Completely apropos to the article, but why is it that when I pressed ESC on my keyboard, the article redirected me to try & log in to Squarespace?
Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
411–420 of 429 posts
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I don't disagree at all, but would argue that it's kind of a circular dependency problem. Sprawl would exist without cars to be sure, but cars make it much easier to expand, which increases dependency on cars, which supports sprawl. Then the people who have moved outward use their cars to work in the city because there's nothing in the suburbs and a poorly designed city (or one that is dependant on the people w…
Definitely. Suburbia could not exist without cars.
Well, suburbia started becoming a thing long before cars and comes from the Greeks. However, I don't think the kind of cities you see today would necessarily have expanded so far without cars. They are not a book to cities or density from what I can tell.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of DT areas of cities are walkable, but Boston is kind of unique in that it has miles and miles of walkable streets. Its urban core is just really big. Portions of Seattle are very walkable (From the International District going north, quite a few miles), and individual parts of Chicago are walkable. Heck there are 2 or 3 mile stretches of San Diego are walkable (there might be more than that, I only spent a wee…
Seattle is among the most walkable cities in the US but San Diego is not. The nominally walkable areas of San Diego are for tourists with tourist desires; locals don’t live there for the most part and for good reason. I loved living there but walkable it was not. Seattle, on the other hand, is a city where I’ve never really needed a car no matter where I lived or worked. I think that part of the lifestyle is brillian…
Northgate, West Seattle, Delridge. There are lots of suburban enclaves within the city.
Seattle has plenty of walkable parts, but I grew up in a working class suburban neighborhood within the city where driving to the store was most certainly necessary.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
Too much density decreases the quality of life. Overcrowdedness, very long waiting times at every establishment or government office, increased ease of pickpockets etc. to "disappear into the crowd", higher prices. You already see all this in many existing cities; you want that, but worse? I'll take malls connected by highways over that any day. Malls are nice and cars are a better experience than transit/walking in…
>Malls are nice and cars are a better experience than transit/walking in every facet This isn't even remotely true. You are forgetting the time spent finding a parking spot, the opportunity cost of having a parking lot instead of more housing or commercial space, transit/walking also provides exercise, which matters in an epidemically obese society. This doesn't even get into the pollution aspect of driving or the co…
I completely disagree. I am far more comfortable with suburban shopping malls than any kind of urbanized environment.
I'll take a nice indoor climate-controlled environment over being exposed to the elements. I live in a part of the country where temperatures are regularly in the triple digits in the summer. I can't tolerate heat at all, which means I can't go shopping in any kind of downtown area. And then there's rain in the spring and cold temperatures in the winter... thanks, but no thanks.
And in urban areas, the streets are still full of cars, and crossing them is physically dangerous. When I worked downtown, I was nearly killed multiple times by some psycho trying to make a right turn while I was crossing the street. There are no cars inside malls, just foot traffic.
And I just love the whole aesthetic of malls. I'll walk around malls just for fun. I even work right next to a mall, so I'll sometimes go to the mall for lunch and walk a circuit or two.
Also, cars should not be considered investments. A car should be considered a sunk cost, just like any other appliance. When I buy an appliance, I'm not investing in anything or expecting to get anything back. I paid money for a tool, and that's it.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
Too much density decreases the quality of life. Overcrowdedness, very long waiting times at every establishment or government office, increased ease of pickpockets etc. to "disappear into the crowd", higher prices. You already see all this in many existing cities; you want that, but worse? I'll take malls connected by highways over that any day. Malls are nice and cars are a better experience than transit/walking in…
I don't know where you live, but you clearly never experienced a city the way it's being described by the others in this thread. I currently live in the US in a small town in the midwest after a long stint in California (socal first then bay area). Previously I lived for a few years in Madrid, an extremely dense city by western standards. I used to walk home from the office (roughly a mile and a half) when the weathe…
And some of us hate cities with a passion.
I'm a strong introvert. I enjoy being alone, and I'm happy living a quiet atomized life. I don't like being social, and a quiet suburban lifestyle is perfect for me.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you been to a mall recently? One that isn't dying? Where is it?
In a region with multiple malls within a 30-minute drive, the strong will survive (longer, at least) but the weak are dying. The most upscale in a region is probably doing fine. Near SV, for example, Stanford Shopping Center and Santana Row are fine for now. In contrast, Westgate and Vallco are mere shadows of what they once were.
