[HN Gopher] Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
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Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
Author : jseliger
Score : 515 points
Date : 2021-08-06 21:39 UTC (1 days ago)
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| arsome wrote:
| Now ask them if they'd rather have walkable cities and condos or
| detached homes and cars. I think you'll find the conflict rather
| quickly.
| Pxtl wrote:
| People say this until you explain the details. Sure they want
| walkability, but density? "I don't want to live in some awful
| human hive". Parking? "why would I go anywhere where I have to
| pay for parking?"
|
| Walkability flows from density, And NIMBYism has killed that.
| specialist wrote:
| There are ~1.2 billion cars globally. Expected to grow to ~1.8b
| by 2050? About the time many carbon zero targets are supposed to
| be achieved.
|
| And yet. Any proposal that a tiny fraction of all the cheddar
| supporting automobiles be repurposed for nefarious questionable
| uses, like maybe add a few bike lanes, triggers a violent
| reaction accompanied by charges of being an anti-car jihadist.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Has anyone done a recent survey of how many people want more free
| parking spots? More traffic lanes? More bridges and tunnels for
| cars? Do people want higher or lower speed limits? Cheaper or
| more expensive gas for cars? More or fewer lanes dedicated to
| busses/bikes? We should not jump to conculsions about what people
| want before asking all relevant questions.
|
| Everyone wants more walkable cities. Thats like asking if people
| want cleaner water or better hospitals. Such questions are
| meaningless on thier own.
| 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."
| tadfisher wrote:
| When visiting family in Germany I really enjoyed the practice
| in smaller towns of having one large parking facility outside
| of the city center, and having basically no parking available
| in the city center itself. The psychological sensation was
| uplifting, because normally when walking in a city I am
| subconsciously aware of the ever-present danger of death by
| automobile and all of my movements reflect that.
| atum47 wrote:
| Back in 2020 I moved to Sao Paulo to start a new job, fresh out
| of college. I knew the biggest problem people that live there
| face is the commute, so I was smart about it. I rented a place 30
| minutes walking from the job and bought a electric scooter. My
| day started at 10, so I could wake up at 9, walk or ride the
| scooter to work (Sao Paulo have some great bike lanes). On
| raining days I would call an Uber. Back in the day they would
| offer a "shared" ride, where the driver would pick up anyone in
| their routes. It was extra cheap, sometimes less then a dollar to
| go from work to home. Then, everything changed when the Covid
| attacked
| miccah wrote:
| I'm happy to hear this statistic, but American cities need to
| change so much to make it happen - mainly removing cars as other
| commenters pointed out. A good start would be making public
| transportation more available through buses and trains, followed
| by limiting cars in already more walkable areas of the city.
|
| Not Just Bikes is a great YouTube channel that explores city
| planning and often compares American cities to cities in the
| Netherlands. He has a video on Strong Towns as well.
|
| https://youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes
| [deleted]
| elevenoh wrote:
| I want to live in a healthy, beautiful, walkable city.
|
| Vancouver BC was the only primary fit for this in USA/Canada.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| I'd love to see mega blocks:
|
| Specifically, make a mega mall underground (with parking under
| that), with a single 10 story building above for office space
| (open offices already don't really have windows). You can build
| the building to have gaps where the roads should be, but more
| like tunnels. Then another 10-15 huge 50-80 story towers above
| the office space. Between the towers on the "roof" of the office
| space, a giant park with bike lanes and scooters.
|
| It's a mall (with everything you need), an office, parking spots,
| a park and "a neighborhood".
|
| I also think North America needs more apartments that are
| 3000-4000 sqft (4 bedroom 6 bathroom multi-story condos).
| pgustafs wrote:
| One point that seems to be missing from this discussion is
| climate.
|
| Walkable cities: NYC, Chicago, SF, Boston, Seattle
|
| Urban hellscapes: LA, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix
|
| Simple explanation -- people don't want to walk around in the
| heat.
| gerdesj wrote:
| A family member landed a job about 17 odd years ago in Plano, TX
| (EDS).
|
| The family across the road drove over to say hi.
| antb123 wrote:
| Walkable is good... Bikeable is even better
| dkhenry wrote:
| If you want more walkable cities you have to stop subsidizing the
| suburban sprawl that has been paid for with debt spending. The
| infrastructure that is falling apart around us is happening
| because its unsustainable, and if we just print 1T dollars every
| few years to kick the can down the road all you do is create a
| bigger problem to be solved in 20 years.
| foxpurple wrote:
| American suburbs are largely a Ponzi scheme. They start out
| with loads of funding to build out all of the infrastructure
| and then in 20 years they can not afford to replace it all so
| they are funded by building another suburb. Eventually most of
| them will fail or some economic trick will be pulled to fund
| them.
| zdragnar wrote:
| If the full 1.2T were actually on roads, we would have much
| nicer roads. Quite a bit of it goes to not-car spending.
| dkhenry wrote:
| If that specific bill was the only debt we were printing to
| subsidize car dependence it would be bad enough, however the
| majority of spending is done by municipalities which sits
| currently at 4T and its estimated we need to add 6T to that
| over the next 10 years to keep up with repairs. After we have
| spent that 10T we will then have to repair all the roads
| built in the past 20 years which is growing at about 500,000
| miles of roads per decade.
| 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.
| occz wrote:
| >The thing is it just doesn't seem like the average person is
| willing to give up single family houses to gain walkability.
|
| As other comments have mentioned, you can have both. In
| addition to that, the reason that people choose single family-
| houses is not necessarily entirely by preference: almost all of
| the land zoned for housing in the U.S is zoned for single
| family-homes. Add onto that some arcane rules about minimum
| parking amounts, minimum setbacks from the street, and the
| fully absurd standard to which suburban streets are created
| (too wide, essentially mini-highways), and you get the mess
| that exists right now.
|
| By addressing these problems, you'll go a long way to improve
| walkability.
| aix1 wrote:
| >> The thing is it just doesn't seem like the average person
| is willing to give up single family houses to gain
| walkability.
|
| > As other comments have mentioned, you can have both.
|
| Absolutely. As an example, much of London offers both.
| masterof0 wrote:
| I have the same experience. I live in a city where every place
| I need to go to is at walking distance. Rarely I take an Uber ,
| an even then , is way cheaper than having a car loan, car
| insurance and gas expenses. Every time I mention this topic
| here in the US, people seem to get a little bit defensive, and
| say: "America is so great, that everyone can afford cars and no
| one takes the bus".
| 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.
| xputer wrote:
| Amen to that. Actually getting it done is a big hairy problem
| I'm afraid though :(
| bnralt wrote:
| That seems to be the direction things are moving in. There
| was a move a few decades back away from malls and towards
| "town centers," which were basically a mix between a mall and
| a downtown area - a few blocks of pedestrian friendly streets
| filled with shops, surrounded by a ton of parking buildings.
| The current trend (from what I've seen) seems to be to try to
| integrate nearby single-family homes into the development, as
| well as increasing the density a bit. Now they're starting to
| feel like small downtown areas in the middle of the suburbs.
| linguae wrote:
| Exactly. I lived in Kawasaki, Japan, which is a large suburb
| of both Tokyo and Yokohama. Much of Kawasaki is walkable and
| has amenities such as restaurants, grocery stores, and
| shopping centers within no more than a 15-minute walk from
| most residences. Kawasaki is also served by many commuter
| train lines; once again, the majority of residents live
| within 15-minute walking distance from a train station, and
| there are local buses that serve those who live too far to
| easily walk to a train station (and even in these places a
| train station is generally 30 minutes away walking distance).
|
| Suburbs don't have to be car-dependent; most of Tokyo's
| suburbs are transit-oriented (some of them were actually
| planned by railroad companies) and are generally walkable.
| ulfw wrote:
| Kawasaki has a population of 1.5 Million people. Hardly
| just a "suburb"
| ericmay wrote:
| These are called walkable neighborhoods. And when you start
| building them and connecting them to one another you
| get............. Walkable cities!
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _You could just build walkable suburbs. Why there is a
| distinction between 'suburb' and 'smaller city' is beyond me,
| but there really is._
|
| The _Not Just Bikes_ channel semi-recently did a video on
| "streetcar suburbs":
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
|
| It's how things used to be built pre-WW2.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I grew up on the south side of Indianapolis perhaps one of
| the worst walkable places there is. There are major streets
| there still named for street car service "Stop 11/Stop
| 12/etc".
|
| The wild thing is that it was direct public policy that
| lead to the death of extensive public transit there.
| 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.
|
| If you need anything special, it takes 30 minutes by public
| transport (https://www.google.com/maps/dir/51.2413047,6.960
| 2975/K%C3%B6... ) to a shopping district in the next larger
| town, which has any type or brand of retail that exists in
| this country (Streetview: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.2
| 254878,6.7800095,3a,75y,64....)
| 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.
| iammisc wrote:
| I just disagree. I live in the very environment you claim
| doesn't exist
| mrgordon wrote:
| Where is that? You may have a different idea of walkable
| than the other poster. As soon as you have tons of
| parking spaces, mandatory setbacks, etc. you've taken
| much of the room away from pedestrians forcing them to
| walk much longer distances (often in bad weather) to get
| to where they want to go. That's why the two are at such
| odds.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Then don't do that. You only need tons of parking and
| mandatory setbacks if you've designed the area for lots
| of cars going too fast. If you just don't, then suddenly
| a lot more ends up being in walking distance, and you
| don't need as much parking because more people are
| walking or biking.
| mrgordon wrote:
| Well of course this is what I prefer. But the other
| poster was saying they didn't see why cities can't be
| designed for cars AND for pedestrians. My point is that
| the policies put in place in almost all American cities
| for cars (mandatory parking requirements in new
| buildings, lots of street parking or parking lots,
| mandatory setbacks from the street for buildings, highway
| entrances, etc.) work directly against making a city
| dense enough to be able to easily walk to enough things
| that you don't end up resorting to cars.
| iammisc wrote:
| I live in Portland city limits but not downtown. Where I
| live was built as a suburb but the city grew into it.
| Actually Portland has a lot of these downtowney areas and
| they're surrounded by blocks and blocks of single family
| homes and small apartments
|
| But if you go farther out into newer developments, they
| just abandoned this lovely system and made awful cookie
| cutter burbs.
|
| Before this I lived in San Rafael and larkspur in Marin
| county which also have nice downtowney areas surrounded
| by single family homes. Old Marin county had just this
| pattern of walkable enough neighborhoods with tiny
| downtowns. I don't see why this sort of thing isn't
| possible. When I lived there I walked everywhere
| mrgordon wrote:
| Portland is a pretty unique place. They famously drew a
| circle around the city and said development can't go
| outside of that area which forced a certain density and
| allowed transit to be planned well in advance.
|
| I didn't spent a ton of time there and admittedly it was
| January so it was quite frigid, but the distances can
| still feel quite long between things outside of downtown.
| Portland made a few mistakes when they embraced car
| culture including getting rid of their street cars like
| many American cities. They also annexed a lot of less
| walkable areas around the city. There is no subway and
| the light rail seems well run but it doesn't exactly
| cover the whole city. My sense is that most people who
| want to walk will end up biking or taking some form of
| transit in many neighborhoods because of the distances
| between things. In the winter it was quite hard to find
| lively streets and public squares to be quite honest. I
| suspect it's because it's easier to just drive when it's
| cold, things are a bit far, etc.
|
| Marin is lovely but most of it is extremely spread out.
| There are a few towns like you mentioned that one could
| conceivably get by without a car but it's not easy.
| Looking at San Rafael, Google Maps shows 4th street is a
| walking area (denoted in beige) and a very small area a
| few blocks south near the Safeway around 1st and 2nd
| streets but it isn't a very big area. Usually a giant
| chain supermarket is a pretty clear sign that things were
| designed for cars and not for pedestrians who would
| typically be better served by neighborhood markets and
| small shops near their house to grab some essentials.
| Zooming in near the walkable areas of San Rafael, Google
| Maps instantly highlights many car oriented businesses
| like at 2nd street and D street where we see a Chevron
| gas station, an Arco gas station, and an O'Reilly Auto
| Parts store all on one corner. I don't know about you but
| even if it's technically walkable that's not what I want
| to walk through every day when I go outside especially if
| I need to walk past it to get to the train to commute to
| work, etc. A major highway cuts through the east side of
| the city which also limits expansion of pleasant walking
| areas and litters the area with on-ramps and other car-
| centric design.
|
| Marin county famously blocked BART from expanding north
| in order to keep out the "riff-raff". These sorts of
| decisions had major consequences and while you can find a
| few blocks here and there that are walkable, the county
| as a whole is largely long drives through tree covered
| asphalt in order to get between areas.
|
| If you're happy with a few blocks of downtown then
| admittedly some of the towns probably meet your needs but
| it's not exactly designed for most people to live a car-
| free live. Even the Bank of America ATM there proudly
| shows on Google that it's a drive-through ATM which I've
| never seen once in Europe (or San Francisco for that
| matter)
| iammisc wrote:
| Close-in marin, so Sausalito, Marin city, Larkspur, Corte
| Madera, San Rafael, and the 'Sir Francis Drake corridor'
| (San Anselmo, Kentfield, etc) are very walkable. I don't
| really understand the consternation about bart, the bus
| service is reliable, and both the marin transit and
| golden gate transit are the gold standard in american
| public bus service IMO. Clean, WIFI, nice seats...
|
| My wife and I frequently took public buses into San
| Francisco for date nights, and would come back late (last
| bus arrives past midnight, IIRC).
|
| > Marin county famously blocked BART from expanding north
| in order to keep out the "riff-raff".
|
| Really good idea. Marin is a lovely place, and BART is
| famously terrible. Until the other cities in the bay area
| manage to enforce some semblance of law, I don't blame
| Marin for wanting nothing to do with them.
