4 ms·

I’d love some walkable neighbourhoods in my suburbia. Automotive industry invested heavily to ensure this was so. Dependence on a vehicle in most North America

I’d love some walkable neighbourhoods in my suburbia. Automotive industry invested heavily to ensure this was so. Dependence on a vehicle in most North American cities is not an accident

marssaxman 3y ago
why not... leave suburbia, then, and go where the walkable neighborhoods are?
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Because if you want your kids’ peers in school to mostly be from households that earn a similar or higher income than your household, the best way to do that is to move to a school district with the biggest lots and homes you can afford, thereby ensuring the population of the school is made up only of people who can afford all the space and driving. It is literally what makes “good” school districts “good”, the household incomes of the student population. And moving to a suburban place filters that nicely. Same reason why residents will often times oppose apartment developments, since they allow lower income residents to move into the district.
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    Wow. That's a really... foreign mindset. Thank you for helping me understand.
    - anon291 3y ago
      Right. Next time you see an American arguing that we need vouchers, realize that this would greatly help redistribute where wealth is. If people could send their kid to any school they wouldn't have to all live in suburbia. They could instead choose the environmentally and socially positive option without risking their child's education.
      - liotier 3y ago
        It is funny because, here in Paris, the urban core is where upwards life is and suburbia is the land of social despair. The opposite logic from the USA, which makes some forum threads awkward with both sides of the Atlantic talking past each other !
        tetrep 3y ago
        There's a lot of differences between the US and France that result in different suburb/city situations, but I think "white flight" and "redlining" cover a decent chunk of it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
        anon291 3y ago
        recently though white flight (if we refer to the general progression of people to suburbs away from cities) is dominated by people of color. Suburbia is basically about as representative demographically as the rest of the country at this point.
- doitLP 3y ago
  Because almost without exception these neighborhoods were built a long time ago, are closer to the city center and are the most expensive in the city. Until a few years ago it was possible for upper middle class like the dear readers of HN to afford these neighborhoods in middle tier cities like Boise, Austin, Denver, Nashville, etc. but now even those are out of reach unless you are wealthy or willing to pay most of your income in mortgage AND have two working parents.
  - swatcoder 3y ago
    For about 20 years in there, we called that process gentrification and it was specifically led by ambituois young professionals (like those on HN) who bought into traditionally ethnic and/or ailing neighborhoods and filled them with cronut shops and ukelele performance centers (or boot stores and gastropubs). But as you note, that movement petered out and more and more money came in and now those same neighborhoods are inaccessible to the same kind of people that first gentrified them. Except that, as many predicted as gentrification became rampant, it's not really sustainable to drive all the service workers and their families out of the city center, and so now they just live on the streets outside of the cronut shops and gastropubs. So if you give it another 10 or 20 years though, you can expect another urban flight to manifest and balance things out a little more again.
- absoluteunit1 3y ago
  It’s way above my pay grade to be able to afford to live there
- notacoward 3y ago
