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The thing that gets me is how many people are seemingly in favor of preserving zoning that keeps out mom and pop corner grocers and cute coffee shops and the li

• jsbisviewtiful 9mo ago
  Recently moved to an area that has some very small local shopping centers every .4 mile or so and it's been amazing. I can walk to a local bodega, a hardware store, some coffee shops, restaurants and a local pharmacy within 15-20 minutes. Not sure how I ever lived without the options.
  • isubkhankulov 9mo ago
    Curious where this might be - assuming NYC?
    • t-writescode 9mo ago
      NYC, Seattle, Chicago, probably lots of places in CA, literally anywhere in Europe
      • deleted 9mo ago
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      • wolvoleo 9mo ago
        Yeah I love that about living in a European City. I don't even own a car and haven't driven one for 8 years now. I hope I'll never need one again. There's stores, restaurants, a laundromat all within 2 minutes walk. The subway is 5-10 minutes (3 different lines with different walking times) Additionally I spend so much less on transport and no longer waste time driving. When I'm riding public transport I can read stuff. I don't see any negatives.
    • red-iron-pine 9mo ago
      downtown Edmonton, Canada. had a similar experience in RDU in NC. Or Anacortes, WA. plenty of cities can and do run these locations. it's not just an NYC thing.
    • PyWoody 9mo ago
      I've had something similar in the middle of nowhere Maine. I miss it so much.
      • bombcar 9mo ago
        Almost any "rural but not two bars and a gas station" town in the USA will match that to some variation. Everything is walkable if the entire town fits in a 2 mile circle (which can be a pretty big town).
        • PyWoody 9mo ago
          I mean, obviously not? Why else would I miss it? I was living in Bath, ME wherein I could walk to multiple bars and restaurants, a farmer's market, gym, two different grocery stores, as well as the town riverwalk. I currently live back in New Hampshire, and, while it's certainly rural, its more than just a "two bars and a gas station" town but its also a 20 minute drive to the closest grocery store, 15 minutes to the nearest gas station, 30 minutes to a hospital, etc.
    • mmooss 9mo ago
      Most northeast American cities are older and denser - Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore (at least parts of it), Washington DC (at least parts of it) ... smaller cities on that region too.
    • jsbisviewtiful 9mo ago
      Colorado
• palmotea 9mo ago
  > It’s just like… why?! I can’t wrap my head around it. There’s no downside to being able to top off on milk and eggs by taking a leisurely stroll on a sunny Saturday morning. That sounds downright idyllic. Traffic? Parking? Yesterday I went to a neighborhood corner coffee shop that I'd never been to before. They had a little parking lot across the street that was full (and a disaster, I had to back out onto the street), so I had to park around the block in front of someone's house. All the street parking near the shop was full. I suppose that wouldn't be so much of an issue if there was a lot more of these shops, but then they might not be economically viable. > People would rather stay marooned in the middle of an endless desert of houses with essentials being a 30-45m drive away There's a lot of space between "walkable" and "30-45m drive away." I can literally drive all the way across my metro area in about 45 minutes, passing dozens and dozens of grocery stores, coffee shops, and restaurants during the journey. A 45 min drive is a huge distance.
  • cosmic_cheese 9mo ago
    Ideally these places wouldn’t even need parking space, because yes, there’s lots of tiny shops dotted throughout the neighborhood and each serves the surrounding residents. The residential areas encircling Tokyo work exactly like this and it’s perfectly economically viable. The difference is pedestrian/cyclist-dominant vs. car-dominant. Personally I’m in favor of the one that doesn’t involve carting a big SUV across town for 16oz of coffee.
    • palmotea 9mo ago
      > The difference is pedestrian/cyclist-dominant vs. car-dominant. Personally I’m in favor of the one that doesn’t involve carting a big SUV across town for 16oz of coffee. You did it again. There nowhere in the US where you need to "[cart] a big SUV across town for 16oz of coffee." Big SUVs aren't even very common anymore. They got replaced by sedans styled to look like SUVs (aka "crossovers"). That kind of black-and-white thinking does no one any good. And it's probably a big part of the reason why, like you said above, you "can’t wrap [your] head around it". You're not going to understand things without empathizing (or at least reasonably hypothesizing) about the other group's feelings and experiences. > Ideally these places wouldn’t even need parking space, because yes, there’s lots of tiny shops dotted throughout the neighborhood and each serves the surrounding residents. The residential areas encircling Tokyo work exactly like this and it’s perfectly economically viable. So? No American city is going to be bulldozed to build a clone that works like Tokyo, even assuming the Americans want to make the same tradeoffs the people of Tokyo make. If you want to any progress towards walkability, you're going to have to make serious compromises away from that ideal.
