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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
The problem isn't cars. Cars are the symptom. The underlying issue is zoning that disincentivizes walkable areas and public transport infrastructure so bad that most people don't even want to use it.
What choice is there if you live in an area designed for cars? In the average suburb there is nothing around for miles, the streets are wide and designed for cars as you said. At that point the only workable option is to buy a car like everyone else. Urban centres which are walkable tend to have the highest home prices. It's a tough feedback loop.
The suburbs have to be made livable first, with plenty of shopping, restaurants, theatres, parks nearby so that living without a car is feasible.
Personally I hope to live in/rent apartments all my life and even raise a family there, but i don't know what it'll be like.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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???
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
>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.
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".
* 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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] standardUser|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] titzer|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] notJim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kiba|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notatoad|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] lumost|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pomian|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] micromacrofoot|4 years ago|reply
https://www.businessinsider.com/car-illustration-karl-jilg-2...
[+] [-] habosa|4 years ago|reply
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|4 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] Retric|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mapgrep|4 years ago|reply
https://www.strongtowns.org/slowthecars
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/10/20/taking-pedest...
[+] [-] spamizbad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wanderingmind|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xboxnolifes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaptheimpaler|4 years ago|reply
The suburbs have to be made livable first, with plenty of shopping, restaurants, theatres, parks nearby so that living without a car is feasible.
Personally I hope to live in/rent apartments all my life and even raise a family there, but i don't know what it'll be like.
[+] [-] SirZimzim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jackson1442|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] throw0101a|4 years ago|reply
There's a difference between having a car as an option as a form of transportation versus having it be a necessity.
[+] [-] atoav|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] version_five|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] browningstreet|4 years ago|reply
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|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jollybean|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] SilasX|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawayboise|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iammisc|4 years ago|reply
But I'm not driving to work ever. Haven't driven to work in years, and I never will. Just not into it.
[+] [-] megablast|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cletus|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] beardyw|4 years ago|reply
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|4 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] foxpurple|4 years ago|reply
The thing is it just doesn’t seem like the average person is willing to give up single family houses to gain walkability. For me, I would never go back.
[+] [-] iammisc|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] occz|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] masterof0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kory|4 years ago|reply
* 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.
[+] [-] dkhenry|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haolez|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|4 years ago|reply
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."
[+] [-] sandworm101|4 years ago|reply
Everyone wants more walkable cities. Thats like asking if people want cleaner water or better hospitals. Such questions are meaningless on thier own.
[+] [-] guyzero|4 years ago|reply
So the drive, which means they have to see even fewer people.
[+] [-] gullywhumper|4 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] PrisonerofWS|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Pxtl|4 years ago|reply
Walkability flows from density, And NIMBYism has killed that.
[+] [-] mancerayder|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] specialist|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mostertoaster|4 years ago|reply
I hate how the roads are in our downtowns ever since visiting Italy and seeing these huge plazas all over in the cities.
[+] [-] gerdesj|4 years ago|reply
The family across the road drove over to say hi.
[+] [-] MattGaiser|4 years ago|reply
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.