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The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

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Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#131

Post by bluGill »

rtkwe wrote: post #23
sandoooo wrote: post #11

Why is there no multilevel parking? All that space can't be cheap. Is there zoning laws against it?

I've often wondered that, why parking structures aren't considered more as a medium term solution to increasing density while not having to revolutionize public transit. Probably a combination of the cost to build and resistance to having one next to buildings because they're usually pretty ugly if I had to guess.

Because roads for all those cars take space as well. In a low density city it isn't a big deal (other than the expense of building all the roads), but as you move up the density levels your roads start to get full. Parking structures are common, and a useful part even the densest cities. They don't solve all the problems though and so are not a solution or even a mitigation.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#132

Post by ghaff »

rayiner wrote: post #119
hapless wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I went to grad school with a lot of people who went to Manhattan to get jobs in the financial industry. Almost all of them, when they had kids, moved out of the city to Connecticut or wherever. And I'm pretty sure the balance who stayed in the city after they had kids sent them to private school.

>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

Given that cities like Boston were still losing population 20 years ago, I do sometimes wonder if the current urban living revival (to a relative handful of cities) is mostly a fad among a very specific demographic that could reverse fairly easily with a generational change.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#133

Post by jarjoura »

I'm confused. Every suburban city in California has the "main downtown" area facade with vast parking lots behind it. This design has been around for almost a century and works in lower density areas.

Do we all want sophisticated public transit? Sure! However, let's be realistic. Where would the public transit take you? How many residents would you need to make it sustainable?

Another thing, does the OP want NYC/SF building density in Florida? You could cram 10k people into a .5 mile area, sure. Then you would have HUGE under developed areas all around and no where for 10k people to go explore. Then there wouldn't even need to be public transit.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#134

Post by reggieband »

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…

This does not match my experience living in Manhattan. I lived in a building where many of the people had children and the neighbourhood had a lot of businesses and facilities for children. While they might have been in the minority, it would be a gross exaggeration to say "Manhattan has almost no middle class people with kids".

I did not see any of my neighbours finances and doubtlessly they were above national median incomes (this is NYC and Manhattan after all). But these were not wall street brokers, they appeared as middle-class in their lifestyle as those I know in the suburbs.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#135

Post by mattrp »

pkroll wrote: post #108
mattrp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In Chicago, is the link between crime and lack of access to decent produce one way, or the other? Nobody wants to put grocery stores (or most stores) in high-crime areas.

I don’t know but there’s actually a name for it: food desert [1]. But think about all that we just learning about gut health and mental health.. it kind of makes sense. I think the author does make an interesting point that modern development land-use leaves little for actual buildings, but I think for many cities they have been far more preoccupied with not letting big chains in because they don’t want the sprawl that it’s created a situation where chains end up in the suburban perimeter while the core becomes even more car centric to reach these retailers. In recent years smaller footprint stores like aldi, Walmart’s neighborhood market, and lidl have been able to come into these areas. It’s possible that more last mile delivery like Prime Now could help but I think we have a long way to go before the author’s utopian vision of an ideal city is realized.

1.https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press...

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#136

Post by Balanceinfinity »

The origin of the mixed use movement (and the rebirth of cities) is The Death and Life of Great American Cities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am...). The upshot is that mixed use is the holy grail. Here, I can't tell is residential mixed in with commercial - that's how you get people out of cars.

It says mixed use - does that means there's commercial and residential in the same space? In my mind that's what makes for a city.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#137

Post by Freak_NL »

leviathant wrote: post #92
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 first encountered this kind of shopping center in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Main Street at Exton struck me as incredibly strange - it's a strip mall dressed up to look like an urban downtown, right down to parallel parking spots on the street. Once you do park, it is actually fairly walkable. A couple of years later, after having moved to Philadelphia, there was something I wanted to grab at a store in Main Stre…

Map:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/40.02105/-75.62698&lay...

Google Street View:

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0220899,-75.6249217,3a,66.6y...

Wow. That's depressing.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#138

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #80
alistairSH wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you fellow Restonite? If so, "Hi!" RTC and the current major development is an interesting case... RTC predates the expansion of the subway system, so drive-to urbanism was, as you suggest, a reasonable option given other constraints. Now that the Metro is (almost) expanded past Reston to the airport, there is (was?) an opportunity to build a true human-scale urban environment (at least within the designated deve…

I don’t think Metro in Reston actually solves very much. The silver line gets you to the airport, Tyson’s, Arlington, and DC. But many if not most people who work in Reston are going to be working in and around Reston or Loudon county. What is the public transit situation for getting to a school from any of the new Reston developments? I think you’re also correct that the development around the train stations are dys…

[deleted]

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#139

Post by at-fates-hands »

This has been going on a for a long time now. I remember working as an installer for a high end AV company in the early 2000's. We installed pricey home theaters and distributed audio for the rich suburban folks.

I remember several "planned communities" where they had small strip malls on the outside of the community, and then it was all high end craftsman and cape cod style houses on the interior. They had removed as many streets into the main center of the community as possible. In order to get to two of the houses we were working on, we had to park several hundred yards away and walk in to the houses.

Sure, it was awesome for the kids as they could go about their business without fear of high speed traffic, but it was a royal pain to heft in all the wiring boxes, tools and other stuff we needed to do our job. I also noticed, all the houses were reduced to two car garages. When I started talking to one of the owners, he gave me a litany of things they had to agree to before being able to build their homes. The strict building codes forbid three level houses, more than a two car garage, and each lot had to leave a strict percentage of "green" space - aka grass on each lot, and you were required to have a porch (you know, to encourage "community" and bonding with your neighbors) which also had a bunch of requirements you had to meet. There were other ones, but those were the ones which always stood out to me.

In short, they were trying to create some kind of a movie like community in every sense.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#140

Post by reggieband »

One thing I dislike about this new trend is it supplants true community spaces. There is a downtown in the suburb I live in now but it is a place no one other than junkies and homeless go. A few business cling to life there but I don't know how since there is no foot traffic.

Some development company created one of these outdoor malls about 10 minutes outside of the downtown. It has a cinema, a few big box stores (including a Walmart super-center). They even got it right with mostly underground parking giving the outdoor mall a high-level of walkability between stores that have fronts directly on the wide side walks. The security keeps all of the undesirables away and there is a public playground for kids. It's like the commercial equivalent of a gated community. I find it unsettling and I wish we took public money to revitalize the downtown rather than creating these segregated spaces.

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