The D-word

The word density tends to elicit a strong, generally negative, response from many people. The mere mention of the word brings out opponents to a proposed development project, en masse.  Particularly in a small town like Sebastopol, density seems to conjure images of overcrowded tenement-like living conditions, faceless apartment tower blocks,

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Parking

I’ve recently read ‘Walkable City’ by Jeff Speck. It’s a great book with a lot of information and inspiration about how to create more walkable places. There is chapter in the book entitled ‘Getting the Parking Right’. When creating a walkable urban environment, it is extremely important to ‘get the

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Smart School Siting – 3

This post is a continuation of 2 previous posts which can be viewed here and here. During my time on the Sebastopol Charter School facilities committee and the Charter Foundation board, I presented several schemes for the expansion of the downtown campus. One missed opportunity that still haunts me is

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More Traffic Thoughts

Probably the number one complaint of residents of Sebastopol and West County, as mentioned in an earlier post, is traffic. This is a common lament of people in communities across the country from large urban areas to small towns like Sebastopol. People just hate traffic. And who could blame them.

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Design Review – Does it improve the quality of the built environment?

This post is a follow-up to an earlier post about the design review process. The earlier post looked at the design review process which resulted in lowering the quality of a proposed project in Sebastopol. I’ve recently been working on a project that is currently going through the design review

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Not a place for people

Main Street Sebastopol has great potential, but it is not a pedestrian friendly environment. The space allocated to pedestrians is definitely secondary to the space allocated to cars. This is partly due to the fact that Main Street is a state highway, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

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A Wide One-Way Street

Sebastopol has a traffic problem.  And It’s not the number of cars passing through downtown and backing up at times as concerns many people.  The traffic problem has to do with the one-way street couplet created by Petaluma Avenue and Main Street. These streets were originally two-way streets but were converted

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FRITZ ARCHITECTURE-URBANISM
small town urbanism

urban design thoughts through the filter of living in a small town

P.O. Box 1074
Sebastopol, CA 95473
707.975.6220
paul@fritzarchitecture.com
Paul Fritz in Sebastopol, CA on Houzz

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