8 ms·

Who’s Afraid of a Transit Desert?

19 points by luu 7y ago

jelliclesfarm 7y ago
Question: would it make more sense to have mobile housing? Not RV living or tiny homes or tent cities, but actual moveable homes and large plots. When planning new cities and townships, wouldn’t it be cheaper to rent out a 5k-10k sq ft plot and keep moving with the job. The idea tickles me especially because we started out as hunter gatherers and then nomadic tribes and pastoralists to urbanists. It will come a full circle. Homes as shells and land with infrastructure. Of course, this means other changes too with city designs and roads and public transport etc, but as a thought experiment..would it work? There may not be as many jobs in the future with automation, but we would still community spaces and living spaces. So cities can’t be designed with transit and commute in mind.
- mindslight 7y ago
  Every time I see some architectural experiment talking about "shipping containers" yet destroying the main quality that makes them shipping containers, I weep. Having said that, the problem with more "agile" housing is that lower cost inevitably gets taken over by the low end of the market. A large part of "having a house" appears to be the conspicuous consumption itself - imposing your presence on the surrounding area, subjecting yourself to a lot of property taxes, and being "part of the community". This makes sense if you flip from analyzing in terms of optimizing cost and think in terms of monkeysphere dominance. It's similar to why large companies are happy to hire as many unproductive seat warmers as they can regardless of the cost - the true measure of power is the army they command. FWIW the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles has a good exhibit on mobile homes, back when mobile homes were new and hadn't yet been associated with poverty living. The idea certainly wasn't just a hack to skirt zoning regulations! But yes it is interesting to think about how the regulatory landscape would change if topology could be easily reconfigured. One of the ideas of seasteading is that you could lower a section and float it under the others to move it out to a different group.
jelliclesfarm 7y ago
This concerns me because they would be using open spaces and displacing habitat when they go for the ‘untapped fringe’. Even deserts have habitat and an eco system. Revitalizing existing cities is a much better option. The roadblock..as it were..would be governments. We have fundamental design weaknesses with utilities..water/power/sewer etc. Cities need fresh perspectives. We need different kind of cities. New cities.
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/Hdi1H http://archive.is/Hdi1H
osdiab 7y ago
It’s too bad that the potential to do the obvious thing - build trains to the transit deserts - is not an option even worth mentioning. This is the state of US infrastructure.
- melling 7y ago
  We should be building subways west into New Jersey too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Subway_Extension https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Subway_Extension https://www.nj.com/traffic/2017/04/new_york_subway_extension_to_nj_may_not_be_dead_after_all.html https://www.nj.com/traffic/2017/04/new_york_subway_extension...
  - Merrill 7y ago
    We should be moving jobs west into New Jersey so less transit across the Hudson is needed. The Hudson is a fjord, a flooded valley carved out by glaciers between the Palisades of New Jersey and the bedrock of Manhattan, and not an ordinary river. Transportation across it is expensive, both in terms of investment and energy costs, and should be minimized.
    - melling 7y ago
      Few people stay at the same job forever. We want to increase mobility by mass transit. Ideally, you could live in Brooklyn and commute to New Jersey, for example.
      - HarryHirsch 7y ago
        Few people stay at the same job forever. That's the other problem that no one is talking about, everyone changing their job every three years. You can't live close to your job, instead you have your hour-long commute. It's exhausting and a waste of time and gasoline.
      - Merrill 7y ago
        We should make it easier for people to relocate to lower cost of living areas with good jobs. It's easier to commute to Jersey City or Newark from New Jersey residential communities than it is to commute from Brooklyn. Plus there are a bunch of tax and other administrative issues with living and working in different states. JPMorgan may move workers out of New York, here's where they may go -- https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/jpmorgan-shifting-workers-new-york https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/jpmorgan-shifting-worker...
gpvos 7y ago
> farther from the train — at least a 15-minute walk That's nearby, only 5 minutes by bicycle. Just make sure there are some reasonable bike routes to the train halts.
- jhbadger 7y ago
  And even by walking, a 15 minute walk is just a 15 minute walk. I live a 15 minute walk to a DC Metro station that I use for commuting and I consider myself to be quite near it. To me, transit deserts are places where the routes to the mass transit sources aren't walkable at all (which there are plenty of).
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Always amusing when young smug Californians tell everyone else of varying health, ability and weather how to live.
  - gpvos 7y ago
    I'm not even American, and just getting used to not calling myself young anymore (but intend to keep cycling for many more years).
spodek 7y ago
Calling a space a "transit desert" implies the problem is too little transit and pushes for more transit. How about overdevelopment? I'm all for public transit, but building and then calling for the public to provide transit service is externalizing costs to raise property value. In an overpopulated world, we don't need more growth but de-growth, at the city, national, and global level.
- melling 7y ago
  You think it’s better to move out of cities, build highways and own cars? The earth likes it better when we don’t sprawl.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    As George Carlin said, The Earth is fine. The Earth ain't goin nowhere. We're all gonna die.
    - Waterluvian 7y ago
      Anytime anyone talks about saving the earth, substitute it for the idea of saving the earth's configuration that is most comfortable for us humans.
  - branweb 7y ago
    It's perhaps a little ambiguous, but I understood the comment as arguing the exact opposite. I interpreted "overdevelopment" to basically mean the kind of sprawl explainted here: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason... ...where cities expand horizontally for short-term tax revenue gains/federal grants while accruing long-term infrastructure costs that their tax bases can't pay.
    - melling 7y ago
      “ In an overpopulated world, we don't need more growth but de-growth, at the city,...” Perhaps it is a little ambiguous. However, the story is about New York City. There’s not much room to grow outwards. More mass transit in and around the city would reduce the need to own a car.
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
I wonder how many costal subways will not survive a rising ocean- because that was just not factored in.
closeparen 7y ago
Thirty minutes is a transit desert? Thirty minute walk to BART was considered central, urban, and transit-oriented by developers and planners alike in my old Berkeley neighborhood.

