9 ms·

As the article hinted at the simple answer is Car Dependency. Suburbs are regulated and built to accommodate cars now and not people. The topic is explored tho

As the article hinted at the simple answer is Car Dependency. Suburbs are regulated and built to accommodate cars now and not people. The topic is explored thouroughly on the 'Not Just Bikes' youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes which uses information from urban planning group 'Strong Towns' https://www.strongtowns.org/ https://www.strongtowns.org/.

mc32 5y ago
I like some suburbs. However, not far from downtown San Jose, within the city limits, there is some interesting tract housing developments: they have soundwall like structures surrounding these neighborhoods that are built like a maze. Once in it can be hard to find your way out without GPS to one of the few entrances/exits. So that’s in a city, not even the maligned suburbs!
- randycupertino 5y ago
  I think some of the walls like that might even be for "traffic dampening" ie- so people don't cut through the neighborhoods to get somewhere else.
  - pharmakom 5y ago
    This is correct. Where this often goes wrong is that the planners don’t allow pedestrians and cyclists to take shortcuts, making driving the faster option for even short trips.
- VHRanger 5y ago
  Are those single family zoned? Because if so they're also responsible for housing prices being insane in the area
  - mc32 5y ago
    Pretty sure they are. Look at a map of San Jose and check out the areas around Quimby or Tully Roads in east(ern) San Jose.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      I just see standard developments - anything more specific? Heh found a trailer park.
      - mc32 5y ago
        To me a place like hidden glen north is odd. It's a tract surrounded by soundwalls and has few exits from the development, whereas in normal developments you have intersections with all streets. This kind of development follows the thoroughfare model where smaller streets feed larger streets which feed boulevards/expressways which feed freeways. They are built in such a way the actual city neighborhood is disconnected from its surroundings and makes transit by anything other than car difficult -buses don't go in, and biking is fraught -all relatively close to the downtown area. Suburbs are better designed than that.
        bombcar 5y ago
        I’ve seen some of those in Arizona - but even though there was one way in and out for cars there were multiple walking paths.
        handrous 5y ago
        > It's a tract surrounded by soundwalls and has few exits from the development, whereas in normal developments you have intersections with all streets. I'm not sure any development built after about 1975 in my midwestern metro area isn't like this, including the sound walls if they're next to an interstate or major highway. My neighborhood, with... oh, I dunno 150houses? At least a dozen named-and-numbered streets present in it? It has two exits. Get this: one of those can only be entered if you're going a particular direction on the road it intersects, because there's an unbroken median curb there. So it's more like 1.5 entrances. Our neighborhood before this one? Two exits (it's bigger than this neighborhood and still developing, so I expect it'll get a third pretty soon). Our neighborhood before that? One exit. One. technically two, but the second was marked "dead end" (it wasn't, really, but that was probably still the right thing to label it) and took you on a weird barely-developed road with no other intersecting roads, which looped you back up to the same highway the the neighborhood's other route would have put you on, so even for people who lived right by the connection to that road, leaving the normal way was faster. The general rule seems to be: no more than one exit on any major road bounding the neighborhood. This means neighborhoods that are right next to each other can be slow to travel between on foot or by bike, without cutting through yards. > They are built in such a way the actual city neighborhood is disconnected from its surroundings and makes transit by anything other than car difficult -buses don't go in, and biking is fraught -all relatively close to the downtown area. Some folks for whom keeping a working car around isn't a big deal, consider it a feature that their neighborhoods are hard to reach by a combination of public transit and foot. Crime rates go up and the homeless population shoots up, they say, when they add a bus stop next to your neighborhood. Time to sell before the market drops if you see them working on a new bus stop in walking distance of your house, they say. (seriously, this is straight from several people I know, not something I'm inventing or guessing at)