|
| > Zooming in near the walkable areas of San Rafael,
| Google Maps instantly highlights many car oriented
| businesses like at 2nd street and D street where we see a
| Chevron gas station, an Arco gas station, and an O'Reilly
| Auto Parts store all on one corner.
|
| Living in a walkable area does not imply removing every
| reminder of a car LOL.
|
| > They famously drew a circle around the city and said
| development can't go outside of that area which forced a
| certain density and allowed transit to be planned well in
| advance.
|
| This is not why Portland developed this way. There are
| many places within the metro area that have not. Portland
| developed this way because it started as many small towns
| that merged, similar to Marin. The difference between PDX
| and Marin is that PDX is today much denser, but the basic
| layout is the same.
|
| I'll also note that you're getting really bogged down
| with the fact Marin has no public rapid train transit, as
| if thats necessary for walkability. Marin is walkable
| because there are so many downtowns, if you live nearby,
| you just go to your downtown, and the downtowns it does
| have are spectacular. Downtown San Anselmo, Fairfax, etc
| are IMO the definition of an American downtown. They are
| so charming it's painful.
| unishark wrote:
| Well if businesses are clustered together for the
| convenience of drivers, it will also be especially easy
| to access for the people living close enough to walk. But
| the math may hold be that this cannot be so possible for
| everyone.
| strix_varius wrote:
| So do I! I'm kind of baffled reading this thread - folks
| are discussing my neighborhood as if it's a theoretical
| impossibility.
|
| A "small" SFH lot is 0.15 acres. That's over 6,500 square
| feet! You can comfortably build a >2,000 square foot
| house with a front and back yard, off-street parking,
| garden, trees, etc in that space. Simultaneously, it will
| only require about 50 ft of sidewalk length.
|
| My wife and I share one car, which we primarily use to
| visit friends in the suburbs. I walk to the grocery,
| dining, bars, coffee shops, parks, greenways.
|
| Our house is nearly 100 years old. We would have loved to
| buy something newer, but American neighborhoods haven't
| been designed in this sensible way for a long time.
| iammisc wrote:
| We must be twins. My lot is 0.14 acres. My house is a two
| story colonial plus finished basement. Easily > 2500sqft
| with room to spare.
|
| Also a hundred years old. They don't build them like this
| anymore.
|
| One car as well. For further out things or things I need
| to get to fast, I bike. The car is used to visit grandma
| and grandpa about 15 miles away, to go shopping for big
| items, and that's it
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Our suburb has some medical and dental offices in the center
| of it. Yay, something I do a couple times a year is within
| walking distance. Talk about useless.
|
| Groceries are about 2 miles away. Which would be bikable if
| the infrastructure was there. In my experience it would be
| easier to reach bikability than walkability. Most suburbs are
| already somewhat bikable aside from the infrastructure.
| granshaw wrote:
| This exists in some areas for example the closer Chicago
| "suburbs" like Lakeview
|
| There the lot sizes aren't big so there's density, but at the
| same time no high rises so it still feels pleasant. And every
| few blocks is zoned commercial
| 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.
| mateo411 wrote:
| This exists. It's usually called a condo or a townhome. I'm
| sure they exist in Texas too. You'll find them in more urban
| areas. They aren't as popular during a pandemic, but they
| usually cost less than a house, and if the organization is
| functioning well enough, then you also have the outside
| maintenance covered.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| A nice condo in Dallas currently goes for $400k with a
| $700/month HOA assessment.
| 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.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I think for things to work, we need to seriously cut down
| the fees for selling a house. The fees and laws are set up
| for someone who buys/sells once every few decades. So if
| you move frequently, there is no way you could be a owner
| without taking serious losses.
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Condos have their own problems. See the collapsed building in
| Miami.
| jandrese wrote:
| That is a freak accident, the more common problem with
| condos is the management jacking up the fees and trapping
| people in the building because nobody wants to buy a unit
| in a building with outrageous fees.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Would the condo board not be able to cancel the contract
| with the management company?
| foxpurple wrote:
| I'm not sure why a freak accident should be used as an
| example of anything. If anything it stands to show how
| insanely problem free modern buildings are if one building
| falling down is shocking news globally and known as one of
| the worst non malicious building issues in the developed
| world.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > I'm not sure why a freak accident should be used as an
| example of anything.
|
| Maybe follow the news a little more. Several MSM outlets
| over the last month have done in-depth stories about the
| fundamental problems with the condo model of ownership
| and maintainance. It has nothing inherently to do with
| construction methods; the evidence is that what happened
| in FL is a risk in an awful lot of condos all over the
| US.
| 55555 wrote:
| Would you mind sharing a link?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/us/condo-associations-
| sur...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The incentives do not line up since condo owners who will
| be out before problems affect them will vote to kick the
| can down the road. Even if other buildings do not
| collapse, it is common to hear of excessive repair bills
| because of it being delayed until the last minute.
|
| This happens with cities too, but the tax base is greater
| to spread the cost over and there is a higher likelihood
| of more qualified people working, rather than on
| individual condo boards.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I wonder if anyone knows how this works in countries with
| widespread apartment ownership. Same model, but done
| right? Different model?
| jandrese wrote:
| Kids are a problem. Areas in the city with good walkability
| often have horrific school districts. You also get trapped
| renting.
| tmccrary55 wrote:
| I want more bikeable cities.
| [deleted]
| 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.
| chapium wrote:
| You want to live in St Louis then. Not the suburbs but the city
| of St. Louis. It matches your requirements to a T. Outside St.
| Louis city county however is the complete opposite.
| tbihl wrote:
| The narrow streets with trees is essential. When I used to live
| in San Diego, the street next to my house, 1 lane in each
| direction plus parking, was at least 40 ft wide. It was
| treacherous to cross and obviously people flew down it.
|
| Now I live in a temperate east coast city with tree canopies
| across the street, which in front of my house is only 19 ft
| wide. I know because it's narrow enough that I was able to use
| a normal tape measure. 19 ft accommodates parking on one side,
| with just barely enough space to squeeze two cars passing each
| other (though in reality they take turns, as at a narrow
| bridge.) Still plenty of room for ambulances and fire trucks,
| and ample space for the police to drive recklessly fast.
| clairity wrote:
| yah, it's surprising to know that most cars are only 6ft
| wide, and bigger trucks typically 7ft wide. my street is ~40
| ft wide, and reckless/distracted drivers threaten pedestrian
| safety all the time (running stop signs, staring at phones,
| etc.). needless to say i've yelled at my share of them. i'd
| love to replace the parking lanes with protected/grade-
| separated bike lanes and put in a tree-filled median. not
| only would that make the drivers more mindful, but it would
| make the neighborhood more pleasant and walkable/bikeable.
| notJim wrote:
| How do you feel about medium density? I live in a neighborhood
| with some of the qualities you describe, and it has lots of
| small courtyard condos, and 2-3 story apartment buildings.
| These would've been illegal to build up until the last year or
| so, but I feel like they're not at all disruptive. I would say
| even a 5 story building on the main streets is fine in the kind
| of neighborhood you're describing. This gets you a lot of
| density without necessarily changing the feel of the
| neighborhood that much.
| kory wrote:
| They built tall, 3 story, modern "block" townhomes in the
| backyard next to my 100+ year-old home. They stick out
| (nothing else on the block is remotely as tall or modern),
| block sunlight in my back yard all winter, and critically
| damaged a 100 year old tree in my backyard (of course,
| nothing I can do about that--developer got away with it).
|
| They are a massive eyesore and have made my outdoor space
| just...frustrating and no longer private. Every time I go
| back there, I see the giant black wall next door. We're
| planning to put up 30ft tall, thin trees, at our expense,
| just to try and restore the space to where it was before.
| Developer walks away with his money and I get to pay for it.
|
| The challenge with medium density is that it's built without
| existing residents' thoughts in mind w/ regards to footprint,
| design, size, etc. You end up with neighborhoods that aren't
| cohesive. Of course, requiring existing residents' input
| means that there would probably never be new housing, so that
| isn't a realistic option.
|
| The people that moved in are great people, and we need more
| housing where I live. Change is gonna happen whether I like
| it or not. We have a housing crisis. New housing is
| eventually going to be built somewhere, and it's going to
| come for neighborhoods with the most walkability and services
| first.
| notJim wrote:
| > Of course, requiring existing residents' input means that
| there would probably never be new housing, so that isn't a
| realistic option.
|
| Yeah it's unfortunate there's not really a way to say "this
| is getting built, but you have some influence on the
| details". From what I've seen, a lot of cities have things
| like design review and environmental review, but they're
| just used for predatory delay, which just inflates costs
| and timelines.
| jltsiren wrote:
| As a rule of thumb, you need 10k people / square km (25k people
| / square mile) to sustain local services and to enable most
| people live without using a car daily. If 50% of land area is
| used for streets, parks, and commercial purposes, that 2-3k lot
| should house at least five people. I believe the average
| single-family home in an area with no housing shortage houses
| ~2 people.
|
| Once population density is substantially below that, there are
| not enough people to support public transit outside specific
| routes. Most people will need a car in their daily life. You
| can still find basic services such as supermarkets within a
| walking distance, but more specialized services such as
| restaurants and coffee shops become scarce outside central
| areas.
| noahtallen wrote:
| You could still have a mix in that area. A handful of
| apartment buildings or multi-family homes/lots at medium
| density could solve the density problem without going
| overkill
| 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.
| iammisc wrote:
| > If you want a thriving business district with a mixture
| of local business you need to have density.
|
| I simply disagree. You can have single family homes and a
| thriving business district. Not ginormous mcmansions. But
| modest, good-sized single family homes. I disagree with
| your assessment because I've seen how great things can be
| in my own neighborhood. I'm not even suggesting no high-
| density housing. On the actual 'satellite downtown' core a
| few blocks from my house, there are a few big apartment
| buildings. This is fine... apartment buildings are perfect
| for younger people and couples.
| another_story wrote:
| The apartment buildings are what add density. People who
| live in single family homes will invariably take the
| extra 15 to 20 minutes to drive to Costco and save money.
| strix_varius wrote:
| As someone who lives in this sort of neighborhood, I see
| every day that this isn't true.
|
| Why would you spend 30-40 extra minutes in a car when you
| could be walking down tree-lined streets to your
| neighborhood bakery?
| iammisc wrote:
| Two things:
|
| (1) I know this shocks most people used to cookie cutter
| American suburbs and cities, but you can put an apartment
| building in a small satellite business district
| surrounded by single family homes.
|
| (2) Sure. We drive to costco as well. We also shop our
| local downtown. For example, every Sunday, the local
| bakery sells off their wares (very nice breads, pies, and
| cakes) for pennies on the dollar. We also often end up at
| our local grocery store for sundry items we've run out of
| or forgotten. Why is preventing people from ever going to
| costco any concern? I would never suggest to never
| drive... that's just silly moral policing. I just suggest
| walking most places because it's way nicer and less
| stressful.
|
| Here's an example. I bike to my gym every morning. It
| takes 10 minutes. It'd actually take longer to drive
| given the stop lights. However, if I lived in the burb I
| was born in, I'd have to drive, because the nearest gym
| would be miles away. Or, I'd have to purchase my own gym
| equipment. Instead, in my city, I have a 24 hour gym
| within biking distance, and I only need to take
| neighborhood streets to get there. It's lovely.
|
| There are many services people need regularly that aren't
| bulk grocery shopping and we don't need to drive to,
| things like gyms, haircuts, restaurants, specialty
| hardware, small groceries, etc.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The stores go empty because people who already have the
| sunk cost of a car will just drive to the next city for
| bigger stores at cheaper prices.
| 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.
| iammisc 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.
|
| I advocate for building and development. I'm just pointing
| out that the activists that are supposedly rallying for
| 'high-density' just end up increasing my home price because
| (1) the high-density builders want the land and (2) people
| want to live in neighborhoods like mine. Heads I win, tails
| you lose.
| afarrell wrote:
| Building N units of dense housing also ends up
| simultaneously increasing the number of people allowed to
| live in a walkable neighborhood by N.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| I don't think the activists have any impact on demand.
| aroundtown wrote:
| I wouldn't mind more walkable if it didn't come at the cost of
| being around many more people.
|
| Every walkable city I've been to is either filthy, cramped, loud,
| over run, and/or very very expensive. I don't want to live so
| close to people to hear them, smell them, or be bothered by them
| or their pets.
| rdedev wrote:
| You could get something like this if there is good public
| transport between points. Like the place where I am staying
| now, its relatively less crowded than the inner cities. I can
| walk and get any essential items like milk or meat. If I need
| something that I cant get, just take a bus and shop in the
| city. Most of the time, my daily needs are met near my home
| itself
| [deleted]
| 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.
| pomian wrote:
| Pavement does not absorb rain water, and causes flooding.
| Pavement causes heating, and raises local temperatures. More
| pavement, the greater the additive effect. Pavement replaces
| vegetation and black soil. The results should be pretty
| obvious. Skipping the whole CO2 debate, and just look at that.
| 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.
| matttproud wrote:
| If you want an introduction into the policy side, read:
|
| Duany, et al.'s Suburban Nation.
| https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780865477506
|
| Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere.
| https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Geography-Of-
| Nowhere/...
|
| It is extremely dismal but also theoretically fixable for
| future development.
| jeffchien wrote:
| Strong Towns page on it: https://www.strongtowns.org/parking
|
| LA-specific advocacy site: https://noparkinghere.com/
|
| Back in 2019/11, LA was thinking about lifting the
| requirement in downtown, but that seems to have been shelved.
| simonsarris wrote:
| a certain amount of parking and certain "setbacks", a
| mandated distance from the road, which also increases the lot
| size required.
| gleenn wrote:
| That's great, hopefully it will make cities more walkable as
| a result.
