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The sorry state of neighbourhood design in America: a mother writes

132 points by antr 14y ago

dkhenry 14y ago
So this is not a universal maxim for all of America, remember that America is a big country and we have lots of diversity even in neighborhood design. Some of the older places are really well designed for the raising of children, its just most people don't want to put up with the other things that go along with living in those neighborhoods (congestion , taxes , house design ,... ).
- colomon 14y ago
  For what it's worth, our neighborhood isn't walkable enough to allow you to function without a car, but it does have plenty of space for kids to roam including elementary and middle schools about four blocks away and lots of businesses with a mile and at most one major street crossing. Plus our 1978 house is good-sized and our lot is nice with lots of trees. It was not wildly expensive or congested. Edited to add: Just occurred to me it might sound like I was disagreeing, when actually I was agreeing and then some. It's just not that hard to find whatever sort of neighborhood you'd like to in the US, if you're willing to pay the price. (Which might be money, or having a smaller house, or living somewhere that isn't trendy.)
sp332 14y ago
Here's a TED talk about bad decisions in the design of public spaces, and how to make them better. http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu... The public realm in America has two roles: it is the dwelling place of our civilization and our civic life, and it is the physical manifestation of the common good. When you degrade the public realm, you will automatically degrade the quality of your civic life and the character of all the enactments of your public life and communal life that take place there. Edit: There was some talk here a while ago about roads that were built by developers "for free" and then given to cities for maintenance. Sounds good on paper but results in ridiculous amounts of roads being built... Anyone remember a good link for that?
- iterationx 14y ago
  I was going to post the exact same thing. Also I enjoyed related books "ReThinking a Lot", and "Streets are for People"
- lux 14y ago
  City planning in North America always makes me think of Kunstler. I saw him speak at the Winnipeg Art Gallery years ago about peak oil, and bought his book The Geography of Nowhere (http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-Landscape/dp/0671888250 http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-La...). That book completely opened up my thinking about how the elements in a city relate to each other, and how community and economic activity are so fundamentally intertwined. Great read!
  - mc32 14y ago
    There is a great Jane Jacobs book about the death and life of American cities. http://www.amazon.com/American-Cities-Anniversary-Edition-Library/dp/0679644334 http://www.amazon.com/American-Cities-Anniversary-Edition-Li.... It goes into how architects and other well intended people overthought and did things which destroyed usability of cities. Also, OT, but "The New Topograpphics" is a great and seminal photographic book about the new American Landscape.
- Spooky23 14y ago
  The funny thing about Kunstler is that he lived in a fairly livable small city/bedroom community with good public spaces (Saratoga Springs, NY) and moved to a gentleman's farm out in the countryside. Many people reach a point in life where they want to live somewhere with a slower pace of life and less disturbance than the city. That's why suburbs exist.
  - sp332 14y ago
    Living in the country is fine. Living in a city is fine. But suburbs are dumb. They're too high-density to have good privacy or really have a "slower pace of life", and too low-density to have good relationships with your neighbors.
martinced 14y ago
As a foreigner the one thing that strikes me the most as alienating is that in too many places it's the exact same pattern that is applied. Same roads. Same neighborhoods. Same places with restaurants and shops and a big parking in the middle of the square lot. Same toilets. It's alienating because it feels "fake" nearly anywhere you go. Nature, in a lot of places, doesn't have its rights (just look at how some states are "divided" by a straight line: terrifying). Probably one of the worst place for that is Irvine in southern California. Even if it's not "cookie cutter" everywhere, all the neighborhoods still look identical. These decisions may look pragmatic but to many foreigners it feels alienating.
- FredFredrickson 14y ago
  You know, there's something comforting about going just about anywhere and having, at least, a vague idea of how the layout might be, what things look like, and where to find things. On the other hand though, I agree with you. That same comfort makes it dissatisfying to travel at times. I live in an area of California surrounded by lots of historical smaller cities, but it's nearly pointless to travel to any of them because, aside from a few key features, they all look like the same place overall. Don't even get me started about housing developments. Once you're lost in one of those, your best hope is to start leaving breadcrumbs.
- CapitalistCartr 14y ago
  It feels alienating to many of us Americans, too. Having visited a few foreign countries, I've seen beautiful public spaces, and its disappointing to come home and see how ugly our cities look now that I've seen better. I desperately want to live in a cosmopolitan urban center that is practical, something I have yet to find here.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Chicago or Philadelphia come pretty close.
- akdetrick 14y ago
  I wouldn't call it pragmatic, but alienating is definitely the right word. There are few (affordable) places in America right now that you can live without complete car dependence. The poor, elderly, young, and disabled are in fact alienated. It's easy to understand why this pattern of settlement began when you consider the novelty, freedom, individuality (which can not be understated as something Americans valued), and convenience that came with the availability of automobiles. Somehow though, we've moved forward through almost a century of such development, placing the car above all else. I'm reminded of Raquel Nelson, charged with (but thankfully not convicted) manslaughter because a hit an run driver killed her child while she was allegedly jaywalking [1]. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/18/woman-convicted-of-homicide-after-drunk-driver-kills-her-child/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/18/woman-convic... Edit: clarity
gtank 14y ago
Kunstler's "The Geography of Nowhere" (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_Nowhere http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_N...) examines this issue in depth. Excellent read.
zacharydanger 14y ago
Being from Texas I can tell you, we spread everything out. Just looking at my Runkeeper logs, it's a quarter of a mile from my apartment door to the nearest street.
- xradionut 14y ago
  North Texas you can choose to live in various environments, from very rural to very urban and various degrees between. Where you chose depends on what lifestyle you and your family wish to have. I can walk to my city hall or train station in 10 minutes or choose to drive to the majority of the area in a reasonable amount of time, traffic withstanding.
  - enjo 14y ago
    When I lived in Dallas we had tremendous trouble finding anywhere to live that was "very urban". Outside of a couple of areas in the park cities (which we could never afford) it was really hard to find. Even Downtown was nothing but large streets with limited retail options. I remember looking at a condo building near McKinney ave. that had as a main selling point "parking for your Suburban". When I asked what was within walking distance they pointed in the direction of McKinney and went "some stuff is that way, about a 10 minute walk". That was 6 years ago granted. Maybe things are better now?
tjansen 14y ago
That's interesting... I was born in Germany and live here in an extremely densely populated, but quite affluent neighbourhood. Imagine 6-story houses, each maybe 60ft long each, standing directly next to each other. Each house has about 20 apartments. Because the city has not been designed for cars, there are far too few parking spaces for all the cars. Many of the houses have an underground garage, but not nearly enough for all the residents. So we have relatively narrow streets with very wide side-walks that are completely filled with cars, usually parking in two rows, sometimes three. When you come home at night (BTW, I don't own a car, but I frequently rent one), it's not uncommon for people to spend 15 minutes looking for a parking spot, driving through narrow streets and in slalom around cars parked on street in the second or third row. And when you eventually find a parking spot, it's quite possible that it's a 10 minute walk home. Whenever I am in the US, especially in the suburbs, I am amazed how easy life can be. I just get into my car, without the usual 10 minute walk, and immediately drive whereever I want on a nice, wide street. Admittedly, I understand that for kids too young to drive this can be a problem, but for me US suburbs are always a welcome change.
- themstheones 14y ago
  Re crazy parking story: A man says to his doctor "It hurts when I move my elbow like this." The doctor replies "Then don't move your elbow like that." E.g. sounds like car ownership is more trouble than it's worth.
  - andyking 14y ago
    I didn't own a car for the first nine months living here. I live opposite a railway station, and work opposite another. Why have a car? What followed was a period, after about six months of this, of abject depression. I turned up at the station in the morning, went to work, went to the station to come home, and messed around on the internet all night. Going anywhere other than work was not possible, especially in the evenings when the last train is at 9.30pm or so. The railway line I live on just runs into the city where I work, nowhere else, it's a minor branch, so going anywhere else was a lengthy and expensive undertaking. It was starting to make me ill - I never did anything, saw anyone, just work-home-work. I had to buy a car to enable me to carry on living here, otherwise I would have quit. Now, I have a fairly active life, I have the opportunity to do all kinds of things, and my quality of life is vastly improved. Not having a car is OK if all you want to do is go to work!
monkeyfacebag 14y ago
It's a bit disingenuous to make straight comparisons between the neighborhood designs in the US and Germany given that the latter has something like 4% of the area of the former and almost 7x the population density. That said, Americans did consciously choose to make full use of the country's land mass to spread themselves out, prioritizing investments in interstate highways over local transportation and I'd like very much to see those priorities shift.
- sp332 14y ago
  The USA has been "urbanizing" itself for decades. More than half the population now lives in cities.
- sopooneo 14y ago
  Yeah. In some ways our vast area is curse.
  - jff 14y ago
    The 5-day drive across the country is beautiful, but it's still a 5-day drive :)
- scarmig 14y ago
