28 ms·

Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive

662 points by oftenwrong 9y ago

pxeboot 9y ago
I wonder what city will be the first to ban private cars and allow all streets to work this way.
- crispyambulance 9y ago
  "The first" was probably a town incorporated in the middle ages. Many towns in Europe that have public squares and donkey sized streets ban private cars in their historic cores (or limit them to special permits).
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Even earlier. There are historic reports from rome during the time of the senate, banning carts in some streets and areas of the cities during certain times of the day.
  - to3m 9y ago
    There's minimal car access during business hours to the walled part of York: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York#Transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York#Transport
- ebiester 9y ago
  You don't need to ban cars. You just need to design around people instead of cars. Remove parking minimums. Don't put on-street parking but rather leave it to the free market to handle parking solutions (Yes, that means people pay to park.) Subsidize public transit but road maintenance must be paid by automobile-based taxes. Don't require density, but always zone for the next bigger thing. (The neighborhood is single house? Allow duplexes and MIL units. Is that the neighborhood? Allow 3 story buildings. Don't go from single house to giant skyscrapers, but rather build incrementally bigger.) That means that there will be fewer automobiles, fewer large roads, and less traffic, lending to more density and more maintainable infrastructure.
  - ars 9y ago
    How is that designing around people? First you are going to make all the people in the cars nuts because they can't find parking, so they won't come. Next all the people who find public transport tedious and slow won't come. (Yes, even the best public transport is not anywhere near as a good as a car that goes direct, and where you can actually leave your stuff in the car.) Next all the people who hate living in dense places will leave because everything is all squished together, so you are again not designing for people. How is that designing for people? It sounds more like you are designing for livestock. Livestock who don't mind, or have no choice, about living in cramped quarters, and who don't mind wasting a lot of time. No thank you, this is not the kind of city I want.
    - saosebastiao 9y ago
      Luckily, for people like you, you have the vast majority of the world's land area to work with. Cities take up very little space.
    - apendleton 9y ago
      And yet Manhattan is an economic powerhouse, so apparently plenty of people are okay with these restrictions. If you aren't, don't live there.
      - InitialLastName 9y ago
        Most of the areas where people actually live in New York (read: Upper Manhattan and the outer boroughs) have free street parking.
    - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      The person you're replying to assumes that transportation and demand to live/work/spend money in the city has such a high baseline volume that the city will always be relatively prosperous and the experience of walking in the city is the bottleneck when it comes to making the city better. This is fine if your world view doesn't extend beyond existing large cities. It's like being rich and complaining about having to maintain your vacation homes. Most smaller cities can't take that high baseline amount of economic activity and prosperity for granted so they need to balance luxury stuff like walk-ability, nice parks, etc. with making it easy and cheap to engage in commerce. Luxuries like walk-ability and parks are second to building up a baseline amount of (hopefully diverse) economic activity that won't go away at the next downturn.
- lmm 9y ago
  Oslo is aiming for 2019: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/04/oslo-is-on-track-for-a-car-free-future/522882/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/04/oslo-is-on-tr...
- 0x4f3759df 9y ago
  Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars https://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12342806/barcelona-superblocks https://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12342806/barcelona-superblocks
- iagovar 9y ago
  Look for Pontevedra, Spain.
- 33W 9y ago
  Probably a bad example because of its dependence on tourism, but Mackinac Island has prohibited motor vehicles since 1898: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Island
- dilyevsky 9y ago
  Not sure about first, but Zermatt, CH already has.
jnordwick 9y ago
> Streetscape enhancements add value to an area and are associated with higher rents and the attraction of new businesses. In addition there is good evidence to show that improving walking and cycling environments raises private property values by significant amounts. Nobody doubts this. Actually everybody sees this as the problem. I love NYC, but i also hate it. There is a price for density: crime, trash, prices, overcrowding, urban decay, poverty and homelessness, etc.
- reaperducer 9y ago
  > There is a price for density: crime, trash, prices, overcrowding, urban decay, poverty and homelessness, etc. One does not necessarily lead to the other. Urban life is far more complex than that. There are lots of places, even in New York with high density, but low crime, poverty, etc...
  - jnordwick 9y ago
    And they are probably very expensive. I didn't say they all occur everywhere.
- jimmywanger 9y ago
  > There is a price for density: crime, trash, prices, overcrowding, urban decay, poverty and homelessness, etc. Density without strict oversight, perhaps. Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore seem to be counterexamples.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Wow, so all we have to do is accept totalitarian rule? Where do I sign?
    - bduerst 9y ago
      Can you help me understand how Singapore is totalitarian?
reaperducer 9y ago
This is something that certain cities have understood for many years. Chicago, for example, mandates that all new development from a simple three-story building to a 100-story skyscraper has retail at its base to improve the walkability of its streets and make its business corridors vibrant. This also helps push down retail rents even in the CBD, allowing local upstart businesses a shot at reaching the masses. Chicago has also come around to the notion that streets aren't "for cars." Streets are public property and belong to all of the city's citizens, including the hundreds of thousands who don't own a car. CDOT evaluates streets and sometimes decides that private property storage (parking cars) isn't the best use for some of that land. So it turns parking spaces into miniature parks or seating areas, or public art.
- del82 9y ago
  Interestingly, Strong Towns published an article a bit more than a week ago about why mandating ground-floor retail is also not the best way to go: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/8/mixed-up-priorities-for-mixed-use-buildings https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/8/mixed-up-priori...
  - davidw 9y ago
    He's one of the Market Urbanism ( http://marketurbanism.com/ http://marketurbanism.com/ ) guys, so a bit more on the libertarian edge of things, but it's a good point in any event: cargo cult urbanism is probably better than "suburban experiment" urbanism, but flexibility and adaptability are even better. Edit - one of the really cool things about the growing movement that - broadly - includes YIMBY's, Market Urbanists, Strong Towns and so on is that it really crosses the ideological spectrum. For instance, this quote: "Reforming local land use controls is one of those rare areas in which the libertarian and the progressive agree. The current system restricts the freedom of the property owner, and also makes life harder for poorer Americans. The politics of zoning reform may be hard, but our land use regulations are badly in need of rethinking." From https://www.brookings.edu/research/reforming-land-use-regulations/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/reforming-land-use-regula... Edit 2 if you're interested in Strong Towns, it's a pretty cool group, with Slack ( https://www.strongtowns.org/discussion-board/ https://www.strongtowns.org/discussion-board/ ) and local groups that are starting to form: https://www.strongtowns.org/local/ https://www.strongtowns.org/local/
tabeth 9y ago
I've often wondered why somone moderately wealthy doesn't just start a super dense town, e.g. everything within 100 acres, and be within 10 miles of a major city. Create tons of these at a 50K people/sqmi density and implement some sort of hub spoke transportation with the major city being the hub and it could work!
