Comment by mmm_grayons | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mmm_grayons | Hacker News Reader

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Preferences are almost certainly a factor. I live in Houston, where we don't have zoning, yet it's specifically cited (and I can confirm) that the vast majority of residents live in suburbs. The article itself acknowledges that, "Americans have been running away from dense, vertical design for a century." People don't want to live in small spaces with close neighbors, or at least, I don't. I don't see the appeal of going to a restaurant on foot given that I never (or very seldom) eat out. Same thing for coffee. I don't shop except for occasional online purchases, and never "go shopping" as many are wont to do. Just about the only things I do are go to the office (which was at least partially virtual, even before corona) and occasionally drive to a business function or symphony performance. Living in an urban area simply holds no appeal for me, or at least, I don't see any appeal. While I can't be sure as to everyone's reasons, it appears others may feel similarly.

As an aside, the article refers to "the suburban wine room." I have yet to see someone with a "wine room"; is this commonplace? A regional difference, perhaps? It also refers to "his-and-hers walk-in closets"; I don't know any guy with his own walk-in closet excepting those that live in apartments that came with one.

> I live in Houston, where we don't have zoning, yet it's specifically cited (and I can confirm) that the vast majority of residents live in suburbs.

Houston doesn't have explicit zoning, which is true, but this doesn't mean that it's necessarily any easier to build dense housing if that's what the market demands.

- Deed restrictions effectively work as zoning by limiting what a given parcel can't be developed into, and they are city enforced; this restricts dense development, particularly in wealthy, high-amenity, high-convenience neighborhoods that might otherwise be more densely developed by natural forces.

- While Houston does not prohibit land uses anywhere, it does mandate a minimum amount of parking for various types of land uses and lot sizes. Mandated parking will drive up the cost of dense development because the minimums are set very high, and it means you either have to give over valuable floor space for parking, you have to build very expensive underground or structured parking, or a combination of the two. By indirectly driving up the cost of dense development, minimum parking regulations makes less of it pencil out.

If dense living was not in demand and undersupplied (which I believe it is), dense apartments would not fetch more per sq ft than a house in a low density suburb, at least not successfully.

>While Houston does not prohibit land uses anywhere, it does mandate a minimum amount of parking for various types of land uses and lot sizes.

This is an absolute necessity in Houston. It is the 4th largest city in the US and has almost no public transportation. Building an apartment that houses 1000 adults guarantees that 1000 cars that will need to be parked nearby.

Building dense housing without parking in Houston would create painful externalities for everyone on the vicinity, in a more pronounced way than any similarly sized US city.

If your apartment building will not be attractive without two dedicated parking spots per bedroom, the government doesn’t have to say a thing: A builder will not want to make an unprofitable building with insufficient parking.

The trick here is that many of the rules are designed for maximum possible need, leading to a sea of lots that are never actually full. It’s silly to build all strip mallS with parking lots that will be comfortable in Black Friday if every store has a major holiday sales bias.

Building too much parking also has painful externalities, as walking, even from store to store, becomes problematic, and maintenance for those oversized lots is not free. It’s just that those externalities are legislated in as the status quo, so they are invisible unless you look somewhere else.

I'm from the UK, and have been to Houston several times for work. I can't think of Houston as a "city" - it has a small "downtown" area with some high-rise buildings, and a huge sprawl of strip malls, clusters of houses and disconnected gaited communities. As a European, it's very odd.

Developers are not dumb, they can figure out what kind of parking is needed for their building without the power of law.

> It is the 4th largest city in the US and has almost no public transportation. Building an apartment that houses 1000 adults guarantees that 1000 cars that will need to be parked nearby.

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy; the more you prioritize car use with requirements for large garages, large surface lots, and large, wide, high speed roads, the more you make transit and walking slower and less effective, and the more you drive people into cars.

Houston has very high parking requirements that are actually even higher than what you are describing; even for "micro-apartments", an apartment size characterized by ~2-300 sq ft total space that could probably only fit one person comfortably, the Houston code requires more than one parking space per unit. https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/docs_pdfs/Req...

One market-based hint that the parking requirements are too high in most cities is that developers nearly always only build the minimum; if more was required you'd expect more people to go and above minimum requirements.

