[HN Gopher] College Towns: Urbanism from a Past Era
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College Towns: Urbanism from a Past Era
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 40 points
Date : 2025-04-18 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.governance.fyi)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.governance.fyi)
| nluken wrote:
| This interview needs to be edited a bit; just posting the
| transcript of the zoom call really hampers the readability and
| flow. What works for a podcast is not the same as what works for
| a written piece.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| A big part of why college towns work so nicely is economic
| circumstances of the student body. Simply put most students
| aren't bringing a car to campus and by definition now need to
| live somewhere closer to get to class. And on top of that the
| town is a monocrop where maybe the couple tens of thousands of
| kids are the vast majority of the population.
|
| This is why it can't really play out as nicely everywhere. You
| might work across town from your partner vs merely across campus,
| or in another town. Your location is compromised by definition
| and not benefiting from economies of scale like it was when it
| was at least compromised with another 40k people in your
| demographic with a similar commute and life pattern within 2
| square miles. And you don't have to pay a couple thousand a year
| for parking privileges either so you might be taking the car on
| trips that would have been a forced walk in college for lack of
| car.
|
| The disneyland point is a bit tired and worn imo among internet
| urbanists and doesn't even make sense in practice if you've ever
| been to disneyland. Main street isnt the draw. It is this strip
| of shops you are obligated to walk through as you enter the park
| to try and tempt you from your dollar. You can't even hang out
| there; all the shops are packed with people looking at
| merchandise, all the restaurants on main are like coffee and ice
| cream "please leave and keep walking" places, and during
| fireworks display it is a miracle and a testament to the staffing
| that there isn't a crowd crush from people leaving through the
| bottleneck as well as people staying to see fireworks framed with
| the castle. In these situations they actually open up a staff
| only alley to the public that is parallel to main street to
| relieve some of this bottleneck.
| tmnvdb wrote:
| This seems like a strangely theoretical argument, as if the
| world outside America simply does not exist.
| zephyrthenoble wrote:
| Isn't the article about college towns in America? It's not
| theoretical there.
|
| A more universal example is probably towns with large
| seasonal influxes, such as ski towns or beach towns, but
| unlike a college town, these locations attract people of all
| ages and incomes. College towns in the US have an influx of
| specifically 18-22 year olds who can afford college but might
| not have a lot of disposable income, and most leave during
| the summer.
| xixixao wrote:
| I'm traveling through Puerto Rico. On every nice beach, when
| there are people, they are playing loud music. Now that is part
| of the local culture. To me (a European), it is abhorent, ruining
| the supposedly relaxing atmosphere of a beach (even more so that
| the music to me seems extremely repetitive).
|
| I could not convince anyone here to stop doing this. Again, for
| locals, this is their culture.
|
| Similarly, I don't think most Americans can grasp the difference
| between American cities (including in Puerto Rico) built for cars
| vs for pedestrians. Most will argue (including here), that this
| is a function of the size of the place. And America is big, and
| in places sparsely unpopulated, undeniably. But this is not the
| reason. Europe too is big. With many less populated places. And
| there are cars everywhere, most people own one.
|
| It's now cultural. Culture can change, but when combined with
| architecture at an industrial scale, I'm afraid the change will
| take much longer than a natural human lifetime.
| bbqfog wrote:
| They probably find it equally abhorrent that a European would
| come and police their culture. Please don't travel somewhere
| and complain about local culture. You're a guest, possibly and
| unwanted one.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| How do we know that this is "Puerto Rican Culture Plays Loud
| Music on Beaches"?
|
| What if it's some obnoxious rebellious college kids who think
| they can get away with it?
|
| What if it's some tourists, like from Cuba or Argentina, who
| are rich and so nobody in authority will handle complaints
| against them, because tourism feeds PR's economy so
| effectively?
|
| What if most Puerto Rico residents don't really go hang out
| at the beach at all, and they stay home with their families,
| and they cook in the kitchen and they enjoy conversations?
|
| What if Puerto Ricans are mostly like Americans, and their
| faces are all in their smartphones, and some of them play
| loud music and some ignore it, and some hate it but don't
| complain, and some complain but also play their own loud
| music to try and drown it out?
