4 ms·

> many living in suburbs like to pretend they are in a rural area Suburbs are not rural, but they're not urban either. The population density in most suburbs i

by pdonis 3y ago

> many living in suburbs like to pretend they are in a rural area Suburbs are not rural, but they're not urban either. The population density in most suburbs is too low to support the kind of walk-everywhere infrastructure that a true high density urban area can (and should) provide. The real issue is that many people fail to realize that there is no problem with that. Having different areas for people to live with vastly different population densities, and different solutions for how people get around, is a feature, not a bug. People have very different preferences, and urban, suburban, and rural areas exist so that people's very different preferences for how they want to live can all be accommodated.

danny_codes 3y ago
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growt... There is a huge problem with that. It turns out that offering urban-level services at suburban density isn't sustainable. It turns out urban areas are subsidizing suburbs quite extensively. Now, if suburbanite were willing to pay their own way, perhaps we could discuss that. But another issue is that car-dependent suburbanites demand access to urban areas. For example, people living in Palo Alto want vehicle access to San Francisco. This degrades the city significantly, far outweighing any benefit from having suburban influx. Now, non-car-dependent suburbs do seem to work. Street-car suburbs, for example, seem to work reasonably well. They seem to be more dense than car-hell suburbs, but not urban like a city. So I think there is a way forward for people wanting suburban life.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > It turns out that offering urban-level services at suburban density isn't sustainable. What do you mean by "urban-level services"? If you mean urban-style mass transit, then yes, I agree--and I don't want such services in the suburbs. If I'm going to live in the suburbs, I'm going to own a car and that's how I'm going to expect to get around in the suburbs. If I wanted to live in a place where I could walk or use mass transit to get around for all of my daily activities, I'd live in the city, not the suburbs. > It turns out urban areas are subsidizing suburbs quite extensively. No, it turns out that politicians and ideologues who think everybody should live a certain way, are trying to impose that way of living in areas where it makes no sense, and using our tax money to do it. That's not a "subsidy", it's just incompetent leadership. Living in the suburbs, I get zero value from all the public expenditure on mass transit in areas which are too low density for it to make sense. So I would be fine with all those expenditures just stopping altogether. In fact, such expenditures can have negative value to the very people they are supposed to be helping. In one suburb I lived in, I could drive for about 15 minutes to a commuter parking area and catch a bus that took a half hour to get to a stop within walking distance of my workplace. Then the urban planners decided that it would make more sense to spend public money to extend the subway out to that area and outlaw the bus--meaning that from the same commuter parking area, I would now have an hour's trip to the same stop within walking distance of my workplace, during which I would have to change trains, at a higher per-trip cost than the bus was. Which meant it no longer made sense for me to take mass transit to work. > car-dependent suburbanites demand access to urban areas What kind of access? I'm fine with using, say, a train to go into the city if I need to do that. Or parking somewhere on the outskirts of the city and using mass transit to get in further. > non-car-dependent suburbs do seem to work. Again, I think this depends on what you call a "suburb". To me, if you're living in an area that has a high enough population density to make street-cars, for example, workable, you're living in a city, not a suburb. If I want more space than such a place can provide me, I'm going to live in a less dense area where mass transit is not workable, and as above, I'm going to own a car.
