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Comment by toodlebunions | Hacker News Reader

This is part of the reason many European cities are so walkable and livable, they were designed for people rather than vehicles.

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I think the problem is less how cities were designed and more how Americans wanted (and maybe still want) to live. Los Angeles is probably the epitome of the American city designed for the car, now suffering from some of the worst traffic on the planet. And, yet, because people are finally starting to demand walkability, it's becoming walkable at an awesomely fast pace. In just the last 4 years, the West Side seems to have gone 180. It's projected to be the 11th most walkable city in the U.S. in the near future [1]--keep in mind the sheer insane size of LA. And, that's despite having been clearly planned NOT to be walkable.

The will of the people is stronger than the plan.

1: http://time.com/money/2887232/the-futures-most-walkable-citi...

> how Americans wanted (and maybe still want) to live

In a free market economy, we should take home prices as an indication of how people want to live. The densest, most walkable city centers tend to have the most expensive homes. Manhattan being the extreme data point.

No, we shouldn't. In a free market economy with an equal distribution of wealth and income (which is unlikely to be a sustainable state), that would make some sense, but in a free market economy with a distribution of wealth and income similar to that of our real economy, prices are at best a wealth-weighted indication of preferences. And even then, you need to be careful about whether the variable you are looking at is really the demand driver.

> The densest, most walkable city centers tend to have the most expensive homes. Manhattan being the extreme data point.

Alternatively, places that are attractive places to live (e.g., because of climate and access to fresh water) or to locate trade centers (e.g., because of natural ports, navigable inland waterways, etc.) tend to be high demand places to live, driving both price and density. In this view, Manhattan isn't in demand because it's dense, it's dense because it's in demand.

That's fallacious reasoning. Price is determined by demand AND SUPPLY. There is way more housing capacity in suburbia than in urban centers, and it's much easier to build more suburban housing than it is to build more urban housing. It is completely possible that most people prefer suburbia, but that there is more demand per unit of available urban housing.

LA is pretty walkable, thats part of the reason its not very drivable. Limited road capacity. It actually wasn't even designed originally for the car, it had an extensive electric rail system.

I think a couple of things have helped their cities compared to the US. Their cities developed and grew before cars became locally mass-available and our move to the city (from farms) more or less coincided with the rise and availability of cars to consumers. Especially post-wwii. Plus, in suburban Europe, you see more cars. However, in cities, which developed before cars, they have lots of public transit with the requisite higher density housing.

"Suburban Europe" is sort of a tricky concept. In most countries, you have the outskirts of cities, and then you have the countryside with towns and farmland. You generally need to own a car in the latter areas, though you also typically get half-decent bus service.

Even in the UK I don't think there's anywhere that truly resembles American suburbia, with its vast sprawling acres of large houses and large yards where it's actually impossible to safely walk anywhere. It's a uniquely inefficient design.

True, in Europe as in advanced east Asian countries, the urban rural/agrarian transition is usually more abrupt. One side of the road is development the other is fields. However, Marseilles, for example [I imagine outer London and beyond has areas exhibiting suburban detached housing tracts] do have suburbs and if you want some mobility you need an estate sedan or the like to get things done.

There are some "suburbs" in the UK, but they're much more compact than American ones, and usually still have some local shops and public transport.

"Even in the UK I don't think there's anywhere that truly resembles American suburbia"

I once visited a very new housing development in Marbella (Southern Spain) that was identical to new housing developments in San Diego. Two car attached garages, everyone had cars. It was completely American. Eerie.

I think this is probably oversimplifying a bit. Most big north American cities also predate cars, even if not by much. By my understanding, many of those cities had public transportation systems in place that were outright dismantled in the drive to a car-centric urban design.

So I don't think it's a matter of never having had it. It seems like we have actually regressed.

It does simplify it a bit, but consider that the pop for US cities ramped up after the turn of the 20th c. (in 1900 it was approx. 70% rural 30% urban, by 1940 it was 55% urban vs 45% rural) So when they grew cars were becoming more ubiquitous. We also have different land-use regs which affect how land can be used.

Mass transit has to be understood in terms of how it allows spread. Buses allow people to commute rather than walk. Trolleys, cars, horses and subways do the same. Some of those trolley lines were put in place to make the new developments attractive to people who would have to work in the city center. As cars become more available fewer people opted for trolleys and they got pulled (some people believe the GM-LA deal for buses lead to the demise of all trolleys, but I think that's more wishful thinking. However, trolleys then, as today, are relatively expensive to run and investors are better off making money elsewhere.

A recent video I found to be pretty interesting covering this topic among others regarding city density and comparisons between Europe and the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQSxPzafO_k

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