Quasi-Urbanism

 I want to talk today about a very particular kind of urbanism, which I want to call "quasi-urbanism," that is getting more and more common on the fringes of the Quad Cities (and other similar urban and surburban areas in the US). This is an urban form that consists of the following:

A. Concentration of housing (usually apartments) even though the overall population density remains low

B. Presence of nearby destinations, such as grocery stores, coffeeshops, small other shops, etc., in reasonable proximity to the concentrations of housing as the crow flies

C. Large sidewalks, mixed-use paths, or other biking/walking infrastructure running through the area

But that also has the following feature:

D. Despite A, B, & C, walking is dangerous there, no one does it, and the place was clearly built with the assumption that cars will be by far the most common form of transportation, to the point where this undoes the benefits of A, B, and C for most people.

This is similar to the false walkability I talked about before, but bears a few additional elements with it to represent a more fleshed-out urban environment, beyond just the markers of walkability.

This is, as I said, becoming more and more common, and I want to talk about why it doesn't really work, despite seeming on the face of it like it should tick a lot of urbanist boxes; or, in other words, why does D happen despite A, B, and C? And for this, I'm going to use a particular example out in Bettendorf--not because it's uniquely bad, but precisely because it feels typical to me.

1. Too Much Empty Space

The biggest flaw of this form of urbanism is that despite ostensibly including things like density, good sidewalks, and walkable amenities, there is just so much empty space. Not parks--though this space is often "green," it's usually all-grass lawn, not organized into parks, and sometimes not even green (lots of asphalt.

Let's look at the example: the Villas apartments and surrounding area on Devil's Glen Road in Bettendorf.

There's the apartment building. I'm standing, to take this photo, on the nearby mixed-use path. And what do I see? Lots and lots of space between me and the apartment building, and between me and the coffeeshop, and between the coffeeshop and the apartment building.

Looking down the road, I see the exact same thing: a huge berm of mostly grass, not attractively molded into a park or anything, just...present. Everything here is actually quite far away from everything else, so the gestures towards density and walkability are undercut. You can just about see the two grocery stores in this neighborhood down this path, but both are so far away that they're not actually visible--and most of the space in between is just empty.

2. Too Much Parking, Too Centered

Here's a closer view of the apartment complex: 

Notice what is given direct access to the apartments, and what is indeed literally the only thing you are confronted with when exiting and entering them?

That's right, a parking lot.

The apartment is surrounded by parking, the neighboring businesses (coffeeshop, boutique, locksmith, bike shop, brewpub) are all surrounded by parking, everything is parking. That creates more of this empty space (see #1) but it also directly counters the idea that this is a space where one could or should walk. There isn't even a marked (let alone protected) walkway through the parking lots to the sidewalk or mixed-use path from any of the businesses or the apartment complex. It's like the separate pieces of an urbanist jigsaw puzzle are all kept apart by three inches of table space, rather than combined into the puzzle they could potentially make.

3. Odd Choices In The Details

Here's the mixed use path, looking north:

It kinda looks like a big sidewalk, which is really what it is. But there's nothing wrong with that, as long as it's big enough to allow people to pass. Let's zoom in.

So here's what I notice (and this is mostly true in Bettendorf): the explicit prioritization of cars over bikes/pedestrians (a literal stop sign for the path at every single place that the cars could cross it), with no protection for the path as it crosses the roadway (no continuous raised sidewalk, even though again this is also a bike path).

I have biked here and do bike here (though I was not on the bike for this particular trip, since I was dropping someone else off who can't ride on the back of my bike). And I can tell you that these are notable issues in practice: cars coming out of these drives do not look for or notice bikes, and if you were actually to stop (as opposed to Idaho-stop) at each stop sign you'd go really, really slowly.

My favorite example, which I didn't happen to get a shot of because it's a few blocks over, is that this mixed-use path coexists with a painted bike gutter lane on a major street--as if the designers themselves weren't sure if this was actually bike infrastructure or not.

And, honestly, these paths don't tend to go anywhere: they begin and end without necessarily having an actual destination--not quite where the sidewalk ends but close--and so that also is an odd detail that reduces usability.

The frustrating thing is that all of the basic elements are good! All of them are helpful! But they aren't combined helpfully. And I worry that this means that people who live here, if asked to vote for more urbanist infrastructure, will say "I've seen dense apartments, I've seen bike paths, I've seen these elements that you say make a 15 minute city, and no one uses them/they're useless/they don't work."

Because this looks like someone cribbed off the test of the person designing a 15 minute city (yeah! Apartments! Yeah! Bike lanes! Yeah, a grocery store nearby!) but didn't realize that the whole point was not to accommodate more cars but to make them less necessary. So instead we have a neighborhood where you need a car, despite all this infrastructure, and so no one uses the infrastructure except weird bloggers getting their caffeine fix.

What about your neighborhoods or cities? Do you see urbanist elements combined into a quasi-urbanist design that fails them? Or are there parts that actually work--or no parts at all?