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The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

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Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#111

Post by lotsofpulp »

danans wrote: post #100
lotsofpulp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those are benefits that come from high density living. But while they might say they like those benefits, most people will choose the benefits of low density living, such as more space (quarter acre lots with detached garages and front and back yards and 2,000+ sq ft interiors). Not to mention the benefit of being able to segregate children into different schools by socioeconomic status, by restricting differe…

> But while they might say they like those benefits, most people will choose the benefits of low density living, This is heavily dependent on one's conditioning. I grew up in a late mid-century low density suburb - nothing like the exurban sprawl you see today, but still very far from walkable. I instinctively moved from that to high density older neighborhoods as an adult. At least at the moment the trend tends to b…

>At least at the moment the trend tends to be towards demand for the benefits of increased density, as the culture has shifted to valuing experiences more than large (expensive-to-maintain) spaces.

In the US, everyone in my circles acts the same way, until they have children. Then the priority becomes quality of school, which really means socioeconomic status of all the children in the school, which leads to the well known rule of thumb to buy the cheapest house in the most expensive most suburban neighborhood you can afford. Or be rich enough to send your kids to private school if you want to continue to stay urban.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#112

Post by esotericn »

rayiner wrote: post #96
jimbokun wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are so many examples everywhere in Europe and Asia, but I can’t think of many (any?) in North America. Manhattan.

Manhattan has almost no middle class people with kids. At most there are some upper middle class lawyers/bankers/programmers fighting it out over a handful of decent public schools. I don’t consider that functional or healthy. By age 45, 86% of Americans have had kids. Out of the remaining 14%, half say they wish they had kids. Just 5% say they don’t want kids—a number virtually unchanged from 1990. You can’t call an…

That's because there aren't enough Manhattans.

A similar situation plays out in cities like London - a ton of people move out to raise families; historically it's been possible for the middle class to have children and live a few zones out, but it's getting much harder for anyone without inheritance.

The problem is that there are very few cities that aren't either tiny, or endless car based sprawl.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#114

Post by hapless »

rayiner wrote: post #96
jimbokun wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are so many examples everywhere in Europe and Asia, but I can’t think of many (any?) in North America. Manhattan.

Manhattan has almost no middle class people with kids. At most there are some upper middle class lawyers/bankers/programmers fighting it out over a handful of decent public schools. I don’t consider that functional or healthy. By age 45, 86% of Americans have had kids. Out of the remaining 14%, half say they wish they had kids. Just 5% say they don’t want kids—a number virtually unchanged from 1990. You can’t call an…

That’s simply not true. Manhattan is home to 1.8 million people, several hundred thousand of whom are children.

18% of Manhattan’s population is under age 18, compared to 24% nationwide.

Fewer families than a suburban area, sure, but still many, MANY families, a large fraction of Manhattan’s population.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#115

Post by lotsofpulp »

turc1656 wrote: post #103
rjkennedy98 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking garages are enormously expensive. They can cost up to 50k per space. For instance the parking garage at the Chinese theater cost as much as the theater itself

Wow, really? Did not know or expect that. Not intuitive that they should be that expensive. In my mind they are just giant blocks of shaped concrete and should be extraordinarily simple to put together compared to something like a mall. What makes them so expensive?

https://watrydesign.com/insights/top-10-issues-affecting-cos...

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#116

Post by atombender »

lnanek2 wrote: post #98

He complains it is all parking, but there's solutions to that. Here in Santa Monica there's a whole row of public parking buildings a few blocks from all the popular downtown areas (beach, pier, 3rd street promenade, mall, etc.). So if you shell out the money, you can compress the parking into one block along the otherwise active walkable downtown area. In this case the developer must have just calculated it's cheape…

"Walkable" doesn't mean you can't walk (although it sometimes means that, too, of course).

By most measurements, walkability refers to a pedestrian's ability to reach amenities such as grocery stores within a short time (e.g. 5 minutes). By that metric, almost all of Manhattan is extremely walkable.

Manhattan does have many isolated "deserts" where you can find yourself surrounded by just residential buildings (parts of UWS and UES, for example), or a heavy concentration of businesses, parking, industry (e.g. 11th-12th Ave around Hudson Yards, for example). Until a decade ago or so, the Finance District used to be pretty dead at night. And so on.

