Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

https://www.governing.com/community/vehicles-still-firmly-in-control-of-city-streets

by jseliger • 5 years ago

553 356 5 years ago

foxpurple6• 5 years ago

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.

iammisc13• 5 years ago

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.

foxpurple6• 5 years ago

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.

linguae• 5 years ago

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.

throw0101a8• 5 years ago

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.

xputer2• 5 years ago

Amen to that. Actually getting it done is a big hairy problem I'm afraid though :(

bcrosby95• 5 years ago

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.

ericmay• 5 years ago

These are called walkable neighborhoods. And when you start building them and connecting them to one another you get…………. Walkable cities!

bnralt• 5 years ago

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.

granshaw• 5 years ago

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

jackson14422• 5 years ago

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.

foxpurple6• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

standardUser2• 5 years ago

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.

lotsofpulp4• 5 years ago

Condos have their own problems. See the collapsed building in Miami.

mateo4112• 5 years ago

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.

masterof0• 5 years ago

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".

occz• 5 years ago

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.

aix17• 5 years ago

> 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.

jandrese2• 5 years ago

Kids are a problem. Areas in the city with good walkability often have horrific school districts. You also get trapped renting.

kory2• 5 years ago

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.

iammisc13• 5 years ago

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.

Schiendelman2• 5 years ago

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.

another_story2• 5 years ago

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.

tbihl• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

notJim8• 5 years ago

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.

kory2• 5 years ago

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.

jltsiren• 5 years ago

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.

noahtallen2• 5 years ago

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

chapium2• 5 years ago

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.

standardUser2• 5 years ago

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.

kiba• 5 years ago

I often joke that aliens would mistake the cars, not people, to be the dominant intelligent species of this planet.

nickff• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

There's a great Canadian cartoon that explored that idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFaHArkYLsM

whatever_dude• 5 years ago

That's the entire premise of classic Transformers.

notJim8• 5 years ago

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.

foxpurple6• 5 years ago

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.

TulliusCicero2• 5 years ago

Not just housing developments. Virtually all development tends to be mandated to provide large amounts of car parking.

simonsarris• 5 years ago

a certain amount of parking and certain "setbacks", a mandated distance from the road, which also increases the lot size required.

nomel3• 5 years ago

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.

twelvechairs• 5 years ago

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

gleenn• 5 years ago

That's great, hopefully it will make cities more walkable as a result.

newyankee2• 5 years ago

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.

jeffchien• 5 years ago

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.

matttproud• 5 years ago

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.

micromacrofoot• 5 years ago

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...

notatoad2• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

titzer• 5 years ago

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.

newyankee2• 5 years ago

Someone had calculated that the urban sprawl king city of Houston was 40% parking space or something

jjoonathan2• 5 years ago

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.

lumost2• 5 years ago

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.

pomian• 5 years ago

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.

jackson14422• 5 years ago

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.

iammisc13• 5 years ago

Same.... I love driving.

But I'm not driving to work ever. Haven't driven to work in years, and I never will. Just not into it.

version_five2• 5 years ago

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.

yellow_lead• 5 years ago

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.

cbdumas• 5 years ago

I think it's hard to find because those two preferences are in direct, irresolvable conflict.

MarkLowenstein• 5 years ago

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.

maxerickson• 5 years ago

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.

userbinator• 5 years ago

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...

throw0101a8• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

Which is the whole point of designing cities so cars are not needed

TulliusCicero2• 5 years ago

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.

megablast2• 5 years ago

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???

ketzo• 5 years ago

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????”

readflaggedcomm• 5 years ago

Love it. Enormous benefits.

throwawayboise• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

browningstreet• 5 years ago

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.

SilasX• 5 years ago

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.

jollybean• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

xorfish5• 5 years ago

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.

cletus3• 5 years ago

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.

lotsofpulp4• 5 years ago

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.

bllguo2• 5 years ago

"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.

harryh• 5 years ago

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.

notJim8• 5 years ago

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.

jdavis703• 5 years ago

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.

bllguo2• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

elihu• 5 years ago

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.)

throw0101a8• 5 years ago

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?

cletus3• 5 years ago

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

hanniabu2• 5 years ago

Many choose suburbs because there aren't walkable cities as an option

notJim8• 5 years ago

And because the walkable cities have been made unaffordable by those insisting that no one wants to live in such a place.

brandonmenc2• 5 years ago

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.

