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Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

strongtowns.org

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Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#471

Post by nitrogen »

crooked-v wrote: post #119
somnic wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partly, but also smaller living space is in fact part of the tradeoff that you make when building stuff close together. It's a worthwhile tradeoff in my opinion, but I'm also not saying that single-family car-centric suburbs should be illegal for people who prefer it, unlike how building denser housing is illegal in many expensive cities.

While that's true, there's a significant difference between "you can't give everybody a McMansion" and "everybody must live in spaces objectively describable as 'tiny'". My objection is to the latter.

When I first played Sim City I imagined a future of towering soundproofed arcologies where everyone still had a private yard on a giant balcony, so you could increase density without overly decreasing living space per household. Is anyone trying to build like that?

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#472

Post by [deleted] »

JeremyNT wrote: post #452
rekado wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love living in a walkable city and a tiny-ass apartment (3 people, 75 square meters). When the neighborhood is attractive it becomes part of "your space". I don't need my whole world to be within the confines of these walls.

This is a key, I think. If you live somewhere that has no common space and nowhere to walk (which is most of US housing) you "need" the larger space of your own because you have nothing of any value available to you (unless you are willing to get in a car and navigate the hellscape of suburban sprawl that isolates these types of housing developments from each other and from any amenities). It's a "tragedy of the comm…

[deleted]

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#473

Post by q3k »

thex10 wrote: post #454
refurb wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Get outside the big cities and houses are very affordable. We’re talking 120m^2 homes for under $200k.

Yeah, but then I'd have to buy a car and drive it to get simple basic tasks done.

There's more choice than just 'megacity and walk everywhere' and 'bumfuck nowhere and drive everywhere'.

Small/medium towns with a fairly dense downtown/market square exist, and while yes, it's more useful to own a car there than in a large city, you still can get tons of things done by walking, biking or taking a bus.

Random example: Alsfeld, Germany, population 16,901. A 1900s house (3br, 120m^2, downtown) 180kEUR [1]. Within walking distance: daycare, multiple doctors/dentists/pharmacies, restaurants, stores... and a train station with an hourly regional train.

[1] - https://www.immobilienscout24.de/expose/130222273

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#474

Post by Enginerrrd »

pja wrote: post #47
pronlover723 wrote: post #15

I'm pretty addicted to "Not Just Bikes" youtube channel which seems to be either directly or indirectly related to stongtowns https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes It's frustrating. Even though I'm currently in SF, SF still doesn't feel remotely as nice as many other places outside the US. Public transportation is slow and although the muni is okay the busses are kinda gross compared to good non-US cities. There are…

Does zoning prevent the walkable neighbourhoods from acquiring a full range of amenities? Or maybe the planning restrictions prevent the kind of organic infill development that leads to these places acquiring their own local character?

Yes it does. I find it really ironic too because a lot of the places praised by modern planning doctrine were allowed to spring up more organically according to need and less subject to such intense planning regulation.

It's even worse in that, just like people complain about the personality types that go into policing, I find there's a particular common personality type among planners: weak/mousey people that tend to be low on the totem pole of organic social hierarchies, but who are strongly opinionated and happily embrace their bureaucratic positions to exert power over people and to impose their agendas on the world.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#475

Post by gkop »

xyzelement wrote: post #437
gkop wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge apartment buildings are “lumpy” and indeed impose externalities locally. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about if we could evenly distribute housing, we could cut through some of the NIMBY opposition. Quad plexes by right [0 for example] makes a lot of sense to me. If you’re OK with a quad plex next door, IMO you’re not part of the problem. Unfortunately, in many places SFH owners will come out in force to fig…

>> Quad plexes by right [0 for example] makes a lot of sense to me. If you’re OK with a quad plex next door, IMO you’re not part of the problem I would actually not be OK with quads next door to my house right now, because that is not the type of life I bought into. That may sound crazy so let me explain. For 39 years, I valued density/walkability/convenience of city life, and lived in NYC for most of that time. Now…

Thanks for the reply!

I can empathize. Have you experienced a neighborhood with a mix of half SFH, and the other half a smattering of 2, 3, 4 and occasional 10+? I currently rent in such a neighborhood and it’s fairly awesome. It supports a fabulous small business district, and the families playing and riding their bikes to school seem very happy too. If you are familiar with a neighborhood such as mine, can you describe the difference in quality of life that you experience in your SFH-only neighborhood?

