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Comment by johngalt | Hacker News Reader

Moving from car centered sprawl, to dense transit oriented city isn't something that can be done in one step. It's immensely complex, and changing the direction of cities/governments is difficult even when everyone involved wants to change.

I'm reminded of whiteboard discussions where someone says we are 'here X' and we want to be 'there Y' and simply draws an arrow between the two and says 'get started'. Assuming that all the important decisions have been made. Not realizing that the all complexity is in the arrow.

That arrow going from car focused to transit focused cities needs to be broken down into individual steps and those steps is where we need the brainpower going.

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It isn't that difficult. It is mainly about changing incentives and unleashing the autonomous forces of the population.

If you think about it primarily in terms of top-down planning, then yea it seems hard. But urban planning is not the solution. If anything it is one of the problems.

Here's a better list of options that don't involve mandates or grand designs.

-Increase taxes on land value to prevent idle speculation

-Remove taxes on buildings to encourage construction and remodelling

-Abolish parking minimums

-Abolish height restrictions

-Eliminate zoning laws that prevent multi-family or mixed-use development

-Reclaim poorly used space for pedestrian use, such as curbside parking which accounts for up to 10% of all urban land by area.

This is what runs through my mind everytime one of these articles shows up on HN.

There is no easy way to undo decades of urban sprawl across the US, especially when many cities have huge amounts of space around them to make this possible.

Also, one of those steps is probably sinking incredible amounts of money into initially barely used public transit which is bound to be politically unpopular.

You can also sink comparatively tiny amounts of money in to a network of physically separated, protected bike lanes - the kind you'd let your 6 year old use to ride to school.

Eliminate or reduce mandatory parking minimums. It's pretty clearly implied from the article given that's basically what's talked about.

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