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Regular people are only able to afford their suburban lifestyle because the US has massively subsidized car ownership. >You can build dense cities in the US al

Regular people are only able to afford their suburban lifestyle because the US has massively subsidized car ownership. >You can build dense cities in the US all you want No you can't. Dense cities have been outlawed by misguided zoning codes and traffic engineering standards.

xienze 10y ago
Outlawed? I think that requires a citation.
- bitslayer 10y ago
  http://netinfo.ladbs.org/ladbsec.nsf/d3450fd072c7344c882564e5005d0db4/72f24c5fab8bd39788256a160067e2e2/$FILE/Summary%20of%20Parking%20Regulations%20final.pdf http://netinfo.ladbs.org/ladbsec.nsf/d3450fd072c7344c882564e...
- SteveMouzon 10y ago
  Euclidian use-based zoning has been the law of essentially every city in the US beginning about a hundred years ago until the rise of form-based codes like the SmartCode mandates that uses be separated: housing into subdivisions, retail into strip centers & shopping malls, and offices into office parks. This means that you have to drive pretty much anywhere. So if you look at the gross density, just the space required for larger streets, collectors, arterials, and expressways guarantees a substantially less compact city. This is exacerbated by the large setbacks required by those ordinances. This was celebrated by the architects; Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City celebrated the ideal of every home sitting on an acre of land. Contrast that with the Tuscan town of Pienza, Italy, which sits on a bit over 11 acres of land and which contains over 2,000 residents. Just looking at the numbers, Americans would think it must be some horrible slum. But it's such a fabulous place that it attracts close to a million visitors a year, if I recall correctly. It would be completely illegal to build Pienza in countless American towns and cities, and on many counts. In reality, Pienza would probably violate close to 90% of the conditions in a conventional Euclidian code.
- sonthonax 10y ago
  Regulated out of existence.

xienze 10y ago

Outlawed? I think that requires a citation.

bitslayer 10y ago
http://netinfo.ladbs.org/ladbsec.nsf/d3450fd072c7344c882564e5005d0db4/72f24c5fab8bd39788256a160067e2e2/$FILE/Summary%20of%20Parking%20Regulations%20final.pdf http://netinfo.ladbs.org/ladbsec.nsf/d3450fd072c7344c882564e...
SteveMouzon 10y ago
Euclidian use-based zoning has been the law of essentially every city in the US beginning about a hundred years ago until the rise of form-based codes like the SmartCode mandates that uses be separated: housing into subdivisions, retail into strip centers & shopping malls, and offices into office parks. This means that you have to drive pretty much anywhere. So if you look at the gross density, just the space required for larger streets, collectors, arterials, and expressways guarantees a substantially less compact city. This is exacerbated by the large setbacks required by those ordinances. This was celebrated by the architects; Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City celebrated the ideal of every home sitting on an acre of land. Contrast that with the Tuscan town of Pienza, Italy, which sits on a bit over 11 acres of land and which contains over 2,000 residents. Just looking at the numbers, Americans would think it must be some horrible slum. But it's such a fabulous place that it attracts close to a million visitors a year, if I recall correctly. It would be completely illegal to build Pienza in countless American towns and cities, and on many counts. In reality, Pienza would probably violate close to 90% of the conditions in a conventional Euclidian code.
sonthonax 10y ago
Regulated out of existence.