- oftenwrong 9y ago
  Something like this maybe? http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20151203.php http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20151203.php Also, Amsterdam is creating a new neighbourhood like that: https://nltimes.nl/2017/11/23/amsterdam-set-build-massive-new-harbor-district-70k-new-homes https://nltimes.nl/2017/11/23/amsterdam-set-build-massive-ne... >The goal for Haven-Stad is to have everything within walking or cycling distance. "As a resident you can bring your children to school on foot or by bicycle and you can work around the corner", the city said.
- crispyambulance 9y ago
  That concept has already been implemented. Urban planners who practice it call it "new urbanism". It has been a mixed bag, but is better than the "malls-connected-by-highways" approach of many suburban development s.
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    Too much density decreases the quality of life. Overcrowdedness, very long waiting times at every establishment or government office, increased ease of pickpockets etc. to "disappear into the crowd", higher prices. You already see all this in many existing cities; you want that, but worse? I'll take malls connected by highways over that any day. Malls are nice and cars are a better experience than transit/walking in every facet besides the fact of not being able to web browse on a phone while doing it.
    - davidw 9y ago
      Malls and freeways aren't really financially tenable, long term. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburban-experiment https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburb...
potatoman2 9y ago
Jane Jacobs was right.
Zenst 9y ago
I love wide pavements as a pedestrian, alas London is in the grip of a cycle paths fetish and in many instances, they eat up pavements with some cases reducing pedestrian access and seen some which have reduced the pedestrian area to one foot due to the oversight of sheltered bus stops consuming the other side of the pavement. I'm not against cycle paths and indeed for them, but not when they erode away pedestrian access. That said, been case of many roads paved over for pedestrian only access and they have been fantastic on many levels for shops.
- nostromo 9y ago
  That's true in Seattle right now too. The city has been building bicycle lanes all around the city -- and yet cycling is down as a percent of commuters for the fifth straight year in a row. We could have dedicated that space to larger sidewalks and greener boulevards, instead of sparsely populated bicycle lanes. (Like London, we don't have great weather -- and we also have lots of steep hills. But city planners keep looking to cycling as our transportation panacea.)
  - buswell 9y ago
    Seattle has the insanity of having obligatory bicycle helmet laws. No city has ever had a successful bike-sharing scheme with laws saying you need to wear a helmet. No city with that law has ever had any amount of cycling either. Medellin has plenty of hills and cycling, London has plenty of rain and cycling. Rain and hills won't kill you, unlike the pollution from cars
  - Xylakant 9y ago
    Weather seems to be a lesser concern to cycling as both all of the Netherlands and Copenhagen demonstrate. Hills are more of an issue, but given how electric cycles improve, that should be taken care of. All in all, cycling is a replacement for car traffic more than for walking and thus the space allocation for cycle path should be taken from roads rather than pedestrian areas.
  - tantivy 9y ago
    Cycling dropping as a share of commuters doesn't tell you that fewer people are cycling. There are also more commuters. Seattle has been rapidly growing, and I'd guess that most new arrivals won't immediately take up cycling in a city that's unfamiliar to them. Building bicycle infrastructure makes cycling more inviting and less stressful for inexperienced riders, which helps shift the balance over time, especially as the network itself strengthens and coverage improves.
roymckenzie 9y ago
Lol America. Where walkable streets are justified by economics and not humanities.
- buswell 9y ago
  Exactly! It makes me laugh in the article that they have to point out the sidewalks and say that "most" of the pictures happen. Only in the US does this happen. Such a weird, unhealthy, wasteful, polluting country. So happy to not be from there.
- donatj 9y ago
  Everything is economics, brother. Even humanities.
  - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
    Not even close.
    - Bluestrike2 9y ago
      Depends on how you define economics. It's the study of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, which absolutely includes common goods like green space, pedestrian access, and other factors that are becoming even more important parts of city planning. Even if you look at some of these elements as purely aesthetic or quality of life factors, that's still something economists regularly analyze, even when it might not have traditionally been the case.
  - walterstucco 9y ago
    Nope
  - jdtang13 9y ago
    Everything is humanities, even economics.
    - stcredzero 9y ago
pqh 9y ago
I'd live in a big city if more cities and building architects cared about green spaces and noise. I'm glad people are doing research here.
- jdavis703 9y ago
  The problem is the cities citizens. Northern European cities such as Copenhagen are pretty quiet, despite their high density.
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    The problem is the cities citizens. Northern European cities such as Copenhagen are pretty quiet, despite their high density. A lot of the character of a city does come from how its citizens imagine it's supposed to be. In the nicer parts of Stuttgart in 2000: Never once even the smell of garbage.
    - ForRealsies 9y ago
      Bingo, it is all about culture and identity (Japan). Often used argument arguing against immigration.
      - stcredzero 9y ago
        Often used argument arguing against immigration. That's a very shortsighted view. One can do an examination of world history and geography to strongly support the conclusion that commerce and cultural interchange has a tremendous amplifying effect on the strength of culture and the value of human capital. Japan itself is an example of this on a smaller scale. When Europeans first got to travel in Japan, they marveled at the sheer volume of commerce they saw. If cultural evolution is anything like genetic algorithms, then what's needed for optimal progression is a balance of interchange and continuity: multiple populations with some degree of interchange.
    - briandear 9y ago
      Paris is a Northern European town I think and it’s a disaster in terms of noise. Those damned 2 cycle scooters for instance. And dog poop and trash and people pissing wherever they feel like. And it’s expensive. Paris is an overrated nightmare. And Copenhagen isn’t really that dense. It’s ranked 117th in the world — just under New Orleans and above Montreal: http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-...
michaelthiessen 9y ago
I found this blog a few months ago and then lost it. Thanks for posting this!
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Don't worry. You'll see it show up here about a zillion times more.
geebee 9y ago
