161–170 of 389 posts
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The market is better at solving this problem than central planning.
Not when it comes to ADA requirements...
Also, people with disabilities tend to drive less than those without them.
In general, if you don't like how a piece of property is being used, you should buy it and then use it the way you see fit.
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There is some really great African food up north just outside the city. :-D Likewise along the northern parts of Aurora you can get some really great Korean food. (Also not strictly in the city limits). Parks, lots of parks. The only decent real "spas" I've found are all up north (Again, Shoreline, just outside of the city) Ballard and Fremont are both big draws. UW, kind of a biggie.
Federal Way has good Korean food also (well, along with lots of Koreans). Frankly, you'll find Asian communities south, east and north, with the high end in the east, the middle end in the north, and lots of value in the south. Schools are better in the north, which is why we chose Ballard rather than Beacon Hill. The reason I don't think about North Seattle so much is because I live here, I guess (and getting places…
If you only go to the south end for Ikea, Southcenter, and Seatac, how often do you really need to do those things? It's not like it becomes impossible to drive there, it just takes a little longer. Frankly, traffic in Seattle just isn't that bad compared to other major cities. I just checked the traffic from Ballard to Ikea, and it's 45 minutes on 99... I-5 isn't even the ideal route right now.
Of course I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit here, but you also have to weigh this against just how much additional real estate would come available if I-5 was gone. I don't think people's need for driving convenience actually stacks up that strongly against all the other positive considerations.
Strong Towns has called a good amount of attention to the mandatory parking requirements in many cities (and shockingly, many downtowns). Thankfully, it seems a fair number of cities are removing such restrictions, but hopefully it becomes more widespread. In general I hope the US can urbanize, the older I get the more I realize it’s not really enjoyable living in this country. I don’t think I want hyper dense, but h…
I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey and Maryland, spent a little time in my 20s in the denser-than-suburbs suburbia of the Bay Area, and then the past 14 years in San Francisco proper. More recently I've been spending 1-1.5 months at a time living out in "rural" parts of Truckee, CA.
I just don't know anymore. In San Francisco I live within a few minutes' walk of two dozen or so useful businesses (corner store, grocery, bakery, butcher, restaurants, bars, etc.), and everything I need to live I can get by walking no more than a half hour. I hate driving and love this.
In Truckee, the closest convenience store is a 40-minute walk, and all the other necessities are at least a 10-minute drive. On the other hand, I'm a light sleeper, and the intense darkness (moonlight, at most, only!) and quiet in Truckee was wonderful for restfulness. In SF we live near a Muni bus depot, where they clean buses well past midnight every night. I can mostly -- but not entirely -- get darkness with blackout blinds, but it's really not the same.
I definitely don't want to go back to the suburbs, but that sort of thing -- with much better city planning than most (all?) US suburbs have -- has potential to give me quiet and darkness, but the ability to walk everywhere I need to go.
Ultimately, though, what drives where I want to live is where my friends are. As I get older, I find it harder and harder to make new, close friends. Moving to a new place where I don't know anyone sounds like torture to me.
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> There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and replace it with a street. I'm afraid that this would wind up like Vancouver, which lacks freeways through the city and has pretty bad traffic as a result. Better maybe to tunnel it under if possible? That works well for Seattle, although we still have I5 to contend with that divides the downtown from Capitol Hill (there is talk of lidding the entire…
I live in Vancouver, and absolutely love how we didn’t go with the freeway idea. And traffic will suck anyways, might as well let the locals enjoy the walks and life instead.
https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2014/03/12/metro-vancouver-str...
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Major European cities with no such minimum parking requirements do fine. They have public transport and bike infrastructure, so many people in dense urban areas don't need cars.
I bet no one in major European cities requires to bike like ten miles each way. The point is the size of American cities is vastly different to European ones, so what works that side of Atlantic rarely translates "as-is" here. (I am disappointed about this oft thrown around comparison, since my city reduced one lane on several major roads and created bike paths. Sadly, we now have major traffic jams and hardly any ut…
15km is on the outer edge of normal (my bike commute was 11km). But yeah, we can build more densely because we don't require massive amounts of car storage everywhere in the city. The best time to start densifying was 20 years ago, but the second-best time is now.
> my city reduced one lane on several major roads and created bike paths. Sadly, we now have major traffic jams and hardly any utilization of the bike path.
Try counting how many humans use the traffic lane and the bike path per hour. You might be surprised.
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The US is urbanized...if you want it. There are plenty of places where people that enjoy living in urban areas can do so. However, to me, that sounds like an unenjoyable hellscape. Been there, done that. The beauty of the US is that people have choices, and aren't pigeonholed into someone else's idea of "enjoyable".
There really are not plenty of places in the US where you can live a good, urban, non-car-oriented life, and you can tell that is true because the ones which do exist tend to be very expensive, showing that they are in high demand. You clearly do not desire an urban lifestyle, and I won't try to change your mind about that, but those of us who do want urban living generally don't find that our choices are either plen…
Boston is about the only city in the US that I feel mildly safe walking around the downtown at night.
They (ought to) unpave the parking lot and put up a paradise! More green spaces are good for cities.
Not really. Some parks/green areas are good. However it is easy to put in more than are needed and make the city less dense which is not good for the city or your ability to do some of the things that make a city great.
Cities are best when they are allowed to gradually adapt, rather than trying to plan everything out 'just so' from the outset and being rigid about changes.
But parks are tougher to put in once the land has been used up.
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> having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. We're at a critical juncture here in the Twin Cities. The state DOT needs to re-build the interstate that cuts right through the entire metro area (I-94) for the first time since it was first built 50 years ago. There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and re…
> There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and replace it with a street. I'm afraid that this would wind up like Vancouver, which lacks freeways through the city and has pretty bad traffic as a result. Better maybe to tunnel it under if possible? That works well for Seattle, although we still have I5 to contend with that divides the downtown from Capitol Hill (there is talk of lidding the entire…
Invest in transit and make it easier for people to get around without cars; that's the only way to solve traffic. Building more roads (and widening existing roads) just induces more demand.
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Federal Way has good Korean food also (well, along with lots of Koreans). Frankly, you'll find Asian communities south, east and north, with the high end in the east, the middle end in the north, and lots of value in the south. Schools are better in the north, which is why we chose Ballard rather than Beacon Hill. The reason I don't think about North Seattle so much is because I live here, I guess (and getting places…
It sounds like you are already set up for I-5 getting obliterated. If you only go to the south end for Ikea, Southcenter, and Seatac, how often do you really need to do those things? It's not like it becomes impossible to drive there, it just takes a little longer. Frankly, traffic in Seattle just isn't that bad compared to other major cities. I just checked the traffic from Ballard to Ikea, and it's 45 minutes on 99…