19 points by luu 7y ago

Question: would it make more sense to have mobile housing? Not RV living or tiny homes or tent cities, but actual moveable homes and large plots. When planning new cities and townships, wouldn’t it be cheaper to rent out a 5k-10k sq ft plot and keep moving with the job. The idea tickles me especially because we started out as hunter gatherers and then nomadic tribes and pastoralists to urbanists. It will come a full circle. Homes as shells and land with infrastructure. Of course, this means other changes too with city designs and roads and public transport etc, but as a thought experiment..would it work? There may not be as many jobs in the future with automation, but we would still community spaces and living spaces. So cities can’t be designed with transit and commute in mind.

mindslight 7y ago
Every time I see some architectural experiment talking about "shipping containers" yet destroying the main quality that makes them shipping containers, I weep. Having said that, the problem with more "agile" housing is that lower cost inevitably gets taken over by the low end of the market. A large part of "having a house" appears to be the conspicuous consumption itself - imposing your presence on the surrounding area, subjecting yourself to a lot of property taxes, and being "part of the community". This makes sense if you flip from analyzing in terms of optimizing cost and think in terms of monkeysphere dominance. It's similar to why large companies are happy to hire as many unproductive seat warmers as they can regardless of the cost - the true measure of power is the army they command. FWIW the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles has a good exhibit on mobile homes, back when mobile homes were new and hadn't yet been associated with poverty living. The idea certainly wasn't just a hack to skirt zoning regulations! But yes it is interesting to think about how the regulatory landscape would change if topology could be easily reconfigured. One of the ideas of seasteading is that you could lower a section and float it under the others to move it out to a different group.

jelliclesfarm 7y ago

This concerns me because they would be using open spaces and displacing habitat when they go for the ‘untapped fringe’. Even deserts have habitat and an eco system. Revitalizing existing cities is a much better option. The roadblock..as it were..would be governments. We have fundamental design weaknesses with utilities..water/power/sewer etc. Cities need fresh perspectives. We need different kind of cities. New cities.

