Here is an interesting story about a railyard development in Atlanta that has many of the same markers floating around the development of the railyard in Sacramento, and in Atlanta, one element that doesn’t seem to fit the typical urbanism template is how conducive the development is to the car driving public; almost suburban in that sense—like the wonderful free parking—long a suburban right of nature.
Here is an excerpt.
“Atlantic Station is a new development near the core of Atlanta being built on disused railroad tracks. It combines residential, housing and retail uses and, among proponents of the New Urbanist movement and is often held up as a model for developments to come.
“Atlantic Station is traditionally urban but is surprisingly suburban. On the surface, Atlantic Station appears to fit many of the New Urbanist design criteria. The buildings start at the sidewalk (pavement) line, rather than being behind parking lots. There are no indoor shopping malls. Instead the stores are directly on the streets, reminiscent of old downtowns or the first shopping centers, like Country Club in Kansas City.
“Some of the normally superficial New Urbanism, however, is even more ephemeral in Atlantic Station. For one thing, prime New Urbanist lynchpins --- anti-automobile design, pedestrian orientation, transit orientation, paid parking, banning of big box stores --- do not apply there.
“Throughout the development there are entrances at the sidewalk level that look like New York subway entrances. As in New York, they go down. But they don’t go down to a subway --- that’s well beyond walking distance, across one of the nation’s widest freeways in Midtown. Instead, the stairs --- at least 16 such entrances --- lead down to a three-story parking lot that appears to be under the entire development. Houston could not have done it bigger or better.
“The architects did not design Atlantic Station from the ground up --- they designed it with three levels of parking under the stores, residences and streets. Thus, this “pedestrian oriented development” sits on a foundation of automobile orientation. And don’t think that the parking lots are only below the surface. Virtually all of the tall office and residential towers have a number of floors above the parking lot platform, though to the credit of the architects, they are not obvious.
“Another rather suburban feature is free parking. A staple of current urban planning is that parking should not be free. The opponents of free parking believe that if only free parking were outlawed, people would flock to inner cities and transit. And to be sure, the little street parking provided in Atlantic Station is metered, which means people must pay. But on all of the parking meters there are signs to the effect that two hours of free parking are offered in the underground lots.”