  The numbers you bring up aren't really meaningful. The salient figure isn't total country population divided by total country area: it's population density as people experience it. Vast swaths of land with no one in it aren't really relevent to social analysis. For an example: imagine the United States now, and then imagine it suddenly got ownership of all of Mars. It would drastically increase the total area of the USA, but it would not suddenly make everyone a nomad who has a hundred square miles to live in alone.
  - afterburner 14y ago
    The population density in Germany means that there is at least a small village every 1-2 miles. I don't know if that's relevant to the conversation, but it's definitely a big difference between Germany and the US, and affects the culture of both. (For example, the tradition of travelling tradesmen in Germany probably makes sense because of this.)
jamespitts 14y ago
I would suggest that we all get involved in how decisions are made in our local governments regarding the structure of our neighborhoods. It is a lot easier than you think. Recently I joined a community-based effort in Ann Arbor to create a large civic space / central park downtown. The city is planning to make downtown much more concentrated and I feel that hackers need to get involved in the process and make sure people are thinking about future needs. We've managed to change the direction of the discussion although it is still early in the game! http://annarborchronicle.com/2013/01/19/parks-group-to-weigh-in-on-downtown-needs/ http://annarborchronicle.com/2013/01/19/parks-group-to-weigh... Every municipality has a mayor, City Council, relevant departments, as well as assorted committees and development organizations. All you have to do is show up with some other neighbors and you are having a big influence. You can bet that real estate developers are involved, pushing their own plans and visions through. Are you?
petercooper 14y ago
Neighbourhood design is one (minor IMHO) component but society and attitudes play a bigger role. When I was a kid in England in the 1980s it was common to be out on your bike all day, to walk to school, to head into the woods, etc. I continue to live in a quaint, safe, rural town and the amount of kids I see out and about is tiny. This is not down to changes in neighbourhood design. Kids do continue to walk to school (but this has supposedly dropped from 90% in the 70s to 10% now for elementary school pupils [1]). Other statistics [2] note that TV watching is up 12% in just the past 5 years and time 'in front of a screen' is up 40% in a decade. A poll commissioned by the Children's Society shows that half of adults believe the earliest a child should be allowed out unsupervised nowadays is 14(!) - it was incredibly common for children to be playing on the streets from 7 or 8 in the 80s. I guess all I'm saying is that even if you give Americans (or Brits) cosy neighbourhoods with everything hooked up just right, there's a bigger and more important problem to be dealt with to get kids out and to get parents to let them out. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/8623152/Children-no-longer-enjoy-playing-outdoors.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/8623152/Child... [2] http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/servlet/file/store5/item823323/version1/Natural%20Childhood%20Brochure.pdf http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/servlet/file/store5/item8233...
- shortlived 14y ago
  I live on a cul-de-sac and it's wonderful for my children. They play outside all the time. There have been various families of our age come and go on our street. We hardly know them because no one comes out of their homes. It's very lonely at times, and yet, we live so close together.
- Torgo 14y ago
  >When I was a kid in England in the 1980s it was common to be out on your bike all day, to walk to school, to head into the woods, etc. When I was a kid in the USA in the 1980's it was this way too. I'd be interested to hear your perspective on this since I've attributed the playing indoors thing to the kidnapper/molester panic that ramped up in the 80's.
- purplelobster 14y ago
  You're right, it's not neighborhood design, it's happening all over the western world. The question is why? My take is that it's an out of control spiral, where more kids stay inside to play video games and watch TV, so fewer kids are on the street, so parents become more concerned about kids being on the street, so they don't let their kids out as much, so the kids do more indoor activities etc. I was born in '86 and I and everybody I knew were basically free roaming kids. I remember being about 5 and taking my bike and ride a kilometer or two away from home, just exploring by myself. That would get my parents arrested today. By the time I started playing video games I was already independent, so it didn't affect me. Got my own keys to the house at 8, came and went as I pleased as long as I call home to say if I'd be home for dinner or not. I wish I could let my kids out when I have them, but I'm afraid that either they won't want to, or I'll be arrested for not supervising them every minute they're outside. And really, what fun would it be running around outside today? It's completely desolate, void of other children to play with.
sheri 14y ago
I lived in Mountain View for a while. The walking distance between locations was large, but not too bad. There was a Starbucks and a few restaurants around 15-20 minutes walk from my place. Despite this, I would not see anyone on the streets. I felt odd, almost like everyone was staring at me, when I would walk from my place to the Starbucks. There are large enough footpaths, but everyone would be in their car. I also lived in a residential neighborhood in San Francisco for a while, and despite being more walk-friendly (with restaurants/coffee shops nearby), I wouldn't see too many pedestrians. The situation was much better than Mountain View, but still very sparse. Despite the housing being more dense, I just don't see people on the streets. I agree that the streets are huge compared to the rest of the world. Crossing a major intersection in Mountain View seems like an eternity.
- tjansen 14y ago
  Here in Germany it's also pretty normal that even in a densely populated residential neighbourhood there are not too many people on the street, unless there's a larger store nearby or something like that. Otherwise, if you do see many people on the street, that would be a sign of high unemployment...
- enjo 14y ago
  Mountain View is a straight up exurb. It's more dense than your average neighborhood in Dallas, but it has all the hallmarks of exurban design..including blasted curved streets. Where were you San Francisco? While I've never lived there, I've done a few month-long stints. It always felt like people were always out on the streets when I've spent time there.
ohwp 14y ago
The book "A Pattern Language" describes a lot of these problems and solutions. Although its from 1977 I think its still valid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language
- praptak 14y ago
  Same thoughts here, I immediately thought of "Connected play" pattern when reading this article. Growing up in communist Warsaw had its downsides but at least my walkable play area was huge so there was always someone to play with (that's more or less the spirit of this pattern.) link: http://www.jacana.plus.com/pattern/P68.htm http://www.jacana.plus.com/pattern/P68.htm
rfb 14y ago
Another great resource: http://www.abebooks.com/9780195019193/Pattern-Language-Towns-Buildings-Construction-0195019199/plp http://www.abebooks.com/9780195019193/Pattern-Language-Towns... Presents the reader with a series of patterns which describe well designed regions, town, buildings, decending right into rooms and living spaces. A fantastic read which has provided a vocabulary to describe the spaces I enjoy.
- scarmig 14y ago
  Also, FWIW, the inspiration for the idea of design patterns in software.
rdl 14y ago
Comparing Germany to Alaska seems a bit unfair. If you want to live in a walkable, dense small town in the US, they do exist. I'd personally prefer to live in a place with multi-acre lots and driving and no kids. Trees are fine, though. The great thing about the US is you actually have everything from dense SF downtown to fairly "German" Palo Alto to Atherton/Hillsborough/Portola Valley, all within the same job market metro area.
- prawks 14y ago
  I'd say extrapolating Alaska to the rest of America is also a big problem in the point the author and her contact are trying to make.
  - weeksie 14y ago
    Anchorage could be any random middle american town and it exhibits the same suburban sprawl issues. What problems do you see with the extrapolation?
    - prawks 14y ago
      America is not homogeneous. "Random middle America" I can't speak to, but certainly neither coast fits this article (from my experience). There doesn't seem to be mention of this in the article.
      - weeksie 14y ago
        Wow, that's exactly the opposite of my experience. Random middle American towns are a vast, bland expanse of strip malls, big box chain stores, suburban tract housing, and family dining restaurants. The towns that aren't like that are the exception.
- _delirium 14y ago
  There are some choices, but I think you overestimate the amount of choice most people have with American development patterns. Sure, you could live in SF or Palo Alto, if you're well off (my brother pays over $1000 for one room in a shared apartment in the Mission). But if you aren't, you're going to be commuting from somewhere else; your only choice is whether you're going to commute from Gilroy or Fremont or whatever. With different development patterns, that's not necessarily the case: in Copenhagen or Berlin, you don't have to be particularly wealthy to live in a centrally located apartment.
loceng 14y ago
It's because the design is driven by development companies with profit-motives.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  And large urban centers like NYC, SF, and Boston aren't driven by development companies with profit motives? Blaming BigCorp seems misguided when we practically begged them to build it this way. It's like walking into McDonald's, ordering a dozen Big Macs, and then complaining about how McDonald's makes you fat.
  - alxp 14y ago
    > And large urban centers like NYC, SF, and Boston aren't driven by development companies with profit motives? They also have to contend with larger local populations, often with a stronger political voice. It's also more capital-intensive and planning-intensive to build in a city than to plop down the same McMansions on cul-de-sacs outside of town, so there's a lot less uniformity. So the answer to your rhetorical question is no, not like suburbia is.
  - loceng 14y ago
    I didn't say they weren't driven in the same way. Most cities can be planned much better.
paganel 14y ago
I highly recommend Jan Gehl's "Life Between Buildings", which even though was written at the beginning of the '70s is still very relevant today. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Gehl#Influence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Gehl#Influence) > Gehl's book Public Spaces, Public Life describes how such incremental improvements have transformed Copenhagen from a car-dominated city to a pedestrian-oriented city over 40 years. Copenhagen's Strøget carfree zone, the longest pedestrian shopping area in Europe,[2] is primarily the result of Gehl's work. In fact, Gehl often uses the phrase "copenhagenize" to describe his vision of how urban centres can embrace bicycle culture and urban cycling.
