In keeping with Portland’s pedestrian-friendly
building codes, city council commissioners have been waging a war
on oversized garages.
The Portland City Council
unanimously concluded that “snout houses’ – the tract homes
dominated by garages thrusting toward the street – lack community
spirit and make pedestrians feel less
safe.
“These houses don’t (just) turn their backs
to the street,” says Charlie Hales, the city commissioner who led
the charge for the ban. “They ignore the street completely. All
they present is the blank, sightless orifice of the garage doors.”
Portland’s ordinance requires that no more than
50 percent of a home’s front wall be occupied by the garage, that
the front door face the street rather than a recessed alcove and
that the garage sit along the same line or behind the front of the
house. It also requires windows or doors to cover at least 15
percent of the house’s facade.
“This (ban) is a
recognition that architecture affects the humanity of the street –
whether it’s safe, welcoming and neighborly – or just a void
through which we drive our cars,” Hales says.
But
Mark Hylland, general counsel for the Home Builders Association of
Metropolitan Portland, says the rules have mixed effects on crime.
Windows provide “eyes on the street,” he notes, but they also allow
people on the street to eye the contents of a house. Massive
garages are “real, physical barriers’ that help keep thieves at
bay.
The new rules may also add thousands of
dollars to the cost of new homes, particularly the middle-class
“affordable housing” markets, he says.
City
commissioners are sticking to their plan, however, in the hopes of
continuing Portland’s example-setting city
planning.
Hales concludes, “We refuse to build
our city around the car.”
* Richard A.
Lovett
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline ‘Snooty’ garages banned.
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