The garages piss me off too.

What I don't "get" is why just about every new townhouse has a microscopic patch of "grass" in the front. What the hell is that for? Do they need to run out and buy a lawn mower just to cut a 5X4 patch of grass (or weeds as the case may be). If I wanted to cut fugging grass I would move to the suburbs.

Then all the utilities are sticking out the front of the building???Hideous.

I'd love to see the street-facing garages go, too. Unfortunately, getting rid of them would require either of two changes:

--The city building code would need to be revised to eliminate the requirement that all new SFRs built in the city include parking for one car on the property, or

--we would need to build more alleys and back the garages onto them.

About the only places where the SFR garage plague has been avoided are multi-dwelling developments whose lots are large enough to accommodate either a shared parking lot or an underground garage.

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Jazz and blogging are both intimate, improvisational, and individual -- but also inherently collective. And the audience talks over both." --Andrew Sullivan, "Why I Blog," The Atlantic, November 2008

exactly, the new buildings are addressing the issue with parking, so its a problem that will be taking care of itself.

The multifamily dwellings (apartments, condos) may be, but the SFRs (Single-Family Residences) aren't.

What people are complaining about are houses that have garages on their street floor. The width of a Philadelphia rowhouse being what it is, this means that the entire street floor is taken up by two doors: the garage door and the entrance to the house. It's unattractive, and if the houses are on the side of the street with the parking lane, it also eliminates some on-street parking.

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Jazz and blogging are both intimate, improvisational, and individual -- but also inherently collective. And the audience talks over both." --Andrew Sullivan, "Why I Blog," The Atlantic, November 2008

The garage front effectively eliminates on-street parking in front of that house. Additionally, the garage front seems to encourage un-neighborly behavior. Like the owners who use the sidewalk as their personal driveways, forcing pedestrians to the curb or beyond. Or the owners who drive into their garages, enter their houses through interior doors, and therefore rarely interact with their neighbors or passersby.

One of the reasons we chose to buy in our block is that the housing stock was such that garage fronts would be unlikely.

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