No Elevators. No Cars.

For years I've read of the need to re-create a small town feel.    Make roads more narrow, or houses less tall, or...   

No cars.    No elevators.    Simple, strict, restrictive.    Easy to monitor.    That's a car sir.    You can't bring that in here.    That building is too tall.    If someone lives that high up, and there is no elevator (We Do Not Allow Elevators In Town) they are in deep danger -- from fire, from being boxed in....

Essentially, all things in our town are built on a human scale.    Before cars and elevators existed, cities had to be Human in scale. 

I live half of each year in a British city of over a quarter million people: Southampton. I've never been in an elevator -- except in a department store.    There are a couple of apartment buildings (more than 12 stories high) that pierce the skyline near me – one I see when I bike over a mile away to a another shopping street (Shirley High Street) I frequent. I see the other over-twelve-stories apartment building when we drive toward a freeway on our way out of town.

Such tall apartment blocks are rare, very rare, in this city of a quarter of a million people. Everything is human scale, two stories, three, four, five stories high.   

Elevators?    There is a place for such machines in big cities, where land is at a premium: many are packed together, every inch of space costs a fortune.

Most places -- most wonderful, vibrant, people-filled cities can do with primarily three story high buildings.    Half of each year I live in a section of Southampton England called Highfield. The street in front of my house, Highfield Lane, snakes down for 1/2 mile, before it reaches the two-streets-long shopping street in Highfield: Portswood Road.    Along both sides, some single family attached houses (Me!), some apartments (my professor tennis opponent), some very expensive single family homes.

Many people walking, living in a small area -- but nothing towers over the other buildings.    Everything is to scale.    Many people can be housed in a small area without the skyward sprawl buildings that create the need for elevator.   

My ideal city?   No elevators.    No cars.