7 ms·

> If we can lower rent in the city, automobile usage will go down on its own. This is where the fight should be pointed I believe. This needs to be repeated,

> If we can lower rent in the city, automobile usage will go down on its own. This is where the fight should be pointed I believe. This needs to be repeated, at least 1,000 more times, because it is the real issue we're facing and everyone is ignoring. You can't expect people to live lifestyles like they're in big cities, when we don't let any of these people live in big cities. Until that happens, these "punish driver" attempts are nothing more than punishing poor/middle class people simply for being poor/middle class. They already can't afford to live in cities. Taxing them again just makes them even less able to afford cities.

philwelch 10y ago
Small towns used to be walkable, too. It's not like everyone lived in big cities before the automobile was invented.
- closeparen 10y ago
  Sure, and maybe promoting walkability in small towns is the right path. This doesn't solve the problem that the low- and mid-level staff of downtown offices in major metros benefits immensely from the ability to drive to work (or to within a few transit stops of work) and would suffer immensely if that option were taken away.
  - osdiab 10y ago
    Most small American towns may have small population, but enormous land mass. There's a video somewhere about how old towns had to be small in area in part because people didn't have things like cars to get around, so although population was low density kept up. Those are the kind of towns we should be encouraging these days. As for driving to work, I do think that transit into work would be a perfectly good (and personally preferable) alternative; Id rather sparse communities have decent car infrastructure and storage at transit connections to dense cities, which don't have as much space to build car storage and road capacity and suffer from far greater utilization since they catch the traffic from all suburbs instead of a subsection of them. It's just a more scalable design.
  - osdiab 10y ago
    Most small American towns may have small population, but enormous land mass. There's a video somewhere about how old towns had to be small in area in part because people didn't have things like cars to get around, so although population was low density kept up. Those are the kind of towns we should be encouraging these days. As for driving to work, I do think that transit into work would be a perfectly good (and personally preferable) alternative; Id rather sparse communities have decent car infrastructure and storage at transit connections to dense cities, which don't have as much space to build car storage and road capacity and suffer from far greater utilization since they catch the traffic from all suburbs instead of a subsection of them. It's just a more scalable design.
dashundchen 10y ago
Many poor people already can't afford to drive. In my city, over a third of households are carless and for most of them i can guarantee it's not by choice. Public transit is weak outside the core, the urban poor are by default locked out of suburban opportunities and job centers. I imagine the situation is probably just as bad for the carless rural poor. Car culture also locks out opportunity for other segments of the population - the young, the very old, the disabled.
pharrlax 10y ago
The problem is that homeowners see their house as an investment, and therefore expect it to accrue value at a predictable rate, and so they'll fight tooth and nail against housing availability in the city. We basically need to bring the hammer down at the state and federal level on urban NIMBYs, because it'll never happen if left up to city councils.
- innocentoldguy 10y ago
  The reason rent in the cities is so high is that people are already renting/buying the available places to rent, so there is a scarcity. It isn't like all these places are standing vacant, waiting for government to force down pricing so people can move in. People have already moved in. The city is fully occupied. All you'd accomplish by forcing property owners to lower their rents, via amoral means I might add, is getting the people who already live there a better deal on their rent. You haven't really solved anything at all, pertaining to the content of this thread, have you?
  - kazagistar 10y ago
    There are plenty of ways to lower costs... If you remove density restrictions and bad zoning laws, some developer will eventually buy up enough low density housing and build much higher density appartments (or local stores), especially if subsidized.
    - JoBrad 10y ago
      Thing is, density restrictions help neighborhoods survive extreme growth. Connection to your neighbors, and retention of the qualities that attracted you to the city in the first place are vital for a city to retain their population. Regulation certainly needs to be updated, but favoring density is not always a good thing.
      - Arizhel 10y ago
        "Connection to your neighbors"? When low-density housing means that houses cost several million dollars apiece, that means you're trying to preserve the "uniqueness" of the city center for a bunch of millionaires. I fail to see why I should care about them.
trgn 10y ago
That's only true for a handful of cities. Most american cities and towns remain very affordable. These cities have tons of vacant lots close to the downtown office areas and are degraded by all the car infrastructure that serves the wealthier suburbanites. In those places, a lot of people of low means actually live very centrally. There's room to contract there and provide ample living space for households of all incomes. It is really a failure of the imagination. Most Americans cannot imagine a luxurious or aspirational life without a car. It has nothing to do with not having the means for it. And, fwiw, it really does require somewhat of an imaginative leap. When someone says that cars have bad consequences and there should be less driving, most objections are really reflexive. People imagine their current way of life, but without a car. A few examples: - How will I take my kids to school? You won't, they'll walk, because you live close to school, and since there are fewer cars, it will be safe for them to do so. - You expect me to lug all my costco bags on foot? No, you still can drive there, but you'll drive out as a special occasion once a week anyway. Or you pick up groceries in small batches from the grocery next to your office. - You want me to wait for the bus that only comes once an hour? No, you'll live closer to your office and walk or bike there. Or you'll take a streetcar that stops one block from your house every 10 minutes. - You want me to give up my huge front yard? Yes, but you won't need it, because you won't live next to a noisy and dangerous road. Instead, you'll have a small courtyard and it will look sick, with a lemon tree and a koi pond. And with all the money you save on gas, you can buy a little cabin out in the country and enjoy real nature there a few weekends a year. The imaginative leap requires you to imagine, basically, town life, and most Americans no longer can because they have never experienced it. Some americans in some city neighborhoods or tourist traps enjoy it. It's usually expensive, but only because supply is constrained, not because it's innately costly. People who have lived abroad may have experienced it. Often they return to the US, and are offended by the sheer ugliness of it all. Many college students experience it, it's kind of nice huh, small college towns. Well, to americans that's not "the real world", just a holding pen for young people to squander their youth. But why couldn't it be "the real world"? Make town living aspirational again, and half the battle is won. But that will only happen if people can imagine it. And that won't happen as long as people imagine `their` life `without` a car. They should imagine `somebody else's` life `with` a car. And again, the rents in the coastal cities are an exception. Most cities and towns do not have any significant pressure on land prices. Town life is right there in front of us, for the cost of used tire lot and a White Castle, and people cannot see it. Because they'll object that there won't be any room for the drive-thru lane.
innocentoldguy 10y ago
High rent in the cities seems more like an example of basic economics than a problem worthy of attention. It's a simple supply vs. demand situation. The only way you're going to reduce rent in the city is to build more city for people to live in, i.e. increase supply. I guess you could use the big guns of government to force property owners to lower their rents, but that is immoral, in my opinion.
- amazon_not 10y ago
  It's not immoral, just counterproductive. Rent controls never make things better, just worse.
  - innocentoldguy 10y ago
    I disagree. If I buy an expensive piece of rental property in a city center as an investment, then the government comes in and forces me to lower my rent through some strong-arm, artificial means, they are stealing from me by keeping me from reaping the full, market-supported rewards of my investment, and theft is immoral.
    - amazon_not 10y ago
      You are not entitled to a return on investment. When you make an investment, you expose yourself to risks, including regulatory risks. Nothing immoral about it and certainly no theft. In case you think we are talking hypotheticals here, what you are describing is exactly how rent control works.

