3 ms·

You can have some larger streets between neighbourhoods with higher buildings. Not every single street needs to be really narrow, but you need to have them. ht

You can have some larger streets between neighbourhoods with higher buildings. Not every single street needs to be really narrow, but you need to have them. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.de/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.de/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

VLM 12y ago
WRT zoning I've lived in three places with that strategy and none really worked. One is Madison WI with pedestrian only State Street. If the experiment of State Street worked, it naturally should have spread thru the city, or at least thru downtown, over the course of many decades. Instead its mostly avoided other than sorta being an outdoor strip mall of bars, sorta. I dread going there because I no longer live there and know how unfriendly that design is to visitors. Another example is the small boring river city I grew up in, with legendarily bad downtown street layout, loops of one way streets and no parking and narrow streets and everything a meandering unpredictable cowpath so easy to get lost, aside from only having 4 bridges over the river which cut thru downtown and the river isn't even navigable anymore. It just didn't sell and resulted in economic decline. All economic activity has always pushed out of the downtown into the areas nearby the interstate with easy parking and nobody who could afford it would voluntarily live there. People just didn't like it. The 3rd example is I live in a suburban neighborhood about 50 years old which was intentionally zoned into quiet (admittedly large) pure residential, narrow (for suburbs) streets, and within short walking distance (oh, maybe a quarter mile) the perimeter of the subdivision is encrusted with retail and commercial and light industrial along major arterial roads. This seems an utter failure in that noone commutes by foot or bike, but I certainly see a lot of cars. In theory this should work, in practice it doesn't. Some of it is expense driven. There are 3 restaurants I could walk to in 10 minutes, but why blow the money on one of three if a 15 minute car ride puts me in reach of way over a dozen restaurants, many of which are better than the walking distance only competition? These arguments all seem to devolve into all retail/service is interchangeable commodity... the marketplace disagrees and prefers choice and competition, even if it requires personal automobiles. If I wanted to only visit 3 restaurants and 2 bars because thats all thats "within range" I'd live rural and cheap, not city prices, especially when the claim is city life means you get a better selection. There is the meta problem, that in an area with decent public infrastructure, I can work 20 miles from home in a 20 minute commute in my comfy car. In NYC thats what, a couple hour commute in a mix of foot and public trans? I could do it, but the hit to my standard of living would be brutal. Either I'd spend all my life commuting which is a waste of a life, or I'd have to work within a 20 minute walk, which would be incredibly inefficient and I'd be stuck doing manual labor or something like that. Another thing thats rarely discussed but very important is commercial density vs residential density. I work in a 800 person building, and even if you could fit 800 tiny little houses within a short walk, if I got a new job I'd have to move which would be a PITA and we're assuming only a single breadwinner per family, what if we lived within walking distance of my wife's employer not mine?
sdotty 12y ago
Thank you for that. Have never looked into japanese zoning.

VLM 12y ago

WRT zoning I've lived in three places with that strategy and none really worked. One is Madison WI with pedestrian only State Street. If the experiment of State Street worked, it naturally should have spread thru the city, or at least thru downtown, over the course of many decades. Instead its mostly avoided other than sorta being an outdoor strip mall of bars, sorta. I dread going there because I no longer live there and know how unfriendly that design is to visitors. Another example is the small boring river city I grew up in, with legendarily bad downtown street layout, loops of one way streets and no parking and narrow streets and everything a meandering unpredictable cowpath so easy to get lost, aside from only having 4 bridges over the river which cut thru downtown and the river isn't even navigable anymore. It just didn't sell and resulted in economic decline. All economic activity has always pushed out of the downtown into the areas nearby the interstate with easy parking and nobody who could afford it would voluntarily live there. People just didn't like it. The 3rd example is I live in a suburban neighborhood about 50 years old which was intentionally zoned into quiet (admittedly large) pure residential, narrow (for suburbs) streets, and within short walking distance (oh, maybe a quarter mile) the perimeter of the subdivision is encrusted with retail and commercial and light industrial along major arterial roads. This seems an utter failure in that noone commutes by foot or bike, but I certainly see a lot of cars. In theory this should work, in practice it doesn't. Some of it is expense driven. There are 3 restaurants I could walk to in 10 minutes, but why blow the money on one of three if a 15 minute car ride puts me in reach of way over a dozen restaurants, many of which are better than the walking distance only competition? These arguments all seem to devolve into all retail/service is interchangeable commodity... the marketplace disagrees and prefers choice and competition, even if it requires personal automobiles. If I wanted to only visit 3 restaurants and 2 bars because thats all thats "within range" I'd live rural and cheap, not city prices, especially when the claim is city life means you get a better selection. There is the meta problem, that in an area with decent public infrastructure, I can work 20 miles from home in a 20 minute commute in my comfy car. In NYC thats what, a couple hour commute in a mix of foot and public trans? I could do it, but the hit to my standard of living would be brutal. Either I'd spend all my life commuting which is a waste of a life, or I'd have to work within a 20 minute walk, which would be incredibly inefficient and I'd be stuck doing manual labor or something like that. Another thing thats rarely discussed but very important is commercial density vs residential density. I work in a 800 person building, and even if you could fit 800 tiny little houses within a short walk, if I got a new job I'd have to move which would be a PITA and we're assuming only a single breadwinner per family, what if we lived within walking distance of my wife's employer not mine?

sdotty 12y ago

Thank you for that. Have never looked into japanese zoning.