Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods • Hacker News Board

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#391

Post by gamechangr » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #267

osdiab wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a wealthy American suburb, the nearest grocery store was a 40 minute walk from my home, and I would have looked like a madman for simply walking on any street in the entire city because literally only beggars don’t ride cars. I’m glad to be living in Tokyo now!

Do people not even walk for leisure/exercise? Just reading this makes me feel kind of claustrophobic.

Yes for sure Americans walk for leisure and casual exercise.

It's popular to imply Americans don't walk. It's true the culture is more pragmatic (why walk when I could drive and get more done), but it's not true that it's unusual to see people out walking on sidewalks, parks, and lakes.

My neighborhood has a walking trail around a small lake (takes 45 minutes to do a lap). There are 20-50 people walking it at almost anytime of day.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#392

Post by bobthepanda » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

jdmichal wrote: post #346

bobthepanda wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not paying neighbors to keep their land the way you like, why should you have any say in that?

That is a pathological way of thinking about it. You could also think of it as a collective pact.

Poking into peoples' property for minutiae is also pathological, and plenty of Americans have horror stories about HOAs fining them for silly things like the height of the lawn not meeting regulations.

It's one thing if you can opt out of a collective pact by picking another jurisdiction, but local busybodies are so widely spread that land legally allowed to be developed even in a short but dense, traditional American style, is so scarce that it fetches a premium, so now there is nothing between the extremes of "quiet cookie cutter suburb far from everything" and "busy noisy neighborhood of tower blocks."

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#393

Post by bobthepanda » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #307

bobthepanda wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better than property tax, land value tax. Charging tax on property (building + land) mostly just disincentivizes more intensive buildings.

The land value should be taxed, but it isn't a simple answer. Large buildings imply more people which mean more use of city services. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but I am sure simple answers that would fit into a comment box here are wrong.

If you want to tax things to cover the cost of more people then it makes more sense to tax the people.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#394

Post by Jugurtha » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

laxk wrote: post #236

Jugurtha wrote: post #132

I live in the suburbs. In a radius of 200m from where I live, 2 minutes on foot, here are some of the businesses there are: - Car accessory workshop for aftermarket accessories - Car mechanic - Car tire shop (they check, patch, and change your tires) - Bycicle and bike repair shop - Car electricians (3) - Car wash (3) - Carpenter - House appliance shop - Travel agencies - Accountant - RV home maker - Shop to print mo…

Where do you live?

In Algiers, Algeria.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#395

Post by orthoxerox » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #222

aahhahahaaa wrote: post #13

How did we slip away so far from this being fairly obvious? Cities have worked well this way for hundreds of years. Maybe the industrial revolution made cities too unpleasant? Were we too spoiled by the automobile industry and government roads? White flight from cities into the suburbs?

No. It's an inferior solution to someone having a car and driving around for shopping. Most people here seems to draw from their experience traveling to a place for a short period of time. The reality is that living near a small business (especially restaurant/cafe/bar) is crappy. You'll have people walking around, being noisy, drunk people, people parking in front of your drive way because the didn't see the signs,…

Bars are a problem, but I live in an apartment and there's a bank, a few cafes, a liquor store, multiple drug stores, an optician's, an orthopedic shoe store, a pawn shop, a shop selling kitchen furniture and god knows what else in the same building. The biggest issue is public urination, but these people aren't the customers, but people leaving the subway.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#396

Post by dodobirdlord » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #263

dgellow wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By curiosity I checked some numbers to compare. Paris density is just crazy! When compared, Berlin (mentioned by cameldrv) really has a low density for the huge capital it is, at around ~3.9k persons/km². London seems to have around 5.5k, New York around 10.2k, while Paris is at a crazy 20.7k! Numbers from https://versus.com/en/berlin-vs-london-vs-new-york-vs-paris/... .

It's a bit exaggerated because Paris proper is only a small part of the urban region. It's more appropriate to compare Paris to Manhattan. Both house around 2 million people at 20k people/km², and both are in sprawling metropolitan areas of 10-20 million depending where you stop counting.

Yes, but Paris proper is notable for achieving that density with only two tall buildings, both non-residential.

Edit: And a considerable amount of land given over to parks, museums, churches, and other non-residential spaces.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#397

Post by qwerty456127 » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

allannienhuis wrote: post #344

qwerty456127 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At 6am, trucks start rolling up and delivering food (although they are only supposed to do that at 7am, on some days they’ll start at 6). That means very loud beeping from the trucks backing up and shouting to the grocery employees above engine noise. Exactly the same takes place in purely residential areas anyway because of garbage trucks. That's no problem if you shut your window however, modern windows isolate n…

Garbage trucks don't show up every morning, do they? The parent poster was describing a situation where multiple trucks roll up in the early morning every day. I think it's pretty clear the two scenarios aren't really comparable.

> Garbage trucks don't show up every morning, do they?

I'd say at least half of the mornings they do. One day the one which takes generic garbage, another day it's glass (obviously, the most noisy), another day it's plastic, then mixed garbage again etc. That's about 20 minutes of loud beeping + garbage noise. But that's fairly quiet if the windows are well-shut.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#398

Post by jhatemyjob » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

modo_mario wrote: post #250

jhatemyjob wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people actually like cars/driving, some people dont want random people walking in front of their house, and not everyone wants their city to turn into NYC Sometimes it feels like the people on this site have only lived in SFBA/LA/NYC and nowhere else in the United States. Cars/suburbia work pretty well in most places

>Some people actually like cars/driving I live in a small town but in a very spread out relatively densely populated country. Still with the closing of the old bakery and little grocery store due to the people who ran it retiring I have to go to a nearby city or supermarkets on the outskirts for stuff. I'm not saying this out of spite or annoyance because of that. It's not that far. Hell i'm even moving soon. But I d…

Yeah I wouldn't like driving to another city to do my errands either. I think the OP meant having a grocery store literally right next door to you

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#399

Post by seszett » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #369

bearbin wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For pedestrians, yes that type of road is fairly dangerous. But for cars it's not too bad, drivers know they need to pay attention and nobody is going at high speeds. It's also easier than you might think to see oncoming cars, especially when it's dark and their headlights are on. Fortunately/unfortunately that type of road is becoming slightly less prevalent, as efficient modern farming means hedges are maintained l…

TBH it doesn't seem too safe for cars either. You couldn't possibly see deer or other animals until they had already jumped into the road. Any normal hazard like a car stopped for a flat or lumber that fell off a truck is more hazardous in this situation.

Honestly, these are not common occurrences in England. Cars that are stopped like this are required to post a warning triangle ahead, and lumber just doesn't fall off trucks (lumber isn't very common anyway as the country is mostly devoid of forests).

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#400

Post by bluGill » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #393

bluGill wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The land value should be taxed, but it isn't a simple answer. Large buildings imply more people which mean more use of city services. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but I am sure simple answers that would fit into a comment box here are wrong.

If you want to tax things to cover the cost of more people then it makes more sense to tax the people.

You obviously need to tax enough to cover the costs somehow.

Tax is also incentive. You want to tax things you want to discourage more than things that you want to encourage.