• rsync 9mo ago
  "People would rather stay marooned in the middle of an endless desert of houses with essentials being a 30-45m drive away." Not my preference but also not out of bounds as a democratic outcome. If we want our respect for democracy to be taken seriously we need to respect democratic outcomes ... even when they are not the ones we prefer.
  • cosmic_cheese 9mo ago
    Is it still a democratic outcome when NIMBYs are doing things like abusing environmental regulations to choke out developments that citizens had approved of with their votes?
  • hash872 9mo ago
    How about if your neighborhood wanted to keep out people of a certain ethnicity instead? Is that a democratic outcome that we need to respect? The definition of democracy is that we hold regular elections for political office. It does not mean that every single decision in society is up for a vote at the local level. 51% of my neighbors cannot decide that they'd like expropriate my house or checking account. The point of YIMBYism is that these kinds of decisions have negative externalities and a larger group of voters- at the state or national level- are removing that decision-making power from a smaller group at the local level. This is a democratically legitimate outcome!
    • palmotea 9mo ago
      > How about if your neighborhood wanted to keep out people of a certain ethnicity instead? Is that a democratic outcome that we need to respect? Come on, you know that's not analogous. > It does not mean that every single decision in society is up for a vote at the local level. It also doesn't mean "any policy the voters want, as long as long as it's the one I want." Nowadays, when people bring up examples like you did above, it's usually part of an attempt to shut down democratic decision making, by making false comparisons.
      • alsetmusic 9mo ago
• deleted 9mo ago
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• rawgabbit 9mo ago
  It all boils down to perceived drop in home values. It is a vicious cycle that feeds on itself. Less supply, higher prices, bigger mortgages, more NIMBY to prevent drop in home values.
• gedy 9mo ago
  You make it sound so charming, but as an example there’s a rural-ish neighborhood nearby that has a commercial lot which they’re going to put a 24 hour convenience store in. And all the neighbors are freaking out about it because of the clientele and noise they’re worried it will bring in.
  • cosmic_cheese 9mo ago
    I would also be a bit alarmed by a 24h convenience store, but that's quite a different thing than a normal-business-hours small grocer or similar.
    • red-iron-pine 9mo ago
      why alarmed? do you live in Meth-town? I'd love more 24/7 options around, even if it's just a 7/11
      • margalabargala 9mo ago
        To be fair, in the US the places able to support 24 hour stores do tend to be places with higher quantities of drug use and homelessness.
      • driverdan 9mo ago
        I'd like more 24/7 options too but it can be a problem. For example, there's a 24/7 7/11 in downtown Austin, TX that has had many crime issues and is in a generally nice area.
      • bombcar 9mo ago
        What the 24/7 store is really depends on the area, it's not causal but revealing. Many small towns have a 24hr gas station that doubles as a convenience store/minor grocery and they're often quite nice, clean, and quiet.
• kmeisthax 9mo ago
  The average person does not think about such things at all. They live in Car World, where they sit in a giant metal box for 30-45m and then wind up at the place where they can actually buy their shit. Their brain shuts off during driving[1]. To them, it's just The Way Things Are. And then they go take a trip to Tokyo and wonder why it feels so much nicer[0]. The thing to note is that NIMBYs are loud and obnoxious, but they do not have broad democratic support. What the average person has is a deep aversion to change they were not consulted with. What gives NIMBYs power is the fact that the average zoning agency is not very good at explaining the rationale of their changes or collecting and incorporating public feedback. It's very easy for a NIMBY to take a few things out of context, bring out a parade of horribles, and scare the average guy into opposing something they otherwise might have liked. Since NIMBYs are inherently minoritarian, the real base of their power isn't even democratic outrage. Their favored tool to stop projects they don't like is paper terrorism: i.e. finding as many legal complaints as possible that they can sue over to block the project. Even if they're bullshit, it'll take a year or two to get the lawsuit thrown out. Which means that, congratulations, you just increased the cost of the project by about 10% or so, and you're probably gonna have to explain to the feds why the grants you applied for aren't enough and your project is late. [0] And, in the process, piss off a bunch of locals as they bumble their way through the city using their translator app [1] In fact, a lot of the hype surrounding self-driving cars is just to make it possible to completely shut off one's brain while driving. I would argue that trains and buses already do that, but...