juan_juarez 14y ago
Welcome to our post-WWII 'prosperity'. When we decided that everyone should have a car & own their own home with a yard, we forced ourselves into this suburban sprawling. While Alaska, which the article talks about, might be a rather extreme example the entire western US is built up like this.
youngerdryas 14y ago
This is market forces in action. If more people wanted to live stacked on top of each other then more of those projects would be built. Families with children want to have a backyard, treefort, garage etc. To a large extent space is freedom.
- babblefrog 14y ago
  Not entirely market forces. City zoning often requires housing over there, shopping way the hell over that way, and your work miles away in a different direction. Which means that you have to drive to go anywhere. So everything is built to move cars around as quickly as possible, at the expense of making walking so unpleasant that nobody wants to go out there. There are a lot of intertwining forces here that have nothing to do with the market.
- dspeyer 14y ago
  And yet, let's take a look at the market. A one-bedroom Manhattan condo costs more than twice what a two-story house almost anywhere else does. There's no lack of demand. Building more housing in a city is hard. You have to buy out all units in the existing building, and the current residents may be quite reluctant. And actually extending a city is even harder.
- emaste 14y ago
  Unfortunately there are are many contributors to suburban sprawl other than market forces. Zoning and regulations like parking minimums contribute to suburban development and prevent developers from building housing that would otherwise be in demand; the way property taxes are calculated also encourages sprawl. An interesting article from a little while back - "How Suburban Sprawl Works Like a Ponzi Scheme" http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2011/10/suburban-sprawl-ponzi-scheme/242/ http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2011/10/su...
Gravityloss 14y ago
Having had a car and also having spent time without one, it creates a striking difference how much you see other people. If you travel by bike and public transport, the places that are easiest to get to are geographically close or with large population densities (= good public transport). You never do "take away" or go to a drive in. At the tiny local hamburger joint between your workplace and home, you might see some people that you might otherwise avoid (you then realize why the drive in was invented) - and you reflect about your difference and are happy that you have a steady job. Or you can hang out with a laptop in a cafe in the city center, bump into an old friend and go somewhere together. With a car, you're insulated from all that. You drive alone, you order your hamburgers from the drive in and go home and eat it alone. You avoid city centers since there's too much traffic there. You try to get your errands and hobbies done in industrial areas and suburbs by the outer ring roads circling the city. Your car whisks you there effortlessly, covering tens of kilometers in a few minutes. You live in a totally different world. After a while you notice you haven't seen another person besides family and colleagues up close for a week. Your physical condition gets worse as well. On the other hand, you might get into deep personal talks with your friends while giving them a lift in the night. You don't drink anymore. In theory, you could start a hobby that requires traveling to hard to get places with large equipment, but that might just as well be a fantasy that justifies the convenience of owning a car. It's a striking contrast in life style. I wish the best sides from both could somehow easily be combined. (If I didn't live in a North European city, I could bicycle much more. California weather could be ideal for something like that, if only city planning supported it.) Nobody ever told me that this happens when you get a car?
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  Two years ago I drove 100miles a day to and from work, put on two stone and nearly broke my marriage For the past year I work twenty minutes walk from home, see my children for breakfast each day and actually recognise people in the local neighbourhood It's soooo much better without commuting - by car or not. The simplest rule of thumb is everything you need for life should be 20 minutes walk away. Schools, shops, doctors, work, parks. It is true of great cities (most of London is like that).
pg 14y ago
Towns are an interesting case where the free market system breaks. The reason is that developers work in units that are too small. If they built whole towns, people would pay more to live in the ones that were walkable and human. But currently developers mostly just build a few hundred houses on the edge of some existing town. Which means they compete with one another at the level of houses rather than towns. Which produces grim expanses of McMansions. I'm not saying developers should switch to building whole towns. It would be a harder problem. The kind of people who currently build houses might not be capable of solving it.
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  But cities do compete - London, NY, Boston, SF all are fairly viable competitors For attracting the best of global talent. And areas of cities (I think the term is metro-area, including feeder towns etc) compete within the city - Kent is a lot more expensive than east essex and both are roughly the same distance from London. I am not saying the micro level analysis is wrong - just that only considering commercial house builders as the only agents with skin in this game is too narrow. Each city mayor will adjust their regulation mix to get the best out of their towns - if we don't like the results that's probably because local democracy needs more effort from us than traditionally it gets - every city could be a pedestrianised beauty if getting elected depended on it.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    > But cities do compete - London, NY, Boston, SF all are fairly viable competitors For attracting the best of global talent. But they compete as governments, rather than as direct builders. That makes it really hard for it to work as a market.
    - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
      Cities are far more Schumpter-style agents than national governments - look at Detroit for an example of a city that has suffered creative destruction. Cities can and often do act as independant (global) agents (bidding for Olympic games comes to mind, and offering special sweetheart deals to banks etc). London has a revenue and expenditure of roughly 22BN - putting it around 150th in the Fortune 500, and it is far mnore concerned with attracting and retaining talent from New York or Paris than from Sheffield. If London fails to provide the right mix of house building and amenities, those people and businesses will (eventually) go elsewhere. Humans do not physically move often or easily - but cities do rise and fall and compete with each other - they are the right level IMO to look at "good neighbourhoods" and if we want to solve the "livability" of cities, then cities (or possibly sub-city-areas) are the right sized unit for the discussion. Its not about houses, its about neighbourhoods.
kyro 14y ago
Recently I realized something about city/neighborhood design in America on a much more general level: We just don't care, or at the very least, it seems that way. The contrast is striking every time I travel abroad. I go to London on an almost biyearly basis where this contrast is really pronounced. Things as trivial as the way bathroom stall doors are built, to much more important components of city life, like the airport/roadway/metro signage, reflect the weight that each city/state/country puts on the importance of design. Comparing London to New York City, it feels as if I'm better taken care of design-wise when in London, like the people running the city actually give a damn about making it easier for me to find my way around the city, with color labeling, maps that are easy to understand, typefaces that are consistent, big and bold for anyone to see. The tube stations are all remarkably consistent in both easily guiding me to the correct subway line, and cleanliness -- two things you definitively cannot say about NYC. The same goes for their respective airports, Heathrow and LaGuardia/JFK. And I pick these two cities because they're the two big metropolises I've spent considerable amounts of time in, but the contrast extends far beyond them. You can pick Berlin and Los Angeles, if you want! I don't know why we as a country don't see just how critical good design is. It seems as if it'd be almost un-American to care.
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  I know the feeling - and I put it down to distrust of government or regulation. London has fantastic park / green spaces. In the Victorian and Edwardian eras paternalistic legislation required access to parkland throughout London, and it is virulently defended even today. In New Jersey/Newark, it feels that such legislation should be fought tooth and nail by every right thinking patriot. In New York, they agree except for the nice bits. edit: not sure I hit the right note - the US approach to such govenrment "interference" can be beneficial, but its really just part of the DNA, not a easy to change choice. I cannot imagine it changing much.
  - defrost 14y ago
    > In the Victorian and Edwardian eras paternalistic legislation required access to parkland throughout London, and it is virulently defended even today. Sort of ballpark but not quite exactly true, and a story that deserves telling. In Victorian and pre Victorian times wealthy landholders had extensive private gardens and follies, the money spent on and by top landscape designers to simulate Arcadia (idealised pastorial setting mixed in with follies after classical antiquity) was substantial and the passive aggressive competition to outdo others ratcheted upwards. In Victorian times a philanthropic movement started to "gift" the concept of private parks and gardens to the public and the unwashed masses (well, to the middle classes more than to the actual unwashed and more seriously socially challenged). Rather than being government required parks these were more individual gifts and many were passed into local government management using "peppercorn leases" (some of which I've actually handled) which bestowed the land to the public use in return for a nominal "rent" (a peppercorn a year, or somesuch) and under the proviso that the the land use be retained as public parkland ... if it is not maintained as such then the control of the land reverts back to the original owners and their estates (which now, a few hundred years on would be a nightmare of dividing up prime central city real estate between potentially several hundred related claimants). The parks are a result of paternalistic (and often maternalistic) gestures which used land transfer legislation to ensure continued public access in perpetuity.
gyardley 14y ago
