The home of Walmart wants to beat sprawl | Hacker News Reader

The home of Walmart wants to beat sprawl

economist.com

33 pointse2e462 comments

Smaller countries like Japan/UK have other issues with sprawl which is that people often want the best of both. I'm happy to enjoy the buzz of working in a city and its lots of choice of shops and restaurants but I want to live somewhere quiet with space and wildlife so we have the commute.

Problem is that when you don't have a lot of space overall, cities start to sprawl and before you know it, the end of one city joins the beginning of another. Valuable open space and rural space is lost and often the housing it is replaced with is nothing near the same habitat for wildlife even if the gardens are big.

The UK introduced "greenbelts" into planning law in the 20th century to try and prevent it but they do not exist automatically and so more and more rural areas get spoiled with low-density housing.

I think there is still something to be said about well thought-out high density housing where everyone doesn't necessarily need their own garden but some open shared spaces to enjoy.

Dense zoning along transit corridors, with public green spaces left inbetween, can give the best of both worlds, but only if the temptation to fill those green spaces with SFH sprawl is resisted.

Downvotes? Why? This is like sustainable development 101, nothing controversial.

Part of the problem with greenbelts like the one around London is that they increase demand by making an already in-demand area nicer to live while reducing the potential supply because building can't happen anymore.

I think land use is more important, and number one for that would be a reversal of the policies that turned London from somewhere anyone in the country could expect to live into a primate city where only the rich can afford to buy while others can scratch along in their vicinity. (Which might mean less need for greenbelts as people would spread out more naturally, as they used to).

However, that would mean dealing with immigration based on reality[1], the capture of the UK by banks, and probably making it incredibly hard for MPs to benefit from property (and hence voting for measures that benefit them), along with a whole host of other things. I'm not hopeful.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/city-eye...

> Problem is that when you don't have a lot of space overall, cities start to sprawl and before you know it, the end of one city joins the beginning of another. Valuable open space and rural space is lost and often the housing it is replaced with is nothing near the same habitat for wildlife even if the gardens are big.

A video of what's available via a fifteen minute bicycle ride from Amsterdam:

* https://twitter.com/notjustbikes/status/1528394830086275075

I'm much the same, but what I don't get are the worst of both buyers.

I live on the outskirts of a city, where each house has at least an acre. It's peaceful, but not close to much. The nearest grocery is about 15 mins by car on the expressway.

Just last year, they started building a new subdivision behind us. 5000ish sq ft plots. I can't figure out who in the world would choose a commute and no space...

Am I like the last person on the planet who doesn't want to live in a dense city?

Just thinking of it makes me nauseous. I'm current in suburbs, and I can almost touch my neighbors house through my window if I lean out very far, and I don't like that, but can tolerate it.

Anything closer, is just horrifying to think about it.

I've been in dense cities, I've stayed there. I would completely lose my sanity if that's where I had to live longterm.

I utterly don't care if I can't walk places - I anyway hate walking. I don't care if there are no small shops - I have some here, and I've never in my entire life visited one. I take a car and I go to a larger store, with a larger selection (or I buy online).

You hate:

- walking

- people being close to you

- going to smaller stores

- going to stores at all if there's an online option

I genuinely think this is an antisocial and unhealthy state to be in, yes. Personally I wouldn't mind if there were a few non-dense suburbs for people like you to live in, the issue is that in many cities that's all there is because all of the city was restructured/bulldozed to meet this preference. Yet the way you frame it is as if it's like you're a minority. Your perspective completely and utterly dominated 20th century Anglosphere urban planning. It won so effectively that entire generations have grown up agreeing with you because literally the density of the pre-car era was eradicated and they know nothing different.

>entire generations have grown up agreeing with you because literally the density of the pre-car era was eradicated and they know nothing different.

But a lot of people have experienced high-density living and deliberately reject it and choose the suburbs. Consider a common life timeline:

- early 20s (single no kids) : going to college in a big city or starting a career at a downtown firm so they enjoy the dense city living like Manhattan, Chicago, etc. Walking to restaurants and bars, museums, cultural things

- mid-life with kids: they enjoyed cities in their younger years but they want to raise a family so they move out to the suburbs. Multiple reasons could be the better schools, less crime, less noise, more square footage, a back yard, garage and extra space for hobbies, etc.

- senior/retired and kids are grown leaving an "empty nest": some (not all) senior citizens might sell the suburb house and move to a city condo and walk to museums again. But some also stay in the suburbs and just move to a smaller house or single-level townhouse.

Yes "walkable cities" have advantages but the suburbs also have particular advantages that can have higher priority. It's not about ignorance. It's about prioritizing which advantage is most important.

This is a uniquely North American perspective, and is tightly coupled to the North American pattern of development. This "common life timeline" is uncommon outside of the U.S. and Canada, and the fact that car dependency and onerous zoning codes dominate these two countries is the reason.

Edit: The U.S. mythology of suburbs being a "great place to raise kids" is also sorely misguided, and is a major reason why there are so many adolescents who spend most of their free time at home on social media/video games. Being completely dependent on parents to shuttle you around is no way to live.

So what's the norm in Europe, in contrast?

The norm outside of the U.S. is that you don't have a massive discontinuity between "dense inner city" and "car dependent wasteland of highway, strip malls, and detached single-family homes surrounded by giant lawns" - if you start at the city center and travel outward you have dense high-rise apartments, which slowly morph into low-rise apartment complexes, which slowly morph into duplexes and triplexes, which slowly morph into somewhat tightly packed SFHs. So, until you get all the way out into farmland, you're always in a place that can be efficiently served by cycling infrastructure and public transportation, which makes them great places to live for children, the elderly and anyone really, and where it's always legal to just open a corner shop to serve the locals.