| nomel wrote:
| > However, it does mean that parking will become harder
|
| In the city I'm near, using public parking lots means a 20
| minute walk to your destination, with a $10 fee from all the
| time walking (or uber), with private parking costing around
| $15, and no meters in sight. This creates an isolated area
| that people never go to for a bite to eat, coffee, window
| shopping, or anything really, since it's a > $10 fee just to
| step on the sidewalk. Not surprisingly, there's incredible
| churn for the businesses down there (pre Coronavirus). The
| only people they have to service are the other businesses in
| the area and the few that live there. With coronavirus, it
| was all wiped out.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > This creates an isolated area that people never go to for
| a bite to eat, coffee, window shopping, or anything really,
| since it's a > $10 fee just to step on the sidewalk.
|
| I take the bus into downtown Seattle with my son every
| weekend. He enjoys the center, the monorail, and the
| market, but I would never do it if I had to drive and find
| parking.
| analog31 wrote:
| Your city may be similar to mine, insofar as the
| "residents" of the downtown area are mainly the people who
| work there and have already paid for parking. Not
| surprisingly, a lot of the restaurants do most of their
| business at lunch time. A city where you have to drive a
| car to a curated pedestrian zone is not walkable by my
| highfalutin sensibilities. ;-)
|
| I get around town by bike. This is not for the faint of
| heart in the upper Midwest, but for a person in decent
| health, the obstacles are primarily psychological.
|
| I also suspect that the cost of parking is a psychological
| obstacle. It's similar to how people who claim to enjoy
| live music are offended when asked to pay a $5 cover to see
| a band.
| voisin wrote:
| > Your city may be similar to mine, insofar as the
| "residents" of the downtown area are mainly the people
| who work there and have already paid for parking.
|
| If massive parking requirements is the #1 urban planning
| disaster of the last century, the #2 surely has to be
| zoning regulations that prevented mixed use areas where
| people can live/work/play in close proximity. And this
| was only to... force people to buy cars to get from place
| to place! Look at any city area that was developed prior
| to the advent of cars and they are unanimously multi-use
| dense areas. Cars ruined everything.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| You can see this in the south bay in an incredibly acute
| way.
|
| Where are Google, Microsoft, and a bunch of other
| enormous campuses located? East of the 101. Where are all
| of the residential areas? West of the 101. Gazillions of
| commuters need to cross the 101 to get from their home to
| their office twice a day. This means that everything is
| limited by a few small overpasses that are crazy
| expensive to expand.
|
| What if people could build apartments over there? Too
| bad. Not zoned for housing.
| analog31 wrote:
| My town, though much smaller, has its own "101" with
| similar bottlenecks. But there are now (at least) three
| bike bridges across it. While not free to build, they're
| doubtlessly much cheaper, especially since the bikes can
| use already existing neighborhood streets with minimal
| impact on the residents. I'm not sure there's a master
| plan for improving bike routes, but when they have to
| tear up a road for some reason, they usually design its
| replacement to accommodate bikes with dedicated lanes,
| bridges, tunnels, etc.
| notJim wrote:
| That sounds strange, it sounds like an area that should've
| been served by foot and public transit traffic.
| nomel wrote:
| Yes, there is public transportation, but this is $6 and
| 20 minutes to the closest light rail stop. I never tried
| a bus.
|
| My point is that this area is almost only served by foot
| traffic, but getting your feet on the sidewalk has a
| pretty significant cost.
|
| I don't think this is odd though, since it's been the
| experience I've had getting to any downtown area.
| Visiting downtown San Fransisco costs around $10 to
| actually get too, after all is said and done, even from
| within the city, unless you walk/bike/spend 20 minutes.
| mrgordon wrote:
| Lyft Line and Uber Pool were usually $4-5 around San
| Francisco before COVID and you can use electric bikes
| through the bike share for $15 for the entire month.
| Obviously it's easier if you live near the walkable area,
| but it doesn't need to be as expensive as you claim and
| SF is one of the more expensive cities.
| nomel wrote:
| > Lyft Line and Uber Pool were usually $4-5
|
| Two way is $10.
|
| > you can use electric bikes through the bike share for
| $15 for the entire month
|
| That 20 minutes is back.
| mrgordon wrote:
| The thing you're missing is that I spent much less than
| $100 a month in transit costs when I lived in SF. When
| you have a car there, you will spend probably $500-$1000
| on the car, the insurance, the gas, parking meters, etc.
| Then you will likely need to pay for a parking spot. In
| the Mission the going rate before COVID was about $400+ a
| month. My friends who had cars and didn't have dedicated
| parking would also get $75 parking or street cleaning
| tickets fairly often.
|
| So I literally could take a $5 ride each way every time I
| didn't feel like walking and I had a huge cost savings,
| much less hassle with parking and street cleaning at 6
| AM, less environmental impact, no problems drinking and
| driving, etc. After a while, most people without
| dedicated parking end up leaving their car in the same
| spot as long as possible and mostly use it for weekend
| trips outside the city.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| Driving a car around SF is generally more than 20
| minutes. Most areas downtown can be reached in the same
| or less time by bike, and it also removes any issues with
| parking/waiting for a car.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| I grew up on the outskirts of Chicago. Mostly built in the
| 1920s or 1950s. Everything you need is within a one mile
| walk, even Home Depot. Cinema closed down but Walmart
| opened up about two miles away. Plenty of street parking,
| alley garages, and lots of nice amenities. Only moderate
| rat load.
|
| I think this is the type of neighborhood people like, when
| the schools are good, at least.
|
| Lots of neighborhoods used to be like this, though usually
| not big box stuff. Used to be bodegas, fruit markets, small
| hardware shops, tailor, dry cleaners, etc.
|
| Until the mid 80s to early 90s there were neighborhood
| Sears and Wiebolts as well. Wiebolts went under in 1986.
|
| Elderly folks could give up their car and age in place as
| long as they could get up the porch ramps and such. Didn't
| need to go to home, and homes need not be far from
| neighborhoods. Plenty of housing options for all stripes.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Feels like one of those "better is worse" situations. Yes
| - "most" people prefer the selection/prices if Target
| over the (relatively) overpriced mom-and-pop store, but
| downstream effects weren't clear, undervalued.
| kumarsw wrote:
| The solution to this is plentiful, well-placed municipal
| parking garages priced _cheaper_ than street parking. Santa
| Monica does this where they have about 6-7 city-run garages
| spaced throughout the city with easily visible electronic
| signage indicating the amount of available spaces. Street
| parking is much more spare and priced higher. It 's an
| enlightened alternative to tearing down buildings for more
| single-level lots. See Google Maps satellite view of
| Spokane, WA for how not to handle city parking - about half
| of downtown is gray asphalt.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Spokane, WA for how not to handle city parking - about
| half of downtown is gray asphalt.
|
| Downtown Spokane isn't that bad, although it used to be
| much better. They have parking garages downtown, but
| those were built during better times (when Spokane also
| had multi-level car dealerships across the street from
| the mall), it turns out downtown real estate just isn't
| that expensive anymore. There is a lot of gray asphalt
| simply because there isn't much demand for the asphalt to
| be anything else.
| sologoub wrote:
| I wouldn't cite SM as the model of municipal parking.
| Especially in conjunction with how poorly these support
| the expo light rail line - it's not really feasible to
| drive in and get on the train to go to work for a day.
| voisin wrote:
| The solution is better rapid mass transit between and
| within cities!
| [deleted]
| agumonkey wrote:
| biking is cool too
| xorfish wrote:
| Removing parking space and giving it to less wasteful
| modes of transport is one of the more efficient ways to
| improve an area.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This wouldn't be a bad thing if the public transportation
| was also effective. It _should_ be hellishly expensive to
| use a car in a big city. It just shouldn 't destroy your
| ability to get to work if you don't have a car.
|
| In my experience, NYC is the only city in the US that has
| made this work. The MTA is plagued with cost overruns and
| other problems, but you really can get places quickly using
| the subway.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Not just housing developments. Virtually all development
| tends to be mandated to provide large amounts of car parking.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| The original purpose is literally to stop cars parking on
| streets.
|
| Carsharing services are a game changer for urban people who
| use a car once a week or so (go to the shops, visit family,
| etc.) And should be substituted in any requirements at a
| 30:1-50:1 ratio or thereabouts. Developera still need car
| parking to attract many buyers however
| foxpurple wrote:
| You can reset your costs by renting out the car park. I make
| $50 AUD/week renting out my city car park to someone who
| works near by.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| In many places outside urban cores in the US, the rules are
| such that the amount of parking created is far in excess of
| demand. You could try and rent your spot, but it would be
| pointless. Inside urban cores the parking is frequently
| underground and gated off so that it makes it hard to rent
| out without breaking the security rules for your building.
|
| At the last place I lived in Vancouver, BC there was 2
| levels of underground parking for 3 stories of living
| space. It is absolutely wild to think that a building along
| a major transit corridor was required to reserve 2/5 of
| their building for private vehicles in a city that is
| famously progressive with transit (for north america)
| notJim wrote:
| That's interesting, but I doubt it would be allowed by most
| apartment leases, and I think for townhomes, many people
| wouldn't want some rando parking in their garage.
| newyankee wrote:
| Only solution i see is a brand new city built from ground up
| with entirely new rules and welcoming people to that kind of
| life. Car free, autonomous pods, grids, public transit and
| small footprint. If it succeeds then others will have a model
| to emulate. I do not know what legal changes will be needed
| to make something like this happen. There is no reason other
| than safety where existing archaic town planning rules need
| to be implemented everywhere.
| davidw wrote:
| Cities are pretty adaptable, no need to build one from
| scratch. Look at how Amsterdam changed, or how Paris is
| changing now
| aix1 wrote:
| To illustrate, here are some historic photos of
| Amsterdam: https://exploring-and-observing-
| cities.org/2016/01/11/amster...
| dmitriid wrote:
| And here's a video, "How the Dutch got their cycle paths"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o
| titzer wrote:
| When I moved to LA, I did the following calculation.
|
| Average number of cars per person, 2/3 x Number of people in
| greater LA area, 16M = 10M. 10M cars x average parking spot is
| 7ft x 15, 105 sq ft = 1 billion sq ft. 1 billion sq ft to
| square miles = 36 square miles. That's a square 6 miles on a
| side. Just to park the cars _once_. There is at least 3x that
| number of spots in the city. A _hundred square miles_ of
| parking. No kidding. Also, the city of LA maintains _5000+
| miles_ of street parking.
|
| The scale is mind boggling.
|
| And the cost is astronomical. The cost of real estate is
| estimated at $2.7 million _per acre_. Those hundred square
| miles are worth close to $200 billion.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Speaking of real estate, does anyone have data on the impact
| of personal range on the ability of land owners to extract
| rent?
|
| The feeling I get from sampling shopping experiences at
| various levels of density is that higher density means higher
| rent and higher prices.
|
| Cars are enormously wasteful in a physics sense, but in an
| economic sense they do wonders to commoditize our
| complements, and I fear that getting rid of high-range
| infrastructure would take us out of the frying pan and into
| the fire.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Density and rent are definitely correlated, but I think the
| causation mostly works the other way: in areas with high
| value (high rent), people will build more densely to take
| advantage of the high-value location.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| That's how density increases naturally due to market
| forces, but we are talking about enacting policy to
| directly spur increased density and what its effects will
| be.
|
| I would expect the policy to create lots of value, but
| because of the way land ownership works, I would expect
| most, all, or more than all of that created value to
| accrue to the people who own the correct land. More
| importantly, I would expect it to bleed away from those
| who don't. Shops away from Main St would be screwed,
| while the new lovely walkable storefronts would have $5
| coffee and $15 sandwiches and the apartments within
| walking distance would have $5000/mo rent. Those massive
| flows of money wouldn't go to shop owners or workers or
| maintaining the infrastructure (see: NY, SF), the money
| would go into the pocket of whoever owned the land,
| because our policy choices would have just gone towards
| ensuring that owning the correct land was all that
| mattered.
|
| It just seems crazy to me how eager people are to build
| an economic steamroller and then throw themselves in
| front of it. Fight to commoditize your complement, don't
| fight to help your complement commoditize you!
| newyankee wrote:
| Someone had calculated that the urban sprawl king city of
| Houston was 40% parking space or something
| Fricken wrote:
| Houston leads the USA and, and I would assume the world in
| parking, with an estimated 30 parking spaces per resident.
|
| Office parking lots in Houston during work hours are, on
| average, 30% empty.
| duskwuff wrote:
| I have to wonder how much of the city overall is used for
| cars -- roads, highways, and the "buffer" land surrounding
| them (like the land in and around a highway interchange);
| parking lots and their access streets; businesses dedicated
| to servicing cars, like gas stations...
|
| It's probably a lot.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| There's a great illustration by Karl Jilg that has stuck with
| me along the same lines... calling them buffers is very
| generous!
