16 November 04

Mixed Living

When we were in Madrid last December, we stayed with a friend just down the hill from where I grew up. When I was growing up, though, the area was fields of thistles, parched in summer and a good place for madrileos to dump their old mattresses and whatnot. Now there are high rises.

In the manner typical of European planning, this new tiny barrio has plenty of shops at the foot of the apartment blocks: pastry shops, light fixture specialists, and of course the fabulous papelera where I bought my Stypen-Up are all downstairs. There are two buses that run along the street, and two different metro lines are both within walking distance.

This is so normal there that it arouses no comment. Here, when they opened the Davis Lofts, a small mixed-use complex in downtown Davis, it was hailed as a breakthrough in planning and design. Yet if we are to make cities livable in the 21st century, this is going to have to become the norm.

This is for the Ecotone Wiki’s New Urban Place.

Posted by at 08:16 PM in Nature and Place | Link |

  1. Indeed. They may even have to build less than 1 parking space per unit :)



    — Jarrett    16. November 2004, 20:29    Link
  2. In the older towns and cities here in New England, they did that, probably because so much was built before cars. In the old apartment building I lived in Arlington, MA, I could walk next door to the pharmacy, buy groceries at the corner market, pick up the bus across the street, etc. It’s like that in many places in New York, too, no? Speaking of New York, there was an interesting article in The New Yorker a month or so ago on how much less wasteful it was to live in a big city like New York than out in the suburbs – for the amount of gasoline consumed to drive everywhere when you need something, energy to heat and cool a standalone house, etc.

    — leslee    17. November 2004, 08:08    Link

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