[HN Gopher] Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
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Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
Author : jseliger
Score : 63 points
Date : 2021-08-06 21:39 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.governing.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.governing.com)
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I think one of the things we need to do is actively work at
| decoupling parking from specific buildings. We currently require
| x number of parking spaces per residential unit or per commercial
| venue and it helps keep us trapped in a situation where you need
| a car to make your life work.
|
| We need to find ways to accommodate parking in a way that helps
| us be flexible and let's people who prefer cars keep them without
| making them a privileged class pushing out all other options.
|
| We don't really talk about that. We talk in an either/or fashion
| rather than talking about how to make it genuinely optional and a
| personal choice. We expect everyone to get on the same page and
| agree rather than working on saying "We don't really need this
| much parking. The parking lots are never full. Let's scale back
| the parking and make it shared somehow so there's enough parking,
| not too much parking and it no longer strangles mixed use,
| walkable development."
| foxpurple wrote:
| I recently moved from a house in the suburbs in Australia to an
| apartment in the city. Got rid of my car and now I just walk to
| everything I need. I couldn't be happier. Driving was such a huge
| stress on my life that is now gone. I can get anything I need
| within a 10 minute walk.
|
| The thing is it just doesn't seem like the average person is
| willing to give up single family houses to gain walkability. For
| me, I would never go back.
| iammisc wrote:
| Or... hear me out. You could just build walkable suburbs. Why
| there is a distinction between 'suburb' and 'smaller city' is
| beyond me, but there really is.
|
| A small city still has a walkable downtown core with apartments
| around which there is a small area of single family homes
| within walking distance to the downtown area.
|
| A suburb is just tracts of single family homes and nothing else
| for miles on end. No real 'business area', certainly no
| walkable one.
|
| We could just talk a normal suburb, rezone some homes to
| business districts and take cars off that street. Voila. Now
| you have a mini downtown near a bunch of single family homes.
| Oh yeah, and you have a nice business district that's cheaper
| than the real downtown that is a good launching place for local
| businesses. win win win.
|
| Now do that everywhere, and then connect the little townie
| areas via rapid transit and you have something lovely.
| foxpurple wrote:
| You can kind of have it if you mean walkable to just the
| general store, a cafe and a few other things but you can
| never have everything because many kinds of stores can only
| exist with a certain population close enough.
|
| What I love about living in the city is literally
| _everything_ I need is within walking distance. I have not
| used a car or any form of public transport in months and have
| felt no need to, I can buy anything within walking distance
| and all offices for any job I would take in this state are
| within walking distance. You just can't have that with houses
| because each house takes up a significant space which you
| have to walk past to get anywhere.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| Even with single-family housing, the density is high enough
| to support a supermarket and other stores that are visited
| at a rate of once per month within walking distance,
| easily.
|
| Source: the town I grew up in: https://www.google.com/maps/
| dir/51.2413047,6.9602975/51.2481...
|
| Population is 36,000 or so. I've added the walking distance
| from the outskirts to the very center, which is 2.3km.
| You'll note that there are supermarkets distributed
| throughout, usually within a few hundred meters.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| I guess it depends on which suburb. Some suburbs in Sydney
| are fairly liveable. Especially where there is a mix of
| housing, or, as much as I hate them, large apartment
| complexes. You can get all the things you need and have a
| few restaurants, all within walking distance.
|
| Other suburbs, especially those huge "communities" with
| lots of cookie cutter homes seem really isolated. You have
| to drive.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| We need more apartments for purchase rather than renting in
| America. That's practically unheard of in Texas- just about
| anything in a shared building is only for rent.
| foxpurple wrote:
| That seems to be the norm in Australia. When a building gets
| approved, the developer puts all the apartments up for sale
| before it gets built. Of course most of them get sold to
| landlords but it's not one company that owns the whole
| building and there is nothing stopping you buying one as they
| are always selling.
| brighton36 wrote:
| I think the problems of governance are non-trivial in tenant-
| owned apartments. Not that they can't work, obviously. But, I
| think the ability to 'vote with your feet', is a bit more
| powerful than the ability to reconcile disagreements between
| owners.
