So the photo at the top of this article: that's University Avenue. Connects right to Stanford University. Second busiest station in the @Caltrain system.
Seems like a good place for urban infill. Replacing some of those 1 story buildings with 5?
Or so you'd think?
(Thread.)
High-profile California housing legislation aims to allow new mid-rise apartments near transit. But it also would allow for apartments in broad swaths of wealthy communities across the state — whether they’re near rail or not. My #SB50 take from Palo Alto. latimes.com/politics/la-pol-…
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The city council had an effort last year to change zoning laws to encourage more housing. They made some tweaks in the right direction, but they really don't do much. (The law goes into effect May 2. Full text at cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/f… .)
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One of the things they wanted to do was try to change the tradeoffs developers face when building office vs housing. But when offices rent for $10/ft²/month and apartments rent for $4-$5/ft²/month, that's hard. They didn't do enough. And they also made things a lot worse.
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See, downtown, along University avenue, is supposed to be a pedestrian friendly area. So curb cuts aren't allowed along University avenue. This is sensible. (It was previously unofficial policy enforced during discretionary review; now it's defined as an objective standard.)
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In this context it means one for cars -- the city doesn't allow driveways entrances for cars to be put on University Avenue.
Apr 22, 2019 · 9:57 PM UTC
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