  - lozenge 3y ago
    They mean water, sewage, roads, pavements, street lighting. See link.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      I pay for those with property taxes. Plus a portion of the purchase price of a house is the developer recovering these infrastructure costs when a neighborhood is built.
      - fnimick 3y ago
        If you read the link you would realize that property taxes don't even cover 25% of the ongoing maintenance cost. The rest comes out of the general tax pool at everyone else's expense, regardless of whether we live there or not.
        pdonis 3y ago
        > If you read the link you would realize that property taxes don't even cover 25% of the ongoing maintenance cost. I don't see this anywhere in the article.
        fnimick 3y ago
        It's there, but here's more evidence and data to back up the assertion that suburbs are a net drain on city finances, with more cost than tax revenue from properties: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/16/where-did-the-money-go https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/16/where-did-the-...
        pdonis 3y ago
        This article isn't saying suburbs are a drain on cities. It's saying that cities have overextended themselves because of skewed incentives imposed on them by government policies (the main one being printing money to fund real estate development). The solution to that is not to abolish suburbs. It's for the government to stop imposing skewed incentives.
fnimick 3y ago
How does mandatory single family zoning and parking minimums factor into your "feature?" When people want to live somewhere dense, and that's illegal to build, they're forced into suburban living even though that is not their preference.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > When people want to live somewhere dense, and that's illegal to build It's not illegal to build everywhere. That should be obvious since there are lots of dense urban areas. I could just as easily ask why I'm not allowed to build a new single family home in Manhattan. The obvious answer is that Manhattan is not a suburb. The equally obvious answer to why you can't build dense urban housing in a suburb is that it's not a city. Unless you are arguing that everywhere should be a dense urban area, there are going to be different areas with different densities and different kinds of housing. That's just a fact of life that everyone has to deal with.
  - fnimick 3y ago
    You can in fact build a new single family home in Manhattan, if you can afford the land to do so. Meanwhile, regardless of land price, dense housing is illegal to build pretty much everywhere that is not currently dense, due to zoning laws. Why shouldn't someone be able to build dense housing in a suburb? What it sounds like you advocate for is that everywhere currently dense can stay dense, and everywhere not currently dense must stay not dense. That doesn't make sense unless you want the dense area to continue to skyrocket in price as more people want to live there and we have no new housing to accommodate them.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      > You can in fact build a new single family home in Manhattan, if you can afford the land to do so. Really? Where? Note that I don't mean a townhome or a row house, I mean literally a detached single family home. > What it sounds like you advocate for is that everywhere currently dense can stay dense, and everywhere not currently dense must stay not dense. Obviously this won't be the case long term; areas will evolve. Some will become more dense, some will become less dense. What I am saying is that people have a wide variety of preferences, and that is just a fact of life. Talking as if one particular way of living is "better" does not recognize that. > That doesn't make sense unless you want the dense area to continue to skyrocket in price as more people want to live there and we have no new housing to accommodate them. Why would there be no new housing in urban areas? New construction is going on in cities all the time.

