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There a dramatic amount of understatement here. "A little less walkable" is untrue. Meandering suburban layouts are dramatically less walkable - we're not talk

There a dramatic amount of understatement here. "A little less walkable" is untrue. Meandering suburban layouts are dramatically less walkable - we're not talking about even the same order of magnitude. Here's a commonly cited diagram of the difference in walkability between a grid layout and a sprawl-suburb. Both of these are real places, not hypothetical illustrations: http://hbr.org/hb/article_assets/hbr/1005/F1005B_A_lg.gif http://hbr.org/hb/article_assets/hbr/1005/F1005B_A_lg.gif "A little less" is an understatement bordering on the edge of untruth. There used to be a better high-res version of this map that I can't find anymore - the right side is Ballard, Seattle, I've forgotten where the left side is (IIRC Dallas). The blue is the area reachable by walk from the central starting point in a given time (IIRC 10 minutes at average pace). Note that Ballard is far from a "perfect grid" layout - there is still ample delineation between arterials and side streets. The grid is also lightly broken up every few blocks to prevent people from speeding right on through, while not making pedestrians go out of the way in the wrong direction. The notion that sprawl-type neighborhoods are somehow safer for pedestrians (and conversely, grid-style layouts are more dangerous) also doesn't bear out in reality. Dallas, TX (a particularly famously suburban city) has a pedestrian fatality rate of 1.7 per 100K pop. NYC, the mother of all grid layouts (a perfect grid, even), clocks in at 1.8 per 100K. There's nothing to suggest grid layouts (perfect or otherwise) are intrinsically more dangerous to pedestrians. The whole traffic business also doesn't jive: > "Reduce through-traffic- not because "outsiders are undesirable" but because through-traffic is noisy" Except non-sprawl suburbs with grid layouts have been restricting through-traffic for decades. Throw down a few of these: http://www.nowtopians.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/mosaic-traffic-circle_2759.jpg http://www.nowtopians.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/mosaic-... They're wonderful and keep side streets from becoming arterial relief valves, while allowing you all the walkability and accessibility of grid-based layouts. No chokepoints, no gates, no driver blasting his way through trying to find a shortcut to work. They also do a great job of curbing drunk drivers, who are more likely to get beached up on one of these than in the side of a house. They look pretty good too: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8002/7132823357_600fba9ee3_z.jpg http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8002/7132823357_600fba9ee3_z.j... Some people even make them into little parklets, though I'm not sure if I'd want to hang out there: http://www.vancourier.com/polopoly_fs/1.577052.1376349174!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_563/img-0-8765159-jpg.jpg http://www.vancourier.com/polopoly_fs/1.577052.1376349174!/f... People who live in these neighborhoods aren't idiots. This isn't a win-lose scenario - this isn't pedestrians vs. safety vs. noise. We can have our cake and eat it too, in fact many neighborhoods around the country do. Besides the "uniformity" thing, there's really nothing that the sprawl-type suburb solves that hasn't already been solved in non-sprawl suburban developments. You can live in a house with a yard with a BBQ with a deck with a garage. You can have space for all your stuff. You can still walk to the grocery store. You can still save money and take the bus to work without it being a giant pain in the ass. You can still have nice parks nearby and your kids won't go to school in a skyscraper. The opposite of the sprawling suburb isn't towers full of people stacked on top of one another, it's another type of suburb altogether.