|
| What if Puerto Ricans don't have one monolithic culture that
| you can generalize while we're here on an English-speaking
| forum, based on the mainland USA? What if Puerto Ricans don't
| actually eat elephants or giraffes?
| https://youtu.be/mzK9_TbzReQ?si=-QsUIwt_0SIcY-gt&t=28
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I think you completely missed the point.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| People can rant and rail about America's car-centric culture,
| or they could just accept that the culture is what it is and
| work to mitigate the negative aspects of it. I don't get why so
| many people feel they need to tilt at windmills this way.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| So, I think the problem is that the culture is unsustainable
| [1] [2]. Look at new vehicle prices [3]. Look at the
| operating cost of a vehicle [4]. For many, currently, this
| cost is at least if not more than $1000/month (car note,
| insurance, fuel, etc) and very roughly, ~60% of Americans
| live paycheck to paycheck. Vehicle repos [5] and auto loan
| delinquencies [6] are hitting historical highs. America built
| a structurally deficient urban planning model. In Iowa, for
| example, they are allowing roads to go back to gravel because
| they lack the resources to maintain the status quo of road
| infra [7]. Also, consider rural america continues to wither
| and clear out [8]. This is all important ground truth to have
| to mitigate the negative aspects as you say, versus throwing
| good money after bad.
|
| Maybe we could encourage folks to migrate to college towns
| from the exurbs with subsidies and job guarantees, versus
| them staying in place while where they exist today rapidly
| declines. They would then continue to support the town as
| residents through their social security or pension income
| they would spend locally through retirement until death. New
| urban builds take decades while retrofits and
| reconfigurations take much less time, effort, and fiat.
| "Skate to where the puck is going to be."
|
| [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/7/22/what-
| strong-to...
|
| [2] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/9/20/the-
| suburbs-ar...
|
| [3] https://www.financialsamurai.com/average-new-car-price/
|
| [4] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-
| loans/total-co...
|
| [5] https://www.pymnts.com/transportation/2025/car-repos-hit-
| lev...
|
| [6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-06/late-
| car-... | https://archive.today/dfCjJ
|
| [7] https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/11/who-will-be-
| left-...
|
| [8] https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-america-lost-
| popula... (draw your attention to "Figure 2. Population
| Change In Nonmetropolitan Counties, 2010 To 2020")
|
| (think in systems)
| the_snooze wrote:
| To bring it down to a real and concrete case, we can do so
| much better than each family ferrying their children to
| school/activites, then driving everywhere in single-
| occupant cars. That's a world where children and senior
| citizens have greatly reduced independence and community.
|
| How would it look like if there were reduced day-to-day car
| dependency? Maybe something like this: a "walking
| schoolbus" where senior citizens and schoolchildren connect
| with one another as they get exercise on the way to school.
| Who wouldn't want that?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeYBL5u97c8
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I really like the Barcelona Superblocks model [1] for
| existing urban environments, but subsidizing families to
| relocate closer to schools is also an option imho. You
| have to find the intersection of what is politically
| palatable and the resources available; the next 100 years
| is going to see structural demographic decline, declining
| working cohort participation, less growth and
| productivity, continuing rapid fertility rate decline,
| declining household sizes, etc so creativity and
| flexibility will be required (imho). I am also a fan of
| what Culdesac [2] is doing, and is a pattern to be
| scaled.
|
| "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have
| said faster horses." got us cars, and I think the new
| question is "How do we deliver locality and mobility for
| quality lives without cars, when possible?" Cars are not
| going away, but we should not build for them specifically
| as if they were the default option, as this cost burdens
| the future with potentially unnecessary and expensive
| personal mobility and infrastructure obligations. Even
| today, they are unaffordable for a substantial population
| of people, based on the evidence in my comment above.
|
| [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=barcelona+superblocks
|
| [2] https://culdesac.com/
| crooked-v wrote:
| > subsidizing families to relocate closer to schools
|
| Without changing the US' urban model to actually allow
| more homes, all that will do is keep the status quo and
| make everything more expensive.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't think many US parents would accept their child
| independently walking or bicycling to school, even over
| short distances. The Stranger Danger mainstream media has
| them absolutely terrified that their kid is going to be
| kidnapped as soon as they leave their front doors.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| No one is forced to buy a car at the median price.
|
| You can buy these cars new under $25K.