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/car-illustration-karl-jilg-2...
| lumost wrote:
| The big challenge is having both shared urban infrastructure
| and personal cars that aren't a luxury. Cities should focus on
| keeping cars out of the center to the maximum extent possible.
| notatoad wrote:
| i was just reading an article in my local paper this morning
| about a new building in town that got a zoning variance
| approved. it's a ten-unit visitor accomodation development, and
| they have ten parking stalls on the property (which is less
| than the minimum parking spaces code requires).
|
| there was apparently a 45-minute debate at the council meeting
| where neighbours were arguing that the development should be
| denied because ten parking spaces wasn't enough for ten units.
| of visitor accomodation. because apparently people go on
| holidays with multiple cars.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| During holidays, visitors can mean many more than two
| additional cars per family. Living in that building means
| choosing not to entertain friends and family, or irritating
| the crap out of your neighbors by taking up the parking. If
| they're lucky, they'll be communicative and work out parking
| custody, but more than likely it'll be a resentful petty
| mess.
| notatoad wrote:
| it is visitor accomodation - like a hotel. nobody lives in
| it, it's just ten hotel suites.
| 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
| aix1 wrote:
| Amazing, thanks so much for sharing!
|
| P.S. The section on reproduction is hilarious.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| > "The National Film Board of Mars presents: WHAT ON
| EARTH!"
|
| This is great, what fun!
| whatever_dude wrote:
| That's the entire premise of classic Transformers.
| [deleted]
| 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.
| jollybean wrote:
| The hardest thing to do is _explain_ that experience to people.
| Also having grown up in the burbs, it wasn 't until adulthood
| in SF and Europe that I realized how materially different
| 'walking' can be.
|
| It's shocking, because it's something so fundamental, right in
| front of our eyes, that's just hard to fathom.
|
| So 1) we have to think about how we communicate this and 2) we
| may want to thin of ways to even adapt the Burbs to something
| more ammenable.
|
| On the later, it seems crazy, but people do like convenience,
| and expansion of commuter lines may bode very well. People will
| use transit if it's faster and more convenient.
|
| If Dallas were connected to Planto etc. through something
| fairly quick, clean and safe it would transform the city. Not
| holding my breath.
| atoav wrote:
| I liked driving too, but I lived in a larger German city for
| the past decade and didn't _need_ a car. If I want groceries I
| walk across the street. If I want to go to work I cycle there
| (which is faster than taking the car or the subway at that time
| of the day, additionally you are more awake at work and get a
| little movement).
|
| The few times a year where I need to transport something
| bigger, I just rent a car or get one from a car sharing
| service, or I transport it in the subway/S-Bahn.
|
| I grew up on the countryside, where cars were a necessity and
| give you freedom, but living here _not_ having a car gives me
| freedom. I don 't have to think about my car, where to park it,
| where I parked it, how to maintain it etc.
| SilasX wrote:
| I remember hearing a joke that Americans like vacationing in
| Paris (or Rome, London, etc) because it reproduces the walkable
| life they only ever had in college.
| megablast wrote:
| You like pollution? You like polluting waterways with micro
| plastics from your tires? You don't care about the 40k killed
| every year in the USA? You don't care about the destruction of
| countryside with roads???
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| Love it. Enormous benefits.
| ketzo wrote:
| Aw, hush. That's a needlessly antagonistic take.
|
| Someone can say "I like driving" without us assuming that
| they're totally ignorant of the negative externalities.
|
| I can say "I like ice cream" without you having to say "you
| like saturated fat??? you like increasing your risk of
| diabetes????"
| megablast wrote:
| You killing yourself is not the same as someone killing the
| planet.
|
| Can you not see why people care about the planet they
| inhabit??
| Vinnl wrote:
| But you do like ice cream? You like millions of animals
| getting killed? People getting killed from antibiotics no
| longer working? Water shortages? The planet getting
| killed?
|
| I don't know what you're trying to achieve with your
| comment, but I'm quite sure I didn't turn you vegan just
| now.
|
| Even if you care about not killing the planet, what
| matters is not that you make it clear that you do, but
| that you're effective in preventing that from happening.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I like my car and I like driving._
|
| There's a difference between having a car as an _option_ as a
| form of transportation versus having it be a _necessity_.
| worik wrote:
| Which is the whole point of designing cities so cars are not
| needed
| crispyambulance wrote:
| Whereas Americans buy cars so that cities are not needed !
| :-)
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Yes, though a lot of Americans don't see it that way. People
| I talk to think I must hate driving, because I think we
| should have effective options for walking, biking, and public
| transit.
|
| I don't hate driving. I hate being forced to drive.
| 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.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I like living out in the country on a large private wooded lot.
| I have lived in dense cities where I could get groceries and
| other necessities within a short walk, and with pervasive
| public transportation. Hated it. I like space and seclusion. I
| like being able to drive anywhere to get what I need, when I
| need it, and not having to wait for a bus or a train.
| yarky wrote:
| It looks like you _need_ a car indeed. I grew up the way you
| live and just loved it when I first lived in a city where I
| didn 't _need_ a car. If you _needed_ a bus /train to do your
| groceries I understand that you hated it, that's why I'd
| rather choose to stay at a _walkable_ distance of everything.
| 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.
| 8note wrote:
| It sounds like the Netherlands has it figure out?
|
| Split out streets and roads. Roads are for driving fast,
| and streets are for destinations, slow driving, and
| walking.
| mrgordon wrote:
| Most Americans would say the Netherlands is tough for
| driving I think because the cars are smaller, the lanes
| are smaller, there is light rail everywhere, many
| pedestrians and bikers everywhere, etc.
|
| I think all these decisions are why the Netherlands are
| so lovely and most of America is seemingly highways,
| strip malls, and suburbs.
|
| One of the most popular Dutch vacations is biking around
| the country and camping instead of staying at hotels.
| It's quite far from American car culture in that regard.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > One of the most popular Dutch vacations is biking
| around the country and camping instead of staying at
| hotels. It's quite far from American car culture in that
| regard.
|
| American car culture is to go on vacation to drive up
| camping spots. You can't actually camp in many places
| without a car. There isn't really public transit from
| Seattle to Mt. Ranier national park, for example, and the
| distances is too far and the terrain too hilly for just
| biking it (the Netherlands is lucky to be flat, in this
| regard).
| mrgordon wrote:
| Yes being flat does help for sure. In much of Europe I
| think they solve this problem with trains or sometimes
| buses to get to the parks or outlying areas. For example,
| much of Italy is hill towns and no one wants to walk up
| huge hills to get to each town but you can typically get
| there with transit.
|
| The United States admittedly is quite large and spread
| out but if we started to connect more things with transit
| then I think it would stop feeling so much this way. Like
| why couldn't there be a connection from San Francisco to
| Tahoe that doesn't involve driving? It's a very very
| popular weekend trip and a train would be great for
| moving skis and other equipment.
|
| If you live near Seattle, you're lucky to have some of
| the better planning in the United States and some of the
| more open-minded people with regards to transit, camping,
| etc. In a place like Florida, for example, it is fairly
| common to meet people who've never been camping unless
| maybe you count a music festival. The priority is often
| air conditioning, a nice hotel room towering over the
| beach, etc. which is not what the Dutch seek out for the
| most part
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| We have lots of choices, but driving is the norm. There
| is a train near Ranier, it's still operable (steam
| train!) but is now for tourism. Let's hope it reopens.
|
| Switzerland has trains and postal buses to serve its
| mountain villages and make tourism easy. The distances
| involved are a bit greater out west, however.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| Japan manages it pretty well. The mass transit system of
| Tokyo is well known. But the city is also zoned such that
| walking or biking from an apartment/house/hotel to a
| restaurant, supermarket, or even a major park or museum is
| easy and fairly safe. The roads are clean and well-
| maintained, and traffic really isn't that bad. Street
| parking is rarely allowed, but small parking lots are
| numerous albeit expensive.
|
| Biking and public transit moves most commuters off of the
| streets, leaving the roads to the owners of luxury cars and
| driving aficionados who don't mind paying the tax premium
| to subsidize their vehicular access. I pay $450/yr in road
| taxes, kei car drivers pay maybe $75, and someone with a
| big-displacement engine like a Lexus IS-F or a Mercedes AMG
| probably pays $800-$1000 every year. I'm totally ok with
| this system.
|
| I spent 3 weeks in the New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia
| and HATED how I couldn't walk to anything....but the roads
| are also of absolutely terrible quality (potholes
| everywhere) and are mostly straight and boring highway
| travel, so they aren't even fun to drive. Then I
| quarantined in Tokyo for 2 weeks and everything was a
| convenient 5-minute walk away. If I LIVED in Tokyo, I would
| still own my sports cars there, as I love the freedom of
| being able to travel longer distances, at any time, with
| privacy and storage capacity.
|
| I'm in another region of Japan where the public transit is
| almost non-existent but the walking-friendly zoning helps
| to compensate. I don't NEED a car to get to the convenience
| store or the supermarket, but they definitely make life
| 100x easier, especially since the weather here is terrible
| more often than not.
|
| So I'd say Japan is proof that walkability and driveability
| are not in "irresolvable conflict".
| aix1 wrote:
| > Biking and public transit moves most commuters off of
| the streets
|
| Help me understand this. Where do cyclists and ground-
| level public transportation go if they're not on the
| streets?
|
| > Then I quarantined in Tokyo for 2 weeks and everything
| was a convenient 5-minute walk away.
|
| Wait a minute, quarantined _and_ walked around?
| sofixa wrote:
| > Help me understand this. Where do cyclists and ground-
| level public transportation go if they're not on the
| streets?
|
| Public transportation is much denser ( even a paltry bus
| can fit at least 30 people vs a car which occupies
| slightly less space, but usually has a single person in
| it), and bikes take much less space. You can fit 4 bikes
| in the space of a single standard sedan; and a small bus
| is what, 2-3 sedans but 30 times the capacity?
| aix1 wrote:
| Oh I see, they're still _on_ the streets, just at a much
| higher density. (I read "commuters" to mean people not
| cars.)
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| >>>Where do cyclists and ground-level public
| transportation go if they're not on the streets?
|
| Cyclists are on the sidewalk, and use little ringer bells
| to signal to pedestrians to move outta the way. For
| public transit "off the streets" I was mostly referring
| to the subway system. Buses and taxis are still "on" the
| street but the users are out of privately-owned vehicles.
| I wasn't clear on that.
|
| >>>Wait a minute, quarantined and walked around?
|
| Technically "restriction of movement" not "quarantined",
| I get sloppy and often use the two terms interchangeably.
| Quarantine = you are COVID+, inside a specially-
| designated hotel, which you can't leave. ROM = you are
| COVID- pending additional testing, can stay in any hotel,
| but can leave your room for essentials such as
| groceries/take-out food.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Cyclists are on the sidewalk, and use little ringer
| bells to signal to pedestrians to move outta the way.
|
| No, cyclists are on the bike lanes or, if they aren't
| there, with the cars. The sidewalk is for people on foot
| only, who are the most vulnerable and should be separated
| from other faster modes of transport.
| antb123 wrote:
| Japan is great but as the population density is 347 per
| Km2 it is maybe not 100% comparable except for the north.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| US and Japan both have a number of mid-tier cities in the
| 4000-6000 per km2 range (look at the "list of [US|Japan]
| cities" pages on Wiki and sort by descending pop
| density). Japan has a number of efficient cities far from
| the Tokyo/Osaka megalopoli that don't benefit from their
| network effects. Consider Fukuoka, Sapporo, or Kagoshima
| (all fairly remote/isolated cities) compared to Miami, FL
| and Santa Ana, CA (for high-density US cities outside of
| the Northeast Corridor). Hiroshima and Sapporo have
| surprisingly-low pop densities closer to Nashville and
| Kansas City. We Americans should be able to draw some
| applicable conclusions even when we look outside of
| Tokyo. The initial reaction is usually "the density
| disparity makes it cost-ineffective when applied to the
| US". If we zoned and developed along Japanese patterns,
| wouldn't our city densities increase, due to the higher
| quality of life delivered by the efficiency improvements?
| People would actually want to live in places where they
| had flexible transit options and safe walkable
| neighborhoods with integrated commercial and
| entertainment activities.
| ummonk wrote:
| Except in really small towns.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I think it 's hard to find because those two preferences
| are in direct, irresolvable conflict._
|
| Plenty of places that were built pre-WW2 have people
| walking for groceries and such, cycling and taking transit
| to work, and yet still have cars (street parking and back
| yard garages) for other longer distance errands:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
|
| Two go-to examples I use in these types of discussion in a
| particular neighbourhood I know; larger houses:
|
| * https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Westminster+Ave,+To
| ron...
|
| More modest:
|
| * https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto
| ,+O...
| antb123 wrote:
| After living in Europe for a while Toronto is "ok" but
| still very car dependent.
|
| I would point to Scandinavia (Finland, Denmark, etc) and
| parts of France and Germany as places that have cars but
| maintain walkable, bikeable cities.
| iammisc wrote:
| Well I think there are cultural differences and that
| Europe is not the only acceptable model.
|
| Both america and Canada are bigger and wilder than
| Europe. Cars are nice and a necessity to live in both
| countries. The neighborhood here is a good example of a
| walkable neighborhood that is also uniquely north
| American. That's okay. We don't need to replicate Europe
| when we have perfectly good, culturally appropriate
| models here.
|
| The neighborhood here is exactly like my neighborhoods.
| It's lovely. I don't need to have old town Prague levels
| of walkability to be happy. Quite the opposite, where I
| am is perfect
| throw0101a wrote:
| Toronto is one example of where neighbourhoods were built
| that are not Manhattan- and Hong Kong-level densities,
| but are still not entirely car dependent. They were built
| semi-recently, and not some long-ago time period that is
| unrealistic to try to recreate.
|
| They also have recognizable architecture that is not from
| the Middle Ages or Napoleonic age. You can explore some
| of these neighbourhoods (in Toronto and elsewhere) and
| realistically visualize similar houses being built today.
|
| Of course Toronto suffered from the same automobile
| malaise as many other North American cities, first in the
| 'inner suburbs' (North York, Scarborough), and later in
| the "905".
| userbinator wrote:
| _is somewhere it 's easy to walk and drive_
|
| This exhibit from 1940 might be interesting:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Street_i.
| ..
| aix1 wrote:
| Relevant:
| https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/02/walkways-
| in-t...
| agent327 wrote:
| Hong Kong has that in some places. It makes it hard to
| navigate on foot, as pedestrian routes are no longer
| obvious lines but require entering building perpendicular
| to your direction, for example.
|
| However, the idea is nearly perfect. All it really needs is
| to put the cars in tunnels. Underground there's plenty of
| room for driving, parking, etc.
| maxerickson wrote:
| In the US, most suburban areas have plenty of low traffic
| streets, and many have additional recreational paths for
| pedestrians.
|
| When I lived in a quite rural area, it was no problem jogging
| on the low traffic roads, and if I wanted long runs, I could
| have gone ~3 miles on those roads to a converted railroad
| that ran for miles in either direction.
