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Why Does America Provide More Space for Storing Cars Than Housing People?
- monsterofcookie 3y agoThey didn't make space for cars, they made space for people who own cars.
- supertrope 3y agoBecause the majority of the electorate is dependent on their cars for access to employment, school, stores, recreation, and their friends and family. The lower friction path is to buy a car and demand free parking, toll free roads, cheap fuel, higher speed limits, etc. They don’t make the connection between half of urban land (!) being allocated toward driving infrastructure and high housing costs. Landlords take the blame. Other problems caused by spatial displacement and only building infrastructure for cars include traffic congestion, oil dependency, climate change, and rising traffic deaths. Driving doesn’t scale well in cities. Besides insatiable demand for parking and congestion, people buy bigger cars to keep up with the crash safety arms race.
- kaffeeringe 3y agoHow did they become dependent on an object that cost them a fortune and ruins cities and enviroment?
- Terr_ 3y agoIf we consider restrictions and costs of housing as the cause of needing a car, it seems hard to conclusively assign blame to just the chicken or just the egg.
- rurounijones 3y agoThe power of large corporations and their marketing departments.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoSpecifically, GM, who lobbied hard about this starting in the 60s
- vkou 3y agoBecause the benefit is immediate, and personal, but the cost is deferred and distributed.
- JoshTriplett 3y agoBecause all of the proposed replacements entail substantial compromises, such as "not actually going directly from point A to point B", and because we no longer seem to have the ability to build infrastructure like transit for reasonable costs.
- midoridensha 3y agoIt's a long story, but it involves the post-WWII economic boom, White Flight from the inner cities to the suburbs and away from the Black people in the cities (along with Redlining to keep the Black people from following them), the construction of Eisenhower's Interstate Highway system in the 50s, and many other factors I'm sure I'm missing.
- cpursley 3y agoNot sure why you’re getting downvoted - this is a well researched phenomenon. The interstate system opened up access (ie, subsidized) land for single family residential. And yes, one factor why white people moved there was to get away from black people - and even enacted covenants to keep out black buyers and real estate agents practiced what was called “red lining”.
- acdha 3y agoThis was turbocharged by court losses saying that cities had to serve all of their citizens. Many white people were okay living in the same city with brown people as long as there were white neighborhoods with schools, pools, etc. only used by white people. Once black (or on the west coast, Mexican) people were legally allowed to use them, some cities shutdown city pools and many people moved to suburbs where the infrastructure was technically open to all residents but since things like the design & covenants were created to limit who lived there, it was de facto segregated.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wink 3y agoBecause the cost/benefit analysis makes it perfectly viable or even cheap. Even as someone living in a non-US city with supposedly good public transport, the cost of a cheap car + gas is ridiculous compared to the benefits.
- goodpoint 3y agoBecause corporations brainwashed people very successfully.
- arroz 3y agoLobby
- candiodari 3y agoBecause of the constant growth any real reduction in housing costs would have be temporary. Or it would have been in the 1945-2020 period. Also, it would have created an environment that would have been totally unaffordable for families. Families don't work well in cities, because you need space. So that means a family of 4, with each kid a room, needs to pay 3-4 times the price a single person needs to pay, just for housing, while only making, at best, twice as much. So families moved away. Families are also the ones that have the numbers, for voting, and the money ... That, and stress in cities is 10x what it is in suburbs.
- trimethylpurine 3y agoThis is trying to sound dystopian, but it fails because car storage is not suitable for housing. We also have more square footage of sidewalks than dwellings. So?
- _dain_ 3y agoThe land on which car storage is built is suitable for housing to be built on it instead.
- trimethylpurine 3y agoThere is no shortage of land in the US. Have you ever been here?
- pjc50 3y agoThere is within commuting radius of the places that pay well, though.
- trimethylpurine 3y agoLearn to code and don't commute. And don't accept offers that force you to. The commute lifestyle is allowed because we allow it.