To me, the planning and density issues everyone's taking about feel like a red herring. Plunk this woman down in the middle of NYC and remove her need for a car whatsoever. Is she really going to let her kid go wherever he wants outside? Is she really going to feel a sense of community, or will she be like most New Yorkers and barely know who her neighbors are? (And before you say 'that's because NYC isn't planned well, either,' would these problems truly go away with more parks?) I'm just theorizing, of course, but I suspect her real issues have a lot more to do with cultural homogeneity and societal mobility. A community with people from all over the place, constantly moving in and out? Low trust and lots of alienation. My whitebread little Texas town, where every church is full on Sunday and the average person's been here for decades? We're completely car dependent out here, the streets are real wide, and for that matter, there's no sidewalks and barely any parks - but there's unsupervised kids running around all over the place, and I can't get through a supermarket trip without being stopped for a conversation with someone I've met. It's nice, and as far as I can tell, it's all without the benefits of urban planning.
- robdoherty2 14y ago
  There are quite a few neighborhoods in NY that have a great sense of community, albeit mostly in the boroughs
- roc 14y ago
  There used to be these things called small towns. [1] One wasn't forced to choose between "20 minutes from anything" and "New York City". Most people talking about the density issue are lamenting the lack of these middle choices. The places where a family would probably still need a car, but it would be conceivable to have a functional bus system to get you from one small town to the next, or into the city. Where you can still own a house with a yard, but walking to corner store wasn't a circuitous two mile hike with intermittent sidewalks. etc. [1] Before they were largely converted to glorified open-air-malls for the cul-de-sac dwellers to drive to on the weekends.
  - smackfu 14y ago
    I do wonder how many of these utopian small towns ever really existed, and when (1920-1950 or so?).
brudgers 14y ago
There's a saying in Florida. "We don't care how you do it up North." Sure some of it is just Southern obstinacy. But some of it is an understanding that with a 67 billion dollar tourist economy and 8400 miles of coastline (more than the U.K.) replenishing beaches is a priority and snow plows aren't. Likewise, European urbanism doesn't scale to the U.S. California has half the density of Germany. Washington is the median state for density it has 1/6th the density. The ODP soccer program in Alabama regularly requires interested players from all parts of the state to convene at a single location. Alabama is about the size of England. You'd have to be daft to require all the top youth players in England to come to a single location for a one day training. You'd have to be insane to propose 10,000 miles of railroads for a population of 8 million. U.S. development patterns aren't a function of bad planning. They are a function of distance. Paris is closer to Moscow than St. Louis is to Los Angeles and doesn't require crossing a continental divide. That doesn't mean it can't be improved. Just that the solutions aren't a priori. They have to recognize the issues on the ground.
tokenadult 14y ago
The city of Woodbury, Minnesota (the city profiled in the blog post kindly submitted here) is a city I specifically rejected living in when my family moved back to Minnesota from Taiwan in 2001. Woodbury offered some interesting work possibilities for my wife, but when we drove through the city to look around, we were appalled to discover that it was nearly impossible to find a place to live that was within walking distance to any kind of shopping, much less to both shopping and services. In Minnetonka, Minnesota, about fifty minutes away by car across the Twin Cities metropolitan area, the lifestyle is still very car-centered, being far from the urban core. But city planning here in Minnetonka has been very intentional about building a city walking and biking trail system, with links to a regional rails-to-trails biking trail network, such that we can walk to the public library (as we are about to do just now), a mile out and a mile back, and walk to much of our shopping (the same distance in a different direction) by the city trails. My wife can bike-commute year-round, and we are able to substitute a LOT of biking or walking for what would be driving trips in most of the United States. My children are fit, healthy, and fearless. They walk all over the place in our crime-free, friendly, diverse neighborhood. I still like the higher density of Taipei or Panchiao, Taiwan even better, and my oldest son likes living in car-free Manhattan now that he works as a programmer for a start-up, but the lifestyle here is not too bad. We know lots and lots of neighbors by sight, having met them repeatedly while walking, and we see deer, coyote, wild turkeys, and much other wildlife while we are on our walks. The United States has a long way to go to be weaned off of car-dependence, but it can happen, and each municipality's government can help make it happen. http://www.eminnetonka.com/public_works/parks_trails/trails.cfm http://www.eminnetonka.com/public_works/parks_trails/trails.... http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/1-bike-city-minneapolis http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/1-bike-city-m... http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/media/Minnesota-Monthly/Travel-Leisure/Traveler-Resources/Minnesota-Biking-2007-2008/Bike-Trails/Twin-Cities-Area-Bike-Trails/ http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/media/Minnesota-Monthly/Trav...
- theycallmemorty 14y ago
  I'd love to hear the logistics of biking to work in Minnesota in the winter. I live in an area with a similar climate and have to give up biking from October through May.
Zak 14y ago
I have some relevant personal experience. I grew up in Alaska, where Andrea, the woman who wrote in lived for 15 years and raised children. We lived in the woods outside a small town for most of my early childhood, then moved to a city when I was 11. Now, I live in Florida, I'm dating a German and spend several months out of the year in Hamburg. I had a great deal of freedom of movement as a child. I could run around in the woods all day by myself if I wanted. In town, I could ride my bicycle anywhere starting from around 6 years old. I may have had a bit more freedom than other kids in the area, but not enough to shock anyone. When I got a bit older, I had access to snowmobiles and three/four wheelers - pretty much as soon as I had the physical size and strength to pull-start the engines and operate all the controls without assistance. This, too was not unusual in that area at that time. My freedom of movement was pretty good when we moved to a city as well. The city wasn't especially designed to be bike-friendly, but it was possible to get most places without having to ride in traffic. A snowmobile was an option for a lot of things in the winter. Even when we moved a few miles out of town, it was practical to ride a bike to town. Where I live now, I still use a bicycle for quite a bit of my transportation. It's a good workout and doesn't cost much to operate. There are a few places I ride that wouldn't be safe for a young, inexperienced or slow cyclist, but there are alternate routes available in most cases. Public transportation is not very good here, but it's an option that can fill in some of the gaps. Germany certainly offers better parity between children and adults as far as transportation. Design may play a role, but it's also important to consider that it's 90 million people in an area smaller than Montana. Not owning a car can work for a greater percentage of people because economies of scale work for a larger percentage of possible trips. That, in turn allows all the infrastructure to be designed for a smaller number of cars per person, hence the smaller streets and multiple grocery stores in every neighborhood. This situation is probably objectively better when you're 12, but may not be when you're 21. What's really different is parents in this time and place. They're now terrified of things that are less likely now than they were 25 years ago. It's that attitude we need to change more than anything.
malyk 14y ago
A great book that was recently released that talks about how to "fix" cities is Walkable City by Jeff Speck. Very compelling read. http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp/0374285810 http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp...
harrylove 14y ago
The limited reading I've done on this subject has come from the published works of Christopher Alexander[1]. In short, he espouses a process of letting living spaces unfold (or evolve, or develop, if you like) in a way that mimics nature. He applies this living process from the rug on the floor, to the location of the doorway in the wall, to the layout of the city. I think The Nature of Order series is especially profound. Read these: * The Timeless Way of Building (1979) * A Pattern Language (1977) * The Nature of Order (vols 1-4, 2002-2005) 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander#Published_works http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander#Published...
zwieback 14y ago
European settlement patterns are basically a continuation of medieval patterns. In the US, especially in the West we have a continuation of the westward expansion. There are plenty of examples of very livable, older towns all over the US and there are plenty of examples of suburban sprawl outside of the US. I think the main problem is that too many affluent families actually prefer a minivan-based lifestyle and the growth of online commerce and culture is going to make it even more enjoyable. For those of us who prefer denser, walkable neighborhoods there are plenty of options but job choice may have to take a back seat to livability. I can see a renewed interest in that type of lifestyle but in the US the trend is driven primarily by younger people and will take some time to show results.
cafard 14y ago
There was very little paranoia about letting kids run loose 50 years ago, when I was walking a few blocks to school, and playing untended in my own back yard or my neighbors'. This was I think in large part because of low key but pervasive surveillance, largely by state-at-home mothers. That few mothers worked outside the home also affected traffic levels in a couple of ways: they didn't commute, and the fathers, freed of pick-up obligations, could carpool. We had in general pretty good schools, partly because there were few professions yet open to women, partly because men who were teachers didn't get drafted, partly because professionals sent their kids to the same schools as everyone else, so there weren't long commutes to a private school--I didn't hear of an elementary school that was other than public or parochial until later. It was a very homogenous middle class world--how homogenous, and how kept that way, has been documented in civil rights cases in the years since.
softgrow 14y ago
A useful counter blog about ignoring the perceived dangers of the environment is Lenore Skenanzy blog "Free-range Kids - How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)". http://www.freerangekids.com/ http://www.freerangekids.com/ Why wait for planning to change and consequent environment change which will take years when you can send the kids to the playground/school/shops now!