| standardUser wrote:
| Landlords hoard housing and sell it back to people for a
| profit. It's arguable that most people would be better off
| buying their housing directly, but like you say the options
| are extremely limited.
| kory wrote:
| I want to live in a walkable streetcar suburb:
|
| * Reasonably sized (2-3k soft) lots
|
| * Homes built with a variety of beautiful architecture
|
| * Area is not overbuilt to the point where all greenery and
| sunlight are gone and replaced by large buildings
|
| * alleys behind the lot, with garages hidden, to keep a single
| car (which is still really necessary in modern life)
|
| * small, thin, tree-lined streets
|
| * within walking distance to locally-owned bakery, a grocery
| store, coffee shop, public transit, etc.
|
| The problem with living in these desirable, walkable,
| neighborhoods is that once they're built up enough, there is
| intense lobby to fill the the area with higher density housing
| because of the critical mass of services available.
|
| Of course, that's necessary, but buying in these areas put you at
| big risk of having to move away if you don't like massive density
| increases, whereas buying in a suburb protects you from that
| change.
| iammisc wrote:
| > The problem with living in these desirable, walkable,
| neighborhoods is that once they're built up enough, activists
| lobby to destroy what was built to fill it with high density
| housing because of the critical mass of services available to
| the area.
|
| You're absolutely right. I live in one of these neighborhoods
| (actually literally was built as a streetcar suburb) and we
| have historic district protections so we're safe.
|
| However, the impetus to build the 'high-density' housing is
| because we stopped building neighborhoods like mine with a
| corner store, bakeries, grocery store and restaurants within
| walking distance.
|
| IMO, new developments of tract homes should mandate that within
| the housing tract, the developer makes a business district with
| space for local businesses.
|
| It's simply the fact that we have a massive business shortage
| in this country that people feel the need to build high-density
| housing near the paltry number of business districts we have.
|
| Or, I mean, we could not, and everyone else can just subsidize
| my housing appreciation. Personally, I'd like to spread the joy
| of my life, but housing activists seem hell-bent on driving my
| home price up, so whatever.
| another_story wrote:
| That business district would probably sit mostly empty if the
| density of customers isn't there. At best you'd get a strip
| mall with big box stores every 5km like typical American
| suburbs.
|
| If you want a thriving business district with a mixture of
| local business you need to have density.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Everyone is subsidizing your housing appreciation when you
| don't allow more housing to be built. The activists who are
| driving up the price of your property are the activists
| trying to stop upward growth. It's pure supply and demand.
| standardUser wrote:
| Add up the roads, parking spaces, parking garages, gas stations
| (not to mention auto shops, drive thrus and car washes) and the
| total urban footprint is a gargantuan 50-60% by many
| calculations. That's not automatically a bad thing, especially if
| you are a car, but all of that space creates massive buffers
| separating all of the other stuff that humans want to walk to. To
| make it worse, those buffers are far and away the most dangerous
| thing in any urban environment.
|
| On the bright side, the pandemic seems have enabled many cities
| to finally reclaim some of that car land for use by people.
| Though it's not clear how long that will last.
| notJim wrote:
| Something I only recently learned is that zoning rules
| generally require housing developments to include a certain
| amount of parking. This drives up the cost of housing, because
| of the space required (either up or out.) Many cities are
| reducing or eliminating these requirements in an effort to make
| housing more affordable. However, it does mean that parking
| will become harder, as there will be more competition for
| street spaces.
| kiba wrote:
| I often joke that aliens would mistake the cars, not people, to
| be the dominant intelligent species of this planet.
| nickff wrote:
| That joke is made early in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
| Galaxy" (by Douglas Adams), and is why one of the major
| characters is named "Ford Prefect".
| makerofspoons wrote:
| There's a great Canadian cartoon that explored that idea:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFaHArkYLsM
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I like my car and I like driving.
|
| That said, I don't like driving _everywhere_. When I moved to
| university, it was incredibly freeing to just be able to walk
| somewhere I wanted to go rather than getting in my car and
| driving miles to get anywhere. I grew up in a suburb in Texas so
| walking anywhere except _maybe_ a friend's house was entirely out
| of the question.
