How realistic is it to expect the idea of parking at the edges of the city to persist? Given its location, I would assume that a lot of its residents would be commuting at least a couple of times a week to Sacramento or the Bay Area. If people are making those long commutes, won’t they want their cars to be as close as possible in order to reduce their time spent commuting?
With that bike network, you’d probably be 5 minutes from a perimeter car park. It could shake out, but I think theres a market for this. Spend a week in Europe, and it becomes obvious.
Genuinely curious, do people in Europe regularly commute by car an hour away from their homes? I thought that most larger metros in Europe have extensive intracity rail/subway systems that they use for commuting.
Probably both. Europe has a lot of suburban development now, too, but much better rail links and much higher gas prices. Supercommuters are a much more American thing.
Quite possible - but it’s also worth looking at real renderings. If you’ve got a one story grand entrance, and a second story right above that, and then a bit of a setback with a rooftop garden, and then six stories of a somewhat smaller tower, it might actually give a fine human scale.
I just looked more closely at the renderings and saw that several of the buildings actually do appear to be six stories! From one side it looks like three stories, because the first two stories look like a single grand level from one side, and the top two stories only cover part of the surface so that there is a big deck on the fourth story. I'm still not sure that I'm seeing 8 stories anywhere in there, but the rendering is a good sign that 6 stories might be able to feel like 3!
The density of this new town is unprecedented by US standards.
My hope is that CF can get this rolling, and it will allow less capitalized visionaries to pursue something similar.
How realistic is it to expect the idea of parking at the edges of the city to persist? Given its location, I would assume that a lot of its residents would be commuting at least a couple of times a week to Sacramento or the Bay Area. If people are making those long commutes, won’t they want their cars to be as close as possible in order to reduce their time spent commuting?
With that bike network, you’d probably be 5 minutes from a perimeter car park. It could shake out, but I think theres a market for this. Spend a week in Europe, and it becomes obvious.
Genuinely curious, do people in Europe regularly commute by car an hour away from their homes? I thought that most larger metros in Europe have extensive intracity rail/subway systems that they use for commuting.
Probably both. Europe has a lot of suburban development now, too, but much better rail links and much higher gas prices. Supercommuters are a much more American thing.
That sounds quite nice, but I notice that all the renderings seem to show mixed use areas of 3 story heights, rather than 8 story.
I would think you lose the human-scale feel with 8 stories. 🤷🏿♀️
Quite possible - but it’s also worth looking at real renderings. If you’ve got a one story grand entrance, and a second story right above that, and then a bit of a setback with a rooftop garden, and then six stories of a somewhat smaller tower, it might actually give a fine human scale.
I just looked more closely at the renderings and saw that several of the buildings actually do appear to be six stories! From one side it looks like three stories, because the first two stories look like a single grand level from one side, and the top two stories only cover part of the surface so that there is a big deck on the fourth story. I'm still not sure that I'm seeing 8 stories anywhere in there, but the rendering is a good sign that 6 stories might be able to feel like 3!
I wasn't as optimistic on this before I read your piece, but now I really like it. Has a lot of great things going for it.