- ben_w 3y agoIf I assume that remote work is as productive as in-office[0], then everyone in this position is now competing with worldwide [1] labour market. Same applies to all office jobs. Even to physical labour, if we have robot telepresence[2]. [0] IDK, might be? [1] Or at least +/- a time zone or three. [2] AI-on-the-edge robotics probably ends those things as human work opportunities.
- trimethylpurine 3y agoYou're exactly right. And that's why over 100k developers were recently terminated while foreign labor was hired. But don't feel too bad for them. Many were already immigrants from India and other countries who are simply giving their countrymen a chance to also gain entrance to the American market. The same chance they had to undercut someone else's pay. Capitalism at its finest.
- CalRobert 3y agoWell when you give people a vote on "do you want more homes for new neighbours or unlimited free parking everywhere always?" people vote for the parking. Which is why US cities are mostly asphalt.
- Animats 3y agoMore land is used for growing food than for housing people, too. So?
- 5350-uiop-1130 3y agothe land is probably used in the most profitable way. whether that's parking, housing, farming, or leaving it empty. it's not used for some hypothetical greater good.
- lazyasciiart 3y agoCar parking space being provided by commercial and residential properties is mandated by government regulation in cities, so it actually is closer to “the greater good” than “the greatest profit”.
- throwaway290 3y agoHas someone coined "the greater bad" yet? If not I'm calling dibs.
- BoorishBears 3y agoThat logic only works if you have some notion that any action that causes economic harm also causes harm to the party who takes it: like the economy is a magical game of tit-for-tat... If I fund a REIT and buy up half the housing in some bumbling town to extract rent, and let those who can't afford it go pound sand: it can be profitable for me, yet be a net cost to the wider economy. In fact, it can cost significantly more than the profit I gain: A couple of cases homelessness can end up costing the state millions over the next few decades in knock on effects, the extra rent my REIT extracts in rent ends up in less economically stimulating places than the local economy, etc etc. In the end I can end up contracting the economy by 100s of millions and still profit, as long as that contraction doesn't overlap with my personal interests too much. Increased homelessness might lower the value of my properties, but the majority of the economic loss doesn't fall on me so I might even expand on that loss in value.
- CalRobert 3y agoNormally, yes it is, but in this case, we force people to build parking even when that is not the most profitable use. https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_architect_in_la_specializing_in_multifamily/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_ar... shows the impact of parking minimums on housing costs.
- countWSS 3y agoUS is extremely car-dependent due commuting and infrastructure spread out in the suburbs, which in turn are caused by abandonment of cities for suburbs: i.e. the conditions of life in suburbs outcompeted cities. Fixing the root cause is fixing the cities Quality of Life to compete with suburbs - going after symptoms(car-centric culture) won't work.
- cpursley 3y agoSuburbs didn’t just outcompete cities, the federal government virtually subsidized them with cheap land (via federal interstate system) and mortgages.
- mrpopo 3y agoSubsidies for suburbs go deeper. Spread out houses means longer water pipes, electric lines, transformers, etc., paid and maintained by local governments. You might pay more taxes for owning more land, but nowhere near as much as what you owe your community. More details here : Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math [ST07] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
- cpursley 3y agoYep, “The Growth Ponzi Scheme” is a classic: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growt...
- xorfish 3y agoSuburbs are highly subsidized. The quality of life only seems to outcompete cities because the quality of life in cities is lowered by the car centric culture. If you want to know how good the QoL in a city can be, you need to visit a European city that is not car centric.
- slifin 3y agoParking minimums cause cities to turn over a large percentage of their productive land to parking You can't effectively build human centric attractive spaces without being hampered by the fact we've given the majority of public space to cars
- bagels 3y agoIt's 50x cheaper per square foot of parking than for housing. I think we should bring back housing projects though. I'd rather increase state budgets by the 2% it would take rather than deal with homeless all the time.