throwawaysea 5y ago
I often see urbanists and young people fantasize about life in car free mega cities. Having lived that life for years I can’t imagine why. A lot of cities that are beautiful and attractive also have room for cars. I would even argue it is a big part of what makes those cities attractive. There’s no substitute for the point to point on demand fast transportation that cars offer. In cities that aren’t overbuilt, it makes it so much easier to get things done, see people, and access the outdoors. All that time saved is time to live a richer life. A good example of a car centric city that is very attractive is Seattle from ten years ago. The city had a strong sense of community because it was composed of intimate neighborhoods mostly with single family zoning rather than mid rise boxy apartment blocks everywhere, ample green space for its population, and roads with little traffic. It is because Seattle was so attractive that people and businesses flocked to it. Now those aspects are going away as density, anti car policies, and other issues are making the overall quality of life worse.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Even famously “mass transit unfriendly” cities can be fit for a car-free lifestyle if you work at it. But I suspect a huge part of it is visiting Europe or Asia as a tourist and enjoying being without a car. But they didn’t actually live there.
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    > I suspect a huge part of it is visiting Europe or Asia as a tourist and enjoying being without a car. Agreed. As a tourist you also tend to visit the historic center of capital cities, which have by far the best public transport and fanciest architecture. Plus you're on vacation and having fun. When you live there and walk to your commuter train a gray november morning, it's a very different experience.
    - NumberWangMan 5y ago
      > When you live there and walk to your commuter train a gray november morning, it's a very different experience. Still preferable, to me at least! Getting in to work and shucking off your mist-covered coat and making a nice cup of tea made it just fine.
xibalba 5y ago
There is not faster to way to discredit oneself than to offer a pat, single variable explanation. As others point out, Americans like and want to transport themselves by car. Let's accept this, work with it, and build around it instead of lusting after a minority defined Utopia.
- cscurmudgeon 5y ago
  Well said. Another angle is the race angle. Most people advocating for lesser cars are young, healthy, rich and white. Healthy enough to not use cars and rich enough to live near work. https://theconversation.com/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-cycling-76256 https://theconversation.com/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-cycl... The group that talks about systemic racism is perpetuating it.
  - BrianHenryIE 5y ago
    Take a hypothetical scenario (not dissimilar to war breaking out in WW2, and not dissimilar to the 2020 global pandemic upending our lives) – where the private motor vehicle is gone. Society (cities) would quickly re-orientate themselves so work wasn't so far away from home. So shops weren't on the outskirts of town. Your argument is predicated on cars existing. On cars causing the problem you suggest they solve.
  - kspacewalk2 5y ago
    "Healthy enough not to use cars" - man, that's a good one. I'll remember it next time my half-senile father in law has no other choice but to drive somewhere because there's no way around his car dependent neighbourhood - oh wait, that's every day.
    - short12 5y ago
      If he is senile he should not be driving anywhere
      - BrianHenryIE 5y ago
r_klancer 5y ago
