7 ms·

It's mostly a case of people not knowing what they really want. Demand-driven economy has a place, but it's definitely not something to accept simplistically.

It's mostly a case of people not knowing what they really want. Demand-driven economy has a place, but it's definitely not something to accept simplistically. Famous examples: people wanted better horse-carriages and didn't anticipate cars. People wanted better keyboards on their blackberry-style phones, not an iPhone. Etc etc. Nobody who experiences life in the Netherlands where biking and walking is actually safe ends up wishing they could return to stroad-style car-dependency. Everyone who says they prefer it is just saying that they don't know any better. And any appeal to saying we have to keep making dangerous garbage sprawl because that's what people demand, that's disengenuous nonsense. Strong Towns actually has the answer to this, the one that doesn't involve being condescending to people in sprawlville, USA. They point out that EVERYONE when you ask them about their priorities, especially for the streets where they live, they always say they care about safety, capacity, cost, and speed, basically in that order. But engineering assumptions put it more like speed, capacity, cost, safety. (Wish I could give you the optimal link, but the one thing Strong Towns is weakest at is making it easy to find the right links in their enormous backlog of articles; the site search tool is really annoying; I know the concepts I'm mentioning are discussed multiple places, including in their two books)

sokoloff 5y ago
> It's mostly a case of people not knowing what they really want While this is possible to be true, I suspect on a per-utterance basis, it’s wrong way more often than it’s right. People often do know what they want; it’s just inconveniently not the same as what the utterer prefers.
- quadrangle 5y ago
  "really want" is a poor phrase, but it was intended to mean not "what people sincerely/honestly want" but instead "what people would choose if they really had deeply informed understanding of the options". People's utterances about what they want are almost never in light of the question of what they "really want". We rarely have the space and perspectives to reflect on and learn about what we "really want" to be able to even answer that question. Most of life is people having low-level fears about loss and acceptance and so on and expressing our wants from that position. We rarely settle into our deeper values enough to even ask what we "really want" let alone find answers.
refurb 5y ago
I'm not convinced. It's not like your "better horse-carriage" example because the option already exists and people reject it. My colleagues in the Bay Area all lived in SF, then quickly moved to the subrurbs when they got older. Sure, there is no pedestrian/biking utopia in the US, but there are places where you can pretty much get by without a car. And many people don't choose to live there. I also spent some time in Singapore and it seems much closer to the Strongtowns ideal than the US - dense housing, top-notch transit (most don't have cars), carefully planned development with first-floor shops on every block, lots of greenspace and public areas. And when I talked to my colleagues you know what their desired was? Make enough money to buy a car and get the equivalent of a single family home. They lived in dense housing and got by without a car not out of choice but out of affordability. Again, not all of them (many who could afford cars choose not to buy one), but it was a pretty common theme.
- Panzer04 5y ago
  I suspect this will also suffer from the “grass is greener” problem. Those who live in cities will romanticise suburban living, and vice versa in suburbs. Culture also matters; in the west the city is often seen as a place for single professionals, rather than somewhere to build your life long term. This will affect perceptions, for good or ill. Also, although you can get by without a car in many locations, I think there’s probably a relatively stark difference in how livable that is depending on how it’s implemented. If your city is filled with two lane roads through the core that’s clearly much worse than the Netherlands equivalent.
- xmprt 5y ago
  What were the reasons your friend gave for not wanting to live in SF? The common reasons I see are often that it's too expensive, there's too much crime and homeless people, and it's noisy and full of traffic. All of these are solvable problems. Cost is fixed by building more housing and traffic is solved by making the Bay Area less car centric (public transportation in the Bay Area isn't terrible but it can still be a lot better). I don't have great solutions for crime and homelessness but building more housing all over will definitely help reduce it and better social safety nets can help eliminate it entirely. Additionally, you don't need to build a second SF to solve the problem. In fact, most dense housing can be built for relatively cheap. You don't need to build 20 story buildings everywhere.

sokoloff 5y ago

> It's mostly a case of people not knowing what they really want While this is possible to be true, I suspect on a per-utterance basis, it’s wrong way more often than it’s right. People often do know what they want; it’s just inconveniently not the same as what the utterer prefers.

quadrangle 5y ago
"really want" is a poor phrase, but it was intended to mean not "what people sincerely/honestly want" but instead "what people would choose if they really had deeply informed understanding of the options". People's utterances about what they want are almost never in light of the question of what they "really want". We rarely have the space and perspectives to reflect on and learn about what we "really want" to be able to even answer that question. Most of life is people having low-level fears about loss and acceptance and so on and expressing our wants from that position. We rarely settle into our deeper values enough to even ask what we "really want" let alone find answers.

refurb 5y ago

I'm not convinced. It's not like your "better horse-carriage" example because the option already exists and people reject it. My colleagues in the Bay Area all lived in SF, then quickly moved to the subrurbs when they got older. Sure, there is no pedestrian/biking utopia in the US, but there are places where you can pretty much get by without a car. And many people don't choose to live there. I also spent some time in Singapore and it seems much closer to the Strongtowns ideal than the US - dense housing, top-notch transit (most don't have cars), carefully planned development with first-floor shops on every block, lots of greenspace and public areas. And when I talked to my colleagues you know what their desired was? Make enough money to buy a car and get the equivalent of a single family home. They lived in dense housing and got by without a car not out of choice but out of affordability. Again, not all of them (many who could afford cars choose not to buy one), but it was a pretty common theme.

Panzer04 5y ago
I suspect this will also suffer from the “grass is greener” problem. Those who live in cities will romanticise suburban living, and vice versa in suburbs. Culture also matters; in the west the city is often seen as a place for single professionals, rather than somewhere to build your life long term. This will affect perceptions, for good or ill. Also, although you can get by without a car in many locations, I think there’s probably a relatively stark difference in how livable that is depending on how it’s implemented. If your city is filled with two lane roads through the core that’s clearly much worse than the Netherlands equivalent.
xmprt 5y ago
What were the reasons your friend gave for not wanting to live in SF? The common reasons I see are often that it's too expensive, there's too much crime and homeless people, and it's noisy and full of traffic. All of these are solvable problems. Cost is fixed by building more housing and traffic is solved by making the Bay Area less car centric (public transportation in the Bay Area isn't terrible but it can still be a lot better). I don't have great solutions for crime and homelessness but building more housing all over will definitely help reduce it and better social safety nets can help eliminate it entirely. Additionally, you don't need to build a second SF to solve the problem. In fact, most dense housing can be built for relatively cheap. You don't need to build 20 story buildings everywhere.