From New World Economics writer Nathan Lewis: "We've been working on a series of ideas for creating Traditional City-type neighborhoods that will nevertheless be compatible with Suburban Hell as it exists in the United States. In practice, this means that each home requires at least one space of off-street parking. One of our first forays into the subject was the New New Suburbanist pattern, which combined 40x50 (2000 square foot) single-family house plots with 16-foot Really Narrow Streets.
"That was fun, so now we want to up the stakes a bit and double density once again, reducing the house plot size to around 1000 square feet, or 20-25 feet wide by 40-50 feet long. We will retain at least one off-street parking spot per site. Once again, we will use the Really Narrow pedestrian street of about 16 feet wide. The high population density itself does a lot to solve the problem of automobiles, because, at that level, a lot of things are now in walking distance.
"With a plot width of only 20-25 feet wide, the buildings become quite close together or even fully attached, a format commonly known as a 'townhouse.' My point is, this is a very common format throughout the world, for people who live in towns, i.e. urban environments. So, when I talk about a 20-25 foot wide plot, you have to get over the 'that's insane!' reaction you might have, because it's not insane at all. It's normal.
"The basic problem we face today is somehow integrating that off-street parking into our townhouse design. The basic problem with townhouses and parking is that you can tend to end up with the 'wall of garage doors' effect. One solution is just to have a variety of solutions. Some houses have double-width garage doors, some have cars parked outside, some have single-width garage doors with stack parking, some just have parking for only one car, some have side parking. If you have a lot of variety, that helps a lot." Full post here.