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Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive

strongtowns.org

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Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive

#101

Post by davidw »

weisser wrote: post #96
davidw wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boulder's a great place in many ways, but it's also what got me really interested in urbanism, and getting involved at a local level, because it is an abject failure in terms of being affordable to even middle-class people who didn't buy in 30 years ago, with average house prices somewhere around 700K or north of that. This is, in part, because they refuse to add denser areas like the downtown in more parts of the ci…

I don't disagree. Boulder does well by the people who can afford to live here but seemingly (I'm still new) does little to offer affordable options. You go around Boulder and it doesn't feel like a city — this is part of the charm and also part of the problem.

They don't need skyscrapers or other big city stuff. Just more 3/4 story buildings that use their available lot well. You don't even have to mandate that; just get rid of the restrictions and market forces would gradually drive things in that way.

Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive

#102

Post by dsfyu404ed »

vinceguidry wrote: post #87

I pay a pretty hefty premium to live in the only walkable neighborhood in Atlanta, Midtown, and even then I'd only call it "barely walkable." There's still not nearly enough density for me to spend a whole lot of time walking around. Still, you can't put a price on having a grocery store, train station, liquor store, neighborhood bar, and cheap Mediterranean restaurant all within a 5 minute walk. As much as I'm payin…

>Still, you can't put a price on having a grocery store, train station, liquor store, neighborhood bar, and cheap Mediterranean restaurant all within a 5 minute walk.

Whoever you're paying money to did just that.

Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive

#103

Post by stcredzero »

jdavis703 wrote: post #68
pqh wrote: post #61

I'd live in a big city if more cities and building architects cared about green spaces and noise. I'm glad people are doing research here.

The problem is the cities citizens. Northern European cities such as Copenhagen are pretty quiet, despite their high density.

The problem is the cities citizens. Northern European cities such as Copenhagen are pretty quiet, despite their high density.

A lot of the character of a city does come from how its citizens imagine it's supposed to be. In the nicer parts of Stuttgart in 2000: Never once even the smell of garbage.

Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive

#104

Post by Xylakant »

nostromo wrote: post #41
Zenst wrote: post #25

I love wide pavements as a pedestrian, alas London is in the grip of a cycle paths fetish and in many instances, they eat up pavements with some cases reducing pedestrian access and seen some which have reduced the pedestrian area to one foot due to the oversight of sheltered bus stops consuming the other side of the pavement. I'm not against cycle paths and indeed for them, but not when they erode away pedestrian ac…

That's true in Seattle right now too. The city has been building bicycle lanes all around the city -- and yet cycling is down as a percent of commuters for the fifth straight year in a row. We could have dedicated that space to larger sidewalks and greener boulevards, instead of sparsely populated bicycle lanes. (Like London, we don't have great weather -- and we also have lots of steep hills. But city planners keep…

Weather seems to be a lesser concern to cycling as both all of the Netherlands and Copenhagen demonstrate. Hills are more of an issue, but given how electric cycles improve, that should be taken care of. All in all, cycling is a replacement for car traffic more than for walking and thus the space allocation for cycle path should be taken from roads rather than pedestrian areas.

Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive

#105

Post by Animats »

The US has too much retail space. About 2x too much. There's a fan club for cutesy little hipster stores that sell overpriced hipster stuff bought by hipster people with their hipster little dogs. Look at the pictures in the article.[1] See any stores selling necessities? A hardware store? A real grocery store? Nah. Retail is happening at the strip mall or online.

It's hard to fill those little shops at the base of commercial structures with anything useful. Most apartment buildings can't even support an on-premises convenience store. SF tried. The big parking garage at 4th and Mission has lots of little shops, marginally trying to survive. The Metreon was supposed to be a tech showcase. Now it's a Target store.

Don't confuse decorative hipster with success.

[1] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26e...

Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive

#106

Post by smashingfiasco »

_m8fo wrote: post #5

I've often wondered why somone moderately wealthy doesn't just start a super dense town, e.g. everything within 100 acres, and be within 10 miles of a major city. Create tons of these at a 50K people/sqmi density and implement some sort of hub spoke transportation with the major city being the hub and it could work!

Sounds like Celebration, Florida.

Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive

#107

Post by _m8fo »

closeparen wrote: post #91
crispyambulance wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Too much density decreases the quality of life. Too much of anything decreases quality of life. Everyone has their own taste, but generally speaking, if every journey out of your home has to begin and end with a parking space because you live in a pedestrian-hostile environment, that will certainly damage quality of life and the social fabric of that place as a "town".

The strength of the social fabric / level of community engagement in suburbs is way higher. Not even close.

Any data to back that up? I'd be curious to know what the ideal density is.

Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive

#108

Post by jstarfish »

del82 wrote: post #19
reaperducer wrote: post #3

This is something that certain cities have understood for many years. Chicago, for example, mandates that all new development from a simple three-story building to a 100-story skyscraper has retail at its base to improve the walkability of its streets and make its business corridors vibrant. This also helps push down retail rents even in the CBD, allowing local upstart businesses a shot at reaching the masses. Chicag…

Interestingly, Strong Towns published an article a bit more than a week ago about why mandating ground-floor retail is also not the best way to go: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/8/mixed-up-priori...

I think some cities (suburban Atlanta, for one, probably the city in Kentucky from TFA as well) have the "if you build it, they will come" approach to mixed-use development, which is just backwards.

It doesn't work if you throw up isolated pockets of mixed-use buildings in the suburbs that one still has to use a car to traverse.

I feel especially bad for entrepreneurs that open places like bakeries or restaurants in these islands. Those are the sorts of places you draw passerbys in with colorful window displays and hunger-inducing smells. People whizzing by in their cars aren't enticed by either as they speed by. These places all close shop within a year or two, and we end up with empty retail shops on the ground floor for years.

Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive

#109

Post by Bluestrike2 »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #33
donatj wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is economics, brother. Even humanities.

Not even close.

Depends on how you define economics. It's the study of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, which absolutely includes common goods like green space, pedestrian access, and other factors that are becoming even more important parts of city planning.

Even if you look at some of these elements as purely aesthetic or quality of life factors, that's still something economists regularly analyze, even when it might not have traditionally been the case.

Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive

#110

Post by dsfyu404ed »

geebee wrote: post #75

Another important factor not mentioned here is the practice of "curb cuts" http://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2008-06-01... I recommend the article (not just posting for a cite, it's an interesting one). But to summarize - SF has a lot of "curb cuts", sections of the curb that are cut out and lowered so a car can drive across the sidewalk to a driveway or garage. This prevents the sidewalks from becomi…

Crossing a busy sidewalks is just as annoying for drivers as it is for pedestrians (maybe more, pedestrian traffic doesn't back up through a light when a pedestrian has to wait for a car). More on street parking and less off-street parking solves that.
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