Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities • Hacker News Board

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#21

Post by notJim » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

yellow_lead wrote: post #16

version_five wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's hardest to find, and what I prefer, is somewhere it's easy to walk and drive. I've lived in walkable places where if you do have to drive, traffic is a nightmare. And then of course there are places where you can drive without traffic but there is nowhere to walk to. I think I prefer the latter with my lifestyle, though it becomes more frustrating for meeting friends, going our for dinner + drinks, etc. For sp…

Where have you been that has both? From my reading, it seems like cities need to prioritize walkable / bikable OR cars, but I've never seen example of a city doing both well.

IMO Portland is actually kind of like this (for now). I've heard Berkeley, CA sort of, too.

In Portland (where I live), I have a driveway and convenient street parking right outside my house, but I can also walk to many shops and restaurants, and have a pretty good busline nearby. I usually take the bus if I'm going downtown, so I don't have to worry about parking. But in my part of town, which is less dense, I can conveniently drive or bike. Parking can be a little annoying on this side of town, but it's usually okay.

That being said, Portland is clearly moving in a denser direction. Housing has gotten too expensive here, and the only way out of that is density. Our cycling infrastructure and public transit are decent, but need to get better IMO. All of this will probably negatively impact the car-friendliness, but I think that's the right move for Portland right now.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#22

Post by lotsofpulp » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #17

No, they don’t. This is a classic example of listening to what people say vs observing what they do. And it’s a good lesson in product development. Ask your users “do you want X?” And the answer is inevitably “yes”. Ask them “do you want A or B?” And you’ll start to get a better approximation of user behavior. Better yet is observing actual behavior. In this case Americans have chosen the suburbs in droves. Americans…

Once kids are in the picture, school districts with greater proportions of wealthier families is the priority.

Plus, the easiest way to avoid dealing with homeless people and/or gangs is to live in far flung suburbs where everything is so far that cars are a necessity.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#23

Post by DoreenMichele » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 10:56 PM UTC

I think one of the things we need to do is actively work at decoupling parking from specific buildings. We currently require x number of parking spaces per residential unit or per commercial venue and it helps keep us trapped in a situation where you need a car to make your life work.

We need to find ways to accommodate parking in a way that helps us be flexible and let's people who prefer cars keep them without making them a privileged class pushing out all other options.

We don't really talk about that. We talk in an either/or fashion rather than talking about how to make it genuinely optional and a personal choice. We expect everyone to get on the same page and agree rather than working on saying "We don't really need this much parking. The parking lots are never full. Let's scale back the parking and make it shared somehow so there's enough parking, not too much parking and it no longer strangles mixed use, walkable development."

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#24

Post by nickff » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 10:56 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #18

standardUser wrote: post #4

Add up the roads, parking spaces, parking garages, gas stations (not to mention auto shops, drive thrus and car washes) and the total urban footprint is a gargantuan 50-60% by many calculations. That's not automatically a bad thing, especially if you are a car, but all of that space creates massive buffers separating all of the other stuff that humans want to walk to. To make it worse, those buffers are far and away…

I often joke that aliens would mistake the cars, not people, to be the dominant intelligent species of this planet.

That joke is made early in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (by Douglas Adams), and is why one of the major characters is named "Ford Prefect".

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#25

Post by harryh » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #17

No, they don’t. This is a classic example of listening to what people say vs observing what they do. And it’s a good lesson in product development. Ask your users “do you want X?” And the answer is inevitably “yes”. Ask them “do you want A or B?” And you’ll start to get a better approximation of user behavior. Better yet is observing actual behavior. In this case Americans have chosen the suburbs in droves. Americans…

There is some truth in this post, but it's also important to understand that in most of the places with very large lots, it is illegal to subdivide the lots and build denser housing. If greater density was legalized, it would almost certainly be built and inhabited in a great many places.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#26