132 points by antr 14y ago

So this is not a universal maxim for all of America, remember that America is a big country and we have lots of diversity even in neighborhood design. Some of the older places are really well designed for the raising of children, its just most people don't want to put up with the other things that go along with living in those neighborhoods (congestion , taxes , house design ,... ).

colomon 14y ago
For what it's worth, our neighborhood isn't walkable enough to allow you to function without a car, but it does have plenty of space for kids to roam including elementary and middle schools about four blocks away and lots of businesses with a mile and at most one major street crossing. Plus our 1978 house is good-sized and our lot is nice with lots of trees. It was not wildly expensive or congested. Edited to add: Just occurred to me it might sound like I was disagreeing, when actually I was agreeing and then some. It's just not that hard to find whatever sort of neighborhood you'd like to in the US, if you're willing to pay the price. (Which might be money, or having a smaller house, or living somewhere that isn't trendy.)

sp332 14y ago

Here's a TED talk about bad decisions in the design of public spaces, and how to make them better. http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu... The public realm in America has two roles: it is the dwelling place of our civilization and our civic life, and it is the physical manifestation of the common good. When you degrade the public realm, you will automatically degrade the quality of your civic life and the character of all the enactments of your public life and communal life that take place there. Edit: There was some talk here a while ago about roads that were built by developers "for free" and then given to cities for maintenance. Sounds good on paper but results in ridiculous amounts of roads being built... Anyone remember a good link for that?

iterationx 14y ago
I was going to post the exact same thing. Also I enjoyed related books "ReThinking a Lot", and "Streets are for People"
lux 14y ago
City planning in North America always makes me think of Kunstler. I saw him speak at the Winnipeg Art Gallery years ago about peak oil, and bought his book The Geography of Nowhere (http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-Landscape/dp/0671888250 http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-La...). That book completely opened up my thinking about how the elements in a city relate to each other, and how community and economic activity are so fundamentally intertwined. Great read!
- mc32 14y ago
  There is a great Jane Jacobs book about the death and life of American cities. http://www.amazon.com/American-Cities-Anniversary-Edition-Library/dp/0679644334 http://www.amazon.com/American-Cities-Anniversary-Edition-Li.... It goes into how architects and other well intended people overthought and did things which destroyed usability of cities. Also, OT, but "The New Topograpphics" is a great and seminal photographic book about the new American Landscape.
Spooky23 14y ago
The funny thing about Kunstler is that he lived in a fairly livable small city/bedroom community with good public spaces (Saratoga Springs, NY) and moved to a gentleman's farm out in the countryside. Many people reach a point in life where they want to live somewhere with a slower pace of life and less disturbance than the city. That's why suburbs exist.
- sp332 14y ago
  Living in the country is fine. Living in a city is fine. But suburbs are dumb. They're too high-density to have good privacy or really have a "slower pace of life", and too low-density to have good relationships with your neighbors.

martinced 14y ago

As a foreigner the one thing that strikes me the most as alienating is that in too many places it's the exact same pattern that is applied. Same roads. Same neighborhoods. Same places with restaurants and shops and a big parking in the middle of the square lot. Same toilets. It's alienating because it feels "fake" nearly anywhere you go. Nature, in a lot of places, doesn't have its rights (just look at how some states are "divided" by a straight line: terrifying). Probably one of the worst place for that is Irvine in southern California. Even if it's not "cookie cutter" everywhere, all the neighborhoods still look identical. These decisions may look pragmatic but to many foreigners it feels alienating.

FredFredrickson 14y ago
You know, there's something comforting about going just about anywhere and having, at least, a vague idea of how the layout might be, what things look like, and where to find things. On the other hand though, I agree with you. That same comfort makes it dissatisfying to travel at times. I live in an area of California surrounded by lots of historical smaller cities, but it's nearly pointless to travel to any of them because, aside from a few key features, they all look like the same place overall. Don't even get me started about housing developments. Once you're lost in one of those, your best hope is to start leaving breadcrumbs.
CapitalistCartr 14y ago
It feels alienating to many of us Americans, too. Having visited a few foreign countries, I've seen beautiful public spaces, and its disappointing to come home and see how ugly our cities look now that I've seen better. I desperately want to live in a cosmopolitan urban center that is practical, something I have yet to find here.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Chicago or Philadelphia come pretty close.
akdetrick 14y ago
I wouldn't call it pragmatic, but alienating is definitely the right word. There are few (affordable) places in America right now that you can live without complete car dependence. The poor, elderly, young, and disabled are in fact alienated. It's easy to understand why this pattern of settlement began when you consider the novelty, freedom, individuality (which can not be understated as something Americans valued), and convenience that came with the availability of automobiles. Somehow though, we've moved forward through almost a century of such development, placing the car above all else. I'm reminded of Raquel Nelson, charged with (but thankfully not convicted) manslaughter because a hit an run driver killed her child while she was allegedly jaywalking [1]. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/18/woman-convicted-of-homicide-after-drunk-driver-kills-her-child/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/18/woman-convic... Edit: clarity

gtank 14y ago

Kunstler's "The Geography of Nowhere" (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_Nowhere http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_N...) examines this issue in depth. Excellent read.

zacharydanger 14y ago

Being from Texas I can tell you, we spread everything out. Just looking at my Runkeeper logs, it's a quarter of a mile from my apartment door to the nearest street.

xradionut 14y ago
North Texas you can choose to live in various environments, from very rural to very urban and various degrees between. Where you chose depends on what lifestyle you and your family wish to have. I can walk to my city hall or train station in 10 minutes or choose to drive to the majority of the area in a reasonable amount of time, traffic withstanding.
- enjo 14y ago
  When I lived in Dallas we had tremendous trouble finding anywhere to live that was "very urban". Outside of a couple of areas in the park cities (which we could never afford) it was really hard to find. Even Downtown was nothing but large streets with limited retail options. I remember looking at a condo building near McKinney ave. that had as a main selling point "parking for your Suburban". When I asked what was within walking distance they pointed in the direction of McKinney and went "some stuff is that way, about a 10 minute walk". That was 6 years ago granted. Maybe things are better now?

tjansen 14y ago

That's interesting... I was born in Germany and live here in an extremely densely populated, but quite affluent neighbourhood. Imagine 6-story houses, each maybe 60ft long each, standing directly next to each other. Each house has about 20 apartments. Because the city has not been designed for cars, there are far too few parking spaces for all the cars. Many of the houses have an underground garage, but not nearly enough for all the residents. So we have relatively narrow streets with very wide side-walks that are completely filled with cars, usually parking in two rows, sometimes three. When you come home at night (BTW, I don't own a car, but I frequently rent one), it's not uncommon for people to spend 15 minutes looking for a parking spot, driving through narrow streets and in slalom around cars parked on street in the second or third row. And when you eventually find a parking spot, it's quite possible that it's a 10 minute walk home. Whenever I am in the US, especially in the suburbs, I am amazed how easy life can be. I just get into my car, without the usual 10 minute walk, and immediately drive whereever I want on a nice, wide street. Admittedly, I understand that for kids too young to drive this can be a problem, but for me US suburbs are always a welcome change.

themstheones 14y ago
Re crazy parking story: A man says to his doctor "It hurts when I move my elbow like this." The doctor replies "Then don't move your elbow like that." E.g. sounds like car ownership is more trouble than it's worth.
- andyking 14y ago
  I didn't own a car for the first nine months living here. I live opposite a railway station, and work opposite another. Why have a car? What followed was a period, after about six months of this, of abject depression. I turned up at the station in the morning, went to work, went to the station to come home, and messed around on the internet all night. Going anywhere other than work was not possible, especially in the evenings when the last train is at 9.30pm or so. The railway line I live on just runs into the city where I work, nowhere else, it's a minor branch, so going anywhere else was a lengthy and expensive undertaking. It was starting to make me ill - I never did anything, saw anyone, just work-home-work. I had to buy a car to enable me to carry on living here, otherwise I would have quit. Now, I have a fairly active life, I have the opportunity to do all kinds of things, and my quality of life is vastly improved. Not having a car is OK if all you want to do is go to work!

monkeyfacebag 14y ago

It's a bit disingenuous to make straight comparisons between the neighborhood designs in the US and Germany given that the latter has something like 4% of the area of the former and almost 7x the population density. That said, Americans did consciously choose to make full use of the country's land mass to spread themselves out, prioritizing investments in interstate highways over local transportation and I'd like very much to see those priorities shift.

