Transforming cities with superblocks

The recipe for a satellite town is simple. Create a fast and frequent rail connection to the central city and build dense mixed-use areas around the station, with lower-density areas farther away. The rail connection is the key. Car-centric satellite towns create too much traffic and often can't reach sufficient density to support local services.

I completely agree.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities...

Even in places without zoning codes, you’ll find plenty of restrictions that shape what is built and what it looks like from setbacks to parking minimums.

See Houston for example https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2020/01/09/no-zoning-in-Ho...

Is it? It's not that long ago that highways were driven intentionally through Black neighborhoods [1]. What humans can do they can also undo, all it needs is politicians with guts.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-...

What we cannot comprehend is that walkable city life is aspirational; the luxury, the tactile beauty, the convenience, a sense of safety. Rather, we see parking problems, small living spaces, and waiting for busses. Or carrying groceries, like a peasant. Or the brutal concrete jungles of NYC.

Instead, the paradigm shift requires imaging the calm and splendor of walking in Bruges or Amsterdam, the quiet grandeur of Madrid or Vienna on a Sunday morning, the verdancy and fragrance of a Japanese suburb, Oxford's accessible country side, the convenience of having your kids and parents be independently mobile, ...

There are even stellar examples closer at home. Imagine Savannah, Charleston, Asheville, ... All tourist traps, and really expensive. Some people know what's up, but not enough. It will get better, as more and more people travel more.

The main difference in Europe, as far as I can tell, is that only well-to-do people can afford a big house with land. And in Eastern Europe or East Asia, only the rich can. The US is just more advanced this way ;)

This assumes people participate in local politics. I would amend this to, "obviously most people don't want it enough to attend town halls and learn whose business interests is blocking progress"

Yes, we're building apartment blocks with retail on the ground level.

No, we aren't re-zoning single-family home zones into something else. At least not with any regularity.

No, we aren't dropping minimum parking requirements in favor of market forces.

Yes, we still subsidize driving through "free" on-street parking.

Looking at my neighborhood, I'm about 1.5 miles from the subway and 2 miles from the closet grocer. Not bad by suburban standards, but it sure would be nice to have a market/bodega down the block. But, it can't happen because between me and the grocer is ALL residential. You couldn't buy a corner lot and build a shop if you wanted. At least not without spending mega-$$$ on buying off politicians to update planning maps.

I agree re: retail though, in my experience there and elsewhere it’s groceries + restaurants/cafes that drive the neighborhood commercial engine, and if there’s enough then you can see traditional retail.

(Not an urbanist just a human).

In the US, addresses are typically in the form of nnnn Street Name. In some cities with a grid and a regular numbering scheme, if you're familiar with the scheme, you can get a sense of where in the city the address is located. In extreme cases like Salt Lake City, you're almost getting grid coordinates though if the address is a street within a block, some of that advantage goes away. But most cities have a haphazard naming and numbering scheme. Odd/Even for the side of the street is about the only thing you can somewhat rely on. Seeing the address 1905 Peachtree Street tells you nothing about where a building is located in Atlanta. Is that near 2205 Peachtree Street? What about 6823 Peachtree Road? Is that even the same street? Is the difference of 200 in address numbers a consistent distance in different parts of town? The address scheme in Tokyo gets you into a neighborhood though you will have to obtain local knowledge to find the building by number. You can walk up the hierarchy to get a general sense of how close two addresses are to each other, though nowhere near as exact as you would get from something like what is used in Manhattan (a relative rarity).

Take a look at Chicago from your mapping tool of choice. Slowly zoom out until the street names fall away and the minor roads start to disappear. The dominant feature is their 4x4 grid of major roads and it extends even to the close-in suburbs - especially in the north and south.

Perhaps you can call this the North American version of the superblock. Density is concentrated along these major roads (and the central business district, of course). The inner roads have that mix of single family homes, townhouses, high-rises, etc. depending on the neighborhood you are in.

That reminded me of this The Economist article [1] about buildings in London: there are 'protected line of sight' which buildings have to avoid:

> Taller buildings [...] must not block designated views of various landmarks, which explains why some of the skyscrapers in the City of London are oddly shaped. The curious wedge-shaped Leadenhall Building, known as “the cheesegrater”, is intended to protect a view of St Paul’s Cathedral from a pub in Fleet Street. The design also means that the building cannot have a central concrete core, as in most skyscrapers. Instead, the floors are held up by an innovative steel exoskeleton. This makes for a thrilling journey up the building’s glass lifts. But it does add somewhat to the cost.

[1] https://www.economist.com/britain/2014/08/09/bodies-bombs-an...

Shiny modern towers next to historical buildings. All of the buildings in this photo are from a range of times and design styles. I think if you took any one of these buildings and made the rest look similar, the aesthetics would be degraded.