Another important factor not mentioned here is the practice of "curb cuts" http://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2008-06-01/eye-street http://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2008-06-01... I recommend the article (not just posting for a cite, it's an interesting one). But to summarize - SF has a lot of "curb cuts", sections of the curb that are cut out and lowered so a car can drive across the sidewalk to a driveway or garage. This prevents the sidewalks from becoming an inviting pedestrian space. First, pedestrians must be on a constant lookout for cars, or dodge cars that are parked on the sidewalk blocking the path. Second, it prevents the street scape from embracing the pedestrian experience, leading to what SPUR calls the "barren nature of the streets" in SF. Ironically, these curb cuts break the street into small sections of curb that are too small for a legal parking spot, so there isn't really even much of a net gain in overall parking. The estimate I read was that each curb cut removes 2/3 of a street parking space. San Francisco tends to get high walkability scores, but the experience is notably worse than many other dense cities. I realized this after living in Paris and Manhattan. There is something much more relaxing about streets when you don't have to dodge cars, and the streetscapes in those places are far more attractive (the link above shows some examples of why this is the case). I'd say it hit me especially hard once I had kids (I live in SF), when the experience of dodging cars crossing the sidewalk became scary rather than just irritating. I realized I had to grip my kids hands pretty hard when walking on the sidewalk, because it is a perilous place for kids who can't be seen. I had a close call or two, when my kid ran ahead and a car was pulling into a driveway. Fortunately, the driver was alert. But again, this is the sidewalk. It's incredibly depressing that in a supposedly progressive, "pedestrian friendly" city, kids in most neighborhoods are less safe on the sidewalk than in a crosswalk, where they are at least visible.[1] SF gets high walkability scores, and in some ways, it's deserved. It's certainly better than the exurbs and many other US cities. But these scores don't count the curb cuts or experience of the walk, and honestly, the curb cuts have really damaged the experience in SF. [1] Edit - leaving this up since it was in my original post, but this isn't necessarily true. I feel the sidewalks are perilous, but I don't have evidence that sidewalks in curb cut heavy areas are more dangerous than crosswalks.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  Ironically, these curb cuts break the street into small sections of curb that are too small for a legal parking spot, so there isn't really even much of a net gain in overall parking. The estimate I read was that each curb cut removes 2/3 of a street parking space. The curb cuts create situations, where a legendary SF restaurant in a residential neighborhood becomes an "adventure" to drive to, because residential parking is so scarce. So a lot of its business comes from Tour Busses bringing in people from out of town to eat there.
MaysonL 9y ago
Jane Jacobs pointed this out in 1961: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am...
- kobrad 9y ago
  It's nice to see her mentioned here. If you've had any architectural education you got to read Jacobs. It's also amazing that we need to rediscover her 60 years later.
weisser 9y ago
I live in Boulder and attribute much of the quality of life here to walkable (and bikeable) streets. We have hundreds of miles of multi-use paths that are used extensively for getting around and for recreation. Our main road downtown has a pedestrian mall for a number of blocks that keeps traffic away and lends itself to street performers, community events, and a generally calming atmosphere. Downtown parking lots are free on the weekends and just $1.25 / hour during the week — this keeps people from circling around looking for the absolute closest spot to where they are trying to go. You can bike (or technically walk though it's >25 miles) from Boulder to Denver on a dedicated path nearly the entire time.
- davidw 9y ago
  Boulder's a great place in many ways, but it's also what got me really interested in urbanism, and getting involved at a local level, because it is an abject failure in terms of being affordable to even middle-class people who didn't buy in 30 years ago, with average house prices somewhere around 700K or north of that. This is, in part, because they refuse to add denser areas like the downtown in more parts of the city, despite there being ample room to build 'in and up'. I mean... if Aspen or something like that is expensive, it is what it is, but a larger town with ample space like Boulder or Bend (where I ended up) or Palo Alto should not have these crazy prices.
  - weisser 9y ago
    I don't disagree. Boulder does well by the people who can afford to live here but seemingly (I'm still new) does little to offer affordable options. You go around Boulder and it doesn't feel like a city — this is part of the charm and also part of the problem.
    - davidw 9y ago
      They don't need skyscrapers or other big city stuff. Just more 3/4 story buildings that use their available lot well. You don't even have to mandate that; just get rid of the restrictions and market forces would gradually drive things in that way.
vinceguidry 9y ago
I pay a pretty hefty premium to live in the only walkable neighborhood in Atlanta, Midtown, and even then I'd only call it "barely walkable." There's still not nearly enough density for me to spend a whole lot of time walking around. Still, you can't put a price on having a grocery store, train station, liquor store, neighborhood bar, and cheap Mediterranean restaurant all within a 5 minute walk. As much as I'm paying, it's worth it. Now if only I could convince my favorite coffee shop proprietor to open up a shop nearby...
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  >Still, you can't put a price on having a grocery store, train station, liquor store, neighborhood bar, and cheap Mediterranean restaurant all within a 5 minute walk. Whoever you're paying money to did just that.
  - powvans 9y ago
    And they should think about a hefty rent hike when it's time to sign the next lease. From the GP's comment it sounds like they left money on the table.
    - vinceguidry 9y ago
      With all the new construction going on in this part of the city, I'd be really surprised if rents stay at this level over the near run.
- _qbxp 9y ago
  I've started my search to buy a place in Midtown, precisely because of the walkability. The prices really do reflect it..
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    Yeah, and if you're not right inside the Juniper - Spring St Corridor, you may as well live in West Midtown. Brutal. Kicking myself for not trying harder to buy into the Metropolis back when 1-beds still went for <$250k
Chiba-City 9y ago
I've waited 50 years for an organization like Strong Towns to combine a) sound accounting and b) urban architecture in a USA context. These guys are sobering consequentialists, testing principles against their realized potential. That's a breath of fresh air cutting across party electioneers, subsidy seekers, wishful thinkers and noisy promoters. Great publication.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
The author appears to think that optimizing for tax revenue is one of the main goals of publicly funded transportation infrastructure (a category which includes roads, sidewalks, subways, etc.) or is at least not a terrible idea. I cannot even begin to convey how much I disagree. The purpose of public funded transportation infrastructure is to make transportation cheap (in terms of time, money, frustration or any other metric, they are all interchangeable) to the point where anyone can use it. In an ideal world physical distance would be negligible part of any decision. Travel would be as inconsequential as getting water from a faucet. Obviously this is little more than a fantasy. Making cities walk-able at the expense of some longer range form of transit is not something I endorse in any way shape or form. Making longer range transportation more expensive (time and money are basically the same thing at this level) creates a negative incentive for people to move about beyond a the limited distance of cheap alternatives (i.e. walking). While that may be a benefit to the wealthy it creates is a detriment to the poor. For example, you're stuck paying too much for bad selection at the local grocery store because you can't afford the level of mass transit pass or a car that would let you get to the better grocery store in a reasonable time (or maybe the increased demand for buses and rail degrades their quality substantially). To hear the author toss in the tax argument annoys me. Transportation isn't free. It costs money and time. It's basically a tax on physical distance. There's no such thing as good roads in a city. They're busy and slow during basically all the hours which people want to use them. People don't pay for a car or rail pass because they want to but because the benefits of increased freedom of movement outweigh the costs. The costs aren't cheap. If increased business/commerce and tax revenue is your argument for reducing the capacity of people to get in/out of your city then you should be asking yourself how the heck you got to a the point where people would rather put up with driving than live/work/spend money in your city.
- wonder_er 9y ago
