6 ms·

The challenge is density - it's much easier to do this if you have more people in a relatively small area. More attractive for businesses, more people to share

The challenge is density - it's much easier to do this if you have more people in a relatively small area. More attractive for businesses, more people to share the costs of parks and other public facilities, etc. But then the type of people who want these sorts of neighborhoods often picture them as purely single-family homes. The two things are completely at odds.

wffurr 6y ago
"25-30 dwellings per hectare" (12/acre) is considered "medium density", and as you say, not compatible with an entire neighborhood of single-family homes, which are 10-12 dwellings per hectare (4-5/acre) https://www.theurbanist.org/2017/05/04/visualizing-compatible-density/ https://www.theurbanist.org/2017/05/04/visualizing-compatibl... It doesn't require going fully urban, though. Lots of medium density examples that are below 3 stories. I particularly like the example in that article of "The Boulders at Green Lake development" which is 36/acre.
- orthoxerox 6y ago
  25-30 dwellings per hectare is 3-4 ares per dwelling. That's easily big enough for single family dwellings. Hell, you can fit a 8x12m home on a 10x20m plot with a 6x10m backyard and a 2m wide front garden, and you will have 40 ares left for roads, sidewalks and curbside parking. Make the houses semi-detached and the place will even look good.
- awillen 6y ago
  Sure, it's definitely doable without a ton of density. The problem is neighborhoods like the one I currently live in (suburbs of San Diego), where everyone has signs up in their yards declaring their total opposition to changing the zoning to allow 2-4 unit properties. That would destroy the "character" of the neighborhood, you see.
  - olyjohn 6y ago
    And when you don't change zoning, the existing houses still get demolished, and replaced with ultra modern McMansions built out to the setbacks, which totally ruin the character of the neighborhood anyways. Then you have this terrible mix of tiny little old houses with yards and great big 3 story Borg cubes scattered throughout.
- choeger 6y ago
  I would argue that mixing is a good idea. 300sqm per household is not a great upper limit for families nor affordable for people with smaller incomes. But houses with 4 apartments of various sizes on 600sqm lots can be quite nice. Add to that single-family-homes with 2.5 stories on similarly sized lots in a 1:2 ratio and you got a nice quarter. If you make the roads broad enough, that is. Feeling cramped in can really destroy the appearance (and take away space for public trees).
chrisseaton 6y ago
> The challenge is density - it's much easier to do this if you have more people in a relatively small area. I don't understand why people think this. I live in a town of 13k people in the UK, low density - 11 people per hecate - mostly single-family homes with large gardens. We have a little town centre with good restaurants, bars, theatres, churches, shops, tea-shops, coffee-shops, book-shops, specialists like a delicatessen, a dedicated butcher, flower shops, sports equipment shops, and so on. Everything you need day-to-day or really week-to-week. It doesn't need density. I'm not entirely sure what it does need apart from just getting on and doing it... but I don't think it's density blocking it.
- asdff 6y ago
  It's not density, it's walmart and places like it. Walmart is now the coffee shop, book shop, delicatessen, butcher, flower shop, sports equipment shop, optometrist, etc, in these similar sized American towns, which once had all of these things as well
  - munificent 6y ago
    Yeah, Wal-Mart and other super groceries like this are the seed of the problem. It goes like this: 1. You have a handful of nice small towns each with their own little commercial center with a small grocery store and a collection of other shops and restaurants. 2. Wal-Mart wants to move into the area. Their efficiency is driven by logistics and scale. They don't want to open a small Wal-Mart in each town that they have to drive trucks to. So they pick one of those towns and put a mega-Wal-Mart there. 3. People in the neighboring towns start going to that Wal-Mart occasionally because it has a few things the smaller local grocery store doesn't have. 4. Business dries up at the local grocery stores. They already operate on razor-thin margins so it doesn't take much to put them in the red. They close. 5. Now even the people who don't want to go to Wal-Mart have no choice. 6. People tend to visit the other shops and restaurants as an additional errand tacked on to their necessary grocery run. Without a local grocery store anchoring those trips, people no longer stop at the restaurants or other shops. Those satellite businesses close down. Ta-da, now you've got a bunch of dead towns with no functioning city center and one bigger town with a Wal-Mart. Traffic gets worse for everyone. Wal-Mart rakes in the cash because instead of them having to pay for last mile product shipping, customers do it for them by driving thirty minutes from their food desert dying town to the nearest Wal-Mart. Did I mention that all the people who used to work at these small stores and restaurants now have shitty jobs at Wal-Mart and awful commutes?
sparrc 6y ago
density is not really a challenge, it's just a question of city laws and zoning. if you allow 5-6 story apartment buildings and eliminate onerous process and requirements (like parking minimums, setbacks, design reviews, "environmental" reviews, etc etc.) then you will see these neighborhoods being built.
908B64B197 6y ago
There's a point at which it's pointless to build single family homes. This [0] for example. All the space between the houses is basically wasted. Much better to build townhouses and start putting the garages underground/on the side of the houses. https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TvqhU0a2H_Uta3-qXBVmgKOqask=/0x0:7952x3106/1200x800/filters:focal(4498x1214:5770x2486)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/55406995/suburbs.0.jpg https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TvqhU0a2H_Uta3-qXBVmgKOqask=...
- bluGill 6y ago
  The problem with townhouses is there is always someone who won't let you do something you want to do.
  - TheCoelacanth 6y ago
    That's more of a problem with HOAs than with townhouses. You don't have to have an HOA to have townhouses and detached houses sometimes have HOAs. I have a non-HOA townhouse, and there's basically nothing I can't do with it that I could do with a detached house short of knocking down one of the side walls.

