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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

#541

Post by foxyv »

stackedinserter wrote: post #489
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…

The biggest problem with NJB is that he completely ignores important fact: there are many people that don't want to live in apartments or even close to other people. Surprise surprise, we really want to live on 10 acres of land in our 3500 sqft house, with our motorcycles, garage workshops, dogs et cetera. We don't need "sense of community", we just want to have quiet space for ourselves.

When I was a kid, my dad would refer to the Urban Sprawl as "The Cancer." All of a sudden, beautiful orange groves and rural communities would be turned into noisy car infested bedroom communities for a city that was 30-40 miles away. If you want to have 10 acre rural homesteads, you also have to have good urban planning. Otherwise all the good farm land will turn into cookie cutter "Planned" communities where you can't fart without a permit.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#542

Post by harpersealtako »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #526
harpersealtako wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're touching on really common mistake a lot of new urbanists make, and the linked article generally is about. The problem is there's a lot of demand for dense neighborhoods but not enough supply -- not that suburbs and rural developments are objectively bad or that nobody actually prefers them. In many cases certain interests, hobbies, preferences and lifestyles are completely incompatible with the dense d…

> a lot of us interpret criticism of car-driving and suburban living as a heavy-handed attack on our way of life rather than as a reasonable argument for having affordable options for both lifestyles It's just folks punching up. The vast majority of the US is zoned for the car. It's really difficult to find a place that allows a car-free or even a low-car lifestyle. People would react a lot differently if there actua…

I don't disagree, I just think that being anti-suburb is a less efficient strategy for fixing the problem than being pro-density.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#543

Post by harpersealtako »

schwartzworld wrote: post #522
harpersealtako wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're touching on really common mistake a lot of new urbanists make, and the linked article generally is about. The problem is there's a lot of demand for dense neighborhoods but not enough supply -- not that suburbs and rural developments are objectively bad or that nobody actually prefers them. In many cases certain interests, hobbies, preferences and lifestyles are completely incompatible with the dense d…

There are people who actually like the suburbs? It's the worst of all worlds.

The plurality of Americans do, even (and especially) those with the means to afford dense, walkable urban life. I don't see why this should be a surprise to anybody to be honest.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#544

Post by dragonwriter »

harpersealtako wrote: post #543
schwartzworld wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who actually like the suburbs? It's the worst of all worlds.

The plurality of Americans do, even (and especially) those with the means to afford dense, walkable urban life. I don't see why this should be a surprise to anybody to be honest.

I dunno, the really rich tend to be attracted to cities more then the merely moderately rich. I think its possible that you are just working with a too low assessment of what really affording dense urban life looks like. Once you get into the realm where you can afford as much space as a generous suburban home but in a dense urban environment,...

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#545

Post by t413 »

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…

I think what it's missing is the full lack of cars. You still don't own your streets in SF! The few days Valencia street was closed to traffic in lockdown, for example, were incredible. Street musicians and people dancing, tables and picnics all over with people who wanted coffee having dinner with friends who wanted pizza alongside vegan sushi. It didn't feel like a party for festival, it felt like _life_.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#546

Post by quadrangle »

refurb wrote: post #536
quadrangle wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that's a good point, the article remains spot-on. People would readily pay 1/2 to 3/4 the price of that neighborhood to live in a place that felt similar in terms of the general neighborhood even in a much less prime location. By contrast, the people who choose to live in this particular prime location would not prefer to live in the same location if the neighborhood were razed and replaced by car-dependent sty…

Right but what’s the argument? That the people who razed it 50 years ago should have known that the old style would be more desirable in 2021? I mean, cities change. Shit gets torn down, neighborhoods that were wealthy go to crap, neighborhoods that were crap become trendy. The article infers there is one “right” was to design a city and complains that people in the past didn’t know that.

No, the point is that these neighborhoods aren't just relativist taste and opinion. Human-scale walkable life is more deeply and objectively a better way to live.

Your last sentence gets in the right direction. There are TONS of "right" ways to design a city. ZERO of them are car-dependent. Car-dependent building approaches are a completely new experiment that is less than 100 years old, and it is a failure.