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| I've never run into a walkable city center where there was
| one super-obvious and convenient place to park--maybe a
| gigantic underground garage--and then you walk everywhere
| from there. Feels like that might work.
|
| The attractive city centers have nice stuff, but too few
| people who live within walking distance to keep them in
| business and in good shape. They need a way to bring in
| suburbanites and visitors to supplement the native
| population.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Amsterdam has big parking lots outside the city center. If
| you park there you get a free transit pass into the city I
| believe.
|
| Makes a lot of sense really
| aix1 wrote:
| In Britain this is called Park & Ride (or P+R for short):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_and_ride
| iammisc wrote:
| Same in the us
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Montreal is similar. Parking downtown: horrible. Parking
| out in the 'burbs and then riding the metro into town?
| easy, and lovely. For a lot of things, anyway.
| antb123 wrote:
| Same with New Jersey + train into Manhattan
| spideymans wrote:
| Might be a Canadian thing. Toronto is similar. If I
| recall correctly, Toronto operates the second most used
| public transit system in the United States or Canada,
| while the public transit authority there is the largest
| parking garage operator in North America.
|
| It's a pretty good solution for medium-sized cities, but
| it breaks down as population increases. Toronto has
| largely stopped building these garages because they've
| run out of room for them after immense population and
| ridership growth.
|
| Toronto is a pretty big though, so it's still a solution
| worth exploring for medium-sized cities that can still
| reasonably build these facilities.
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| In a lot of areas, street parking is actually a really good
| way to provide a barrier between the sidewalk and traffic.
| This physical safety provides psychological safety, so
| people feel a lot more comfortable with sidewalk dining,
| etc. A lane of parking can also separate car traffic from a
| bi-directional pair of bike lanes.
|
| Also, a lot of cities have too many and/or too wide lanes,
| which makes drivers feel too safe driving unsafe speeds.
| You can use parking to "eat up" the extra space and make
| the street feel more crowded, which will make drivers slow
| down and drive a lot more carefully.
|
| So street parking should absolutely not be seen as just a
| negative thing, it can serve a very useful function in the
| layout of a street.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| On a similar note, my city used to have a lot of 50 km/h
| four lane streets through residential areas, even though
| they were only minor trunk roads that didn't warrant that
| many car lanes. There was also a severe dearth of bike
| lanes, and since these are residential areas with lots of
| houses, there were always cars parked in the right lane
| and cars turning left into driveways.
|
| The solution was to remove two lanes of traffic, forbid
| street parking, add a bike lane along each side of the
| road, and add a centre turning lane. this was all done
| with just paint and "no parking" signage. There was a bit
| of complaining about the loss of street parking, but
| other than that it's worked out great, and I actually see
| people using the bike lanes now, and traffic actually
| flow _smoother_.
| mrgordon wrote:
| In Europe this is solved by having a train station in the
| center. Even the little towns have them which is why it can
| be lovely to spend a day exploring the area whereas in the
| United States it's often easier to assume a small town will
| have little walkability and maybe you'll just stop there
| for gas.
| 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.
| verall wrote:
| This might not be news for you, but you're in a really
| desireable location. The land you're on is probably
| really expensive right now.
| iammisc wrote:
| It's desirable only because they don't build the outer
| burbs this way. As you drive out of the city, the time of
| building gets later and later. When you hit some point
| where the homes were built in the 60s, suddenly the
| walkable neighborhoods, which were the standard before
| then, make way for huge, sidewalkless developments.
|
| If they just built more of the commenters neighborhood,
| and my neighborhood, there would be more desirable land.
|
| Portland is not running out of land...
| 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. Compared with Toronto or Montreal where in 20 min
| if you're lucky you've entered a highway so you can sit in
| traffic for an hour to clear the city. Not sure about in
| the US.
| throwaway9980 wrote:
| Towns tend to be this way, not so much cities. I live in a
| single family neighborhood in a large city and it's both
| walkable and drivable. It's not great driving beyond a 1-2
| mile radius, but I don't need to go that far more than once
| a week. My kids' schools are all walkable distances, 30
| minutes tops, or a 5 minute drive. Same for the gym,
| restaurants, bars, the grocery stores, etc.
| antb123 wrote:
| Oulu Finland... Created equal numbers of separate human and
| car roads. Very possible in newer cities.
|
| https://www.euronews.com/2021/01/22/meet-the-bike-loving-
| fin...
| newsbinator wrote:
| Minsk does both well
| browningstreet wrote:
| I live adjacent to a mid- sized downtown area. It's walkable,
| but from my house to anything on the other side of it... not as
| walkable. Driving it is very annoying though... lights, weird
| traffic patterns, a million turns, one way streets, etc. if any
| single one of those roads were converted to a bike only street,
| it'd be 100x easier and more rewarding to bike it.
|
| I wish American towns... especially the smaller ones where
| streets are too narrow for bike lanes, would embrace no-car
| streets. The fact that they don't exist AT ALL is
| disheartening.
| xorfish wrote:
| Just imagine how much freedom people that can't drive a car
| (disabilities, too young, too old) get in a walkable city.
|
| Can you imagine to live in a city where you can give a 10 year
| old money to get some ice at a stand that is 2 km away?
|
| That happens if you do city planning right.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Walkable cities or walkable towns?
|
| The cities are losing population and this started before Covid.
| Now, with working from home possibilities, it has been revealed,
| in NYC at least, that many people only were living here to be
| close to work. It's evident from the house sales behavior in more
| suburban and rural areas, and while things are coming back, it
| seems to be skewing towards a younger demographic and 'new
| people' rather than people-who-had-left. Moreover, a lot of
| people are downgrading apartments and buying weekend homes with
| fresh air and birds in trees.
|
| Let's forget cities for a second. A lot of American towns could
| be a little more pedestrian friendly. They should copy European
| cities like France and Netherlands and Germany, where even
| smaller towns have public transport that doesn't suck, safe
| sidewalks with safe crosswalks, and separate bike lanes.
|
| Instead we have roads with people's driveways, commercial stuff,
| people walking, all intermixed making traffic slow and dangerous.
|
| The evidence that Americans want more walkable towns is in the
| fact that these towns are so much more expensive and often
| populated by white collar professionals who can afford them.
| gullywhumper wrote:
| To make cities more walkable, changing driver behavior needs to
| be a significant focus.
|
| Minneapolis consistently ranks as one of the better cities for
| pedestrians, but even here the drivers here are really aggressive
| towards pedestrians to the point that some don't even care if
| you're pushing a stroller. Bike lanes, trails, and enhanced
| crosswalks are great, but they can't protect you from drivers
| that ignore traffic laws and drive dangerously.
|
| The city knows it has a problem. This picture taken today is of a
| sign posted on one of the main bridges into downtown:
|
| https://imgur.com/gallery/NsLGfk4
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Easier said than done. My Bay Area City is implementing city
| planning measures to reduce traffic fatalities; things like
| bike lane protectors and removing right-turn yield passages
| into a sharp right turn that forces drivers to be slower. You
| would not believe the amount of sheer vitriol from many
| folks....
| noahtallen wrote:
| Road design has a huge part to play here. Places with very safe
| streets have very few lanes, lots of traffic calming, smarter
| signals, and design which makes drivers slow down and pay
| attention. The road in that picture is broad and open, so it's
| no wonder cars feel like they're the priority: the design
| promotes it.
|
| I agree that cultural change is necessary too, but there are so
| many relatively cheap things we could do to improve streets for
| non-cars! And if we do, they'd end up being able to move more
| people anyways, because cars are incredibly space expensive.
| guyzero wrote:
| My belief is that Americans want walkable cities except they
| fundamentally hate other people. Not personally, just
| existentially. Other people take stuff that the average American
| wants - a parking spot next to the door, getting a coffee right
| away, being seated instantly in a restaurant. Or simply having to
| see people they dislike.
|
| So the drive, which means they have to see even fewer people.
| Minor49er wrote:
| What a bizarre take. I've experienced Americans doing the
| following for me as a stranger: - Waving hello
| as I walk past - Holding open doors as I approach,
| despite being able-bodied - Creating an opening for me in
| busy traffic when they don't have to - Picking stuff up
| for me that I've accidentally dropped
|
| The list goes on.
|
| The reason why Americans drive is that they have a large
| population living across a sprawling landmass. Trains used to
| be the norm as American cities were being developed in the
| 1800s through the early 1900s. But because the scale of cities
| grew, they became less efficient than cars for most people to
| get around
| doit4thebitties wrote:
| Have to build cities European-style then with shops and
| residences closer together.
|
| Also, Davis CA is extremely walkable anywhere near downtown and
| the UCD campus.
| PrisonerofWS wrote:
| It's absolute pie in the sky to think Americans will give up
| their cars. Walkability is great for a sunny Saturday morning
| farmers market. But that's not going to move the needle on carbon
| in any significant way. Living in a "walkable" neighborhood with
| two cars in the driveway is like recycling. It makes us feel like
| we're doing something meaningful to rationalize all the junk we
| buy on Amazon.
|
| But one car per household would make a significant difference.
| It's not just carbon emissions. It's also the energy required to
| manufacture and ship the second car. You can still drive
| anywhere, anytime but one car forces you to coordinate and make
| choices. Gotta start somewhere.
| newobj wrote:
| It's actually possible for walkability to have nothing to do
| with environmentalism.
| generalizations wrote:
| > one car forces you to coordinate and make choices
|
| Choices like, "oh, I can't live in the country because my
| spouse can't go anywhere while I'm at work an hour away."
|
| One car per household is a great way to lower the quality of
| life for a large fraction of households.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I think a lot of city dwellers fail to realise not everyone
| is attracted to urban life and some people actively disdain
| it. I really don't like being in built up areas for more than
| a few days, if I lived in one I'd be a miserable alcoholic
| within a month. If you listened to half the people in
| discussions like this they'd pile us all into Warhammer 40k
| style arcologies!
|
| Urban life genuinely holds no appeal at all for me, I'm just
| not wired for it. I know this isn't true for everyone or even
| the majority but it is for a lot of people, I'd honestly
| rather emigrate to a foreign country with all the stress and
| work that entails than live in a city even for a year. My
| dream house would be an old stone cottage somewhere
| overlooking the sea with no light pollution and the nearest
| neighbour at least half a mile away! It's not that I'm
| antisocial, it's just that cities are sensory overload _par
| excellence_ and I just feel really uncomfortable after a
| while of that. I'm social enough, but I prefer to have the
| choice to keep the world at arm's length if necessary.
| pxeboot wrote:
| > It's absolute pie in the sky to think Americans will give up
| their cars.
|
| Yep. I live in a very walkable neighborhood and walk to work.
| Almost everybody else still drives a full size truck or SUV,
| even if they are only going a few blocks.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| >>>But one car per household would make a significant
| difference. It's not just carbon emissions. It's also the
| energy required to manufacture and ship the second car. You can
| still drive anywhere, anytime but one car forces you to
| coordinate and make choices.
|
| I know a woman who divorced her husband and moved back to Japan
| because they only had 1 car, and her lack of mobility kept her
| from getting a job or doing much of anything besides sitting in
| the house. I think they were living in the Atlanta suburbs,
| which I'm not familiar with.
| [deleted]
| dmos62 wrote:
| I think car-only cities sounded like such a good idea during
| urbanization. I wonder what current trendy ideas we'll look back
| on with regret.
| heurisko wrote:
| I live in England. Our cities are walkable, but they are often a
| nightmare to commute to by car (and bus, train, even though this
| is getting better).
|
| What I think would work in American suburbs is light rail/tram
| systems. They aren't as popular in England, but are very popular
| in Germany. As a tourist, they made getting around very easy,
| even without a car.
| [deleted]
| Giorgi wrote:
| They want but will never walk.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| I think the inside of a downtown should only have one way streets
| and parking on the side, and have big centers with plaza like
| things. Then you mostly drive on the outside until you're
| parking.
|
| I hate how the roads are in our downtowns ever since visiting
| Italy and seeing these huge plazas all over in the cities.
| btheshoe wrote:
| Honestly this stuff is part of what makes me want to move to
| Shanghai, or another city in east Asia at some point in my life.
| The public transport there was just incredible - super efficient,
| super clean, extremely accessible. I'm in tech though, so
| probably stuck to the bay area :/
| MattGaiser wrote:
| How many are willing to give up a detached house for it though?
|
| How many are willing to deal with shortsighted neighbours who
| refuse to fix their condo building?
|
| I'm someone who nominally wants walkable neighbourhoods, but as
| soon as it requires compromising those two, I'm out.
| xputer wrote:
| No need to give up single family homes at all. Just make sure
| every suburb has a dense multi use zoned core with shops and
| apartments above the shops. Then make that core easy to reach
| from all across the suburb by walking/cycling/bus/rail (yes
| that will take away some of the space allocated to cars). Then
| as a bonus, connect those cores to each other with rail. This
| is essentially how Dutch suburbs work.
| habosa wrote:
| Sometimes I think Americans don't know how badly they want this.
|
| Americans will tell you how wonderful European cities are with
| their small streets and their public squares filled with great
| restaurants. They think we don't have cities like that because
| we're lacking some fundamental European-ness.
|
| No. We just put cars everywhere. Cars ruin everything. Now you
| have wider streets. Louder streets. More dangerous streets. Far
| less foot traffic which means very low chances of discovering a
| new favorite place. You have lower business density which totally
| changes the economics of an entire neighborhood. Etc.
|
| In this and so many other things Americans say they want what
| they see elsewhere but are uninterested in doing anything about
| it.
| afarrell wrote:
| The problem is there are real costs:
|
| - Politicians need to be willing to withstand accusations that
| they are allied with property developers who earn more than
| they spend.