There's fairly low "pain threshold" in the US before people discard walking as an alternative and just go in their car. We all know the satiric image of the American who jumps in their car to go one block; in my experience (as a European living in the US), there's a certain amount of cultural indoctrination that has persuaded Americans that transportation by car is absolutely necessary.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#117

Post by ghaff »

vineyardmike wrote: post #90
mtberatwork wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You get something that is an entertainment product—it looks cute, but it’s functionally like a movie set or a theme park. Its design has the aesthetic signifiers of a traditional town, but none of the functionality, none of the deep responsiveness to the needs of the people living there. I think he encapsulates things nicely here. Barring some exceptions, town/village life in the US is basically non-existent. There…

Visit New England, many of the towns there have nice downtown sections which are walkable, and have town squares, etc.

In all fairness, the vast majority of people are driving to those town squares/greens and the shopping options are usually pretty limited--especially for day-to-day rather than artsy/crafty stuff. But, yes, many towns have a nice little center. (And, indeed, many smaller cities do these days even if the rest of the city is mostly sprawly and not so nice generally.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#118

Post by treis »

kop316 wrote: post #42

I wish the author would hit the non-walkability a bit harder. To get from one section to another, cross a street. To get from one side to another, you have to cross several streets. There is one area that did the same thing where I live (The Greene Town Center). I cannot simply think of why I would want to live there, and I was their target demographic! I really can't walk around inside of The Greene without having t…

> I really can't walk around inside of The Greene without having to watch traffic (I am simply amazed at how recklessly folks drive in there).

If you're talking about the one in Ohio, I'm not sure you have reasonable expectations of what walkable means. There's not going to be many places where you can walk in the street without having to watch out for cars. But if your expectation is more like I can walk to shops and restaurants then it fits the bill. The only real difference between it and a classic downtown is that it's full of chain stores/restaurants instead of locally owned places.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#119

Post by rayiner »

hapless wrote: post #114
rayiner wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manhattan has almost no middle class people with kids. At most there are some upper middle class lawyers/bankers/programmers fighting it out over a handful of decent public schools. I don’t consider that functional or healthy. By age 45, 86% of Americans have had kids. Out of the remaining 14%, half say they wish they had kids. Just 5% say they don’t want kids—a number virtually unchanged from 1990. You can’t call an…

That’s simply not true. Manhattan is home to 1.8 million people, several hundred thousand of whom are children. 18% of Manhattan’s population is under age 18, compared to 24% nationwide. Fewer families than a suburban area, sure, but still many, MANY families, a large fraction of Manhattan’s population.

Those kids aren’t middle class, and the situation for them is not functional or healthy. The median household income in the communities where New York County (Manhattan) public school kids live is around $40,000, half the median income of New York County as a whole. (For obvious reasons, the situation is reversed in most of the rest of the country—households with kids earn more than households without them, because they’re statistically more likely to have two earners and older heads of the household.) 75% of New York Public School kids are eligible for free or reduced price lunch. The public school system does not serve a representative cross section of the community, but people who are stuck in the city due to availability of service jobs, availability of public housing, etc. Many of whom will flee to the suburbs as soon as their economic situation improves. They’re people like some members of my family, new immigrants who lived in the city while getting established, but moved to Long Island as soon as they got their feet under them.

People have been playing up the “revival” of cities over the past two decades, but it turns out that was entirely due to college educated white people with no kids: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/where-have.... From 2000-2017, the rate of urban living for people with school-aged kids actually dropped 5%.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#120

Post by microtherion »

mattrp wrote: post #51
mc32 wrote: post #3

I’m not sure this is totally a rip from Hollywood or a kind of modern Potemkin city. I see this in old districts too. Facade in the front parking in the back. Strip malls are the inverse. With strip malls it looks ugly but you can tell at a glance if there is parking. The older form you don’t know till you drive around the back on a typically one-way street. The modern take is like the Emeryville Bay Street shopping…

I agree that Santana Row is particularly well done... but I think the author is reminiscing for something more like downtown Palo Alto. What he misses is a few things: a) Palo Alto can hold onto its old town feel because it’s literally the epicenter of Facebook, google, sand hill road and Stanford university. Some random town in Florida isn’t going to have all that. B) in places like Florida, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Hous…

> I think the author is reminiscing for something more like downtown Palo Alto

As a compromise, there is something like downtown Mountain View, with one dense street, and parking lots in the back lots of each block.

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