Walkability/accessibility in auto-centric suburbia
I was in Chicago last weekend. Saturday night we stayed at the new ALoft in Bolingbrook (map), near Ikea.
The location is highly auto-centric) but walkability/accessibility was given some minimal attention. From our room I could see the sidewalk along the public road as well as the private sidewalk to the hotel. The above is the minimal I’d accept, not the goal. All the buildings in the area are so far apart that no amount of perfectly green grass or upscale landscaping will make it a good walking environment. These sidewalks are decoration, a feel-good measures to imply walkability. Don’t get me wrong, it is better to have them than not, but hopefully we will cease building such environments completely.
To create walkable areas we must:
- Reduce the amount of auto parking in private lots.
- Reduce the distance between buildings.
- Reduce the distance from the public sidewalk and the building entrance.
- Allow on-street parking.
With every business having a huge parking lot the distances become to great to walk. But if parking were scaled back they can be closer to each other and walking becomes a viable option. The total parking in this area far exceeds the total number of cars at any given time. By significantly limiting private off-street parking but permitting on-street parking you introduce affordable shared parking. Shared parking is often thought of as a parking lot or garage structure but taking all the cars and spreading them out in a linear fashion along roads reduces the impacts from massive parking lots that spread our destinations apart to the point we must drive to reach them.
- Steve Patterson
