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> You can't just tear down all the housing and then build public transit there You absolutely can. Of course you don't need to tear down all the housing. Just
by nicoburns 4y ago
> You can't just tear down all the housing and then build public transit there
You absolutely can. Of course you don't need to tear down all the housing. Just enough to retrofit a transport corridor. America already did this to build highways. Or you can replace road infrastructure with transit infrastructure.
I suspect the first step might by to make (parts of) residential neighbourhoods mixed use. This wouldn't need to be done in one fell swoop. It could be as simple as allowing a single house to be converted to a commercial properties (say a grocery store).
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoIt's harder to cut up a dense and mixed use neighborhood because the real estate is worth more and there will be more people and money to vote against it. Boston tried that. They were able to get the project rolling in the poorer parts of town but when they got to the slightly richer ones moneyed interests rallied the Karens and killed it (racism deserves a little credit too, rich white people hate it when you build a highway between them and poor dark people). That was half a century ago. Eventually they salvaged what they could and put a light rail line in the parts of the project that had already been done but still....
- nicoburns 4y agoIsn't the problem precisely that most of the neighbourhoods aren't dense or mixed use?
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoThe problem is that people won't let them densify without the underlying infrastructure but won't speculatively build infrastructure and won't build it after the fact. We've reached an impasse.