4 ms·
You don't need to live densely to have public transport and access to services. US city planning (and Canada for the most part) have a problem with either allow
by sascha_sl 4y ago
You don't need to live densely to have public transport and access to services. US city planning (and Canada for the most part) have a problem with either allowing very high density (in limited space, so you get huge towers) or single family homes, very few things in between.
I live in a mixed used era, in a 5 story appartment block, which is the high end of density around here. I have two tram lines within 400 meters and an S-Bahn station less than 100m away.
And also, dutch cities allow for bikes, if public transport isn't your thing.
- crooked-v 4y agoSee also: US suburbs in the streetcar era, which were built just densely enough that it was practical for everyone to walk to streetcar stops. You can see what's left of that period in some neighborhoods of cities like Boston and San Francisco, where row houses that were once mass-produced to appeal to the middle class have become multi-million-dollar 'luxury' homes almost entirely from the total unavailability of that kind of housing and living style elsewhere. The equivalent mid-density construction is basically nonexistent in new construction today because of exclusionary zoning. It's only recently that some states have started forcibly re-legalizing this sort of thing by overriding local zoning codes, and it will still take decades at best for new construction to really catch up.