|
| - Politicians have to be willing to piss off people who support
| minimum parking requirements and other restrictions.
|
| - Those same politicians have to be able to get re-elected.
|
| - Large numbers of people have to credibly promise to volunteer
| and vote for a local politician who supports the walkable urban
| development policies alongside positions they disagree with.
|
| An individual can want it, but it requires costly collective
| action to change. If just one person goes to a town council
| meeting and argues in favor of letting a housing developer
| build apartments near them, that will have little impact unless
| they also talk 2 other people into both taking similar action
| and recursively getting similar alignment.
|
| The rate at which YIMBY activism spreads is too low.
| [deleted]
| SirZimzim wrote:
| I always wish for big pedestrian zones like those public
| squares in Europe. I have noticed closing off streets has
| become more common but we need to commit and make those full
| time pedestrian areas. We don't need to park 3 feet away from
| everything.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Americans aren't homogenous: those who adore European cities
| aren't the same ones demanding parking minimums at their local
| neighborhood groups. _Those_ people don't give a hoot about
| European cities: they just want everything within a 10 mile
| radius of where they live to be easy to drive to and don't want
| to think through or be reminded of the externalities.
| mapgrep wrote:
| You are right, and there are also design speeds routinely
| imposed on new/"improved" U.S. roads that enable or even
| require (under govt safety standards) wide roads, which just
| encourage faster driving and worsen the problem. Even here in
| nyc we have some roads like this. Thankfully they are a smaller
| proportion than in the rest of the country. But mainly that's
| because of the age of the streets -- we are lucky to have old
| ones not ruined by our engineers and government.
|
| https://www.strongtowns.org/slowthecars
|
| https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/10/20/taking-pedest...
| Retric wrote:
| I've lived in walkable US cities. The main ingredients are
| mixed use, high density, effective public transportation,
| useable sidewalks, and zero surface level parking lots. Roads
| and underground parking is fine because they don't lower
| density that much and density defines how much you can reach in
| a reasonable walk.
|
| What I think people miss is public transportation is the least
| important part of the equation. Once people start walking
| everywhere you can increase the number of trips people take
| with public transportation, but you want people making short
| trips not simply long commutes.
| presentation wrote:
| Roads often do make a big difference - if there are too many
| lanes it you end up with a block-sized, loud and dangerous
| chasm in the middle of what could be a bustling neighborhood.
|
| I live in Tokyo and it's dominated by streets that are
| literally barely wide enough to have two cars pass each other
| at <5mph, and I've come to love that.
| Retric wrote:
| IMO this still just comes down to density. Getting to a
| park just across a 3 lane divided highway isn't a problem
| especially via skyway or underground tunnel. Walking 5
| miles to that same park isn't.
|
| Narrow streets can significantly boost city density which
| then gets people out of their cars. One way streets make
| crossing traffic easier. But, if there's nowhere to walk to
| then it's all kind of pointless.
| wanderingmind wrote:
| I was going to write almost very similar comment. A follow up
| question will be how badly they want it and are they willing to
| give up their cars to have a walkable City and you would
| immediately see how many are actually interested in it
| loa_in_ wrote:
| The sunken cost basically almost doomed the world by now
| (fossil fuel industry) so there's no way America gives up
| their cars (for less)
| ethanbond wrote:
| Of course there is. Just get rid of parking and/or put up
| bollards.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| It's not that easy. For one there is a notable population
| which will complain and even for those who want to get
| rid of cars it is a long project: You need to change the
| city structure. If you have a resedential area without
| shops to run errands and no workplaces whatsoever people
| will need to travel long distances each time. Long travel
| time (whatever the means) means that you don't do grocery
| shopping for a day or two, but a week or two, which means
| you carry more and that's only viable by car.
|
| Transforming city structure and society takes time.
| ganzuul wrote:
| European cities are overrun by electric scooters. It's not a
| big step. heh
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| Usually provided by American companies supported by venture
| capital.
|
| As a resident of a very walkable European city I can assure
| you that most of us didn't ask for those pests.
| tblt wrote:
| As a resident of another very walkable European city, I
| love the ease and affordability of e-scooters. They
| haven't replaced walking for me, they've replaced the
| longer trips where I might take a bus, train or taxi.
| They're cheaper, more convenient and especially during
| the pandemic have meant fresh air and the joy of being
| outside.
| msla wrote:
| > Usually provided by American companies supported by
| venture capital.
|
| And bought by Europeans with European money. What's your
| point, beyond nationalist bickering?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| If I didn't need it to get to work I wouldn't own a car. I
| hate them.
| lumost wrote:
| Zoning is a dragon that even a clear majority can't slay in
| many cities. In Boston there is a major controversy that all
| new construction must have 1 parking space for every 2
| condos.
|
| Property developers, residents, and everyone else hates this
| regulation as the people buying these condos aren't getting
| cars. You end up with buildings that are 1/3rd empty parking
| lot.
|
| Bear in mind that the most popular neighborhoods of Boston
| were built in the 1600s without cars in mind.
| nerdponx wrote:
| The problem is that American cities also generally don't have
| functioning mass transit systems. And even in those that do
| (New York), they don't always go where you need them to go,
| so mass transit trips can be 2-3x longer than a car trip.
|
| Want to do a big shopping trip? Have more than 1 child you
| need to move around the city? Want to do more than 1 specific
| errand in the same afternoon? Without a car, all of this
| becomes a huge pain in the ass even in New York or Boston,
| which have extensive networks of subways and buses, let alone
| anywhere else.
|
| And now let's say you want to get out of the city for the
| weekend. Do you rent a car? That's way more expensive in the
| long run compared to owning.
|
| We would need to fundamentally redesign our cities/towns and
| transit systems for Americans to be able to give up their
| cars.
| OJFord wrote:
| > And now let's say you want to get out of the city for the
| weekend. Do you rent a car? That's way more expensive in
| the long run compared to owning.
|
| Are you doing it every weekend? Renting a car for just the
| odd weekend away would be way cheaper than owning. The
| initial cost / capital depreciation aside even.
|
| I live in London and don't have a car, a PS50+ train out to
| my parents' seems a bit absurd next to the cost of a train
| to Paris, Ryanair flights, or my Netflix subscription. But
| I could do it every other weekend just for the cost of
| _insuring_ a (basic, sensible) car.
|
| I could probably go more often than I do, take _taxis_
| there and back ( >2h each way) and still come out ahead vs.
| car ownership.
|
| Really need a 'day to day' (or specialised, such as needing
| capacity for something, or disabled access) use to make it
| worthwhile IMO, too many people I think see it as just a
| 'standard' thing which must be had.
| maccard wrote:
| Cars are unfortunately too cheap. My last car was a basic
| VW polo, and the insurance was PS350/year, road tax PS99
| and probably PS200 a year amortized over the 5 years on
| servicing/wear and year, with a 400 mile range on ~PS50
| worth of fuel. The break even point on that is ~5-6 trips
| per year, and much lower if you use the car for basically
| anything else. I can fly to eastern Europe for PS15, but
| the transit to the airport is more expensive than that in
| my city.
| Retric wrote:
| What about parking? In major cities that's is frequently
| the biggest expense at ~PS100/month it really adds up.
| Leherenn wrote:
| And it's even worse when you consider you can add people
| for almost no extra costs, whereas with public
| transportation it mostly multiplies.
| omaranto wrote:
| I lived in the Boston area for five years and it was a
| great experience overall, it's quite walkable. The one
| thing I could never quite get used to was public transit
| taking longer than walking! You often had a choice of
| walking for 20 minutes or waiting 15 minutes for a 6 minute
| bus ride. (Tip: in winter, walking isn't just faster, it
| feels much warmer too.)
|
| This really confused my Mexico City brain. Here in Mexico
| City public transit is horribly crowded but faster than
| walking. The subway is usually faster even than driving,
| which makes sense because you're not in our terrible
| traffic.
|
| I guess part of the problem in Boston is that there just
| aren't enough riders: after waiting 10 minutes for a bus it
| wasn't even full! Here in Mexico City a more typical
| waiting period is 5 minutes and the bus is usually packed.
| I bet in Boston it's just not economically viable to run
| transit more frequently. Although maybe more people would
| opt for public transit if it were more frequent?
|
| Anyway, I do recommend living Boston for a few years even
| with its wonky public transit. It's very pretty and has
| plenty of character.
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| Apparently 12 minutes of waiting is the critical point
| where you start to lose riders of public transit. If you
| want people to really use your system, you need to keep
| wait times consistently under that.
| 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
| inevitably "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.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| You aren't looking at the right variables. The revealed
| preference isn't shown by where people chose to move because
| pricing due to exogenous factors has a huge impact on
| availability. The right way to look is in some mix of "price
| per square foot" and "cost per dwelling unit" metrics, both of
| which show a strong preference for (1) dense urban living like
| NYC and (2) walkable suburban living like downtown palo alto,
| Berkeley, LA or many other inner ring suburbs in east coast
| cities.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| People do vote with their dollars. The walkable neighborhoods
| in my city tend to cost 2-3X more than houses in less walkable
| areas.
|
| There are actually huge swaths of affordable houses built on
| the outskirts of many towns, but people don't want them because
| they're not close to the walkable parts of the city.
| taeric wrote:
| This can be misleading. The supply in walkable areas will, by
| near definition, be lower than places you have to drive to.
| Such that the evidence isn't that houses are more expensive
| in walkable areas. The evidence is that it is not
| economically viable to build more walkable neighborhoods.
|
| Edit: I meant to say it could be an alternative, not that it
| is.
| epistasis wrote:
| It is far far far more economical to build walkable
| neighborhoods. They require far less infrastructure costs,
| from water piping to sewer to roads. Quite often the only
| places that can sustainably fund themselves on property
| taxes are walkable multiuse neighborhoods. A ton of
| suburbia is sitting on huge infrastructure bills that will
| come due in the near future.
|
| Car-dependent neighborhoods only exist because law prevents
| more dense uses. I don't know of a single such car-
| dependent neighborhood that doesn't strictly prevent a
| change away from being car dependent. From zoning to codes,
| anything that could lead to a walkable neighborhood is
| banned by law from even starting.
|
| If we didn't outlaw walkable neighborhoods, and vigorously
| defend the banning of apartments and corner stores by
| swarming of planning meetings and recalls of city council
| members, vigorous actions perpetrated by the few and not
| the many, the balance would be entirely different.
|
| In every single family neighborhood that is far dependent,
| you'll find a small number of people that will go to war to
| prevent any change to that. And all our systems are set up
| to allow a small number of people to control the outcomes
| of planning decisions.
| taeric wrote:
| This sounds good on paper, but you just have to look at
| how Walmart destroyed brick and mortar shops. They would
| build a single giant shop for an entire region and folks
| would drive to it in droves.
|
| That is to say, I want to agree. I just can't square that
| with how I've seen small towns destroyed by shopping
| centers that require cars for the residents to drive to.
| (Ironically, this is different from the situation that
| requires companies to drive to the customers. Though,
| there, reverse pressure exists such that the more reliant
| on the company driving, the less pleasant the shopping
| experience.)
| epistasis wrote:
| I don't quite understand the contradiction. If you're
| talking about small rural areas, sure, but that's a tiny
| fraction of our population. And rural areas don't
| typically vigorously block apartment and walkable
| development.
|
| And I haven't seen every rural town, but all of the ones
| that I know of have plenty of housing near a walkable
| core too. I know lots of rural people that have no
| trouble getting in 20,000 steps daily because of that
| walkability of homes neat the downtown.
|
| But suburbia, the vast majority of our new housing over
| the past 50-60 years, is not rural, and is of a very
| different character.
|
| Strong Towns has been reporting on this for years, from
| the fiscally conservative side. Though I don't call
| myself any sort of fiscal conservative, the data and
| analysis is very good, IMHO:
|
| https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/
| taeric wrote:
| But... talking about the rural areas is enough to destroy
| the "if you build walkable areas, folks will live there."
| Right?
| epistasis wrote:
| Well this is also combined with a shift away from rural
| areas in terms of job opportunities, as farming has
| either become hugely automated, or staffed by skilled
| labor that is severely underpaid.
|
| Where there is economic opportunity, density and walk
| ability are forbidden by law, not by market preferences
| or by natural choices.
| taeric wrote:
| I want to believe this, to a large extent. But it doesn't
| square with my experiences in small towns.
|
| I fully grant that I'm rather removed from my experiences
| in said small towns. And I should fully lay the cards on
| the table that I haven't driven a car for my own commute
| or basic transportation in almost a decade. I far far
| prefer biking/walking to work. Even still, we drive the
| kids to school where we are now. (We walked them back in
| Seattle.)
| 8note wrote:
| People wanted to live in rural areas before the car
| existed, I'm pretty sure.
| taeric wrote:
| But companies did not, and generally do not, want to
| build in them. Which makes them particularly difficult to
| make walkable.
| jcims wrote:
| I'm interested in what you mean by car-dependent
| neighborhood?
|
| From what I've seen it has little to do with
| accommodations for vehicles at the residence level and
| more to do with the proximity of interesting places to
| walk to. It does help if these 'interesting places' don't
| have much parking accommodation.
| epistasis wrote:
| By "car-dependent" I mean the style of US urban planning
| that has dominated since WW2, with huge tracts of single-
| use zoning, miles and miles wide. Usually dominated by
| cul-de-sacs with feeder roads. There is nowhere to walk
| to, distances are far enough that bicycles even become
| challenging, and it's impossible for transit to serve the
| road design, because density of housing is too low and
| the intentional lack of a connected road network makes it
| too difficult to ever run buses in a meaningful way.
|
| Cul-de-sacs are used to minimize the danger of cars (the
| largest cause of child death) and keep traffic to a
| minimum where people live, at the expense of circuitous
| routes. And they shift car traffic to even more dangerous
| feeder roads, that have high speeds and few crossings,
| that serve as extremely dangerous barriers for
| pedestrians and bikes.
| mulmen wrote:
| I have lived in highly walkable neighborhoods. They utilize
| highrises to increase density (supply) of housing and
| commercial space. Walkable areas are by necessity higher
| density, meaning they pack more supply into the same
| footprint.
| taeric wrote:
| Some do. I lived in upper Queen Anne in Seattle. Very few
| highrise houses and all very expensive now. I would be a
| liar if I said I didn't miss how walkable it was.
|
| I also lived in Buckhead area of Atlanta. Also very
| walkable for me, though there were a few high rises.
| mulmen wrote:
| I lived in the Junction in West Seattle for 7 years.
| Highly walkable, lots of highrises in the core, but still
| lots of (very expensive!) single family homes. Now I live
| on Alki and it is much less walkable. I can get around
| but have to climb Admiral to get to a grocery store.
| Several of our bus routes were permanently closed.
|
| Queen Anne benefits from being in Seattle and the
| economic benefits that has to businesses that make a
| neighborhood walkable. It's also just very old and was
| built when walkability was a necessity. Unfortunately it
| is prohibitively expensive because higher density
| development is difficult or impossible.
| taeric wrote:
| Right. But whenever I hear that "walkable places are
| expensive", I hear folks talking about places like
| Seattle. Or downtown Atlanta.
|
| What places are we talking about that are a) highly
| walkable, b) expensive, and c) not at capacity?
|
| (This is a genuine question. I fully cede that I could
| just be completely miscalibrated for this.)