sp332 14y ago
The USA has been "urbanizing" itself for decades. More than half the population now lives in cities.
sopooneo 14y ago
Yeah. In some ways our vast area is curse.
- jff 14y ago
  The 5-day drive across the country is beautiful, but it's still a 5-day drive :)
scarmig 14y ago
The numbers you bring up aren't really meaningful. The salient figure isn't total country population divided by total country area: it's population density as people experience it. Vast swaths of land with no one in it aren't really relevent to social analysis. For an example: imagine the United States now, and then imagine it suddenly got ownership of all of Mars. It would drastically increase the total area of the USA, but it would not suddenly make everyone a nomad who has a hundred square miles to live in alone.
- afterburner 14y ago
  The population density in Germany means that there is at least a small village every 1-2 miles. I don't know if that's relevant to the conversation, but it's definitely a big difference between Germany and the US, and affects the culture of both. (For example, the tradition of travelling tradesmen in Germany probably makes sense because of this.)

jamespitts 14y ago

I would suggest that we all get involved in how decisions are made in our local governments regarding the structure of our neighborhoods. It is a lot easier than you think. Recently I joined a community-based effort in Ann Arbor to create a large civic space / central park downtown. The city is planning to make downtown much more concentrated and I feel that hackers need to get involved in the process and make sure people are thinking about future needs. We've managed to change the direction of the discussion although it is still early in the game! http://annarborchronicle.com/2013/01/19/parks-group-to-weigh-in-on-downtown-needs/ http://annarborchronicle.com/2013/01/19/parks-group-to-weigh... Every municipality has a mayor, City Council, relevant departments, as well as assorted committees and development organizations. All you have to do is show up with some other neighbors and you are having a big influence. You can bet that real estate developers are involved, pushing their own plans and visions through. Are you?

petercooper 14y ago

Neighbourhood design is one (minor IMHO) component but society and attitudes play a bigger role. When I was a kid in England in the 1980s it was common to be out on your bike all day, to walk to school, to head into the woods, etc. I continue to live in a quaint, safe, rural town and the amount of kids I see out and about is tiny. This is not down to changes in neighbourhood design. Kids do continue to walk to school (but this has supposedly dropped from 90% in the 70s to 10% now for elementary school pupils [1]). Other statistics [2] note that TV watching is up 12% in just the past 5 years and time 'in front of a screen' is up 40% in a decade. A poll commissioned by the Children's Society shows that half of adults believe the earliest a child should be allowed out unsupervised nowadays is 14(!) - it was incredibly common for children to be playing on the streets from 7 or 8 in the 80s. I guess all I'm saying is that even if you give Americans (or Brits) cosy neighbourhoods with everything hooked up just right, there's a bigger and more important problem to be dealt with to get kids out and to get parents to let them out. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/8623152/Children-no-longer-enjoy-playing-outdoors.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/8623152/Child... [2] http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/servlet/file/store5/item823323/version1/Natural%20Childhood%20Brochure.pdf http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/servlet/file/store5/item8233...

shortlived 14y ago
I live on a cul-de-sac and it's wonderful for my children. They play outside all the time. There have been various families of our age come and go on our street. We hardly know them because no one comes out of their homes. It's very lonely at times, and yet, we live so close together.
Torgo 14y ago
>When I was a kid in England in the 1980s it was common to be out on your bike all day, to walk to school, to head into the woods, etc. When I was a kid in the USA in the 1980's it was this way too. I'd be interested to hear your perspective on this since I've attributed the playing indoors thing to the kidnapper/molester panic that ramped up in the 80's.
purplelobster 14y ago
You're right, it's not neighborhood design, it's happening all over the western world. The question is why? My take is that it's an out of control spiral, where more kids stay inside to play video games and watch TV, so fewer kids are on the street, so parents become more concerned about kids being on the street, so they don't let their kids out as much, so the kids do more indoor activities etc. I was born in '86 and I and everybody I knew were basically free roaming kids. I remember being about 5 and taking my bike and ride a kilometer or two away from home, just exploring by myself. That would get my parents arrested today. By the time I started playing video games I was already independent, so it didn't affect me. Got my own keys to the house at 8, came and went as I pleased as long as I call home to say if I'd be home for dinner or not. I wish I could let my kids out when I have them, but I'm afraid that either they won't want to, or I'll be arrested for not supervising them every minute they're outside. And really, what fun would it be running around outside today? It's completely desolate, void of other children to play with.

sheri 14y ago

I lived in Mountain View for a while. The walking distance between locations was large, but not too bad. There was a Starbucks and a few restaurants around 15-20 minutes walk from my place. Despite this, I would not see anyone on the streets. I felt odd, almost like everyone was staring at me, when I would walk from my place to the Starbucks. There are large enough footpaths, but everyone would be in their car. I also lived in a residential neighborhood in San Francisco for a while, and despite being more walk-friendly (with restaurants/coffee shops nearby), I wouldn't see too many pedestrians. The situation was much better than Mountain View, but still very sparse. Despite the housing being more dense, I just don't see people on the streets. I agree that the streets are huge compared to the rest of the world. Crossing a major intersection in Mountain View seems like an eternity.

tjansen 14y ago
Here in Germany it's also pretty normal that even in a densely populated residential neighbourhood there are not too many people on the street, unless there's a larger store nearby or something like that. Otherwise, if you do see many people on the street, that would be a sign of high unemployment...
enjo 14y ago
Mountain View is a straight up exurb. It's more dense than your average neighborhood in Dallas, but it has all the hallmarks of exurban design..including blasted curved streets. Where were you San Francisco? While I've never lived there, I've done a few month-long stints. It always felt like people were always out on the streets when I've spent time there.

ohwp 14y ago

The book "A Pattern Language" describes a lot of these problems and solutions. Although its from 1977 I think its still valid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language

praptak 14y ago
Same thoughts here, I immediately thought of "Connected play" pattern when reading this article. Growing up in communist Warsaw had its downsides but at least my walkable play area was huge so there was always someone to play with (that's more or less the spirit of this pattern.) link: http://www.jacana.plus.com/pattern/P68.htm http://www.jacana.plus.com/pattern/P68.htm

rfb 14y ago

Another great resource: http://www.abebooks.com/9780195019193/Pattern-Language-Towns-Buildings-Construction-0195019199/plp http://www.abebooks.com/9780195019193/Pattern-Language-Towns... Presents the reader with a series of patterns which describe well designed regions, town, buildings, decending right into rooms and living spaces. A fantastic read which has provided a vocabulary to describe the spaces I enjoy.

scarmig 14y ago
Also, FWIW, the inspiration for the idea of design patterns in software.

rdl 14y ago

Comparing Germany to Alaska seems a bit unfair. If you want to live in a walkable, dense small town in the US, they do exist. I'd personally prefer to live in a place with multi-acre lots and driving and no kids. Trees are fine, though. The great thing about the US is you actually have everything from dense SF downtown to fairly "German" Palo Alto to Atherton/Hillsborough/Portola Valley, all within the same job market metro area.

prawks 14y ago
I'd say extrapolating Alaska to the rest of America is also a big problem in the point the author and her contact are trying to make.
- weeksie 14y ago
  Anchorage could be any random middle american town and it exhibits the same suburban sprawl issues. What problems do you see with the extrapolation?
  - prawks 14y ago
    America is not homogeneous. "Random middle America" I can't speak to, but certainly neither coast fits this article (from my experience). There doesn't seem to be mention of this in the article.
    - weeksie 14y ago
      Wow, that's exactly the opposite of my experience. Random middle American towns are a vast, bland expanse of strip malls, big box chain stores, suburban tract housing, and family dining restaurants. The towns that aren't like that are the exception.
_delirium 14y ago
There are some choices, but I think you overestimate the amount of choice most people have with American development patterns. Sure, you could live in SF or Palo Alto, if you're well off (my brother pays over $1000 for one room in a shared apartment in the Mission). But if you aren't, you're going to be commuting from somewhere else; your only choice is whether you're going to commute from Gilroy or Fremont or whatever. With different development patterns, that's not necessarily the case: in Copenhagen or Berlin, you don't have to be particularly wealthy to live in a centrally located apartment.

loceng 14y ago

It's because the design is driven by development companies with profit-motives.

potatolicious 14y ago
And large urban centers like NYC, SF, and Boston aren't driven by development companies with profit motives? Blaming BigCorp seems misguided when we practically begged them to build it this way. It's like walking into McDonald's, ordering a dozen Big Macs, and then complaining about how McDonald's makes you fat.
- alxp 14y ago
  > And large urban centers like NYC, SF, and Boston aren't driven by development companies with profit motives? They also have to contend with larger local populations, often with a stronger political voice. It's also more capital-intensive and planning-intensive to build in a city than to plop down the same McMansions on cul-de-sacs outside of town, so there's a lot less uniformity. So the answer to your rhetorical question is no, not like suburbia is.
- loceng 14y ago
  I didn't say they weren't driven in the same way. Most cities can be planned much better.