It's interesting to note that Hacker News really loves Strong Towns. I chatted with Chuck Marohn (founder and face of Strong Towns) once at an event a couple years ago, and they're quite aware that they get a lot of traffic from HN.
- mobilewatch7 5y ago
  The strong town movement and its affiliated planning companies ruined my community. A lot of the mixed use re zoning is a pretext for opening up rural areas for heavy industry.
  - oblio 5y ago
    That's just ridiculous, though. Does anyone sane zone heavy industry together with residential?
sytelus 5y ago
I don’t think that’s what article says. Article just keeps blathering that new neighborhoods are not “beautiful” or “nice” without describing any objective measures for what author really meant. I do understand however what it is trying to say. My opinion is that housing development is vastly commoditized and builders wants tried and trusted designs at lowest prices and fastest speed. There is not much room for creativity and experimentation. I went to see houses build by Toll Brothers which are premium expensive builders and even their designs were regular with few bells and whistles only to show off. Lower end market basically just follows the template. This is extremely disappointing because house construction is something that lasts for so long.
theamk 5y ago
Nope, the article specifically addresses your point: > consider college campuses and their central quads, which typically do not have automobiles even today. The ones people admire are the older ones, not the newer campuses, which tend to be functional but aesthetically mediocre
- tortarga 5y ago
  These are most likely two separate problems. Car based urban planning which requires large wide roads, giant carparks and 'boxey houses' due to garages can overwhelm any other aesthetically pleasing design (notably green space). Admiring the old brick styles of the ivy leagues is simple confirmation bias due to their academic prestige. There are plenty of beautiful Modernist buildings, it comes down to if the college is willingly to pay for it.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    I would like to see some pictures of beautiful Modernist buildings. I live in an apartment, but the house I grow up in had more lawn space than was used by the car.
- quadrangle 5y ago
  NotJustBikes and StrongTowns have addressed all of this. For just one of zillions of examples: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/6/3/cognitive-comfort-and-visual-clutter-is-it-time-we-started-regulating-style https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/6/3/cognitive-comfo... Neither source just simplistically says "it's the fault of cars", both are deeply thought-out perspectives on what is really going on. It's not just cars, it's certain engineering and bureaucratic decisions that were made around cars. It's also the scale of development, i.e. governments that are set up to work with large-scale developers and are too hard for small-scale developers to deal with, and the general trend toward all-at-once top-down development, and I could go on and on. StrongTowns has successfully diagnosed the entire systemic pattern. It's not just blame-the-cars. Check out the actual resources, don't just assume they are only the simple thing the poster had to say to make any point at all.
closeparen 5y ago
There are some very nice older suburbs, with much higher densities than would be thought of as suburban today, that provision parking for every home. The venerable alley is basically an accommodation for cars, but a much more humane one. The sweet spot seems to be about 1920-1940.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Yep, you're absolutely right. The parent's youtube suggestion has a video on this too, called streetcar suburbs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
- bradstewart 5y ago
  The Lake Vista neighborhood [0] in New Orleans nailed this as well, but sort of flipped the alley concept. Still has street access and parking for every home, but the "front" of most houses faces an alley-width, pedestrian walkway. It was always one of my favorite areas to hang out as a kid, never really understood why until now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeshore/Lake_Vista,_New_Orleans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeshore/Lake_Vista,_New_Orle...

