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Can't speak for OP, but I take it to mean what Jane Jacobs was a proponent of, and what has been the opposite of modern American urban planning until now. The
by potatolicious 10y ago
Can't speak for OP, but I take it to mean what Jane Jacobs was a proponent of, and what has been the opposite of modern American urban planning until now.
The general trend in American urban planning has been highly prescriptivist and precise. Suburbs often have bylaws that prevent "too many" businesses of a particular sort in an area. It's based on a very centrally-planned vision for cities where you get your groceries from there, your haircuts there, and entertain yourself at that entertainment complex.
Using a place against its original planner's precisely envisioned purpose is verboten. No, you can't have another supermarket in the neighborhood. No, there is already another coffee shop too close to this proposed one. No, you can't repurpose this land for a playground, because the children are supposed to play over there.
Urban areas experience it too - if you've worked in a modern American downtown you've no doubt walked by the countless plazas that are deserted. Benches and tables that looked real good on the architectural renderings but are severely disused. Big office buildings fronted by "public space" that not even its own tenants use regularly.
This has been especially severe in public housing projects - they were designed with idyllic parkland and courtyards, which their designers envisioned as isolated utopias, but ultimately ended up being deserted, dangerous, and hotbeds of crime, because they were never where people wanted to be, and was just void space.
The opposite of this is something that resembles more of the free market - mixed use, relaxed zoning, so that the community can decide the amenities and businesses it needs. Maybe there should be a second supermarket, maybe that empty lot could be a playground.
The struggle between top-down prescriptivist and bottom-up market-like urban planning is a huge one. In many ways Americans crave the efficiency, character, and benefits of living in the bottom-up neighborhood, but also crave the precise, reliable, and ordered nature of top-down cities.
- emodendroket 10y agoI mean if you want no zoning you can live in Houston or something.
- potatolicious 10y agoAhah, that's why I said "market-like" - the bottom-up urban planning approach has properties that are like free markets, but isn't an actual free market. Zoning still needs to be a thing. An actual "free market" - i.e., little to no zoning whatsoever - would likely be rather unpleasant. Sorry Houston. In this school of thought the ideal urban planner sketches out the broad strokes while allowing natural forces to fill in the spaces, but of course, there is considerable disagreement over what exactly the broad strokes entail.
- msandford 10y agoThe only real problem in Houston is that it's taken too long to get mass transit going. The lack of zoning isn't really a problem. It's that it takes forever to do anything to ease traffic. I wish we'd do like Brazil and get BRT systems so that they could be built progressively and start reaping benefits immediately. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rapid_transit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rapid_transit
- ska 10y agoThe lack of zoning is a massive problem. That combined with the cheap surrounding land is why there are essentially no livable neighborhoods in Houston in the sense that Jacobs was talking about. Houston is a great example of what you get with unbridled suburban sprawl. Much of the city isn't dense enough to justify real mass transit, which is part of the problem you are seeing. It's a great example of how to keep land prices low and automobile miles high, but not much else from a city planning point of view.
- msandford 10y agoThe development is happening outside of the city limits. Which means that no amount of zoning in the already annexed land could or would stop developers from doing things in the unannexed land. In order for your assertion that zoning is the problem to hold water, the city of Houston would have to annex faster than the developers popped out new subdivisions, which definitely isn't happening. I agree that there's a distinct lack of planning in Houston which is a problem. But those aren't necessarily the same thing. Further there are good local neighborhoods popping up all over, especially wherever the light rail is going. All without any zoning whatsoever.
- ska 10y agoI haven't lived there for a while , so perhaps good neighbourhoods are popping up, I hope so. They certainly weren't therr 8 or so years ago. I think you are missing the degree to which zoning is needed as a tool for effective planning.
- herbre 10y agoI saw your post over here. You said this "Also, your first name has no ancestral or family implications so is fair game," https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2121880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2121880 That is totally not true. In Chinese culture,a "zibei" (generation name) is used as the first part of a first name. The "zibei" is related to family naming. All children of a particular generation in a family have the same character for their "zibei" taken from a generation poem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_name Please don't spread misinformation about Chinese naming customs. Thanks.