[RP TownTalk] Beall Circle

[David Hiles]

I don't think businesses are going to do well if their customers have 
to park across Rt. 1.   What if it is raining or cold?  Ask the Calvert 
House owners about that idea.   Accessible, sufficient parking behind 
the shops is part of the master plan.  Adjusting the master plan at 
this stage is not a recipe for success.  Or maybe we should think about 
making Field of Pebbles the doggy park.

Quotations from the Book of Edge City:

AMPLE FREE PARKING: The touchstone distinction between Edge City and 
the old downtown.

THIRD COROLLARY TO THE SIX-HUNDRED-FOOT LAW: In either a downtown or an 
Edge City, if you do everything you can to make casual use of the 
automobile inconvenient at the same time that you make walking pleasant 
and attractive, you maybe, just maybe, can up the distance an American 
will willingly walk to fifteen-hundred feet. A quarter of a mile. And 
this at the substantial risk of everybody saying forget it and choosing 
not to patronize your highly contrived environment at all. See also 
Friction Factor in chapter 12, "The Words."

FRICTION FACTOR: The path of most resistance. The notion is that the 
degree of difficulty of getting from one place to another, by whatever 
means, can be calculated and used to predict the paths people will 
take. One grocery store may be twice as far as another from a consumer. 
But if the path to the far store has minimum friction, and the path to 
the near store involves hassles, the store with the longer but easier 
path may be the one picked. In a downtown setting, getting a car out of 
an underground garage has a high enough friction factor that people are 
inclined to walk moderate distances. In Edge City, however, the 
Friction Factor in walking from one place to another may be so high 
that people will choose to drive trivial distances. The significance is 
that friction can be both good and bad. When a high friction factor 
discourages long-distance travel, it can contribute to the rise of 
civilization in Edge City by forcing goods and services to be provided 
locally. And to the extent that it makes a downtown difficult to get 
to, or move around in, it can lead to the center's decline. See also 
Fast Commute. See also chapter Thirteen, "The Laws," regarding foot 
traffic.

GROUND COVER: An automobile dealership, or a ministorage facility, or 
any other easily bulldozed land-intensive use in Edge City that 
provides an income stream and keeps the whole place from blowing away 
while its owners figure out what they want to do with the land, really. 
(In our case this may be a Wachovia bank.)



WE are who we have been waiting for.
http://riverdalepark.blogspot.com/