Walkability: Zoning for Delight?
Scott | August 15, 2011We talk a lot about walkability here on DM and that’s a good thing. But one thing I’ve noticed is that we tend to focus predominantly on the mechanics — is it physically possible and reasonably safe to walk from one place to another?
Don’t get me wrong. The proper infrastructure — sidewalks, crosswalks, signalization — is important, but it’s a mistake to think it’s enough to compel meaningful changes in people’s lifestyles. That’s the kind of thinking that leads one to suggest that DeKalb Industrial Blvd. has, now that they’ve laid sidewalks, become some sort of pedestrian paradise.
It hasn’t.
What it has become is a marginally safer environment for pedestrians without choices. And that’s not the same thing. Because what really defines walkability is its ability to compete as a viable mode of transportation.
When people are looking to get somewhere, they typically weigh their choices. And let’s face it: Cars compete pretty well. They’re quick. They’re comfortable. They feel safe. You can cart stuff around.
But, especially in an urbanized area like Decatur, they can have drawbacks too. Parking may be tough to find or you may need to pay for it. You’re physically isolated along the way. Traffic might waste your time, increase your stress level, or both. Gas, maintenance and insurance tend to add up.
Go toe to toe in that type of environment and walking’s got a fighting chance. Healthier, cheaper, more social and, perhaps, more convenient. Not too shabby and yet, still, not always enough.
That’s because there’s something else people factor — often subconsciously — when considering the choice of walking: Delight. That is, what’s experienced along the way. Is it pleasant? Varied? Visually engaging?
Humans, as a species, are easily bored. The prospect of delight is no small thing.
I think about this intangible quality a lot, especially when out for walks with Mrs. Growth & Development, and one thing I’ve come to notice is just how much delight can be found in things no longer allowable under our current zoning.
When considering variety in the built environment, people often think in terms of architecture. But another important factor is how buildings relate to their lot and to their surroundings. For better or worse, the regulating parameters of our neighborhood zoning tend to homogenize residential orientation. The upside of this is that it prevents someone from doing something really damaging. But on the down side, it also prevents them from doing something really interesting.
Take this small collection of (if they were built today) rule-breakers:
0’ Sideyard Setback. Above is one of my favorites as, for those walking by on the sidestreet, it offers an almost Charleston-like sense of intimacy, and also serves to neck down the entrance to the street, which makes for a nice visual gateway.
0’ Front Setback (Grand). Ah, the Castle House. A true neighborhood gem, but a model of variety that can’t be legally repeated.
0’ Front Setback (Humble). Here’s another good one from a modest little street just around the corner from the Castle House. Tucked right up against the sidewalk, this house is not only adorable, it’s also steeped in irony. That’s because, as built, it defies our zoning while, right next door, a new infill house that fully complied with city code raised all manner of surrounding objections.
Get that? No one ever muttered a word of complaint against the “illegal” house but the legal house got some folks riled up. That’s because one was built in consideration of context while the other was built in consideration of formulas. Which do you think contributes to a more fulfilling environment?
The point of this post is not to suggest that these examples, or others like them, are somehow better than what’s currently allowed. The point is that they’re different in ways that don’t hurt anyone or anything. Instead, they provide unexpected instances of variety and visual interest to otherwise more regimented surroundings and add a lot of value in the process. Not just arbitrary value, I’d argue, but value that contributes to the City’s strategic goals — most notably, walkability.
I gotta say, last week’s discussion of cottages was among the most substantive and considered I’ve ever witnessed in cyberspace, and I thank you all for that. As our Zoning Task Force moves forward, I believe this is another issue that should be on the table.
Up for another go? What delights have you experienced — especially those related to the things we build — in your walks around Decatur? And would they be encouraged or discouraged by our current rules?
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More grass and trees make for greater walk-ability. I walk down Clairemont frequently and always hate the section between Williams and Commerce on the East side of Clairemont. It is all concrete and asphalt. Even the Goodyear just north of Williams is more pleasant, it has grass.
Nice post. This idea of walking and delight reminds me of a piece in the New York Times a while back, “Maggie Nesciur: The Walker.” In the piece Nesciur talks about how a walk in the PA countryside quickly bored her, but that she doesn’t get bord walking for miles in the city. Here’s a link to it: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/1-in-8-million/index.html#/maggie_nesciur
That so much reminds me of living in New York in my 20s, walking endlessly without ever thinking of the distance. All I need now is an old Suzanne Vega CD to bring back the memories…
Things that increase my delight quotient around here would include expressions of individuality – unmanicured wildflowers, bird feeders, pets in windows, older styles of architecture, and oddball yard art that’s rough-hewn almost to the point of unacceptability.
Groove is in the hea-a-a-art
Groove is in the hea-a-a-art
Groove is in the hea-a-a-art
Groove is in the hea-a-a-art
I was sure you were going for Dire Straits.
