Please note: I love downtown San Carlos. I grew up in San Carlos, and more important, I enjoy its quaint feel. The article is meant as a study in urban design, and it’s not meant as a critique of San Carlos downtown. Many people like it the way it is - the “slow growth” folks.
Access to Destination Points
Lets start with what I call “destination points”. A destination point is a place that has significant attraction to outside people. In Palo Alto, it may be a restaurant (St. Michael’s Alley), a café (Coupa Café), or a theater (Stanford Theater). In San Carlos, it is mainly the restaurants on the 700 block of Laurel Street (Town Restaurant). My thought is simple: a mature downtown provides easy walking access from major transit, which in our area is Caltrain. Thinking about “easy walking access” since yesterday, I’ve come up with three advantages that Palo Alto offers over San Carlos: protection, distance and variation. Let’s look at them briefly.
Protection
First, the walk from Palo Alto train station into downtown follows a protected path. It starts with a walk down a flight of stairs to an elevated walkway (with railing), then through a short crosswalk (at a lightly trafficked stop sign), and soon after you’re in downtown. The following photo shows the protected walkway and crosswalk:
On the other hand, consider the walk from Caltrain to the 700 block of Laurel Street in San Carlos. It starts with an unattractive walk across El Camino, a five-lane boulevard (six counting the turn lane). The light takes awhile, there is only one crosswalk, and traffic moves fast. The walk down San Carlos Avenue is less than pleasing. Albeit less trafficked than El Camino Real, the street accommodates two lanes each way of cars that move quickly (four lanes total). The following photo shows what in my opinion, on a subtle level, is a less than appealing walk into downtown:
Distance
Second, consider distance. In Palo Alto, destination points start within 500 feet of Caltrain (Junnoon, Palo Alto Bicycles, Lavanda). On the other hand, the walk from Caltrain to the 700 block of Laurel Street is 1500 feet. The difference may not seem like much, however when you convert the distances into miles (0.09 and 0.28 miles respectively), you see the difference. Think of a running track in your mind. Between walking one straightaway versus a full lap, which would you prefer?
Variation in Walking Paths
Finally, Palo Alto’s distribution of nearby destination points and grid of avenues-alleys-streets (University Ave, Hamilton Ave, Lytton Ave run east to west; High St, Emerson St, Ramona St, Bryant St, Waverly St, Cowper St, Webster St run north to south) give the pedestrian a myriad of choices when choosing walking paths to major destinations. In the drawing below, black squares represent destination points. How many paths do you count?
I counted around 15. Compare that with San Carlos. Most pedestrians (if they have a choice) prefer streets with as little car traffic as possible. Also, I took the train to Bellarmine College Prep for four years and walked down San Carlos Avenue nearly every day. And I drive the street everyday too. In my experience, I’d say 99% of the people I see walk San Carlos Avenue into town (and less than 1% walk along El Camino). That leaves one path to the 700 block of Laurel Street. See below.
Final Thoughts
I don’t consider myself the end-all-be-all authority on urban design. Hardly. However I do think about these things on a regular basis. Seriously, its just the way that I’m wired. I just notice these things while driving, walking, whatever. I can’t help myself. So in the coming weeks, expect more writings about local urban design. Why? Because I enjoy writing about it. If you like these articles, please comment (any feedback would be great). More than anything, I hope you, faithful reader, begin noticing the subtleties of the spaces we live in - both private (homes) and public (towns).
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Mathieson 05.08.08 at 5:29 pm
Agreed, the access from Caltrain isn’t as welcoming in San Carlos as it is in Palo Alto and the three qualities you provide are insightful. Several questions: Who is coming and going from San Carlos? (i.e., the university in PA both draws and provides a varied population, whereas maybe the town of San Carlos is looking to satisfy simply the people of San Carlos?) Once located according to resources and geography, towns historically radiated from access points until cars distributed access into parking spaces and parking lots (at least, I assume that’s the case). So, there’s competition. I agree that mass transit should have priority, but maybe SC is a car town? At any rate, these things are often contingent rather than planned, so to help SC mature, do you see a way to remediate the problem and make SC more accessible? And for whom?
Amir 05.13.08 at 7:17 pm
Anton,
You raise some interesting issues, certainly worth considering when purchasing a residence or speculating land value. Your analysis reminds me of the young man who attempted to answer the question, “can a pedestrian traverse all seven bridges over the river Pregel, and return to their starting point without repeating a bridge crossing?” The young man was Euler, the father of graph theory. Urban planning (along with graphing theory, management science, and operations research) considers the points you raised, and indeed approaches problems regarding optimal network paths (max flow, accessibility, shortest path, and related costs) using some mathematical rigor. For example, one can model Accessibility as such:
Accessibility = ???Network Paths?* f(travel cost)
I think when contrasting San Carlos and Palo Alto, you might find it a worthwhile exercise to expand your definition of “Destination Points” to places of employment, schools, libraries, hospitals, emergency services, light commerce areas, and public transportation depots. Different cities have different goals and constraints in mind when planning urban or suburban development.
Urban planning combined with policy analysis is quite interesting. Consider a small town with local food shops and no supermarkets. Did you know price dispersion (standard deviation of price) increases among various foods between local shops and supermarkets? So while there may be close to no variance in the price of apples between a local shop and a supermarket, there is significant price dispersion between two exact bags of frozen food, and likewise between identical bags of rice, gallons of milk, and boxes of tea, to name a few commodities. When a community has five coffee shops, for instance, all equally accessible, expect price dispersion to approach zero. Alternatively, a community with five coffee shops that are not all equally accessible, ceteris paribus, will compete on price. When it become difficult to compete on price (totally elastic market), the cafés will compete on quality, and the consumer benefits. There is a good reason why Palo Alto has so many quality cafes, they price dispersion is low, geographically speaking (although price is high in absolute terms), and the cafés are forced to compete on quality to stay in business. One a side note – one reason Starbucks places stores so close together is reduce distribution costs, for instance (supply-side reasoning). While the average home buyer does not consider (nor should they) price dispersion and distribution costs when buying a house, I raise these points as they speak to a larger issue in the aggregate. Culture.
The first and foremost difference I notice when contrasting Palo Alto and San Carlos is culture. The accessibility factor, you notice in Palo Alto, I would argue, fosters an environment where price dispersion is minimized and businesses compete on quality. This invites a reinforcing effect where consumers willing to pay a ‘premium’ for quality or superior goods frequent these “quality” businesses. As such, real estate values increase (business rents increase), and business must continue competing on quality to win business (can’t lower costs because operating income is too low), and only new business that can offer higher levels of quality enter the market, et cetera. This phenomenon, I would argue, creates a filter that excludes numerous participants from engaging in marketing activities (i.e. buying stuff), yielding an environment requiring market participants with high discretionary income. The net result is a self-reinforcing social system perpetuating social exclusion.