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I grew up in a midwest rust-belt city, and traffic wasn't crazy, and still isn't, even in the suburbs. Probably because the population is still rebounding. I'm
by mikem170 6y ago
I grew up in a midwest rust-belt city, and traffic wasn't crazy, and still isn't, even in the suburbs. Probably because the population is still rebounding.
I'm in Florida now, and most of Florida is horrible. Sprawl on top of swamp. Everything is so spread out, the roads have so much traffic, and there's too many people driving agressively or not paying attention. Every hour on the road is a roll of the dice in my $30,000 vehicle versus some asshole swerving through traffic because he was raised on Fast and Furious or something.
Houston is the same, just so many cars and everything so spread out. Atlanta leaves that impression, also. And much of Charlotte. Two-thirds of Austin is jam packed with traffic and nowhere to park. These places were all mostly built in an era of car-centric urban planning.
My impression of Indianapolis, and some of it's suburbs, a booming midwest city, is that they are on their way to the same situation - Driving miles back and forth from housing developments to box stores for every need with only hundreds of cars for company. It's inhumane.
Yuck. This is a fail for so many people. I have working poor friends and it sucks that they have to spend several hundreds of dollars per month each for a non-shit car, insurance, and gas. It keeps them in the hole. I blame zoning and selfish property owners who won't allow more density.
- godzillabrennus 6y agoThe costs of living in a high density city probably eat up more Capital than the costs of transit in one of these suburban cities.
- jeromegv 6y agoYes, but it's a failure of zoning. It's totally absurd that anyone that wants a job in a low density city NEEDS to spend thousands of dollar just to get to their job. This is poverty trap. Tons of places don't have that issue.
- astrange 6y agoTokyo is cheap, because they build enough housing. This happens even though Japanese landlords are discriminatory and abusive (eg requiring you pay them an extra month's rent as "key money" when you move in for no apparent reason.)
- thebean11 6y agoNot too different from 99% of management companies in the US stealing the majority of your security deposit.
- mikem170 6y agoI've read that Japanese zoning regulations are federal laws, and based on population density. As the population in an area increases the building heights are allowed to increase. Also it is allowable to convert industrial to commercial, and commercial to residential, etc.
- mikem170 6y agoActually the density of taxpayers in suburbs may not be enough over time to maintain their infrastructure like roads and sewers. Residents in both places pay for their housing units but share the costs for roads, sewers, etc. Denser cities have an advantage in this regard.
- dajohnson89 6y agodont forget the automobile lobby fighting mass transit.
- andrew_ 6y agoYou lumped all of Florida into one awful description. There is sprawl, spread, and desolation in every state. Crazy drivers exist everywhere, and to think they don't is naive. Sure, they have a weird thing in FL about breaking before signaling a turn, but I'd take the roads in FL over the interstates in Chicago or Atlanta. It just sounds like you're bitter about where you live now. I live in one of the large cities in Florida, and while the transit isn't world-class, the quality of life certainly is.
- mdorazio 6y agoWhich city do you live in? I've been trying to figure out which FL cities are most attractive to the HN crowd and tend to get mixed answers.
- souprock 6y agoYou'll get mixed answers because people don't like the same stuff. I like the Melbourne area. I'm to the east, out on the barrier island. I have a coworker out to the west, with canal access to a lake so he can go shoot alligators from his airboat. There was a coworker who got 11 acres. He got sheep, chickens, and goats. He can shoot in his yard. Somebody got a low-rise condo right on the Atlantic Ocean beach. Somebody bought a McMansion. The last time this came up I described the culture a bit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17271199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17271199 People who want to walk to work can do that, but road traffic is insignificant. The public transportation here is called SCAT. (supposedly the Space Coast Area Transit) The word "scat" fits it very well. I don't think anybody cares.
- astrange 6y agoHouston actually famously doesn't have zoning, but they do have minimum parking requirements and an infinite amount of land, so they still ended up with sprawl. I believe they're improving their laws now.
- apexalpha 6y agoThat's weird, we have a very strict maximum parking requirement in my country. Sometimes it's even 0.
- astrange 6y agoParking spots are Americans' religion. Essentially the only things most middle-aged voters seem to care about are their property taxes not going up and that they need to never ever have to wait or pay for a parking spot any place they ever go to, ever.
- mikem170 6y agoI've heard that. What you say about that parking minimum rings a bell, too. Also, I'm sure that the HOAs so many people live in wouldn't allow anyone to convert their single into a double, or build an auxiliary dwelling in the backyard. I wonder if areas of the city not under an HOA regime would allow stuff like that?