The speed of auto traffic has a lot to do with whether a street is walkable, but there have to be ways to get around or through a place.
Scott Blvd. has nice sidewalks and trees. Not delightful. So does College Ave. Also not delightful. Ponce de Leon, on the other hand, has become quite delightful west of Adair, because the cars on it were forced to slow down by lining the road as one-lane both ways.
That’s the real battle. If you don’t believe me walk down East Lake from the MARTA station south some day. Then come back on Third Avenue. Both roads are one-lane each way, both have sidewalks on both sides. But one has cars rushing down at 45 mph or faster, while the other has fewer cars going at around 15.
Great point, Dana, and I don’t disagree at all. Speed is a huge deal in the perceived “delight” of any street. In this post, though, I’m trying to get at things that fall under the proposed overhaul of our zoning. For better or worse, I believe streets are outside the scope of the Task Force’s charge.
So why were front setbacks originally implemented? I can guess the side setback reasoning…
When hoofing into town alone, I’m often torn between putting on my headphones or not.
The act of sonically isolating myself allows for less ‘delight’ although Ive never thought of it in that term. On the other hand, walking with a good tune can make the trip go by much more quickly.
I add my vote to those who say that cars speeding by equals a good walk spoiled. You can have all the grass, trees, flowers, interesting architecture, funky design, etc., but it won’t matter much if you’ve got cars going past you at 35mph+.
Sing it! 25mph speed limits for every street!
Where is this castle house?
in oakhurst…on fayetteville rd.
Interesting post Scott. I wrote a paper in college over 30 years ago, while living in Europe called, you guessed it, “Delight” about the pedestrian experiences in older European cities. Very similar to many of the points you are making. Regarding your point about the existing zoning ordinance preventing delightful and fulfilling experiences, I would point out that Decatur’s existing residential districts have been 99% developed since the 1950s. The purpose of the zoning district regulations is stated in the first paragraph of each district regulation, “The district is located to protect existing developments of this character.” I purchased my home because I liked the character of the neighborhood that the City promised to protect through the zoning ordinance. I would oppose and fight any change to the zoning that would allow a change of the character of the neighborhood. However, I would like to see new developments of the type you describe on a large scale but not on a lot by lot basis. Unfortunately Decatur is mostly developed and doesn’t have many opportunities for large scale development.
That’s a good point, Mises. I agree in preserving character but allow me to suggest an alternate take.
As you said, Decatur’s neighborhoods have essentially been built out for a long time. Within them, we’re no longer in the era of development. We’re now in the era of redevelopment, and I’d suggest that, when it’s about tearing down a home that was in many cases built with much sensitivity to surrounding context and replacing it with one where a developer simply tries to minimize hassles by adhering to the formulaic requirements of our current ordinance, that’s not doing a very good job of protecting the existing character you describe. In many of our neighborhoods, it’s essentially a license to undo the character.
Thus, I would be in favor of zoning modifications that allowed greater leeway and flexibility to respond to surrounding context, instead of just meeting numbers. Developers “follow the code” because it is the path of least resistance. If they were able to respond to the nuances of the lot or the neighbors without additional hurdles such as variances, they would be more inclined to be creative and context-sensitive. Or, barring that, the opportunity to be creative would, at the very least, draw a better class of builder to start buying up old homes.
PS: I want a copy of that paper!
So you’re suggesting that the zoning could take into account the setback of houses adjacent in order to determine how close to the street a structure could be built? Sorry, I’m looking for a specific example of an ordinance modification…
Sorry to be a stick in the mud, but I’m not getting how this relates to walkability in any meaningful way.
Front porch sitting & waving!
One of my favorite houses on Sycamore Dr. is close to the street. (Well, a lot of them are, but this one’s especially wonderful with its wide welcoming porch.) My neighbors don’t even have to leave their front porch to have a hoppin’ social life! Just about every neighbor has probably pulled up a chair at some point!
(What do y’all think of our idea to sit there & use super soakers to take aim at the cars rolling the stop sign? Or we could rig a pail of water…)
I love front porches-and people on them-as well. Front porches could be an example of an allowable exception to the set back rule, either for only rehabs and/or new/replacement homes. ie i the average setback of neighboring homes is 15′, then a porch (of no greater than “X” depth) can be closer to the sidewalk/right of way. It would be great to see a bunch of new porch additions popping up all over town.
My neighbor’s older (childhood!) house line ups with the next door houses,and the porch juts out. Maybe our zoning does allow it… let’s make sure it does! Front porches with their hospitality and visual interest- design, decor, hanging baskets- certainly add to the delight of a walk!
