20 ms·

> The answers are very uncomfortable. Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low tr

> The answers are very uncomfortable. Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Of course their desires alone shouldn't be the final word on proposed changes to codes, but implying that all of these homeowners are primarily driven by prejudice is a pretty big leap given the many obvious benefits of the status quo for them. I imagine you could take almost any demographic and put them in a low density neighborhood with big yards, trees, low traffic, and neighbors that they've known for decades, and they're going to resist change.

jackson1442 4y ago
You can have all this (and more!) in cities as well. Lived in Seattle for a bit and my apartment had several neighborhoods of single-family homes within a couple blocks: each with mature trees, yards, and low traffic streets. Sure, the yard maybe isn't as massive as you can get in a suburb, but there's still plenty of space (and far more public parks). Because they were so close to dense housing, they also had the added benefits of public transit and being walking distance to several grocery stores. Much better than suburbia in my opinion.
- hcurtiss 4y ago
  But I do think that's a matter of opinion, and totally unrelated to prejudice.
- jtbayly 4y ago
  I mean, you’re basically saying that you can have suburbia in the city? If lots of people want it, the price will skyrocket, so then somebody will buy some land just outside the city and build suburbia there so more people can afford it. Rinse and repeat.
- brundolf 4y ago
  Having lived in Texas my whole life this idea was mostly foreign to me, but last year I visited Brooklyn and had my eyes opened
  - steveklabnik 4y ago
    ... and I moved to Texas from Brooklyn, and I can assure you, longer term residents than me are still finding it foreign. That's slowly changing...
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Old narrow-street, maybe an alley in the back, grid-layout suburbs with the odd block corner zoned commercial and all-neighborhood-streets routes to all kinds of businesses and parks and libraries and such are a whole different beast from the twisty-road car-dependent mazes of post-70s suburbia. And they're so much damn nicer. Too bad no-one builds them anymore.
  - twiddling 4y ago
    problem isn't zoning but design regulations. A lot of street design is dictated by being able to fire engine equipment in and turned around. Hence no new alleys are being built.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      I don't even mean that narrow. Just not, like, 4ish cars wide. More like 3 or 2.5 (if one-way).
    - ultrarunner 4y ago
      The "residential" road that I live on is (and most in the area are) 45 ft wide, with 2.5' sidewalks. The Hummer H1 is an incredible 7.2 feet wide, meaning you could fit six full-size hummers side-by-side down this road. Add in the mandatory front 30ft setback and you have a sight line that is around 110 feet wide. People are expected to go up to 30 mph here. They don't.
    - alistairSH 4y ago
      We could build fire equipment to fit narrower streets.
      - zip1234 4y ago
        There already are fire trucks for that: https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/Meet-Kiri-the-tiny-Japanese-fire-truck-bringing-16137119.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/Meet-Kiri-the-tiny...
- zzzeek 4y ago
  I dont like noise, light pollution, or crowds. I'd like nighttime to be silent and pitch dark, and the daytime to be mostly silent as well. I go on trips and need to be able to load lots of stuff in and out of "my" or "a" car without living in terror of all of my stuff getting stolen while I'm inside. Where should I live? Note: I lived in three different boroughs of NYC for 25 years
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    That's nice. Many of us don't want that, but have it forced upon us considering something like 90% of all residential zoning in the USA is R1 zoning. There will be demand for neighborhoods you want and they will exist but it won't necessarily be in the middle of major population centers like it is now.
    - zzzeek 4y ago
      > 90% of all residential zoning in the USA is R1 well if that's based on land area that's not a very informative number. you'd want to do it by population.
      - jholman 4y ago
        What? No, doing it by population is a bad approach. Land is the resource you're dividing up. The question is how much of the divided-up land is allocated to an (allegedly) niche usage. Doing it by population is like saying "almost no one is a billionaire, almost everyone is basically poor and equally-poor, so there can't possibly be a wealth inequality problem". (I'm not saying there is/isn't a wealth inequality problem, I'm only saying that's a dud argument.)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jackson1442 4y ago
    Sounds like the country is the place for you, I experienced all of that in a suburb. The "living in terror" part sounds like you could use some work on mindfulness though.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > Much better than suburbia in my opinion. I think a lot of people just assume that the only kind of suburbia that exists is endless tract housing as far as the eye can see. I'm absolutely positive that does happen, but I've never lived in a suburban neighborhood that fit such a description. We have stores. We have business parks here and there. Heck, we even have public transit. This is probably why there is such a dichotomy between those who hate suburbia, and those who love it. Different experiences piggybacking on the same terminology.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    I don’t think parent was denying that, or at least I don’t get a sense of this dichotomy in the text. As someone that lives on Vashon island (what some consider a suburb of Seattle; but I actually consider rural King County), I got the sense that suburbia here was specifically directed at the endless tract of housing one (so like East Bellevue, Kent, or large parts of Kirkland), but not actual small towns around the main city (like Bothel, Lynnwood, Kirkland proper, or—well—Vashon) or even other dense urban areas like Burien or Redmond.
  - chrisfinazzo 4y ago
    If you find your way to my other comment ("suburban sprawl") this is largely what it looked like to me when I visited my brother. The developments aren't very large and there is roughly nothing around them. Contrast to NJ, where the NYC suburbs extend way outside Midtown and the city limits. As a result, it is very rare to feel like you are in the middle of nowhere.
- jayd16 4y ago
  Those single family homes are the exact plots that people look to as examples of NIMBY homeowners standing in the way of affordable housing.
throw0101a 4y ago
> Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around Basically how things were built pre-WW2? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&t=68s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&t=68s The Oh the Urbanity channel has a video on the (misguided) idea that "urban living" = Manhattan / Hong Kong apartment blocks: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E Examples (Streetview): * https://www.google.com/maps/place/125+Hampton+Ave,+Toronto,+ON https://www.google.com/maps/place/125+Hampton+Ave,+Toronto,+... * https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+ON https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+O... * https://www.google.com/maps/place/70+Jackman+Ave+Toronto,+ON https://www.google.com/maps/place/70+Jackman+Ave+Toronto,+ON See also: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6txCZpbsQ&t=9m28s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6txCZpbsQ&t=9m28s Fifteen minutes pedalling in one direction is downtown Amsterdam, fifteen minutes in the other is farm land.
