The Arrogance of Space in Downtown Sunnyvale
- Daria Mukhachova
- 20 hours ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 13 hours ago
Walk through downtown Sunnyvale on a weekend afternoon, and you’ll notice something: historic Murphy Avenue feels alive. People sit outside at restaurants, children run around, friends meet for coffee, and musicians fill the street with sound; it feels less like a street and more like a public space — a place where community happens.
Sunnyvale has seen this happen in other moments too. When Washington Avenue closes for the Farmers’ Market every Saturday morning, the street transforms. The space that usually moves cars becomes a place where people gather, walk, shop, and connect.
But look around outside of historic Murphy Avenue and the Farmers' Market. The places where people spend time are actually a small part of downtown. Surrounding Murphy Avenue is a much larger landscape dedicated to moving and storing cars: surface parking lots, parking garages, and on-street parking that fills much of the surrounding area. This raises a simple question: what is downtown actually designed for?
In 2012, Danish urban designer Mikael Colville-Andersen introduced a concept that helps answer this question. He called it “The Arrogance of Space”. His idea was simple: take an aerial image of a city and color the space based on what it is designed for — roads and parking for cars, spaces for walking and biking, and spaces where people live, work, shop, and gather. Once you see a city this way, it becomes difficult to ignore what is usually hidden in plain sight: how much space is dedicated to cars compared to everything else. So we started wondering: What would downtown Sunnyvale look like through this lens?
Most of the land surrounding this lively pedestrian street isn't occupied by homes, restaurants, parks, or public spaces. It's occupied instead by parking. Our illustration makes something almost invisible suddenly obvious. The balance is striking. One pedestrian street — one of the places where downtown feels most alive — is surrounded by a sea of parking lots. And even this illustration understates the reality. It doesn’t capture every parking garage, every surface lot, or the miles of surrounding streets designed primarily to move and store cars. Downtown Sunnyvale is connected by a much larger network of car storage: public parking lots, garages, underground parking, Caltrain parking, and on-street spaces surrounding historic Murphy Avenue. Murphy Avenue isn't just sitting next to a few parking lots. It's surrounded by an entire parking system. How many parking lots and garages do you see in the accompanying map?
The Hidden Cost of Surface Parking in Downtown Sunnyvale
Parking often feels free. But it isn't. Every parking lot requires valuable land to be purchased, paved, maintained, lit, cleaned, and eventually resurfaced. More importantly, every parking lot comes with an opportunity cost. That same land could instead become:
housing,
local businesses,
a neighborhood park,
a public plaza,
outdoor dining,
or safer walking and biking connections.
Surface parking is one of the least productive uses of valuable downtown land. A parking lot can store cars for only a few people. On comparable space, a restaurant patio can serve dozens of customers each day, a small apartment building can house many families, and a public square can allow people to gather.
Parking is necessary. But every acre devoted to storing empty vehicles is an acre that cannot serve another purpose. The question immediately becomes: "But where would people park?" Fortunately, downtown already provides an answer. Structured parking already exists nearby, including the Parking Pear Garage near Target, Whole Foods, AMC, and Caltrain, among others. The question isn't whether downtown should have parking. It's whether some of its most valuable land should continue being used primarily to store empty cars.
Cities Reveal Their Priorities
You might be thinking: "Well, somebody must have wanted all this parking." The truth is more complicated. Most of this wasn't the result of one bad decision. For decades, cities across North America required new developments to include large amounts of parking. Streets were widened to move more traffic. Each individual decision seemed reasonable. Taken together, those decisions reshaped our cities around cars rather than around people. Cities reveal their priorities through how they allocate space. When we look at downtown Sunnyvale from above, we aren't just seeing roads and parking lots. We're seeing decades of decisions about what—and who—our public space is for.
We Usually Ask the Wrong Question
Whenever a protected bike lane, wider sidewalk, or safer crosswalk is proposed, the discussion usually begins with the same question: "Where will the cars go?" But maybe that's the wrong question. Imagine asking instead:
Where will the children go?
Where will older adults feel safe walking?
How can someone get lunch without driving two blocks?
Language shapes how we think. Instead of asking how children can safely exist in a car-dominated environment, perhaps we should ask: How should cars fit into a world where people—including children—live? It's a small change in wording, but it completely changes the conversation.
We Aren't Taking Streets Away
One of the most common arguments against safer streets is that bike lanes or wider sidewalks "take away" space from cars. But streets were never created exclusively for cars. For centuries, they were places where people met neighbors, shopped, played, celebrated, and simply existed. When we redesign a street for people, we aren't closing it. We're opening it. We're allowing more people to use the same public space—not just those inside a vehicle. Nobody describes Murphy Avenue as feeling "closed." It feels more open than almost anywhere else in downtown.
A Street Built for People
Murphy Avenue wasn't always pedestrian-only. Before the pandemic, space devoted to cars took up most of the street. During the pandemic, the street was temporarily closed (or should we say opened?) so restaurants could expand outdoor dining. When the City later asked whether Murphy Avenue should remain pedestrian-only, the response was overwhelming. Residents supported making it permanently pedestrian-only. Nearly 90% of downtown businesses did too. That's remarkable. What began as an emergency measure ended up becoming permanent.
The businesses most directly affected by removing car traffic weren't asking for cars to return. They had already experienced what happened when people—not vehicles—became the priority. No public study has shown exactly how much business increased after Murphy Avenue became pedestrian-only. But perhaps the strongest evidence is simpler than that. The businesses themselves lived with the change for two years—and overwhelmingly asked the City to keep it. Sometimes actions speak louder than statistics.
Looking at Sunnyvale Differently
This isn't a battle between drivers and all other road users. Most of us drive. Many of us also walk. Some bike. Some take Caltrain and buses. The goal isn't to make driving impossible. The goal is to give people more choices and to create a city where an eight-year-old can safely ride a bike, where an older adult feels comfortable walking to dinner, and where families have places to gather that aren't parking lots. Murphy Avenue shows what's possible. It's the block everyone loves, because we put people first.
Want to Try Mapping Space Yourself?
Curious what your own neighborhood looks like? Try out the Arrogance of Space mapping tool. It lets anyone create similar visualizations of their own city. Looking at familiar places from above can completely change how you think about public space. Share your picture on Socials and tag us.
Conclusion
For decades, we have designed our streets around one question: How do we move more cars? Maybe it’s time to ask a different one: How do we create a city where everyone — whether they’re 8 or 80 — has the freedom to choose how they move and feels safe using our streets? Changing a city often starts with something simple: changing how we see the spaces around us. Once we notice how much room we dedicate to different priorities, we can begin imagining new possibilities.
So, if you could transform one parking lot in Downtown Sunnyvale into a space for people, what would you build? A park? More housing? A public plaza? A place for art, play, or community events? We’d love to hear your ideas.
Want to get involved? Join our next monthly meeting and help shape the future of Sunnyvale’s streets and public spaces. Contact us at info@sunnyvalesafestreets.org .
About the Author
Daria Mukhachova has a passion about doing urbanism right. She believes that streets should be designed for people first. That means creating places where walking, biking and taking transit are safe, comfortable, and enjoyable, while still supporting occasions when driving is necessary.