Post by another_story » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 10:58 PM UTC

iammisc wrote: post #8

kory wrote: post #3

I want to live in a walkable streetcar suburb: * Reasonably sized (2-3k soft) lots * Homes built with a variety of beautiful architecture * Area is not overbuilt to the point where all greenery and sunlight are gone and replaced by large buildings * alleys behind the lot, with garages hidden, to keep a single car (which is still really necessary in modern life) * small, thin, tree-lined streets * within walking dista…

> The problem with living in these desirable, walkable, neighborhoods is that once they're built up enough, activists lobby to destroy what was built to fill it with high density housing because of the critical mass of services available to the area. You're absolutely right. I live in one of these neighborhoods (actually literally was built as a streetcar suburb) and we have historic district protections so we're saf…

That business district would probably sit mostly empty if the density of customers isn't there. At best you'd get a strip mall with big box stores every 5km like typical American suburbs.

If you want a thriving business district with a mixture of local business you need to have density.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#27

Post by jdavis703 » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 10:58 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #17

No, they don’t. This is a classic example of listening to what people say vs observing what they do. And it’s a good lesson in product development. Ask your users “do you want X?” And the answer is inevitably “yes”. Ask them “do you want A or B?” And you’ll start to get a better approximation of user behavior. Better yet is observing actual behavior. In this case Americans have chosen the suburbs in droves. Americans…

Not all Americans chose to live in the suburbs. Many Americans are finding themselves displaced from cities in to far out areas. This happens because demand to live in cities is causing increased rents.

I know there are people happily living in suburbia by choice. But there are also many government policies from restrictive zoning to an imbalanced 80:20 highways to transit spending ratio that has profound impacts on how people live.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#28

Post by cbdumas » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 10:58 PM UTC

version_five wrote: post #13

jackson1442 wrote: post #5

I like my car and I like driving. That said, I don't like driving _everywhere_. When I moved to university, it was incredibly freeing to just be able to walk somewhere I wanted to go rather than getting in my car and driving miles to get anywhere. I grew up in a suburb in Texas so walking anywhere except _maybe_ a friend's house was entirely out of the question. I visited Portland recently and it was lovely to be abl…

What's hardest to find, and what I prefer, is somewhere it's easy to walk and drive. I've lived in walkable places where if you do have to drive, traffic is a nightmare. And then of course there are places where you can drive without traffic but there is nowhere to walk to. I think I prefer the latter with my lifestyle, though it becomes more frustrating for meeting friends, going our for dinner + drinks, etc. For sp…

I think it's hard to find because those two preferences are in direct, irresolvable conflict.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#29

Post by 2muchcoffeeman » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 10:58 PM UTC

foxpurple wrote: post #10

iammisc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or... hear me out. You could just build walkable suburbs. Why there is a distinction between 'suburb' and 'smaller city' is beyond me, but there really is. A small city still has a walkable downtown core with apartments around which there is a small area of single family homes within walking distance to the downtown area. A suburb is just tracts of single family homes and nothing else for miles on end. No real 'busin…

You can kind of have it if you mean walkable to just the general store, a cafe and a few other things but you can never have everything because many kinds of stores can only exist with a certain population close enough. What I love about living in the city is literally _everything_ I need is within walking distance. I have not used a car or any form of public transport in months and have felt no need to, I can buy an…

I guess it depends on which suburb. Some suburbs in Sydney are fairly liveable. Especially where there is a mix of housing, or, as much as I hate them, large apartment complexes. You can get all the things you need and have a few restaurants, all within walking distance.

Other suburbs, especially those huge “communities” with lots of cookie cutter homes seem really isolated. You have to drive.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#30

Post by makerofspoons » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 10:58 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #18

standardUser wrote: post #4

Add up the roads, parking spaces, parking garages, gas stations (not to mention auto shops, drive thrus and car washes) and the total urban footprint is a gargantuan 50-60% by many calculations. That's not automatically a bad thing, especially if you are a car, but all of that space creates massive buffers separating all of the other stuff that humans want to walk to. To make it worse, those buffers are far and away…

I often joke that aliens would mistake the cars, not people, to be the dominant intelligent species of this planet.

There's a great Canadian cartoon that explored that idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFaHArkYLsM