The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism” • Hacker News Board

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#191

Post by DoreenMichele » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 1:14 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #30

Correct it's no vibrant, bustling organic downtown. But it's still a helluva lot better than nothing at all. The suburbs I grew up in? There were a bunch of shitty strip malls, and a single indoor mall with a single food court with zero natural lighting, taken over by teenagers after school because it was literally the only place to congregate besides the parking lot outside the supermarket. There was no local "cente…

Strong Towns is trying to educate people about what real urbanism is all about. It doesn't serve their mission to write an article saying "Well, half a loaf is better than none." They are trying to tell America what a great and nutritious whole loaf looks, feels and smells like.

This naturally involves criticism of the many half-assed attempts to do something about the situation.

That's not them being negative meanie faces. That's them trying to set a high bar informationally so that those who would like to see real remedies have some hope of accomplishing something better than half assing it.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#192

Post by narrator » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 1:18 AM UTC

The structure of America being car dependent is that the "youths" who mayor Bloomberg recently commented commit 95% of murders don't have cars or gas money to get there. The car dependent lifestyle is to create areas where undesirable elements are excluded.

In many areas "youths" gather in shopping malls and so forth and generate a lot of petty crime, vandalism, shoplifting, playing loud music and generally making everyone uncomfortable. Dead malls and downtowns have declined because of excessive presence of "youths". For example, Halloween in San Francisco's Castro got cancelled permanently because "youths" showed up and started shooting at each other. If you make it hard to get places, these "youths" tend to not show up and keep everything nice, peaceful and upscale.

Without the "youths" problem, America would have a far lower homicide rate and public transit, bikes, walkable neighborhoods, free public festivals and all that stuff would be far more popular.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#193

Post by astrodust » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 2:02 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #79

dsr_ wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is shown is not better than what you grew up in; it's the same. It's an outdoor mall, pretending to be a downtown. The only difference is that this mall doesn't have the food court and the giant corridors; instead it's outside where the rain and bugs can get to you.

It is also near the water, which could be nice.

Yeah, I'm sure that'll work out just fine so long as the sea level never rises. At least it's in Florida where there's never any serious storms.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#194

Post by danans » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 2:08 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #173

lotsofpulp wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At least at the moment the trend tends to be towards demand for the benefits of increased density, as the culture has shifted to valuing experiences more than large (expensive-to-maintain) spaces. In the US, everyone in my circles acts the same way, until they have children. Then the priority becomes quality of school, which really means socioeconomic status of all the children in the school, which leads to the well…

And for that reason, the brief trend of urbanization has already reversed. Once the recession passed and millennials started having kids, they started moving back out to the suburbs: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/29/millennials-are-fleeing-big-... I personally think that sucks (for the most part). But there are just a handful of cities where you can simultaneously satisfy the constraints of jobs, kids, decent schools,…

> And for that reason, the brief trend of urbanization has already reversed

The current flight to the suburbs is a matter of unaffordability, which is very different than the forces that drove previous waves of suburbanization.

People being priced out of desirable urban areas hasn't necessarily resulted in a reversal of urbanism, but rather an increasing pressure to urbanize the more "affordable" (in price per sqft) suburban areas.

You see this in efforts to change suburban planning codes to allow multiple dwellings per lot, or to allow bars and restaurants to be open later. Both of those are examples of initiatives that have faced pretty stiff opposition from longtime suburban residents.

Developers have caught on to this too, which is why you see developments like the one described in the article, however shallow the implementations may be.

I agree that there is a lot of push and pull, and huge financial and quality of life trade-offs that everyone is forced to make.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#195

Post by skinnymuch » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 2:16 AM UTC

danans wrote: post #100

lotsofpulp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those are benefits that come from high density living. But while they might say they like those benefits, most people will choose the benefits of low density living, such as more space (quarter acre lots with detached garages and front and back yards and 2,000+ sq ft interiors). Not to mention the benefit of being able to segregate children into different schools by socioeconomic status, by restricting differe…

> But while they might say they like those benefits, most people will choose the benefits of low density living, This is heavily dependent on one's conditioning. I grew up in a late mid-century low density suburb - nothing like the exurban sprawl you see today, but still very far from walkable. I instinctively moved from that to high density older neighborhoods as an adult. At least at the moment the trend tends to b…

Until people start having kids and more and more leave the dense areas.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#196

Post by superduperuser » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 2:40 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #192

The structure of America being car dependent is that the "youths" who mayor Bloomberg recently commented commit 95% of murders don't have cars or gas money to get there. The car dependent lifestyle is to create areas where undesirable elements are excluded. In many areas "youths" gather in shopping malls and so forth and generate a lot of petty crime, vandalism, shoplifting, playing loud music and generally making ev…

Woah

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#197

Post by Bootwizard » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

briefcomment wrote: post #145

Bootwizard wrote: post #76

I live in a place exactly like this in Florida called Baldwin Park. It's much better designed and I love living here. The main difference is a few things (and these really matter to me): 1. All the parking is parallel parking along all the streets. This ensures that the number of businesses don't need their own massive ugly parking lots 2. There are actually apartments here above the businesses, so that it's always a…

The same author wrote about this place three years ago. He seems to like it. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/5/31/baldwin-park-a...

Wow I actually didn't know all the history of this town, and I've lived here for a few years.

Thanks for sharing this!

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#198

Post by ido » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 7:25 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #132

rayiner wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those kids aren’t middle class, and the situation for them is not functional or healthy. The median household income in the communities where New York County (Manhattan) public school kids live is around $40,000, half the median income of New York County as a whole. (For obvious reasons, the situation is reversed in most of the rest of the country—households with kids earn more than households without them, because t…

I went to grad school with a lot of people who went to Manhattan to get jobs in the financial industry. Almost all of them, when they had kids, moved out of the city to Connecticut or wherever. And I'm pretty sure the balance who stayed in the city after they had kids sent them to private school. >People have been playing up the “revival” of cities over the past two decades, but it turns out that was entirely due to…

Here in Germany a cursory search shows that the biggest cities (Berlin & Hamburg, both their own states like DC in the US) are at the bottom of the children-per-woman chart while the top spots are mostly taken by the most rural states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_ferti...

And perhaps more "incriminating" is that last spot is taken by Berlin while the first by Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin on all sides (and thus containing all its suburbs).

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#199

Post by achenatx » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 12:29 PM UTC

We have a couple of developments in austin the "domain" which is an outdoor mall integrated with tons of apartments and a ton of actual jobs. The entertainment district serves those who live there, but is probably good enough to attract people from north austin who dont want to go downtown. It is disappointing to see classic strip malls continuing to be built in the suburbs with massive parking lots, when this dense form of living works so well. https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Domain/@30.4006016,-97...

There is another development "mueller" which took the old airport and turned it into a neighborhood. It is much less commercial but the parks make it amazing. There are a ton of amenities, but the amenities are car centric. There are some jobs, but not quite enough. As a kid with a bike though there are multiple pools, movie theater, ice cream shop, pizza within biking distance. The small backyards means that everyone gathers at the park to play. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mueller,+Austin,+TX/@30.29...

Both of the developments are heavily influencing the areas around them

Austin is trying to fix old neighborhoods with an updated land development code. The NIMBYS are out in force - they absolutely love the neighborhood character of their car dependent semi suburbs.

I live in "northwest hills" which was developed in the 60s-80s. The developer didnt do a bad job (lots of multi family, missing middle, and SFH), but all the commercial is heavily on one side down a steep hill, which means most of the SFH people are physically separated from the multifamily/commercial area. That means huge parking lots and everyone driving. The commercial should have been pushed more into the SFH area. The city is trying to increase density via zoning and the neighborhood is going crazy. There should be commercial along mesa between far west and spicewood springs rd. The city is upzoning it to 4 plexes which is a step in the right direction.

https://www.google.com/maps/@30.3499372,-97.7681162,15z

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#200

Post by alistairSH » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #148

alistairSH wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you fellow Restonite? If so, "Hi!" RTC and the current major development is an interesting case... RTC predates the expansion of the subway system, so drive-to urbanism was, as you suggest, a reasonable option given other constraints. Now that the Metro is (almost) expanded past Reston to the airport, there is (was?) an opportunity to build a true human-scale urban environment (at least within the designated deve…

>you have to cross 8 lanes of traffic coming from the east I remember I was once staying in Tyson's or somewhere around there. I could see a number of restaurants in the shopping center from my hotel but there was literally no way of crossing the 6-8 lane road between me and the restaurants. I had to get into my car to drive the few hundred feet.

Tyson's Corner is a disaster. Whoever through building mini-city in the dead space between 3 highways was a good idea needs a kick in the teeth.

I mean, I suppose it was a good idea, in terms of car access, but it's been at "automobile saturation" for decades. There's literally no way to redevelop it into a liveable/walkable urban space because it's bounded on each side by a major highway (Rt7, Dulles Toll Road, and I-495). And it's bisected by another major artery - Rt123. And every other road within the triangle is, as you noted, nearly impossible to cross on foot.