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!
It has been a mixed bag, but is better than the "malls-connected-by-highways" approach of many suburban development s.
In a city with 10x the people, you can have 10x more shops, restaurants, etc, and you’ll as result also get 10x more variation.
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 family house,” including a nice backyard and lush, tree-lined streets. This is what gets us from 8,000 people per square mile, for a typical Los Angeles suburb (with 5000sf plots), to maybe 10,000 for the New Urbanist example and more like 25,000-30,000 for our example. We have already seen how our basic house plot shrinks from 4000sf to 2000sf, which doubles the density right there. We even have some smaller house plots of 1,250sf and 625sf. Then, we have a huge amount of land now being consumed by vastly excessive roadways and associated Green Space, that we can replace with Really Narrow Streets, thus freeing up more land for houses. For example, if the house plot/total land area ratio rises from 50% to 75%, that is a 50% increase in density right there. The combination of half the lot size plus a 50% increase in density due to reduction in land used for streets/Green Space/parking lots gives us our triple density bogey. Triple the density means that every store or restaurant now has 30,000 people who are within an easy walk of 15 minutes or so, which means that they can have a viable business without a parking lot. It means that every school now has three times as many students that are within an easy walk. No more chauffering your kids to school. No more school buses. At 30,000 people per square mile, and if 15% of the people are school age (6-17), that means 4500 kids are within walking distance of the school. It means that the four-year high school would have about 1500 students, all within a half-mile walk of the school. It means that, if a train station is introduced later, three times as many people will be able to walk there as well. In short, everything becomes a lot more “walkable.” By making it walkable, we thus eliminate the need for cars unless travelling outside the immediate neighborhood, which eliminates auto traffic and also makes the neighborhood much more peaceful, quiet, and suitable for kids, families, and seniors.
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 like 30 minute walk away. Your friends and gym are also going to be 30 minutes walk away. It's not dense enough for subways everywhere and buses stop on every block so it makes just as much sense to walk. Nobody walks anywhere besides their neighborhood and there is usually nothing in their neighborhood.
So it's really worse than suburbs and worse than city center that has buildings. Worse than city with buildings because you don't share common resources so everyone is still for themselves. You also don't get nice things like common public playgrounds and parks.
It's worse than the suburbs because you still get the same problems of it being difficult to get places but now it's even harder. You still get "what's mine is mine and I don't want public things" but now you have less of your own stuff and fewer public things because real estate is expensive. You also don't get the diversity of food or clothes that you would get in a city.
I think the ideal is 90k/sq mile in the places where people live with 4-6 story buildings.
[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.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburb...
> 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".
https://books.google.com/books?id=Xk06al1sAmUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA...
Passage begins on page 171 but I can't link to it via Google Books.
> It doesn't sound like something I'd care much about.
But recognize that many, especially increasing numbers of millennials, feel differently and this is now reshaping the demographics of cities.
- The ability to just stop by a neighbor for a drink or a chat
- Somebody to give your house keys to while you're on vacation, without inconveniencing them since they live so close
- Being able to call your doctor off hours in an emergency because you have a personal relation beyond your yearly visit
- The grapevine that will let you know if somebody saw your kid hang-out with the trashy teenagers
- Ability for your kids to walk to school, so you're not wasting your time driving them. Same for your parents, they walk for their daily groceries, instead of whining about how they no longer can drive and making you feel guilty for not chauffeuring them around
- Ability to use your neighbor's car when yours is in the shop, because he doesn't need it since he generally bikes to work
Basically, supreme convenience. A small town has everything you need for daily life, at your fingertips. There's redundancy and fallbacks literally around every corner for life's little setbacks, because you have actual convivial relationships with your neighbors.
Some people really don't care about that. Other people really do. In America, the second group is SOL. If they want that convenience, they'll pay dearly for it. In other countries, it's the other way around. The norm is the walkable town, and the exception is the sprawling burbs.
Living close-by does strengthen informal ties, because you're more likely to run into eachother, literally. The alienation of the car-dependent suburb is admittedly a literary trope, but it is rooted in reality.
Different people, different strokes, suburbs have a different appeal. But it's a sliding scale. People that don't enjoy car-dependency have very little inexpensive options in this country. The market has spoken, and the demand for town-living is far greater than the supply. It's reflected in the house prices, virtually any metro, the walkable areas are more expensive than the car sprawl.
In most towns there are school buses that have routes in the morning to bring kids to school from their houses. It's not a choice between only driving and walking.
From my perspective, we have bitter few of them. For me and many others, walkability is fundamental. It's fine if others don't agree. Our segment of the market is woefully underserved though, and we can see that in the fact that walkable neighorhoods and towns are always almost more expensive than areas that require car-dependency. I also think that price-differential is because of the constrained supply of walkable towns because collectively we prioritize speedy car travel at the expense of everything else.
A small town or "streetcar suburb" in Jane Jacobs parlance functions very much like a city microcosm in terms of walkability, amenities and vibe. Most modern American suburbs are entirely different than small towns.
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 costs of car ownership/maintenance. Cars become a depreciating asset as soon as you buy them, should we be encouraging that type of investment?
Not a lot of time at all in my experience, certainly less than waiting for public transit or an uber to arrive.
>opportunity cost
To me it's worth it.
>exercise
You walk inside the mall. And what about people with certain disabilities? Do they get left out of this walking-only city?
>pollution
Emissions are improving all the time, and electric cars are on the rise.
>depreciating asset
So? Along with almost everything? Buy a used car if you're so concerned about your "asset" depreciating. You get value from it when you use it.
I can track train, bus or Uber/Lyft arrival on my phone.
>To me it's worth it.
You made that clear. For the rest of society, higher rents, heat capture and poor rainwater drainage make parking lots a net negative.
>You walk inside the mall. And what about people with certain disabilities? Do they get left out of this walking-only city?
I see plenty of disabled people on public transit and using sidewalks in my city. I'm not sure what cities your experience comes from, but my experience is different. I also don't see many obese people on public transit, but I do when walking around suburban malls.
>Emissions are improving all the time, and electric cars are on the rise.
Transportation (cars and trucks) is the biggest contributor to CO2 emissions in the US as of the past two years. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/1/11/1687469...
>Along with almost everything? Buy a used car if you're so concerned about your "asset" depreciating.
Except education, real estate, stocks and other large purchases people make. I actually can't think of something other than cars that people routinely pay over $10k (in December, the average new car in US sold for $36,495) for and expect it to decline in value immediately. Used cars are as much a depreciating asset as new ones. Typically the more used a car is, the more you will pay for upkeep.
Rent is usually correlated with density, what do you mean by that?
My car was $1000 used, and in terms of maintenance, the most expensive repair it's needed was $30 (not missing a zero, it's thirty), having the transmission line replaced with a hose because it broke. There have been fluid changes, new tires, DMV registration etc. but that would all be the same in a newer car. I could probably sell it for more than $1000 if I wanted, but I don't want to - 28-38ish MPG and very reliable, a 1998 Ford Escort ZX2.
Haven't recent events in the housing market shown that expecting your real estate to appreciate is a mistake? Real estate can't just keep appreciating faster than inflation forever; greater fool theory only works in a market for so long. If you buy a house, plan around it depreciating.
>If you buy a house, plan around it depreciating.
Unless the country expands or population stops growing there is a limit on the supply of land in the US. It is safe to assume a steady increase in property values over time. Certainly not 90s and early 2000s level, but steady. Even with the recession, housing prices have continued to climb in the US.
Waiting on public transit is definitely a drawback in many places (not in my city), but things like more frequent buses are something we could have if we adjusted priorities as a nation.