  I think you and the author might be in more agreement than your comment indicates. You said: > The purpose of public funded transportation infrastructure is to make transportation cheap... to the point where anyone can use it. and > Making cities walk-able at the expense of some longer range form of transit is not something I endorse The reason I think you both might be in agreement is because by "optimizing for tax revenue", you have to allow dense (and perhaps) walkable development. If a dense environment allows 10000 people to access services with 10 minutes of walking, or a not-dense environment requires public transit to get 10000 people access to services, wouldn't the dense one do it better than the not-dense one? I think you and the author both want the most people to access important things in the least time. I'm inclined to think that dense environments better serve more people than sparse environments with public transit tacked on.
Animats 9y ago
The US has too much retail space. About 2x too much. There's a fan club for cutesy little hipster stores that sell overpriced hipster stuff bought by hipster people with their hipster little dogs. Look at the pictures in the article.[1] See any stores selling necessities? A hardware store? A real grocery store? Nah. Retail is happening at the strip mall or online. It's hard to fill those little shops at the base of commercial structures with anything useful. Most apartment buildings can't even support an on-premises convenience store. SF tried. The big parking garage at 4th and Mission has lots of little shops, marginally trying to survive. The Metreon was supposed to be a tech showcase. Now it's a Target store. Don't confuse decorative hipster with success. [1] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26ea91/54b6c509e4b062126976d942/5a5e174853450ab8996ddb54/1516298146574/4558849693_bf779c96ed_b.jpg?format=2500w https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26e...
- rayiner 9y ago
  Hah. This is right by my office in DC. The only people who live around there are GWU students and profs. It’s been around forever, but it exists to support the bauinsss and tourist lunch crowd. That said, in DC, where lots of people don’t drive, you can support grocery stores and hardware stores. There was a Safeway and an Ace Hardware in the building over when I lived in China Town. You don’t need one in every block though.
- vkou 9y ago
  > Most apartment buildings can't even support an on-premises convenience store. SF tried. Then they aren't building high enough. My Vancouver apartment, in a 30 story building was floored by retail. So were some of the other neighboring buildings. Thanks to mixed-use building, Vancouver has a vibrant downtown - one used by people after 6pm. Seattle, where I currently live... Has large stretches of it that are largely dead in the evening - because it's all office/professional space. Vancouver downtown feels far safer after hours.
- abainbridge 9y ago
  I agree mainly. However, it really does improve everyone's quality of life if you buy your coffee from someone who is running their own little business and wants you to come back. It makes England (in my case) seem a bit more like France, which always seems to have had a society better balanced in favour of the normal citizen, rather than The Man. If it isn't an economically sustainable, then we should strive to change the rules so that it is.
d--b 9y ago
It's always a tradeoff... - super dense cities like Tokyo or New York can feel suffocating. A lot of people can't bear it. The lack of green space, and the overcrowding of people and cars increases the stress levels by a lot. Yet, being able to walk around the city is excellent for exercising and mindfulness, it's easier to meet with people, etc. - super sparse cities (like LA or Brasilia) on the other end tend to isolate people, and to mediate the experience of daily life. Life is constantly split by episodes of driving / parking. Yet, these cities offer a lot of space, greenery and privacy. The fact that both very dense cities and sparse cities exist and are successful only shows that different people enjoy different kinds of cities, so it would be a bit preposterous to claim that one style is better over another. That said, electric cars and self driving car fleets will most likely help reduce pollution (both noise and air) by a lot and make living in dense city much easier.
- xvedejas 9y ago
  Even from the perspective of personal preference, I think it's fair to say that, at least in the US, there is a wide variety of sparse cities for people to choose from, and only a few actually dense cities. This leaves those preferring density at a relative disadvantage. Unrelated: it's unclear to me how self-driving cars can help pollution. They're a solution to the problem of the high cost of labor, and not much else. If anything, self-driving cars will make it cheaper for everyone to ride cars everywhere, and so people will more often ride cars everywhere, and more pollution will be the result.
  - wonder_er 9y ago
    > This leaves those preferring density at a relative disadvantage. 100% agree. I much prefer to live in a dense, urban, walkable area, but most built environments that satisfy these criteria violate modern zoning regulations. So, the USA's supply of pleasant, dense environments is dwindling because every time an olde/walkable area revitalizes enough to attract new development, that new development must comply with modern zoning, and kills the thing that that makes the area attractive. It's thoroughly frustrating.
    - 9y ago
stretchwithme 9y ago
I look forward to a time when vehicles and pedestrians aren't interacting at all. Vehicles should be below where people walk and ride bikes. Either roads are designed to be underground or we one layer up from existing roads. And that's were storefronts will be. Robotic construction is going to drive down construction costs dramatically, so I think it will be feasible. Vehicles will be totally electric a few decades from now, so pollution will be less of an issue. Cities will get quieter and we'll see a lot more vegetable gardens and open space where streets used to be.
- kiliantics 9y ago
  I remember parts of Hong Kong being designed like this when I visited 10 years ago. It felt a little awkward but I could see this working nicely. Ideally we'd just remove the need for cars altogether though. Maybe freight could come in underground.
  - stretchwithme 9y ago
    Yes, it will come in underground. Freight and people too, as they already do in NYC on the subway and PATH train. It won't happen all at once, of course. But it will happen in most places.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
intrasight 9y ago
>Walkable Streets are More Economically Productive "Walkable Streets" really mean main streets. Main streets are economically productive if they have a critical mass of interesting stores. > More economically productive More than what? Other main streets? This is circular reasoning.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  What is a "main street" in the context of Manhattan? That phrase only has meaning out in the suburbs. "Walkable street" does not mean the same thing as "main street". Every street here is walkable.
scotty79 9y ago
You can think about walkable streets as mall sprawl. I mean it in a positive way. As analogy for the people that would dubt they have economic value.
oagboghi2 9y ago
I wonder how many people spouting the greatness of this urban lifestyle rent as compared to own their homes.
mjevans 9y ago
I keep saying that vehicles need to be on a different layer than pedestrians and cyclists. I think what I'd prefer to see is a reduction in the total number of streets, but for each street that remains to be fully dedicated to vehicle traffic, with wide single direction entry/exit ports for buildings. Pedestrians would walk through and between buildings at non-vehicle level height (under them seems to be the best option); most likely beneath the roads that were removed (imagine skylights where the roadway was). Obviously the pedestrian areas would be insulated from the weather.
- Balero 9y ago
  I would suggest places with nice weather have it the other way, cars underneath, pedestrians walking around on top. Frankly living in a place that doesn't always get the best weather id rather get what little sun I could.
some1else 9y ago
Obnoxious pop up, pressing escape opens Squarespace login
Arn_Thor 9y ago
Lafayette looks very inviting!
kikimaru 9y ago
Completely apropos to the article, but why is it that when I pressed ESC on my keyboard, the article redirected me to try & log in to Squarespace?
touringcomplete 9y ago
I partially agree. Davis, CA is extremely walkable but it’s not exactly Stanford/Palo Alto. Stanford/Palo Alto is sort of walkable, but ridiculously economically-productive. Amsterdam, SF and Manhattan are very walkable and very productive. LA is not walkable yet very productive.