- rahimnathwani 3y agoExample from San Francisco: In a shocking and possibly illegal act of public absurdity, eight members of the Board of Supervisors voted to stall the construction of 495 new housing units on the site of a parking lot in the South of Market neighborhood. https://www.sfexaminer.com/archives/absurdity-san-francisco-leaders-stall-soma-housing-project-to-preserve-parking-lot/article_404ef58e-f31d-5961-815c-585645fc30ad.html https://www.sfexaminer.com/archives/absurdity-san-francisco-...
- mock-possum 3y ago> They bemoaned the dreaded specter of gentrification, as if the site’s current use as a 176-space valet parking lot for Nordstrom’s shoppers provides any benefit for communities struggling with scarce housing options. This got me
- bagels 3y agoWhy do we need to house the homeless in the most expensive part of the state? It's a genuine question. Would love reasons instead of just downvotes.
- sgt 3y agoI didn't see anything about this being to house the homeless. It just said affordable housing, which I assume is for normal working folks even tech people?
- bagels 3y agoThanks, I wrongly inferred it was for homeless housing from "housing units" somehow.
- rahimnathwani 3y agoIt just said affordable housing, which I assume is for normal working folks even tech people? Nope, not for tech people. The term 'affordable housing' often refers to housing units that are offered at below-market rates. It's part of a government racket: The government creates regulations and takes other actions that hinder developers from easily building new housing, thereby limiting supply and increasing prices for the units that are available. At the same time governments enact policies to prevent landlords from raising rents to market rates. While this protects current tenants, it limits the availability of units for new residents, effectively pricing them out and meaning only a subset of the total rental stock is affected by supply and demand. After these regulations create a landscape of high housing costs, governments then introduce 'affordable housing' quotas for new development projects. These are often aimed at appeasing certain voter demographics to win votes.
- est 3y agoCar is an asset and people is sometimes a liability. (just describing a fact, not that I fully agree with this.)
- gl-prod 3y agoClimate town did a fantastic piece on this Parking Laws Are Strangling America | Climate Town https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNXFHpUhu8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNXFHpUhu8
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoIf I think about a walkable city, I keep on getting stuck. Regardless of whether I get around during the week to a doctors appointment, my work, friends, etc I still will need a car. Not being able to buy things in larger amounts means that you get taken advantage of, looking at price per X at your local grocer vs Costco. Then during the weekend I want to go into nature. You cannot economically have public transportation to all those hiking trails. Some of you might say: what about a rental for when I need a car? Lots of rental places just flat-out don't allow you to take the vehicle off of paved roads.
- arroz 3y agoOne reason costco is cheaper is because they charge for a membership. It’s not that cheaper. Honestly it’s not even cheaper if you compare against a regular supermarket and you are willing to buy a different brand then the one offered at Costco I have never seen a rental saying where you can or can’t go with a vehicle
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoA basic Costco membership is $60. Their chicken is $5 + tax. Same chicken at Safeway is $8.99 + tax. So if you eat >15 chickens per year Costco is cheaper. And even that is incorrect. Costco's chicken is 32oz, the Safeway one 28. Forgetting about taxes, Costco's is $0.15625 / oz, Safeway is $0.3210714285714286 / oz. So now we have 2 equations, and we need to find the intersection: * y = 60 + x * 0.15625 * y = 0.3210714285714286 * x They cross at 11.37594799566631 chickens. But larger chickens have larger bones, so let's keep it at 15. I definitely eat more than 15 chickens per year. Then there's the issue of cost in general, while the house-brands of Safeway / Frys / Kroger / ... are cheaper, they are much more likely to have stuff added to it to make it 'bulkier'. A good example is Cottage Cheese from Walmart. They add a thickener to the liquid which allows them to sell you the same amount for less, but you actually get less cheese and more filler.
- arroz 3y agoWalmart chicken is the same price as Costco and you don’t need a membership I don’t know if the cottage thing is true or not, but even if it is, it doesn’t make difference for the customer if their goal is to save money
- johnea 3y agoBecause cars are bigger than people...
- tzs 3y agoWhy does America have more chairs than people?