• burkaman 9mo ago
  It is confusing, especially because the few places in the US that have walkable neighborhoods like you're describing are also extremely expensive, so clearly they are desirable. It is rational to buy a cheaper house in an area that doesn't have this stuff, because that's what you can afford or you want to save your money for other things you care about, but then why fight against it once you live there? Wouldn't it make your neighborhood a better place to live while also raising your property value?
  • rayiner 9mo ago
    Judging by what the moms in my neighborhood say—traffic and parking.
  • kevin_thibedeau 9mo ago
    > few places in the US that have walkable neighborhoods Lots of places in the US have walkable neighborhods. You just have to live in a place that was developed before WW2 and car ownership wasn't assumed.
    • gnz11 9mo ago
      Those are often the expensive places.
      • kevin_thibedeau 9mo ago
        I have a pre-civil war cottage behind me. The neighborhood built out in 1870 and then again in 1925. All the houses are below $200k.
        • 0x1ch 9mo ago
          In Washington, a half million dollar home is generally becoming a demo lot for property builders, if you don't you just bought a half mil crack house... What state are you in?
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• kjkjadksj 9mo ago
  People like that but no existing person tolerates the potential of having it next door. 4am deliveries. Plates clinking. People making noise. Commercial dumpster operations. Customers taking up all the parking including illegally in your private parking space. There are certain potential disruptions you get living there 24/7 that you don’t get stopping by for 20 mins once a week contributing to that disruption. Not saying these people are right or wrong. Just that it isn’t so black and white an issue. It is one thing when a place is already “lively” and tacitly accepting of all that comes with that vs going into that especially when it is unknown and easy to just say ‘no’ before seeing it how it may play out.
  • margalabargala 9mo ago
    Someone imagining they are able to hear plates clinking from several buildings away may have issues that extend beyond having chosen to live next to a restaurant. Allowing cafes into neighborhoods doesn't mean mandating you turn your living room into one.
    • kjkjadksj 9mo ago
      You can argue that but someone might stand up at that zoning review meeting and say well what if they allow outdoor seating in the future. Or what if they throw out takeout trash in my yard. Or what if the customers fill up my trashcan and I can’t put any in myself. Or they are double parking my driveway making it hard for my mother to back out. At the end of the day, it is going to cause friction something happening somewhere there wasn’t something going on previously. Not saying these people are right or wrong, just that they have grievances that are based on real issues, however big they may be in the grand scheme of things, that they may value more than the prospects of an $8 latte a few minutes sooner than the one already down the road at the strip mall in a sort of containment zone.
      • margalabargala 9mo ago
        > what if they allow outdoor seating in the future God forbid. What if my neighbor has a BBQ?
• pandaman 9mo ago
  I lived next to a mom and pop store, not grocery, selling crystals and such. The owner of the store allowed a homeless camp on the store's lot. City could not clean it out because it's on a private property. The closest tent was less than 50' from my bedroom. The homeless fought, burned stuff, blasted music and hopped over 8' fence into my backyard to help themselves with anything they found there. Store owner was not bothered perhaps because during the day the homeless wondered off, perhaps he just liked them. The police did not do anything, would not even come over noise complaints. Would you like to live like this?
  • Nevermark 9mo ago
    The fact that the problem happened at a store, didn't make the store itself the problem. Any more than the problem of loud neighbors, is a problem of having neighbors.
    • pandaman 9mo ago
      It's a problem of people owning non-residential property next to residential. I am against that, not just stores but the comment I responded to asked about stores specifically.
      • oblio 9mo ago
        If a house near you were abandoned, could you do something about it?
        • pandaman 9mo ago
          Perhaps, but how is it relevant? I responded to a question of what are possible downsides of a mom and pop store next to your house.
          • oblio 9mo ago
            Everything has a downside. The American approach is to take the absolute worst possible outcome and plaster it over any average scenario.
• wmeredith 9mo ago
  Eh, I live in a fairly typical midwest suburb and I don't have access to walkable groceries. But my local grocery store is about a 5 min drive.
  • ajkjk 9mo ago
    well yeah the point is that it would be so nice to have
  • asdfasvea 9mo ago
    'Walkable' has been heavily influenced by the car culture we live in. Too many, crossing an intersection with a traffic light makes that commute unwalkable. In my suburbia, going from one shop to another 5 doors down requires driving.
