4 ms·

It’s mostly because of zoning. If you separate retail from offices from housing, you force people to have cars to get around. Which then requires large parking

It’s mostly because of zoning. If you separate retail from offices from housing, you force people to have cars to get around. Which then requires large parking lots and wide roads to deal with all the cars, in a big feedback loop. Those who can’t drive (about a third of the population are too young, too old, or disabled) are just forced to make do. Not to mention how difficult it is for the poor. Owning a car is really expensive for those living on very little money. I feel like fixing zoning would at least make possible fixing the rest.

causality0 3y ago
Don't forget the socialization of costs that comes in the forms of cities crippling their traffic flow for the sake of dedicating half their road surface to people parking on it instead of driving on it. I love cars but a street covered in unmoving automobiles is an intensely perverse sight.
majormajor 3y ago
You're not gonna get rid of the need to commute. Once people start forming families, "live next to work" is likely to be very unrealistic for one of the people involved, assuming they both work. One person gets a new job across town and the other doesn't? Setting aside whether or not most people would want to move anytime that happened, there's no longer a single answer. Start throwing kids in the mix and it gets even trickier. Gotta balance the schools in there, and the effect that moving would have on them, etc. Reduce the need for shopping and entertainment commuting and build more transit so that more routs have practical non-car options and you reduce the need for traffic and parking, but that's realistically an incredibly expensive proposition for many cities. You need a really really really built out transit network to enable something close to point to point commuting in under an hour across a large city. (And traffic and parking becoming crippling things for a city are issues small cities often mostly duck by their nature of being small...) It's a sort of "we all need to commit to changing our environment systematically for decades" problem.
- davidw 3y ago
  > incredibly expensive proposition for many cities I lived in Italy for a number of years. It is a poorer country than the United States in a lot of ways, and yet they manage this quite well. It still comes back to zoning and parking: by allowing denser development, you can plan transit routes that serve a lot more people, some of whom don't even own an automobile.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    The largest cities in Italy are quite a bit smaller than the largest cities in the US, so it's a very different situation. Rome's metro area is about 4.3 million people. San Antonio's is about 2.6 million. San Antonio also has far more relaxed car-based commutes than the Bay Area or LA as a result. If you dropped Rome's three subway lines in San Antonio you wouldn't get rid of that many car trips, especially since the city being smaller and less dense than the really big cities in the US makes the car trips that much easier in the first place.
    - davidw 3y ago
      Rome is notable for having kind of not great subway infrastructure for a major European city because, among other problems, they tend to encounter a lot of archeological stuff whenever they dig there. And I'm not even talking about major cities. Where I lived in Padova, it has approximately 200K people in the same area that about 100K people occupy here in Bend, Oregon. Padova has way better transit than Bend does even if Bend is much more well to do in many ways.
      - majormajor 3y ago
        Is Bend gripped by housing issues and traffic as much as the Bay Area or NYC or wherever? The folks I know in smaller US towns simply don't have the same concerns about parking spaces as those in high-demand, high-population, central large cities. And comparing those cities to typically-small-to-medium-size Italian cities doesn't result in very actionable practical plans.
AlanSE 3y ago
I hope/believe that we are near a tipping point. There is a very large and very substantial neighborhood premium based on what's around it, but the zoning is the same everywhere so the competition was legally restricted to greenways, sidewalks, parks, and HOA facilities. Even in the suburban US, it is a VERY desirable feature to be within walking distance of a park where young children can play. This has created a strange effect, where people (let's be honest, affluent people) accumulate a collection of aspirational wheeled items - strollers, bikes, weird electric skateboard-like things, and other wheeled things for the kids. These are coupled local government parks and spaces where people can ride a bike JUST FOR FUN. I mean it very seriously that greenways outright avoid any turns that might be useful for economic life. Riding bikes on the roads is mostly for the true anti-car zealots. I've been ready to buy a house for few years, but I've realized I'm no longer happy with the whole package. I want to realistically be able to walk or bike to get a dinner, coffee, or groceries. Yet, city centers (in the south for sure) tend to offer the most dangerous roads for doing this, and unhealthy environment, and poor social atmosphere. I'm sensing that there are more people on the sidelines (who have remove jobs, after all) who are ready to buy into better neighborhoods. These people may not be willing to give up their cars, but there is negotiating space, and it is relevant that these are people who have economic clout to force the issue.
- lazyasciiart 3y ago
  Riding bikes on the road, even in the US, is mostly for the poorest workers. It is most visibly for the committed exercise or competitive cyclists, and it is vanishingly infrequently but looms large in the public imagination for the "true anti-car zealots". https://www.vox.com/2014/7/9/5883823/its-not-just-hipsters-on-bikes-cycling-is-most-popular-for-poor-people https://www.vox.com/2014/7/9/5883823/its-not-just-hipsters-o...
- BobbyTables2 3y ago
  I think the lifestyle you desire can be had somewhat near downtown areas of large cities in the South. However, areas tend to quickly flip-flop between gentrified and not. Things within walking distance may be slightly limited. Worse, this is really just for the 20-30s crowd or childless crowd. As soon as you have kid(s), you’ll probably find this unsuitable (school quality/location, 3 floor townhouse design, etc). If you went to college and grad school and then moved out there, you might only have 5 years of this… For the better schools in a more solidly middle class area, one easily ends up in a suburb. And if one desires a house less than 20yrs old, one learns about unknown communities formerly believed to be in remote reaches beyond the boundaries of known civilization… (I jest but they are way out from the city center!) And remote jobs aren’t a panacea. If one has kids in school, they can’t just uproot their family and move to a rural mountain town across the country on a whim. I’ve also always been vexed that I can’t live near where I work. Aside from years of long commutes, the distance caused me to largely miss out on after-hours social events. Almost felt like a foreigner next to the people who lived closer.

