How To Make A Pile of Dough With the Traditional City 6: Better Than a Thousand Words

August 21, 2011

Guess where this is!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OK, what are we looking at here?

Obviously, it is a pedestrian place. Do you see any cars here?

Doesn’t this look like fun?

If you are a developer, I would ask: doesn’t this look profitable? Look at all those people. If you make a nice place that attracts a lot of people, they spend a bunch of money and some of that lands in your pocket. How hard is that to understand.

Yes, making fun places for people (not cars!) means KACHINGO MANIA.

August 22, 2010: How to Make a Pile of Dough with the Traditional City

I would note that this street is actually rather wide. It looks like at least 60-70 feet from one side to the other. Maybe more. This is actually not so uncommon, and works fine here as there are a lot of people. I suppose someone would insist that you had to make the street that wide due to all the people, but that is not actually true. Instead of one 80-foot street, you could have four 20-foot streets. Instead of one ninety-foot street, you could have six 15-foot streets, or nine ten-foot streets. So, instead of one fabulous street you could have two or four or more. We are a little stuck with the “Main Street” idea where you put everything on one oversized street.

Shanghai, China.

Shanghai.

Madrid, Spain.

Eight foot street, Tokyo, Japan. You could have ten of these instead of one 80 foot street.

Hmmm, that looks sort of similar. Much narrower, though. This is more like 40 feet wide. So, you could have two of these.

Tokyo.

That looks sort of similar too. The idea of eventually enclosing a “shopping street” is a very old one.

Atami, Japan.

Leadenhall Market, London. The glass enclosure was added in 1881.

This stuff is so easy. You just do it and … it works!

Other commentary in this series:

July 31, 2011: How To Make a Pile of Dough With the Traditional City 5: The New New Suburbanism
July 17, 2011: How To Make A Pile of Dough With the Traditional City 4: More SFDR/SFAR Solutions
July 3, 2011: The New World Economics Guide to Men’s Fashion
June 12, 2011: How to Make a Pile of Dough with the Traditional City 3: Single Family Detached in the Traditional City Style