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The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.

chrisnorstrom.com

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Re: The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.

#111

Post by yason »

The sad recipe of the 1900's:

- have nice walkable cities for everyone

- start building and selling cars

- cars begin to take space in the city, cause local pollution, and also kill people walking or biking

- don't blame the cars but blame the dangers of city, and thus proceed to build suburbs which are perceived safe, and move there

- build miles and miles of wide and car-friendly culs-de-sac because everybody knows if cars stay on their runway and people stay inside their yards or homes, they can't hit each other

- automobile accidents soar because everybody needs to drive around

- thus, build and sell more cars because suburbanites require a couple in each house, continue blaming cities and leave it to poor people who can't buy a house and maintain a couple of vehicles

- build malls and office parks to avoid going to the downtown at all, but only if you can afford to drive there because there's no other way there

- suburbia is becomes dead during the daytime and conversely office parks die off after the workday, and malls get their share of visits before people go to sleep and this is all glued together by huge traffic congestion during commute hours

- to battle congestion, build more roads and make them even wider: there's more congestion that spreads even wider

- oil prices soar and living gets really expensive in the suburbs: continue to build new suburbs while leaving older suburbs to become McGhettos

- 2011

Re: The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.

#112

Post by enjo »

ryanjkirk wrote: post #86
kaiuhl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it obvious? Do the majority of the public understand the value of a well planned community or have the option to participate in one? Being walking distance to a grocery store is not the same thing as living in a transit-oriented region and living your entire life without dependence on a car. Suburbs were born from industry, not out of the realization of American's idealized community. I live in downtown Portland,…

Portland is a poor example. I love Portland, by the way, but we're essentially talking about economics here, and Portland is skewed. In Portland, you have people that want to live this lifestyle. They don't want the burden of the car, they are environmentally conscious, they work in the city, and they don't have kids. Sure, for them, it's doable (and you sound like one of them). This isn't usually the case. Industria…

Aren't roads similarly a net-loss and are 100% subsidized by taxes?

Sure, public transportation is great for young single people. Try going to the grocery store with young kids on the bus. It's virtually impossible.

I see it literally every day:) It hardly seems impossible.

Re: The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.

#114

Post by dalke »

ryanjkirk wrote: post #86
kaiuhl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it obvious? Do the majority of the public understand the value of a well planned community or have the option to participate in one? Being walking distance to a grocery store is not the same thing as living in a transit-oriented region and living your entire life without dependence on a car. Suburbs were born from industry, not out of the realization of American's idealized community. I live in downtown Portland,…

Portland is a poor example. I love Portland, by the way, but we're essentially talking about economics here, and Portland is skewed. In Portland, you have people that want to live this lifestyle. They don't want the burden of the car, they are environmentally conscious, they work in the city, and they don't have kids. Sure, for them, it's doable (and you sound like one of them). This isn't usually the case. Industria…

It's amazing how we had any sort of industry before the car. I live in a relatively small (500,000) city, though Sweden's second largest. One of my clients is in an industrial area. The city has extra lines for the morning and evening commute, but only about 20% of the people use them, and I think another 5% cycle. I don't know how many walk into work, but clearly over 50% do drive in.

This in a city and country which is pro-mass transit, pro-bicycles and pro-high fuel tax. The turning point is often, as you say, when children are born. People do take their babies, in strollers, on the trams and busses, but it's much easier if you can leave spare diapers and such in the car and not lug them with you all day.

(Your comment about taking the bus with young kids to get groceries is specious. If density is high enough then it's easy to walk to a grocery store. In town there's three grocery stores within a few blocks of me, and a corner store .. on the corner. Surely that was the same in the dense European city you lived in?)

On the other hand, kids and people up to 20 ride free or at reduced price. This means greatly increased mobility for anyone over about 8 or so. I've read autobiographies of people raised in New York City during the 1950s or so, who describe the sense of freedom of being able to go to Coney Island, or Central Park. That's not possible without a car in the standard suburbia we're talking about.

That said, I really don't understand why a public transportation system needs "to be a break-even affair." The road system definitely is not. Gas taxes even in Sweden isn't enough to pay for the road network, snow cleaning, and so on. Public transit should properly be seen, like the roads, as having a multiplier effect. It means you can have areas of town with higher density, which support those people and families you are talking about, which have higher numbers of clubs and restaurants and shops, and have areas for families with cars.

