The Bath and Racquet Club proposal has also spurred fierce opposition from neighbors over height, density, and traffic, as the Sarasota Observer reports. This development site is in a congested area behind a very popular Trader Joe's store. The store's parking lot routinely causes traffic snarl-ups on the side streets that serve it, and these are the same streets that would serve B&RC's residents. There is a very good chance that residents would enter and leave the development via a back route, down quiet neighborhood streets, rather than deal with the Trader Joe's chaos. This could be legitimately disruptive.

On the other hand, we have to remember that this development site is directly behind a very popular Trader Joe's, which means its residents would rarely have to get in their cars to go buy groceries. Like Siesta Promenade, the Bath and Racquet Club site is near the intersection of two large arterial roads that would be perfect for future bus rapid transit, providing a quick, painless connection to downtown and large employers such as Sarasota Memorial Hospital. Within walking distance is the Westfield Southgate Mall, which has been recently redeveloped as a dining and entertainment hub. Finally, not far from the site is the other one of the two bridge accesses to Siesta Key, South Sarasota's single biggest draw.

I repeat: if mixed-use, compact, relatively dense development in the suburbs is not appropriate here, then where is it appropriate?

The Chicken or the Egg?

Whatever my sympathies for these projects in principle—we've got to start allowing this stuff somewhere, right?—I don't think the opponents of these projects are being unreasonable. They're basically making the common-sense argument that if you cram hundreds of new people and their cars into an already-congested area, localized congestion is likely to get worse.

It'd be nice to imagine that many of the residents of these buildings won't drive, but let's be realistic: these proposals are isolated enclaves of high density in low-density suburbia. People will drive.

The congestion problem, we have argued before, is attributable to suburban design: a hierarchical road network that funnels traffic onto large arterials. This is a recipe for congestion far worse than we'd experience if we had a well-connected street grid with many routes from A to B. But reconnecting that grid would be a very long time coming.

And a lot of the problem is suburban design not even in the immediate vicinity of these proposals. It's a whole system. Beachgoers from all over the county funnel through the major intersections adjacent to these two projects. And they're almost all driving, because their own neighborhoods afford no better options.

It's a serious chicken-egg problem.

I'm torn about these two projects, as I said. I think they represent the worst of both urban and suburban, but possibly also a bridge to something better than the status quo in their respective locations. I want walkable nodes to exist at U.S. 41 and Bee Ridge Road, and at U.S. 41 and Stickney Point, and that means significant new development around those intersections.

It just seems that getting there from here is going to involve some pain. You have to go uphill out of the valley before you can go downhill. You might even have to destroy the village in order to save it.

Or do you?

I think there is an alternative, but it's one that has thus far been completely off the table because of a whole host of regulatory, cultural, and financial barriers.

Trying to manufacture a node of walkable, traditional urban development out of whole cloth is an awkward endeavor, but taking the part of the city that already has that form, and letting its radius grow, makes sense to me. Let it grow incrementally up, incrementally out, and incrementally more intense.

There are neighborhoods within 2 to 3 miles of downtown that, by this logic, should be open to the next level of development. Let single-family homes become duplexes and triplexes. Let small apartment buildings, 8 to 12 units, go up on corner lots. Let mom-and-pop stores and cafes open in these areas to serve growing populations.

This slideshow (photos by me) illustrates small apartment buildings, duplexes, and triplexes coexist in a neighborhood adjacent to downtown Sarasota. What if we allowed this sort of "gentle density" in more places than we do now?