81–90 of 143 posts
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You presume too much. I live in a suburb just east of Kansas City and my money goes a long way here.
I need to get out my atlas, I coulda swore Kansas City was not on the coast.
Two observations: 1. There are far, far more differences between Midtown and Mabelton than urban planning (Midtown is a young, liberal, much higher than average percentage of gay residents, close proximity to Georgia Tech) and Mabelton is pretty much in the opposite direction in every way possible. It is an apples to oranges comparison. 2. A huge advantage of cul-de sacs is that people don't speed down them like they…
You wouldn't imagine that such a finely delineated categorical segmentation would occur, but it's very visible. Take, for instance, the fighting between Fulton County and the metro/MSA: last year's SPLOST vote [1], the Braves Stadium move [2], etc. all serve to exemplify how polar these two populations are.
Those in the city want regional tax money to improve transportation in and around the city, those outside the city want to be left alone (yet still be able to commute to the city); Atlantans bemoan urban sprawl, suburbanites loathe city spending. It's interesting to watch nothing get done.
[1] http://southernspaces.org/sites/southernspaces.org/files/ima...
[2] http://www.ajc.com/news/sports/baseball/braves-plan-to-build...
>Why do most people fail to walk even the 10,000 daily steps needed to stay healthy? Where does that figure come from? A lazy guestimate of 1m/stride puts that at 10km/day. That's 2 hours of walking a day. Who the hell spends 2 hours a day walking?
Extensive personal experience with a fitbit indicates that: 1) Its downright difficult to get thru even the laziest day without 4000 or so steps 2) 10K means you "exercised" perhaps an hour. I'm not talking about sprint training but went out for a walk, hiking, etc. Half hour at lunchtime won't quite do it (maybe if you speedwalk?) 3) Its really easy to leave the GD thing in your pocket and wash it. Although running…
I'll never understand why we continue to design our suburbs for cars and driving with no attempt to encourage walking. Instead, we seem to discourage walking through a lack of sidewalks, concentration of destinations surrounded by parking lots a mile wide themselves, and burying houses in subdivisions that require almost a mile walk just to get out of.
Maybe people don't like walking? I know I don't.
My more ideal city would have higher density housing but with small private yards, if only decks that seem like yards, something like this: http://www.dwell.com/house-tours/article/mountain-dwellings-... In the US we have high density housing (condo skyscrapers) and low density housing (suburbs) but not much in-between that's nice.
http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/news/images/amelmstreet.jpg
Todays municipalities are shunning urban forestry for miserly xeroscape landscaping. "Native landscaping" is often anything but, and has turned entire neighborhoods and towns into gravel strewn deserts. Obsession over costs has reduced much of America into a series of soulless strip malls and gated communities. Historic districts are today largely devoted to tourists while the rest of America lives in chicken wire and stucco tract homes made by economic refugees rather than craftsman. America is ugly because its people will not pay for beauty.
Regarding smaller yards, a return to < 1000 sq. ft. Sears-Catalog style architecture may be a more aesthetic alternative than heaping up duplexes or townhouses, or heaven forbid, closely packed trailer parks. Also, building codes should be loosened. Nothing kills the spirit of a neighborhood like "military review" uniformity in home construction.
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A large part of it is crime and/or race. The modern subdivision - full of meandering streets and poor connectivity to nearby arterials - is deliberate. It creates the gated neighborhood effect without the need to put up any unsightly walls or gates, and in effect keeps its residents separated from the world outside. The world outside presumably filled with undesirables. The lack of connectivity discourages through tr…
The problem I have with light rail in Bellevue is that it isn't very useful unless you live within walking distance of a station. I consider it to be mostly a boondoggle.
The trick with mass transit - particularly permanent infrastructure like rail transit, is that you're not really building it for right now, you're building it to shape the future.
My go-to example for this is Toronto, Canada. They built the subway in the 50s and put stations in extremely low-density neighborhoods. Nonsensical at the time naturally, but if you take a gander on Google Maps today, nearly all of these subway stations have evolved mini-cities around themselves, and the surrounding suburbs have realigned to maximize accessibility to the subway station.
Rail transit is always betting on the future rather than today. The question is if Bellevue is willing to redevelop around the infrastructure - or if the disproportionate power held by Kemper Freeman et al will put a stop to it. The natural evolution of neighborhoods around transit infrastructure is not subject to the curation of taste and wealth than has been emblematic of the development of Bellevue until now.
>Why do most people fail to walk even the 10,000 daily steps needed to stay healthy? Where does that figure come from? A lazy guestimate of 1m/stride puts that at 10km/day. That's 2 hours of walking a day. Who the hell spends 2 hours a day walking?
Not to mention the trips to the washroom/photocopier/kitchen/whatever. It's not hard to do, especially if you avoid driving when you can. There are lots of people who spend 2 hours a day driving, yet oddly that doesn't seem as crazy to you?
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Density is an effect and not a cause of design. My dad grew up in Bend, Oregon during the Depression. People had cars but walked to work, typically at the sawmill. Bend was a small town and not the tourist destination it is today, but it was apparently designed to be walkable. Go to Bend today though, and it's been rebuilt for cars rather than humans.
>it was apparently designed to be walkable. was it really "designed"? To me one of the issues with modern development is that it is explicitly "designed/planned" and thus diversity and vibrancy is naturally limited by the views/imagination of the designers/developers and politicians. (an illustration from another area - it is like "planned" economy vs. naturally evolving/developing capitalist economy)
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Chicago nails this. The grid road network throughout the entire city means there is regular N-S and E-W bus service every half mile or so. And there are business districts in pretty much every neighborhood. This happens is areas of low housing density (single-family homes in Jefferson Park) and high density (high-rises in Lincoln Park.)
Andersonville in Chicago is wonderful. https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Andersonville,+Chicago,+IL&hl... That's just blocks away from this: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Andersonville,+Chicago,+IL&hl...
The point is these shots are not atypical, it's like this throughout Chicago. Even the "not so good areas" have the same fundamental layout.
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The article wasn't complaining about density but about structure; a fences-and-backyards suburb arranged on a grid or some other well-connected layout is much more walkable than the same density suburb where all traffic must pass through a distant trunk to a major street. This makes it possible to actually connect useful mass transit to the suburb, which as the article explained, people will use if it's there.
Chicago nails this. The grid road network throughout the entire city means there is regular N-S and E-W bus service every half mile or so. And there are business districts in pretty much every neighborhood. This happens is areas of low housing density (single-family homes in Jefferson Park) and high density (high-rises in Lincoln Park.)
If you can live and work entirely in the city limits, public transit might work.
