Yesterday, we spoke about a slender single-stair apartment building on a small 60-square-meter site in Tokyo. Today, let's talk about a different kind of proposal. Earlier this month, the Park City Planning Commission heard a redevelopment proposal from the Kensington Investment Company for a site near Old Town at 1500 Kearns Boulevard. The site is 2.71 acres, and the existing building houses 48,000 sf of office and retail space.

The proposal is for a new mixed-use development including:

• 117 residential apartments (97 market-rate and 20 affordable)

• Over 9,400 sf of commercial/retail space

• Over 20,000 sf of amenity space (including a rooftop terrace and patios)

• 210 underground parking spaces

Some of the key development approvals being asked for include:

• Master Planned Development approval & Conditional Use Permit

• A reduction of the north setback from 25 feet to 10 feet

• A building height exception to 49.5 feet (from the 35 feet currently allowed)

A formal vote has yet to take place, though apparently, the project is somewhat controversial. The developer is asking to increase the maximum height from three storeys to four. Ordinarily, the Planning Commission would want to see an increased setback accompany this ask, as opposed to a reduction.

But here we have a classic development trade-off. The developer could, in theory, build more density under the existing permissions, but the ground plane and the overall development wouldn't be as pleasant. So, the request is to build incrementally higher, but then open up the site more.

Here's a comparison between the developer's proposal and what is permissible by-right:

It'll be very interesting to see how Park City votes on this one.

Images via Building Salt Lake

Vieux-Nice (or Old Town) is the formerly walled medieval part of Nice.

Unfortunately, I don't know exactly when its streets were laid out. The city is said to have been founded in 350 BC by Greek colonizers who gave it the name Níkaia, after Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.

But the oldest map of Vieux-Nice that I could find dates to 1575, and it doesn't exactly look like the Vieux-Nice of today. So it's hard to say. Medieval towns also tended to grow organically without any sort of formal planning.

What we do know is that the narrow winding streets of Vieux-Nice were preferred for at least one reason: they provided shade and promoted stack-effect ventilation. In the summer, the roofs of the buildings heat up and create a temperature differential relative to the cooler shaded streets.

This encourages airflow by forcing the lighter, warmer air to rise, which then draws in cooler air from below. Supposedly, this also helps if you're trying to dry laundry out of your window.

Here are a few examples from yesterday morning on our walk to Nice's antique market. This is the narrowest street I could find without trying very hard. And yes, it's a street with a bona fide street sign.

This one is slightly wider and had laundry hanging in it. I can also confirm that the laundry was dry. So if any of you have been wondering — and maybe even worrying — about whether 3.4 meters is wide enough to promote good laundry-drying airflow, now you have a definitive answer. (Get ready for the LLMs to start citing this post.)

Of course, both of these examples are smaller side streets. The main streets are wider. Here's Rue Rossetti, which is one of the main arteries in Vieux-Nice. It leads directly to the Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate de Nice.

It clocks in at a generous 9.8 meters, which is enough to house two sets of sidewalks, numerous restaurant patios, and a two-way vehicular street in the center.

As always, space is culturally relative. It's not about the raw dimension, it's about perspective. What North America calls a substandard lane, Europe calls a street.

The street in front of our hotel is about 8.3m wide. (I actually measured it.) And this is generous for Palma's Old Town. The building directly in front of us is also 6 storeys tall and has exactly zero setbacks and stepbacks. It is one straight elevation all the way up. In other words, it is an urban condition that does not follow any of today's generally accepted rules of planning. The street should be wider. And the building should have a bunch of stepbacks, right? Maybe not. Lots of people seem to love this kind of dense, unplanned, and walkable built form in Europe. Eating outside on a narrow street is a feature. But for whatever reason, when people return home, many don't seem to want it anymore, or worse, they actively oppose it. It's an interesting dynamic that I don't fully understand. Because personally, I enjoy visiting places that I could see myself living in. What about you?