> Building dense housing without parking in Houston would create painful externalities for everyone on the vicinity,

Turning that around: a lack of public transport options creates painful externalities on new construction (mandatory large parking lots) and the city (must put in multiplane roads for every new block).

That is also the cause of the lack of good public transportation. You can't have good public transportation when there is so much space dedicated to parking

It's pretty hard to do good public transportation in a place like Houston. I've had forty-mile commutes in the past, and once you get that far out, you get that nasty superlinear expansion of area covered. The closest Houston could ever get is park-and-ride, i.e. re-locating the sea of asphalt, because buses are too dang slow. Not to mention walking is absolute misery due to weather from May to September.

What the parent comment is saying doesn't disagree with this statement, but rather that this is self-inflicted by the chicken-and-egg nature of "we need more parking". The requirement for parking is what causes Houston to consider 40+ mile commutes normal, because the need for parking physically pushes uses further away from each other, making transit and walking less attractive, driving people into cars, and thus requiring ever more parking.

Forget about the distant places, Houston has a few dense places where transit can get decent ridership. Get rid of parking minimums and developers can turn some parking lots into a building increasing density and in turn making transit work better. Focus where you can win, let the rest be. Even if the city grows faster than the transport network, transit is still winning. Slow and steady can win this race of the time span of decades.

I don’t live in the US, but I’m in the same boat. I vastly prefer my suburb to the central city. I have great neighbours, who I only have to see when I want to. I have everything I could need or want.

What am I missing out on by not being in the city centre? Shows? I don’t go to them. Restaurants? I have a dog with separation anxiety and a 4mo daughter - I’m not going to any restaurants. Street festivals? Spare me. Art and modern “culture”? Thanks, but no thanks.

I’m perfectly happy for other people to pack themselves into noisy, cramped apartments if they like, I just don’t understand why the HN crowd seems to automatically assume that’s what I should want.

Suburbs are great. Long may they continue.

I think a lot of it comes down to how you feel about cars/driving. driving in a dense city is an awful experience, but you can probably walk or take public transit to most of the places you need to be in a given week. driving in a rural area can be lovely, and you're gonna have to do it to get anywhere. driving in a suburb is not as bad as driving in the city, but imo it's still a pretty unenjoyable experience, and you need to do it to get most places. I personally love driving, but I'd rather not drive at all than have a bad driving experience.

I live in a city and (in normal times) work in a suburb ~20 miles away. my commute is pretty painless; it's just a straight shot down the interstate in the opposite direction of most other people. but once I get there, it's amazing how unpleasant it is to drive around in a place that was built from the ground up to accommodate cars. even the shortest trips involve driving to a highway, traveling on it for one or two exits, then getting off and driving to your destination. I have no idea how people get around on bikes there. there are several shopping centers that are only connected by a limited access highway. I often joke that in that suburb, no trip takes more than fifteen minutes by car, but none are shorter either.

I don't know which I prefer. I think I'd prefer to be filthy rich and have a house or penthouse in the city haha.

But, I grew up in the suburbs and now live in the city. I love both. I love that there are interesting places to walk to, coffee shops, bakeries, bars, restaurants, book stores, etc... but I miss the freedoms of my suburban childhood like a yard to play in, a garage for power tools and bikes, being able to be loud indoors at all hours, being able to have house parties or even just entertain 2-4 friends at any time of the day or night without annoying the neighbors, block parties, and even just knowing my neighbors well. Yes, I suppose I could do that in an apartment building but maybe because we live so close we don't want to know each other :P

Typically wine rooms and walk-in closets (of any type) are found in the much newer and very expensive (or moderately expensive, but very far away) suburban neighborhoods.

I live on the outskirts of a midwestern city and only know a couple people who live in such homes.

Though I'm not from a wealthy background, so most of my family and friends (even in the suburbs) are in 1000-2000 sq ft houses where sometimes a 2nd bathroom is a nice amenity.

But we do have (usually unfinished) basements here which add at least a few hundred square feet of utility space to a house. I couldn't imagine life without one!

You tend to see these in apartment complexes when the floorplan doesn't tile well and there are awkward shapes left over. Boom! Walk in closet.

Speaking from a wealthy Chicago suburb here, wine rooms are decently common assuming they are talking about a room dedicated to storing wine (usually underneath your basement staircase). My parents also have separate walk in closets.

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