662 points by oftenwrong 9y ago

pxeboot 9y ago

I wonder what city will be the first to ban private cars and allow all streets to work this way.

crispyambulance 9y ago
"The first" was probably a town incorporated in the middle ages. Many towns in Europe that have public squares and donkey sized streets ban private cars in their historic cores (or limit them to special permits).
- kuschku 9y ago
  Even earlier. There are historic reports from rome during the time of the senate, banning carts in some streets and areas of the cities during certain times of the day.
- to3m 9y ago
  There's minimal car access during business hours to the walled part of York: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York#Transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York#Transport
ebiester 9y ago
You don't need to ban cars. You just need to design around people instead of cars. Remove parking minimums. Don't put on-street parking but rather leave it to the free market to handle parking solutions (Yes, that means people pay to park.) Subsidize public transit but road maintenance must be paid by automobile-based taxes. Don't require density, but always zone for the next bigger thing. (The neighborhood is single house? Allow duplexes and MIL units. Is that the neighborhood? Allow 3 story buildings. Don't go from single house to giant skyscrapers, but rather build incrementally bigger.) That means that there will be fewer automobiles, fewer large roads, and less traffic, lending to more density and more maintainable infrastructure.
- ars 9y ago
  How is that designing around people? First you are going to make all the people in the cars nuts because they can't find parking, so they won't come. Next all the people who find public transport tedious and slow won't come. (Yes, even the best public transport is not anywhere near as a good as a car that goes direct, and where you can actually leave your stuff in the car.) Next all the people who hate living in dense places will leave because everything is all squished together, so you are again not designing for people. How is that designing for people? It sounds more like you are designing for livestock. Livestock who don't mind, or have no choice, about living in cramped quarters, and who don't mind wasting a lot of time. No thank you, this is not the kind of city I want.
  - saosebastiao 9y ago
    Luckily, for people like you, you have the vast majority of the world's land area to work with. Cities take up very little space.
  - apendleton 9y ago
    And yet Manhattan is an economic powerhouse, so apparently plenty of people are okay with these restrictions. If you aren't, don't live there.
    - InitialLastName 9y ago
      Most of the areas where people actually live in New York (read: Upper Manhattan and the outer boroughs) have free street parking.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    The person you're replying to assumes that transportation and demand to live/work/spend money in the city has such a high baseline volume that the city will always be relatively prosperous and the experience of walking in the city is the bottleneck when it comes to making the city better. This is fine if your world view doesn't extend beyond existing large cities. It's like being rich and complaining about having to maintain your vacation homes. Most smaller cities can't take that high baseline amount of economic activity and prosperity for granted so they need to balance luxury stuff like walk-ability, nice parks, etc. with making it easy and cheap to engage in commerce. Luxuries like walk-ability and parks are second to building up a baseline amount of (hopefully diverse) economic activity that won't go away at the next downturn.
lmm 9y ago
Oslo is aiming for 2019: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/04/oslo-is-on-track-for-a-car-free-future/522882/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/04/oslo-is-on-tr...
0x4f3759df 9y ago
Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars https://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12342806/barcelona-superblocks https://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12342806/barcelona-superblocks
iagovar 9y ago
Look for Pontevedra, Spain.
33W 9y ago
Probably a bad example because of its dependence on tourism, but Mackinac Island has prohibited motor vehicles since 1898: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Island
dilyevsky 9y ago
Not sure about first, but Zermatt, CH already has.

jnordwick 9y ago

> Streetscape enhancements add value to an area and are associated with higher rents and the attraction of new businesses. In addition there is good evidence to show that improving walking and cycling environments raises private property values by significant amounts. Nobody doubts this. Actually everybody sees this as the problem. I love NYC, but i also hate it. There is a price for density: crime, trash, prices, overcrowding, urban decay, poverty and homelessness, etc.

reaperducer 9y ago
> There is a price for density: crime, trash, prices, overcrowding, urban decay, poverty and homelessness, etc. One does not necessarily lead to the other. Urban life is far more complex than that. There are lots of places, even in New York with high density, but low crime, poverty, etc...
- jnordwick 9y ago
  And they are probably very expensive. I didn't say they all occur everywhere.
jimmywanger 9y ago
> There is a price for density: crime, trash, prices, overcrowding, urban decay, poverty and homelessness, etc. Density without strict oversight, perhaps. Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore seem to be counterexamples.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Wow, so all we have to do is accept totalitarian rule? Where do I sign?
  - bduerst 9y ago
    Can you help me understand how Singapore is totalitarian?

reaperducer 9y ago

This is something that certain cities have understood for many years. Chicago, for example, mandates that all new development from a simple three-story building to a 100-story skyscraper has retail at its base to improve the walkability of its streets and make its business corridors vibrant. This also helps push down retail rents even in the CBD, allowing local upstart businesses a shot at reaching the masses. Chicago has also come around to the notion that streets aren't "for cars." Streets are public property and belong to all of the city's citizens, including the hundreds of thousands who don't own a car. CDOT evaluates streets and sometimes decides that private property storage (parking cars) isn't the best use for some of that land. So it turns parking spaces into miniature parks or seating areas, or public art.

del82 9y ago
Interestingly, Strong Towns published an article a bit more than a week ago about why mandating ground-floor retail is also not the best way to go: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/8/mixed-up-priorities-for-mixed-use-buildings https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/8/mixed-up-priori...
- davidw 9y ago
  He's one of the Market Urbanism ( http://marketurbanism.com/ http://marketurbanism.com/ ) guys, so a bit more on the libertarian edge of things, but it's a good point in any event: cargo cult urbanism is probably better than "suburban experiment" urbanism, but flexibility and adaptability are even better. Edit - one of the really cool things about the growing movement that - broadly - includes YIMBY's, Market Urbanists, Strong Towns and so on is that it really crosses the ideological spectrum. For instance, this quote: "Reforming local land use controls is one of those rare areas in which the libertarian and the progressive agree. The current system restricts the freedom of the property owner, and also makes life harder for poorer Americans. The politics of zoning reform may be hard, but our land use regulations are badly in need of rethinking." From https://www.brookings.edu/research/reforming-land-use-regulations/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/reforming-land-use-regula... Edit 2 if you're interested in Strong Towns, it's a pretty cool group, with Slack ( https://www.strongtowns.org/discussion-board/ https://www.strongtowns.org/discussion-board/ ) and local groups that are starting to form: https://www.strongtowns.org/local/ https://www.strongtowns.org/local/

tabeth 9y ago

I've often wondered why somone moderately wealthy doesn't just start a super dense town, e.g. everything within 100 acres, and be within 10 miles of a major city. Create tons of these at a 50K people/sqmi density and implement some sort of hub spoke transportation with the major city being the hub and it could work!

