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People keep bringing up Tokyo but it's not really relevant. Yes, Tokyo has mixed zoning. But it was developed the way it is because the people who live there wa

People keep bringing up Tokyo but it's not really relevant. Yes, Tokyo has mixed zoning. But it was developed the way it is because the people who live there want it to be that way. It's also only livable because the people there have a culture that makes it possible to live in high density without high levels of crime, noise, and filth. Americans in the same situation would not have built something like Tokyo. If you're going to bring up Tokyo you should also bring up Houston. Houston is what most American cities would look like if the people who lived there were able to build what they wanted. Most Americans want to live in detached homes that they own, and they prefer cars to public transit.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
stouset 4y ago
> Most Americans want to live in detached homes that they own, and they prefer cars to public transit. Most people just want what they're already accustomed to. We quite literally have the power to influence that instead of just throwing our hands up and saying "well gosh Americans want terribly designed communities whose long-term costs are completely unsustainable, so I guess there's nothing we can do about it." This isn't some immutable law of the damned universe.
- twblalock 4y ago
  > We quite literally have the power to influence that instead of just throwing our hands up and saying "well gosh Americans want terribly designed communities whose long-term costs are completely unsustainable, so I guess there's nothing we can do about it." That's quite a strawman there. Suburbs are not inherently unsustainable or terribly designed. Some are, but some cities are too. I'm seeing a ton of strawman arguments, totally inaccurate descriptions of suburbs, unsourced hyperbole about "subsidies" and "externalities", and conflation of "suburb" and "rural" in this thread which certainly does not apply to any suburbs I've ever lived in.
  - bandofthehawk 4y ago
    > Suburbs are not inherently unsustainable or terribly designed. Some are, but some cities are too. I would guess that most suburbs are financially unsustainable in the long term because they pay less in taxes than it costs to maintain their infrastructure. Strong towns talks about this in great detail.
    - twblalock 4y ago
      > I would guess that most suburbs are financially unsustainable in the long term because they pay less in taxes than it costs to maintain their infrastructure. Again, that is something that might be true for some places but not others. I know of suburbs that definitely pay for themselves. And it's not hard to see why -- the property taxes are high and many of the residents are paying high income taxes too. Plus, many residents of suburbs commute to work in cities, where they contribute to the success of businesses that pay taxes in those cities. I also know that some of the new subdivisions outside of Sacramento have paid for all of their infrastructure via their HOA, so that all of the money to build and maintain the roads, sewers, and power lines was 100% paid for by the homeowners. That's also apparently a common model for new housing in Nevada. These arguments about taxes are also a form of special pleading that we don't see much of in other debates. Taxes are redistribution. Quite a lot of people and organizations get more in benefits from the government than they pay for, e.g. welfare recipients and students getting grants, companies get subsidies, state governments move money around to pay for schools, etc. Nobody seriously argues that the police and fire departments should only serve people who pay income tax, or that people without children shouldn't be taxed to pay for schools. Yet for some reason people seem to think that suburbs should have a unique requirement to pay for themselves 100% and can't be sustained if they don't.
      - nicbou 4y ago
        > Taxes are redistribution. Why should they be redistributed to the recreationally remote? Are they especially in need?
        4y ago
- majormajor 4y ago
  > Most people just want what they're already accustomed to. People with more resources and more power have taken larger living spaces for centuries, the idea of wanting more space isn't some creation of post-WWII America. Nowdays we talk about trains in the US as a "let's get away from suburban development" but the train itself was a driver of suburbanization from London, historically - people opted for more space and a train commute when they got the option.
- Tade0 4y ago
  > Most people just want what they're already accustomed to. Do they really? My country is a textbook case of the opposite, where the general population suddenly decided they don't really want to live in apartment blocks in the city - especially the type which was built in the communist second half of the XXth century. What happened next was intense proliferation of sprawl. It actually was seen as a status symbol back then to be able to afford a detached house. So much so that the urbanization rate actually slightly fell in the past 20 years. People gravitate towards comfort and apparently needing to drive everywhere but having enormous living space is preferable to living in a relatively small apartment and walking/cycling.
zbrozek 4y ago
And Houston has more diversity and better affordability than most other top tier American cities.
- majormajor 4y ago
  And it has much lower overall population density, so diversity and affordability clearly aren't automatically driven by density. Houston has space to expand so it can easily keep building outwards without bulldozing shit (which requires people wanting to sell their land, etc, etc). Development is easy if there's nothing to displace. NY? LA? SF? Not so much. No coincidence that Chicago is much cheaper than those geography-bound places too. Compare Houston to other cities in Texas *that have plenty of zoning of the sort that would be immediately recognizable in the Bay Area) and it no longer looks like any YIMBY miracle of affordability. Just... basically the same...
anonkogudhyfhhf 4y ago
Hard to make this claim when govt bureaucrats enforced this type of city design with zoning laws a road/highway subsidies

