applying narrow street ideas

Per the previous post, what if I apply those ideas where I live? First we need more clarity on what we're starting with, like the height/width ratio. The street width is 30 feet curb to curb, around 45 feet between property lines, and then there's driveways to account for. I'll guess 60-70 feet wall to wall.

Height is a bit tricky. The houses are one-story, but elevated on mounds of dirt. Also, the street slopes a lot, so one end of the house is near ground level while the other is above a garage (though there the "dirt mound" effect is gone.) So depending on where you're standing, the height from the sidewalk might be 15-25 feet.

At worst that's a 1:5 height:width ratio, not quite to Speck's "too open" level of 1:6. At best, it's 2:5, almost 1:2. The setbacks aren't deep enough for ADUs, so the only way to change that would be to replace or expand the buildings. (It would be neat if you could just add stories to houses, but I suspect that's not feasible unless one planned ahead when first building it.) You could get new buildings, 30 feet for 3 stories, up to the property lines, for a ratio of 30:45 or 2:3. Though that would displace two tall trees and a bunch of flowers, not an unalloyed win. Leaving the plants alone, 30:60, 1:2.

Anyway, what about the street itself? The lowest impact change would be to take 6-8 feet of width, losing one car travel lane, and give them to the sidewalks. This would make each sidewalk 8-9 feet wide. No precious parking would be lost. The street would have one lane, one-way for cars, but traffic is low so that's not a huge deal. Though maybe even drivers would start cursing the long blocks. (Or you could keep two travel lanes, and lose one parking.)

More aggressively, take half the street, say 14 feet, leaving two lanes for cars. 12 feet sidewalks? Or give the space to the properties; with setbacks now of maybe 17 feet, tiny ADUs/ACUs start being possible. (E.g. my property is at least 80 feet long; 40x10 = 400 sqft, on the high end of tiny home or microapartment. Make it two stories and you've got a 2BR unit if not a small house.)

Probably some of the privatized space would be used for parking, to replace the curbside parking. But it's an interesting contrast: public space that is 100% used for parking, though theoretically repurposeable en masse for something else some day, vs. private space that might well be used parking, but could also be other uses, on a fine scale. (E.g. Peter using it for parking, while Alice builds an ADU, and George expands his garden.)

measuring via body parts, and sidewalks

Sometimes I like to know how long things are. Usually I don't travel with a tape measure. Even if I did, it's not always appropriate. I've had various ways of trying to approximately measure things, but today I refined them.

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