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There's a great reddit thread exploring much the same issues at https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_architect_in_la_specializing_in_multif

There's a great reddit thread exploring much the same issues at https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_architect_in_la_specializing_in_multifamily/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_ar... Turns out, requiring little houses for cars be added on to every house for people gets expensive.

jimmaswell 4y ago
Quality of life is expensive, doesn't mean it's not worth it. Not that there shouldn't be some allowances for denser apartment buildings.
- routerl 4y ago
  Car-centric living is absolutely not quality-of-life focused...
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Depends where you live. That's a broad assertion to cover a wildly divergent spectrum of community types.
    - CountSessine 4y ago
      Community types enforced by rigid laws outlawing market alternatives. If your “quality of life” is so compelling, why do you need to outlaw everything else, comrade? “Tear down this wall, Mr Gorbachev”
      - lupire 4y ago
        Your last 1.5 sentences discredit your first two paragraphs.
        CountSessine 4y ago
        Nonsense. Your city council is the People’s Central Planning Committee that runs the construction economy in your city. They decide what is produced and they decide who does it. Construction in your city is a planned economy - every bit as much as the Soviet Union or pre-Deng China. And like every planned economy, it sucks and fails in just about every way.
    - noahtallen 4y ago
      It’s an easy assertion to make because even car transit itself is better in places that aren’t car centric. (Because fewer people are on the roads, and roads are much safer.) https://youtu.be/d8RRE2rDw4k https://youtu.be/d8RRE2rDw4k
      - ethbr0 4y ago
        Population density in the Netherlands is 414.33 people per square kilometer. Population density in the US is 34.05 people per square kilometer. Granted, a huge amount of the US should probably be discounted for a more realistic comparison (e.g. unlivable regions, BLM / park / national forest, and massive amount of farmland), which would bump the number up. But we're still probably going to need some adjustments going from a country you can drive across in about 4 hours, to one where it would take 40+ hours.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Are you suggesting that a pleasant rural/exurban environment, perhaps within a reasonable driving distance of an urban downtown is not quality of life focused? It may not be your preference but it is for many people. Others even like suburbs though that's mostly not my thing.
    - gernb 4y ago
      That's fine if people want to live in the suburbs but... They need to start paying the full amount of what it costs to maintain those suburbs. As it is, the dense urban downtown is subsidizing all of it. That's not fair. https://youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI https://youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI
      - ghaff 4y ago
        It's by no means a straightforward question. It's not like a city exists in some impermeable bubble from the surrounding area. A great deal is shipped into a city through the suburbs and other surrounding area. Many workers commute in from suburbs which are often cheaper than the city even though they may have better school systems (even though the per student costs are often lower). Food comes in from generally more rural areas. Cities and especially their denser and more walkable areas are dependent on the surrounding area in many ways. More dependent than the suburbs are on the city except perhaps for employment. There's a reasonable argument to be made that while San Francisco was the original primary catalyst for development in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley (which is effectively suburban sprawl) would be just fine without the city at all. The same would have been true of the Boston area to a large degree especially 20 years or so ago, except perhaps for the universities.
        gernb 4y ago
        It makes sense the downtown is where people in the suburbs go to work and that therefore downtown appears to be making more. But that's still ignoring the fact that there's a cost to maintain every road, water pipe, sewer, sidewalk, etc. Those suburbs still cost way more than downtown and the suburbs are not paying enough to maintain their costs. Cities are going bankrupt. If you want to consider the entire thing one unit (suburbs + downtown = unit), you still have to figure out how to pay for all the services. The more spread out everything is the more those services cost. So it still comes down to the same thing. If you want, blame it on the government zoning downtown for no residents and only zoning for single family housing and therefore leading to the only affordable thing being the suburbs. But, to maintain those suburbs they're going to have to raise taxes 4x to 8x on everyone in that unit.
  - fulafel 4y ago
    Also not sustainable.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Whether it's worth it or not should be decided by the people buying, not by some bureaucrat.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  Solid gold hot tubs are nice too I suppose but maybe don't make it illegal to build homes without them.
nopenopenopeno 4y ago
This make excellent sense, and the only solution would necessitate public transportation. Unsurprisingly, whether it’s public housing or public transportation, there really is no way around investing in public infrastructure if you want to have a healthy society.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  I don't agree. As people get richer, they (at an aggregate level) choose private housing and private transportation over public. You can have a healthy society with private transportation and private housing, it just needs to be a rich society.
- actionablefiber 4y ago
  Public transportation is one piece of the puzzle. Cities that are truly great for car-free living are also walkable and cyclable, and have dedicated infrastructure to this end. Public transit gets you part-way there, since unlike cars, public transit, even buses, do not really make the streets dangerous and hostile the way that individual transport vehicles do. Still, it's important to remember that public transit is a key part of a broader approach to the problem and not the end-all solution itself.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    I'm not in zoning, so no idea if this is already done, but it would be great to have a (probably national-level) standardized formula for calculating a transit credit for a development that could be applied to decrease required parking spaces. I.e. having a light or heavy rail stop within 2 miles gives an X credit, having a grocery or mixed use commercial (food and services) within 2 miles gives a Y credit, having bike storage and lanes gives a Z credit Essentially, attempt to quantify the holistic experience of residents, when talking about parking requirements. If we make the kind of housing / communities we'd like to see cheaper, developers will start building it naturally. Edit: From the linked Reddit post: "In January 2013, LA enacted its first major parking reduction, essentially giving developers the option of replacing up to 15% of their required residential parking with bike parking if they are within 1500ft of a major light rail or metro station. However, these bike spaces must be “long term” spaces, which require locked cages, a dedicated bike servicing area." (But also notes some requirements around the bike spaces that increase the cost of making that trade-off)
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
It’s the same in cities with good public transportation though.
SilasX 4y ago
Ugh, I remember that one. Painful to read. For an extra level of irony, where do wealthy Angelenos go for vacation? Paris, for its great, walkable neighborhoods that allow exactly what their city rabidly bans.
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  Washington, DC is a more accessible example.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  Hah, I wasn't wealthy but if it helps, I got sick of socal and moved from LA to Europe (Ireland, so not as good as Paris, but an improvement all the same)
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  Never had the desire to go to Paris. I'll probably go camping in the mountains for my next vacation. Doesn't mean I want to sleep in a tent the rest of my life and it doesn't mean I want people sleeping in tents in my neighborhood.

