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I have very fond memories of a quaint ~100k Netherlands city where most of the commuting happened by bike because everything was within a 20 minutes bike ride.

I have very fond memories of a quaint ~100k Netherlands city where most of the commuting happened by bike because everything was within a 20 minutes bike ride. Using a car was simply a hassle. By the time you walk to its parking spot, drive, park, walk to your destination, you are already there on bike. I live in a North American city. The city is zoned the almost all of the jobs are in downtown, u district and maybe the port. Everywhere else is a job desert. To commute by bike to downtown from within the city limits, forget about the suburbs, is an hour each way. This is unfeasible, other than for young people, usually men, with no kids or other obligations. It's a luxury lifestyle, not the obvious choice. The problem is not the suburbs. The problem is the downtown. The problem is the expectation that millions of people have to commute in/out the downtown every day. Break down the downtown. Build small office parks all over the 'suburbs'. Spend real $$$ to help families solve the two-body problem. Edit. Apparently I feel quite strongly about this. Here's a bit more. Suburbs are build around people wanting a decent living space for their families. The car helps, quite a lot, but it's not like suburbanites wake up on Sunday mornings, hop on their Cars and go to the CarTemple to sing praise and offer their first borns as sacrifice to the CarGod. There is simply a dearth of real alternatives, which mostly boils down to a simple question: Are the jobs anywhere near where people want to live?

Karrot_Kream 5y ago
Yeah single-family residential zoning is an intimate part of the car dependency trap in North America.
- bookofsand 5y ago
  I don't speak Dutch, so I could not retrieve relevant statistical data. From my memories, the quaint ~100k Netherlands city was mostly townhouse rows and SFHs. I don't recall many 6+ floor megabuildings. Feel free to drop some StreetView pins around and see for yourself: https://www.google.com/maps/place/''s-Hertogenbosch,+Netherlands https://www.google.com/maps/place/''s-Hertogenbosch,+Netherl...' The #1 US problem is the centralization of jobs in the downtown. If we want to get to reduce car usage, we need to zone to geographically spread the jobs around. Edit: Orthogonally: https://missingmiddlehousing.com https://missingmiddlehousing.com
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    I don't disagree at all. My comment was perhaps just a tad too pithy.
sudosysgen 5y ago
What you're describing is not really a suburb, though. Suburbs are built around a city, it's in the name, sub-urban. Commuting downtown for your job is the core to the idea of the suburb. You're describing a nice, low density, urban place. You don't need to commute to downtown by bike. Really, you just need to commute to a metro station, somehow, either by bike, by bus, or by your own two feet. When I was a kid, I had the chance of being able to go to school alone. That is the real solution for families - we need to make an environment where it is possible for kids to move themselves safely. Nowadays, even in my fairly walkable and nice city of Montréal, this isn't really possible anymore. Anyways, I think you really underestimate what is possible using public transport. It takes around 40 minutes for me to commute from a low density borough of Montreal, Ville Saint Laurent, which is full of SFH, to an office downtown, without using a bike at all. That compares very well to 30 minutes in a car. And this can still be improved considerably. Thankfully, I don't work downtown, and instead it takes me around 25 minutes to get there without a car. Before that, my family of 6 lived in a duplex, from which you could bike downtown in 30 minutes flat. You can definitely build spaces where families can live and still get to work and to school in around half an hour. The key is to make it possible for children to get where they have to go by themselves, safely, as fast as possible, and to have enough public transit and bike accommodations for older people to get downtown - which is the worst case - in 30 minutes more or less. Around 2 million people live in Montreal. Our public transit system is not great at all. 55% of people in the island commute to work every day. I know people that commute from the suburb of Laval all the way downtown in less than an hour using only public transit, and that's a family of five. We can do much better still. There are ways for people to live comfortably as a family without going to the North American suburb, while still having cities with more than a million people. Also, simply building offices in the suburbs as they exist right now isn't going to be helpful - try commuting even within a normal suburb by bike for 30 minutes and you're going to see why. It's damn near suicidal.
- bookofsand 5y ago
  If we define 'suburb' as a 'low density urban place without the jobs' then I suspect we are in agreement. Urbanistically speaking, the top 2 needs of the inhabitants are 'low density urban place' to live and jobs. We happen to have both, alas in geographically different places. Let's shift the locus of the solution from vindictive disfunctional 'the cars are the problem [...] we need to make driving cars worse', to constructive and hopefully workable 'bring the jobs to the suburbs', which will have the byeffect we all seek: reducing the need for cars.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

Yeah single-family residential zoning is an intimate part of the car dependency trap in North America.

bookofsand 5y ago
I don't speak Dutch, so I could not retrieve relevant statistical data. From my memories, the quaint ~100k Netherlands city was mostly townhouse rows and SFHs. I don't recall many 6+ floor megabuildings. Feel free to drop some StreetView pins around and see for yourself: https://www.google.com/maps/place/''s-Hertogenbosch,+Netherlands https://www.google.com/maps/place/''s-Hertogenbosch,+Netherl...' The #1 US problem is the centralization of jobs in the downtown. If we want to get to reduce car usage, we need to zone to geographically spread the jobs around. Edit: Orthogonally: https://missingmiddlehousing.com https://missingmiddlehousing.com
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  I don't disagree at all. My comment was perhaps just a tad too pithy.

sudosysgen 5y ago

What you're describing is not really a suburb, though. Suburbs are built around a city, it's in the name, sub-urban. Commuting downtown for your job is the core to the idea of the suburb. You're describing a nice, low density, urban place. You don't need to commute to downtown by bike. Really, you just need to commute to a metro station, somehow, either by bike, by bus, or by your own two feet. When I was a kid, I had the chance of being able to go to school alone. That is the real solution for families - we need to make an environment where it is possible for kids to move themselves safely. Nowadays, even in my fairly walkable and nice city of Montréal, this isn't really possible anymore. Anyways, I think you really underestimate what is possible using public transport. It takes around 40 minutes for me to commute from a low density borough of Montreal, Ville Saint Laurent, which is full of SFH, to an office downtown, without using a bike at all. That compares very well to 30 minutes in a car. And this can still be improved considerably. Thankfully, I don't work downtown, and instead it takes me around 25 minutes to get there without a car. Before that, my family of 6 lived in a duplex, from which you could bike downtown in 30 minutes flat. You can definitely build spaces where families can live and still get to work and to school in around half an hour. The key is to make it possible for children to get where they have to go by themselves, safely, as fast as possible, and to have enough public transit and bike accommodations for older people to get downtown - which is the worst case - in 30 minutes more or less. Around 2 million people live in Montreal. Our public transit system is not great at all. 55% of people in the island commute to work every day. I know people that commute from the suburb of Laval all the way downtown in less than an hour using only public transit, and that's a family of five. We can do much better still. There are ways for people to live comfortably as a family without going to the North American suburb, while still having cities with more than a million people. Also, simply building offices in the suburbs as they exist right now isn't going to be helpful - try commuting even within a normal suburb by bike for 30 minutes and you're going to see why. It's damn near suicidal.

bookofsand 5y ago
If we define 'suburb' as a 'low density urban place without the jobs' then I suspect we are in agreement. Urbanistically speaking, the top 2 needs of the inhabitants are 'low density urban place' to live and jobs. We happen to have both, alas in geographically different places. Let's shift the locus of the solution from vindictive disfunctional 'the cars are the problem [...] we need to make driving cars worse', to constructive and hopefully workable 'bring the jobs to the suburbs', which will have the byeffect we all seek: reducing the need for cars.