|
| Toyota Corolla LE ($23,460), Hyundai Elantra SE ($23,025),
| Kia K4 LX ($21,990), Nissan Sentra S ($21,590), Mazda3 2.5
| S ($24,150), Subaru Impreza Base ($23,495).
|
| I make _decent_ money and I would never spend more than
| $25K on a car. Of course you can also get used cars with
| low mileage.
|
| As far as people in rural areas. They deserve every
| negative thing that they keep voting for.
| kortilla wrote:
| >In Iowa, for example, they are allowing roads to go back
| to gravel because they lack the resources to maintain the
| status quo of road infra [7].
|
| A gravel road to a dying town doesn't seem like a failure
| mode to me.
|
| They don't build train lines to dying towns in Europe
| either.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| In my comment, I am using it as signal wrt infra cost
| affordability. I agree it is not a bad solution as
| population declines continue where it occurs, versus
| having no road. Look at infrastructure cost projections
| to understand if it is within the light cone of economic
| affordability. If it can't be paid for with a combination
| of taxes and debt, it isn't possible.
| renewiltord wrote:
| These sources are garbage. This paycheck to paycheck thing
| is just nonsense. This is just a gish gallop.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I am open to other sources of these metrics, please feel
| free to provide them.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Here's one: 3 months emergency savings is the median
| position https://www.federalreserve.gov/consumerscommunit
| ies/sheddata...
|
| There's a good summary on Matt Yglesias's blog of Matt
| Darling (economist at Niskanen Center and Twitter
| debunker of this paycheck to paycheck myth) on the
| subject: https://www.slowboring.com/i/149683266/the-
| median-financial-...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Thank you! I will reference these in the future on this
| topic.
| itishappy wrote:
| > People can rant and rail about America's car-centric
| culture, or they could just accept that the culture is what
| it is and work to mitigate the negative aspects of it.
|
| Honest question: What's the difference? Mitigating the
| negative aspects involves making others aware of the negative
| aspects, but many people see that as ranting and railing.
| What does a productive conversation look like?
| kortilla wrote:
| You're assuming all of the negative aspects require giving
| up cars to solve
| itishappy wrote:
| I don't think we need to give up cars entirely, but I
| also don't think we'll be able to address the negative
| aspects without some amount of change.
|
| An example: I live roughly 200m from the Costco in the
| center of town, but there's a major 4 lane road between
| us. Walking would be so convenient, but it's so much
| safer to drive. A footbridge would address this without
| impacting drivers. I have no intentions of giving up my
| car, but this particular activity would be so much nicer
| without it!
| xanderstrike wrote:
| The simple geometry problem of how much space cars take
| up is arguably the worst now (given tailpipe emissions
| are on their way out), and there is no solution to that
| outside of fewer and much smaller cars.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| People acknowledge that America is bigger than their
| country with challenging geographical features. They also
| stop comparing their best country (UK) with America's worst
| state or, even worse, the entire US landmass.
| nlarew wrote:
| Total strawman argument.
|
| The size of the country has almost no bearing on the way
| we develop our towns and cities, subsidize car
| production, assume/require car ownership in public
| policy, etc.
|
| It's also quite the stretch to claim the UK as the best
| country in the EU and even more to claim that it doesn't
| also have a car culture. And it's not just "America's
| worst state", the vast majority of US town and cities are
| car dependent.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Your criticisms are absolutely right. I upvoted you, but
| just fyi I think your response may come off as too
| blunt/rude, and get "downvotes". It doesn't really matter
| here, but maybe helpful to know in general, if you didn't
| already.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Any time someone uses the excuse that "the size of the
| USA" prevents this or that, then ask why New Jersey can't
| do this or that. Some states are the same size and
| density of the average European country.
| tmnvdb wrote:
| It's obviously nonsense. Nobody is walking from Paris to
| Berlin. But you can walk _in_ Paris and Berlin.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Well, Werner Herzog, possibly.
| tmnvdb wrote:
| What are these "challenging geographic features"?
| rsynnott wrote:
| ... I'm not sure many would agree that the UK, of all
| places, has good public transport. _London_ does, but it
| more or less ends there.
|
| (Possibly you mean by some other metric, but I'm
| struggling to think of _any_ metric by which the UK could
| be said to be the best country in Europe. Sitcoms,
| possibly. It does a good sitcom. Even outside London!)
