This is Bauer Street, just south of Cornwallis. These buildings on the west side of the street, which were evidently built somewhat recently. Note the garages dominating the first level facade, and the accompanying curb cuts and concrete driveways. The curb cuts remove on-street parking, and so residents are parking on the driveways. The result is a very pedestrian-unfriendly stretch of sidewalk, and no front porches that are conducive to interaction between neighbours and pedestrians.
Contrast those structures to the older buildings immediately across the street:
The parking is on the street, leaving the sidewalk as a pedestrian friendly stretch with small gardens and large trees. The trees may need a bit of a prune, and there are still no proper porches, but the small stoops coupled with the pedestrian strip is very conducive to social interactions.
The on-street parking also serves to narrow the street for through traffic, and therefore slow traffic down and bring cross-street neighbours that much closer together. Or, it did, before the new structures were built.
These are small differences, but cumulatively they are the difference between building a neighbourhood and building merely a people warehouse.
If you have photos of good and bad local architecture, send them in, and we can discuss them.
This article appears in Aug 21-27, 2008.
the answer to this is a private rear road wide enough for one vehicle with garage parking from the back of the housing.When building these they must have looked into moving the houses forward enough to allow room from the back. But why wasn’t this done, what’s behind there?I bet small Eco cars huddled next to they’re appropriate houses shared with pedestrians on sidewalks looked great in water colour.
Of course you’re right– alleys are the solution to lots of these problems. I’m not sure what the possibilities were/are off this particular street, but I know some new buildings going up on Creighton are putting an alley behind them. This is good.You can also run power lines and garbage trucks down alleys, which helps create a better street scene as well.