philwelch 10y ago

Small towns used to be walkable, too. It's not like everyone lived in big cities before the automobile was invented.

closeparen 10y ago
Sure, and maybe promoting walkability in small towns is the right path. This doesn't solve the problem that the low- and mid-level staff of downtown offices in major metros benefits immensely from the ability to drive to work (or to within a few transit stops of work) and would suffer immensely if that option were taken away.
- osdiab 10y ago
  Most small American towns may have small population, but enormous land mass. There's a video somewhere about how old towns had to be small in area in part because people didn't have things like cars to get around, so although population was low density kept up. Those are the kind of towns we should be encouraging these days. As for driving to work, I do think that transit into work would be a perfectly good (and personally preferable) alternative; Id rather sparse communities have decent car infrastructure and storage at transit connections to dense cities, which don't have as much space to build car storage and road capacity and suffer from far greater utilization since they catch the traffic from all suburbs instead of a subsection of them. It's just a more scalable design.
- osdiab 10y ago
  Most small American towns may have small population, but enormous land mass. There's a video somewhere about how old towns had to be small in area in part because people didn't have things like cars to get around, so although population was low density kept up. Those are the kind of towns we should be encouraging these days. As for driving to work, I do think that transit into work would be a perfectly good (and personally preferable) alternative; Id rather sparse communities have decent car infrastructure and storage at transit connections to dense cities, which don't have as much space to build car storage and road capacity and suffer from far greater utilization since they catch the traffic from all suburbs instead of a subsection of them. It's just a more scalable design.

dashundchen 10y ago

Many poor people already can't afford to drive. In my city, over a third of households are carless and for most of them i can guarantee it's not by choice. Public transit is weak outside the core, the urban poor are by default locked out of suburban opportunities and job centers. I imagine the situation is probably just as bad for the carless rural poor. Car culture also locks out opportunity for other segments of the population - the young, the very old, the disabled.