  Because people doing that is why this will never change. Every time someone leaves the suburbs for the city, a vote in town elections goes with them. Every time, it becomes less likely that zoning or other local laws affecting land/property use will change. The only way to make the suburbs better, to turn all of these urban-design principles we all know so well into reality, is for more people to stay and fight. "Move to the city" (or any other already-walkable place) is part of the problem, not the solution. For one thing, people won't do it en masse. Even if they did, those too-few places would become even less affordable, plus their power/water/waste infrastructure would get strained beyond breaking. It's a very privileged and selfish position to take. Instead, we need to make more such places, reconfiguring and repurposing buildings and other infrastructure where they are and where the people are. And that takes voting power. Don't tell people to throw that away.
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    Here in Seattle, over two-thirds of the land inside city limits is locked up in suburban-style low-density, single-family-only residential zoning. We would not need the suburbs if we could stop forcing people out of the city by prohibiting natural urban development. Seattle needs more people living in the city who want city life, so we can get these policies changed and build out proper urban amenities: mixed-use zoning, rapid transit, bike infrastructure, walkable neighborhoods. Infrastructure gets upgraded when the tax base arrives to justify it. Yes, you are right, "we need to make more such places", and the low-density neighborhoods closest to the city center are the most efficient places to do that. It is a genuine tragedy that so much sprawl has been built over the last 60-70 years. Much of that construction can never afford its own maintenance without subsidy from the city centers. To make this sustainable, we must densify and contract.
    - notacoward 3y ago
      The low-density areas within city limits are functionally suburbs. You basically said as much yourself. Whether they have their own name and mayor or town council is a historical accident, not significant in this context. For example, Detroit is one of the geographically largest cities in the US. I lived there, and I lived in an adjoining suburb. There was no difference with respect to density or development type. The stroad near our house in Detroit was actually worse than the stroad near our house in Hazel Park. Whatever you can do within the "suburban style" parts of Seattle you can do in a politically separate suburb, as long as there are votes. Cities absorbing their near suburbs (as Detroit did long ago except for Hamtramck and Highland Park) and using weight of numbers to force change would possibly allow for greater density and more walkable areas in those places, but nowadays no current suburb would allow that to happen (because of property values, school funding, etc.) so it's a pipe dream. Transit would not be affected, since that's usually regional anyway. Again, the only way to affect how suburbs are built is to vote there. Running away helps the individual, but doesn't help society, and I'm sorry that people would rather not hear that about themselves but it's the truth here in reality.
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
I'm going to take a slightly different tack, one that will probably also provide walkable. We should be transitioning as many neighborhoods to be aligned around the e-bike, which provides a lot more transportation utility, a fair amount more range, but not nearly as much danger to pedestrians, climate impact, etc. Walkability comes practically for free from such an approach. The ebike should provide just enough range + concentration to enable the big box store. What is not talked about with walkable neighborhoods is that they are rich neighborhoods with rich people that don't mind paying twince Walmart costs. Especially post-covid-inflation, this won't fly. You need SOME big box scale. Because no one talks about the bodega in the slum. There's lots of poor neighborhoods with expensive bodegas that are poor people's only options. People do not rave about that.

