10 ms·

The density in cul-de-sac neighborhoods is still too low to make it possible for residents to get to any of the basic services they need (school, grocery, etc)

The density in cul-de-sac neighborhoods is still too low to make it possible for residents to get to any of the basic services they need (school, grocery, etc) without driving. Adding a few roads to shave a mile or two off a commute or trip the store isn't going to make much of a difference. Our (american) cities desperately need urban growth boundaries to force density.

HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
Why are you/we trying to force density when it's so obvious that most people want the exact opposite? [edit] I had in a house in a great neighborhood in the city within walking distance of grocery, restaurants, buses, etc., and I still moved to the suburbs. Obviously density's not the only thing people want.
- kaiuhl 15y ago
  Is it obvious? Do the majority of the public understand the value of a well planned community or have the option to participate in one? Being walking distance to a grocery store is not the same thing as living in a transit-oriented region and living your entire life without dependence on a car. Suburbs were born from industry, not out of the realization of American's idealized community. I live in downtown Portland, OR and have done so for the last eight years without ever owning a car. I can walk or bike to literally everything in the city, or alternatively take a streetcar, light rail train, or technologically advanced bus system. There's a reason people move here – there's value in Urban Growth Boundaries (UGBs) that make more livable, walkable, awesome places to live your life. And because of the UGB, it's even faster to escape the city's limits and find yourself in real green space. On Tuesday after work, I drove 45 minutes (using a car-sharing program) out of the city to a national wilderness where I slept under the stars, caught a few trout, and still made it back into the city for work the next morning. Something like that might be difficult in LA or in a large suburb. As you can see, I really really disagree with you. :)
  - michaelchisari 15y ago
    And the thing is, Portland isn't even that dense of a city. As far as urban environments go, it's hardly Blade Runner. Plenty of detached homes with yards, parks, etc. The idea that people have that we have to live like sardines in some anime-inspired megalopolis is simply inaccurate. If everyone lived in cities as dense as portland, the current human population would only be living on about 2.7% of the world's land mass. Obviously, in terms of resources, it's more complicated than that, but it's clear that sprawling out is terrible for the environment, and that for true nature-lovers, it's much more advantageous to live in a city that has no suburbs, where the world of people truly ends at the city limits.
    - cpeterso 15y ago
      > If everyone lived in cities as dense as portland, the current human population would only be living on about 2.7% of the world's land mass. What is the human population's current footprint? Wikipedia says humans' average population density worldwide (excluding Antarctica and oceans) is about 50 people/km^2.
      - michaelchisari 15y ago
        If we're averaging 50 people/km^2, that puts our footprint at around 91.6%
  - ryanjkirk 15y ago
    Portland is a poor example. I love Portland, by the way, but we're essentially talking about economics here, and Portland is skewed. In Portland, you have people that want to live this lifestyle. They don't want the burden of the car, they are environmentally conscious, they work in the city, and they don't have kids. Sure, for them, it's doable (and you sound like one of them). This isn't usually the case. Industrial areas, where many people work, aren't dense enough to support frequent bus stops, and most families would have a hard time getting kids places without being able to drive them hither and thither. I've lived in some of the densest cities in Europe, and families still had a hard time getting around without a car. At one point, I did get a car, and not having to deal with the scheduling hassles