pharrlax 10y ago

The problem is that homeowners see their house as an investment, and therefore expect it to accrue value at a predictable rate, and so they'll fight tooth and nail against housing availability in the city. We basically need to bring the hammer down at the state and federal level on urban NIMBYs, because it'll never happen if left up to city councils.

innocentoldguy 10y ago
The reason rent in the cities is so high is that people are already renting/buying the available places to rent, so there is a scarcity. It isn't like all these places are standing vacant, waiting for government to force down pricing so people can move in. People have already moved in. The city is fully occupied. All you'd accomplish by forcing property owners to lower their rents, via amoral means I might add, is getting the people who already live there a better deal on their rent. You haven't really solved anything at all, pertaining to the content of this thread, have you?
- kazagistar 10y ago
  There are plenty of ways to lower costs... If you remove density restrictions and bad zoning laws, some developer will eventually buy up enough low density housing and build much higher density appartments (or local stores), especially if subsidized.
  - JoBrad 10y ago
    Thing is, density restrictions help neighborhoods survive extreme growth. Connection to your neighbors, and retention of the qualities that attracted you to the city in the first place are vital for a city to retain their population. Regulation certainly needs to be updated, but favoring density is not always a good thing.
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      "Connection to your neighbors"? When low-density housing means that houses cost several million dollars apiece, that means you're trying to preserve the "uniqueness" of the city center for a bunch of millionaires. I fail to see why I should care about them.

trgn 10y ago

That's only true for a handful of cities. Most american cities and towns remain very affordable. These cities have tons of vacant lots close to the downtown office areas and are degraded by all the car infrastructure that serves the wealthier suburbanites. In those places, a lot of people of low means actually live very centrally. There's room to contract there and provide ample living space for households of all incomes. It is really a failure of the imagination. Most Americans cannot imagine a luxurious or aspirational life without a car. It has nothing to do with not having the means for it. And, fwiw, it really does require somewhat of an imaginative leap. When someone says that cars have bad consequences and there should be less driving, most objections are really reflexive. People imagine their current way of life, but without a car. A few examples: - How will I take my kids to school? You won't, they'll walk, because you live close to school, and since there are fewer cars, it will be safe for them to do so. - You expect me to lug all my costco bags on foot? No, you still can drive there, but you'll drive out as a special occasion once a week anyway. Or you pick up groceries in small batches from the grocery next to your office. - You want me to wait for the bus that only comes once an hour? No, you'll live closer to your office and walk or bike there. Or you'll take a streetcar that stops one block from your house every 10 minutes. - You want me to give up my huge front yard? Yes, but you won't need it, because you won't live next to a noisy and dangerous road. Instead, you'll have a small courtyard and it will look sick, with a lemon tree and a koi pond. And with all the money you save on gas, you can buy a little cabin out in the country and enjoy real nature there a few weekends a year. The imaginative leap requires you to imagine, basically, town life, and most Americans no longer can because they have never experienced it. Some americans in some city neighborhoods or tourist traps enjoy it. It's usually expensive, but only because supply is constrained, not because it's innately costly. People who have lived abroad may have experienced it. Often they return to the US, and are offended by the sheer ugliness of it all. Many college students experience it, it's kind of nice huh, small college towns. Well, to americans that's not "the real world", just a holding pen for young people to squander their youth. But why couldn't it be "the real world"? Make town living aspirational again, and half the battle is won. But that will only happen if people can imagine it. And that won't happen as long as people imagine `their` life `without` a car. They should imagine `somebody else's` life `with` a car. And again, the rents in the coastal cities are an exception. Most cities and towns do not have any significant pressure on land prices. Town life is right there in front of us, for the cost of used tire lot and a White Castle, and people cannot see it. Because they'll object that there won't be any room for the drive-thru lane.

innocentoldguy 10y ago

High rent in the cities seems more like an example of basic economics than a problem worthy of attention. It's a simple supply vs. demand situation. The only way you're going to reduce rent in the city is to build more city for people to live in, i.e. increase supply. I guess you could use the big guns of government to force property owners to lower their rents, but that is immoral, in my opinion.

amazon_not 10y ago
It's not immoral, just counterproductive. Rent controls never make things better, just worse.
- innocentoldguy 10y ago
  I disagree. If I buy an expensive piece of rental property in a city center as an investment, then the government comes in and forces me to lower my rent through some strong-arm, artificial means, they are stealing from me by keeping me from reaping the full, market-supported rewards of my investment, and theft is immoral.
  - amazon_not 10y ago
    You are not entitled to a return on investment. When you make an investment, you expose yourself to risks, including regulatory risks. Nothing immoral about it and certainly no theft. In case you think we are talking hypotheticals here, what you are describing is exactly how rent control works.