The Two Towers is intended to be a hundred units in a building. It was designed with the idea that it would play well in the downtown area of a fairly small town near a transit station so people could have a real choice as to wether or not to own a car depending on other factors in their lives.
The idea is it can help relieve parking issues in a downtown and help a historic, walkable, mixed-use downtown area that was probably built before cars took over the world come back to life without tearing down half the buildings to meet parking minimums typically required by modern zoning codes.
It was inspired by actually living in such a downtown area with very little residential development due to most of the upstairs parts of buildings being empty which COULD have been housing but weren't due to parking minimums.
I participated in community development organizations and spoke with locals and so forth. So I became familiar with some of the barriers to redeveloping the downtown and came up with THIS idea as a solution.
Some areas I am personally familiar with that generally fit the intended placement of a Two Towers development:
You can hop a bus to the nearest big city and from there and go probably just about anywhere in the world. (I've never been there, but I've researched the city.)
Could it work in some other setting, such as Los Angeles or the rest of the San Frncisco Bay Area? Presumably, it could if you chose a spot that needed overflow parking and was near transit, which is a key piece of this idea: That it works financially because you can charge people for parking there by the day or by the hour who don't live there if too many of your residents go carless.
But this project was designed to help enhance a small town's historic walkable mixed-use downtown and return it to the lively, pedestrian-filled scene it was a hundred years ago by helping to make peace between this older pattern of development and modern car-centric culture and give people a real choice about whether or not to own a car.
Parking minimums are actively hostile to both affordable housing AND historic, walkable, mixed-use downtowns, but the reality is cars aren't going away any time soon and it's critical that people who still want or need their car to be able to make that choice without having to tear down half the buildings and replace them with parking lots if you want a thriving downtown.
It also has potential to provide student housing for colleges that lack a dorm. I would encourage builders to EITHER choose a location that NEEDS extra parking for commercial venues nearby OR consider tweaking the project some to fit the scenario if you can't find a spot that NEEDS more paid parking.
Perhaps reduce the parking garage size and work with a car-sharing service if this model doesn't look financially viable for the location in question.
The idea is it can help relieve parking issues in a downtown and help a historic, walkable, mixed-use downtown area that was probably built before cars took over the world come back to life without tearing down half the buildings to meet parking minimums typically required by modern zoning codes.
It was inspired by actually living in such a downtown area with very little residential development due to most of the upstairs parts of buildings being empty which COULD have been housing but weren't due to parking minimums.
I participated in community development organizations and spoke with locals and so forth. So I became familiar with some of the barriers to redeveloping the downtown and came up with THIS idea as a solution.
Some areas I am personally familiar with that generally fit the intended placement of a Two Towers development:
- Many of the small towns in Coastal Washington.
- Many of the towns and cities in The High Desert of Southern California.
- Solano County, California which serves as a bedroom community for much of the San Francisco Bay Area, especially if they actually adopted my Solano Rail Plan, which I am NOT holding my breath on.
- Fresno, California, which doesn't really have a lot of skyscrapers and is a sprawling, relatively low cost city for California. Like the High Desert, it is a retirement area for some people from the larger, more expensive coastal cities (San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego). It also has a surprisingly good bus system.
You can hop a bus to the nearest big city and from there and go probably just about anywhere in the world. (I've never been there, but I've researched the city.)
Could it work in some other setting, such as Los Angeles or the rest of the San Frncisco Bay Area? Presumably, it could if you chose a spot that needed overflow parking and was near transit, which is a key piece of this idea: That it works financially because you can charge people for parking there by the day or by the hour who don't live there if too many of your residents go carless.
But this project was designed to help enhance a small town's historic walkable mixed-use downtown and return it to the lively, pedestrian-filled scene it was a hundred years ago by helping to make peace between this older pattern of development and modern car-centric culture and give people a real choice about whether or not to own a car.
Parking minimums are actively hostile to both affordable housing AND historic, walkable, mixed-use downtowns, but the reality is cars aren't going away any time soon and it's critical that people who still want or need their car to be able to make that choice without having to tear down half the buildings and replace them with parking lots if you want a thriving downtown.
It also has potential to provide student housing for colleges that lack a dorm. I would encourage builders to EITHER choose a location that NEEDS extra parking for commercial venues nearby OR consider tweaking the project some to fit the scenario if you can't find a spot that NEEDS more paid parking.
Perhaps reduce the parking garage size and work with a car-sharing service if this model doesn't look financially viable for the location in question.