paganel 14y ago

I highly recommend Jan Gehl's "Life Between Buildings", which even though was written at the beginning of the '70s is still very relevant today. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Gehl#Influence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Gehl#Influence) > Gehl's book Public Spaces, Public Life describes how such incremental improvements have transformed Copenhagen from a car-dominated city to a pedestrian-oriented city over 40 years. Copenhagen's Strøget carfree zone, the longest pedestrian shopping area in Europe,[2] is primarily the result of Gehl's work. In fact, Gehl often uses the phrase "copenhagenize" to describe his vision of how urban centres can embrace bicycle culture and urban cycling.

juan_juarez 14y ago

Welcome to our post-WWII 'prosperity'. When we decided that everyone should have a car & own their own home with a yard, we forced ourselves into this suburban sprawling. While Alaska, which the article talks about, might be a rather extreme example the entire western US is built up like this.

youngerdryas 14y ago

This is market forces in action. If more people wanted to live stacked on top of each other then more of those projects would be built. Families with children want to have a backyard, treefort, garage etc. To a large extent space is freedom.

babblefrog 14y ago
Not entirely market forces. City zoning often requires housing over there, shopping way the hell over that way, and your work miles away in a different direction. Which means that you have to drive to go anywhere. So everything is built to move cars around as quickly as possible, at the expense of making walking so unpleasant that nobody wants to go out there. There are a lot of intertwining forces here that have nothing to do with the market.
dspeyer 14y ago
And yet, let's take a look at the market. A one-bedroom Manhattan condo costs more than twice what a two-story house almost anywhere else does. There's no lack of demand. Building more housing in a city is hard. You have to buy out all units in the existing building, and the current residents may be quite reluctant. And actually extending a city is even harder.
emaste 14y ago
Unfortunately there are are many contributors to suburban sprawl other than market forces. Zoning and regulations like parking minimums contribute to suburban development and prevent developers from building housing that would otherwise be in demand; the way property taxes are calculated also encourages sprawl. An interesting article from a little while back - "How Suburban Sprawl Works Like a Ponzi Scheme" http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2011/10/suburban-sprawl-ponzi-scheme/242/ http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2011/10/su...

Gravityloss 14y ago

Having had a car and also having spent time without one, it creates a striking difference how much you see other people. If you travel by bike and public transport, the places that are easiest to get to are geographically close or with large population densities (= good public transport). You never do "take away" or go to a drive in. At the tiny local hamburger joint between your workplace and home, you might see some people that you might otherwise avoid (you then realize why the drive in was invented) - and you reflect about your difference and are happy that you have a steady job. Or you can hang out with a laptop in a cafe in the city center, bump into an old friend and go somewhere together. With a car, you're insulated from all that. You drive alone, you order your hamburgers from the drive in and go home and eat it alone. You avoid city centers since there's too much traffic there. You try to get your errands and hobbies done in industrial areas and suburbs by the outer ring roads circling the city. Your car whisks you there effortlessly, covering tens of kilometers in a few minutes. You live in a totally different world. After a while you notice you haven't seen another person besides family and colleagues up close for a week. Your physical condition gets worse as well. On the other hand, you might get into deep personal talks with your friends while giving them a lift in the night. You don't drink anymore. In theory, you could start a hobby that requires traveling to hard to get places with large equipment, but that might just as well be a fantasy that justifies the convenience of owning a car. It's a striking contrast in life style. I wish the best sides from both could somehow easily be combined. (If I didn't live in a North European city, I could bicycle much more. California weather could be ideal for something like that, if only city planning supported it.) Nobody ever told me that this happens when you get a car?

lifeisstillgood 14y ago
Two years ago I drove 100miles a day to and from work, put on two stone and nearly broke my marriage For the past year I work twenty minutes walk from home, see my children for breakfast each day and actually recognise people in the local neighbourhood It's soooo much better without commuting - by car or not. The simplest rule of thumb is everything you need for life should be 20 minutes walk away. Schools, shops, doctors, work, parks. It is true of great cities (most of London is like that).

pg 14y ago

Towns are an interesting case where the free market system breaks. The reason is that developers work in units that are too small. If they built whole towns, people would pay more to live in the ones that were walkable and human. But currently developers mostly just build a few hundred houses on the edge of some existing town. Which means they compete with one another at the level of houses rather than towns. Which produces grim expanses of McMansions. I'm not saying developers should switch to building whole towns. It would be a harder problem. The kind of people who currently build houses might not be capable of solving it.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago
But cities do compete - London, NY, Boston, SF all are fairly viable competitors For attracting the best of global talent. And areas of cities (I think the term is metro-area, including feeder towns etc) compete within the city - Kent is a lot more expensive than east essex and both are roughly the same distance from London. I am not saying the micro level analysis is wrong - just that only considering commercial house builders as the only agents with skin in this game is too narrow. Each city mayor will adjust their regulation mix to get the best out of their towns - if we don't like the results that's probably because local democracy needs more effort from us than traditionally it gets - every city could be a pedestrianised beauty if getting elected depended on it.
- saraid216 14y ago
  > But cities do compete - London, NY, Boston, SF all are fairly viable competitors For attracting the best of global talent. But they compete as governments, rather than as direct builders. That makes it really hard for it to work as a market.
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    Cities are far more Schumpter-style agents than national governments - look at Detroit for an example of a city that has suffered creative destruction. Cities can and often do act as independant (global) agents (bidding for Olympic games comes to mind, and offering special sweetheart deals to banks etc). London has a revenue and expenditure of roughly 22BN - putting it around 150th in the Fortune 500, and it is far mnore concerned with attracting and retaining talent from New York or Paris than from Sheffield. If London fails to provide the right mix of house building and amenities, those people and businesses will (eventually) go elsewhere. Humans do not physically move often or easily - but cities do rise and fall and compete with each other - they are the right level IMO to look at "good neighbourhoods" and if we want to solve the "livability" of cities, then cities (or possibly sub-city-areas) are the right sized unit for the discussion. Its not about houses, its about neighbourhoods.

kyro 14y ago

Recently I realized something about city/neighborhood design in America on a much more general level: We just don't care, or at the very least, it seems that way. The contrast is striking every time I travel abroad. I go to London on an almost biyearly basis where this contrast is really pronounced. Things as trivial as the way bathroom stall doors are built, to much more important components of city life, like the airport/roadway/metro signage, reflect the weight that each city/state/country puts on the importance of design. Comparing London to New York City, it feels as if I'm better taken care of design-wise when in London, like the people running the city actually give a damn about making it easier for me to find my way around the city, with color labeling, maps that are easy to understand, typefaces that are consistent, big and bold for anyone to see. The tube stations are all remarkably consistent in both easily guiding me to the correct subway line, and cleanliness -- two things you definitively cannot say about NYC. The same goes for their respective airports, Heathrow and LaGuardia/JFK. And I pick these two cities because they're the two big metropolises I've spent considerable amounts of time in, but the contrast extends far beyond them. You can pick Berlin and Los Angeles, if you want! I don't know why we as a country don't see just how critical good design is. It seems as if it'd be almost un-American to care.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago
I know the feeling - and I put it down to distrust of government or regulation. London has fantastic park / green spaces. In the Victorian and Edwardian eras paternalistic legislation required access to parkland throughout London, and it is virulently defended even today. In New Jersey/Newark, it feels that such legislation should be fought tooth and nail by every right thinking patriot. In New York, they agree except for the nice bits. edit: not sure I hit the right note - the US approach to such govenrment "interference" can be beneficial, but its really just part of the DNA, not a easy to change choice. I cannot imagine it changing much.
- defrost 14y ago
  > In the Victorian and Edwardian eras paternalistic legislation required access to parkland throughout London, and it is virulently defended even today. Sort of ballpark but not quite exactly true, and a story that deserves telling. In Victorian and pre Victorian times wealthy landholders had extensive private gardens and follies, the money spent on and by top landscape designers to simulate Arcadia (idealised pastorial setting mixed in with follies after classical antiquity) was substantial and the passive aggressive competition to outdo others ratcheted upwards. In Victorian times a philanthropic movement started to "gift" the concept of private parks and gardens to the public and the unwashed masses (well, to the middle classes more than to the actual unwashed and more seriously socially challenged). Rather than being government required parks these were more individual gifts and many were passed into local government management using "peppercorn leases" (some of which I've actually handled) which bestowed the land to the public use in return for a nominal "rent" (a peppercorn a year, or somesuch) and under the proviso that the the land use be retained as public parkland ... if it is not maintained as such then the control of the land reverts back to the original owners and their estates (which now, a few hundred years on would be a nightmare of dividing up prime central city real estate between potentially several hundred related claimants). The parks are a result of paternalistic (and often maternalistic) gestures which used land transfer legislation to ensure continued public access in perpetuity.