of public transportation made my life instantly easier. You have to have an enormous population density for public transportation to be a break-even affair. Your Portland public transportation isn't self-sufficient, it's a net loss, and it's subsidized by taxes. Sure, it's more efficient than cars, but it still doesn't solve all the problems that cars do, as noted above (primarily for families). By the time you get the density required for public transportation to be self-sustaining, you're looking at a cost of living that is unacceptable for most families (eg, NYC). Sure, public transportation is great for young single people. Try going to the grocery store with young kids on the bus. It's virtually impossible.
- drinian 15y ago
  Hey, if you're willing to shoulder the true costs of that style of living -- environmentally, that's at least air pollution, and runoff from increased paving and lawns replacing woods and fields; then there's the cost of building out utilities, which you'll share with far fewer people in the exurbs -- then I guess you can. I suspect that far fewer people can truly afford suburban density than our current setup has allowed.
- philwelch 15y ago
  People respond to incentives. Urban misgovernment and subsidies for suburbs (chiefly the freeways) create a particular set of circumstances that force sparsity. The fact is, the rising cost of energy, especially petroleum, makes large scale suburbia unsustainable. Public policy needs to reflect this.
- jseliger 15y ago
  Why are you/we trying to force density when it's so obvious that most people want the exact opposite? The problem is that the playing field isn't level: as Edward Glaeser points out in his book, The Triumph of the City (highly recommended; http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healthier/dp/159420277X?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Health...), there are numerous institutional barriers to urban living, including, in no particular order: 1) Mortgage interest tax deduction; since urban life favors multi-unit dwellings but condos have externalities single-family houses don't (it's hard to deal with a noisy upstairs neighbor when you both own), this favors suburbs. 2) Substantial car-based infrastructure investment that means car owners pay around half of the "total" or social cost of their driving. 3) Barriers to entry in urban areas, especially in the form of zoning height limits. 4) Tying education and education funding to geographic location. I believe there are a couple others I've forgotten. It's pretty obvious that a lot of people want density—if they didn't, housing prices in NYC, DC, Seattle, San Francisco, and others wouldn't be so high. Hold supply relatively constant while demand increases, and you get prices that zoom up. I would, in many ways, draw the opposite conclusion from yours.
  - anamax 15y ago
    > It's pretty obvious that a lot of people want density Yes, but folks living in suburbs don't stop folks who like density from having it. It's interesting that suburb dwellers never complain about other people's living choices. It's always the city fans who can't tolerate folks who want something else. BTW - If you want high-density housing, you're going to have shared walls. It's unclear why you blame suburbs for that. > 4) Tying education and education funding to geographic location. That's actually less of an issue in densely populated areas, for somewhat obvious reasons. As to the "car subsidy" argument, every time I've checked the numbers presented by folks who claim it exists, I've found that their accounting is borderline fraudulent. Of course, they're typically just passing along numbers from someone else, but .... There is maybe one mass-transit system in the world that pays its operating costs and they all receive massive subsidies for capital expenditures, often from the gas tax....
    - 15y ago
- specialist 15y ago
  > it's so obvious that most people want the exact opposite? Ah yes, the fabled "free market". Subsidize sprawl with money looted from urban areas. People move the burbs. Claim it's demand driven. What impresses me is that people increasingly choose urban despite the sprawl tax.

HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago

Why are you/we trying to force density when it's so obvious that most people want the exact opposite? [edit] I had in a house in a great neighborhood in the city within walking distance of grocery, restaurants, buses, etc., and I still moved to the suburbs. Obviously density's not the only thing people want.

kaiuhl 15y ago
Is it obvious? Do the majority of the public understand the value of a well planned community or have the option to participate in one? Being walking distance to a grocery store is not the same thing as living in a transit-oriented region and living your entire life without dependence on a car. Suburbs were born from industry, not out of the realization of American's idealized community. I live in downtown Portland, OR and have done so for the last eight years without ever owning a car. I can walk or bike to literally everything in the city, or alternatively take a streetcar, light rail train, or technologically advanced bus system. There's a reason people move here – there's value in Urban Growth Boundaries (UGBs) that make more livable, walkable, awesome places to live your life. And because of the UGB, it's even faster to escape the city's limits and find yourself in real green space. On Tuesday after work, I drove 45 minutes (using a car-sharing program) out of the city to a national wilderness where I slept under the stars, caught a few trout, and still made it back into the city for work the next morning. Something like that might be difficult in LA or in a large suburb. As you can see, I really really disagree with you. :)
- michaelchisari 15y ago
  And the thing is, Portland isn't even that dense of a city. As far as urban environments go, it's hardly Blade Runner. Plenty of detached homes with yards, parks, etc. The idea that people have that we have to live like sardines in some anime-inspired megalopolis is simply inaccurate. If everyone lived in cities as dense as portland, the current human population would only be living on about 2.7% of the world's land mass. Obviously, in terms of resources, it's more complicated than that, but it's clear that sprawling out is terrible for the environment, and that for true nature-lovers, it's much more advantageous to live in a city that has no suburbs, where the world of people truly ends at the city limits.
  - cpeterso 15y ago
    > If everyone lived in cities as dense as portland, the current human population would only be living on about 2.7% of the world's land mass. What is the human population's current footprint? Wikipedia says humans' average population density worldwide (excluding Antarctica and oceans) is about 50 people/km^2.
    - michaelchisari 15y ago
      If we're averaging 50 people/km^2, that puts our footprint at around 91.6%
- ryanjkirk 15y ago
  Portland is a poor example. I love Portland, by the way, but we're essentially talking about economics here, and Portland is skewed. In Portland, you have people that want to live this lifestyle. They don't want the burden of the car, they are environmentally conscious, they work in the city, and they don't have kids. Sure, for them, it's doable (and you sound like one of them). This isn't usually the case. Industrial areas, where many people work, aren't dense enough to support frequent bus stops, and most families would have a hard time getting kids places without being able to drive them hither and thither. I've lived in some of the densest cities in Europe, and families still had a hard time getting around without a car. At one point, I did get a car, and not having to deal with the scheduling hassles of public transportation made my life instantly easier. You have to have an enormous population density for public transportation to be a break-even affair. Your Portland public transportation isn't self-sufficient, it's a net loss, and it's subsidized by taxes. Sure, it's more efficient than cars, but it still doesn't solve all the problems that cars do, as noted above (primarily for families). By the time you get the density required for public transportation to be self-sustaining, you're looking at a cost of living that is unacceptable for most families (eg, NYC). Sure, public transportation is great for young single people. Try going to the grocery store with young kids on the bus. It's virtually impossible.
drinian 15y ago
Hey, if you're willing to shoulder the true costs of that style of living -- environmentally, that's at least air pollution, and runoff from increased paving and lawns replacing woods and fields; then there's the cost of building out utilities, which you'll share with far fewer people in the exurbs -- then I guess you can. I suspect that far fewer people can truly afford suburban density than our current setup has allowed.
philwelch 15y ago
People respond to incentives. Urban misgovernment and subsidies for suburbs (chiefly the freeways) create a particular set of circumstances that force sparsity. The fact is, the rising cost of energy, especially petroleum, makes large scale suburbia unsustainable. Public policy needs to reflect this.
jseliger 15y ago
Why are you/we trying to force density when it's so obvious that most people want the exact opposite? The problem is that the playing field isn't level: as Edward Glaeser points out in his book, The Triumph of the City (highly recommended; http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healthier/dp/159420277X?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Health...), there are numerous institutional barriers to urban living, including, in no particular order: 1) Mortgage interest tax deduction; since urban life favors multi-unit dwellings but condos have externalities single-family houses don't (it's hard to deal with a noisy upstairs neighbor when you both own), this favors suburbs. 2) Substantial car-based infrastructure investment that means car owners pay around half of the "total" or social cost of their driving. 3) Barriers to entry in urban areas, especially in the form of zoning height limits. 4) Tying education and education funding to geographic location. I believe there are a couple others I've forgotten. It's pretty obvious that a lot of people want density—if they didn't, housing prices in NYC, DC, Seattle, San Francisco, and others wouldn't be so high. Hold supply relatively constant while demand increases, and you get prices that zoom up. I would, in many ways, draw the opposite conclusion from yours.
- anamax 15y ago
  > It's pretty obvious that a lot of people want density Yes, but folks living in suburbs don't stop folks who like density from having it. It's interesting that suburb dwellers never complain about other people's living choices. It's always the city fans who can't tolerate folks who want something else. BTW - If you want high-density housing, you're going to have shared walls. It's unclear why you blame suburbs for that. > 4) Tying education and education funding to geographic location. That's actually less of an issue in densely populated areas, for somewhat obvious reasons. As to the "car subsidy" argument, every time I've checked the numbers presented by folks who claim it exists, I've found that their accounting is borderline fraudulent. Of course, they're typically just passing along numbers from someone else, but .... There is maybe one mass-transit system in the world that pays its operating costs and they all receive massive subsidies for capital expenditures, often from the gas tax....
  - 15y ago
specialist 15y ago
> it's so obvious that most people want the exact opposite? Ah yes, the fabled "free market". Subsidize sprawl with money looted from urban areas. People move the burbs. Claim it's demand driven. What impresses me is that people increasingly choose urban despite the sprawl tax.