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>If we could clone this neighborhood and built it elsewhere, it would be a good thing. But we don't seem to be able to build neighborhoods in this style anymore
by eli_gottlieb 11y ago
>If we could clone this neighborhood and built it elsewhere, it would be a good thing. But we don't seem to be able to build neighborhoods in this style anymore.
It's not that we're unable, it's that North Americans have chosen not to. Nice dense developments are bad for cars, and car-lifestyles are what North Americans have culturally designated as the marker of success. Therefore you see a false correlation: dense developments are only built to house those too poor to participate in car culture.
- nitrogen 11y agoSalt Lake City has some experiments built around outdoor shopping malls, but it seems the good apartments are never available and the condominiums are priced for wealthy investors, not residents. The city has very wide streets around these developments and multi-level underground parking to accommodate cars.
- yourapostasy 11y ago> ...and car-lifestyles are what North Americans have culturally designated as the marker of success. This is no longer uniformly true. Some of the hottest, highest-priced residential real estate in the US is explicitly tied to more walkable environs. In the urban cores of cities like Portland, OR, Boulder, CO, and Austin, TX, there are definitely extraordinarily expensive ("marker of success") residences that are impractical (or at least very time inefficient) to live in unless one eschews a car-centric lifestyle. The developers have noticed, and there is a boom going on right now in those and similar cities by the developers to increase density; however, often neighborhood associations and land-use regulations tend to hold back the density of the proposed developments.
- graeme 11y agoYeah, this is what I was getting at. The old, dense neighborhoods are getting expensive. But we can't seem to build them anymore.