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/Hdi1H http://archive.is/Hdi1H

osdiab 7y ago

It’s too bad that the potential to do the obvious thing - build trains to the transit deserts - is not an option even worth mentioning. This is the state of US infrastructure.

melling 7y ago
We should be building subways west into New Jersey too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Subway_Extension https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Subway_Extension https://www.nj.com/traffic/2017/04/new_york_subway_extension_to_nj_may_not_be_dead_after_all.html https://www.nj.com/traffic/2017/04/new_york_subway_extension...
- Merrill 7y ago
  We should be moving jobs west into New Jersey so less transit across the Hudson is needed. The Hudson is a fjord, a flooded valley carved out by glaciers between the Palisades of New Jersey and the bedrock of Manhattan, and not an ordinary river. Transportation across it is expensive, both in terms of investment and energy costs, and should be minimized.
  - melling 7y ago
    Few people stay at the same job forever. We want to increase mobility by mass transit. Ideally, you could live in Brooklyn and commute to New Jersey, for example.
    - HarryHirsch 7y ago
      Few people stay at the same job forever. That's the other problem that no one is talking about, everyone changing their job every three years. You can't live close to your job, instead you have your hour-long commute. It's exhausting and a waste of time and gasoline.
    - Merrill 7y ago
      We should make it easier for people to relocate to lower cost of living areas with good jobs. It's easier to commute to Jersey City or Newark from New Jersey residential communities than it is to commute from Brooklyn. Plus there are a bunch of tax and other administrative issues with living and working in different states. JPMorgan may move workers out of New York, here's where they may go -- https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/jpmorgan-shifting-workers-new-york https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/jpmorgan-shifting-worker...

gpvos 7y ago

> farther from the train — at least a 15-minute walk That's nearby, only 5 minutes by bicycle. Just make sure there are some reasonable bike routes to the train halts.

jhbadger 7y ago
And even by walking, a 15 minute walk is just a 15 minute walk. I live a 15 minute walk to a DC Metro station that I use for commuting and I consider myself to be quite near it. To me, transit deserts are places where the routes to the mass transit sources aren't walkable at all (which there are plenty of).
lonelappde 7y ago
Always amusing when young smug Californians tell everyone else of varying health, ability and weather how to live.
- gpvos 7y ago
  I'm not even American, and just getting used to not calling myself young anymore (but intend to keep cycling for many more years).

spodek 7y ago

Calling a space a "transit desert" implies the problem is too little transit and pushes for more transit. How about overdevelopment? I'm all for public transit, but building and then calling for the public to provide transit service is externalizing costs to raise property value. In an overpopulated world, we don't need more growth but de-growth, at the city, national, and global level.

melling 7y ago
You think it’s better to move out of cities, build highways and own cars? The earth likes it better when we don’t sprawl.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  As George Carlin said, The Earth is fine. The Earth ain't goin nowhere. We're all gonna die.
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    Anytime anyone talks about saving the earth, substitute it for the idea of saving the earth's configuration that is most comfortable for us humans.
- branweb 7y ago
  It's perhaps a little ambiguous, but I understood the comment as arguing the exact opposite. I interpreted "overdevelopment" to basically mean the kind of sprawl explainted here: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason... ...where cities expand horizontally for short-term tax revenue gains/federal grants while accruing long-term infrastructure costs that their tax bases can't pay.
  - melling 7y ago
    “ In an overpopulated world, we don't need more growth but de-growth, at the city,...” Perhaps it is a little ambiguous. However, the story is about New York City. There’s not much room to grow outwards. More mass transit in and around the city would reduce the need to own a car.

LifeLiverTransp 7y ago

I wonder how many costal subways will not survive a rising ocean- because that was just not factored in.

closeparen 7y ago

Thirty minutes is a transit desert? Thirty minute walk to BART was considered central, urban, and transit-oriented by developers and planners alike in my old Berkeley neighborhood.