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What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

stevemagness.substack.com

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Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#521

Post by iamalizard »

tstrimple wrote: post #413
thaumasiotes wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It won't increase their visibility, obviously. It will make them think twice before going on that crosswalk. Meanwhile in Shanghai, it tends to be a little too difficult to cross an entire street at once, so the way you cross is lane by lane, as if you were playing Frogger. (Except that you'll rest on lane dividers as opposed to right in the middle of a lane.) Pedestrians getting run over while doing this is not a…

Not a noticeable problem because they are Chinese and there are so many of them it doesn't matter if 4k die while trying to cross at crosswalks? https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/how-dangerous-are-china...

How does it compare to other countries, though? 4000 is high, but it's out of 1400000000.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#522

Post by oersted »

steveklabnik wrote: post #412
oersted wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there could be small shops and restaurants dispersed at walking distances that don’t require parking space. I get that it is low density, but not that low, and there is some money to spend in such areas. They would do good business.

> Surely there could be small shops and restaurants dispersed at walking distances that don’t require parking space. I know it sounds insane, but no, in many places, this is not possible. My city, Austin, eliminated mandatory minimum parking in 2023, and was at the time the largest US city to do so https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/02/austin-minimum-parki... I know of at least one business in my neighborhood that…

Oh I understand that it is a regulatory constraint. What I don’t understand is why the regulations aren’t changed. Who is benefiting?

I don’t see why it wouldn’t be better for everyone, both in terms of business and living standards.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#523

Post by bombcar »

petsfed wrote: post #484
eloisant wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't that the city is full. It's that suburbs are made for cars. You could have suburbs designed as walkable neighbourhoods with shops. Look at Japan, each area around a station is like a small village. Even if you commute to the "big" city, the area you live can still be a nice walkable place.

I'd go further and say that modern suburbs are designed to completely isolate commerce from residence, in a way that doesn't just necessitate driving, it necessitates driving long distances to centralized commercial centers. So you can't just walk around the corner to a shop and get what you need, you have to drive, sometimes for miles, to get to a big-box grocery store. And because people didn't want to drive all th…

You often can "go down the block" for some value of "block" (often within walking distance, if not perfect walking conditions; definitely within bike range) but the store you find is likely expensive, small, and limited. The same time expenditure gets you to Walmart (or Target, if you're upmarket) and things are more plentiful and cheaper.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#525

Post by mothballed »

buildsjets wrote: post #506
Aeolun wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely that’s just because people go to drink in the city center? 1 out of 1000 violent drunks sounds like a pretty reasonable ratio.

I don't think you have an accurate and full understanding of the issues plaguing some areas of American city centers. I can't even recall the last time I saw a person who was drunk in public causing a serious issue after leaving a downtown bar. It just doesn't happen. Besides, you don't need to go to the city center to get drunk, we sell full proof booze in the supermarkets here. People go to the city center to buy t…

I've seen hood rats specifically camp out near the bar to find marks to steal from, though. In that sense the bar can congregate crime.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#526

Post by tech_ken »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #207
hibikir wrote: post #101

What I see in my deep suburbia is just far less interest in wandering past the front yard, because there's nothing to do: House after house where no front yard has anything for anyone, and quite long distances before you get somewhere you might be welcome, or have a chair. When my son, a pre-teen at the time went to Spain with me, things were quite different: A small town that even had stores targeting kids, places t…

> But it's amazing how much modern-ish suburbia just has no place for you to even exist without a car. It's trendy to blame cars for this but the problem is fundamentally zoning. It's not that there is nowhere for you to exist without a car, it's that there is nowhere for you to exist there at all , and you thereby need a car to leave the vicinity in order to get anywhere you can. If you want to build a cafe or an ar…

> It's trendy to blame cars for this but the problem is fundamentally zoning

> you thereby need a car to leave the vicinity in order to get anywhere you can.