You seem to have made good economic decisions (specifically on your car purchase) and should be applauded for that. What I question is a society that explicitly encourages car driving over other forms of transit. This encourages people to make poor economic decisions (ex: car loans, maintenance, depreciation, insurance) because they need a car to survive in our built environment. I do not mean to question your personal decisions.
When there are 2 good restaurants on your block, and a small grocery store: you don't need to go to the mall anymore.
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.
If that was really true it would create a huge arbitrage opportunity for people to make billions of dollars by building their businesses out in cheaper areas.
> The high paying/skilled jobs are there
Yes, but the question is why? If most people don't want to be in cities as you say, that would also include business owners, who could save a ton of money by moving their businesses into cheaper areas and paying lower rents and wages.
But that's not happening, on net. We're seeing the reverse. Businesses that fled to the suburbs 60 years ago are steadily moving back into cities.
https://www.economist.com/news/business/21706285-lots-promin... http://fortune.com/2011/07/14/companies-head-back-downtown/ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/business/economy/why-corp...
Many of these are sober, fortune 500 companies that wouldn't be moving if they didn't see a clear economic reason to do it. It's not some "strange vocal minority" position.
We are returning to the long-term average for civilization since the first cities began 6000 years ago: cities are the centers of economic activity and power. America went through a weird inversion for two generations where that wasn't true. We're now reverting to the mean.
If the desirable employees, and the capitalists who want to actively oversee their investments weren't already in the more expensive areas, or if there weren't costs to both associated with regular travel or relocation (which taken together negates the short term opportunity), or if jobs moving to the new place wouldn't actually turn it into a more expensive, denser place (removing the long-term opportunity), that would be true.
Most of those people were out in cheaper areas 40 years ago, when suburbia was still ascendant. So "they just happen to already be there" doesn't explain what we observe today.
> or if there weren't costs to both associated with regular travel
That is just restating why walkable cities are nice to be in: travel has costs, being close to things means less travel.
> if jobs moving to the new place wouldn't actually turn it into a more expensive, denser place
That clearly didn't actually happen when the jobs first migrated to the suburbs. The suburbs remained suburbs. The jobs were in low density office parks.
Yes, they did; not so much in terms of density, but the suburbs that had substsntial local quality jobs rather than being bedroom communities for more distant urban areas (or other other suburbs) did become substantially more expensive (as is expected, because convenient location to work is something people value), and, conversely, when jobs have moved away (including in the return to cities) they've gotten less expensive.
There's also the fact that major cities tend to be located in places which are geographically conducive to physically supporting largee numbers of people and large volumes of material trade, and even if an industry doesn't itself need or produce lots of physical goods directly, it often supports or is supported by others that do, and, in any case, the ability to support people effects the economics of moving jobs.
I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. There are plusses and minuses to both. IMO, the big plus with a car is freedom, but then there are many negatives like parking, traffic, and speed to destination.
If I ever move again, it will be to a location where I do not have to own a car. I hate everything about driving, and realized it's a huge source of general stress for me personally.
Subjectively, I prefer being in my own space with personal temperature controls and music, and a bit of traffic would be worth it. Compared to transit, where it's often crowded, you have to look out for your stop coming up, the seats aren't generally as good, the ambient temperature is liable to be uncomfortable, etc. I've also found that I just like driving lately.
So it's not better in every facet. It's better for your exact current situation. Most people do not have a 5 minute drive to work [1].
On the whole, I think if we took the best car situation and the best city/public transportation situation (some EU city like London for example), the car situation does not scale and lags behind the car situation.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/22/the-a...
But car culture in the aggregate has absolutely killed american cities. My city tore down its downtown to accommodate highways and parking lots. It's ghastly. Nobody wants to live in a place like that, nobody wants to visit a place like that. Traffic should be calmed in the city, so it's slow, predictable, quiet and safe. We'd get our towns back. Instead of building cities so they're convenient for cars, we should build them so they're convenient for pedestrians.
We can still use the car for all the other fun stuff.
