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Honorable Menlo Park City Council,
Dear City Council members,
I support building new affordable homes downtown and I urge you to do the same on January 14th.
I would like to first thank you for serving our community here in Menlo Park. I appreciate the city council and respect your work greatly. I am sending a note in support of the proposal to transform and develop the parking lots in downtown Menlo Park to
become mixed income housing. My family and I have lived in Linfield Oaks for the last 13 years, and my 2 children attend our public schools and spend quite a bit of time in downtown Menlo Park. Just to highlight a few of my credentials, my father, Vukan Vuchic,
is actually one of the most famous Urban Planners and Transportation Engineers of the last century. He was a professor for over 45 years at the University of Pennsylvania and is largely considered the godfather of modern transportation and city planning. He
was responsible for bringing light rail to America in the 70s, he was writing books about designing towns and cities around people first as opposed to cars back in the 1970s before people ever considered the concept. He is also credited with defining modern
planning concepts like intermodal and multi-use city and transportation planning. His trilogy of books have been called the “bibles of transportation and city planning”.
My family and I are in FULL and enthusiastic support of transforming downtown parking lots into vibrant housing. It is clear that parking is not the solution to Menlo Park’s lethargic downtown and half empty retail stores. The parking lots are an eye-sore,
poorly designed for pedestrians and empty for large periods of time. The #1 principle my dad always talks about is that you ALWAYS design around people first, and then supplement cars. Centering parking lots puts cars first and leaves people to deal with them.
In addition, we need integrated solutions that solve for housing, commerce and entertainment together. Trying to put these all in separate locations with different solutions only increases traffic and parking requirements everywhere. This is what America did
in the 70’s and 80’s to disastrous effects and has left us with separate business districts, empty remote shopping malls, and sleepy isolated housing…and in turn tons of traffic and parking between them all. Many other cities in the peninsula have gone in
the integrated multi-use direction with great success and renewed vibrancy and accessibility to their towns. I hope Menlo Park will follow.
Please vote "yes" to new affordable homes downtown on January 14th.
Sincerely,
Vic Vuchic
226 Morgan Ln.
Menlo Park, CA
vic@vuchic.com
Victor
California