causality0 3y ago

Don't forget the socialization of costs that comes in the forms of cities crippling their traffic flow for the sake of dedicating half their road surface to people parking on it instead of driving on it. I love cars but a street covered in unmoving automobiles is an intensely perverse sight.

majormajor 3y ago

You're not gonna get rid of the need to commute. Once people start forming families, "live next to work" is likely to be very unrealistic for one of the people involved, assuming they both work. One person gets a new job across town and the other doesn't? Setting aside whether or not most people would want to move anytime that happened, there's no longer a single answer. Start throwing kids in the mix and it gets even trickier. Gotta balance the schools in there, and the effect that moving would have on them, etc. Reduce the need for shopping and entertainment commuting and build more transit so that more routs have practical non-car options and you reduce the need for traffic and parking, but that's realistically an incredibly expensive proposition for many cities. You need a really really really built out transit network to enable something close to point to point commuting in under an hour across a large city. (And traffic and parking becoming crippling things for a city are issues small cities often mostly duck by their nature of being small...) It's a sort of "we all need to commit to changing our environment systematically for decades" problem.

davidw 3y ago
> incredibly expensive proposition for many cities I lived in Italy for a number of years. It is a poorer country than the United States in a lot of ways, and yet they manage this quite well. It still comes back to zoning and parking: by allowing denser development, you can plan transit routes that serve a lot more people, some of whom don't even own an automobile.
- majormajor 3y ago
  The largest cities in Italy are quite a bit smaller than the largest cities in the US, so it's a very different situation. Rome's metro area is about 4.3 million people. San Antonio's is about 2.6 million. San Antonio also has far more relaxed car-based commutes than the Bay Area or LA as a result. If you dropped Rome's three subway lines in San Antonio you wouldn't get rid of that many car trips, especially since the city being smaller and less dense than the really big cities in the US makes the car trips that much easier in the first place.
  - davidw 3y ago
    Rome is notable for having kind of not great subway infrastructure for a major European city because, among other problems, they tend to encounter a lot of archeological stuff whenever they dig there. And I'm not even talking about major cities. Where I lived in Padova, it has approximately 200K people in the same area that about 100K people occupy here in Bend, Oregon. Padova has way better transit than Bend does even if Bend is much more well to do in many ways.
    - majormajor 3y ago
      Is Bend gripped by housing issues and traffic as much as the Bay Area or NYC or wherever? The folks I know in smaller US towns simply don't have the same concerns about parking spaces as those in high-demand, high-population, central large cities. And comparing those cities to typically-small-to-medium-size Italian cities doesn't result in very actionable practical plans.

AlanSE 3y ago

I hope/believe that we are near a tipping point. There is a very large and very substantial neighborhood premium based on what's around it, but the zoning is the same everywhere so the competition was legally restricted to greenways, sidewalks, parks, and HOA facilities. Even in the suburban US, it is a VERY desirable feature to be within walking distance of a park where young children can play. This has created a strange effect, where people (let's be honest, affluent people) accumulate a collection of aspirational wheeled items - strollers, bikes, weird electric skateboard-like things, and other wheeled things for the kids. These are coupled local government parks and spaces where people can ride a bike JUST FOR FUN. I mean it very seriously that greenways outright avoid any turns that might be useful for economic life. Riding bikes on the roads is mostly for the true anti-car zealots. I've been ready to buy a house for few years, but I've realized I'm no longer happy with the whole package. I want to realistically be able to walk or bike to get a dinner, coffee, or groceries. Yet, city centers (in the south for sure) tend to offer the most dangerous roads for doing this, and unhealthy environment, and poor social atmosphere. I'm sensing that there are more people on the sidelines (who have remove jobs, after all) who are ready to buy into better neighborhoods. These people may not be willing to give up their cars, but there is negotiating space, and it is relevant that these are people who have economic clout to force the issue.

lazyasciiart 3y ago
Riding bikes on the road, even in the US, is mostly for the poorest workers. It is most visibly for the committed exercise or competitive cyclists, and it is vanishingly infrequently but looms large in the public imagination for the "true anti-car zealots". https://www.vox.com/2014/7/9/5883823/its-not-just-hipsters-on-bikes-cycling-is-most-popular-for-poor-people https://www.vox.com/2014/7/9/5883823/its-not-just-hipsters-o...
BobbyTables2 3y ago
I think the lifestyle you desire can be had somewhat near downtown areas of large cities in the South. However, areas tend to quickly flip-flop between gentrified and not. Things within walking distance may be slightly limited. Worse, this is really just for the 20-30s crowd or childless crowd. As soon as you have kid(s), you’ll probably find this unsuitable (school quality/location, 3 floor townhouse design, etc). If you went to college and grad school and then moved out there, you might only have 5 years of this… For the better schools in a more solidly middle class area, one easily ends up in a suburb. And if one desires a house less than 20yrs old, one learns about unknown communities formerly believed to be in remote reaches beyond the boundaries of known civilization… (I jest but they are way out from the city center!) And remote jobs aren’t a panacea. If one has kids in school, they can’t just uproot their family and move to a rural mountain town across the country on a whim. I’ve also always been vexed that I can’t live near where I work. Aside from years of long commutes, the distance caused me to largely miss out on after-hours social events. Almost felt like a foreigner next to the people who lived closer.