- willnonya 4y ago
  "Basically how things were built pre-WW2?" Or, like many places still build them today?
- chrisco255 4y ago
  > Basically how things were built pre-WW2? The majority of America was not some idyllic "streetcar suburb" even pre WWII. Majority of it was either grid based urban development or rural residential / agriculture in large plots (often 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640 acre plots). https://web.archive.org/web/20131108174122/http://www.thegreatamericangrid.com/archives/777 https://web.archive.org/web/20131108174122/http://www.thegre... As agriculture got more efficient, and raising food for ones self became less common, and as cars became more prevalent these large rural plots often got sold to developers who would be tasked with breaking up the land into parcels and installing new roads and infrastructure. Even in 1906 in San Francisco, you can see that cars are beginning to overtake the cable car and horse carriage as the central form of transport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHkc83XA2dY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHkc83XA2dY So it's natural that majority of American land was developed around the automobile.
kiba 4y ago
Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Cars are currently two tons noise and pollution machine. It's no wonder why people feel unsafe around them. You could restrict traffic to only bicycles and pedestrians combined with mixed zoning. Also, lawn mowers....They're extremely loud.
- harvey9 4y ago
  Seems like a non sequitur
api 4y ago
> that are safe for kids It’s all about kids. Without kids in the picture sure, go ahead, make cities look like Coruscant from Star Wars. The instant you have kids you see how important open spaces safe enough for unstructured minimally supervised play are. Without spaces like this all you have are kids drooling on Roblox and YouTube all day. There’s nothing for kids in an urban core. Those spaces don’t have to be undeveloped or even outdoor but I have yet to see a city successfully create an environment safe enough that I’d let my small daughters run around. So while I agree that zoning is dumb and complicated, I also think it’s important to understand where people are coming from.
- JAlexoid 4y ago
  I grew up in a Soviet planned city, with courtyard focused developments. Our playgrounds were(they still are) larger and more accessible, than anything my current neighbours kids get on their 2a of land in rural USA. Even the new developments in Eastern Europe provide a kid friendly courtyard. Shielded from all traffic and observable by literally the whole community. Suburbia should be reserved for the insane rich people, that hate their neighbors.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    Advantages for real-estate developers triumphed over the community-minded across a lot of the USA. I talked to my elderly Uncle, and he said that these zoning and quality of life issues were discussed quite a bit in the 1950s, but the "sprawl" pattern won in most cases. Shopping mall retail is another example of low-quality results in the USA, but with a different menu of inputs.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    exactly - the problem is that House-absessed people do not understand how to build and manage apartments. In their imagination its just stacking towers without courtyards on top of each-other. When they have coirtyards, they looks lile prisons.
SamBam 4y ago
> and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around Actually, suburban streets are significantly more dangerous than urban streets, in terms of number of children killed, as a fraction of both population and miles driven. > Motor vehicle traffic was the leading mechanism of unintentional injury death among children aged 5–13, with the rural rate (3.1) twice as high as the urban rate (1.5) > Motor vehicle traffic was the leading mechanism of unintentional injury death among children aged 14–17 in both urban and rural areas; the rate was 2.5 times higher in rural (12.5) than in urban areas https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db421.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db421.htm > cul-de-sac communities actually have some of the highest rates of traffic accidents involving young children. In fact, children in suburban communities are five times more likely to be killed in a pedestrian accident than urban children. https://www.lewisandtompkins.com/motor-vehicle-and-public-transportation/pedestrian-bicycle-accidents/pedestrian-bicycle-accidents-questions/i-live-on-a-quiet-cul-de-sac-in-the-virginia-suburbs-do-i-really-need-to-supervise-my-children-while-they-play-outside/ https://www.lewisandtompkins.com/motor-vehicle-and-public-tr... > City streets safer than suburban roads, study finds https://whyy.org/articles/study-city-driving-often-safer-than-the-burbs/ https://whyy.org/articles/study-city-driving-often-safer-tha... > Cul-de-Sacs Are Killing Us: Public Safety Lessons From Suburbia https://usa.streetsblog.org/2011/06/07/cul-de-sacs-are-killing-us-public-safety-lessons-from-suburbia/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2011/06/07/cul-de-sacs-are-killi...
- spockz 4y ago
  But why is that? Maybe because children don’t play on the street at all in the city. So what does the fraction look when we take children playing outside and be healthy instead of just children? The chance remains the same but for the ones that survive there is a better quality of life.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - willnonya 4y ago
    There is also a significant ant difference in the absolute numbers. Not to mention people tend to be much lore cautious in high traffic areas.
giantrobot 4y ago
> Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? For one if zoning laws change tomorrow no one is going to bulldoze those neighborhoods on Thursday. So everyone already in their "safe" neighborhood will remain "safe". Except in rare circumstances no one is going to build a 10-lane expressway behind that tract of "safe" houses. Second you've got to be realistic about the socioeconomic factors behind those "safe" suburbs. The small, often winding suburban streets are largely impenetrable to buses and completely immune to light rail. This means public transit often used by "those people" (for whatever local definition of "those") is inaccessible from inside the "safe" suburban housing tracts. This is exacerbated by many suburbs lacking sidewalks. Inaccessibility of public transit was a design criteria for early suburbs preventing anyone that could afford a house but not a car from moving to them.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  > For one if zoning laws change tomorrow no one is going to bulldoze those neighborhoods on Thursday. I’m so in favor of up zoning, but some parts of California will be quickly thrust into a new reality. Santa Monica was the first town to fail the housing element. They previously had 1600 houses built in the last 8 years. Since failing recently, developers have submitted permits for 4000 units. That’s 20x above the yearly average. If I was a “desirable” town, I’d be very nervous to not comply. If I owned property in one of those towns I’d have been advertising it to developers hard too.
thatfrenchguy 4y ago
> Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? You mean like all the medium-density neighborhoods of San Francisco? American R-1 suburbs are a nightmare for kids, and that's why you never see any kids outside there, tell me how this: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Menlo+Park,+CA/@37.4562493,-122.160922,15.82z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x808fa6b1117280ff:0xebbf998e5df289ab!8m2!3d37.4529598!4d-122.1817252 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Menlo+Park,+CA/@37.4562493... , in one of America's most expensive suburbs, is any sort of safe for kids.
- hcurtiss 4y ago
  I live in a suburban R-1 neighborhood in Oregon and my kids play basketball, ride bikes, and roller skate in the street literally every day with boatloads of other kids. If that's your vision of a nightmare, I fear we're not going to agree on any of this.
  - veec_cas_tant 4y ago
    I'm seriously shocked by how many people value the idea that kids can play in the street. Why not a park or other recreation area? I get that it isn't entirely common in the United States to build walkable parks but that is a United States problem, not a city problem. Cities built for living should offer much better alternatives to children than playing in the street.
    - frenchy 4y ago
      > Why not a park or other recreation area How do they get there? What might not be obvious is that the parks are often far away, because you can't afford to maintain many parks because the tax base is too small.
      - veec_cas_tant 4y ago
        I completely agree if we are talking about a typical suburb. A mixed-use area built for living doesn't have that issue. What I find really strange is that some people in these comments seem opposed to mixed-use areas BECAUSE their children will no longer be able to play in the streets. It's like some sort of weird, cyclical way of justifying the lack of proper pedestrian areas.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
vineyardmike 4y ago
> Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Yes that is absolutely something people want. You can get that in cities if you give up on yard and instead share with parks. That said, some of the reasons people want it are uncomfortable. Some people don’t like change and moved somewhere based on how it looked in <year>, understandable, but change is a part of life especially as our population grows. Streets that are safe for kids are common in many parts of the world, in many different city structures, not just suburbs. So the “family friendly” myth about suburbs isn’t true. Regarding uncomfortable truths, if you go and listen to some of the town meetings, you’ll walk away with a couple points, of varying degrees of prejudice. Some people simply want it to be “exclusionary” to keep prices up, and to keep themselves feeling special. Those people in town meetings may suggest paying for affordable housing in another town to keep theirs as is. Some people will say they don’t want affordable housing because “we all know that those people bring crime”. This can be a varying degree of prejudice, whether it’s low income people or racial minorities, but invariably someone always says it.
- GenerocUsername 4y ago
  Parks cannot replace yards as long as the homeless camps exist across every existing park in my city.
  - xp84 4y ago
    This is very true. Sadly there is zero chance of finding a politically-palatable solution for this one in California.
    - d3nj4l 4y ago
      What is the non-politically-palatable solution?
      - nerdbert 4y ago
JAlexoid 4y ago
They absolutely can. In the end it should be their right... but... what happens now, is that they underpay for the infrastructure and services they get.
xp84 4y ago
many others have pointed out how tunnel-vision you are being, but just wanted to add: Low traffic → Less cars driving How do you get less cars driving? People need realistic options. How do you get those options? Density to support transit and Density to support having businesses close to everyone's homes so they can just walk or bike. Car-dependent suburbia IS the problem, and the more of it you have in the city the bigger the problems of traffic and unaffordability get. Finally though: > want to keep them that way Look, don't get carried away. Unless a very significant block of homeowners in your beautiful leafy neighborhood are itching to sell, you have literally nothing to fear. Maybe when a large mall is demolished a mile away from you, someone will build something other than single-family tract homes. Big whoop. *Nobody is coming for your suburbs with bulldozers* just because "SFH" might not be enshrined as the only way anything can be developed.
- nlavezzo 4y ago
  > many others have pointed out how tunnel-vision you are being I'm not advocating for low density suburbs or for things to remain unchanged. My point was that the implication that some kind of nefarious prejudice was the main reason for homeowners wanting to keep the status quo, isn't fair or accurate.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  This is a very simplistic view. Less people per unit land also means less cars per unit land. Depending on how the roads are designed, you can get a spread out neighborhood with no traffic on your street. I grew up on a cul-de-sac. There were 8 houses on the street. The only time there was a car on the street is when someone from one of those 8 houses went somewhere. There was zero traffic and the street was safe for kids to play in.
  - nerdbert 4y ago
    > Less people per unit land also means less cars per unit land. Only if you arbitrarily cherry-pick the unit of analysis to support your argument. The only way to actually reduce cars per unit of land across all available land is to increase housing density so that sensible transportation alternatives like bicycle and metro become viable for the lazier marginal population.
anyfoo 4y ago
> Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? You're describing European cities, there. That is literally how I grew up in a big city, and we were lower middle class at best.
BurningFrog 4y ago
I think the primary reason in 2023 is to keep housing values high and rising, not racism.
dahfizz 4y ago
The pro-density crowd cannot comprehend wanting to live in a quiet, safe, uncrowded town. They say the only possible motivations are money and racism.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lamontcg 4y ago
  San Fransisco left behind "uncrowded town" quite a lot time ago.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  Sure we can. We just think that can also look like this: https://youtu.be/5APjiZz_XCY https://youtu.be/5APjiZz_XCY Uncrowded is subjective I suppose but it's certainly no Manhattan.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  What we can't comprehend is forcing everyone in the country to live in the type of town you want. Move to bumfuck if you want a quiet uncrowded town. People near jobs want cheap housing.
- vkou 4y ago
  > The pro-density crowd cannot comprehend wanting to live in a quiet, safe, uncrowded town. No, we just can't comprehend why you would expect the big city to be quiet and uncrowded. It's like moving to the tropics, and complaining that it rains too much, and that the skiing sucks. If you want quiet and uncrowded, there's the 99.9% of the country's land area that isn't taken up by coastal metros in the middle of a crippling housing crisis.
- ryan_lane 4y ago
  I live in Tokyo, in a central area (nearish to Shibuya). It's dense, but quiet, safe, and surprisingly not that crowded. There's a few children's play areas within a 2 minute walk. There's numerous parks around me, including dog runs. The anti-density crowd can't imagine allowing well planned towns and cities to exist in the US.
dnissley 4y ago
