Therefore:
Lay out the entrances to form a family. This means:
1. They form a group, are visible together, and each is visible from all the others.
2. They are all broadly similar, for instance all porches, or all gates in a wall, or all marked by a similar kind of doorway.
family of entrances
In detail, make the entrances bold and easy to see—main entrance (iio); when they lead into private domains, houses and the like, make a transition in between the public street and the inside—entrance transition (112); and shape the entrance itself as a room, which straddles the wall, and is thus both inside and outside as a projecting volume, covered and protected from the rain and sun—entrance room (130). If it is an entrance from an indoor street into a public office, make reception part of the entrance room—reception welcomes you (149). . . .
| 103 SMALL PARKING LOTS* |
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503
. . . since a small parking lot is a kind of gateway—the place where you leave your car, and enter a pedestrian realm—this pattern helps to complete shopping streets (32), house
CLUSTER (37), WORK COMMUNITY (41), GREEN STREETS (51),
main gateways (53), circulation realms (98), and any other areas which need small and convenient amounts of parking. But above all, if it is used correctly, this pattern, together with shielded parking (97), will help to generate nine per cent parking (22) gradually, by increments.
v * *
Vast parking lots wreck the land for people.
In nine per cent parking (22), we have suggested that the fabric of society is threatened by the mere existence of cars, if areas for parked cars take up more than 9 or 10 per cent of the land in a community.
We now face a second problem. Even when parked cars occupy less than 9 per cent of the land, they can still be distributed in two entirely different ways. They can be concentrated in a few huge parking lots; or they can be scattered in many tiny parking lots. The tiny parking lots are far better for the environment than the large ones, even when their total areas are the same.
Large parking lots have a way of taking over the landscape, creating unpleasant places, and having a depressing effect on the
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| The destruction of human scale. |
504
103 SMALL PARKING LOTS
open space around them. They make people feel dominated by cars; they separate people from the pleasure and convenience of being near their cars; and, if they are large enough to contain unpredictable traffic, they are dangerous for children, since children inevitably play in parking lots.
The problems stem essentially from the fact that a car is so much bigger than a person. Large parking lots, suited for the cars, have all the wrong properties for people. They are too wide; they contain too much pavement; they have no place to linger. In fact, we have noticed that people speed up when they are walking through large parking lots to get out of them as fast as possible.
It is hard to pin down the exact size at which parking lots become too big. Our observations suggest that parking lots for four cars are still essentially pedestrian and human in character; that lots for six cars are acceptable; but that any area near a parking lot which holds eight cars is already clearly identifiable as “car dominated territory.”
This may be connected with the well-known perceptual facts about the number seven. A collection of less than five to seven objects can be grasped as one thing, and the objects in it can be grasped as individuals. A collection of more than five to seven things is perceived as “many things.” (See G. Miller, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” in D. Beardslee and M. Wertheimer, eds., Readings in Perception, New York, 1958, esp. p. 103.) It may be true that the impression of a “sea of cars” first comes into being with about seven cars.
The small lots can be quite loosely placed.
Metropolitan regions will not come to balance until each one is small and autonomous enough to be an independent sphere of culture.
There are four separate arguments which have led us to this conclusion: I. The nature and limits of human government. 2. Equity among regions in a world community. 3. Regional planning considerations. 4. Support for the intensity and diversity of human cultures.
I. There are natural limits to the size of groups that can govern themselves in a human way. The biologist J. B. S. Haldane has remarked on this in his paper, “On Being the Right Size”:
. . . just as there is a best size for every animal, so the same is true for every human institution. In the Greek type of democracy all the citizens could listen to a series of orators and vote directly on questions of legislation. Hence their philosophers held that a small city was the largest possible democratic state. ... (J. B. S Haldane, “On Being the Right Size,” The World of Mathematics, Vol, 77, J. R. Newman, ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956, pp. 962-67).
It is not hard to see why the government of a region becomes less and less manageable with size. In a population of N persons, there are of the order of N2 person-to-person links needed to keep channels of communication open. Naturally, when N goes beyond a certain limit, the channels of communication needed for democracy and justice and information are simply too clogged, and too complex; bureaucracy overwhelms human processes.
And, of course, as N grows the number of levels in the hierarchy of government increases too. In small countries like Denmark there are so few levels, that any private citizen can have access to the Minister of Education. But this kind of direct access is quite impossible in larger countries like England or the United States.
We believe the limits are reached when the population of a region reaches some 2 to 10 million. Beyond this size, people become remote from the large-scale processes of government. Our estimate may seem extraordinary in the light of modern history: the nation-states have grown mightily and their governments hold power over tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions, of people. But these huge powers cannot claim to have a natural size.
11
BUILDINGS
Therefore:
Make parking lots small, serving no more than five to seven cars, each lot surrounded by garden walls, hedges, fences, slopes, and trees, so that from outside the cars are almost invisible. Space these small lots so that they are at least too feet apart.
| five to seven cars |
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«£♦ *$♦
Place entrances and exits of the parking lots in such a way that they fit naturally into the pattern of pedestrian movement and lead directly, without confusion, to the major entrances to individual buildings—circulation realms (98). Shield even these quite modest parking lots with garden walls, and trees, and fences, so that they help to generate the space around them— POSITIVE OUTDOOR SPACE (l06), TREE PLACES ( 171 ), GARDEN WALLS (l73). . • •