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Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

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Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

#211

Post by adventured »

advael wrote: post #186
0x0nyandesu wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's actually way more disposable income today than even 100 years ago. We just spend it on things that didn't exist before like car insurance and iPhones.

What do you consider "disposable income"? Car insurance is legally mandatory if you drive a car. If your income is predicated on being able to commute by car (as it is for many Americans, though hopefully a trend toward remote work will ameliorate this somewhat) then your insurance is no more optional than your gas. People also talk about smartphones as though they're a luxury item, but for most intents and purposes…

Disposable income in the US is at record highs, both at the median and average, inflation adjusted. It has not gone down.

And the median and average for disposable income is a lot higher in the US than in Europe. US disposable income is only comparable to the most affluent nations of Europe: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland.

Americans waste an enormous amount of money on consumer garbage. Until recently it was very common for households to have $150-$200 / month cable or satellite TV plans. It's still common, just slightly less so thanks to Netflix etc. $200-$300 family smartphone plans are common.

Americans also flip in and out of cars frequently, losing huge sums of money doing it. And they buy ridiculously over-priced new vehicles, which they keep for relatively short periods of time.

Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

#212

Post by ben-schaaf »

gyc wrote: post #158
cletus wrote: post #106

Two reasons: 1. People (in the US at least) overall consistently choose more land over living somewhere walkable. In a lot of places, the marginal cost of more land is near zero; and 2. The dirty secret of car dependency is that most people (in the US) like being car dependent. In all but the densest largest cities, private vehicles are so much more convenient. Even in Manhattan there are a nontrivial number of peopl…

>1. People (in the US at least) overall consistently choose more land over living somewhere walkable. In a lot of places, the marginal cost of more land is near zero Yeah this pretty much. In some other countries, it's really expensive to own a large piece of land somewhere remote, so only the Uber-rich can live in those sorts of settings.

Owning a large piece of land somewhere remote with urban infrastructure as you see a lot in NA is also incredibly expensive, yet these places are rather cheap due to heavy subsidies. At least they're cheap until the infrastructure maintenance bill comes around. Strong towns has a good article on this: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/

Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

#213

Post by proc0 »

ryanj20021 wrote: post #95

We can and we are! I’m the CEO of Culdesac. Our vision is to build the first car-free city in the US, starting with the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US. That’s Culdesac Tempe, a 1000-resident neighborhood that is under construction now. Residents move in next year. Join our waitlist at culdesac.com. If you want to visit in the meantime, drop me a note. We have something exciting happening on…

While it's great there are efforts here, it looks like it's being over-architected, over-engineered, such that people don't own it. This leads to uneasy privacy concerns and dystopian feels. I'm not sure what the solution is, and at least this is an attempt, so at least there is that.

Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

#214

Post by conductr »

a2tech wrote: post #69
UncleOxidant wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cabinet making is a lost art. It used to be very common, but now most cabinetry is mass produced in factories so there aren't many people around who are skilled in the art.

Cabinets are not almost exclusively made to order in factories. At least the ones that aren't picked up in a box at Lowes. We just had a new bathroom installed and each cabinet was hand made--in a factory settings of course, to our specifications.

> hand made

It was most likely CNC made and hand assembled. The guy doing the assembly would have no clue what to do without the CNC’d parts. The guy designing the CAD files would have no clue how to assemble the CNC’d parts. Neither of them know how to install the cabinets in your bathroom. This used to all be done by the same guy.

Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

#215

Post by NumberWangMan »

bombcar wrote: post #120
throwawaysea wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often see urbanists and young people fantasize about life in car free mega cities. Having lived that life for years I can’t imagine why. A lot of cities that are beautiful and attractive also have room for cars. I would even argue it is a big part of what makes those cities attractive. There’s no substitute for the point to point on demand fast transportation that cars offer. In cities that aren’t overbuilt, it mak…

Even famously “mass transit unfriendly” cities can be fit for a car-free lifestyle if you work at it. But I suspect a huge part of it is visiting Europe or Asia as a tourist and enjoying being without a car. But they didn’t actually live there.

For one data point: I lived in London without a car for several years, and enjoyed it. A lot of people do. One big thing you give up in car-dependent areas is interesting walks. Everything is super-sized to accommodate vehicles, and at a human scale, it's boring. In an older city designed for people, every 10 feet there's something new to catch your eye.

There are tradeoffs, but I much preferred being able to take the train or bus and relax and zone out rather than have spend the entire trip in the vigilant state you need while driving. And while cycling, yes, you have to be vigilant, but you're getting exercise too.

I'm at a point in my life where, I probably don't want to live in the big city as much. (Funnily enough, when I was much younger I never thought I would want to.) But anyway, I'd still much prefer to live in a denser, more walkable suburb, which tend to be unfortunately hard to find and expensive in the US for reasons that are probably already all discussed in comments in this thread.

Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

#216

Post by NumberWangMan »

BurningFrog wrote: post #160
bombcar wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even famously “mass transit unfriendly” cities can be fit for a car-free lifestyle if you work at it. But I suspect a huge part of it is visiting Europe or Asia as a tourist and enjoying being without a car. But they didn’t actually live there.

> I suspect a huge part of it is visiting Europe or Asia as a tourist and enjoying being without a car. Agreed. As a tourist you also tend to visit the historic center of capital cities, which have by far the best public transport and fanciest architecture. Plus you're on vacation and having fun. When you live there and walk to your commuter train a gray november morning, it's a very different experience.

> When you live there and walk to your commuter train a gray november morning, it's a very different experience.

Still preferable, to me at least! Getting in to work and shucking off your mist-covered coat and making a nice cup of tea made it just fine.

Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

#217

Post by 0x0nyandesu »

helen___keller wrote: post #202
0x0nyandesu wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with Tokyo is that the cops do their jobs. A homeless person asking for money on a Tokyo subway is unheard of. I'd love something like Tokyo in the USA but it will never work because crime on American public transport is rampant. Hell just last week a women was raped on a Philly subway and no one did a thing. Adult hood in America is coming to terms with the fact that I'll never live to see this cleaned up…

> it will never work because crime on American public transport is rampant. Are you sure? I’ve never had that impression across years of transit, bus and rail, in Pittsburgh and Boston. I think the biggest barrier is a chicken and egg problem: it’s hard to motivate transit expansion without dense housing and it’s hard to motivate denser housing except along existing transit corridors

Lol the amount of times I've seen a tweaker snoozing on my septa ride to work or some idiot going "hey I'm sorry to bother you folks but [insert fake sob story]". No thanks. Plus have you noticed there's a pandemic? The last thing I need is to be in a tube with strangers. Do you realize how miserable subway stations in east coast cities can get when the AC is broken? If they even have AC?

The whole system would need to be rebuilt for me to even consider going back to that.

Most riders before covid were office commuters. Now with remote work what reason is there for it to be there? Oh right for the guy asking for hand outs to ride it all the way up and down the line all day while no one does anything about it.

Trust me it's not an issue of denser housing. I do not want denser housing. I don't even want to know my neighbors exist. Seriously.

I lived in a dense city for a long time. It sucked.

Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

#218

Post by proc0 »

There are two simple answers, one of which was mentioned already, in the comments and in the article:

> I can visit many European cities and find lovely parts of town to walk through

1. Cars. They have ruined walkable neighborhoods, and in the US there are artificial walkable shopping centers, but you have to drive ther anyway. Everything being spaced out affects the architecture/landscape.

2. Building technology and ethos. It seems to me modern buildings are not built to last, and this is on purpose. Of course this is a huge factor! Old villages around the world always had many buildings that were made to last. This automatically means you will think deeply on its aesthetics, its symbolism, etc. Nowadays it's just about getting it done, and having an indoor space, with the outside looking as plain as possible for buidling costs and speed. I really wish building tech would also explore extremely durable constructions at smaller scales for towns and such. This would force people to think seriously about outside look and feel.

Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

#219

Post by BrianHenryIE »

dymk wrote: post #210
BrianHenryIE wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's said people in Los Angeles love their cars doesn't need a survey or study. Are you disputing the perception that Los Angeles is a car-centric city? > Are you a vegan? Yes.

> I tried to find the tweet, but it was succinctly put ~"it's said people in Los Angeles love their cars, but people in LA have no choice but to own a car, it's not love, it is necessity". This is the part that needs a study or survey to back it up. If we're just throwing around anecdotes, I've both driven a car and taken the bus in a city that was known for its mass transit, and the mass transit sucked compared to b…

You're being a contrarian.

Los Angeles is famed for its motordom.

Tell me, where are you from that that needs explaining? It's fascinating to meet someone from such a remote tribe.

Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

#220

Post by advael »

rsj_hn wrote: post #196
advael wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you consider "disposable income"? Car insurance is legally mandatory if you drive a car. If your income is predicated on being able to commute by car (as it is for many Americans, though hopefully a trend toward remote work will ameliorate this somewhat) then your insurance is no more optional than your gas. People also talk about smartphones as though they're a luxury item, but for most intents and purposes…

"Disposable income" is not some vague philosophical term that we have to haggle over. It simply means income minus taxes paid to government. Please please don't redefine economic terms to suit your intuitive belief about what a word "should" mean because you are wading into an area where you don't know the agreed upon terminology. That impedes communication. If you want to refer to income after paying necessities, th…

I wasn't aware this was a technical term, but if we insist on this usage, the post I'm responding to is even less meaningful, because this is drawing a pedantic distinction between money that's tied up in expenses and thus, at any rate, not money that the relevant party is really making decisions about
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