wffurr 6y ago

"25-30 dwellings per hectare" (12/acre) is considered "medium density", and as you say, not compatible with an entire neighborhood of single-family homes, which are 10-12 dwellings per hectare (4-5/acre) https://www.theurbanist.org/2017/05/04/visualizing-compatible-density/ https://www.theurbanist.org/2017/05/04/visualizing-compatibl... It doesn't require going fully urban, though. Lots of medium density examples that are below 3 stories. I particularly like the example in that article of "The Boulders at Green Lake development" which is 36/acre.

orthoxerox 6y ago
25-30 dwellings per hectare is 3-4 ares per dwelling. That's easily big enough for single family dwellings. Hell, you can fit a 8x12m home on a 10x20m plot with a 6x10m backyard and a 2m wide front garden, and you will have 40 ares left for roads, sidewalks and curbside parking. Make the houses semi-detached and the place will even look good.
awillen 6y ago
Sure, it's definitely doable without a ton of density. The problem is neighborhoods like the one I currently live in (suburbs of San Diego), where everyone has signs up in their yards declaring their total opposition to changing the zoning to allow 2-4 unit properties. That would destroy the "character" of the neighborhood, you see.
- olyjohn 6y ago
  And when you don't change zoning, the existing houses still get demolished, and replaced with ultra modern McMansions built out to the setbacks, which totally ruin the character of the neighborhood anyways. Then you have this terrible mix of tiny little old houses with yards and great big 3 story Borg cubes scattered throughout.
choeger 6y ago
I would argue that mixing is a good idea. 300sqm per household is not a great upper limit for families nor affordable for people with smaller incomes. But houses with 4 apartments of various sizes on 600sqm lots can be quite nice. Add to that single-family-homes with 2.5 stories on similarly sized lots in a 1:2 ratio and you got a nice quarter. If you make the roads broad enough, that is. Feeling cramped in can really destroy the appearance (and take away space for public trees).

chrisseaton 6y ago

> The challenge is density - it's much easier to do this if you have more people in a relatively small area. I don't understand why people think this. I live in a town of 13k people in the UK, low density - 11 people per hecate - mostly single-family homes with large gardens. We have a little town centre with good restaurants, bars, theatres, churches, shops, tea-shops, coffee-shops, book-shops, specialists like a delicatessen, a dedicated butcher, flower shops, sports equipment shops, and so on. Everything you need day-to-day or really week-to-week. It doesn't need density. I'm not entirely sure what it does need apart from just getting on and doing it... but I don't think it's density blocking it.

asdff 6y ago
It's not density, it's walmart and places like it. Walmart is now the coffee shop, book shop, delicatessen, butcher, flower shop, sports equipment shop, optometrist, etc, in these similar sized American towns, which once had all of these things as well
- munificent 6y ago
  Yeah, Wal-Mart and other super groceries like this are the seed of the problem. It goes like this: 1. You have a handful of nice small towns each with their own little commercial center with a small grocery store and a collection of other shops and restaurants. 2. Wal-Mart wants to move into the area. Their efficiency is driven by logistics and scale. They don't want to open a small Wal-Mart in each town that they have to drive trucks to. So they pick one of those towns and put a mega-Wal-Mart there. 3. People in the neighboring towns start going to that Wal-Mart occasionally because it has a few things the smaller local grocery store doesn't have. 4. Business dries up at the local grocery stores. They already operate on razor-thin margins so it doesn't take much to put them in the red. They close. 5. Now even the people who don't want to go to Wal-Mart have no choice. 6. People tend to visit the other shops and restaurants as an additional errand tacked on to their necessary grocery run. Without a local grocery store anchoring those trips, people no longer stop at the restaurants or other shops. Those satellite businesses close down. Ta-da, now you've got a bunch of dead towns with no functioning city center and one bigger town with a Wal-Mart. Traffic gets worse for everyone. Wal-Mart rakes in the cash because instead of them having to pay for last mile product shipping, customers do it for them by driving thirty minutes from their food desert dying town to the nearest Wal-Mart. Did I mention that all the people who used to work at these small stores and restaurants now have shitty jobs at Wal-Mart and awful commutes?

sparrc 6y ago

density is not really a challenge, it's just a question of city laws and zoning. if you allow 5-6 story apartment buildings and eliminate onerous process and requirements (like parking minimums, setbacks, design reviews, "environmental" reviews, etc etc.) then you will see these neighborhoods being built.

908B64B197 6y ago

There's a point at which it's pointless to build single family homes. This [0] for example. All the space between the houses is basically wasted. Much better to build townhouses and start putting the garages underground/on the side of the houses. https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TvqhU0a2H_Uta3-qXBVmgKOqask=/0x0:7952x3106/1200x800/filters:focal(4498x1214:5770x2486)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/55406995/suburbs.0.jpg https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TvqhU0a2H_Uta3-qXBVmgKOqask=...

bluGill 6y ago
The problem with townhouses is there is always someone who won't let you do something you want to do.
- TheCoelacanth 6y ago
  That's more of a problem with HOAs than with townhouses. You don't have to have an HOA to have townhouses and detached houses sometimes have HOAs. I have a non-HOA townhouse, and there's basically nothing I can't do with it that I could do with a detached house short of knocking down one of the side walls.