If it sucks to live somewhere, you would expect it to be CHEAPER than living in the surrounding area.
But thats not what we see. What we see is that prices in urban areas are pretty much universally higher than living in the surrounding, less dense area?
Do you know what that means? That means that the market has spoken, and it proves that people want to live in these areas, as proven by the fact that they are willing to pay a lot more money to do so.
When it is just as cheap to live in the city as it is to live in low density areas, THEN we can talk about relative demand and the benefits of low density.
If anything, the examples you give mean that it is even more important to increase density.
This is because, for all of those reasons you mentioned, there are people who need to live in certain areas, but they can't, because they are priced out of the area!
The suburbs take up the majority of the world. If people want to live in low density areas, they can't live literally anywhere.
The problem is that the demand for high density is unfulfilled. Cities take a very small amount of space, when compared to the rest of the living space.
Thusly, there is nothing to lose. Don't want to live in a city? Then don't! You have 99% of the rest of the land to choose from.
This seems extremely subjective. I don't like malls very much, and won't set foot in one without good reason. I enjoy walking, and have no problem with public transport. I'd really have no interest in living somewhere where I couldn't either walk to work or take a short train/tram. Different people like different things.
Malls have none of those. Maybe a couple local jewelers, and everything else is large nation wide (or regional) chains.
Density of construction drives down rents. Large parking lots are huge lost opportunity costs. They don't give much tax revenue, and they don't contribute to the economy, there is nothing on them.
When I lived in an urban core, I was able to get everything I needed within a 5 minute walk. That included an outdoor mall, integrated into the walkable city, that was a mix of local stores and nationwide retailers. In contrast, the malls I drive to have none of that.
Some of the parking lots by where I lived were used for flea markets on the weekends. Regardless, I think parking lots sprinkled with islands containing trees/greenery make the landscape look nicer than if that area were packed full of buildings.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/scenes-inside-houst...
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 weather was good, took metro and walked in bad weather. Bars and restaurants were all over the place, and it wasn't unusual I would walk by a store with something nice in the window and decide to go inside to see if I wanted to buy (young dude with a lot of disposable income, that was nice).
Over time I got to create relationships with the owners of the stores I would visit more frequently, and it wasn't rare to meet coworkers randomly by getting a beer in a bar with a friend. We would join groups and my social circle would naturally change over time.
Fast forward to now: I go from home to work, then back. I never meet anyone I haven't made plans to meet. I buy everything online. I haven't made a new friend in 3 years, and the variability of my social circle is also very limited. I'm bored all the time, and I eat too much and watch too much tv because I have no idea what to do with some of my free time. It sucks, and I wish I could go back to that lifestyle because it was a lot more fun than anything I experienced in the US.
Back when I lived in a far more suburban city I was able to play golf with friends, go hiking, and take road trips to see places and people. Restaurants were much more affordable and I rarely needed a reservation, stores weren't completely swarmed with people during the times I could visit them (which makes buying everything online easier). Everyone had a washer and dryer. People invited friends over for BBQs in their backyards. On weekends it was actually faster to go places than on weekdays, so I could visit people who lived in faraway parts of town and it was no big deal (in NYC I barely get to see my friends in Queens, it takes forever to get there). After dealing with so many people and broken down subways a lot of days I'm just tired and want to go home, so I end up just being home a lot.
Now, there are a lot of reasons I like living in NYC and choose to do so, but there are serious trade offs to living in a very dense environment and there are some awesome things about living in a low density environment.
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.
I suppose, but I'm not sure this proves your point. If anything, it shows that these commuters are choosing to go to the mall up there instead of window shopping in the city. I never said I prefer "transit-free hinterlands"? That general area is actually the specific example I had in mind all along.
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.
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.
> Overcrowdedness
Again - when we are talking about increasing density we are not talking about forcing people to get rid of their car or making a sleepy suburb look like Manhattan. Townhouses, for instance, increase residential density a lot compared to the tract housing popular in American suburbs and, if well-built, have very little downside.
