does single stair make biking more possible? maybe. is it a coincidence that many cities with the highest uptake in bicycling also have courtyards where bikes can be stored with level access to the street/bike path? - ThreadSky

holz-bau.bsky.social • 6 days ago

does single stair make biking more possible?

maybe.

is it a coincidence that
many cities with the highest uptake in bicycling also have courtyards where bikes can be stored with level access to the street/bike path?

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annemariedooley.bsky.social•5 days ago

Bike parking is not the only thing I see here. The mental health benefits from a lovely community building courtyard like this are underestimated. I wonder if planners ever think about that.

ieatpie.bsky.social•6 days ago

Maybe a product of the same flat landscapes leading to both things?
Though not sure they're too related. Not many courtyard buildings in the Netherlands.

anik1968.bsky.social•6 days ago

And in Ontario Canada we have our Premier Doug Ford eliminating bike lanes. He is such an idiot.

holz-bau.bsky.social•6 days ago

berlin - closed building form. most of these courtyards are only accessible from a building with a handful of units. eyes on the street and courtyard thanks to zero side yard setbacks

holz-bau.bsky.social•6 days ago

seattle: open building form w/ alley - diaphanous. most buildings oriented perpendicular to street, units look into neighboring lots. less security, fewer eyes on street.

holz-bau.bsky.social•6 days ago

revisiting geoff manaugh's 'how to be a better burglar' with this thread...

one way to think about this is that seattle's land use actually makes theft *easier*

https://www.salon.com/2016/06/04/how_to_be_a_better_burglar_creeping_around_in_buildings_with_geoff_manaugh_and_jeff_vandermeer/

lennonsmith.bsky.social•6 days ago

Just curious on how a change could be implemented to encourage developments with courtyards instead of alleyways? It feels like alleyways are sort of already the status quo in much of North America.

abolish-this.bsky.social•6 days ago

One factor in this I can think of is block size/shape - places in NA where alleyways are popular tend to have "long-short" rectangular blocks. European cities tend to have less oblong block shapes. NA cities with regular-shaped urban blocks tend to get 1 double-loaded high rise or low-density zoning

abolish-this.bsky.social•6 days ago

Of course, counterexamples are going to exist because reality is messy and both Europe and NA are big & diverse 😂

abolish-this.bsky.social•5 days ago

Oh! Also, maybe more important, a lot of building codes forbid certain row structures due to code additions put in when a bunch of cities were burning down in huge fires from really bad *water systems*. The idea was to stop the fires with a gap, which notably does not really work at this scale.

abolish-this.bsky.social•5 days ago

The reason we see these building code additions in NA but not Europe are twofold:
1. American cities with 19th century population explosions like Boston infamously had construction outpace water infrastructure.
2. Many NA code bits were put in to make apartments difficult to build for racial reasons

lennonsmith.bsky.social•5 days ago

I think something else might be the way that blocks are divided into parcels; it's not as common to have a developer build an entire block, especially in denser areas. They probably take as much room up as they can to maximize the amount of units and floor space they can have, instead of courtyards.

abolish-this.bsky.social•5 days ago

These enclosed row blocks are also divided into parcels, but instead of having maximum lot usage rules, they have mandatory specific lot usage rules (among many other things) to maintain the inner-block. Nowadays indeed a single dev mostly makes them, but that's also the case with new blocks in NA.

derekmyoung.bsky.social•6 days ago

I'm moving into an new apartment (the design would drive you insane) but bike parking was a big sell and it looks like it’s very well utilized.

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