  • bombcar 9mo ago
    Is that a "five mile" drive or is that literally five minutes from car start to car park? Because I can get about 2 miles by car in that time, if I'm really honest about stop lights and such.
• rayiner 9mo ago
  > People would rather stay marooned in the middle of an endless desert of houses with essentials being a 30-45m drive away I live far enough out of DC where there’s soybean farms five minutes down the road from me. On the way to my parent’s house, there’s a bison farm. But I’m also a 5 minute drive to the closest strip mall (which has a CVS and several restaurants, both sit down and fast food). The ALDI is 10 minutes, and almost everything else, including the Apple Store, is within 15. There are some suburbs where it’s 30 minutes to get to essentials, but most aren’t like that. Heck, the average one-way commute to work in Dallas Texas is under 30 minutes.
  • bombcar 9mo ago
    Even if we ignore freeways and such, a 15 minute drive at 30 mph is about 7 miles, which is a circle containing 176 square miles - or the entirety of the city of New Orleans or Denver. A 15 minute walk is about a mile, so that's a 3.14159 sq mile circle - that's a small town or a neighborhood or two.
    • selimthegrim 9mo ago
      As much as I love going to bat for New Orleans, I will point out that people drive to Metairie all the time for things. The eastern part of New Orleans is also very spread out. (It's also not the 24/7 city it was before the pandemic.) A better comparison would be the towns on the Northshore.
• dmitrygr 9mo ago
  Any real estate agent will tell you what people actually want. Ask one who's been around for a while, in an unofficial setting over drinks. Ask what questions people ask. Ask what they follow up on. Really dig into it. You'll realize that while nobody likes commuting, a commute is the price one pays for those other things people want that you'll hear about over those drinks. It'll give you a lot to think about, i promise.
  • bombcar 9mo ago
    This is 1000% the truth - nobody passes up a house because there's a similar one further away.
• lotsoweiners 9mo ago
  Please give an example of somewhere that has groceries 30 minutes away and is denying some small business to move in near by. This makes it sound like you have never seen a suburb and are describing some extremely rural area.
• sershe 9mo ago
  For perspective I didn't even learn to drive till 30 so I know the pros and cons of walkability. And since learning I shifted firmly into car dependent camp and regret that we bought a house with 60 walkscore and not say 20. First of all convenience is overblown for everything except drinking and children (paradoxically - people go to the burbs for kids but it must be pretty bad for those who can't drive). Shopping for groceries on foot every other day is a waste of time. Local stores for hardware, clothes etc. are typically more expensive with worse quality and selection. Anything remotely specialized like a climbing gym or a bar that is a good place for dancing is unlikely to be walking distance unless you optimize for it, so you need a car or transit - slow and inconvenient. Restaurants in the US are expensive.. sure if I had a Tokyo style joint nearby maybe, otherwise going out is not a daily thing and if prefer variety, so the walking options quickly lose appeal. The only thing it's unquestionably better for is going to a local bar to drink a beer or eight. I lived blocks from Granville st in Vancouver when I was 25, that was great. Maybe a local park would be nice too, but suburbs do have those. Driving everywhere, as I found out, is just better for everything else. The second, in the US it filters out the wrong kind of people to a large degree. Given non-existent law enforcement for property crime and disorder in many cities, this is why I suspect people protect their low density. Places where people have to drive, and places without services, will have many fewer people of the kind that cause crime and disorder. The economic lower middle gets caught in the crossfire - I have lived next to affordable housing and I believe 95% of the people there are probably great, but they didn't enforce the law on the other 5%, so if they tried to build anything affordable next to me i would fight it tooth and nail.
• xyzzyz 9mo ago
  Places full of single family houses with essentials being 30 minutes away don't tend to stay like that for long. They are great business opportunities for developers of supermarkets, malls and the like. You buy some cheap land, build some cheap commercial low-rises, and rake cash as the tenants come flooding in.
  • bombcar 9mo ago
    I wish people would give examples of these places so we could look at them!
    • eudamoniac 9mo ago
      Summerlin, NV
      • xyzzyz 9mo ago
        There's not a single home in Summerlin, NV that's more than a 10 minute drive from a large supermarket. Majority of the houses are less than 5 minutes drive.