Re: The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.

#115

Post by dalke »

ars wrote: post #99
kaiuhl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it obvious? Do the majority of the public understand the value of a well planned community or have the option to participate in one? Being walking distance to a grocery store is not the same thing as living in a transit-oriented region and living your entire life without dependence on a car. Suburbs were born from industry, not out of the realization of American's idealized community. I live in downtown Portland,…

You can do all that because you have no kids. Add kids and you'll see why people like to live in the suburbs. Suburbs were born from families. Not industry.

I was thinking the same thing. NYC was the main US harbor, steel in Pittsburgh, slaughterhouses in Chicago. All were industry close enough that people could walk or take public transit - back when cars were too expensive.

But containerized shipping has replaced stevedores, and other industries have moved as well to their own areas of town. I think this move has partially been enabled by people moving to the suburbs, so that a commute into the city or a commute to somewhere else doesn't make a large difference.

Re: The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.

#116

Post by whatusername »

Mz wrote: post #14

I live without a car. The "put in connector sidewalks" solution is one that has occurred to me. My thought is that it would let people keep the same situation they seem to prefer in terms of car traffic but would connect neighbors like he is talking about, where teenagers could go see each other without needing a driver's license and car to have a social life.

My exurb has these. It's quite an elegant solution.

Re: The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.

#117

Post by specialist »

davidandgoliath wrote: post #91
ryanjkirk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's generalizing, of course, but it's because in the US, the suburbs incorporate into their own cities, and keep the taxes for themselves. Meanwhile, they commute into a city on a freeway paid for by the urbanites and enjoy all the benefits of city infrastructure, without paying for it. Not sure how cities incorporate in Canada but that's how it usually is here.

Certainly no disagreement that suburbanites commute. And once they arrive they spend bucketloads of money on a daily basis & tend to work for companies that spend bucketloads of money locally for office space & all the goods held therein. Communters do tend to also help support public transportation systems that are made available, in effect subsidizing them. Afterwards they leave & cost the city absolutely nothing b…

> I can name ten(s) of cities in the United States that absolutely die the moment 5-6pm strike, but were couriered money in by suburbanites during the day and would have zero infrastructure otherwise.

Citation please.

(This should be interesting.)

Re: The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.

#118

Post by bdunbar »

michaelchisari wrote: post #106
pkteison wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, much lower. Property taxes in my suburb are around three quarters compared to the nearby city (Atlanta, GA - millage rate 44.435; Gwinnett, GA - millage rate 32.10). Couple that with the fact that houses are much much cheaper, and in practice I pay ~$2000/year property taxes on my house while my friend pays over $5000/year in property taxes for his condo in the city. Then my mortgage and insurance are also cheap…

I have no idea what benefit this extra level of government actually provides, though. I have public infrastructure (transportation, libraries, etc) in the city of Chicago that the suburbs could only dream of.

I don't know the suburbs of Chicago. Where I live we have enough public transportation (bus) and a decent library system.

We don't need the massive public infrastructure you have because we're not a Big City.

Re: The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.

#119

Post by ditojim »

potatolicious wrote: post #73
ditojim wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i lived on a variety of cu-de-sacs until i was 30. cutting thru neighbors' yards was never considered "trespassing" in those neighborhoods, especially for kids/teens.

Most suburbs have fences, no? The one where I grew up it'd be impossible for me to get to a house 100 feet away without hopping fences, and that's generally seen as poor form.

So (1) almost all fences have gates. (2) most houses do not have fences unless they have an animal or need extra privacy for some reason. (3) jumping fences is fun when you are a kid/teen. Otherwise, yes, the fence will get in the way.

Re: The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.

#120

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

bgentry wrote: post #11

He fails to understand the main reason that home developers want to build neighborhoods with lots of cul-de-sacs: Homes on cul-de-sacs sell for more money. The more of these you can squeeze into a given neighborhood, the more money you'll make off the development.

lol, you failed to read my first paragraph that specifically said "I get why people (myself even) like the suburbs and cul-de-sacs but they have been taken to an extreme"

btw, sorry my whole shared hosting server crashed, and is still down since yesterday. I can now say, "hacker news crashed my server", so I consider it an achievement unlocked and am very happy about it.

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