5 ms·

This is true, but it's not trade-off free. It requires tight control over zoning and any new housing development. It is difficult to do this type of developmen

This is true, but it's not trade-off free. It requires tight control over zoning and any new housing development. It is difficult to do this type of development in the United States without a much higher degree of centralized planning and/or restrictive zoning. In the US, freedom afforded to property owners / zoning especially in more rural areas, not to mention an immense amount of open, "unused" land that makes this kind of car-centric development the norm. I imagine it's also much "cheaper" for the developer (if we ignore the cost to the commons)

grecy 7y ago
Your reply boils down to "It's hard, so we shouldn't try". Which is exactly the reason nothing is getting better, FYI. If it's worth doing, it worth fighting tooth and nail for.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Define "better?" Being able to drive everywhere in a climate-controlled vehicle regardless of weather is pretty great. Not getting rained on, not getting your shoes wet, not having to huff up a hill, having the kids' crap always at hand, etc. You're missing a link in the logical chain. It's hard to build transit/bike lanes in America because that requires central coordination, and Americans don't like central coordination. That's why Americans love cars so much. Driving and road construction is extremely decentralized. Few towns are sophisticated enough to build rail, but pretty much every place can pave a road, and connect it to roads to neighboring jurisdictions without too much planning. So as long as Americans prefer their decentralized system, advocating for things like transit that inherently require a level of central planning is swimming upstream against the culture.
  - grecy 7y ago
    I meant that American society in general is not getting better. The healthcare sucks. The education sucks. The debt sucks. The infrastructure sucks. The access to affordable housing sucks. The Public Transport sucks. All of those things are true because people gave up trying when it got hard to fix/improve them.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      You need to understand America on its own terms. Americans don't really believe in redistribution, so measures that look at overall overages tend to make it look worse. The healthcare sucks if you look at the averages. But most Americans have employer-provided health insurance, and are happy with it: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcare-quite-positively.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcar.... 69% rate their insurance coverage "excellent" or "good" and 80% rate their healthcare "excellent" or "good." If you look at the most well-off subgroup of Americans, Asian Americans, you see some remarkable statistics. Asian Americans live an average of 87.1 years, longer than people in overwhelmingly Asian countries like Japan and Singapore. Asian American kids have higher scores on the PISA test than kids in any European country, or Japan or Korea. (Just below Singapore.) Median household income for Asian Americans is double that of Japan or Singapore. Asians don't have access to a special version of America. They participate in the same health care system, the same public schools, etc. They're just disproportionately represented in the "somewhat above median" category, and America does really well for those people. The infrastructure and public transit sucks. Which is fine. Americans don't want public transit. They want to drive everywhere. That's why we invented the drive through. The pervasiveness of driving is why Americans have some of the shortest commutes in the OECD: https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/world-of-commuters https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/world-of-commu.... Affordable housing may be an issue in some American cities. But most Americans don't live there. Most live in suburbs/exurbs, or satellite cities. American mortgages as a percentage of income are on the lower side for the developed world: https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC1-2-Housing-costs-over-income.pdf https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC1-2-Housing-costs-over-inc.... 15% in the United States, versus 23% in say France and 17% in Germany. Rents are about in the middle, but a much smaller percentage of Americans rent than Europeans. Despite paying similar amounts on housing, we have truly massive houses in the United States: http://demographia.com/db-intlhouse.htm http://demographia.com/db-intlhouse.htm. The average new house is 2,200 square feet, versus 1,200-1,300 in France or Germany. We eat 40% more meat per capita than the EU: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/08/these-countries-eat-the-most-meat-03bdf469-f40a-41e3-ade7-fe4ddb2a709a https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/08/these-countries-eat-t.... We have the second-highest per-capita consumption expenditures in the world, a hair under Hong Kong, 33% higher than Switzerland, and 86% more than France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household_final_consumption_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household....
- sailfast 7y ago
  I thought my reply boiled down to “we’d need a lot of people’s opinions on policy to change to set things up”. I was mostly providing a counterpoint to “of course bike friendly cities!” opinions which may not consider the limitations imposed on citizens in order to achieve this kind of objective. Having experienced NL bike culture first hand a great deal I think it’s awesome, but it’d also be frustrating to have a bunch of rules imposed on new development at a state or federal level. This stuff has got to start locally. Agreed - you should fight for that and support it, especially in your local community.
vkou 7y ago
Rural areas aren't going to be walkable car-free paradises anyways. Most of the people in the US do not live in rural areas. They either live in urban areas that are already heavily subjected to zoning laws [1], or in suburban areas which are... Also heavily subjected to zoning laws. The US is unique in that it adds another level of centralized planning + restrictive zoning called an "HOA" - but that level exists in addition to the municipal one. Also, car-centric development is not cheaper for the developer. The more units they can cram onto their plot of land, the more money they stand to make. Parking requirements, and offsets, and low density zoning restrictions cut into their profits. [1] Yes, you can name a few major cities that don't have zoning laws, but that does not cover the majority of the US.

