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I went on a rather long walk today with my dog, focusing on trying to wander instead of just going out and back. I decided midway through that I wanted a cookie, and ended up making the trek to town and country. Despite living less than 15 minutes away from T+C by both car and bike, and despite it being the closest shopping center to me, I never really come here. To start off with my empathizing I recorded some observations. It is 2pm on thursday, so it is a bit after lunchtime and before all the PALY kids get out of class. I was sitting on the benches on the corner outside the cupcake shop. At this time of day, very few people were outside the shops, most people were walking from their cars to whatever store they were going to and then back again. It felt like there was much more action in the parking lot than on any of the sidewalks. The parking lot at this place is hectic, and I am realizing it is the main reason I don’t come here as much as I feel like I otherwise would. I fall victim to driving most places, and this is not a place people would really like to drive to. It is filled edge to edge with parking spaces; almost every possible inch of town and country is filled with parking. It is on a very busy corner (embarcadero and el camino), so turning in and out of the parking lot can be annoying. It is a bit of a labyrinth, so there are always pedestrians walking back to their cars from every which direction. I literally once got backed into outside jamba juice a while ago. If we take town and country as a product, the crunch for parking here makes it less appealing for everyone, people who walk or bike there, and also people who drive there. I walked around the parking lot and noticed that there is a new valet parking stand in the back, which is apparently an attempt to solve these very issues, although it seems to be more a sidestep to me.
The desire to fix the issues cause by car-based suburban sprawl is not a new one. Many places across the united states and further afield suffer from the dominance of cars. Because it is not an issue that can be solved by the implementation of a single product (as demonstrated by the valet stand), I was hesitant to think about this problem as a potential project, but after ideating a bit I think I have a few ideas.
I first briefly defined the problem and target audience. I am looking to create a solution to the problem from the perspective of pedestrians, people who are at town and country on foot. They could have driven there, but hopefully they walked or biked. They could and often would have just hopped out of a car, but the solution to the problem faced by those in a car is different from those on foot, even when people go back and forth between these two groups. How can we make town and country a more comfortable place for pedestrians?
Some potential solutions to this problem include (not all of these are products):
Reducing the number of cars (through one of the following means).
charging for parking
reducing the number of parking spaces
building a parking structure nearby
an app or service that provides discounts at town and country when you carpool or use an alternative means of transportation
Organizing the cars better
each building has parking on each side. if we better organized the overall space, it could be more efficient (not feasible)
fewer entrances and exits (better for pedestrians, worse for cars)
app or display screen that shows where available parking spaces are (would reduce the endless circling of cars)