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

stouset 4y ago

> Most Americans want to live in detached homes that they own, and they prefer cars to public transit. Most people just want what they're already accustomed to. We quite literally have the power to influence that instead of just throwing our hands up and saying "well gosh Americans want terribly designed communities whose long-term costs are completely unsustainable, so I guess there's nothing we can do about it." This isn't some immutable law of the damned universe.

twblalock 4y ago
> We quite literally have the power to influence that instead of just throwing our hands up and saying "well gosh Americans want terribly designed communities whose long-term costs are completely unsustainable, so I guess there's nothing we can do about it." That's quite a strawman there. Suburbs are not inherently unsustainable or terribly designed. Some are, but some cities are too. I'm seeing a ton of strawman arguments, totally inaccurate descriptions of suburbs, unsourced hyperbole about "subsidies" and "externalities", and conflation of "suburb" and "rural" in this thread which certainly does not apply to any suburbs I've ever lived in.
- bandofthehawk 4y ago
  > Suburbs are not inherently unsustainable or terribly designed. Some are, but some cities are too. I would guess that most suburbs are financially unsustainable in the long term because they pay less in taxes than it costs to maintain their infrastructure. Strong towns talks about this in great detail.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    > I would guess that most suburbs are financially unsustainable in the long term because they pay less in taxes than it costs to maintain their infrastructure. Again, that is something that might be true for some places but not others. I know of suburbs that definitely pay for themselves. And it's not hard to see why -- the property taxes are high and many of the residents are paying high income taxes too. Plus, many residents of suburbs commute to work in cities, where they contribute to the success of businesses that pay taxes in those cities. I also know that some of the new subdivisions outside of Sacramento have paid for all of their infrastructure via their HOA, so that all of the money to build and maintain the roads, sewers, and power lines was 100% paid for by the homeowners. That's also apparently a common model for new housing in Nevada. These arguments about taxes are also a form of special pleading that we don't see much of in other debates. Taxes are redistribution. Quite a lot of people and organizations get more in benefits from the government than they pay for, e.g. welfare recipients and students getting grants, companies get subsidies, state governments move money around to pay for schools, etc. Nobody seriously argues that the police and fire departments should only serve people who pay income tax, or that people without children shouldn't be taxed to pay for schools. Yet for some reason people seem to think that suburbs should have a unique requirement to pay for themselves 100% and can't be sustained if they don't.
    - nicbou 4y ago
      > Taxes are redistribution. Why should they be redistributed to the recreationally remote? Are they especially in need?
      - 4y ago
majormajor 4y ago
> Most people just want what they're already accustomed to. People with more resources and more power have taken larger living spaces for centuries, the idea of wanting more space isn't some creation of post-WWII America. Nowdays we talk about trains in the US as a "let's get away from suburban development" but the train itself was a driver of suburbanization from London, historically - people opted for more space and a train commute when they got the option.
Tade0 4y ago
> Most people just want what they're already accustomed to. Do they really? My country is a textbook case of the opposite, where the general population suddenly decided they don't really want to live in apartment blocks in the city - especially the type which was built in the communist second half of the XXth century. What happened next was intense proliferation of sprawl. It actually was seen as a status symbol back then to be able to afford a detached house. So much so that the urbanization rate actually slightly fell in the past 20 years. People gravitate towards comfort and apparently needing to drive everywhere but having enormous living space is preferable to living in a relatively small apartment and walking/cycling.

zbrozek 4y ago

And Houston has more diversity and better affordability than most other top tier American cities.

majormajor 4y ago
And it has much lower overall population density, so diversity and affordability clearly aren't automatically driven by density. Houston has space to expand so it can easily keep building outwards without bulldozing shit (which requires people wanting to sell their land, etc, etc). Development is easy if there's nothing to displace. NY? LA? SF? Not so much. No coincidence that Chicago is much cheaper than those geography-bound places too. Compare Houston to other cities in Texas *that have plenty of zoning of the sort that would be immediately recognizable in the Bay Area) and it no longer looks like any YIMBY miracle of affordability. Just... basically the same...

anonkogudhyfhhf 4y ago

Hard to make this claim when govt bureaucrats enforced this type of city design with zoning laws a road/highway subsidies