Can confirm. Dallas had a lot of malls. While a bunch are dying, there are a small handful that are as strong as ever.
The Galleria, NorthPark, and Stonebriar are thriving (and Willow Bend is doing OK for now, though it's had turbulence in the past). The Galleria and NorthPark are both somewhat upscale (but with non-upscale sections), but Stonebriar isn't. Basically, all of the non-upscale shopping is being consolidated in Stonebriar. The people who used to shop at dead or dying malls like Prestonwood, Valley View, or Collin Creek now shop at Stonebriar. The market has shrunk a bit, so multiple locations aren't desirable, but the market for these stores does exist, just all concentrated into one location.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#417I 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…
Most of the new cycle superhighways are just lines painted on roads, the handful of segregated routes have come almost entirely from the roadspace. It is very rare for cycle paths to come at the expense of pavements, in fact I have only heard of it in the context of CS9. Can you provide another example? The 'grip of a cycle paths fetish' is excessive.
I am of course speaking about my local partofLondon and beenmany a pavement sacrificed to cycle paths and much spent laying them out - yes fetish may be excessive but given some of the plans and work as well as funding at the neglect of pedestrian rights of way, not as excessive in my local area at all.
But that's just my perspective as a pedestrian who has never driven. But I'm all for cycle paths, and do feel that many are just bodged in planning and could be better thought out, though do lament how pedestrians are taking a back seat in funding for this current drive in initiative.
Maybe fashion would of been a better choice of words, least that is how it seems currently.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
...and a [shop, street, park, restaurant, school, etc] will have 10x as many people that are living within walking distance. This point is made well in this article: http://newworldeconomics.com/how-to-make-a-pile-of-dough-wit... >Our basic goal, in all this, is to deliver roughly triple the density as this “New Urbanist” model, while still preserving what looks very much like a “traditional Small Town America single…
The way i see it you are basically describing south Brooklyn with the 30k/square mile. Something like Bensohurst ( https://www.google.com/maps/@40.620487,-74.0093661,3a,75y,20... ) or Western part of San Francisco. I think the issue with this approach is it doesn't take away individualism. Everything is still too far away. Most people still have cars and look for parking for hours. The parks are few and something lik…
I do see your point. The author is modelling this as a transitional form of a suburban neighbourhood that could later be intensified. Additionally, it should be read with understanding of his previous writing on cities [1]. You'll see he capitalizes a lot of terms (e.g. Really Narrow Street) which are intended as references to concepts he has fleshed-out in other posts. A major component of his vision for cities is the idea that (most) streets should be pleasant, attractive Places (as opposed to Non-Places) to spend time, and should be public spaces in their own right. Rather than have urbanites "get away" from the city by visiting parks, he would have the city be a place that people do not need to "get away" from. A street could
[1] http://newworldeconomics.com/category/traditional-city-post-... He has written a lot on cities. Unabashedly opinionated, but compelling. I especially like his extensive use of photos.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are comparing the wrong thing. When you are in a walkable area most of the things you want to get to are closer than the distance that you walk form your car to the store in the mall. When there are 2 good restaurants on your block, and a small grocery store: you don't need to go to the mall anymore.
It was like that at college, on-campus eating places within a 5 minute walk of my dorm. Having experienced both, I prefer driving for 5 minutes to walking for 3.
Entirely subjective - I will walk 20 minutes to avoid 5 minutes of driving and parking.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. Exxon came late to the game think more Chevron and Anadarko. And the city is straight out of the 1970's Texas developer thought process. And yeah it is a new money striver town. I know one person who built a 14k sqft house only to build later the largest house in the Woodlands at something like 30k sqft. Then the weird lake front new urbanism project. Where you can live in a high rise.
Yeah I was running down that walk during construction, very odd area but I guess cool if you work at one of those corpos, dig whole foods, and don't mind a lack of local character. That walk would be beautiful to run on if it weren't Houston, I am not used to that humidity!
I should have listed the urban development in Oklahoma City happening. It is just small 3k people urban district near downtown.
https://www.wheelerdistrict.com
But it is basically a town built by a rich family right next to the river and five minutes from downtown OKC and the rest of the metro.