Well, that’s for the Task Force to determine, based on what’s important to people. I’m just trying to explore the issue. But here’s an example, since you asked. Two of the pictured homes are corner lots and zoning could easily be revised to make a distinction between corner lots and those at mid block. Corner lots could have parametric setback standards instead of a rigid minimum. For example, you could regulate a corner side setback as needing to be between 0′ and 15′, rather than setting a 10′ minimum. So long as the mass of the house is still being regulated, this provides flexibility in design and placement, which adds variety to the street.
The other photo is on a skinny side street, so zoning could also be amended to allow shorter setbacks based on street width. If our streets vary in character, it seems logical that their accompanying frontage regs could vary also.
As I mentioned above, many of our neighborhoods are in the era of redevelopment. Some folks — including vocal ones who comment here on DM — seem to be growing fatigued with infill homes tending to always be that same old foursquare, because it’s the easiest one to conform to the regs. I like variety in my surroundings and there are aspects of our zoning that produce sameness. Sameness is the opposite of character, which means that, currently, our neighborhoods are destined to become less varied over time. Maybe in ways not everyone, such as brianc, appreciates when thinking about going for a walk. But some of us do.
The real problem is building out of scale. I understand that the builder wants to maximize lot usage but that usually leads to a very big house not at all in keeping with the tone of the surrounding homes. Relaxing the setbacks without some other kind of size rule would just lead to huge houses very close to the street.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, it’s that we seem to be talking about two different things here: walking as an alternative to driving vs. walking for leisure. Most of my walking relates to the former, and it mainly consists of going from lower Ponce to the MARTA station and other destinations in that area. My main concerns are sidewalks, signals, and retail opportunities along the way.
If I am walking for leisure, I might stroll through the Great Lakes neighborhood, which I do find delightful, partly because of the variety of homes, but mostly, as Parker Cross mentioned, because of the shade trees. I don’t dispute that zoning can play a small role in making a walk more enjoyable, but in my opinion, preserving Decatur’s tree canopy is a more important factor in the delight component of walkability, along with reducing the speeds that cars can travel on the streets.
DM, that exact condition is already in the current zoning. Generally, a house cannot be built any closer to the street than the average set back of adjacent houses. (Section 10.6)
I thought so. But is there also a minimum?
That is the minimum setback.
So I guess my question is: how does the minimum setback “…protect existing developments of this character” if there’s already another condition that limits setback based on adjacent structures?
The adjacency rule, I believe, was written in for instances where what’s already built does not conform to what’s required for R60 and it makes more sense to follow what’s already on the ground. Because it regulates how close you can get to the street (no closer than the average of your two adjacent neighbors), it maintains character in the street direction. However, it is not a “build-at” line. It simply sets a lot-specific minimum setback, so you’re still free to build *further back* than your two neighbors. Which means it really only maintains existing character in one direction (towards the street).
Corrections please, if I got this wrong.
What issue should be on the table? What was learned from the discussion of cottages?
My Delight-o-Meter (patent pending) will be widely available for license in Q4. This innovative technology is already under private license for use in DelightScore (TM) – a partnership that will leverage 3rd party virtual environments for real-time scoring.
You sure are in an inventing mood these days! What’s Bubba been up to? :0)
Trees. I walk around Decatur a lot, particularly during the hot months. What is delightful? Walking in the shade.
+1 I walk in shade. I wilt in open sun.
And nice gardens. I enjoy seeing lovely flowers blooming or interesting foliage. I also like seeing people out on their porches. This really is a small town, y’all.
I had a good walk with the kids yesterday on our way to Raging Burrito and back. We went through a block with 2 new infill houses going up. We walked through the Agnes Scott campus.. We walked past Color Wheel and the Little Schoolhouse daycare, with little ones coming and going. We walked past the old El Tesoro house that has renovation ongoing for a seafood joint. We walked past some cool utility work going on at the corner in front of Twains – the kids checked out the deep hole, the cherry picker and other machinery. And then we walked by the big mural next to Raging Burrito, pointing out the little mice painted at the feet of the Ramones.
From a kids perspective, that was a “delightful” walk. It wasn’t bad for me either.
One thing that made it nicer than usual – cooler, drier weather. Let’s be honest, walking is not delightful for a couple months of summer, and the same for winter.
More pedestrian/bike rail crossings would be nice. And trees. Have you ever tried crossing the tracks at Adair/Atlanta in the hot afternoon sun with a baby jogger (baby included), pizza from Avellino’s and growler from Ale Yeah? Let me tell you, it is NOT easy!
There was a piece yesterday in the NYT about places that are walking death traps and Atlanta got a shout out. (Specifically the idiotic prosecutor who charged the mother with the accidental death of her child, who a hit and run driver ran over)
Back on topic…
As far as zoning influencing/promoting walkablity & slowing things down, it’s an interesting and forward thinking idea worth examining, which means it will be immediately rejected!
People just aren’t there yet.
There were a segment of people that were p’ed off and freaked out about the roundabout, of course none would admit after the fact all is swell with it.
