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The preference has been distorted by propaganda and coercive redistribution of wealth. https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/why-sprawl-was-caused-nuclear-arm

by Decade 9y ago

The preference has been distorted by propaganda and coercive redistribution of wealth. https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/why-sprawl-was-caused-nuclear-arms-race-and-why-matters-more-ever-today.html https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/why-sprawl-was-cause... Sure, I would like my own single family home, as long as I have access to all the other people and activities that make life worthwhile. Even better, I would like to have a castle in the wilderness, permitting no entrance without permission, with a teleporter so I can instantly commute to civilization. In the real world, we balance the things that we desire with what we need and what we can pay. Would you want to live in a single-family home if you had to pay what it really costs? https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/9/2/a-thousand-hidden-subsidies https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/9/2/a-thousand-hidd... In California, some of us recognize that castles are sprawl that destroys the wilderness. http://www.sfhac.org http://www.sfhac.org

mason240 9y ago
The implied argument here is that suburban living is subsided by others, while urban living is not. This simply not true. Just as one example, the light rail lines in my metro does not even make enough in fares to cover operating expenses (which is actually a stated goal of out MetroTransit authority), much less their initial construction or ongoing maintenance costs.
- Decade 9y ago
  Both are subsidized by unlimited debt financing. The difference is that car-free cities are physically possible to do without subsidy, mainly having a corruption problem, while suburbs as we know them are not. In particular, mass transit works if the average number passengers per mile is pretty high. The most obvious way to do that is to have a lot of homes and destinations close to each other, so the cars have a lot of passenger trips per vehicle trip. And then to take care of crowding, they can have higher frequency service and longer hours, which make mass transit more attractive, allowing more people to take transit instead of cars. Transit and housing are interconnected. If you start from a sprawled, low-density city, then light rail doesn't work economically.
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    If you start from a sprawled, low-density city, then light rail doesn't work economically. Bummer.
    - mason240 9y ago
      Nope, they put it into a very dense area. And again, their stated goal is to keep the amount of fares collected lower than their operating costs.
      - Decade 9y ago
        Ah, your previous statement was unclear. I thought that 100% farebox recovery was a goal, but it is not. Again, corruption covered by unlimited debt financing. It’s like the US has the worst version imaginable of all sorts of common things. Of course the LRT is not going to make back its costs if it’s not even designed to make back its costs. The best it can do is to be more efficient at getting people to their destinations than spending that amount on roads and parking garages. Passenger rail used to be a profitable privately financed business, but they all went bankrupt because car infrastructure was massively subsidized, surface rail was missing its schedules due to congestion from cars, and operators were forbidden by law from charging enough to cover their expenses. Now, the existing public transit systems are subsidized by the government, with a few profitable routes that require a lot of unprofitable routes to make them viable; and a farebox recovery ratio of 35% is considered pretty high. Also, I have learned not to trust Americans when they use words like “very dense.” Looking at ZipAtlas.com, the densest zip code in the Minneapolis-St Paul area has a bit less than 16,000 people per square mile. I think of San Francisco as being not very dense, and it averages over 18,000 people per square mile; over 53,000 in the densest zip code.

by Decade 9y ago

mason240 9y ago

The implied argument here is that suburban living is subsided by others, while urban living is not. This simply not true. Just as one example, the light rail lines in my metro does not even make enough in fares to cover operating expenses (which is actually a stated goal of out MetroTransit authority), much less their initial construction or ongoing maintenance costs.

Decade 9y ago
Both are subsidized by unlimited debt financing. The difference is that car-free cities are physically possible to do without subsidy, mainly having a corruption problem, while suburbs as we know them are not. In particular, mass transit works if the average number passengers per mile is pretty high. The most obvious way to do that is to have a lot of homes and destinations close to each other, so the cars have a lot of passenger trips per vehicle trip. And then to take care of crowding, they can have higher frequency service and longer hours, which make mass transit more attractive, allowing more people to take transit instead of cars. Transit and housing are interconnected. If you start from a sprawled, low-density city, then light rail doesn't work economically.
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  If you start from a sprawled, low-density city, then light rail doesn't work economically. Bummer.
  - mason240 9y ago
    Nope, they put it into a very dense area. And again, their stated goal is to keep the amount of fares collected lower than their operating costs.
    - Decade 9y ago
      Ah, your previous statement was unclear. I thought that 100% farebox recovery was a goal, but it is not. Again, corruption covered by unlimited debt financing. It’s like the US has the worst version imaginable of all sorts of common things. Of course the LRT is not going to make back its costs if it’s not even designed to make back its costs. The best it can do is to be more efficient at getting people to their destinations than spending that amount on roads and parking garages. Passenger rail used to be a profitable privately financed business, but they all went bankrupt because car infrastructure was massively subsidized, surface rail was missing its schedules due to congestion from cars, and operators were forbidden by law from charging enough to cover their expenses. Now, the existing public transit systems are subsidized by the government, with a few profitable routes that require a lot of unprofitable routes to make them viable; and a farebox recovery ratio of 35% is considered pretty high. Also, I have learned not to trust Americans when they use words like “very dense.” Looking at ZipAtlas.com, the densest zip code in the Minneapolis-St Paul area has a bit less than 16,000 people per square mile. I think of San Francisco as being not very dense, and it averages over 18,000 people per square mile; over 53,000 in the densest zip code.