiting a couple of examples.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)