sliverstorm 13y ago
See, now you are arguing there are ways to do it better, and I agree. But that doesn't prove sprawling suburbs were designed under the influence of classism. That's really the key thing I disagree with. Are you ceding that part? As for "a little less walkable", that was me hedging my speech because I don't know exactly how walkable the worst offenders are, and I consider "how much less walkable" to be tangential to the point I was trying to make anyway. I was not trying to argue that "the tradeoffs are balanced" or anything like that.
- saalweachter 13y ago
  I don't think every person who moved to or built a suburb over the last 50-odd years was acting with explicitly racist motivations, but he's basically just describing "White flight": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    To be fair, I don't think he's denying white flight, and what I'm describing isn't really race-centric (though as with all things socioeconomic in the USA, race is always a factor). It's true that many suburbs, especially the early ones, were explicitly racist (i.e., bylaw-segregated communities), that's not what's under contention. The question is if the physical design of suburbia is influenced by the desire to keep undesirables out, above and beyond any sort of legislative or extralegal measures already being undertaken at the time. There aren't any easy answers here. I think it's quite self-evident, but obviously there is room for disagreement. One of the defining feature of modern suburbs is the "gate" - the limitation of access points to nearby arterial streets. It's fairly obvious (and even a perk for buyers) that this effectively separates the road network within from the outside and discourages through-traffic. The main claimed benefit here is safety - but from what? One oft-claimed safety improvement is traffic. This isn't really true as pedestrian fatalities are still comparable to urban areas. But I am willing to accept that people believe they are getting improved traffic safety in these places. The other oft-claimed safety improvement is crime. The idea is that if you make through-traffic a giant pain in the ass, then anyone who is there who doesn't live there is likely up to no good, and it makes troublemakers and potential criminals easier to spot. This is not illogical - and it agrees with Oscar Newman's Defensible Space theory. The question is to what extent that is classist. This is where things get murky. We know a few things from the early days of suburbia: - Cities were experiencing high crime and violence, and suffering from a particularly compressed housing market due to the sudden return of millions of servicemen. This is the primary force that purged people out of urban centers and into newly developed suburbs. - Only the middle and upper-middle classes could afford cars. Suburbia (in that format) was fundamentally incompatible with public transit. Occasionally this was an enforced incompatibility - see: Robert Moses and the low overpasses on Long Island. - Suburban developments were explicitly advertised as an escape from the gritty, dangerous cities of yore. Many were explicitly segregationist. I don't think it's at all a stretch to say that separation from the poor (and black, if you want to go there) was a substantial motivator for early suburbs. Like today, personal safety is one of the main selling points of suburbs, the contention is to what extent that was code for "because no poor people here". - The design of suburban street layouts to minimize usefulness as through-roads is deliberate and an oft-touted selling point. The contention is to what extent this was an aesthetic preference vs. an exclusionary tactic. This is a hard one, since even during those times people were less-than-explicit about motivations against the poor. The use of street design as a class/crime barrier has been very transparent and blatant in the past - even the recent past. For example: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-05-03/news/1996124052_1_guilford-barrier-barricade http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-05-03/news/1996124052_... Most other cases are not quite as blatant and clearcut. There is grayness between simply wanting safe neighborhoods and wanting all poor people out.

sliverstorm 13y ago

See, now you are arguing there are ways to do it better, and I agree. But that doesn't prove sprawling suburbs were designed under the influence of classism. That's really the key thing I disagree with. Are you ceding that part? As for "a little less walkable", that was me hedging my speech because I don't know exactly how walkable the worst offenders are, and I consider "how much less walkable" to be tangential to the point I was trying to make anyway. I was not trying to argue that "the tradeoffs are balanced" or anything like that.

saalweachter 13y ago
I don't think every person who moved to or built a suburb over the last 50-odd years was acting with explicitly racist motivations, but he's basically just describing "White flight": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
- potatolicious 13y ago
  To be fair, I don't think he's denying white flight, and what I'm describing isn't really race-centric (though as with all things socioeconomic in the USA, race is always a factor). It's true that many suburbs, especially the early ones, were explicitly racist (i.e., bylaw-segregated communities), that's not what's under contention. The question is if the physical design of suburbia is influenced by the desire to keep undesirables out, above and beyond any sort of legislative or extralegal measures already being undertaken at the time. There aren't any easy answers here. I think it's quite self-evident, but obviously there is room for disagreement. One of the defining feature of modern suburbs is the "gate" - the limitation of access points to nearby arterial streets. It's fairly obvious (and even a perk for buyers) that this effectively separates the road network within from the outside and discourages through-traffic. The main claimed benefit here is safety - but from what? One oft-claimed safety improvement is traffic. This isn't really true as pedestrian fatalities are still comparable to urban areas. But I am willing to accept that people believe they are getting improved traffic safety in these places. The other oft-claimed safety improvement is crime. The idea is that if you make through-traffic a giant pain in the ass, then anyone who is there who doesn't live there is likely up to no good, and it makes troublemakers and potential criminals easier to spot. This is not illogical - and it agrees with Oscar Newman's Defensible Space theory. The question is to what extent that is classist. This is where things get murky. We know a few things from the early days of suburbia: - Cities were experiencing high crime and violence, and suffering from a particularly compressed housing market due to the sudden return of millions of servicemen. This is the primary force that purged people out of urban centers and into newly developed suburbs. - Only the middle and upper-middle classes could afford cars. Suburbia (in that format) was fundamentally incompatible with public transit. Occasionally this was an enforced incompatibility - see: Robert Moses and the low overpasses on Long Island. - Suburban developments were explicitly advertised as an escape from the gritty, dangerous cities of yore. Many were explicitly segregationist. I don't think it's at all a stretch to say that separation from the poor (and black, if you want to go there) was a substantial motivator for early suburbs. Like today, personal safety is one of the main selling points of suburbs, the contention is to what extent that was code for "because no poor people here". - The design of suburban street layouts to minimize usefulness as through-roads is deliberate and an oft-touted selling point. The contention is to what extent this was an aesthetic preference vs. an exclusionary tactic. This is a hard one, since even during those times people were less-than-explicit about motivations against the poor. The use of street design as a class/crime barrier has been very transparent and blatant in the past - even the recent past. For example: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-05-03/news/1996124052_1_guilford-barrier-barricade http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-05-03/news/1996124052_... Most other cases are not quite as blatant and clearcut. There is grayness between simply wanting safe neighborhoods and wanting all poor people out.