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I have sensed an emerging "story" in various media over
| the last 6-12 months that within the US at least, there
| are vanishingly few cities or large towns that are (a)
| highly desirable places to live (b) affordable to median
| income folks. Or maybe the story is that if this is not
| true to today, it seems that it will be in 5-10 years.
| taeric wrote:
| I don't think this is necessarily a new story, all told.
| I think I remember it back in the 90s.
|
| That said, does seem to be getting more pronounced.
| Really, just seems that there aren't any new cities. All
| of the places folks wanted to live, are the same places
| folks want to live today. :(
| mulmen wrote:
| I think we are talking past each other. When you said
| "The supply in walkable areas will, by near definition,
| be lower than places you have to drive to." I interpreted
| that to mean there is less total supply. You seem to be
| speaking to available supply.
|
| > What places are we talking about that are a) highly
| walkable, b) expensive, and c) not at capacity?
|
| I don't think there is such a place. If a place is
| walkable it is going to be at or near capacity which
| makes it expensive.
|
| The lack of these areas seems to be a result of an
| unwillingness to increase density.
| taeric wrote:
| I was meaning it in terms of purchasable supply. Nothing
| is stopping anyone from building a new city center in the
| middle of Montana, such that it has plenty of buildable
| supply.
|
| That is, you can say that dense cities are more
| effecient, but that only matters if you can build another
| one. Otherwise, there are more affordable homes further
| from existing city center then there are in them. And
| that is going to be hard to change.
|
| You seem to be pointing that existing cities should
| double down on their density. I'm claiming if that was
| such a clear path to success, it would be done in new
| places.
|
| I do suspect there is a mix of both.
| mulmen wrote:
| > Nothing is stopping anyone from building a new city
| center in the middle of Montana, such that it has plenty
| of buildable supply.
|
| I don't think it is that easy. The state has to approve a
| new town. I don't think you can just create one at will.
| Nearby landowners are certainly going to have opinions.
|
| > You seem to be pointing that existing cities should
| double down on their density.
|
| Ideally, yes. But really I am saying they _can't_ because
| zoning laws prevent it. Existing home owners favor this
| constraint because it keeps prices up.
| taeric wrote:
| I think it is easier than you'd think to get a builder to
| build a neighborhood. Convincing mixed zoning to move in
| is more difficult. Largely due to how confusing store
| ownership is. Often the buildings need to exist and be
| owned before businesses look to lease in places.
|
| None of which is to say I disagree with zoning being
| problematic. I fully agree with that points. I just think
| it is oversold. Folks like having room, and folks are
| typically over afraid of letting kids play in parks on
| their own. (I can't really argue against some of that
| fear... :( )
| wpm wrote:
| My census tract in Chicago is denser than 96% of America.
| There are like two high-rises, one for seniors and some
| shorter new construction near the transit stops in the
| 5-6 story range.
|
| The bulk of my neighborhoods density is created by
| missing middle housing, two and three flats, four-six
| square apartments, and a healthy smattering of SFHs on
| narrow lots.
|
| I have a backyard. My neighbor grows a garden in between
| her house and her two car garage. She pollinates her
| garden with the honey bees she keeps.
|
| The dichotomy between "car centric suburbia" or "huge 100
| story high rises" is false. You can get to walkable
| density without going over three stories on average.
| [deleted]
| mulmen wrote:
| I don't think there is a building in Seattle even close
| to 100 floors.
|
| The Junction in West Seattle (where I lived) is exactly
| what you describe.
| drivers99 wrote:
| That's called "drive until you qualify."
| jppope wrote:
| > "In this case Americans have chosen the suburbs in droves."
|
| "chosen the suburbs" implies that there was a choice.
|
| The limited walkable cities that have been built since 1950
| (like Seaside, FL) are some of the most coveted real estate in
| the United States. The plain fact is that walkable cities are
| illegal to build now because of zoning laws and building codes.
| bluGill wrote:
| Supply and demand drives prices up, but it doesn't tell us
| how large the demand is, only that there is enough to drive
| up prices. it only takes a small number of unmet demand go
| drive prices up.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > The limited walkable cities that have been built since 1950
| (like Seaside, FL)
|
| I think you should check the population of Seaside (or
| Celebration). Oh that's right, it's never had a census scan.
| Suffice it to say that calling either of them "cities" is
| quite a stretch.
| 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.
| bllguo wrote:
| "Avoid" being the operative word! Unfortunately we've chosen
| to slap on the suburbia band-aid that just introduces more
| negative externalities. Dense cities in Europe and East Asia
| are much safer _and_ score better on education metrics, so
| it's not like eschewing urbanity is working well for us
| comparatively.
| surfmike wrote:
| At the end of the day most people want more of their bit of
| space (indoor and outdoor) for the money. Which inherently
| pushes them to suburbs.
| dionidium wrote:
| Suburban character isn't the result of consumer choice. In most
| suburbs, alternative kinds of development are literally illegal
| to build. Cities regulate the number of units, the heights of
| buildings, how far they must be setback from the street, how
| many parking spaces they require, and so on and so on.
|
| Landowners lobby for and enact these regulations precisely
| because they know that if people were allowed to vote with
| their wallets they'd choose to live in denser developments.
|
| You can't make cheeseburgers illegal and then argue that nobody
| orders cheeseburgers in restaurants because they're unpopular.
| dionidium wrote:
| I hope no one will think it too unorthodox if I respond to my
| own comment just to add that given these constraints on land
| use patterns it's obviously the case that Americans choose to
| drive automobiles. It's fairly common to hear people describe
| this, too, as another kind of "revealed preference" for
| driving over the alternatives. But it's a revealed preference
| _in the environment as it exists today_ , which is the only
| environment that's legal. If people were allowed to build
| other kinds of environments, then they would build other
| kinds of environments and in those other kinds of
| environments they would make other choices about
| transportation.
|
| If you only look at people on the beach, you'll find a
| revealed preference for flip-flops. But in other kinds of
| environments, people wear other kinds of footwear. If you
| only looked at people on beaches, you'd draw some funny
| conclusions about what people like to wear on their feet.
|
| The big takeaway here is that the suburbs are the result of
| big government social engineering on a massive scale. You
| really can't look at anything about land-use or
| transportation and conclude basically anything useful about
| "revealed preferences."
| 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 in a great many places.
| notJim wrote:
| People have this all-or-nothing thinking about this, but
| realistically most cities ought to have a mix. A single
| person in their 20s doesn't necessarily need or want a house
| with a yard, but they might want one later on. Right now, in
| most places that means allowing more options for apartments
| to be built, and more medium-density for people who are
| somewhere in between.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I think it's largely because we're still at the point in
| American politics where the folks against densification are
| still strongly tied to a certain pastoral vision of
| America: large lot sizes, single family homes, easy
| parking, and heavily manicured neighborhoods. It's more
| than just density, it's a legally codified way of life.
| Folks understand that the moment restrictions are eased
| that this pastoral view of urban development will
| necessarily change. It takes a lot of restrictions to have
| a built environment like America's and the only way to
| maintain that built environment is to resist any change to
| the restrictions.
|
| But I agree. A vision of sustainable development would be a
| dense urban core with decreasing density away from the
| core, instead of endless SFH large-lot sprawl. Families or
| other individuals that want/need more space can live on the
| outskirts and take a train in to the urban core for work.
| Younger people or those who don't need the space can stay
| in the core, and folks in between can live anywhere in the
| spectrum of density.
| xorfish wrote:
| There needs to be a land tax that is high enough to cover
| the cost of infrastructure.
|
| This is currently not the case with single family homes.
| graeme wrote:
| Your thesis is flawed. It is illegal to build new dense
| walkable neighborhoods in almost all of north america. But
| existing neighbourhoods of that style tend to be both highly
| priced to live in and also popular tourist destinations,
| implying high desirability.
|
| The older east coat cities built walkable neighbourhoods before
| they became illegal.
| refurb wrote:
| Housing is actually _more_ expensive outside of San
| Francisco, at least suburbs close to the city.
|
| I'd say there is more demand for a house with a yard in the
| suburbs than a 2 bedroom apartment in the city.
|
| Especially in a post-Covid world where people are working
| from home, who wants to be stuck in an apartment during the
| next lockdown?
| usaar333 wrote:
| > Housing is actually more expensive outside of San
| Francisco, at least suburbs close to the city.
|
| Not per lot SQ feet
| refurb wrote:
| Why would you look at just the lot sq ft and ignore the
| house or other factors?
| usaar333 wrote:
| Because it's the land that drives value in the Bay Area.
|
| I suppose you can use some weighted combination of lot
| and house, but I haven't seen common and simple valuation
| metrics there.
| cletus wrote:
| > It is illegal to build new dense walkable neighborhoods in
| almost all of north america
|
| Yes.. because of the people's representatives. Why is that do
| you think?
|
| > The older east coat cities built walkable neighbourhoods
| before they became illegal.
|
| Technically, they were built before the modern automobile era
| when there was really no alternative. Additionally, geography
| played a part. Manhattan is land-constrained. So is San
| Francisco. LA, Chicago and Atlanta are not.
|
| By any quantitative measure, Americans have clearly chosen a
| car-dependent lifestyle. Since WW2, houses have gotten larger
| while families have gotten smaller. When given the choice
| between less space is a downtown neighbourhood or more space
| in the suburbs the vast majority of people choose the latter.
|
| People will even choose more space and pay exorbitant private
| school fees rather than live with less space but get a "free"
| excellent public school system, even though the latter is
| almost always more economically sensible, even more so the
| more children a family has.
| coryrc wrote:
| > Why is that do you think?
|
| Zoning is too local, so if I can't afford to live near my
| job I can't vote to allow me to live near my job.
| graeme wrote:
| Nobody campaigns on parking minimums, setbacks, etc and
| most people you speak to haven't heard of these things.
| Municipal election turnout is low.
|
| I'll admit it's certainly possible. Or possible that
| decades ago people voted for this and the laws stayed.
|
| But the argument seems pretty indirect given how few people
| are familiar with these issues.
| grumblenum wrote:
| I've never dealt with a city in my region that didn't have
| variance procedures for building and land development
| permits. In my own experience, these committees are nearly a
| rubber stamp unless an adjacent property owner expects to be
| inconvenienced. You're observing what's called realized
| preferences.
|
| Coffee-table planners seem content to frame everything as a
| political problem, as if developers are an extended civil
| service or some kind of unthinking machines. There is also an
| unsurprising lack of investigation into places in the world
| where zoning free-for-alls actually do exist. Most are not
| like Martha's Vinyard. Many people don't actually want to
| live in a favela, and they vote and spend their dollars
| accordingly.
|
| The east coast built walkable neighborhoods because they were
| built _before_ cars existed. Several of these states have a
| net negative domestic migration, which does not suggest that
| people _want_ to live there.
| xorfish wrote:
| There were plenty of walkable places in the US. They were
| just bulldozed for the car.
|
| https://strongtowns.org has a few good examples.
| 542458 wrote:
| They're illegal because people vote for representatives who
| makes them illegal and show up to city council meetings to
| petition for them to be illegal.
|
| Existing areas in that style tend to be expensive, but are
| often (at least where I've lived) some of the most NYMBY
| areas in a city. They like the benefits their density has
| brought, but won't tolerate the lot next to them getting one
| iota more dense.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Is that because they don't prefer that design, or because
| protecting the price of their house is so essential to
| their long term financial stability that they'll block
| literally any policy, no matter how good, if it threatens
| their house price?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > They're illegal because people vote for representatives
| who makes them illegal
|
| Yes, but that's not because nobody wants to live in them.
| It's because a loud subsection of the people that already
| own single-family homes there don't want them built.
|
| You seem to recognize this. That's different from saying
| "Americans don't want to live in this sort of housing".
| 542458 wrote:
| Ah sorry! That's fair - I understand what you're saying
| now. That said, I'd argue that this is a bit of people
| wanting their cake and to eat it too. They want a
| contradiction - to be close to everything (so they can
| walk places and be in the middle of the action), but also
| far away from it (so they have privacy and room). So -
| It's true to say that people want density, but also true
| to say they don't.
| xorfish wrote:
| It will become a necessity in a few decades.
|
| Single family homes that are up to code don't bring in
| enough tax revenue to pay for the infrastructure that is
| necessary to suport them.