mc32 5y ago

I like some suburbs. However, not far from downtown San Jose, within the city limits, there is some interesting tract housing developments: they have soundwall like structures surrounding these neighborhoods that are built like a maze. Once in it can be hard to find your way out without GPS to one of the few entrances/exits. So that’s in a city, not even the maligned suburbs!

randycupertino 5y ago
I think some of the walls like that might even be for "traffic dampening" ie- so people don't cut through the neighborhoods to get somewhere else.
- pharmakom 5y ago
  This is correct. Where this often goes wrong is that the planners don’t allow pedestrians and cyclists to take shortcuts, making driving the faster option for even short trips.
VHRanger 5y ago
Are those single family zoned? Because if so they're also responsible for housing prices being insane in the area
- mc32 5y ago
  Pretty sure they are. Look at a map of San Jose and check out the areas around Quimby or Tully Roads in east(ern) San Jose.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I just see standard developments - anything more specific? Heh found a trailer park.
    - mc32 5y ago
      To me a place like hidden glen north is odd. It's a tract surrounded by soundwalls and has few exits from the development, whereas in normal developments you have intersections with all streets. This kind of development follows the thoroughfare model where smaller streets feed larger streets which feed boulevards/expressways which feed freeways. They are built in such a way the actual city neighborhood is disconnected from its surroundings and makes transit by anything other than car difficult -buses don't go in, and biking is fraught -all relatively close to the downtown area. Suburbs are better designed than that.
      - bombcar 5y ago
        I’ve seen some of those in Arizona - but even though there was one way in and out for cars there were multiple walking paths.
      - handrous 5y ago
        > It's a tract surrounded by soundwalls and has few exits from the development, whereas in normal developments you have intersections with all streets. I'm not sure any development built after about 1975 in my midwestern metro area isn't like this, including the sound walls if they're next to an interstate or major highway. My neighborhood, with... oh, I dunno 150houses? At least a dozen named-and-numbered streets present in it? It has two exits. Get this: one of those can only be entered if you're going a particular direction on the road it intersects, because there's an unbroken median curb there. So it's more like 1.5 entrances. Our neighborhood before this one? Two exits (it's bigger than this neighborhood and still developing, so I expect it'll get a third pretty soon). Our neighborhood before that? One exit. One. technically two, but the second was marked "dead end" (it wasn't, really, but that was probably still the right thing to label it) and took you on a weird barely-developed road with no other intersecting roads, which looped you back up to the same highway the the neighborhood's other route would have put you on, so even for people who lived right by the connection to that road, leaving the normal way was faster. The general rule seems to be: no more than one exit on any major road bounding the neighborhood. This means neighborhoods that are right next to each other can be slow to travel between on foot or by bike, without cutting through yards. > They are built in such a way the actual city neighborhood is disconnected from its surroundings and makes transit by anything other than car difficult -buses don't go in, and biking is fraught -all relatively close to the downtown area. Some folks for whom keeping a working car around isn't a big deal, consider it a feature that their neighborhoods are hard to reach by a combination of public transit and foot. Crime rates go up and the homeless population shoots up, they say, when they add a bus stop next to your neighborhood. Time to sell before the market drops if you see them working on a new bus stop in walking distance of your house, they say. (seriously, this is straight from several people I know, not something I'm inventing or guessing at)

throwawaysea 5y ago

I often see urbanists and young people fantasize about life in car free mega cities. Having lived that life for years I can’t imagine why. A lot of cities that are beautiful and attractive also have room for cars. I would even argue it is a big part of what makes those cities attractive. There’s no substitute for the point to point on demand fast transportation that cars offer. In cities that aren’t overbuilt, it makes it so much easier to get things done, see people, and access the outdoors. All that time saved is time to live a richer life. A good example of a car centric city that is very attractive is Seattle from ten years ago. The city had a strong sense of community because it was composed of intimate neighborhoods mostly with single family zoning rather than mid rise boxy apartment blocks everywhere, ample green space for its population, and roads with little traffic. It is because Seattle was so attractive that people and businesses flocked to it. Now those aspects are going away as density, anti car policies, and other issues are making the overall quality of life worse.

bombcar 5y ago
Even famously “mass transit unfriendly” cities can be fit for a car-free lifestyle if you work at it. But I suspect a huge part of it is visiting Europe or Asia as a tourist and enjoying being without a car. But they didn’t actually live there.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  > I suspect a huge part of it is visiting Europe or Asia as a tourist and enjoying being without a car. Agreed. As a tourist you also tend to visit the historic center of capital cities, which have by far the best public transport and fanciest architecture. Plus you're on vacation and having fun. When you live there and walk to your commuter train a gray november morning, it's a very different experience.
  - NumberWangMan 5y ago
    > When you live there and walk to your commuter train a gray november morning, it's a very different experience. Still preferable, to me at least! Getting in to work and shucking off your mist-covered coat and making a nice cup of tea made it just fine.

xibalba 5y ago

There is not faster to way to discredit oneself than to offer a pat, single variable explanation. As others point out, Americans like and want to transport themselves by car. Let's accept this, work with it, and build around it instead of lusting after a minority defined Utopia.