I would say that the reasons you stated above are uncomfortable because they are implicitly discriminatory to people outside those areas who want to move in. People who already live there are, in effect, saying "we're full up here, go somewhere else". And these are often the same people with signs in their front yard saying things like "no matter where you are from, we're glad you're our neighbor" in multiple languages, or "climate change is real", or "no human is illegal" which espouse values in direct opposition to that implicitly discriminatory message.
hadlock 4y ago
Many of the big trees are on public right of ways. Nothing is happening to them. The center of many city residential blocks are still quiet green oasis. Busy streets will still stay busy, quiet side streets tend to stay that way. Go look at any european city, or any city outside of the US really
- parineum 4y ago
  > Many of the big trees are on public right of ways. Nothing is happening to them. *Until the city decides they want to change it That's why people want to ensrine in law that those trees don't change. They don't trust the city to maintain homeostasis for the duration of their residency. What happens when people want to build a new apartment building but those trees are too big to safely build next to?
  - nerdbert 4y ago
    You make a very good point: Only cities chop down trees, private landowners absolutely never ever do.
    - parineum 4y ago
      They don't (legally) on city property. That's what we're talking about. If you move into a neighborhood where the city maintains the trees in the common areas (sidewalks, parks, etc.), it's not unreasonable to want to put a barrier between the city deciding, for example, it's too expensive to keep maintaining those trees so they are going to cut them all down. If I or my neighbor wants to cut down a tree is a completely different conversation. I appreciate your snark though, even though it's completely irrelevant.
CalRobert 4y ago
Low traffic streets are a reason to remove cars, not people.
_ZeD_ 4y ago
...and then you need a car because everything is literally miles away
- zip1234 4y ago
  Cities are not loud. Cars are loud!
scythe 4y ago
> > The answers are very uncomfortable. > but implying that all of these homeowners are primarily driven by prejudice This is a good example of why being coy rather than explicit is bad for productive discussion. Bigotry of its various forms is certainly one possible uncomfortable answer to the question. But there are others, like crime, or the effect of local property-value-to-enrollment ratio on school quality, or plenty of other problems that systematically occur in American cities. NIMBYism is by no means the exclusive domain of homeowners in low-density neighborhoods. Even when it comes from them, they are often concerned with developments that are not actually in their neighborhoods — their trees and yards not being in jeopardy. There's a fundamental distrust of the overall process of development that animates anti-growth sentiments not only in middle-class neighborhoods but also in, for example, the Mission.
tshaddox 4y ago
Nothing about this would let a developer cut down your tree, build on your yard, etc. You just wouldn't be able to stop your neighbor from selling their property to a developer who might cut down trees and build things there. It's not unreasonable for you to have preferences about what your neighbors do with their property, just like it's not unreasonable for you to have preferences about which kinds of restaurants are close to your home. But should you be able to prevent your favorite restaurant from legally closing?
- nlavezzo 4y ago
  Your neighbor doesn't currently have the right to do anything they want with their property though. They don't absolutely own it and have some kind of sovereign status. They can't turn it into a gas station or auto repair shop. They have the right to exclusive use of the land for the purpose of a single family dwelling built to certain specifications and abiding by various guidelines and regulations. When each neighbor bought into the neighborhood, they all signed up for this same basic deal. Many of them would likely have chosen to not spend their money on the property had their neighbors not been bound by the same rules. What is being proposed is a significant change to those rules that every owner at some point agreed to. This absolutely does affect everyone in the neighborhood because an older neighborhood is more than a collection of unrelated properties, it is a collection of actual homes of similar size and character with a particular feel and aesthetic. A change to the rules may absolutely be necessary for the health of the city / population as a whole. Totally agree with this. Don't pretend though that it's not coming at the cost of infringing on the existing homeowners' reasonable expectations of what they bought into when they purchased their properties. Again, maybe it does need to happen, but homeowners are not unreasonable for wanting to keep their neighborhoods as they've always known and loved them.
  - zip1234 4y ago
    Buying a house and expecting nothing to change in one's neighborhood is completely unreasonable. Places change constantly.
    - 4y ago
andrepd 4y ago
> low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around Suburban streets are extremely dangerous to kids (in fact being hit by a driver is the leading cause of death to kids under 14). You know what is safe? Walkable cities, pedestrianised streets, speed bumps wherever cars do drive inside the city, etc.
fleddr 4y ago
Even the prejudice part we don't have to dance around. I'm from the Netherlands, and for the first 24 years of my life have lived in lower working class neighborhoods, 3 in total. Low income families, people on wellfare, the like. In this case all white, so it's not a racial thing. All of these 3 neighborhoods were awful. Relatively high crime, vandalism, the public dumping of trash, alcoholism, very loud music blasting, shouting, just general anti-social behavior. The biggest quality of life improvement in my lifetime is that eventually I was able to afford living in a good neighborhood. Middle class to a bit above it. Families, stable citizens, civil, considerate, sane. The piece of mind this gives is invaluable. This is just one step up the ladder, I'm by no means rich. It's not elitism. It shouldn't be a high bar to feel comfortable, safe, and not constantly frustrated by obnoxious people, or the spaces ruined. But at the same time we should acknowledge that this "bar" is strongly correlated with class. For obvious reasons, in the lower classes more people have what I'll categorize as "social issues". And here's the thing. It's a rotten apple dynamic. Perhaps as little as 5-10% of the inhabitants are responsible for all this shit, yet the entire neighborhood becomes unlivable because of it. The real issue here is that these rotten apples are not addressed. Because it's near-impossible to address. The behavior is petty crime at best and often merely obnoxious and anti-social behavior. You can't put people in jail for that and they have to live somewhere. This is already the lowest end, there's nowhere else to go. So the positive here is that it's not racism (in my example), and not even classism. 90% of people in the lower classes are decent and social people. The real issue is the inability to deal with the 10% that is not. The dysfunctionals and anti-socials wrecking the place. I'm sure that each has their own story, but I'm not going to suffer my entire life at their whims. I've done plenty of that. You could say that this "prejudice" is very much grounded in reality. Sometimes you need to a reality check.