| dkarl wrote:
| Policy is decided by people. "Car-centric culture" is just a
| description of the material status quo, much of which was
| built by people who are dead, who have changed their minds
| about cars, or who see different conditions in their city and
| now want a different approach.
|
| An orientation towards adopting new ways of living when the
| old ones become impractical or harmful can be just as part of
| a person's "culture" as a piece of technology.
| iambateman wrote:
| Because 40,000 people a year die on roads _as a result_ of
| their design.
|
| Please don't accept 100 extra funerals a day. It can and will
| get better.
| mantas wrote:
| Changing road design is not necessarily a cultural change
| from driving.
|
| My country had very bad traffic deaths record. few decades
| later, traffic is much more intense and there're many more
| cars, but traffic deaths are waaaaaay down. Thanks to
| better infrastructure, better cars and better culture
| especially when it comes to drink and drive...
| screye wrote:
| That's the issue. You can't mitigate it. Especially when even
| the lowest hanging fruits (eg: protected bike lines) face
| similar opposition as any radical change.
|
| America already bulldozed through walkable streetcar towns
| for cars less than a century ago. So, the precedent for the
| change is there. It's not like cars are the way of the
| ancestors
|
| As another comment mentioned, car infrastructure is an
| unsustainable spend. America is entering an era of expensive
| labor, lower fertility and bi-polar super powers. Therefore,
| unsustainable systems are beginning to give.
|
| It's tempting to call car centrism a personal preference. But
| North America stands alone against a near-global consensus on
| what urban infrastructure should look like.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The problem is that mitigation of any kind is an affront to
| car driving culture.
|
| One big problem people have, for example, is that we just
| focus so much on roads and there is literally no safe
| infrastructure for other kinds of people; but drivers also
| balk at using taxpayer money to build said infrastructure,
| particularly if it is perceived as reducing driver
| convenience even by mere seconds. Or even pausing the
| construction of new, dangerous infrastructure.
| xanderstrike wrote:
| 95% of people drive because 95% of transportation funding
| goes to enabling that choice.
|
| People at large are rational and will make rational
| transportation choices given incentives. The incentives are
| all aligned towards driving right now because that benefits
| the auto industry.
|
| You cannot make assertions about how Americans behave,
| "culturally," based on their transportation choices because
| these choices are not happening in a vacuum.
|
| Case in point: when Americans visit Disneyland, or NYC, or
| Amsterdam, they do not typically insist on driving through
| those places.
| janalsncm wrote:
| "Tilting at windmills" makes it sound like a pointless and
| impossible task. I don't even agree that this is a culture
| problem. It's an infrastructure problem wrapped up in tyranny
| of the minority NIMBY politics.
|
| But even if we accept your premise that American "culture"
| prefers cars (rather than being a result of decades of
| expanding as fast and as cheaply as possible across the
| country), culture can change. It does change.
| bluedino wrote:
| > I'm traveling through Puerto Rico. On every nice beach, when
| there are people, they are playing loud music. Now that is part
| of the local culture
|
| A lot of American beaches will have signs up saying no music.
| As well as no beer etc but they aren't always followed.
| bombcar wrote:
| In America, "no beer" often really means "no glass bottles"
| and if you avoid that, nobody cares.
| bbqfog wrote:
| In my experience the transient nature of the college town
| population means that they're all kind of run down in a
| particular kind of way, especially housing (how many drunken
| ragers can a 1 bedroom apartment really handle?). It's nice that
| they can be beacons of culture in otherwise rural areas, but
| there's definitely downsides to having a bunch of kids move in
| and out constantly.
| frutiger wrote:
| > how many drunken ragers can a 1 bedroom apartment really
| handle?
|
| Depends on how they were built. For some college halls in the
| UK, maybe a few hundred years worth?
| kortilla wrote:
| They aren't failing structurally, they are just in a
| perpetually ugly state because a landlord doesn't care about
| keeping a property attractive that students will abuse.
|
| So you end up with worn out carpet, paint flaking, broken
| door handles, etc etc.
|
| That's why there is a different much smaller but much better
| pool of properties for people willing to do an 18+ month
| lease.
| cyberax wrote:
| Why not go into even more past eras? Urbanism from the era of
| bunk beds in flophouses is the future, after all.
