We suspect that when the density of cars passes a certain limit, and people experience the feeling that there are too many cars, what is really happening is that subconsciously they feel that the cars are overwhelming the environment, that the environment is no longer “theirs,” that they have no right to be there, that it is not a place for people, and so on. After all, the effect of the cars reaches far beyond the mere presence of the cars themselves. They create a maze of driveways, garage doors, asphalt and concrete surfaces, and building elements which people cannot use. When the density goes beyond the limit, we suspect that people feel the social potential of the environment has disappeared. Instead of inviting them out, the environment starts giving them the message that the outdoors is not meant for them, that they should stay indoors, that they should stay in their own buildings, that social communion is no longer permitted or encouraged.
We have not yet tested this suspicion. Hoivevery if it turns out to be true, it may be that this pattern, which seems to be based on such slender evidence, is in fact one of the most crucial patterns there is, and that it -plays a key role in determining the difference between environments which are socially and psychologically healthy and those which are unhealthy.
We conjecture, then, that environments which are human, and not destroyed socially or ecologically by the presence of parked cars, have less than 9 per cent of the ground area devoted to parking space; and that parking lots and garages must therefore never be allowed to cover more than 9 per cent of the land.
It is essential to interpret this pattern in the strictest possible way. The pattern becomes meaningless if we allow ourselves to place the parking generated by a piece of land A, on another adjacent piece of land B, thus keeping parking on A below 9 per
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22 NINE PER CENT PARKING
cent, but raising the parking on B to more than 9 per cent. In other words, each piece of land must take care of itself; we must not allow ourselves to solve this problem on one piece of land at the expense of some other piece of land. A town or a community can only implement the pattern according to this strict interpretation by defining a grid of independent “parking zones”—each zone I to 10 acres in area—which cover the whole community, and then insisting that the rule be applied, independently, and strictly, inside every parking zone.
The 9 per cent rule has a clear and immediate implication for the balance between surface parking and parking in garages, at different parking densities. This follows from simple arithmetic. Suppose, for example, that an area requires 20 parking spaces per acre. Twenty parking spaces will consume about 7000 square feet, which would be 17 per cent of the land if it were all in surface parking. To keep 20 cars per acre in line with the 9 per cent rule, at least half of them will have to be parked in garages. The table below gives similar figures for different densities:
Cars per Per cent on Per cent in two Per cent in three acre surface story garages story garages
What about underground parking? May we consider it as an exception to this rule? Only if it does not violate or restrict the use of the land above. If, for example, a parking garage is under a piece of land which was previously used as open space, with great trees growing on it, then the garage will almost certainly change the nature of the space above, because it will no longer be possible to grow large trees there. Such a parking garage is a violation of the land. Similarly, if the structural grid of the garage— 60 foot bays—constrains the structural grid of the building above, so that this building is not free to express its needs, this is a violation too. Underground parking may be allowed only in those rare cases where it does not constrain the land above at alclass="underline" under a major road, perhaps, or under a tennis court.
We see then, that the 9 per cent rule has colossal implications.
Since underground parking will only rarely satisfy the conditions we have stated, the pattern really says that almost no part of the urban area may have more than 30 parking spaces per acre. This will create large changes in the central business district. Consider a part of a typical downtown area. There may be several hundred commuters per acre working there; and, under today’s conditions, many of them park their cars in garages. But if it is true that there cannot be more than 30 parking spaces per acre, then either the work will be forced to decentralize, or the workers will have to rely on public transportation. It seems, in short, that this simple pattern, based on the social psychology of the environment, leads us to the same far reaching social conclusions as the patterns web
OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION (l6) and SCATTERED WORK (9).
Therefore:
Do not allow more than 9 per cent of the land in any given area to be used for parking. In order to prevent the “bunching” of parking in huge neglected areas, it is necessary for a town or a community to subdivide its land into “parking zones” no larger than 10 acres each and to apply the same rule in each zone.
| parking zones |
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*
Two later patterns say that parking must take one of two forms: tiny, surface parking lots, or shielded parking structures—
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SHIELDED PARKING (97), SMALL PARKING LOTS (1O3). If yOU accept these patterns the 9 per cent rule will put an effective upper limit of 30 parking spaces per acre, on every part of the environment. Present-day on-street parking, with driveways, which provides spaces for about 35 cars per acre on the ground is ruled out. And those present-day high density business developments which depend on the car are also ruled out. . . .
A PATTERN LANGUAGE
We have spent years trying to formulate this language, in the hope that when a person uses it, he will be so impressed by its power, and so joyful in its use, that he will understand again, what it means to have a living language of this kind. If we only succeed in that, it is possible that each person may once again embark on the construction and development of his own language— perhaps taking the language printed in this book, as a point of departure.
And yet, we do believe, of course, that this language which is printed here is something more than a manual, or a teacher, or a version of a possible pattern language. Many of the patterns here are archetypal—so deep, so deeply rooted in the nature of things, that it seems likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years, as they are today. We doubt very much whether anyone could construct a valid pattern language, in his own mind, which did not include the pattern arcades (119) for example, or the pattern alcoves (179).
In this sense, we have also tried to penetrate, as deep as we are able, into the nature of things in the environment: and hope that a great part of this language, which we print here, will be a core of any sensible human pattern language, which any person constructs for himself, in his own mind. In this sense, at least a part of the language we have presented here, is the archetypal core of all possible pattern languages, which can make people feel alive and human.
| 23 PARALLEL ROADS |
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. . . in earlier patterns, we have proposed that cities should be subdivided into local transport areas, whose roads allow cars to move in and out from the ring roads, but strongly discourage internal movement across the area—local transport areas (ii), ring roads (17)—and that these transport areas themselves be further subdivided into communities and neighborhoods, with the provision that all major roads are in the boundaries between communities and neighborhoods—subculture boundary (13), neighborhood boundary (15). Now, what should the arrangement of these roads be like, to help the flow required by local transport areas (i i), and to maintain the boundaries?