grecy 7y ago

Your reply boils down to "It's hard, so we shouldn't try". Which is exactly the reason nothing is getting better, FYI. If it's worth doing, it worth fighting tooth and nail for.

rayiner 7y ago
Define "better?" Being able to drive everywhere in a climate-controlled vehicle regardless of weather is pretty great. Not getting rained on, not getting your shoes wet, not having to huff up a hill, having the kids' crap always at hand, etc. You're missing a link in the logical chain. It's hard to build transit/bike lanes in America because that requires central coordination, and Americans don't like central coordination. That's why Americans love cars so much. Driving and road construction is extremely decentralized. Few towns are sophisticated enough to build rail, but pretty much every place can pave a road, and connect it to roads to neighboring jurisdictions without too much planning. So as long as Americans prefer their decentralized system, advocating for things like transit that inherently require a level of central planning is swimming upstream against the culture.
- grecy 7y ago
  I meant that American society in general is not getting better. The healthcare sucks. The education sucks. The debt sucks. The infrastructure sucks. The access to affordable housing sucks. The Public Transport sucks. All of those things are true because people gave up trying when it got hard to fix/improve them.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    You need to understand America on its own terms. Americans don't really believe in redistribution, so measures that look at overall overages tend to make it look worse. The healthcare sucks if you look at the averages. But most Americans have employer-provided health insurance, and are happy with it: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcare-quite-positively.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcar.... 69% rate their insurance coverage "excellent" or "good" and 80% rate their healthcare "excellent" or "good." If you look at the most well-off subgroup of Americans, Asian Americans, you see some remarkable statistics. Asian Americans live an average of 87.1 years, longer than people in overwhelmingly Asian countries like Japan and Singapore. Asian American kids have higher scores on the PISA test than kids in any European country, or Japan or Korea. (Just below Singapore.) Median household income for Asian Americans is double that of Japan or Singapore. Asians don't have access to a special version of America. They participate in the same health care system, the same public schools, etc. They're just disproportionately represented in the "somewhat above median" category, and America does really well for those people. The infrastructure and public transit sucks. Which is fine. Americans don't want public transit. They want to drive everywhere. That's why we invented the drive through. The pervasiveness of driving is why Americans have some of the shortest commutes in the OECD: https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/world-of-commuters https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/world-of-commu.... Affordable housing may be an issue in some American cities. But most Americans don't live there. Most live in suburbs/exurbs, or satellite cities. American mortgages as a percentage of income are on the lower side for the developed world: https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC1-2-Housing-costs-over-income.pdf https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC1-2-Housing-costs-over-inc.... 15% in the United States, versus 23% in say France and 17% in Germany. Rents are about in the middle, but a much smaller percentage of Americans rent than Europeans. Despite paying similar amounts on housing, we have truly massive houses in the United States: http://demographia.com/db-intlhouse.htm http://demographia.com/db-intlhouse.htm. The average new house is 2,200 square feet, versus 1,200-1,300 in France or Germany. We eat 40% more meat per capita than the EU: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/08/these-countries-eat-the-most-meat-03bdf469-f40a-41e3-ade7-fe4ddb2a709a https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/08/these-countries-eat-t.... We have the second-highest per-capita consumption expenditures in the world, a hair under Hong Kong, 33% higher than Switzerland, and 86% more than France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household_final_consumption_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household....
sailfast 7y ago
I thought my reply boiled down to “we’d need a lot of people’s opinions on policy to change to set things up”. I was mostly providing a counterpoint to “of course bike friendly cities!” opinions which may not consider the limitations imposed on citizens in order to achieve this kind of objective. Having experienced NL bike culture first hand a great deal I think it’s awesome, but it’d also be frustrating to have a bunch of rules imposed on new development at a state or federal level. This stuff has got to start locally. Agreed - you should fight for that and support it, especially in your local community.

vkou 7y ago

Rural areas aren't going to be walkable car-free paradises anyways. Most of the people in the US do not live in rural areas. They either live in urban areas that are already heavily subjected to zoning laws [1], or in suburban areas which are... Also heavily subjected to zoning laws. The US is unique in that it adds another level of centralized planning + restrictive zoning called an "HOA" - but that level exists in addition to the municipal one. Also, car-centric development is not cheaper for the developer. The more units they can cram onto their plot of land, the more money they stand to make. Parking requirements, and offsets, and low density zoning restrictions cut into their profits. [1] Yes, you can name a few major cities that don't have zoning laws, but that does not cover the majority of the US.