Mainly the rules need to be reexamined because they don’t make a lot of sense, as discussed last week. A house built on a small lot is going to sit close to the street.
Small lot=small house=less occupants=tax positive. An obvious win, why discourage this?
For me, having walking paths that diverge from the street grid add significantly to ‘delight.’ The pedestrian block of Sycamore next to the MARTA shows us how this can benefit commercial space, but paths that cut through neighborhoods are great, too, like the bit of PATH just south of Agnes Scott. Boulder, CO is a smallish town that does this well. I mean, imagine if Ponce between Church and West Commerce were a pedestrian zone during the day, or even just on weekends, or if there were a road-less path from Oakhurst to Downtown Decatur.
By the way, this is a very important reframing of a stale debate, since the aesthetic quality of public – and private- space is a severely undervalued quality in American life. It is worth a lot to have a beautiful and varied built environment (though it is difficult to quantify, property values give a hint). People tend to think solely in dollar signs, but economists tell us that we should measure money against many other forms of “utility”- that is, delight. How much does a daily walk in a beautiful place “cost?” Probably much more than we think.
Or more appropriately: it costs us so much to walk in boring or ugly places, and accordingly it would cost far less to our community to make it delightful. But the cost of ugly walks is not measured in dollars, and some of the cost of fixing it is in dollars, so it seems not be be worth it…
Another thing…LACK OF TRASH. My perception of a neighborhood’s quality is inversely proportional to the amount of trash on the street. More trash-trashier neighborhood. I habitually pick up trash as I’m walking around, too. Sometimes I recycle trash.
I don’t quite understand why people with losing Lottery tickets don’t dispose of them in trash cans, and why those who drink certain brands of cheap booze and malt liquor will frequently hide their trash among leaves instead of throwing bottles or cans into a trash can.
I pick up that trash because this is my community, and I feel responsible for keeping it clean. But I wonder why they don’t?
(Token Republican, this is your cue to make a comment about the culture of dependency or something.)
By your lottery tickets and cheap booze and malt liquor comment, I’m assuming that the “they” you are referring to here are poor people of a certain minority group. [edited: no personal attacks]
Let me assure you … they are not the only ones who litter.
You’re absolutely right; they aren’t.
And I bought a lottery ticket today.
Diane- I’d love for there to be public trash bins along the longer corridors. Making it handy for folks to toss their trash would greatly improve the odds of them doing it properly. Threatening to sic you on them could work too! :0)
[Odd remark to make to Decatur's Token Republican. Can't say as I recall seeing him just randomly throw in a comment like that. ]
+1 on more trash bins. I’d like to see more street mailboxes but I’m sure that won’t happen given the Post Offices’s financial situation. It just always seems so silly, when one has missed the daily mail delivery but needs to get a postmark that day, to drive over to the Post Office.
Eyes rolling.
Considering the behavior you’re describing that generates the trash is, generally speaking, irresponsible, I’m not sure why you’d expect those engaging in it to feel responsible for the cleanliness of the community.
To the suggestion of super soakers or rigging a pail of water for those who roll through the stop sign…
I have been tempted to have a bucket of rubber kick balls in my yard to throw out just before the cars going 60 pmh down Superior Ave (“cutting through” the hood no less and trying to make the long light before it turns red), just to scare the crap out of them…maybe next time they’ll remember, slow down and know at any point, it could have been a kiddo.
parento- Just make sure there aren’t any pedestrians or pets nearby! :0) (And also report ‘em. The Decatur Police Dept. will add the complaint to roll call and follow up with a spot check of the area within the week. Love ‘em for it!)
* To all the inconsiderate drivers roarin’ & rollin’ on Superior Ave. & Sycamore Dr.:
WATCH OUT!!! Coz maybe we will or maybe we won’t…. ya just never know! :0)
I typically walk to work down Church Street, and it is not a terrible walk but it is not entirely pleasant either. There is a fair bit of trash (even though it is a nice and rather expensive neighborhood) and there is little shade. I have to admit that when I let myself drive the 1 mile to work (ridiculous I know) it is so nice and cool in my air conditioned car but it expensive because I end up paying to park
And I feel like a bit of a jerk knowing I should have walked.
I really wish I had the option of biking b/c it would be faster, but I feel like I am risking my life on Church Street and am not brave enough to do it. I feel like unless you are in race shape you are risking life and limb to ride a bike on Church.
I would love to see all non-car options improved and would love to have some more pleasant choices.
If you could hop over to Glendale, you may feel safer. But it ends on East Ponce further from Downtown than Church Street. Another route to consider is heading into the park by the pool, then cutting through the cemetery.
“I feel like unless you are in race shape you are risking life and limb to ride a bike on Church.”
Ever considered a scooter? I assume you would not have to pay for parking and the speed issue wouldn’t be a factor on Church St.