jackson1442 4y ago

You can have all this (and more!) in cities as well. Lived in Seattle for a bit and my apartment had several neighborhoods of single-family homes within a couple blocks: each with mature trees, yards, and low traffic streets. Sure, the yard maybe isn't as massive as you can get in a suburb, but there's still plenty of space (and far more public parks). Because they were so close to dense housing, they also had the added benefits of public transit and being walking distance to several grocery stores. Much better than suburbia in my opinion.

hcurtiss 4y ago
But I do think that's a matter of opinion, and totally unrelated to prejudice.
jtbayly 4y ago
I mean, you’re basically saying that you can have suburbia in the city? If lots of people want it, the price will skyrocket, so then somebody will buy some land just outside the city and build suburbia there so more people can afford it. Rinse and repeat.
brundolf 4y ago
Having lived in Texas my whole life this idea was mostly foreign to me, but last year I visited Brooklyn and had my eyes opened
- steveklabnik 4y ago
  ... and I moved to Texas from Brooklyn, and I can assure you, longer term residents than me are still finding it foreign. That's slowly changing...
yamtaddle 4y ago
Old narrow-street, maybe an alley in the back, grid-layout suburbs with the odd block corner zoned commercial and all-neighborhood-streets routes to all kinds of businesses and parks and libraries and such are a whole different beast from the twisty-road car-dependent mazes of post-70s suburbia. And they're so much damn nicer. Too bad no-one builds them anymore.
- twiddling 4y ago
  problem isn't zoning but design regulations. A lot of street design is dictated by being able to fire engine equipment in and turned around. Hence no new alleys are being built.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    I don't even mean that narrow. Just not, like, 4ish cars wide. More like 3 or 2.5 (if one-way).
  - ultrarunner 4y ago
    The "residential" road that I live on is (and most in the area are) 45 ft wide, with 2.5' sidewalks. The Hummer H1 is an incredible 7.2 feet wide, meaning you could fit six full-size hummers side-by-side down this road. Add in the mandatory front 30ft setback and you have a sight line that is around 110 feet wide. People are expected to go up to 30 mph here. They don't.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    We could build fire equipment to fit narrower streets.
    - zip1234 4y ago
      There already are fire trucks for that: https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/Meet-Kiri-the-tiny-Japanese-fire-truck-bringing-16137119.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/Meet-Kiri-the-tiny...
zzzeek 4y ago
I dont like noise, light pollution, or crowds. I'd like nighttime to be silent and pitch dark, and the daytime to be mostly silent as well. I go on trips and need to be able to load lots of stuff in and out of "my" or "a" car without living in terror of all of my stuff getting stolen while I'm inside. Where should I live? Note: I lived in three different boroughs of NYC for 25 years
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  That's nice. Many of us don't want that, but have it forced upon us considering something like 90% of all residential zoning in the USA is R1 zoning. There will be demand for neighborhoods you want and they will exist but it won't necessarily be in the middle of major population centers like it is now.
  - zzzeek 4y ago
    > 90% of all residential zoning in the USA is R1 well if that's based on land area that's not a very informative number. you'd want to do it by population.
    - jholman 4y ago
      What? No, doing it by population is a bad approach. Land is the resource you're dividing up. The question is how much of the divided-up land is allocated to an (allegedly) niche usage. Doing it by population is like saying "almost no one is a billionaire, almost everyone is basically poor and equally-poor, so there can't possibly be a wealth inequality problem". (I'm not saying there is/isn't a wealth inequality problem, I'm only saying that's a dud argument.)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jackson1442 4y ago
  Sounds like the country is the place for you, I experienced all of that in a suburb. The "living in terror" part sounds like you could use some work on mindfulness though.
rootusrootus 4y ago
> Much better than suburbia in my opinion. I think a lot of people just assume that the only kind of suburbia that exists is endless tract housing as far as the eye can see. I'm absolutely positive that does happen, but I've never lived in a suburban neighborhood that fit such a description. We have stores. We have business parks here and there. Heck, we even have public transit. This is probably why there is such a dichotomy between those who hate suburbia, and those who love it. Different experiences piggybacking on the same terminology.
- runarberg 4y ago
  I don’t think parent was denying that, or at least I don’t get a sense of this dichotomy in the text. As someone that lives on Vashon island (what some consider a suburb of Seattle; but I actually consider rural King County), I got the sense that suburbia here was specifically directed at the endless tract of housing one (so like East Bellevue, Kent, or large parts of Kirkland), but not actual small towns around the main city (like Bothel, Lynnwood, Kirkland proper, or—well—Vashon) or even other dense urban areas like Burien or Redmond.
- chrisfinazzo 4y ago
  If you find your way to my other comment ("suburban sprawl") this is largely what it looked like to me when I visited my brother. The developments aren't very large and there is roughly nothing around them. Contrast to NJ, where the NYC suburbs extend way outside Midtown and the city limits. As a result, it is very rare to feel like you are in the middle of nowhere.
jayd16 4y ago
Those single family homes are the exact plots that people look to as examples of NIMBY homeowners standing in the way of affordable housing.

throw0101a 4y ago

> Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around Basically how things were built pre-WW2? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&t=68s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&t=68s The Oh the Urbanity channel has a video on the (misguided) idea that "urban living" = Manhattan / Hong Kong apartment blocks: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E Examples (Streetview): * https://www.google.com/maps/place/125+Hampton+Ave,+Toronto,+ON https://www.google.com/maps/place/125+Hampton+Ave,+Toronto,+... * https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+ON https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+O... * https://www.google.com/maps/place/70+Jackman+Ave+Toronto,+ON https://www.google.com/maps/place/70+Jackman+Ave+Toronto,+ON See also: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6txCZpbsQ&t=9m28s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6txCZpbsQ&t=9m28s Fifteen minutes pedalling in one direction is downtown Amsterdam, fifteen minutes in the other is farm land.