|
| I visited Portland recently and it was lovely to be able to get
| around the whole city without a car. We didn't rent one, save for
| one day when we went > 100mi out of the city. No Ubers, no Lyfts-
| just walking, buses, and lightrail.
|
| Just my experience as an American.
| iammisc wrote:
| Same.... I _love_ driving.
|
| But I'm not driving to work ever. Haven't driven to work in
| years, and I never will. Just not into it.
| version_five wrote:
| What's hardest to find, and what I prefer, is somewhere it's
| easy to walk and drive. I've lived in walkable places where if
| you do have to drive, traffic is a nightmare. And then of
| course there are places where you can drive without traffic but
| there is nowhere to walk to. I think I prefer the latter with
| my lifestyle, though it becomes more frustrating for meeting
| friends, going our for dinner + drinks, etc.
|
| For sports / leisure, "driveable" areas are better for getting
| out of town and into nature faster. In bigger cities (in
| Canada) I never would have considered going skiing after work,
| but it is possible in smaller places. I find it's also easier
| to go to league sports in a driveable place. For running,
| walkable is obviously better, and one reason I like living in
| the city is that I can step out my door and safely go for a
| run, where as further out that option doesnt exist.
|
| Anyway, just my experience.
| cbdumas wrote:
| I think it's hard to find because those two preferences are
| in direct, irresolvable conflict.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Where have you been that has both? From my reading, it seems
| like cities need to prioritize walkable / bikable OR cars,
| but I've never seen example of a city doing both well.
| notJim wrote:
| IMO Portland is actually kind of like this (for now). I've
| heard Berkeley, CA sort of, too.
|
| In Portland (where I live), I have a driveway and
| convenient street parking right outside my house, but I can
| also walk to many shops and restaurants, and have a pretty
| good busline nearby. I usually take the bus if I'm going
| downtown, so I don't have to worry about parking. But in my
| part of town, which is less dense, I can conveniently drive
| or bike. Parking can be a little annoying on this side of
| town, but it's usually okay.
|
| That being said, Portland is clearly moving in a denser
| direction. Housing has gotten too expensive here, and the
| only way out of that is density. Our cycling infrastructure
| and public transit are _decent_ , but need to get better
| IMO. All of this will probably negatively impact the car-
| friendliness, but I think that's the right move for
| Portland right now.
| version_five wrote:
| Ottawa, Canada is pretty good for this. It's a pretty small
| city but has a few neighborhoods that would be considered
| walkable, while in 20 minutes you can be out into the
| country. Not sure about in the US.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Minsk does both well
| cletus wrote:
| No, they don't.
|
| This is a classic example of listening to what people say vs
| observing what they do. And it's a good lesson in product
| development. Ask your users "do you want X?" And the answer is
| intentionally "yes". Ask them "do you want A or B?" And you'll
| start to get a better approximation of user behavior. Better yet
| is observing actual behavior.
|
| In this case Americans have chosen the suburbs in droves.
|
| Americans want walkable areas in close proximity to the exact
| kind of house they live in now with all that entails: large
| single family house on a large lot with their 2+ cars.
|
| People would don't love in the US may not realize just how large
| the lots are most Americans live on. In Australian cities a
| quarter acre block was once the dream. More typical now is half
| that.
|
| You will find areas in Atlanta where the lot size is one or even
| two acres.
|
| It's only the older typically East Coast cities that have
| anything remotely approaching the density you might see in
| Europe.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Once kids are in the picture, school districts with greater
| proportions of wealthier families is the priority.
|
| Plus, the easiest way to avoid dealing with homeless people
| and/or gangs is to live in far flung suburbs where everything
| is so far that cars are a necessity.
| harryh wrote:
| There is some truth in this post, but it's also important to
| understand that in most of the places with very large lots, it
| is illegal to subdivide the lots and build denser housing. If
| greater density was legalized, it would almost certainly be
| built and inhabited.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Not all Americans chose to live in the suburbs. Many Americans
| are finding themselves displaced from cities in to far out
| areas. This happens because demand to live in cities is causing
| increased rents.
|
| I know there are people happily living in suburbia by choice.
| But there are also many government policies from restrictive
| zoning to an imbalanced 80:20 highways to transit spending
| ratio that has profound impacts on how people live.
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