jimmaswell 4y ago

Quality of life is expensive, doesn't mean it's not worth it. Not that there shouldn't be some allowances for denser apartment buildings.

routerl 4y ago
Car-centric living is absolutely not quality-of-life focused...
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Depends where you live. That's a broad assertion to cover a wildly divergent spectrum of community types.
  - CountSessine 4y ago
    Community types enforced by rigid laws outlawing market alternatives. If your “quality of life” is so compelling, why do you need to outlaw everything else, comrade? “Tear down this wall, Mr Gorbachev”
    - lupire 4y ago
      Your last 1.5 sentences discredit your first two paragraphs.
      - CountSessine 4y ago
        Nonsense. Your city council is the People’s Central Planning Committee that runs the construction economy in your city. They decide what is produced and they decide who does it. Construction in your city is a planned economy - every bit as much as the Soviet Union or pre-Deng China. And like every planned economy, it sucks and fails in just about every way.
  - noahtallen 4y ago
    It’s an easy assertion to make because even car transit itself is better in places that aren’t car centric. (Because fewer people are on the roads, and roads are much safer.) https://youtu.be/d8RRE2rDw4k https://youtu.be/d8RRE2rDw4k
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      Population density in the Netherlands is 414.33 people per square kilometer. Population density in the US is 34.05 people per square kilometer. Granted, a huge amount of the US should probably be discounted for a more realistic comparison (e.g. unlivable regions, BLM / park / national forest, and massive amount of farmland), which would bump the number up. But we're still probably going to need some adjustments going from a country you can drive across in about 4 hours, to one where it would take 40+ hours.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Are you suggesting that a pleasant rural/exurban environment, perhaps within a reasonable driving distance of an urban downtown is not quality of life focused? It may not be your preference but it is for many people. Others even like suburbs though that's mostly not my thing.
  - gernb 4y ago
    That's fine if people want to live in the suburbs but... They need to start paying the full amount of what it costs to maintain those suburbs. As it is, the dense urban downtown is subsidizing all of it. That's not fair. https://youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI https://youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI
    - ghaff 4y ago
      It's by no means a straightforward question. It's not like a city exists in some impermeable bubble from the surrounding area. A great deal is shipped into a city through the suburbs and other surrounding area. Many workers commute in from suburbs which are often cheaper than the city even though they may have better school systems (even though the per student costs are often lower). Food comes in from generally more rural areas. Cities and especially their denser and more walkable areas are dependent on the surrounding area in many ways. More dependent than the suburbs are on the city except perhaps for employment. There's a reasonable argument to be made that while San Francisco was the original primary catalyst for development in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley (which is effectively suburban sprawl) would be just fine without the city at all. The same would have been true of the Boston area to a large degree especially 20 years or so ago, except perhaps for the universities.
      - gernb 4y ago
        It makes sense the downtown is where people in the suburbs go to work and that therefore downtown appears to be making more. But that's still ignoring the fact that there's a cost to maintain every road, water pipe, sewer, sidewalk, etc. Those suburbs still cost way more than downtown and the suburbs are not paying enough to maintain their costs. Cities are going bankrupt. If you want to consider the entire thing one unit (suburbs + downtown = unit), you still have to figure out how to pay for all the services. The more spread out everything is the more those services cost. So it still comes down to the same thing. If you want, blame it on the government zoning downtown for no residents and only zoning for single family housing and therefore leading to the only affordable thing being the suburbs. But, to maintain those suburbs they're going to have to raise taxes 4x to 8x on everyone in that unit.
- fulafel 4y ago
  Also not sustainable.
renewiltord 4y ago
Whether it's worth it or not should be decided by the people buying, not by some bureaucrat.
CalRobert 4y ago
Solid gold hot tubs are nice too I suppose but maybe don't make it illegal to build homes without them.

