Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
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Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
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Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#2I recently moved from a house in the suburbs in Australia to an apartment in the city. Got rid of my car and now I just walk to everything I need. I couldn’t be happier. Driving was such a huge stress on my life that is now gone. I can get anything I need within a 10 minute walk.
The thing is it just doesn’t seem like the average person is willing to give up single family houses to gain walkability. For me, I would never go back.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#3I want to live in a walkable streetcar suburb:
* Reasonably sized (2-3k soft) lots
* Homes built with a variety of beautiful architecture
* Area is not overbuilt to the point where all greenery and sunlight are gone and replaced by large buildings
* alleys behind the lot, with garages hidden, to keep a single car (which is still really necessary in modern life)
* small, thin, tree-lined streets
* within walking distance to locally-owned bakery, a grocery store, coffee shop, public transit, etc.
The problem with living in these desirable, walkable, neighborhoods is that once they're built up enough, there is intense lobby to fill the the area with higher density housing because of the critical mass of services available.
Of course, that's necessary, but buying in these areas put you at big risk of having to move away if you don't like massive density increases, whereas buying in a suburb protects you from that change.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#4Add up the roads, parking spaces, parking garages, gas stations (not to mention auto shops, drive thrus and car washes) and the total urban footprint is a gargantuan 50-60% by many calculations. That's not automatically a bad thing, especially if you are a car, but all of that space creates massive buffers separating all of the other stuff that humans want to walk to. To make it worse, those buffers are far and away the most dangerous thing in any urban environment.
On the bright side, the pandemic seems have enabled many cities to finally reclaim some of that car land for use by people. Though it's not clear how long that will last.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#5I like my car and I like driving.
That said, I don't like driving _everywhere_. When I moved to university, it was incredibly freeing to just be able to walk somewhere I wanted to go rather than getting in my car and driving miles to get anywhere. I grew up in a suburb in Texas so walking anywhere except _maybe_ a friend's house was entirely out of the question.
I visited Portland recently and it was lovely to be able to get around the whole city without a car. We didn't rent one, save for one day when we went > 100mi out of the city. No Ubers, no Lyfts- just walking, buses, and lightrail.
Just my experience as an American.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#6I recently moved from a house in the suburbs in Australia to an apartment in the city. Got rid of my car and now I just walk to everything I need. I couldn’t be happier. Driving was such a huge stress on my life that is now gone. I can get anything I need within a 10 minute walk. The thing is it just doesn’t seem like the average person is willing to give up single family houses to gain walkability. For me, I would n…
Or... hear me out. You could just build walkable suburbs. Why there is a distinction between 'suburb' and 'smaller city' is beyond me, but there really is.
A small city still has a walkable downtown core with apartments around which there is a small area of single family homes within walking distance to the downtown area.
A suburb is just tracts of single family homes and nothing else for miles on end. No real 'business area', certainly no walkable one.
We could just talk a normal suburb, rezone some homes to business districts and take cars off that street. Voila. Now you have a mini downtown near a bunch of single family homes. Oh yeah, and you have a nice business district that's cheaper than the real downtown that is a good launching place for local businesses. win win win.
Now do that everywhere, and then connect the little townie areas via rapid transit and you have something lovely.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#7I recently moved from a house in the suburbs in Australia to an apartment in the city. Got rid of my car and now I just walk to everything I need. I couldn’t be happier. Driving was such a huge stress on my life that is now gone. I can get anything I need within a 10 minute walk. The thing is it just doesn’t seem like the average person is willing to give up single family houses to gain walkability. For me, I would n…
We need more apartments for purchase rather than renting in America. That's practically unheard of in Texas- just about anything in a shared building is only for rent.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#8I want to live in a walkable streetcar suburb: * Reasonably sized (2-3k soft) lots * Homes built with a variety of beautiful architecture * Area is not overbuilt to the point where all greenery and sunlight are gone and replaced by large buildings * alleys behind the lot, with garages hidden, to keep a single car (which is still really necessary in modern life) * small, thin, tree-lined streets * within walking dista…
> The problem with living in these desirable, walkable, neighborhoods is that once they're built up enough, activists lobby to destroy what was built to fill it with high density housing because of the critical mass of services available to the area.
You're absolutely right. I live in one of these neighborhoods (actually literally was built as a streetcar suburb) and we have historic district protections so we're safe.
However, the impetus to build the 'high-density' housing is because we stopped building neighborhoods like mine with a corner store, bakeries, grocery store and restaurants within walking distance.
IMO, new developments of tract homes should mandate that within the housing tract, the developer makes a business district with space for local businesses.
It's simply the fact that we have a massive business shortage in this country that people feel the need to build high-density housing near the paltry number of business districts we have.
Or, I mean, we could not, and everyone else can just subsidize my housing appreciation. Personally, I'd like to spread the joy of my life, but housing activists seem hell-bent on driving my home price up, so whatever.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#9I like my car and I like driving. That said, I don't like driving _everywhere_. When I moved to university, it was incredibly freeing to just be able to walk somewhere I wanted to go rather than getting in my car and driving miles to get anywhere. I grew up in a suburb in Texas so walking anywhere except _maybe_ a friend's house was entirely out of the question. I visited Portland recently and it was lovely to be abl…
Same.... I love driving.
But I'm not driving to work ever. Haven't driven to work in years, and I never will. Just not into it.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#10I recently moved from a house in the suburbs in Australia to an apartment in the city. Got rid of my car and now I just walk to everything I need. I couldn’t be happier. Driving was such a huge stress on my life that is now gone. I can get anything I need within a 10 minute walk. The thing is it just doesn’t seem like the average person is willing to give up single family houses to gain walkability. For me, I would n…
Or... hear me out. You could just build walkable suburbs. Why there is a distinction between 'suburb' and 'smaller city' is beyond me, but there really is. A small city still has a walkable downtown core with apartments around which there is a small area of single family homes within walking distance to the downtown area. A suburb is just tracts of single family homes and nothing else for miles on end. No real 'busin…
You can kind of have it if you mean walkable to just the general store, a cafe and a few other things but you can never have everything because many kinds of stores can only exist with a certain population close enough.
What I love about living in the city is literally _everything_ I need is within walking distance. I have not used a car or any form of public transport in months and have felt no need to, I can buy anything within walking distance and all offices for any job I would take in this state are within walking distance. You just can’t have that with houses because each house takes up a significant space which you have to walk past to get anywhere.