        • eudamoniac 9mo ago
          Sorry, I misread. I was giving an example of "They are great business opportunities for developers of supermarkets, malls and the like.", not of an isolated neighborhood.
• seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
  Because absolutely no city wants to become Houston? The USA doesn’t have great examples, and we aren’t Japan. Houston not being walkable at all probably has a lot to do with the fear. I live in a walkable neighborhood in Seattle and had to pay for it. Also lived in Lausanne and Beijing so I still know what I’m missing.
• jjav 9mo ago
  > People would rather stay marooned in the middle of an endless desert of houses with essentials being a 30-45m drive away. Please tell me where in the US, aside from very remote desert areas, can you possibly be 45m (min or mile? either way) away from essentials.
• DonsDiscountGas 9mo ago
  Some people just don't want anything to change ever.
• ratmeadow 9mo ago
  Well said. I wonder about this too in my city ([name redacted]). Apparently many people think "living the dream" is having an excessively large copy-pasted house in a copy-pasted suburb in the middle of nowhere, with no amenities, no green/community space, and you have to drive for an hour to get anywhere. It sounds like a dystopian lifestyle to me. Or, you could live in a somewhat smaller residence where you actually have access to the things that make life good. But god forbid there's a train nearby that increases the sound by 10dB every 10 minutes and brings in all those dodgy (i.e. working class) people! Grrr functional society makes me angry!!
  • eudamoniac 9mo ago
    > access to the things that make life good. This is a strange opinion to me and I guess it's just "the divide". The things that make life good to me, of the things that change with home location, are peace/quiet, privacy, safety, meditative aspects, nature, space to host and play and have kids run around. Hearing that a city block contains "the things that make life good" is kind of baffling. Driving time is suboptimal but it's nowhere near an hour and it's worthwhile.
    • ratmeadow 9mo ago
      The suburbs I'm talking about do not really have nature or space to play. They are by no means rural, but endless seas of identical streets and houses. They are basically the worst of both worlds (no nature and no accessibility), with the advantage of a little extra space. And often they don't have shops either because again, they're so far from anything. Just sad places in my opinion. Also, there is such thing as medium density, in between "city block" and "endless houses". No one seems to want to acknowledge this exists and may be a good option. I'm fortunate to live in a medium density area and I think it's very pleasant. It is absolutely not a city block but there's a train station 1 minute away and a local shopping/community precinct 10 minutes away (by walking). A decent amount of green space, and it seems to be popular with couples and small families. But suburbs like this seem to be rare and that's my point.
  • jjav 9mo ago
    > access to the things that make life good Could it be possible that what makes life good is subjective and people have different enjoyments and hobbies? Having space for a woodworking shop or a large garden or a backyard pool or any other such things bring joy to some people. Not everyone wants to live in an apartment in Manhattan.
• eudamoniac 9mo ago
  Because when I buy a house in a quiet neighborhood I don't want a cafe or bar open right next to my bedroom window? Is this actually mystifying? Everyone wants the shops near, but not too near, but you can't zone for that; someone will be too near. In Seattle I lived on the 20th floor above a bar and it still awoke me some nights.
• b0rtb0rt 9mo ago
  what is so important about being able to walk to a store? take 1 weekly trip to walmart or costco and you’re done shopping for the week my soulless suburb has lots of parks, trails, and friends and neighbors houses for me to walk to, why do i need a commercial development in the middle of this?
  • cosmic_cheese 9mo ago
    Being able to make small grocery trips means less spoiled perishables (only buy what you plan to use right away) and more flexibility when cooking, since it’s no big deal to go grab whatever it is that you need in the moment. It also prevents the annoyance of realizing you forgot that one thing last week’s trip, which is just going to have to wait until next week’s trip. This is how it is in the sleepy residential parts of Tokyo. An interesting knock-on effect is smaller, simpler, cheaper refrigerators since you don’t need to store a ton of refrigerated goods for long periods when groceries are within arm’s reach.
    • b0rtb0rt 9mo ago
      this isn’t really a compelling argument, i can still take a 10 minute trip to the store if i forget something japan is always used as the example here, but america is not japan. i’ve spent a lot of time in japan. due to “cultural differences” the systems that work in japan don’t work in the united states also, the car dependent areas of japan are still way nicer than tokyo anyway
• NeutralCrane 9mo ago
  In my experience I’ve come to realize there is a segment of the population who is against any kind of change at all, of any kind. Even if they have complaints, if action is taken to address that complaint, they will complain about the action.