cscurmudgeon 5y ago
Well said. Another angle is the race angle. Most people advocating for lesser cars are young, healthy, rich and white. Healthy enough to not use cars and rich enough to live near work. https://theconversation.com/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-cycling-76256 https://theconversation.com/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-cycl... The group that talks about systemic racism is perpetuating it.
- BrianHenryIE 5y ago
  Take a hypothetical scenario (not dissimilar to war breaking out in WW2, and not dissimilar to the 2020 global pandemic upending our lives) – where the private motor vehicle is gone. Society (cities) would quickly re-orientate themselves so work wasn't so far away from home. So shops weren't on the outskirts of town. Your argument is predicated on cars existing. On cars causing the problem you suggest they solve.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  "Healthy enough not to use cars" - man, that's a good one. I'll remember it next time my half-senile father in law has no other choice but to drive somewhere because there's no way around his car dependent neighbourhood - oh wait, that's every day.
  - short12 5y ago
    If he is senile he should not be driving anywhere
    - BrianHenryIE 5y ago

r_klancer 5y ago

It's interesting to note that Hacker News really loves Strong Towns. I chatted with Chuck Marohn (founder and face of Strong Towns) once at an event a couple years ago, and they're quite aware that they get a lot of traffic from HN.

mobilewatch7 5y ago
The strong town movement and its affiliated planning companies ruined my community. A lot of the mixed use re zoning is a pretext for opening up rural areas for heavy industry.
- oblio 5y ago
  That's just ridiculous, though. Does anyone sane zone heavy industry together with residential?

sytelus 5y ago

I don’t think that’s what article says. Article just keeps blathering that new neighborhoods are not “beautiful” or “nice” without describing any objective measures for what author really meant. I do understand however what it is trying to say. My opinion is that housing development is vastly commoditized and builders wants tried and trusted designs at lowest prices and fastest speed. There is not much room for creativity and experimentation. I went to see houses build by Toll Brothers which are premium expensive builders and even their designs were regular with few bells and whistles only to show off. Lower end market basically just follows the template. This is extremely disappointing because house construction is something that lasts for so long.

theamk 5y ago

Nope, the article specifically addresses your point: > consider college campuses and their central quads, which typically do not have automobiles even today. The ones people admire are the older ones, not the newer campuses, which tend to be functional but aesthetically mediocre

tortarga 5y ago
These are most likely two separate problems. Car based urban planning which requires large wide roads, giant carparks and 'boxey houses' due to garages can overwhelm any other aesthetically pleasing design (notably green space). Admiring the old brick styles of the ivy leagues is simple confirmation bias due to their academic prestige. There are plenty of beautiful Modernist buildings, it comes down to if the college is willingly to pay for it.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  I would like to see some pictures of beautiful Modernist buildings. I live in an apartment, but the house I grow up in had more lawn space than was used by the car.
quadrangle 5y ago
NotJustBikes and StrongTowns have addressed all of this. For just one of zillions of examples: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/6/3/cognitive-comfort-and-visual-clutter-is-it-time-we-started-regulating-style https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/6/3/cognitive-comfo... Neither source just simplistically says "it's the fault of cars", both are deeply thought-out perspectives on what is really going on. It's not just cars, it's certain engineering and bureaucratic decisions that were made around cars. It's also the scale of development, i.e. governments that are set up to work with large-scale developers and are too hard for small-scale developers to deal with, and the general trend toward all-at-once top-down development, and I could go on and on. StrongTowns has successfully diagnosed the entire systemic pattern. It's not just blame-the-cars. Check out the actual resources, don't just assume they are only the simple thing the poster had to say to make any point at all.

closeparen 5y ago

There are some very nice older suburbs, with much higher densities than would be thought of as suburban today, that provision parking for every home. The venerable alley is basically an accommodation for cars, but a much more humane one. The sweet spot seems to be about 1920-1940.

brailsafe 5y ago
Yep, you're absolutely right. The parent's youtube suggestion has a video on this too, called streetcar suburbs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
bradstewart 5y ago
The Lake Vista neighborhood [0] in New Orleans nailed this as well, but sort of flipped the alley concept. Still has street access and parking for every home, but the "front" of most houses faces an alley-width, pedestrian walkway. It was always one of my favorite areas to hang out as a kid, never really understood why until now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeshore/Lake_Vista,_New_Orleans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeshore/Lake_Vista,_New_Orle...