Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities • Hacker News Board

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#61

Post by foxpurple » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

notJim wrote: post #31

standardUser wrote: post #4

Add 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…

Something I only recently learned is that zoning rules generally require housing developments to include a certain amount of parking. This drives up the cost of housing, because of the space required (either up or out.) Many cities are reducing or eliminating these requirements in an effort to make housing more affordable. However, it does mean that parking will become harder, as there will be more competition for st…

You can reset your costs by renting out the car park. I make $50 AUD/week renting out my city car park to someone who works near by.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#62

Post by foxpurple » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 11:23 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #58

jackson1442 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not sure why a freak accident should be used as an example of anything. If anything it stands to show how insanely problem free modern buildings are if one building falling down is shocking news globally and known as one of the worst non malicious building issues in the developed world.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#63

Post by 0xB31B1B » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 11:23 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #17

No, 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…

You aren't looking at the right variables. The revealed preference isn't shown by where people chose to move because pricing due to exogenous factors has a huge impact on availability. The right way to look is in some mix of "price per square foot" and "cost per dwelling unit" metrics, both of which show a strong preference for (1) dense urban living like NYC and (2) walkable suburban living like downtown palo alto, Berkeley, LA or many other inner ring suburbs in east coast cities.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#64

Post by PragmaticPulp » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 11:24 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #17

No, 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…

People do vote with their dollars. The walkable neighborhoods in my city tend to cost 2-3X more than houses in less walkable areas.

There are actually huge swaths of affordable houses built on the outskirts of many towns, but people don’t want them because they’re not close to the walkable parts of the city.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#65

Post by jppope » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 11:24 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #17

No, 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…

> "In this case Americans have chosen the suburbs in droves."

"chosen the suburbs" implies that there was a choice.

The limited walkable cities that have been built since 1950 (like Seaside, FL) are some of the most coveted real estate in the United States. The plain fact is that walkable cities are illegal to build now because of zoning laws and building codes.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#66

Post by foxpurple » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 11:26 PM UTC

dkhenry wrote: post #40

If 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.

American suburbs are largely a Ponzi scheme. They start out with loads of funding to build out all of the infrastructure and then in 20 years they can not afford to replace it all so they are funded by building another suburb. Eventually most of them will fail or some economic trick will be pulled to fund them.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#67

Post by surfmike » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 11:26 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #17

No, 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…

At the end of the day most people want more of their bit of space (indoor and outdoor) for the money. Which inherently pushes them to suburbs.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#68

Post by dkhenry » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 11:26 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #53

dkhenry wrote: post #40

If 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.

If that specific bill was the only debt we were printing to subsidize car dependence it would be bad enough, however the majority of spending is done by municipalities which sits currently at 4T and its estimated we need to add 6T to that over the next 10 years to keep up with repairs. After we have spent that 10T we will then have to repair all the roads built in the past 20 years which is growing at about 500,000 miles of roads per decade.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#69

Post by graeme » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 11:27 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #17

No, 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…

Your thesis is flawed. It is illegal to build new dense walkable neighborhoods in almost all of north america. But existing neighbourhoods of that style tend to be both highly priced to live in and also popular tourist destinations, implying high desirability.

The older east coat cities built walkable neighbourhoods before they became illegal.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#70

Post by taeric » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 11:28 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #64

cletus wrote: post #17

No, 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…

People do vote with their dollars. The walkable neighborhoods in my city tend to cost 2-3X more than houses in less walkable areas. There are actually huge swaths of affordable houses built on the outskirts of many towns, but people don’t want them because they’re not close to the walkable parts of the city.

This can be misleading. The supply in walkable areas will, by near definition, be lower than places you have to drive to. Such that the evidence isn't that houses are more expensive in walkable areas. The evidence is that it is not economically viable to build more walkable neighborhoods.

Edit: I meant to say it could be an alternative, not that it is.