Not in My Front Yard?
The Department of City Planning has chosen a side in the so-called Paving Wars by proposing a zoning change that would require planting on 20 to 50 percent of most front yards, thus stopping home owners from coating those spaces with concrete and creating parking spaces. The green front yard contributes to community and quality…
The Department of City Planning has chosen a side in the so-called Paving Wars by proposing a zoning change that would require planting on 20 to 50 percent of most front yards, thus stopping home owners from coating those spaces with concrete and creating parking spaces. The green front yard contributes to community and quality of life, says planning director Amanda Burden, who believes that paving yards is creating a cement jungle in these beautiful neighborhoods. The proposal will need to get a thumbs-up from the Planning Commission and the City Council in order to become a regulation. We’re not sure about the requirement of 50 percent plant coverage, but we certainly like the gist of the proposal. How ’bout you?
One More Skirmish in the Paving Wars [NY Times]
It seems bizarre to posit that maintaining a front lawn or garden is an excessive “burden” and that paved-over parking pads are a “right” when it has been a shared civic assumption for at least a century that urban streetscapes are defined by front yards on private property, not “parking lots” (beyond the original design of a single driveway in later non-row-house blocks with garages). We have had working-class people and old people in party-wall houses for decades, and we’ve had street crime just as long, and yet only since the Attack of the Urban Hummer Lifestyle (i.e. Everybody Needs Lots of Cars)have folks suddenly begun parking en masse on their erstwhile front lawns. It is worth noting that many of these pads are paved over as RENTAL parking spots; we are incessantly queried as to whether or not we’d be willing to pave over a chunk of our property to accommodate some loony contractor’s panel van or the car of a teacher at a nearby school. Many neighbors stuff their backyards with numerous cars not their own, just as they are willing to stuff their basements with illegal tenants to turn a fast buck.
That said, it seems we should be able to stamp out a lot of this just by rigorous enforcement of current curb cut regs…but having seen what “rigorous enforcement” currently entails (zilch) with regard to some flagrant multi-curb-cutters on my own block, I don’t hold out much hope for that.
How about a “campaign of shame” similar to the neon-stickers they slapped on cars that blocked street cleaning for awhile? Maybe a fluourescent stencil on their sidewalk, “Urban Landscape Violator”?
“Aesthetics aside, for every curb cut/driveway that’s created, that equals one less parking spot at the curb for everyone else.”
This is the key point: a curb cut privatizes public space, as only the owner can now park where the curb cut is.
If were going to allow parking in front yards, maybe the curb cuts should be purchased like any other easement.
Personally I’m all for this zoning change — it strikes me as a quality of life issue with no downside for most city people and manageable downside for owners.
Um, under what stretch of the law have people bought the street parking in front of their home when they buy their home? It is a public street. My understanding is that in many cases the city owns an easement over the front yards of many townhouses. Given the aesthetic/runoff/privitiation of streets implications of allowing home owners to pave their front yards, it does not seem unreasonable to me to restrict the use in this way.
to guest@4:05: maybe, but it creates *at least one* parking spot for the owner of the property.
Bullshit reasons involving aesthetics notwithstanding, a compromise can easily be worked out here that allows people to have the parking spots that they in essence paid for when they bought their space. The space in front of your garage isn’t the only space on the land where plants or grass or whathaveyou can be planted. I really do think this is all a matter of taste. An embarrasing one at that.
Aesthetics aside, for every curb cut/driveway that’s created, that equals one less parking spot at the curb for everyone else.
This Amanda Burden is a micromanaging totalitarian. She’s the urban planning-obsessed dork who read A Pattern Language one too many times, but happened to be blue-blooded enough to actually get into power.
Concrete yards are ugly, yes, but so are many gardens. Some people just have abominable taste, and unless Ms. Burden is going to start showing up and personally planning people’s gardens and paved areas so that they are more legally stylish (haha), this should be dropped.
I hate cement in front and cement in back both. It’s utterly lacking in taste. Or logic. It makes the street noise inside a home much worse. Grass and trees absorb noise, cement amplifies it.
The other issues they city might be caring about here are global warming + sewage. More green space = a cooler planet. Also the way the city’s ancient sewage system works is that runoff from concrete all goes in to the same sewage system. So if there’s less pavement then our overtaxed sewers will get a bit of a break. But the quotes from Amanda Burden above do seem only to be ones of aesthetics. I would guess if they passed a law like this and then the sewers backup because of all the supersized development approved in Brooklyn then the city can blame the individual homeowners and not their careless planning. But that’s just me. A cynic.
I agree with Mrs. Limestone. The issue is creating parking spaces and curb cuts illegally … not how a front yard (or “area way”) is landscaped. Curb cuts require a permit. See: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dob/downloads/pdf/curbcuts.pdf