urban design thoughts through the filter of living in a small town
I went to a conference recently and participated in a tour and session on ‘Missing Middle Housing.’ Missing Middle housing is a term coined by Dan Parolek of Opticos Design, Inc. Missing Middle refers to housing types between a single-family home and multi-family apartments that are compatible in scale to
Traffic congestion is typically the number one complaint about Sebastopol. Being at the crossroads of 2 state highways and given the physical limitations of any expansion to the road network we have to live with what we have. The only way we are going to reduce congestion is to develop
A great post about a wasted opportunity. The street along the Santa Rosa Junior College is a mish-mash of low density, car-oriented sprawl. Given the thousands of people that attend and work at the junior college and the adjacent high school it is appalling how we have developed this stretch
Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns was in Santa Rosa last week. During one of our conversations he told me about this meme and I had to share it. I have been feeling this way for years. One of the biggest complaints about the state of our town is traffic and
This post was originally published as a guest post on the Strong Towns website. Like many other cities in California, Santa Rosa is struggling with high housing costs and deteriorating infrastructure. Rents have risen 40% in the past 4 years. Median sale price has risen about 10% in the past
Here is a great blog post of why modern zoning codes prevent implementation of human-scaled urbanism today. In most places, it is simply not legal to build mixed-use walkable neighborhooods.
I’ve been a member of Strong Towns the past several years and I’ve written about them before on this blog. I’m a little behind schedule on this as they have been having a membership drive this week. (I’m sure no one will mind if you joint next week!). I would
The City of Sebastopol recently debuted it’s most recent attempt at slowing traffic in town. Created by local sculptor Patrick Amiot, Slow Down Cat is seen as a way to enhance local traffic safety and help the police department enforce safe speeds while building goodwill between the community and police
Came across this video today posted on Walkable West Palm Beach. It’s an inspiring video on bicycling in Copenhagen. Imagine if we had the same ability to bike here. It’s great to see other modes of transportation treated with the same level of importance. I’m sure we could achieve the
I’ve noticed something a bit troubling recently. There are a couple of vacant storefronts on Main Street. In addition, there is another that is about to close and a recently closed business was replaced with a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu studio. I don’t know about you, but a martial arts studios
urban design thoughts through the filter of
living in a small town
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