willnonya 4y ago
"Basically how things were built pre-WW2?" Or, like many places still build them today?
chrisco255 4y ago
> Basically how things were built pre-WW2? The majority of America was not some idyllic "streetcar suburb" even pre WWII. Majority of it was either grid based urban development or rural residential / agriculture in large plots (often 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640 acre plots). https://web.archive.org/web/20131108174122/http://www.thegreatamericangrid.com/archives/777 https://web.archive.org/web/20131108174122/http://www.thegre... As agriculture got more efficient, and raising food for ones self became less common, and as cars became more prevalent these large rural plots often got sold to developers who would be tasked with breaking up the land into parcels and installing new roads and infrastructure. Even in 1906 in San Francisco, you can see that cars are beginning to overtake the cable car and horse carriage as the central form of transport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHkc83XA2dY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHkc83XA2dY So it's natural that majority of American land was developed around the automobile.

kiba 4y ago

Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Cars are currently two tons noise and pollution machine. It's no wonder why people feel unsafe around them. You could restrict traffic to only bicycles and pedestrians combined with mixed zoning. Also, lawn mowers....They're extremely loud.

harvey9 4y ago
Seems like a non sequitur

api 4y ago

> that are safe for kids It’s all about kids. Without kids in the picture sure, go ahead, make cities look like Coruscant from Star Wars. The instant you have kids you see how important open spaces safe enough for unstructured minimally supervised play are. Without spaces like this all you have are kids drooling on Roblox and YouTube all day. There’s nothing for kids in an urban core. Those spaces don’t have to be undeveloped or even outdoor but I have yet to see a city successfully create an environment safe enough that I’d let my small daughters run around. So while I agree that zoning is dumb and complicated, I also think it’s important to understand where people are coming from.

JAlexoid 4y ago
I grew up in a Soviet planned city, with courtyard focused developments. Our playgrounds were(they still are) larger and more accessible, than anything my current neighbours kids get on their 2a of land in rural USA. Even the new developments in Eastern Europe provide a kid friendly courtyard. Shielded from all traffic and observable by literally the whole community. Suburbia should be reserved for the insane rich people, that hate their neighbors.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  Advantages for real-estate developers triumphed over the community-minded across a lot of the USA. I talked to my elderly Uncle, and he said that these zoning and quality of life issues were discussed quite a bit in the 1950s, but the "sprawl" pattern won in most cases. Shopping mall retail is another example of low-quality results in the USA, but with a different menu of inputs.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  exactly - the problem is that House-absessed people do not understand how to build and manage apartments. In their imagination its just stacking towers without courtyards on top of each-other. When they have coirtyards, they looks lile prisons.

SamBam 4y ago

> and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around Actually, suburban streets are significantly more dangerous than urban streets, in terms of number of children killed, as a fraction of both population and miles driven. > Motor vehicle traffic was the leading mechanism of unintentional injury death among children aged 5–13, with the rural rate (3.1) twice as high as the urban rate (1.5) > Motor vehicle traffic was the leading mechanism of unintentional injury death among children aged 14–17 in both urban and rural areas; the rate was 2.5 times higher in rural (12.5) than in urban areas https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db421.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db421.htm > cul-de-sac communities actually have some of the highest rates of traffic accidents involving young children. In fact, children in suburban communities are five times more likely to be killed in a pedestrian accident than urban children. https://www.lewisandtompkins.com/motor-vehicle-and-public-transportation/pedestrian-bicycle-accidents/pedestrian-bicycle-accidents-questions/i-live-on-a-quiet-cul-de-sac-in-the-virginia-suburbs-do-i-really-need-to-supervise-my-children-while-they-play-outside/ https://www.lewisandtompkins.com/motor-vehicle-and-public-tr... > City streets safer than suburban roads, study finds https://whyy.org/articles/study-city-driving-often-safer-than-the-burbs/ https://whyy.org/articles/study-city-driving-often-safer-tha... > Cul-de-Sacs Are Killing Us: Public Safety Lessons From Suburbia https://usa.streetsblog.org/2011/06/07/cul-de-sacs-are-killing-us-public-safety-lessons-from-suburbia/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2011/06/07/cul-de-sacs-are-killi...

spockz 4y ago
But why is that? Maybe because children don’t play on the street at all in the city. So what does the fraction look when we take children playing outside and be healthy instead of just children? The chance remains the same but for the ones that survive there is a better quality of life.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- willnonya 4y ago
  There is also a significant ant difference in the absolute numbers. Not to mention people tend to be much lore cautious in high traffic areas.

giantrobot 4y ago

> Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? For one if zoning laws change tomorrow no one is going to bulldoze those neighborhoods on Thursday. So everyone already in their "safe" neighborhood will remain "safe". Except in rare circumstances no one is going to build a 10-lane expressway behind that tract of "safe" houses. Second you've got to be realistic about the socioeconomic factors behind those "safe" suburbs. The small, often winding suburban streets are largely impenetrable to buses and completely immune to light rail. This means public transit often used by "those people" (for whatever local definition of "those") is inaccessible from inside the "safe" suburban housing tracts. This is exacerbated by many suburbs lacking sidewalks. Inaccessibility of public transit was a design criteria for early suburbs preventing anyone that could afford a house but not a car from moving to them.

vineyardmike 4y ago
> For one if zoning laws change tomorrow no one is going to bulldoze those neighborhoods on Thursday. I’m so in favor of up zoning, but some parts of California will be quickly thrust into a new reality. Santa Monica was the first town to fail the housing element. They previously had 1600 houses built in the last 8 years. Since failing recently, developers have submitted permits for 4000 units. That’s 20x above the yearly average. If I was a “desirable” town, I’d be very nervous to not comply. If I owned property in one of those towns I’d have been advertising it to developers hard too.

