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Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
51–60 of 370 posts
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#52I 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 could just build walkable suburbs. Why there is a distinction between 'suburb' and 'smaller city' is beyond me, but there really is.
The Not Just Bikes channel semi-recently did a video on "streetcar suburbs":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
It's how things used to be built pre-WW2.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#53If you want more walkable cities you have to stop subsidizing the suburban sprawl that has been paid for with debt spending. The infrastructure that is falling apart around us is happening because its unsustainable, and if we just print 1T dollars every few years to kick the can down the road all you do is create a bigger problem to be solved in 20 years.
If the full 1.2T were actually on roads, we would have much nicer roads. Quite a bit of it goes to not-car spending.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#54No, they don’t. This is a classic example of listening to what people say vs observing what they do. And it’s a good lesson in product development. Ask your users “do you want X?” And the answer is inevitably “yes”. Ask them “do you want A or B?” And you’ll start to get a better approximation of user behavior. Better yet is observing actual behavior. In this case Americans have chosen the suburbs in droves. Americans…
Many choose suburbs because there aren't walkable cities as an option
And because the walkable cities have been made unaffordable by those insisting that no one wants to live in such a place.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#55I 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…
What's hardest to find, and what I prefer, is somewhere it's easy to walk and drive. I've lived in walkable places where if you do have to drive, traffic is a nightmare. And then of course there are places where you can drive without traffic but there is nowhere to walk to. I think I prefer the latter with my lifestyle, though it becomes more frustrating for meeting friends, going our for dinner + drinks, etc. For sp…
I've never run into a walkable city center where there was one super-obvious and convenient place to park--maybe a gigantic underground garage--and then you walk everywhere from there. Feels like that might work.
The attractive city centers have nice stuff, but too few people who live within walking distance to keep them in business and in good shape. They need a way to bring in suburbanites and visitors to supplement the native population.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#56I 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…
How do you feel about medium density? I live in a neighborhood with some of the qualities you describe, and it has lots of small courtyard condos, and 2-3 story apartment buildings. These would've been illegal to build up until the last year or so, but I feel like they're not at all disruptive. I would say even a 5 story building on the main streets is fine in the kind of neighborhood you're describing. This gets you…
They built tall, 3 story, modern "block" townhomes in the backyard next to my 100+ year-old home. They stick out (nothing else on the block is remotely as tall or modern), block sunlight in my back yard all winter, and critically damaged a 100 year old tree in my backyard (of course, nothing I can do about that--developer got away with it).
They are a massive eyesore and have made my outdoor space just...frustrating and no longer private. Every time I go back there, I see the giant black wall next door. We're planning to put up 30ft tall, thin trees, at our expense, just to try and restore the space to where it was before. Developer walks away with his money and I get to pay for it.
The challenge with medium density is that it's built without existing residents' thoughts in mind w/ regards to footprint, design, size, etc. You end up with neighborhoods that aren't cohesive. Of course, requiring existing residents' input means that there would probably never be new housing, so that isn't a realistic option.
The people that moved in are great people, and we need more housing where I live. Change is gonna happen whether I like it or not. We have a housing crisis. New housing is eventually going to be built somewhere, and it's going to come for neighborhoods with the most walkability and services first.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#57They want but will never walk.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#58I 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.
Condos have their own problems. See the collapsed building in Miami.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#59How many are willing to give up a detached house for it though?
How many are willing to deal with shortsighted neighbours who refuse to fix their condo building?
I’m someone who nominally wants walkable neighbourhoods, but as soon as it requires compromising those two, I’m out.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#60No, they don’t. This is a classic example of listening to what people say vs observing what they do. And it’s a good lesson in product development. Ask your users “do you want X?” And the answer is inevitably “yes”. Ask them “do you want A or B?” And you’ll start to get a better approximation of user behavior. Better yet is observing actual behavior. In this case Americans have chosen the suburbs in droves. Americans…
Once kids are in the picture, school districts with greater proportions of wealthier families is the priority. Plus, the easiest way to avoid dealing with homeless people and/or gangs is to live in far flung suburbs where everything is so far that cars are a necessity.
"Avoid" being the operative word! Unfortunately we've chosen to slap on the suburbia band-aid that just introduces more negative externalities. Dense cities in Europe and East Asia are much safer _and_ score better on education metrics, so it's not like eschewing urbanity is working well for us comparatively.