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#476

Post by xyzelement »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #462
xyzelement wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Quad plexes by right [0 for example] makes a lot of sense to me. If you’re OK with a quad plex next door, IMO you’re not part of the problem I would actually not be OK with quads next door to my house right now, because that is not the type of life I bought into. That may sound crazy so let me explain. For 39 years, I valued density/walkability/convenience of city life, and lived in NYC for most of that time. Now…

>I would actually not be OK with quads next door to my house right now, because that is not the type of life I bought into. This is, definitionally, NIMBYism. Resisting necessary change in your town because it doesn't jive with what you want is more or less the problem. Now, maybe your town doesn't need quads or apartments or anything of the sort. Maybe the properties and zoning laws that exist are able to meet deman…

You may be totally right about PWN etc. and I think you're right about my assessment about the NYC area being already fine. But I guess I am not super comfortable with this sentence: "Resisting necessary change in your town." Who gets to decide what is truly necessary? Is it people who already live in the town? That seems the most democratic and least tyrannical. Or is it people from elsewhere that are somehow empowered to decide how the town ought to be, and if so how does that work?

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#477

Post by nradov »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #462
xyzelement wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Quad plexes by right [0 for example] makes a lot of sense to me. If you’re OK with a quad plex next door, IMO you’re not part of the problem I would actually not be OK with quads next door to my house right now, because that is not the type of life I bought into. That may sound crazy so let me explain. For 39 years, I valued density/walkability/convenience of city life, and lived in NYC for most of that time. Now…

>I would actually not be OK with quads next door to my house right now, because that is not the type of life I bought into. This is, definitionally, NIMBYism. Resisting necessary change in your town because it doesn't jive with what you want is more or less the problem. Now, maybe your town doesn't need quads or apartments or anything of the sort. Maybe the properties and zoning laws that exist are able to meet deman…

How do determine what growth is necessary and what is optional? Should we compress more and more people into existing cities, or would it make more sense to build new cities in regions with fewer geographical constraints? How do we balance the interests of existing residents versus those who would like to move in? Considering that most US population growth is due to immigration, what is the optimal level of net migration?

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#478

Post by panzagl »

dionidium wrote: post #456
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #13

Everybody wants walkable cities, but nobody wants to live in tiny-ass flats. I'm a European and if you look at the size of housing here (perhaps excluding the few cities that have low population density) it's tiny in comparison to most of the USA (except for NYC). So as always there are pro's and con's - would you want to live in a city like NYC? Would you like to raise a family in those conditions?

There's a whole world of difference between Manhattan and 2500-sqft single-family homes with large setbacks, street-facing garages, loads of surface parking, and vast backyards, set on culs-de-sac in exurban environments reachable only by car. And it's not hypothetical. Every pre-war U.S. city has districts full of duplexes, tri-plexes, and other kinds of modest density -- with limited setbacks, small yards, spaced f…

In my city these neighborhoods have all been taken over by lawyer's offices, therapists, accountants, etc., or turned into multiple unit housing for single people.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#479

Post by halostatue »

nitrogen wrote: post #469
thex10 wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but then I'd have to buy a car and drive it to get simple basic tasks done.

That's kind of the whole point. People want that.

Do they? Or are the places that people can afford constrained to offer that, making them think that what they can afford and what they _want_ are the same thing?

I live in a reasonably walkable section of Toronto, but I still need a car for some of what I do (if I got a bike trailer, I could reduce that need to a larger degree than I already have, but public transit where I live is suboptimal for short trips and doesn’t go everywhere we want).

I could not now afford the house I bought twelve years ago because the market has gone crazy (we estimate we could get 3–4x what we paid for the house—but then we’d have to find a place to live), especially for the more walkable sections of the city.

I _want_ more walkable, transit-able, and bikeable parts of the city. I also want it to be more affordable to more people in the city, because I don’t particularly want to force people to have 2 hour commutes into the city because they think they want more space, but in order to have more space they have to move where nothing is as reachable as it is here.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#480

Post by wallacoloo »

nradov wrote: post #345

It's bizarre how this article defines "nice" in terms of architecture and walkability. In the US most people care more about crime rates and school quality. If the local school is rated 2/10 and there are drug dealers in the neighborhood park then it doesn't matter how many shops and restaurants are within walking distance.

I suppose it depends on how you define walkability. I think a good walkability metric decreases when you no longer prefer walking — which tends to be the case when the neighborhood park becomes a drug hotspot, per your example.
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