I hear your point but I think your causal model is misguided. It's two different things augmenting each other, not "one is a more primal cause than the other" (in my opinion, anyways). Like yes road diets in the suburbs won't 'solve' the problem by themselves, but the impact of the zoning changes you're pointing to may also have the impact of reducing car dependency in the area (although not guaranteed, I've seen USians drive even just half a mile). Cars collapse distance, and zoning policy eats up those gains greedily. SFH zoning spaces everything 10 miles apart, so all the residents buy cars because there's no alternatives. It's multiple threads reinforcing each other; I think if you dig into the ""trendy"" anti-car arguments you will find a lot of backing for mixed-used zoning policy as well because both types of changes are needed at once.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#527

Post by amanaplanacanal »

throw0101c wrote: post #326
api wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to put it this way: The automobile, at least insofar as it impacts the urban landscape, is only incidentally about transportation. It's really about leverage in real estate markets. I think there's a tie-in between suburban sprawl and the explosion of the middle class. It allowed middle earners to escape the urban "law of rent." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent This is really what led me to stop being…

> I think there's a tie-in between suburban sprawl and the explosion of the middle class. It allowed middle earners to escape the urban "law of rent." […] This is really what led me to stop being an unreserved advocate for urbanism. The dark side of urbanism is that nobody but the property owners can accumulate wealth. I do not understand: why did you stop being pro-urbanist? How does urbanism stop the middle class f…

I think the idea is that it locks them out of owning real estate.

Of course that opens the question: why should real estate be a continually appreciating asset? There are other countries where it isn't.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#528

Post by bombcar »

hsiudh wrote: post #434
gsinclair wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a huge exaggeration. Tall buildings require a much greater footprint than a single detached home. Knock down three adjacent homes and you can get maybe 6-8 levels, which would be no more than 40 families.

Have you been to any place other than the US? The size of a single detached home, including backyard, front lawn and sides can perfectly fit an entire 5-8 story building of two 80m2 apartment per floor, if not more. If you live in a well designed city with public transport, you don't need to waste surface area on a parking garage.

The key is always setbacks - if you have to have ten feet on each side of every building, you can only get "so dense" without going for apartments that consume an entire block.

The problem is introducing the zero-setback designs organically - as the people there likely receive little to no benefit, and the people who do receive the benefit aren't there now.

E.g., a house could easily be fit between mine and the neighbors, but we wouldn't really benefit from the density improvements, and the family that would move into the "missing middle" doesn't currently exist here.

I'd love if our lot was zero setback, as I'd build an addition right up to the property line instead of having to try to find another lot/house in the area we want.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#529

Post by Amezarak »

embedding-shape wrote: post #384
nostats wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are saying that homeless people are scary or messy. Or that drug use happens sometimes in a bathroom, etc. Obviously, this attitude is born from some incorrect assumptions, but it's a pretty standard feast from folks out of town.

So homeless people use bathrooms to do drugs and somehow that means there is a age limit? I'm sorry but this makes no sense, how are they at all related? Why would it matter what someone does before you use the bathroom, it's not like drugs stick around in the air and impact people entering the room afterwards...

The last time I was in a major city with my kids I went to a major, nice park. They had to use the bathroom. There were ample bathrooms but every single one of them was filled with human feces, covering practically every surface, and littered with needles.

There is absolutely no reason to tolerate this in a civilized society, and it’s completely unheard of in the region I’m from, a major culture shock - along with the attitude that I should just get over it.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#530

Post by steveklabnik »

oersted wrote: post #522
steveklabnik wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely there could be small shops and restaurants dispersed at walking distances that don’t require parking space. I know it sounds insane, but no, in many places, this is not possible. My city, Austin, eliminated mandatory minimum parking in 2023, and was at the time the largest US city to do so https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/02/austin-minimum-parki... I know of at least one business in my neighborhood that…

Oh I understand that it is a regulatory constraint. What I don’t understand is why the regulations aren’t changed. Who is benefiting? I don’t see why it wouldn’t be better for everyone, both in terms of business and living standards.

People who primarily drive don't think through the second order implications.

I have been in the car with someone more than once, looking for parking, where they re-invent the idea from first principles. "Ugh, we can't find a spot, why don't they require this place to provide enough parking?"

It was a tremendous political fight to get these sorts of reforms through. People get really upset when they perceive you as taking away their convenience.

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