oftenwrong 9y ago
Something like this maybe? http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20151203.php http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20151203.php Also, Amsterdam is creating a new neighbourhood like that: https://nltimes.nl/2017/11/23/amsterdam-set-build-massive-new-harbor-district-70k-new-homes https://nltimes.nl/2017/11/23/amsterdam-set-build-massive-ne... >The goal for Haven-Stad is to have everything within walking or cycling distance. "As a resident you can bring your children to school on foot or by bicycle and you can work around the corner", the city said.
crispyambulance 9y ago
That concept has already been implemented. Urban planners who practice it call it "new urbanism". It has been a mixed bag, but is better than the "malls-connected-by-highways" approach of many suburban development s.
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  Too much density decreases the quality of life. Overcrowdedness, very long waiting times at every establishment or government office, increased ease of pickpockets etc. to "disappear into the crowd", higher prices. You already see all this in many existing cities; you want that, but worse? I'll take malls connected by highways over that any day. Malls are nice and cars are a better experience than transit/walking in every facet besides the fact of not being able to web browse on a phone while doing it.
  - davidw 9y ago
    Malls and freeways aren't really financially tenable, long term. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburban-experiment https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburb...

potatoman2 9y ago

Jane Jacobs was right.

Zenst 9y ago

I love wide pavements as a pedestrian, alas London is in the grip of a cycle paths fetish and in many instances, they eat up pavements with some cases reducing pedestrian access and seen some which have reduced the pedestrian area to one foot due to the oversight of sheltered bus stops consuming the other side of the pavement. I'm not against cycle paths and indeed for them, but not when they erode away pedestrian access. That said, been case of many roads paved over for pedestrian only access and they have been fantastic on many levels for shops.

nostromo 9y ago
That's true in Seattle right now too. The city has been building bicycle lanes all around the city -- and yet cycling is down as a percent of commuters for the fifth straight year in a row. We could have dedicated that space to larger sidewalks and greener boulevards, instead of sparsely populated bicycle lanes. (Like London, we don't have great weather -- and we also have lots of steep hills. But city planners keep looking to cycling as our transportation panacea.)
- buswell 9y ago
  Seattle has the insanity of having obligatory bicycle helmet laws. No city has ever had a successful bike-sharing scheme with laws saying you need to wear a helmet. No city with that law has ever had any amount of cycling either. Medellin has plenty of hills and cycling, London has plenty of rain and cycling. Rain and hills won't kill you, unlike the pollution from cars
- Xylakant 9y ago
  Weather seems to be a lesser concern to cycling as both all of the Netherlands and Copenhagen demonstrate. Hills are more of an issue, but given how electric cycles improve, that should be taken care of. All in all, cycling is a replacement for car traffic more than for walking and thus the space allocation for cycle path should be taken from roads rather than pedestrian areas.
- tantivy 9y ago
  Cycling dropping as a share of commuters doesn't tell you that fewer people are cycling. There are also more commuters. Seattle has been rapidly growing, and I'd guess that most new arrivals won't immediately take up cycling in a city that's unfamiliar to them. Building bicycle infrastructure makes cycling more inviting and less stressful for inexperienced riders, which helps shift the balance over time, especially as the network itself strengthens and coverage improves.

roymckenzie 9y ago

Lol America. Where walkable streets are justified by economics and not humanities.

buswell 9y ago
Exactly! It makes me laugh in the article that they have to point out the sidewalks and say that "most" of the pictures happen. Only in the US does this happen. Such a weird, unhealthy, wasteful, polluting country. So happy to not be from there.
donatj 9y ago
Everything is economics, brother. Even humanities.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  Not even close.
  - Bluestrike2 9y ago
    Depends on how you define economics. It's the study of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, which absolutely includes common goods like green space, pedestrian access, and other factors that are becoming even more important parts of city planning. Even if you look at some of these elements as purely aesthetic or quality of life factors, that's still something economists regularly analyze, even when it might not have traditionally been the case.
- walterstucco 9y ago
  Nope
- jdtang13 9y ago
  Everything is humanities, even economics.
  - stcredzero 9y ago

pqh 9y ago

I'd live in a big city if more cities and building architects cared about green spaces and noise. I'm glad people are doing research here.

jdavis703 9y ago
The problem is the cities citizens. Northern European cities such as Copenhagen are pretty quiet, despite their high density.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  The problem is the cities citizens. Northern European cities such as Copenhagen are pretty quiet, despite their high density. A lot of the character of a city does come from how its citizens imagine it's supposed to be. In the nicer parts of Stuttgart in 2000: Never once even the smell of garbage.
  - ForRealsies 9y ago
    Bingo, it is all about culture and identity (Japan). Often used argument arguing against immigration.
    - stcredzero 9y ago
      Often used argument arguing against immigration. That's a very shortsighted view. One can do an examination of world history and geography to strongly support the conclusion that commerce and cultural interchange has a tremendous amplifying effect on the strength of culture and the value of human capital. Japan itself is an example of this on a smaller scale. When Europeans first got to travel in Japan, they marveled at the sheer volume of commerce they saw. If cultural evolution is anything like genetic algorithms, then what's needed for optimal progression is a balance of interchange and continuity: multiple populations with some degree of interchange.
  - briandear 9y ago
    Paris is a Northern European town I think and it’s a disaster in terms of noise. Those damned 2 cycle scooters for instance. And dog poop and trash and people pissing wherever they feel like. And it’s expensive. Paris is an overrated nightmare. And Copenhagen isn’t really that dense. It’s ranked 117th in the world — just under New Orleans and above Montreal: http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-...

michaelthiessen 9y ago

I found this blog a few months ago and then lost it. Thanks for posting this!

emodendroket 9y ago
Don't worry. You'll see it show up here about a zillion times more.

geebee 9y ago

Another important factor not mentioned here is the practice of "curb cuts" http://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2008-06-01/eye-street http://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2008-06-01... I recommend the article (not just posting for a cite, it's an interesting one). But to summarize - SF has a lot of "curb cuts", sections of the curb that are cut out and lowered so a car can drive across the sidewalk to a driveway or garage. This prevents the sidewalks from becoming an inviting pedestrian space. First, pedestrians must be on a constant lookout for cars, or dodge cars that are parked on the sidewalk blocking the path. Second, it prevents the street scape from embracing the pedestrian experience, leading to what SPUR calls the "barren nature of the streets" in SF. Ironically, these curb cuts break the street into small sections of curb that are too small for a legal parking spot, so there isn't really even much of a net gain in overall parking. The estimate I read was that each curb cut removes 2/3 of a street parking space. San Francisco tends to get high walkability scores, but the experience is notably worse than many other dense cities. I realized this after living in Paris and Manhattan. There is something much more relaxing about streets when you don't have to dodge cars, and the streetscapes in those places are far more attractive (the link above shows some examples of why this is the case). I'd say it hit me especially hard once I had kids (I live in SF), when the experience of dodging cars crossing the sidewalk became scary rather than just irritating. I realized I had to grip my kids hands pretty hard when walking on the sidewalk, because it is a perilous place for kids who can't be seen. I had a close call or two, when my kid ran ahead and a car was pulling into a driveway. Fortunately, the driver was alert. But again, this is the sidewalk. It's incredibly depressing that in a supposedly progressive, "pedestrian friendly" city, kids in most neighborhoods are less safe on the sidewalk than in a crosswalk, where they are at least visible.[1] SF gets high walkability scores, and in some ways, it's deserved. It's certainly better than the exurbs and many other US cities. But these scores don't count the curb cuts or experience of the walk, and honestly, the curb cuts have really damaged the experience in SF. [1] Edit - leaving this up since it was in my original post, but this isn't necessarily true. I feel the sidewalks are perilous, but I don't have evidence that sidewalks in curb cut heavy areas are more dangerous than crosswalks.