nopenopenopeno 4y ago

This make excellent sense, and the only solution would necessitate public transportation. Unsurprisingly, whether it’s public housing or public transportation, there really is no way around investing in public infrastructure if you want to have a healthy society.

rufus_foreman 4y ago
I don't agree. As people get richer, they (at an aggregate level) choose private housing and private transportation over public. You can have a healthy society with private transportation and private housing, it just needs to be a rich society.
actionablefiber 4y ago
Public transportation is one piece of the puzzle. Cities that are truly great for car-free living are also walkable and cyclable, and have dedicated infrastructure to this end. Public transit gets you part-way there, since unlike cars, public transit, even buses, do not really make the streets dangerous and hostile the way that individual transport vehicles do. Still, it's important to remember that public transit is a key part of a broader approach to the problem and not the end-all solution itself.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  I'm not in zoning, so no idea if this is already done, but it would be great to have a (probably national-level) standardized formula for calculating a transit credit for a development that could be applied to decrease required parking spaces. I.e. having a light or heavy rail stop within 2 miles gives an X credit, having a grocery or mixed use commercial (food and services) within 2 miles gives a Y credit, having bike storage and lanes gives a Z credit Essentially, attempt to quantify the holistic experience of residents, when talking about parking requirements. If we make the kind of housing / communities we'd like to see cheaper, developers will start building it naturally. Edit: From the linked Reddit post: "In January 2013, LA enacted its first major parking reduction, essentially giving developers the option of replacing up to 15% of their required residential parking with bike parking if they are within 1500ft of a major light rail or metro station. However, these bike spaces must be “long term” spaces, which require locked cages, a dedicated bike servicing area." (But also notes some requirements around the bike spaces that increase the cost of making that trade-off)

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

It’s the same in cities with good public transportation though.

SilasX 4y ago

Ugh, I remember that one. Painful to read. For an extra level of irony, where do wealthy Angelenos go for vacation? Paris, for its great, walkable neighborhoods that allow exactly what their city rabidly bans.

mixmastamyk 4y ago
Washington, DC is a more accessible example.
CalRobert 4y ago
Hah, I wasn't wealthy but if it helps, I got sick of socal and moved from LA to Europe (Ireland, so not as good as Paris, but an improvement all the same)
rufus_foreman 4y ago
Never had the desire to go to Paris. I'll probably go camping in the mountains for my next vacation. Doesn't mean I want to sleep in a tent the rest of my life and it doesn't mean I want people sleeping in tents in my neighborhood.