thatfrenchguy 4y ago

> Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? You mean like all the medium-density neighborhoods of San Francisco? American R-1 suburbs are a nightmare for kids, and that's why you never see any kids outside there, tell me how this: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Menlo+Park,+CA/@37.4562493,-122.160922,15.82z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x808fa6b1117280ff:0xebbf998e5df289ab!8m2!3d37.4529598!4d-122.1817252 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Menlo+Park,+CA/@37.4562493... , in one of America's most expensive suburbs, is any sort of safe for kids.

hcurtiss 4y ago
I live in a suburban R-1 neighborhood in Oregon and my kids play basketball, ride bikes, and roller skate in the street literally every day with boatloads of other kids. If that's your vision of a nightmare, I fear we're not going to agree on any of this.
- veec_cas_tant 4y ago
  I'm seriously shocked by how many people value the idea that kids can play in the street. Why not a park or other recreation area? I get that it isn't entirely common in the United States to build walkable parks but that is a United States problem, not a city problem. Cities built for living should offer much better alternatives to children than playing in the street.
  - frenchy 4y ago
    > Why not a park or other recreation area How do they get there? What might not be obvious is that the parks are often far away, because you can't afford to maintain many parks because the tax base is too small.
    - veec_cas_tant 4y ago
      I completely agree if we are talking about a typical suburb. A mixed-use area built for living doesn't have that issue. What I find really strange is that some people in these comments seem opposed to mixed-use areas BECAUSE their children will no longer be able to play in the streets. It's like some sort of weird, cyclical way of justifying the lack of proper pedestrian areas.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

vineyardmike 4y ago

> Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Yes that is absolutely something people want. You can get that in cities if you give up on yard and instead share with parks. That said, some of the reasons people want it are uncomfortable. Some people don’t like change and moved somewhere based on how it looked in <year>, understandable, but change is a part of life especially as our population grows. Streets that are safe for kids are common in many parts of the world, in many different city structures, not just suburbs. So the “family friendly” myth about suburbs isn’t true. Regarding uncomfortable truths, if you go and listen to some of the town meetings, you’ll walk away with a couple points, of varying degrees of prejudice. Some people simply want it to be “exclusionary” to keep prices up, and to keep themselves feeling special. Those people in town meetings may suggest paying for affordable housing in another town to keep theirs as is. Some people will say they don’t want affordable housing because “we all know that those people bring crime”. This can be a varying degree of prejudice, whether it’s low income people or racial minorities, but invariably someone always says it.

GenerocUsername 4y ago
Parks cannot replace yards as long as the homeless camps exist across every existing park in my city.
- xp84 4y ago
  This is very true. Sadly there is zero chance of finding a politically-palatable solution for this one in California.
  - d3nj4l 4y ago
    What is the non-politically-palatable solution?
    - nerdbert 4y ago

JAlexoid 4y ago

They absolutely can. In the end it should be their right... but... what happens now, is that they underpay for the infrastructure and services they get.

xp84 4y ago

many others have pointed out how tunnel-vision you are being, but just wanted to add: Low traffic → Less cars driving How do you get less cars driving? People need realistic options. How do you get those options? Density to support transit and Density to support having businesses close to everyone's homes so they can just walk or bike. Car-dependent suburbia IS the problem, and the more of it you have in the city the bigger the problems of traffic and unaffordability get. Finally though: > want to keep them that way Look, don't get carried away. Unless a very significant block of homeowners in your beautiful leafy neighborhood are itching to sell, you have literally nothing to fear. Maybe when a large mall is demolished a mile away from you, someone will build something other than single-family tract homes. Big whoop. *Nobody is coming for your suburbs with bulldozers* just because "SFH" might not be enshrined as the only way anything can be developed.

nlavezzo 4y ago
> many others have pointed out how tunnel-vision you are being I'm not advocating for low density suburbs or for things to remain unchanged. My point was that the implication that some kind of nefarious prejudice was the main reason for homeowners wanting to keep the status quo, isn't fair or accurate.
dahfizz 4y ago
This is a very simplistic view. Less people per unit land also means less cars per unit land. Depending on how the roads are designed, you can get a spread out neighborhood with no traffic on your street. I grew up on a cul-de-sac. There were 8 houses on the street. The only time there was a car on the street is when someone from one of those 8 houses went somewhere. There was zero traffic and the street was safe for kids to play in.
- nerdbert 4y ago
  > Less people per unit land also means less cars per unit land. Only if you arbitrarily cherry-pick the unit of analysis to support your argument. The only way to actually reduce cars per unit of land across all available land is to increase housing density so that sensible transportation alternatives like bicycle and metro become viable for the lazier marginal population.

anyfoo 4y ago

> Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? You're describing European cities, there. That is literally how I grew up in a big city, and we were lower middle class at best.

BurningFrog 4y ago

I think the primary reason in 2023 is to keep housing values high and rising, not racism.

dahfizz 4y ago

The pro-density crowd cannot comprehend wanting to live in a quiet, safe, uncrowded town. They say the only possible motivations are money and racism.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lamontcg 4y ago
San Fransisco left behind "uncrowded town" quite a lot time ago.
ryukafalz 4y ago
Sure we can. We just think that can also look like this: https://youtu.be/5APjiZz_XCY https://youtu.be/5APjiZz_XCY Uncrowded is subjective I suppose but it's certainly no Manhattan.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
What we can't comprehend is forcing everyone in the country to live in the type of town you want. Move to bumfuck if you want a quiet uncrowded town. People near jobs want cheap housing.
vkou 4y ago
> The pro-density crowd cannot comprehend wanting to live in a quiet, safe, uncrowded town. No, we just can't comprehend why you would expect the big city to be quiet and uncrowded. It's like moving to the tropics, and complaining that it rains too much, and that the skiing sucks. If you want quiet and uncrowded, there's the 99.9% of the country's land area that isn't taken up by coastal metros in the middle of a crippling housing crisis.
ryan_lane 4y ago
I live in Tokyo, in a central area (nearish to Shibuya). It's dense, but quiet, safe, and surprisingly not that crowded. There's a few children's play areas within a 2 minute walk. There's numerous parks around me, including dog runs. The anti-density crowd can't imagine allowing well planned towns and cities to exist in the US.