stcredzero 9y ago
Ironically, these curb cuts break the street into small sections of curb that are too small for a legal parking spot, so there isn't really even much of a net gain in overall parking. The estimate I read was that each curb cut removes 2/3 of a street parking space. The curb cuts create situations, where a legendary SF restaurant in a residential neighborhood becomes an "adventure" to drive to, because residential parking is so scarce. So a lot of its business comes from Tour Busses bringing in people from out of town to eat there.

MaysonL 9y ago

Jane Jacobs pointed this out in 1961: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am...

kobrad 9y ago
It's nice to see her mentioned here. If you've had any architectural education you got to read Jacobs. It's also amazing that we need to rediscover her 60 years later.

weisser 9y ago

I live in Boulder and attribute much of the quality of life here to walkable (and bikeable) streets. We have hundreds of miles of multi-use paths that are used extensively for getting around and for recreation. Our main road downtown has a pedestrian mall for a number of blocks that keeps traffic away and lends itself to street performers, community events, and a generally calming atmosphere. Downtown parking lots are free on the weekends and just $1.25 / hour during the week — this keeps people from circling around looking for the absolute closest spot to where they are trying to go. You can bike (or technically walk though it's >25 miles) from Boulder to Denver on a dedicated path nearly the entire time.

davidw 9y ago
Boulder's a great place in many ways, but it's also what got me really interested in urbanism, and getting involved at a local level, because it is an abject failure in terms of being affordable to even middle-class people who didn't buy in 30 years ago, with average house prices somewhere around 700K or north of that. This is, in part, because they refuse to add denser areas like the downtown in more parts of the city, despite there being ample room to build 'in and up'. I mean... if Aspen or something like that is expensive, it is what it is, but a larger town with ample space like Boulder or Bend (where I ended up) or Palo Alto should not have these crazy prices.
- weisser 9y ago
  I don't disagree. Boulder does well by the people who can afford to live here but seemingly (I'm still new) does little to offer affordable options. You go around Boulder and it doesn't feel like a city — this is part of the charm and also part of the problem.
  - davidw 9y ago
    They don't need skyscrapers or other big city stuff. Just more 3/4 story buildings that use their available lot well. You don't even have to mandate that; just get rid of the restrictions and market forces would gradually drive things in that way.

vinceguidry 9y ago

I pay a pretty hefty premium to live in the only walkable neighborhood in Atlanta, Midtown, and even then I'd only call it "barely walkable." There's still not nearly enough density for me to spend a whole lot of time walking around. Still, you can't put a price on having a grocery store, train station, liquor store, neighborhood bar, and cheap Mediterranean restaurant all within a 5 minute walk. As much as I'm paying, it's worth it. Now if only I could convince my favorite coffee shop proprietor to open up a shop nearby...

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>Still, you can't put a price on having a grocery store, train station, liquor store, neighborhood bar, and cheap Mediterranean restaurant all within a 5 minute walk. Whoever you're paying money to did just that.
- powvans 9y ago
  And they should think about a hefty rent hike when it's time to sign the next lease. From the GP's comment it sounds like they left money on the table.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    With all the new construction going on in this part of the city, I'd be really surprised if rents stay at this level over the near run.
_qbxp 9y ago
I've started my search to buy a place in Midtown, precisely because of the walkability. The prices really do reflect it..
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  Yeah, and if you're not right inside the Juniper - Spring St Corridor, you may as well live in West Midtown. Brutal. Kicking myself for not trying harder to buy into the Metropolis back when 1-beds still went for <$250k

Chiba-City 9y ago

I've waited 50 years for an organization like Strong Towns to combine a) sound accounting and b) urban architecture in a USA context. These guys are sobering consequentialists, testing principles against their realized potential. That's a breath of fresh air cutting across party electioneers, subsidy seekers, wishful thinkers and noisy promoters. Great publication.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

The author appears to think that optimizing for tax revenue is one of the main goals of publicly funded transportation infrastructure (a category which includes roads, sidewalks, subways, etc.) or is at least not a terrible idea. I cannot even begin to convey how much I disagree. The purpose of public funded transportation infrastructure is to make transportation cheap (in terms of time, money, frustration or any other metric, they are all interchangeable) to the point where anyone can use it. In an ideal world physical distance would be negligible part of any decision. Travel would be as inconsequential as getting water from a faucet. Obviously this is little more than a fantasy. Making cities walk-able at the expense of some longer range form of transit is not something I endorse in any way shape or form. Making longer range transportation more expensive (time and money are basically the same thing at this level) creates a negative incentive for people to move about beyond a the limited distance of cheap alternatives (i.e. walking). While that may be a benefit to the wealthy it creates is a detriment to the poor. For example, you're stuck paying too much for bad selection at the local grocery store because you can't afford the level of mass transit pass or a car that would let you get to the better grocery store in a reasonable time (or maybe the increased demand for buses and rail degrades their quality substantially). To hear the author toss in the tax argument annoys me. Transportation isn't free. It costs money and time. It's basically a tax on physical distance. There's no such thing as good roads in a city. They're busy and slow during basically all the hours which people want to use them. People don't pay for a car or rail pass because they want to but because the benefits of increased freedom of movement outweigh the costs. The costs aren't cheap. If increased business/commerce and tax revenue is your argument for reducing the capacity of people to get in/out of your city then you should be asking yourself how the heck you got to a the point where people would rather put up with driving than live/work/spend money in your city.

wonder_er 9y ago
I think you and the author might be in more agreement than your comment indicates. You said: > The purpose of public funded transportation infrastructure is to make transportation cheap... to the point where anyone can use it. and > Making cities walk-able at the expense of some longer range form of transit is not something I endorse The reason I think you both might be in agreement is because by "optimizing for tax revenue", you have to allow dense (and perhaps) walkable development. If a dense environment allows 10000 people to access services with 10 minutes of walking, or a not-dense environment requires public transit to get 10000 people access to services, wouldn't the dense one do it better than the not-dense one? I think you and the author both want the most people to access important things in the least time. I'm inclined to think that dense environments better serve more people than sparse environments with public transit tacked on.

