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>It's not "just" close together like it happened Development gets done in whatever way makes best use of the available resources at the time. The overwhelming

>It's not "just" close together like it happened Development gets done in whatever way makes best use of the available resources at the time. The overwhelming majority of the cities and towns in Europe were built out before transportation over land was slow and expensive so you had dense town centers surrounded by farmland and dense cities surrounded by even more farmland so to avoid spending precious resources on transportation. The practical limits on transportation constrained development. By comparison huge portions of the US were built out after the advent the automobile (often tearing down and building over places that were previously more densely developed) and being geographically large there was always more land to build into so you got sprawling development because overcoming distance was fast and cheap. The way we have more or less not built any infrastructure since the 20th century despite increasing population (and increasing clustering of the population in urban areas) is starting to catch up and incentive density but it will take time and policy sticks/carrots if you want it to happen faster than it organically would. So yes, Europe to a large extent did win the lottery in that regard though they didn't know it at the time.

erikpukinskis 7y ago
> Development gets done in whatever way makes best use of the available resources at the time. Can you explain what you mean? I’m having trouble squaring that with my model of developers, which is that they try to make money, not make efficient use of resources. Are you talking about Europe specifically? I live in America.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Efficient use of resources is one of the main ways to make money!
  - antepodius 7y ago
    On a micro-scale, yes, but if there's an incentive to externalise costs that that's what'll happen, even that course of action in aggregate reduces everyone's profits. Tragedy of the commons.
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      True, but we have a lot of experience with designing legal frameworks and property rights that align individual and aggregate incentives.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
fooblitzky 7y ago
It's not all historical accident. The US also bought into a vision of an auto-centric future that featured multi-lane highways right through downtown neighborhoods. This vision was pushed by specific people, notably Robert Moses[1], who advocated strongly for highway systems over public transport, and who succeeded in having a number of dense urban neighborhoods demolished to make way for highways. There was also the General Motors street car conspiracy[2], which saw car companies buy up privatized public transit only to run it into the ground. The fight against this future being imposed is also fascinating reading, particularly the work of Jane Jacobs[3]. She correctly saw past the hyperbole to the unfortunate consequences, fought against the vision but lost. The reason not much infrastructure is being built these days is simply that cities are running out of money and credit. Every road built comes with a price tag for building it, and an ongoing price tag for maintaining it. The building price was so often done on credit (bonds), but the maintenance price is usually not considered. Given that roads bring in basically zero income for a city, every road built comes with an obligation for the city but no way to pay for it. In the past credit was issued on the assumption that future growth would somehow provide some payback, but after 50 years cities have hit the growth limits and still not seen any payback. Strong Towns[4] is an excellent book on the subject. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp... [3] https://shelterforce.org/2016/05/10/jane-jacobs-defender-of-cities-and-their-people/ https://shelterforce.org/2016/05/10/jane-jacobs-defender-of-... [4] https://www.strongtowns.org/book https://www.strongtowns.org/book
- ghaff 7y ago
  Jane Jacobs is an interesting case in that many of today's urbanists read in her what they want to read. She was indeed against highways going through the middle of cities and in favor of walkability and mixed use. At the same time, she also opposed rationalist urban planning like Le Corbusier's clusters of towering skyscrapers. She would likely not have favored the mass building of vertical housing that many of the same people who oppose cars want in order to reduce housing prices.
  - 7y ago

erikpukinskis 7y ago

> Development gets done in whatever way makes best use of the available resources at the time. Can you explain what you mean? I’m having trouble squaring that with my model of developers, which is that they try to make money, not make efficient use of resources. Are you talking about Europe specifically? I live in America.

BurningFrog 7y ago
Efficient use of resources is one of the main ways to make money!
- antepodius 7y ago
  On a micro-scale, yes, but if there's an incentive to externalise costs that that's what'll happen, even that course of action in aggregate reduces everyone's profits. Tragedy of the commons.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    True, but we have a lot of experience with designing legal frameworks and property rights that align individual and aggregate incentives.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

fooblitzky 7y ago

It's not all historical accident. The US also bought into a vision of an auto-centric future that featured multi-lane highways right through downtown neighborhoods. This vision was pushed by specific people, notably Robert Moses[1], who advocated strongly for highway systems over public transport, and who succeeded in having a number of dense urban neighborhoods demolished to make way for highways. There was also the General Motors street car conspiracy[2], which saw car companies buy up privatized public transit only to run it into the ground. The fight against this future being imposed is also fascinating reading, particularly the work of Jane Jacobs[3]. She correctly saw past the hyperbole to the unfortunate consequences, fought against the vision but lost. The reason not much infrastructure is being built these days is simply that cities are running out of money and credit. Every road built comes with a price tag for building it, and an ongoing price tag for maintaining it. The building price was so often done on credit (bonds), but the maintenance price is usually not considered. Given that roads bring in basically zero income for a city, every road built comes with an obligation for the city but no way to pay for it. In the past credit was issued on the assumption that future growth would somehow provide some payback, but after 50 years cities have hit the growth limits and still not seen any payback. Strong Towns[4] is an excellent book on the subject. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp... [3] https://shelterforce.org/2016/05/10/jane-jacobs-defender-of-cities-and-their-people/ https://shelterforce.org/2016/05/10/jane-jacobs-defender-of-... [4] https://www.strongtowns.org/book https://www.strongtowns.org/book

ghaff 7y ago
Jane Jacobs is an interesting case in that many of today's urbanists read in her what they want to read. She was indeed against highways going through the middle of cities and in favor of walkability and mixed use. At the same time, she also opposed rationalist urban planning like Le Corbusier's clusters of towering skyscrapers. She would likely not have favored the mass building of vertical housing that many of the same people who oppose cars want in order to reduce housing prices.
- 7y ago