gyardley 14y ago

To me, the planning and density issues everyone's taking about feel like a red herring. Plunk this woman down in the middle of NYC and remove her need for a car whatsoever. Is she really going to let her kid go wherever he wants outside? Is she really going to feel a sense of community, or will she be like most New Yorkers and barely know who her neighbors are? (And before you say 'that's because NYC isn't planned well, either,' would these problems truly go away with more parks?) I'm just theorizing, of course, but I suspect her real issues have a lot more to do with cultural homogeneity and societal mobility. A community with people from all over the place, constantly moving in and out? Low trust and lots of alienation. My whitebread little Texas town, where every church is full on Sunday and the average person's been here for decades? We're completely car dependent out here, the streets are real wide, and for that matter, there's no sidewalks and barely any parks - but there's unsupervised kids running around all over the place, and I can't get through a supermarket trip without being stopped for a conversation with someone I've met. It's nice, and as far as I can tell, it's all without the benefits of urban planning.

robdoherty2 14y ago
There are quite a few neighborhoods in NY that have a great sense of community, albeit mostly in the boroughs
roc 14y ago
There used to be these things called small towns. [1] One wasn't forced to choose between "20 minutes from anything" and "New York City". Most people talking about the density issue are lamenting the lack of these middle choices. The places where a family would probably still need a car, but it would be conceivable to have a functional bus system to get you from one small town to the next, or into the city. Where you can still own a house with a yard, but walking to corner store wasn't a circuitous two mile hike with intermittent sidewalks. etc. [1] Before they were largely converted to glorified open-air-malls for the cul-de-sac dwellers to drive to on the weekends.
- smackfu 14y ago
  I do wonder how many of these utopian small towns ever really existed, and when (1920-1950 or so?).

brudgers 14y ago

There's a saying in Florida. "We don't care how you do it up North." Sure some of it is just Southern obstinacy. But some of it is an understanding that with a 67 billion dollar tourist economy and 8400 miles of coastline (more than the U.K.) replenishing beaches is a priority and snow plows aren't. Likewise, European urbanism doesn't scale to the U.S. California has half the density of Germany. Washington is the median state for density it has 1/6th the density. The ODP soccer program in Alabama regularly requires interested players from all parts of the state to convene at a single location. Alabama is about the size of England. You'd have to be daft to require all the top youth players in England to come to a single location for a one day training. You'd have to be insane to propose 10,000 miles of railroads for a population of 8 million. U.S. development patterns aren't a function of bad planning. They are a function of distance. Paris is closer to Moscow than St. Louis is to Los Angeles and doesn't require crossing a continental divide. That doesn't mean it can't be improved. Just that the solutions aren't a priori. They have to recognize the issues on the ground.

tokenadult 14y ago

The city of Woodbury, Minnesota (the city profiled in the blog post kindly submitted here) is a city I specifically rejected living in when my family moved back to Minnesota from Taiwan in 2001. Woodbury offered some interesting work possibilities for my wife, but when we drove through the city to look around, we were appalled to discover that it was nearly impossible to find a place to live that was within walking distance to any kind of shopping, much less to both shopping and services. In Minnetonka, Minnesota, about fifty minutes away by car across the Twin Cities metropolitan area, the lifestyle is still very car-centered, being far from the urban core. But city planning here in Minnetonka has been very intentional about building a city walking and biking trail system, with links to a regional rails-to-trails biking trail network, such that we can walk to the public library (as we are about to do just now), a mile out and a mile back, and walk to much of our shopping (the same distance in a different direction) by the city trails. My wife can bike-commute year-round, and we are able to substitute a LOT of biking or walking for what would be driving trips in most of the United States. My children are fit, healthy, and fearless. They walk all over the place in our crime-free, friendly, diverse neighborhood. I still like the higher density of Taipei or Panchiao, Taiwan even better, and my oldest son likes living in car-free Manhattan now that he works as a programmer for a start-up, but the lifestyle here is not too bad. We know lots and lots of neighbors by sight, having met them repeatedly while walking, and we see deer, coyote, wild turkeys, and much other wildlife while we are on our walks. The United States has a long way to go to be weaned off of car-dependence, but it can happen, and each municipality's government can help make it happen. http://www.eminnetonka.com/public_works/parks_trails/trails.cfm http://www.eminnetonka.com/public_works/parks_trails/trails.... http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/1-bike-city-minneapolis http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/1-bike-city-m... http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/media/Minnesota-Monthly/Travel-Leisure/Traveler-Resources/Minnesota-Biking-2007-2008/Bike-Trails/Twin-Cities-Area-Bike-Trails/ http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/media/Minnesota-Monthly/Trav...

theycallmemorty 14y ago
I'd love to hear the logistics of biking to work in Minnesota in the winter. I live in an area with a similar climate and have to give up biking from October through May.

Zak 14y ago

I have some relevant personal experience. I grew up in Alaska, where Andrea, the woman who wrote in lived for 15 years and raised children. We lived in the woods outside a small town for most of my early childhood, then moved to a city when I was 11. Now, I live in Florida, I'm dating a German and spend several months out of the year in Hamburg. I had a great deal of freedom of movement as a child. I could run around in the woods all day by myself if I wanted. In town, I could ride my bicycle anywhere starting from around 6 years old. I may have had a bit more freedom than other kids in the area, but not enough to shock anyone. When I got a bit older, I had access to snowmobiles and three/four wheelers - pretty much as soon as I had the physical size and strength to pull-start the engines and operate all the controls without assistance. This, too was not unusual in that area at that time. My freedom of movement was pretty good when we moved to a city as well. The city wasn't especially designed to be bike-friendly, but it was possible to get most places without having to ride in traffic. A snowmobile was an option for a lot of things in the winter. Even when we moved a few miles out of town, it was practical to ride a bike to town. Where I live now, I still use a bicycle for quite a bit of my transportation. It's a good workout and doesn't cost much to operate. There are a few places I ride that wouldn't be safe for a young, inexperienced or slow cyclist, but there are alternate routes available in most cases. Public transportation is not very good here, but it's an option that can fill in some of the gaps. Germany certainly offers better parity between children and adults as far as transportation. Design may play a role, but it's also important to consider that it's 90 million people in an area smaller than Montana. Not owning a car can work for a greater percentage of people because economies of scale work for a larger percentage of possible trips. That, in turn allows all the infrastructure to be designed for a smaller number of cars per person, hence the smaller streets and multiple grocery stores in every neighborhood. This situation is probably objectively better when you're 12, but may not be when you're 21. What's really different is parents in this time and place. They're now terrified of things that are less likely now than they were 25 years ago. It's that attitude we need to change more than anything.

malyk 14y ago

A great book that was recently released that talks about how to "fix" cities is Walkable City by Jeff Speck. Very compelling read. http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp/0374285810 http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp...

harrylove 14y ago

The limited reading I've done on this subject has come from the published works of Christopher Alexander[1]. In short, he espouses a process of letting living spaces unfold (or evolve, or develop, if you like) in a way that mimics nature. He applies this living process from the rug on the floor, to the location of the doorway in the wall, to the layout of the city. I think The Nature of Order series is especially profound. Read these: * The Timeless Way of Building (1979) * A Pattern Language (1977) * The Nature of Order (vols 1-4, 2002-2005) 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander#Published_works http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander#Published...

zwieback 14y ago

European settlement patterns are basically a continuation of medieval patterns. In the US, especially in the West we have a continuation of the westward expansion. There are plenty of examples of very livable, older towns all over the US and there are plenty of examples of suburban sprawl outside of the US. I think the main problem is that too many affluent families actually prefer a minivan-based lifestyle and the growth of online commerce and culture is going to make it even more enjoyable. For those of us who prefer denser, walkable neighborhoods there are plenty of options but job choice may have to take a back seat to livability. I can see a renewed interest in that type of lifestyle but in the US the trend is driven primarily by younger people and will take some time to show results.

cafard 14y ago

There was very little paranoia about letting kids run loose 50 years ago, when I was walking a few blocks to school, and playing untended in my own back yard or my neighbors'. This was I think in large part because of low key but pervasive surveillance, largely by state-at-home mothers. That few mothers worked outside the home also affected traffic levels in a couple of ways: they didn't commute, and the fathers, freed of pick-up obligations, could carpool. We had in general pretty good schools, partly because there were few professions yet open to women, partly because men who were teachers didn't get drafted, partly because professionals sent their kids to the same schools as everyone else, so there weren't long commutes to a private school--I didn't hear of an elementary school that was other than public or parochial until later. It was a very homogenous middle class world--how homogenous, and how kept that way, has been documented in civil rights cases in the years since.

softgrow 14y ago

A useful counter blog about ignoring the perceived dangers of the environment is Lenore Skenanzy blog "Free-range Kids - How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)". http://www.freerangekids.com/ http://www.freerangekids.com/ Why wait for planning to change and consequent environment change which will take years when you can send the kids to the playground/school/shops now!