Yesterday, we spoke about a slender single-stair apartment building on a small 60-square-meter site in Tokyo. Today, let's talk about a different kind of proposal. Earlier this month, the Park City Planning Commission heard a redevelopment proposal from the Kensington Investment Company for a site near Old Town at 1500 Kearns Boulevard. The site is 2.71 acres, and the existing building houses 48,000 sf of office and retail space.

The proposal is for a new mixed-use development including:

• 117 residential apartments (97 market-rate and 20 affordable)

• Over 9,400 sf of commercial/retail space

• Over 20,000 sf of amenity space (including a rooftop terrace and patios)

• 210 underground parking spaces

Some of the key development approvals being asked for include:

• Master Planned Development approval & Conditional Use Permit

• A reduction of the north setback from 25 feet to 10 feet

• A building height exception to 49.5 feet (from the 35 feet currently allowed)

A formal vote has yet to take place, though apparently, the project is somewhat controversial. The developer is asking to increase the maximum height from three storeys to four. Ordinarily, the Planning Commission would want to see an increased setback accompany this ask, as opposed to a reduction.

But here we have a classic development trade-off. The developer could, in theory, build more density under the existing permissions, but the ground plane and the overall development wouldn't be as pleasant. So, the request is to build incrementally higher, but then open up the site more.

Here's a comparison between the developer's proposal and what is permissible by-right:

It'll be very interesting to see how Park City votes on this one.

Images via Building Salt Lake

Vieux-Nice (or Old Town) is the formerly walled medieval part of Nice.

Unfortunately, I don't know exactly when its streets were laid out. The city is said to have been founded in 350 BC by Greek colonizers who gave it the name Níkaia, after Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.

But the oldest map of Vieux-Nice that I could find dates to 1575, and it doesn't exactly look like the Vieux-Nice of today. So it's hard to say. Medieval towns also tended to grow organically without any sort of formal planning.

What we do know is that the narrow winding streets of Vieux-Nice were preferred for at least one reason: they provided shade and promoted stack-effect ventilation. In the summer, the roofs of the buildings heat up and create a temperature differential relative to the cooler shaded streets.

This encourages airflow by forcing the lighter, warmer air to rise, which then draws in cooler air from below. Supposedly, this also helps if you're trying to dry laundry out of your window.

Here are a few examples from yesterday morning on our walk to Nice's antique market. This is the narrowest street I could find without trying very hard. And yes, it's a street with a bona fide street sign.

This one is slightly wider and had laundry hanging in it. I can also confirm that the laundry was dry. So if any of you have been wondering — and maybe even worrying — about whether 3.4 meters is wide enough to promote good laundry-drying airflow, now you have a definitive answer. (Get ready for the LLMs to start citing this post.)

Of course, both of these examples are smaller side streets. The main streets are wider. Here's Rue Rossetti, which is one of the main arteries in Vieux-Nice. It leads directly to the Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate de Nice.

It clocks in at a generous 9.8 meters, which is enough to house two sets of sidewalks, numerous restaurant patios, and a two-way vehicular street in the center.

As always, space is culturally relative. It's not about the raw dimension, it's about perspective. What North America calls a substandard lane, Europe calls a street.

The street in front of our hotel is about 8.3m wide. (I actually measured it.) And this is generous for Palma's Old Town. The building directly in front of us is also 6 storeys tall and has exactly zero setbacks and stepbacks. It is one straight elevation all the way up. In other words, it is an urban condition that does not follow any of today's generally accepted rules of planning. The street should be wider. And the building should have a bunch of stepbacks, right? Maybe not. Lots of people seem to love this kind of dense, unplanned, and walkable built form in Europe. Eating outside on a narrow street is a feature. But for whatever reason, when people return home, many don't seem to want it anymore, or worse, they actively oppose it. It's an interesting dynamic that I don't fully understand. Because personally, I enjoy visiting places that I could see myself living in. What about you?