> very long waiting times at every establishment or government office
Maybe to line up at a nightclub or an exceptionally popular restaurant. But the beauty of increased density is choice - if a place is busy, just walk to a less busy one.
>increased ease of pickpockets etc. to "disappear into the crowd"
Notorious pickpocketing hotspots in Paris or Barcelona mainly prey on tourists who are confused and disoriented and jet lagged. Keeping aware of your belongings at all times will greatly lower your chance of being pickpocketed. Also, I'd argue that if a crime occurs in a less dense area, there might not be anyone else who was there to witness or report the crime.
http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20151203.php
Also, Amsterdam is creating a new neighbourhood like that:
https://nltimes.nl/2017/11/23/amsterdam-set-build-massive-ne...
>The goal for Haven-Stad is to have everything within walking or cycling distance. "As a resident you can bring your children to school on foot or by bicycle and you can work around the corner", the city said.
Anyway, things like this are happening to an extent. Israel is currently well in a building boom. A lot of the new development within the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem areas are like this, especially on the outskirts of suburburban towns. 100 buildings on a couple hundred acres, near train stations. 50-100 families per building.
Some good, some bad. It's very land efficient, which is important considering population density. Its easier to plan, and produce housing stock fast.
Being big corporate development, it can feel a little soulless. You get high density on the outskirts of suburban towns, which generally average 3 stories in the older centres. Still, all the walkable, shopable, cafeable streets are in the old centre, not the outskirts regardless of density.
That gets to the last point.... there's a limit to how much these things can be designed. Architects sometimes seem to think (when they get excited) that peoples use of places is dictated by the design of those places. I think causation runs both ways.
Grafton Street (Dublin street often used as an example of walkablility) is a packed, lively, window shopping and street performance centre because of its culture. Pedestrian only, and all its things other physical characteristics got way because of the culture, not just the other way around.
Culture takes time, and is not always designable. This is a gotcha with a lot of big ideas in planning & architecture. Cities are how they are for reasons other than just buildings, often causation runs the reverse way...
That sort of thing has happened before, as a "planned community" or "company town". Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. It really depends on the folks running the show, and their goals in doing it.
I think the usual failure mode is when the interests of the residents and the corporate founders diverge. The founders then shut down and move out the major employer business, and the town fails because almost everything in it was predicated on that economic support pillar being there. It's like they built shopping malls with only one anchor store.
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.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/14/16648290/bill-gates-smar...
Otherwise I guess you could just make it cheap. For those reading -- what would incentivize you?
Something to think about here... Noodles and Company. You know what their ad budget is? Zero. They're entirely location-driven. They build only in areas that satisfy certain economic criteria. People who frequent those kinds of areas recognize them from style and previous experience. They know who they want their customers to be.
So you don't start with "I want to build a certain way". Start with "I want to build a community of a certain type of people, with particular incomes and social values".
For example, my spouse and I live in a hundred year old house in a quiet Minneapolis neighborhood. We could have two or three times the space (inside and out) if we were willing to live in the burbs. But we live in the city proper for shared values... access to the artistic communities we love. We live where we can count on most of our neighbors to share our political values. Where we can get the diverse food we like. Etc. And if we had more money, we'd just live in a more expensive version of the same area (heck, my wife's dream house is about four blocks from ours, an old mansion on the Mississippi).
I personally would not mind living in this hypothetical place while I am young, but I would definitely not want to stay there in the mid-long term.
Sounds like a nightmare. Ugh, just thinking about it makes me shudder.
Why would someone wealthy want to live that way?
The high prices of living in the city prove that people actually prefer to live in high density places.
Why else would they be willing to pay so much money to live there if they didn't like it?
In the 1960s there was approximately half the population in the United States that exists now. The problem is that living close to work and extreme low density doesn't scale. For a majority of people to live close to work, something has to give, whether it be density or perhaps companies allowing telework.