| Mr-Frog wrote:
| I unironically agree with this. 100 years ago, Skid Row and
| Bunker Hill in Los Angeles were full of SROs, boarding houses
| and long-term hotels. The people who lived there didn't
| disappear, they're just all sleeping in the street now.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I guess you never had the misfortune of sleeping in a
| flophouse to say something like that.
|
| One time I had this project in Switzerland and my co-worker,
| who also travelled there, figured he'd save money if he
| rented a bunk bed in illegal (due to density) quarters.
|
| Terrible experience, which got him fired eventually because
| he quickly lost steam due to having to share a tiny room with
| three other people.
|
| I on the other hand moistened every Swiss Frank banknote with
| tears, but splurged thrice the amount on a proper room and
| survived until the end of my involvement in that project.
| yesfitz wrote:
| The person you're responding to suggested Single Room
| Occupancies, flophouses, etc. are a better alternative to
| sleeping rough (on the street).
|
| You suggested that flophouses are worse than a proper room.
|
| Both of these things can be true.
| tmnvdb wrote:
| The current American urbanism _is_ from the past! The
| assumption that other urbanisms somehow represent a blast from
| the past, while 70 year old American car-centric urbanism
| embodies the eternal modern 'now,' simply doesn't hold up to
| scrutiny. There are numerous contemporary urbanisms, and newer
| approaches increasingly tend to be far less car-centric.
| janalsncm wrote:
| It's too easy for a vocal minority to veto good policy, like
| building more housing. You see this all across the country, in
| college towns and in California overall. It is formalized as
| "zoning" but that is just an official way of implementing a
| shortsighted policy.
|
| If you do not zone for housing you are zoning for homelessness.
| Plain and simple.
| spwa4 wrote:
| You can do what rich people do: force others to take care of
| your problems by kicking out the homeless.
| janalsncm wrote:
| There are plenty of rich people in San Francisco which has a
| severe housing shortage and homelessness issue. Homelessness
| is the exhaust fumes of rapid growth, which SF and CA as a
| whole have experienced. Smart politics knows this and plans
| ahead to handle it, rather than allowing exploding housing
| costs stunt the growth of the city. There are many talented
| people who otherwise would have went to SF who didn't.
|
| You don't have to go far from SF to get to single family
| houses, which should not be possible. They can solve this by
| adding a land value tax inversely proportional to the
| distance from specific city functions.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Hate to be the bearer of bad news but you could build
| infinite housing in San Francisco and the streets would
| still be riddled with drug-abusing vagrants. They may
| technically stop being "homeless" if you give them all a
| free apartment but it's not a magic wand that will solve
| SF's problems.
| davidjama wrote:
| Isn't it bizarre how in college short distances, walkability and
| building high capacity accommodations on a budget are a priority
| to create productive, collaborative, social and affordable
| environments but after college, people move to suburban hell
| shostack wrote:
| Not at all.
|
| When you're young and not tied down, and also likely lack much
| money, you prioritize a different lifestyle and are also in
| college to, presumably, accomplish your goal of getting a
| degree and learning something.
|
| For many, once they get older and desire a slower, calmer,
| quieter life, and especially if you want more space with kids,
| the suburbs start holding more appeal. And that also factors in
| constraints about job availability.
| ptero wrote:
| People change. As they get older that suburban hell often looks
| more like a suburban paradise and those condensed anthills of a
| city can make one shudder. My 2c.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Yeah, I absolutely and honestly loved cities most of my life.
| I grew up in London, lived in Seattle and Philadelphia, spent
| a semester teaching in Berlin, frequently went to NYC ...
| loved it all.
|
| I'm 61 now, and for the last 6 years I've lived in a very
| small village in rural NM. Those big cities? Well, I'll go if
| I have to and will not complain the way some folks would. But
| I certainly do not love them the way I once did, and it's not
| because _they_ changed.
| bentt wrote:
| Let's not forget that in America, when you have a college or
| university, you have historically created a money funnel from the
| government/parents, through the students, to the city. There's an
| outsized incentive to cater to that opportunity and get the
| students accessing the business areas.
|
| Also, American liberal culture tends to follow higher education,
| which not only means a desire for certain things, but also a love
| of rules to block "bad things". This often means preserving old
| cities.
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