I found this blog a few months ago and then lost it. Thanks for posting this!
Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
71–80 of 429 posts
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people enjoy their quiet suburban neighborhoods and don't have any particular desire to live in a dense city so to convince them these guys need to start talking about dire economic consequences.
And also to demonstrate that the urban environment is directly subsidizing the suburban neighborhoods. If you ever get the chance to see a talk by Joe Minicozzi from Urban3, I highly recommend it. He covers this in detail, and his work has been used in a number of Strong Towns posts, like this one: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
>The median house in Lafayette costs roughly $150,000. A family living in this house would currently pay about $1,500 per year in taxes to the local government of which 10%, approximately $150, goes to maintenance of infrastructure (more is paid to the schools and regional government). A fraction of that $150 – it varies by year – is spent on actual pavement.
>To maintain just the roads and drainage systems that have already been built, the family in that median house would need to have their taxes increase by $3,300 per year. That assumes no new roads are built and existing roadways are not widened or substantively improved. That is $3,300 in additional local taxes just to tread water.
I've seen these figures before, and they don't make sense. It looks like he gets that $3300 figure by assuming that payments on infrastructure will double and infrastructure will remain at 10% of the city budget. But the more reasonable assumption is that payments on infrastructure will increase to become a larger proportion of the city budget -- particularly when we're talking about, say, sewers, which won't generate additional demand for policing or schools (or at least won't double it). If his claims were accurate, no suburbs so defined could have been built in the first place. At the very least it's annoying that he doesn't show more of his work, which is easy to blame on the fact that he obviously wants to destroy our way of life.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#73Lol America. Where walkable streets are justified by economics and not humanities.
Yes, the argument this article makes is the only reason we have such streets. It's a good thing this article was written 200 years ago so we can benefit from its wholly economic insights today.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
That concept has already been implemented. Urban planners who practice it call it "new urbanism". It has been a mixed bag, but is better than the "malls-connected-by-highways" approach of many suburban development s.
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…
> Too much density decreases the quality of life.
Everyone has their own taste, but generally speaking, if every journey out of your home has to begin and end with a parking space because you live in a pedestrian-hostile environment, that will certainly damage quality of life and the social fabric of that place as a "town".
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#75Another important factor not mentioned here is the practice of "curb cuts"
http://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2008-06-01...
I recommend the article (not just posting for a cite, it's an interesting one). But to summarize - SF has a lot of "curb cuts", sections of the curb that are cut out and lowered so a car can drive across the sidewalk to a driveway or garage. This prevents the sidewalks from becoming an inviting pedestrian space. First, pedestrians must be on a constant lookout for cars, or dodge cars that are parked on the sidewalk blocking the path. Second, it prevents the street scape from embracing the pedestrian experience, leading to what SPUR calls the "barren nature of the streets" in SF.
Ironically, these curb cuts break the street into small sections of curb that are too small for a legal parking spot, so there isn't really even much of a net gain in overall parking. The estimate I read was that each curb cut removes 2/3 of a street parking space.
San Francisco tends to get high walkability scores, but the experience is notably worse than many other dense cities. I realized this after living in Paris and Manhattan. There is something much more relaxing about streets when you don't have to dodge cars, and the streetscapes in those places are far more attractive (the link above shows some examples of why this is the case).
I'd say it hit me especially hard once I had kids (I live in SF), when the experience of dodging cars crossing the sidewalk became scary rather than just irritating. I realized I had to grip my kids hands pretty hard when walking on the sidewalk, because it is a perilous place for kids who can't be seen. I had a close call or two, when my kid ran ahead and a car was pulling into a driveway. Fortunately, the driver was alert. But again, this is the sidewalk. It's incredibly depressing that in a supposedly progressive, "pedestrian friendly" city, kids in most neighborhoods are less safe on the sidewalk than in a crosswalk, where they are at least visible.[1]
SF gets high walkability scores, and in some ways, it's deserved. It's certainly better than the exurbs and many other US cities. But these scores don't count the curb cuts or experience of the walk, and honestly, the curb cuts have really damaged the experience in SF.
[1] Edit - leaving this up since it was in my original post, but this isn't necessarily true. I feel the sidewalks are perilous, but I don't have evidence that sidewalks in curb cut heavy areas are more dangerous than crosswalks.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#76I've often wondered why somone moderately wealthy doesn't just start a super dense town, e.g. everything within 100 acres, and be within 10 miles of a major city. Create tons of these at a 50K people/sqmi density and implement some sort of hub spoke transportation with the major city being the hub and it could work!
> a super dense town Sounds like a nightmare. Ugh, just thinking about it makes me shudder. Why would someone wealthy want to live that way?
What does one's wealth have to do with how dense of an area in which one prefers to live?
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need to ban cars. You just need to design around people instead of cars. Remove parking minimums. Don't put on-street parking but rather leave it to the free market to handle parking solutions (Yes, that means people pay to park.) Subsidize public transit but road maintenance must be paid by automobile-based taxes. Don't require density, but always zone for the next bigger thing. (The neighborhood is single…
How is that designing around people? First you are going to make all the people in the cars nuts because they can't find parking, so they won't come. Next all the people who find public transport tedious and slow won't come. (Yes, even the best public transport is not anywhere near as a good as a car that goes direct, and where you can actually leave your stuff in the car.) Next all the people who hate living in dens…
And yet Manhattan is an economic powerhouse, so apparently plenty of people are okay with these restrictions. If you aren't, don't live there.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#78Lol America. Where walkable streets are justified by economics and not humanities.
A lot of people enjoy their quiet suburban neighborhoods and don't have any particular desire to live in a dense city so to convince them these guys need to start talking about dire economic consequences.
> A lot of people enjoy their quiet suburban neighborhoods and don't have any particular desire to live in a dense city
I don't think there is any limited supply for suburban neighborhoods.
But there is a supply problem for dense urban living with lots of services within a short walk, and public transport to work. Demand is higher than supply, which has made prices high.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
And also to demonstrate that the urban environment is directly subsidizing the suburban neighborhoods. If you ever get the chance to see a talk by Joe Minicozzi from Urban3, I highly recommend it. He covers this in detail, and his work has been used in a number of Strong Towns posts, like this one: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
>The median house in Lafayette costs roughly $150,000. A family living in this house would currently pay about $1,500 per year in taxes to the local government of which 10%, approximately $150, goes to maintenance of infrastructure (more is paid to the schools and regional government). A fraction of that $150 – it varies by year – is spent on actual pavement. >To maintain just the roads and drainage systems that have…
> he obviously wants to destroy our way of life.
Uh huh... "our way of life" that really only came into existence after WWII. Strong Towns focuses a lot on how cities used to be in the US, and points to that as a pretty good model. They grew incrementally, both up, in, and out. They mostly grew thanks to local, smaller efforts rather than mega projects.
Re: Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
#80Jane Jacobs pointed this out in 1961: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am...