Animats 9y ago

The US has too much retail space. About 2x too much. There's a fan club for cutesy little hipster stores that sell overpriced hipster stuff bought by hipster people with their hipster little dogs. Look at the pictures in the article.[1] See any stores selling necessities? A hardware store? A real grocery store? Nah. Retail is happening at the strip mall or online. It's hard to fill those little shops at the base of commercial structures with anything useful. Most apartment buildings can't even support an on-premises convenience store. SF tried. The big parking garage at 4th and Mission has lots of little shops, marginally trying to survive. The Metreon was supposed to be a tech showcase. Now it's a Target store. Don't confuse decorative hipster with success. [1] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26ea91/54b6c509e4b062126976d942/5a5e174853450ab8996ddb54/1516298146574/4558849693_bf779c96ed_b.jpg?format=2500w https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26e...

rayiner 9y ago
Hah. This is right by my office in DC. The only people who live around there are GWU students and profs. It’s been around forever, but it exists to support the bauinsss and tourist lunch crowd. That said, in DC, where lots of people don’t drive, you can support grocery stores and hardware stores. There was a Safeway and an Ace Hardware in the building over when I lived in China Town. You don’t need one in every block though.
vkou 9y ago
> Most apartment buildings can't even support an on-premises convenience store. SF tried. Then they aren't building high enough. My Vancouver apartment, in a 30 story building was floored by retail. So were some of the other neighboring buildings. Thanks to mixed-use building, Vancouver has a vibrant downtown - one used by people after 6pm. Seattle, where I currently live... Has large stretches of it that are largely dead in the evening - because it's all office/professional space. Vancouver downtown feels far safer after hours.
abainbridge 9y ago
I agree mainly. However, it really does improve everyone's quality of life if you buy your coffee from someone who is running their own little business and wants you to come back. It makes England (in my case) seem a bit more like France, which always seems to have had a society better balanced in favour of the normal citizen, rather than The Man. If it isn't an economically sustainable, then we should strive to change the rules so that it is.

d--b 9y ago

It's always a tradeoff... - super dense cities like Tokyo or New York can feel suffocating. A lot of people can't bear it. The lack of green space, and the overcrowding of people and cars increases the stress levels by a lot. Yet, being able to walk around the city is excellent for exercising and mindfulness, it's easier to meet with people, etc. - super sparse cities (like LA or Brasilia) on the other end tend to isolate people, and to mediate the experience of daily life. Life is constantly split by episodes of driving / parking. Yet, these cities offer a lot of space, greenery and privacy. The fact that both very dense cities and sparse cities exist and are successful only shows that different people enjoy different kinds of cities, so it would be a bit preposterous to claim that one style is better over another. That said, electric cars and self driving car fleets will most likely help reduce pollution (both noise and air) by a lot and make living in dense city much easier.

xvedejas 9y ago
Even from the perspective of personal preference, I think it's fair to say that, at least in the US, there is a wide variety of sparse cities for people to choose from, and only a few actually dense cities. This leaves those preferring density at a relative disadvantage. Unrelated: it's unclear to me how self-driving cars can help pollution. They're a solution to the problem of the high cost of labor, and not much else. If anything, self-driving cars will make it cheaper for everyone to ride cars everywhere, and so people will more often ride cars everywhere, and more pollution will be the result.
- wonder_er 9y ago
  > This leaves those preferring density at a relative disadvantage. 100% agree. I much prefer to live in a dense, urban, walkable area, but most built environments that satisfy these criteria violate modern zoning regulations. So, the USA's supply of pleasant, dense environments is dwindling because every time an olde/walkable area revitalizes enough to attract new development, that new development must comply with modern zoning, and kills the thing that that makes the area attractive. It's thoroughly frustrating.
  - 9y ago

stretchwithme 9y ago

I look forward to a time when vehicles and pedestrians aren't interacting at all. Vehicles should be below where people walk and ride bikes. Either roads are designed to be underground or we one layer up from existing roads. And that's were storefronts will be. Robotic construction is going to drive down construction costs dramatically, so I think it will be feasible. Vehicles will be totally electric a few decades from now, so pollution will be less of an issue. Cities will get quieter and we'll see a lot more vegetable gardens and open space where streets used to be.

kiliantics 9y ago
I remember parts of Hong Kong being designed like this when I visited 10 years ago. It felt a little awkward but I could see this working nicely. Ideally we'd just remove the need for cars altogether though. Maybe freight could come in underground.
- stretchwithme 9y ago
  Yes, it will come in underground. Freight and people too, as they already do in NYC on the subway and PATH train. It won't happen all at once, of course. But it will happen in most places.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

intrasight 9y ago

>Walkable Streets are More Economically Productive "Walkable Streets" really mean main streets. Main streets are economically productive if they have a critical mass of interesting stores. > More economically productive More than what? Other main streets? This is circular reasoning.

CydeWeys 9y ago
What is a "main street" in the context of Manhattan? That phrase only has meaning out in the suburbs. "Walkable street" does not mean the same thing as "main street". Every street here is walkable.

scotty79 9y ago

You can think about walkable streets as mall sprawl. I mean it in a positive way. As analogy for the people that would dubt they have economic value.

oagboghi2 9y ago

I wonder how many people spouting the greatness of this urban lifestyle rent as compared to own their homes.

mjevans 9y ago

I keep saying that vehicles need to be on a different layer than pedestrians and cyclists. I think what I'd prefer to see is a reduction in the total number of streets, but for each street that remains to be fully dedicated to vehicle traffic, with wide single direction entry/exit ports for buildings. Pedestrians would walk through and between buildings at non-vehicle level height (under them seems to be the best option); most likely beneath the roads that were removed (imagine skylights where the roadway was). Obviously the pedestrian areas would be insulated from the weather.

Balero 9y ago
I would suggest places with nice weather have it the other way, cars underneath, pedestrians walking around on top. Frankly living in a place that doesn't always get the best weather id rather get what little sun I could.

some1else 9y ago

Obnoxious pop up, pressing escape opens Squarespace login

Arn_Thor 9y ago

Lafayette looks very inviting!

kikimaru 9y ago

Completely apropos to the article, but why is it that when I pressed ESC on my keyboard, the article redirected me to try & log in to Squarespace?

touringcomplete 9y ago

I partially agree. Davis, CA is extremely walkable but it’s not exactly Stanford/Palo Alto. Stanford/Palo Alto is sort of walkable, but ridiculously economically-productive. Amsterdam, SF and Manhattan are very walkable and very productive. LA is not walkable yet very productive.