by pdonis 3y ago

danny_codes 3y ago

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growt... There is a huge problem with that. It turns out that offering urban-level services at suburban density isn't sustainable. It turns out urban areas are subsidizing suburbs quite extensively. Now, if suburbanite were willing to pay their own way, perhaps we could discuss that. But another issue is that car-dependent suburbanites demand access to urban areas. For example, people living in Palo Alto want vehicle access to San Francisco. This degrades the city significantly, far outweighing any benefit from having suburban influx. Now, non-car-dependent suburbs do seem to work. Street-car suburbs, for example, seem to work reasonably well. They seem to be more dense than car-hell suburbs, but not urban like a city. So I think there is a way forward for people wanting suburban life.

pdonis 3y ago
> It turns out that offering urban-level services at suburban density isn't sustainable. What do you mean by "urban-level services"? If you mean urban-style mass transit, then yes, I agree--and I don't want such services in the suburbs. If I'm going to live in the suburbs, I'm going to own a car and that's how I'm going to expect to get around in the suburbs. If I wanted to live in a place where I could walk or use mass transit to get around for all of my daily activities, I'd live in the city, not the suburbs. > It turns out urban areas are subsidizing suburbs quite extensively. No, it turns out that politicians and ideologues who think everybody should live a certain way, are trying to impose that way of living in areas where it makes no sense, and using our tax money to do it. That's not a "subsidy", it's just incompetent leadership. Living in the suburbs, I get zero value from all the public expenditure on mass transit in areas which are too low density for it to make sense. So I would be fine with all those expenditures just stopping altogether. In fact, such expenditures can have negative value to the very people they are supposed to be helping. In one suburb I lived in, I could drive for about 15 minutes to a commuter parking area and catch a bus that took a half hour to get to a stop within walking distance of my workplace. Then the urban planners decided that it would make more sense to spend public money to extend the subway out to that area and outlaw the bus--meaning that from the same commuter parking area, I would now have an hour's trip to the same stop within walking distance of my workplace, during which I would have to change trains, at a higher per-trip cost than the bus was. Which meant it no longer made sense for me to take mass transit to work. > car-dependent suburbanites demand access to urban areas What kind of access? I'm fine with using, say, a train to go into the city if I need to do that. Or parking somewhere on the outskirts of the city and using mass transit to get in further. > non-car-dependent suburbs do seem to work. Again, I think this depends on what you call a "suburb". To me, if you're living in an area that has a high enough population density to make street-cars, for example, workable, you're living in a city, not a suburb. If I want more space than such a place can provide me, I'm going to live in a less dense area where mass transit is not workable, and as above, I'm going to own a car.
- lozenge 3y ago
  They mean water, sewage, roads, pavements, street lighting. See link.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    I pay for those with property taxes. Plus a portion of the purchase price of a house is the developer recovering these infrastructure costs when a neighborhood is built.
    - fnimick 3y ago
      If you read the link you would realize that property taxes don't even cover 25% of the ongoing maintenance cost. The rest comes out of the general tax pool at everyone else's expense, regardless of whether we live there or not.
      - pdonis 3y ago
        > If you read the link you would realize that property taxes don't even cover 25% of the ongoing maintenance cost. I don't see this anywhere in the article.
        fnimick 3y ago
        It's there, but here's more evidence and data to back up the assertion that suburbs are a net drain on city finances, with more cost than tax revenue from properties: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/16/where-did-the-money-go https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/16/where-did-the-...
        pdonis 3y ago
        This article isn't saying suburbs are a drain on cities. It's saying that cities have overextended themselves because of skewed incentives imposed on them by government policies (the main one being printing money to fund real estate development). The solution to that is not to abolish suburbs. It's for the government to stop imposing skewed incentives.

fnimick 3y ago

How does mandatory single family zoning and parking minimums factor into your "feature?" When people want to live somewhere dense, and that's illegal to build, they're forced into suburban living even though that is not their preference.

pdonis 3y ago
> When people want to live somewhere dense, and that's illegal to build It's not illegal to build everywhere. That should be obvious since there are lots of dense urban areas. I could just as easily ask why I'm not allowed to build a new single family home in Manhattan. The obvious answer is that Manhattan is not a suburb. The equally obvious answer to why you can't build dense urban housing in a suburb is that it's not a city. Unless you are arguing that everywhere should be a dense urban area, there are going to be different areas with different densities and different kinds of housing. That's just a fact of life that everyone has to deal with.
- fnimick 3y ago
  You can in fact build a new single family home in Manhattan, if you can afford the land to do so. Meanwhile, regardless of land price, dense housing is illegal to build pretty much everywhere that is not currently dense, due to zoning laws. Why shouldn't someone be able to build dense housing in a suburb? What it sounds like you advocate for is that everywhere currently dense can stay dense, and everywhere not currently dense must stay not dense. That doesn't make sense unless you want the dense area to continue to skyrocket in price as more people want to live there and we have no new housing to accommodate them.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > You can in fact build a new single family home in Manhattan, if you can afford the land to do so. Really? Where? Note that I don't mean a townhome or a row house, I mean literally a detached single family home. > What it sounds like you advocate for is that everywhere currently dense can stay dense, and everywhere not currently dense must stay not dense. Obviously this won't be the case long term; areas will evolve. Some will become more dense, some will become less dense. What I am saying is that people have a wide variety of preferences, and that is just a fact of life. Talking as if one particular way of living is "better" does not recognize that. > That doesn't make sense unless you want the dense area to continue to skyrocket in price as more people want to live there and we have no new housing to accommodate them. Why would there be no new housing in urban areas? New construction is going on in cities all the time.