Anti-Curb Cutting Rule Inches Forward
It was merely advisory, but a vote at Community Board 2 on Wednesday spoke very clearly about how most people in brownstone neighborhoods feel about curb cuts and other actions that destroy the residential streetscape: According to a post on The Local, the board unanimously voted to support the Department of City Planning’s Residential Streetscape…
It was merely advisory, but a vote at Community Board 2 on Wednesday spoke very clearly about how most people in brownstone neighborhoods feel about curb cuts and other actions that destroy the residential streetscape: According to a post on The Local, the board unanimously voted to support the Department of City Planning’s Residential Streetscape Preservation Text Amendment. The amendment would prohibit the creation of front yard parking in areas with predominantly one- and two-family houses (by implementing stricter planting rules) as well as block curb cuts for new buildings less than 40 feet wide in R4B through R8B districts. Hopefully this will be lay-up.
PFA, I’ll let your statement and my statements from the last year speak for themselves.
Joe from Brooklyn — I hate singling anybody out on a forum like this, and I’m sure you mean well… but dude, it’s your quasi-libertarian attitude that undermines the character and livability of so many new york neighborhoods.
BTW, the more that I look at the curb cut in the above picture the more tasteful and contextual it looks. I notice that the driveway is slopes DOWN to allow a larger-than-would-seem garage door that could accommodate today’s larger crossovers and SUV’s. Definitely far more handsome than from the downward driveways in those paleo-Fedders from the 1950’s and 60’s you see.
Gotta say, brownstone front yards are a joke to begin with, parking a car there doesn’t bother me (though knocking through a wall to install a garage seems kinda gross).
Probably half of the houses (brownstones, brick row houses, and former-brick-now-vinyl-siding-kill-me-please) on my block have gotten the parking treatment, and I can’t say they look any better or worse than the others.
ou812 — that’s the thing… IF they were built today, the whole neighborhood would be built to accommodate cars! Lots of examples are above. Brownstone Brooklyn ain’t that.
Garages and Curb cuts are a beutiful thing. I get to park my gas guzzlers when I want and I don’t have to circle for a spot. I don’t worry about taking my car out for short trips, because I’ll have a spot when I return. Alternate side parking, what’s that? The best part, since mine is legal, anyone who blocks me gets a ticket and a tow courtesy of NYPD. Let’s face it, if your brownstones were built today, they would all have parking. Put another log on the fire and deal with it.
An alleyway must cut the costs for garden renovations in half…
An average car is about 16′ long. A standard 1 car garage door such as the one pictured is 8′ wide. Even assuming a 1 car curb cut removes an entire street parking spot, it also adds one off street parking spot. Adding off street parking and removing on street parking in this manner has no impact to the overall parking capacity of a given area.
Yeah, Crown Heights South has many streets with alleyways, as well as quite a few blocks of semi-detached houses with shared driveways and double garages, one for each neighbor. These date from the early 1900’s to about the 1930’s. It’s a great feature of the neighborhood.