This is not about styles and trends. All the changes in styles and trends across huge diversity of human societies went along for thousands of years without car-dependency.

Around 80 years ago, people started building fundamentally unsustainable, impoverished, inhuman, financially insolvent styles of development on a grand scale, and it turns out that about any place that has been protected from that experiment is now desirable, and it's not because the features are culturally associated with wealth or because they are in historic prime locations, it's because car-dependent life is crappy, and people with enough wealth to escape it without cramming into extreme density are often doing that, and it's possible to build medium-density non-car-dependent life for far more people and we should be doing it.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#547

Post by matkoniecz »

treis wrote: post #341
matkoniecz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The grocery is 2.5 kilometers away and the journey includes one very dangerous roundabout. Well, if city is so poorly designed that it requires cars, then you will need a car. For comparison, I have small supermarket 250m away (on the ground floor of an apartment block) - and I do not need to cross road to get there. And withing 250m there are several other shops like bakeries, pharmacies, haidresser, convenience s…

I'm guessing you pay significantly more for food at these local places than you would at a big box grocery store. Plus, you're less able to buy in bulk to get those time&money savings. The other big factor that people miss in these comparisons are schools. Generally speaking housing in dense places with good schools is usually very expensive. People that can't afford that typically have the choice between crappy urba…

> People that can't afford that typically have the choice between crappy urban schools or good suburban schools.

That sounds like USA specific problem, in Poland, Kraków all good high schools were in city center. Most of students were using bus/tram.

> I'm guessing you pay significantly more for food at these local places than you would at a big box grocery store. Plus, you're less able to buy in bulk to get those time&money savings.

Not really applicable in Poland, prices in Biedronka supermarket (closest to me is on ground level of apartment tower) are basically the same as in Auchan (big supermarket on suburbs).

> Plus, you're less able to buy in bulk to get those time&money savings.

Last time I checked any savings would be eaten by extra cost and time of going over 2km to the shop.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#548

Post by matkoniecz »

looki wrote: post #408
treis wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you pay significantly more for food at these local places than you would at a big box grocery store. Plus, you're less able to buy in bulk to get those time&money savings. The other big factor that people miss in these comparisons are schools. Generally speaking housing in dense places with good schools is usually very expensive. People that can't afford that typically have the choice between crappy urba…

>I'm guessing you pay significantly more for food at these local places than you would at a big box grocery store. I think you have a very wrong picture of what the GP is talking about, since this is not really the case at all. We're not talking about NY-style bodegas here. In Germany for example, cut-throat discount stores like Aldi that constantly try to lower the price floor for groceries are ubiquitous and can de…

Yeah, I have hilariously expensive convenience shop at ground floor of my apartment block. As bonus quality of products is low.

Twice the distance, 20m away there is another overpriced convenience shop but with a better quality.

I shop in supermarket about 250m away on ground floor of another apartment block that has quite good prices, good enough that it is not worth time and other costs to shop further away for many products.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#549

Post by matkoniecz »

will4274 wrote: post #438
matkoniecz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also in urban environments, making a lot of "inviting" public spaces for people to hang around and loiter is not always a great idea.. this also attracts a lot of crime, drugs etc Maybe in some third-world crime infested countries? At least in Poland it is not a real problem at all. Some parks are locked for night and that is all. If making nice park is instantly resulting in crime/drugs/etc then something went rea…

> Maybe in some third-world crime infested countries? Like Seattle and San Francisco? This isn't a third world problem, unless you consider these cities to be third world.

OK, I was unaware that USA really had such runaway crime problems. I thought that it is an exaggeration. (and still suspect this)

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#550

Post by dang »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #530
dang wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that in the general case it would with high likelihood lead to a flamewar. Dropping a lit match in a dry forest is a bad idea even when that particular match doesn't happen to catch fire.

> Dropping a lit match in a dry forest is a bad idea I'm sure you studied this metaphors a lot over the years, but that wasn't a match in a dry forest, it was the image of a match in a dry forest with the label "this is not how you should do it" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images

That's much too complicated. What you posted was flamebait. Please don't do that on HN.
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