|
| Same thing goes for strip mals.
|
| You can try to run a deficit forever, it is just a really
| bad idea.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg&list=PLJp5q-R0l
| Z...
| imgabe wrote:
| The people who show up to city council meetings and pay
| attention to local politics are a tiny minority. It is not
| a stretch to believe that they do not represent what most
| people want.
| whalabi wrote:
| Wait why is it illegal to build dense walkable
| neighbourhoods? Which laws?
| cheriot wrote:
| At a high level:
|
| 1. Zoning prevents density, which precludes having enough
| foot traffic for neighborhood stores to exist (if zoning
| actually allow them).
|
| 2. Parking minimums force things farther apart because so
| much of each lot is asphalt.
|
| 3. Street design that prioritizes car speed over pedestrian
| safety.
|
| In the end, it's not safe, pleasant, or practical to walk
| in suburbs built from the 70s on. These things are a
| patchwork of local and state law so specifics vary by area.
| 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.
| ramblenode wrote:
| > In this case Americans have chosen the suburbs in droves.
|
| They've chosen their preferred option, given the current
| (meager) options. That doesn't mean people wouldn't choose
| walkable cities over suburbs---the option of walkable cities
| just functionally doesn't exist in the US for a middle income
| family.
|
| And this isn't due to organic demand for suburban
| neighborhoods, either. In the US, central planning has had a
| major role in accelerating the development of suburbs. Tax
| incentives for home ownership were first rolled out during the
| New Deal, and these especially targeted single family homes.
| After the war, the dual-use civil-military interstate system
| was created and highways were subsidized which allowed
| neighborhood development far from the city center. Auto and
| petrochemical development were targeted for national security,
| which acted as a subsidy toward the gasoline-heavy suburban
| lifestyle. The 1970s energy crisis shifted US foreign policy
| toward stabilizing petrol prices, which has resulted in various
| military and CIA operations to that effect (Paul Wolfowitz was
| talking about securing oil in Iraq before 2nd Bush was even in
| office). Suburban homes in many cities consume more resources
| via public roads, water, sewer, electric than they pay in
| property taxes, but taxes are kept low for political reasons,
| because that's where voters live.
|
| So there are quite a lot of extra-market forces that have
| shaped city planning. Now all of this has reached a scale where
| it is self-sustaining, but that doesn't mean people would have
| picked this route if the initial conditions were not so
| favorable.
| afarrell wrote:
| Yea, you have to ask people "do you like walkable cities enough
| that you'd be willing to let a for-profit developer build
| houses and vote for an otherwise-unsavory politician who
| repealed minimum parking requirements?"
| quicklime wrote:
| This sort of thinking is how city planning and product design
| gets stuck in a local optimum.
| bllguo wrote:
| Agreed. If we truly wanted them we would be willing to give up
| car ownership, single family homes, and suburban sprawl. I
| doubt that will ever happen in this hyper-individualistic
| culture. Hopefully it is uncontroversial by now to say that an
| enormous swath of American society does not believe in self-
| sacrifice.
| dorchadas wrote:
| I would _love_ to give all that up. But until change happens,
| I _can 't_. It's a chicken-and-egg problem. I believe many
| would give that up if they could, especially younger people,
| but there's no option to give it up currently.
| xnyan wrote:
| I think you are dismissing or not considering a major part of
| living in a walkable area - the cost of housing at any square
| footage. I know I did until quite recently.
|
| I really want to live in a walkable city, and would be
| thrilled not to own a car and live in a smaller space. I'm a
| remote dev, and as my partner just finished graduate school
| and is starting their professional career I thought we'd have
| the perfect opportunity to live the dream and move somewhere
| where we could use walking/biking as our primary form of
| transportation.
|
| Turns out, there's a very limited supply of walkable
| communities in the US and they have a significant premium. We
| gotta pay off graduate school loans and even with higher
| salaries, it would be years of additional repayments living
| in somewhere like Seattle or New York vs a suburb of Raleigh,
| NC. There are small and more out of the way walkable
| communities, but not really any with good job prospects.
| Maybe at some point in the future, but right now I honestly
| don't think I can afford it.
| kgermino wrote:
| Those neighborhoods are deeply subsidized. I don't doubt that
| most Americans would like their exact house (or bigger) in a
| walkable neighborhood over something that's actually be
| available in town today, but it's not a purely market driven
| choice today.
| elihu wrote:
| A quarter acre is a little over 10,000 square feet, which is
| what I'd consider a normal-size lot in a normal town. A 5,000
| square foot lot is smallish, but pretty typical of new
| construction. I leave near Portland, OR.
|
| One way to have large lots and walkable cities at the same time
| is just to have smaller cities or towns. People are drawn to
| large urban areas because that's where the jobs are and that's
| where the interesting people and things to do are. If we had
| more towns that were desirable places to live, it would go a
| long way towards fixing the housing shortages and long commutes
| and so on that are typical of major cities. (This is easier
| said than done, though.)
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _In this case Americans have chosen the [car-centric] suburbs
| in droves._
|
| What alternative do they have if that is all that is being
| built?
| cletus wrote:
| For the record, I'm not defending car-dependent living. I
| wish there were more walkable options in the US for people to
| live in (myself included).
|
| But there's an awful lot of copium in these kinds of threads
| that shallowly blame the lack of choice as to why American
| life is so car-dependent. Housing markets are extremely good
| at responding to consumer demand.
|
| Here's a good quantitative data point of people expressing
| their preferences [1]:
|
| > In 1973, the median new single-family house was just 1,525
| square feet, according to the US Census Bureau. By 2010, it
| had grown to 2,169 square feet. And, by 2018, it had bloated
| to 2,435 square feet. Who in 1973 would have believed that a
| newly built typical American home would be 60% bigger than
| theirs in 45 years?
|
| > There's another even more startling factor to take into
| account. Statista.com claims the average household in 1973
| comprised 3.01 people, meaning the home offered 507 square
| feet per person. But by 2018, that household had shrunk to
| 2.53 people. And each had 962 square feet to stretch out.
|
| Houses have gotten 60% larger while households have gotten
| 15% smaller in the last 50 years. That didn't happen in spite
| of consumer demand.
|
| [1]: https://www.hsh.com/homeowner/average-american-home.html
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _But there 's an awful lot of copium in these kinds of
| threads that shallowly blame the lack of choice as to why
| American life is so car-dependent. Housing markets are
| extremely good at responding to consumer demand._
|
| With-in the limits allowed by zoning policy. I'm not
| entirely _laissez-faire_ but I think a lot of NIMBYism and
| just plain old inertial has been baked into by-laws and
| such.
|
| Certain mandates can do good (tighter building envelopes,
| better insulation), while other mandates can do bad
| (minimum lot sizes).
| strix_varius wrote:
| While this suggests that people want more space in their
| homes, it doesn't imply that they prefer car-dependent
| neighborhoods. That would only follow if > 2,000 sq ft
| precluded walkability.
|
| I paid a large premium to own a home in one of the east
| coast's walkable areas. Lot sizes here average about 0.15
| acres, which is over 6,500 (single-story) square feet.
| Homes have front yards, back yards, off-street parking,
| gardens, trees, and still easily fit > 2,000 square feet of
| living space.
|
| The dichotomy of "walkable vs comfortable" is a false one.
| There's a middle ground between tiny high-rise apartments
| and sprawling McMansions.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Houses have gotten 60% larger while households have
| gotten 15% smaller in the last 50 years. That didn 't
| happen in spite of consumer demand._
|
| Pre-WW2 there were large houses, in walkable and
| transit/cycle-friendly neighbourhoods, where people also
| now own cars:
|
| * https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Westminster+Ave,+To
| ron...
|
| There were also more modest homes in the same are:
|
| * https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto
| ,+O...
|
| These places now cost quite a lot, but in roughly 1960-90s
| they were relatively cheap because all the WASPs moved to
| the suburbs because 'downtown was for immigrants'; this
| particular neighbourhood was >90% Polish during the time
| period. Just to the east of this neighbourhood is Little
| Portugal, and to the west a large Ukraine community used to
| be concentrated (with a smattering of Lithuanians).
|
| Now that urban living has become fashionable again, it has
| been gentrified (no more Poles) and the prices are crazy
| high.
|
| But there's nothing unique about how it was built, and
| nothing is stopping communities from (e.g.) instituting
| zoning to mandate higher density (but less than Hong Kong
| levels):
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
| reportingsjr wrote:
| It's not a hard choice when suburbs have been subsidized like
| hell for about 70 years while money has been drained out of
| cities to pay for said suburbs. Here in Ohio there is this
| garbage designation for "rural farming areas" called townships
| that get huge infrastructures subsidies/grants, even though
| they are all just suburbs/exurbs.
|
| Look at any of the areas around Cincinnati, Columbus, or
| Cleveland and check out how many of them have township in their
| name. It's pretty incredible and absolutely disgustingly
| dishonest.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Drained out of the cities? Nearly all of Texas is what most
| people would consider "suburb". Even the "urban" areas are
| mostly sprawl. Very little of Texas is walkable by any
| stretch.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| Yes, a significant amount of tax dollars come from cities
| and are funneled to suburbs/exurba via "grants" and other
| subsidized funding methods, which urban areas don't get the
| benefit of receiving.
| whalabi wrote:
| Out of curiosity, is Austin an exception?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Austin is a giant suburban sprawl that's better than most
| Texan cities because it has a reasonable bus line. It's
| all low density, all of it, with massive parking lots
| everywhere.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Framing it as user choice ignores a lot of history and
| politics. Long Island, for instance, became suburban largely
| due to Robert Moses' starvation of public transportation and
| his prioritization of cars. Because Long Island lacked any sort
| of industry of its own, most inhabitants commuted into New York
| City. Because Moses built massive highways without reserving
| any right of way for a train, most of these inhabitants drove
| into cities. Because they drove cars, they would naturally
| prioritize living in spaces where they could have a garage,
| i.e. a suburb. As more people drove, the trains lost revenue,
| ran less frequently and lost more customers. If fast trains had
| been built to and from Long Island, it's not unbelievable to
| imagine it'd have become as dense as New York.
|
| Or take the white flight. A lot of movement to suburbs was
| predicated on fear of minorities and urban crime.
| [deleted]
| hanniabu wrote:
| Many choose suburbs because there aren't walkable cities as an
| option
| notJim wrote:
| And because the walkable cities have been made unaffordable
| by those insisting that no one wants to live in such a place.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| I have _never_ met anyone who lives in the suburbs because
| "the city wasn't walkable."
|
| It is _always_ because they want a larger house, more land,
| and no shared walls.
| hanniabu wrote:
| If you live in a truly walkable city you don't need a yard
| because there's parks. You also don't feel crammed because
| it's walkable and spend time walking around as opposed to a
| small yard or no yard where your options are to be inside
| or drive somewhere. And you don't need a larger house if
| there's a more appealing outside. Ayooooo these issues go
| away for most people when you introduce real walkable
| cities
| brandonmenc wrote:
| > you don't need a yard because there's parks
|
| Americans want their own private spaces and that
| preference is not going to change, especially when there
| is so much land available.
|
| > you don't need a larger house if there's a more
| appealing outside
|
| The outside is intolerable at best, if not outright
| dangerous for up to half of the year in much of the US.
| imo, our attitudes about walkability are due in large
| part to not having a mild climate like Europe.
| antb123 wrote:
| I agree - but the answer may lie in extensive bike "Roads" for
| walkers and bikers.
| [deleted]
| chapium wrote:
| Americans choose suburbs in droves because the schools are more
| well funded. Most agree that this tradeoff gets the a far worse
| commute than if they lived in the city. I have many coworkers
| who commute 2 hours a day for their glorious backyards? No,
| there are other economic factors driving the decision, but the
| joy of having a lawn to maintain and living on a highway 4
| hours a day are not among them.
| haolez wrote:
| I've been to a few cities in the US (I'm a foreigner), like
| Denver and Atlanta, and they are very pedestrian hostile. Almost
| no sidewalks, every street looks like a roadway (large) and every
| shop seems to belong to these islands where you can park your car
| and do your stuff. Not saying this is good or bad, but it's very
| different from every other country that I've came across. An
| exception in the US would be Las Vegas.
| chronofar wrote:
| In both cities you will find new developments in the city that
| are imminently walkable and highly desirable (more expensive
| than other parts). I think these cities are actually great
| examples of the shifting preferences indicated here. They were
| built to sprawl, but are finding large success when they
| improve pedestrian infrastructure.
| beardyw wrote:
| On one of my relatively few visits to America, from my hotel room
| I could see the zoo less than half a mile away. In reception I
| asked the best route to walk there. There was a stunned silence
| and outright puzzlement, as if I had asked what trains I needed
| to catch to get to Patagonia[1]. No one was even certain it was
| possible.
|
| In the end I worked it out OK, only having to wait at a level
| crossing for a seemingly infinitely long freight train to pass.
| The zoo had more food outlets than animals, but that's another
| story.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Patagonian_Express
| (recommended)
| GordonS wrote:
| Hah, I had a really similar thing happen the first time I went
| to the US, something like 10-15 years back in Houston!
|
| The office was only a mile or 2 from the hotel, so I thought
| I'd walk. On my way out, the receptionist asked where I was
| going and if I'd like her to call a cab. I replied that I was
| going to walk to somewhere close by, and her eyes just about
| popped out of her head - "you can't do that, it's far too
| dangerous to walk!".
|
| I walked anyway of course, looking out for anything even
| tenuously dangerous, and found nothing. It was most puzzling! I
| later conferred with local colleagues in the office, who
| reiterated what the receptionist had said - nobody walks
| anywhere!
|
| Coincidently, one morning I too met an enormous freight train
| at a level crossing - it was actually pretty amazing waiting
| multiple minutes for such an incredibly long train to pass!
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