dnissley 4y ago

I would say that the reasons you stated above are uncomfortable because they are implicitly discriminatory to people outside those areas who want to move in. People who already live there are, in effect, saying "we're full up here, go somewhere else". And these are often the same people with signs in their front yard saying things like "no matter where you are from, we're glad you're our neighbor" in multiple languages, or "climate change is real", or "no human is illegal" which espouse values in direct opposition to that implicitly discriminatory message.

hadlock 4y ago

Many of the big trees are on public right of ways. Nothing is happening to them. The center of many city residential blocks are still quiet green oasis. Busy streets will still stay busy, quiet side streets tend to stay that way. Go look at any european city, or any city outside of the US really

parineum 4y ago
> Many of the big trees are on public right of ways. Nothing is happening to them. *Until the city decides they want to change it That's why people want to ensrine in law that those trees don't change. They don't trust the city to maintain homeostasis for the duration of their residency. What happens when people want to build a new apartment building but those trees are too big to safely build next to?
- nerdbert 4y ago
  You make a very good point: Only cities chop down trees, private landowners absolutely never ever do.
  - parineum 4y ago
    They don't (legally) on city property. That's what we're talking about. If you move into a neighborhood where the city maintains the trees in the common areas (sidewalks, parks, etc.), it's not unreasonable to want to put a barrier between the city deciding, for example, it's too expensive to keep maintaining those trees so they are going to cut them all down. If I or my neighbor wants to cut down a tree is a completely different conversation. I appreciate your snark though, even though it's completely irrelevant.

CalRobert 4y ago

Low traffic streets are a reason to remove cars, not people.

_ZeD_ 4y ago

...and then you need a car because everything is literally miles away

zip1234 4y ago
Cities are not loud. Cars are loud!

scythe 4y ago

> > The answers are very uncomfortable. > but implying that all of these homeowners are primarily driven by prejudice This is a good example of why being coy rather than explicit is bad for productive discussion. Bigotry of its various forms is certainly one possible uncomfortable answer to the question. But there are others, like crime, or the effect of local property-value-to-enrollment ratio on school quality, or plenty of other problems that systematically occur in American cities. NIMBYism is by no means the exclusive domain of homeowners in low-density neighborhoods. Even when it comes from them, they are often concerned with developments that are not actually in their neighborhoods — their trees and yards not being in jeopardy. There's a fundamental distrust of the overall process of development that animates anti-growth sentiments not only in middle-class neighborhoods but also in, for example, the Mission.

tshaddox 4y ago

Nothing about this would let a developer cut down your tree, build on your yard, etc. You just wouldn't be able to stop your neighbor from selling their property to a developer who might cut down trees and build things there. It's not unreasonable for you to have preferences about what your neighbors do with their property, just like it's not unreasonable for you to have preferences about which kinds of restaurants are close to your home. But should you be able to prevent your favorite restaurant from legally closing?

nlavezzo 4y ago
Your neighbor doesn't currently have the right to do anything they want with their property though. They don't absolutely own it and have some kind of sovereign status. They can't turn it into a gas station or auto repair shop. They have the right to exclusive use of the land for the purpose of a single family dwelling built to certain specifications and abiding by various guidelines and regulations. When each neighbor bought into the neighborhood, they all signed up for this same basic deal. Many of them would likely have chosen to not spend their money on the property had their neighbors not been bound by the same rules. What is being proposed is a significant change to those rules that every owner at some point agreed to. This absolutely does affect everyone in the neighborhood because an older neighborhood is more than a collection of unrelated properties, it is a collection of actual homes of similar size and character with a particular feel and aesthetic. A change to the rules may absolutely be necessary for the health of the city / population as a whole. Totally agree with this. Don't pretend though that it's not coming at the cost of infringing on the existing homeowners' reasonable expectations of what they bought into when they purchased their properties. Again, maybe it does need to happen, but homeowners are not unreasonable for wanting to keep their neighborhoods as they've always known and loved them.
- zip1234 4y ago
  Buying a house and expecting nothing to change in one's neighborhood is completely unreasonable. Places change constantly.
  - 4y ago

andrepd 4y ago

> low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around Suburban streets are extremely dangerous to kids (in fact being hit by a driver is the leading cause of death to kids under 14). You know what is safe? Walkable cities, pedestrianised streets, speed bumps wherever cars do drive inside the city, etc.

fleddr 4y ago

Even the prejudice part we don't have to dance around. I'm from the Netherlands, and for the first 24 years of my life have lived in lower working class neighborhoods, 3 in total. Low income families, people on wellfare, the like. In this case all white, so it's not a racial thing. All of these 3 neighborhoods were awful. Relatively high crime, vandalism, the public dumping of trash, alcoholism, very loud music blasting, shouting, just general anti-social behavior. The biggest quality of life improvement in my lifetime is that eventually I was able to afford living in a good neighborhood. Middle class to a bit above it. Families, stable citizens, civil, considerate, sane. The piece of mind this gives is invaluable. This is just one step up the ladder, I'm by no means rich. It's not elitism. It shouldn't be a high bar to feel comfortable, safe, and not constantly frustrated by obnoxious people, or the spaces ruined. But at the same time we should acknowledge that this "bar" is strongly correlated with class. For obvious reasons, in the lower classes more people have what I'll categorize as "social issues". And here's the thing. It's a rotten apple dynamic. Perhaps as little as 5-10% of the inhabitants are responsible for all this shit, yet the entire neighborhood becomes unlivable because of it. The real issue here is that these rotten apples are not addressed. Because it's near-impossible to address. The behavior is petty crime at best and often merely obnoxious and anti-social behavior. You can't put people in jail for that and they have to live somewhere. This is already the lowest end, there's nowhere else to go. So the positive here is that it's not racism (in my example), and not even classism. 90% of people in the lower classes are decent and social people. The real issue is the inability to deal with the 10% that is not. The dysfunctionals and anti-socials wrecking the place. I'm sure that each has their own story, but I'm not going to suffer my entire life at their whims. I've done plenty of that. You could say that this "prejudice" is very much grounded in reality. Sometimes you need to a reality check.