I’d love some walkable neighbourhoods in my suburbia. Automotive industry invested heavily to ensure this was so. Dependence on a vehicle in most North American cities is not an accident

marssaxman 3y ago

why not... leave suburbia, then, and go where the walkable neighborhoods are?

lotsofpulp 3y ago
Because if you want your kids’ peers in school to mostly be from households that earn a similar or higher income than your household, the best way to do that is to move to a school district with the biggest lots and homes you can afford, thereby ensuring the population of the school is made up only of people who can afford all the space and driving. It is literally what makes “good” school districts “good”, the household incomes of the student population. And moving to a suburban place filters that nicely. Same reason why residents will often times oppose apartment developments, since they allow lower income residents to move into the district.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  Wow. That's a really... foreign mindset. Thank you for helping me understand.
  - anon291 3y ago
    Right. Next time you see an American arguing that we need vouchers, realize that this would greatly help redistribute where wealth is. If people could send their kid to any school they wouldn't have to all live in suburbia. They could instead choose the environmentally and socially positive option without risking their child's education.
    - liotier 3y ago
      It is funny because, here in Paris, the urban core is where upwards life is and suburbia is the land of social despair. The opposite logic from the USA, which makes some forum threads awkward with both sides of the Atlantic talking past each other !
      - tetrep 3y ago
        There's a lot of differences between the US and France that result in different suburb/city situations, but I think "white flight" and "redlining" cover a decent chunk of it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
        anon291 3y ago
        recently though white flight (if we refer to the general progression of people to suburbs away from cities) is dominated by people of color. Suburbia is basically about as representative demographically as the rest of the country at this point.
doitLP 3y ago
Because almost without exception these neighborhoods were built a long time ago, are closer to the city center and are the most expensive in the city. Until a few years ago it was possible for upper middle class like the dear readers of HN to afford these neighborhoods in middle tier cities like Boise, Austin, Denver, Nashville, etc. but now even those are out of reach unless you are wealthy or willing to pay most of your income in mortgage AND have two working parents.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  For about 20 years in there, we called that process gentrification and it was specifically led by ambituois young professionals (like those on HN) who bought into traditionally ethnic and/or ailing neighborhoods and filled them with cronut shops and ukelele performance centers (or boot stores and gastropubs). But as you note, that movement petered out and more and more money came in and now those same neighborhoods are inaccessible to the same kind of people that first gentrified them. Except that, as many predicted as gentrification became rampant, it's not really sustainable to drive all the service workers and their families out of the city center, and so now they just live on the streets outside of the cronut shops and gastropubs. So if you give it another 10 or 20 years though, you can expect another urban flight to manifest and balance things out a little more again.
absoluteunit1 3y ago
It’s way above my pay grade to be able to afford to live there
notacoward 3y ago
Because people doing that is why this will never change. Every time someone leaves the suburbs for the city, a vote in town elections goes with them. Every time, it becomes less likely that zoning or other local laws affecting land/property use will change. The only way to make the suburbs better, to turn all of these urban-design principles we all know so well into reality, is for more people to stay and fight. "Move to the city" (or any other already-walkable place) is part of the problem, not the solution. For one thing, people won't do it en masse. Even if they did, those too-few places would become even less affordable, plus their power/water/waste infrastructure would get strained beyond breaking. It's a very privileged and selfish position to take. Instead, we need to make more such places, reconfiguring and repurposing buildings and other infrastructure where they are and where the people are. And that takes voting power. Don't tell people to throw that away.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  Here in Seattle, over two-thirds of the land inside city limits is locked up in suburban-style low-density, single-family-only residential zoning. We would not need the suburbs if we could stop forcing people out of the city by prohibiting natural urban development. Seattle needs more people living in the city who want city life, so we can get these policies changed and build out proper urban amenities: mixed-use zoning, rapid transit, bike infrastructure, walkable neighborhoods. Infrastructure gets upgraded when the tax base arrives to justify it. Yes, you are right, "we need to make more such places", and the low-density neighborhoods closest to the city center are the most efficient places to do that. It is a genuine tragedy that so much sprawl has been built over the last 60-70 years. Much of that construction can never afford its own maintenance without subsidy from the city centers. To make this sustainable, we must densify and contract.
  - notacoward 3y ago
    The low-density areas within city limits are functionally suburbs. You basically said as much yourself. Whether they have their own name and mayor or town council is a historical accident, not significant in this context. For example, Detroit is one of the geographically largest cities in the US. I lived there, and I lived in an adjoining suburb. There was no difference with respect to density or development type. The stroad near our house in Detroit was actually worse than the stroad near our house in Hazel Park. Whatever you can do within the "suburban style" parts of Seattle you can do in a politically separate suburb, as long as there are votes. Cities absorbing their near suburbs (as Detroit did long ago except for Hamtramck and Highland Park) and using weight of numbers to force change would possibly allow for greater density and more walkable areas in those places, but nowadays no current suburb would allow that to happen (because of property values, school funding, etc.) so it's a pipe dream. Transit would not be affected, since that's usually regional anyway. Again, the only way to affect how suburbs are built is to vote there. Running away helps the individual, but doesn't help society, and I'm sorry that people would rather not hear that about themselves but it's the truth here in reality.

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

I'm going to take a slightly different tack, one that will probably also provide walkable. We should be transitioning as many neighborhoods to be aligned around the e-bike, which provides a lot more transportation utility, a fair amount more range, but not nearly as much danger to pedestrians, climate impact, etc. Walkability comes practically for free from such an approach. The ebike should provide just enough range + concentration to enable the big box store. What is not talked about with walkable neighborhoods is that they are rich neighborhoods with rich people that don't mind paying twince Walmart costs. Especially post-covid-inflation, this won't fly. You need SOME big box scale. Because no one talks about the bodega in the slum. There's lots of poor neighborhoods with expensive bodegas that are poor people's only options. People do not rave about that.