I want to live in a healthy, beautiful, walkable city.
Vancouver BC was the only primary fit for this in USA/Canada.
Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
91–100 of 370 posts
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#92How 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.
No need to give up single family homes at all. Just make sure every suburb has a dense multi use zoned core with shops and apartments above the shops. Then make that core easy to reach from all across the suburb by walking/cycling/bus/rail (yes that will take away some of the space allocated to cars). Then as a bonus, connect those cores to each other with rail. This is essentially how Dutch suburbs work.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I have lived in highly walkable neighborhoods. They utilize highrises to increase density (supply) of housing and commercial space. Walkable areas are by necessity higher density, meaning they pack more supply into the same footprint.
Some do. I lived in upper Queen Anne in Seattle. Very few highrise houses and all very expensive now. I would be a liar if I said I didn't miss how walkable it was.
I also lived in Buckhead area of Atlanta. Also very walkable for me, though there were a few high rises.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#94A family member landed a job about 17 odd years ago in Plano, TX (EDS).
The family across the road drove over to say hi.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#95Add 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…
a certain amount of parking and certain "setbacks", a mandated distance from the road, which also increases the lot size required.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#96I 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…
As a rule of thumb, you need 10k people / square km (25k people / square mile) to sustain local services and to enable most people live without using a car daily. If 50% of land area is used for streets, parks, and commercial purposes, that 2-3k lot should house at least five people. I believe the average single-family home in an area with no housing shortage houses ~2 people.
Once population density is substantially below that, there are not enough people to support public transit outside specific routes. Most people will need a car in their daily life. You can still find basic services such as supermarkets within a walking distance, but more specialized services such as restaurants and coffee shops become scarce outside central areas.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It is far far far more economical to build walkable neighborhoods. They require far less infrastructure costs, from water piping to sewer to roads. Quite often the only places that can sustainably fund themselves on property taxes are walkable multiuse neighborhoods. A ton of suburbia is sitting on huge infrastructure bills that will come due in the near future.
Car-dependent neighborhoods only exist because law prevents more dense uses. I don't know of a single such car-dependent neighborhood that doesn't strictly prevent a change away from being car dependent. From zoning to codes, anything that could lead to a walkable neighborhood is banned by law from even starting.
If we didn't outlaw walkable neighborhoods, and vigorously defend the banning of apartments and corner stores by swarming of planning meetings and recalls of city council members, vigorous actions perpetrated by the few and not the many, the balance would be entirely different.
In every single family neighborhood that is far dependent, you'll find a small number of people that will go to war to prevent any change to that. And all our systems are set up to allow a small number of people to control the outcomes of planning decisions.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#98No, 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.
They’re illegal because people vote for representatives who makes them illegal and show up to city council meetings to petition for them to be illegal.
Existing areas in that style tend to be expensive, but are often (at least where I’ve lived) some of the most NYMBY areas in a city. They like the benefits their density has brought, but won’t tolerate the lot next to them getting one iota more dense.
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It is far far far more economical to build walkable neighborhoods. They require far less infrastructure costs, from water piping to sewer to roads. Quite often the only places that can sustainably fund themselves on property taxes are walkable multiuse neighborhoods. A ton of suburbia is sitting on huge infrastructure bills that will come due in the near future. Car-dependent neighborhoods only exist because law prev…
This sounds good on paper, but you just have to look at how Walmart destroyed brick and mortar shops. They would build a single giant shop for an entire region and folks would drive to it in droves.
That is to say, I want to agree. I just can't square that with how I've seen small towns destroyed by shopping centers that require cars for the residents to drive to. (Ironically, this is different from the situation that requires companies to drive to the customers. Though, there, reverse pressure exists such that the more reliant on the company driving, the less pleasant the shopping experience.)
Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities
#100No, 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…
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