Because 1) You're not allowed to build mixed-use areas thanks to NIMBYs
2) You're not allowed to build high or mid-density areas thanks to NIMBYs
3) You're not allowed to build real bike routes (the kind you'd let your 8 year old cycle to school alone on) because of NIMBYs
4) You could cycle the long distances needed on the road, but the US has made it legal to kill people with your car so long as you're sober, so this is dangerous.
Nobody's driving from NYC to LA for their morning commute. The size of the country is not relevant.
Is it really so shocking to live that close to a gardener? What is outlandish about that?
Public transit is a bad joke too, the light rail in LA waits for cars to pass at intersections! I've never seen that in other metros, as rail always gets signal priority, but it is a great way to drive away riders...
I think it's not that people refuse to live next to a gardener, it's that the job of gardener does not allow for an income that someone could afford to live close by given the housing market. It might not be 50 miles, but there are areas of affluence where it would take awhile for a low-income person to reach. There are also areas of affluence right next to considerably run-down (but famous) areas, such as Hollywood. Then again, I'm not sure how much housing there is in the run-down portions.
It may have started as NIMBY, but I think natural market forces eventually reinforce it to the degree that NIMBY isn't necessarily the largest factor at play at this point.
Manila by comparison is 71,263/km2 in it’s core. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila
It's not dense relative to other types of metro areas, but I think it's probably fairly dense for single level housing in an industrialized nation.
My point wasn't to imply that Southern California was very densely housed, but that there may not be a huge amount of unutilized land left to build high density housing one, at least not enough to really change the dynamics. And once the conversation shifts from just what to build and where to also who to displace to build it, it's an much harder conversation.
I could be entirely wrong, I don't live in LA, but my impression every time I visit is that there's not a lot of unused land, even if the land that is used isn't used efficiently (population density wise). If that's true, it's not just a NIMBY situation (even if it might have traditionally been one), as it's also a "don't displace historical group X that's been living in this area for decades" situation (whether entirely accurate or not).
PS: It’s a question of underutilization, where it would be economically profitable to take each of these buildings down and replace them with more useful structures.
Therefore the riverfront should be low density huts forever I guess.
Out of respect for property rights though, please don't make it illegal for your neighbour to do this to their home should they choose.
2) Expecting your groundskeeper to drive a century on top of his (or her) actual job is pretty sick and cruel too
3) I'm pleased you mention Southern California as it's a useful case study of how to turn a pleasant area in to a dystopian hellscape. I've lived in Westwood (near UCLA), Santa Monica, and most recently San Diego (South Park - a fairly upscale neighborhood).
I routinely attended meetings of the planning group for South Park, where the attendees, all of whom were homeowners aside from me (and elderly), opposed ANY new housing of ANY sort ANYWHERE. They were blunt about their reasoning - it might hurt their home values. Of course, keeping homes expensive is a great way to ensure your groundskeeper can't live near work.
They also hated bike lanes, because they thought it would affect parking. It's rather sickening they cared more about places for cars to sleep than for people to sleep.
https://www.sandiego.gov/planning/community/profiles/greater... if you care to go yourself. The area's taxpayers will even give you free parking welfare.
Thankfully I escaped SoCal (and the US), but not everyone (including, perhaps, your gardener) is able to do that.
Dramatic upzoning is only brought to the table when the NIMBYs are seen as weak enough that it might stand a chance.
Property taxes can pay for these updates once the additional housing is built, it's self-financing. (Of course this won't work in CA, due to Prop 13. But then again, it was a ballot initiative, and those crazy folks in California voted for it. It's all self-inflicted pain on their part.)
The size of the country is relevant; not everything is as dense as LA, NYC, SFC. Chicago being the 3rd largest metro area is also probably one of the least dense. I cannot reasonnnably bike from my home into the Loop. Between shit roads, bad neighborhoods and generally not wanting to die. Not to mention, it is infeasible at least 3 months of the year.
Also, your argument 4 is just wrong and FUD. It is no where legal to just hit a cyclist and kill them. Probably the slightest you will get is negligent vehicular manslaughter, if you are found to be at fault with no other extenuating circumstances. If you are not at fault, you might likely not face charges.
Obviously not dead, but I was the victim where a car ran a stop sign and T-boned while I was on a bike. The driver, who did stop and offer assistance, was ticketed (I think failure to yield right of way, failure to yield to avoid an accident), faced court, around $500 in fines and had to pay my medical costs (about $20k) amd to replace my bike (about $3500). His insurance took most of the brunt, but I was fully compensated for my losses.
No, the US accepts that traffic accidents happen, and absent irresponsible behavior like drunk driving, drivers should not be held responsible for accidents. When these accidents involve collisions between cars, they're usually simple fender-benders. When similar collisions happen between cars and bicycles, they often lead to serious injury or even death.
It's an extremely dangerous idea to have bicycles and cars travelling side by side in such close proximity with such narrow bicycle lanes. What we need is proper bike lanes with lane separators protecting them from traffic.
I can't go accidentally shooting people on the street and expect just a fine.
Generally people who kill others with their car get off fine, so long as they're sober. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-t...
On the other hand if a gun range built a pathway for people downrange right by the targets, you wouldn't be the one responsible if you accidently shoot someone. It would be the gun range's fault for creating such a dangerous setup in the first place.
I’m fully guilty of this myself too. But like all things it cannot keep growing indefinitely.
http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...
Beyond that, the stats in that article are just plain bad because it ignores the fact that not everyone lives in a new house, but it still compares the average household size to ONLY new homes built in that year.
I would actually ignore the average household size. We already know that that that decreasing over time.
Note that I didn't intend my comment to be a personal attack on you. I'm merely trying to point out this trend. Apologies if I came off that way. But your case also highlights another fact that was rare back in the day -- using your house as an office is increasingly becoming viable or necessary for those doing remote work.
I didn't take it personally, but I also didn't quite know the best way to respond either. I probably didn't do the best job at it.
This is a catch 22 because the way our cities are designed in America makes them unaffordable. American zoning in most cities prohibits the kind of dense mixed use development that makes low cost housing near work possible. We need to reform the zoning code in most cities and improve bike safety, walkability and public transportation to make headway.
Mid-sized USA cities tend to have half decent transit around their urban core (often woefully under-served especially in cities that don't have either trains/subways or else dedicated right-of-way for buses, but none-the-less serviceable).
However, the thing that mid-sized cities almost uniformly lack in the US is any form of regional commuter rail.
It seems clear that commuter rail is not a silver bullet. Housing density is probably what we really need.
I have more trouble seeing where the 500 seat office for a global enterprise should go on my city block. it seems like that sort of space would lead to a dead feeling at night when everyone goes home and the space sits empty.
Turns out when you don't need to allocate space for 500 cars around a building, you can build it in a single city block and coexist with other types of buildings. And you even get a rooftop with a view as a bonus.