0xB31B1B• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

taeric10• 5 years ago

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.

drivers99• 5 years ago

That's called "drive until you qualify."

jppope2• 5 years ago

"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.

PaulDavisThe1st7• 5 years ago

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.

bluGill• 5 years ago

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.

surfmike• 5 years ago

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.

graeme2• 5 years ago

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.

5424582• 5 years ago

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.

refurb3• 5 years ago

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?

cletus3• 5 years ago

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.

grumblenum• 5 years ago

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.

whalabi2• 5 years ago

Wait why is it illegal to build dense walkable neighbourhoods? Which laws?

quicklime• 5 years ago

This sort of thinking is how city planning and product design gets stuck in a local optimum.

kgermino• 5 years ago

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.

reportingsjr2• 5 years ago

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.

Rapzid2• 5 years ago

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.

dionidium2• 5 years ago

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.

dionidium2• 5 years ago

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.”

chapium2• 5 years ago

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.

ramblenode• 5 years ago

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.

hardwaregeek• 5 years ago

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.

afarrell3• 5 years ago

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?”

antb1236• 5 years ago

I agree - but the answer may lie in extensive bike "Roads" for walkers and bikers.

DoreenMichele• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

dkhenry2• 5 years ago

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.

zdragnar• 5 years ago

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.

dkhenry2• 5 years ago

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.

foxpurple6• 5 years ago

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.

mancerayder• 5 years ago

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.

guyzero• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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

Giorgi• 5 years ago

They want but will never walk.

MattGaiser• 5 years ago

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.

xputer2• 5 years ago

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.

doit4thebitties• 5 years ago

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.

elevenoh• 5 years ago

I want to live in a healthy, beautiful, walkable city.

Vancouver BC was the only primary fit for this in USA/Canada.

gerdesj• 5 years ago

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.

specialist• 5 years ago

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.

yazaddaruvala• 5 years ago

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).

haolez• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

gullywhumper• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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....

noahtallen2• 5 years ago

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.

tmccrary55• 5 years ago

I want more bikeable cities.

atum47• 5 years ago

Back in 2020 I moved to São 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 (São 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

mostertoaster• 5 years ago

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.

PrisonerofWS• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

It’s actually possible for walkability to have nothing to do with environmentalism.

generalizations• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

CapricornNoble4• 5 years ago

>>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.

arsome• 5 years ago

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.

pgustafs• 5 years ago

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.

aroundtown• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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

Pxtl• 5 years ago

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.

zz865• 5 years ago

It'll be interesting to see what different remote working makes. Sure, a short commute to work is nice, but if I'm working remotely I dont have to live in this big city any more and I can now live in a smaller town with a car.

btheshoe• 5 years ago

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 :/

beardyw• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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!

habosa• 5 years ago

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.

wanderingmind• 5 years ago

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_• 5 years ago

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)

ganzuul• 5 years ago

European cities are overrun by electric scooters. It's not a big step. heh

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 5 years ago

If I didn't need it to get to work I wouldn't own a car. I hate them.

nerdponx• 5 years ago

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.

lumost2• 5 years ago

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.

mapgrep• 5 years ago

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...

Retric3• 5 years ago

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.

presentation2• 5 years ago

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.

HungSu• 5 years ago

Which US cities do you consider walkable?

afarrell3• 5 years ago

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.

spamizbad2• 5 years ago

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.

vdqtp34• 5 years ago

I'd actually be fine with neighborhoods being made car-hostile and pedestrian friendly if I could get TO the neighborhood and park just outside it.

The unmentioned aspect of making everything "walkable" (at least in the US) is it denies access to those who are not local.

SirZimzim• 5 years ago

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.

zaptheimpaler• 5 years ago

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.

xboxnolifes• 5 years ago

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.

dmos62• 5 years ago

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.

sandworm101• 5 years ago

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.

miccah• 5 years ago

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

antb1236• 5 years ago

Walkable is good... Bikeable is even better

heurisko• 5 years ago

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.

Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

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