Asheville developers go big with eco, at the worst time ever 3

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1. 

   liberalnun Posted 5:10 am
   29 Jan 2009

   Building a garage for Smart cars isn't smart. A Smart car gets only a fraction of the mpg that a Prius or an Insight gets. And the fuel efficiency of this year's Smart car relative to other cars will only decrease; California standards will produce a 37 mpg average standard in eighteen states by 2016. And, in matters unrelated to the environment, the car is tiny and inconvenient for those who like to use their cars to transport things. While I'm totally a fan of the green building concept, I'm not a fan of this building's imposing those cars on all its tenants.

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2. 

   rufwork Posted 4:55 am
   30 Jan 2009

   Good idea by meLangdon Winner's "Do Artifacts Have Politics" might be worth a good read if one doesn't like the Smart Car Garage idea.  There's a bit in there accusing some part of Long Island (iirc) of building bridges too low for city buses to pass through, effectively eliminating a certain sort of folk from entering the high scale neighborhood.
   That's obviously a nefarious use of technology, but the small garage seems less so.  It's not like you could only put a Smart Car in there there; I bet a 60 mpg motorcycle fits fairly well too.  And this could contribute to a new size standard smaller than the lanes we're used to today, slowly doing its part to encourage car makers to create more Smart-sized cars, potentially with much better mpg, parked in these sorts of spaces in the future.
   I guess the practical question becomes if there are enough alternatives that folks in this condo do something else with their garages.  That is, is there long term, full sized parking nearby that would likely turn the garage into storage for many would-be condo owners?
   In any event, I'd agree with the initial blog; there's nothing particularly bad about helping folk think small when they think auto.

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3. 

   spaceshaper Posted 7:59 am
   30 Jan 2009

   Smart - not so much?Agree with liberalnun. Smartcars only real benefit is how short they are. Handy parking on the streets of Paris, not so big a deal in the US where most every urban parking space is marked for a full-size, and you're up for a ticket if you double-park 2 Smarts at one meter. Apparently this project went for the Smartcar strategy as a workaround as they couldn't get enough full-size spaces under the building to meet city ordinances (a common enough scenario) - which begs the question, if this building is downtown why does it need parking spaces at all? Doesn't Asheville have a Zipcar franchise? If not why not?
   Of course the subtext makes it clear the condos are positioned as second, third or whatever homes for wealthy out-of-towners ("their Asheville car"). So, greenwash anyone?
   
   The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

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