In East Asia for example, going back millennia, you had Confucian filial piety whereby adults were expected to take care of their aging parents. In pretty much everywhere except white-collar communities in North America and Europe, multi-generational households are pretty standard fare. In a city that has not been bulldozed and hacked up for cars, both kids and the elderly can enjoy a high degree of independence and safety; by contrast in American suburbia, you are essentially trapped in a home, forced to drive a car to travel anywhere. It's no wonder I spent my childhood and teenage years on an Xbox.

There are some advantages to suburbs but again, the model of development that literally bulldozed neighbourhoods was that any alternative was bad. It was quite literally seen as the way of the future to have low density suburbs connected by gigantic highways.

Either way car-centric suburbs are unnecessary, you could still have American suburbs with big houses that people could walk and cycle and use PT in. Again, I was responding to someone who literally had it out for walking.

It's interesting that for a country so obsessed with the freedom to live where and how you want that Americans are so car dependent...

The main reasons people leave cities for the suburbs are schools, crime, and cost.

All three are certainly addressable by policy, and the crime element is already nothing like it was during the mass migration of the 60s-80s.

>All three are certainly addressable by policy,

Sure. But it's very much a "pick two" situation.

There are multiple options between dense housing (high-rise apartment buildings) and a suburban sprawl of single family houses:

- Small (2-5 story) apartment buildings in an area where zoning doesn't prevent building of shops and other amenities

- 2 family houses

- Terrace housing (which is popular in the UK) - 2-3 story building side by side in a row, each has a separate entrance on one side and a small backyard on the opposite. Its my favorite - almost all advantages of living in a personal house but density is much higher than for US-style suburbs - shops are usually in a walking distance. If wish this option where considered in the US too.

You are not wrong, but the person I was replying to implied that anything like apartments or even duplexes would be high density (i.e. reachable by extending one's arms).

In reality the truth is that if someone has it out for walking they are basically not worth engaging with. Ever. It's just the opposite of what people need which is to be as physically active as their body allows. It's not opinion that walking is good for you, and like a lot of exercise that applies even if you dislike the activity. Not everything in life that's good for us is easy unfortunately.

A small corrective, many people can't walk (i couldn't due to an illness a few weeks ago and used a wheelchair). I will say walkable cities generally are better for disabled folks. Almost all the difficulty i had moving around on a wheelchair was due ultimately car centric city planning that pervades the US.

Yes, although many people cannot drive either, so at best it's equal and at worst many more people cannot drive (all children, many elderly, anyone with severe vision or mobility impairments, PTSD from previous accidents, etc.)

So yes, you're correct, and absolutely cars still have a place to play for those who cannot walk (or indeed for anything where the car perfectly fills the niche, which it does for quite a few things). It's a useful tool, it just became far too dominant.

'Active transport' definitely gets attacked for not being inclusive enough of those who can't do x (where x is walk, cycle) etc. but it's usually unfair. A bit like criticising animal rights activists for not having a solution to the starvation that might occur if we immediately banned all animal products from being sold. It's just not what anyone is really wanting.

I believe the American term for terrace house is row house, and it’s certainly not uncommon, it’s a fixture of our older city residential neighborhoods. Though it’s correct to say that it’s almost illegal to build now in most parts of the US.

But row houses are definitely a thing here too.

Sunset District, San Francisco, CA, has a lot of terraced housing similar to the UK, but with much wider roads.

> I genuinely think this is an antisocial and unhealthy state to be in, yes

I don't think so - I find neighbors in the burbs are much more likely to actually try to connect with each other and strike up a conversation with each other casually than I've ever experienced in urban areas.

Granted it's a bit of a monoculture (mostly centered on raising families), and the lack of walkable areas absolutely sucks - I wish suburbs were planned so that commercial areas were interspersed in some way that I could walk to get a coffee and it didn't require a 2 mile drive.

I'm currently in an urban area, and I do love the mobility aspect, but I don't really even have neighbors to connect with (one side is a rental, the other is an airbnb). The last house I owned in a suburbs I knew both my neighbors very well. I miss the BBQ's we used to have.

> I'm currently in an urban area, and I do love the mobility aspect, but I don't really even have neighbors to connect with

Consider moving to an urban residential neighborhood with young families, and you can have the best of both worlds. BBQs a plenty, block parties, neighborhood swap sales, lemonade stands. All usually within walking distance.

Where I live is an urban residential neighborhood, but there's no block parties or BBQ's -- most families can't afford to live here because a 2BR is about half a million dollars.

Maybe you could organize a social event? These things start the old fashioned way, by bringing a pie or cookies over to a neighbor and introducing yourself. I get that it can be weird if everyone is preset to be skeptical of each other though.

I understand the airbnb not allowing for much connection, but how does someone renting their domicile prevent you from connecting with them?

I guess it doesn't necessarily, it just makes the opportunity for connection less likely - their tenancy is temporary and they just aren't invested in things like lawncare or house maintenance or who just moved into the neighborhood.

I genuinely think this is an antisocial and unhealthy state to be in, yes.

That's a pretty interesting take. I lived in a super dense city in Asia. Almost no one lives in a detached home, most live in 30+ story towers. Transit is great and it's pretty walkable - you can easily live without a car. Lots of small stores, not a lot of big box stores. Apparently the pinnacle of the human experience from what you describe.

After living there for a while, it was pretty clear a very large percent of the population wants: 1) to live in a detached single family home with a yard, 2) own a car and 3) love shopping at big box stores and buying online.

What you seem to think is an unhealthy state to be in is actually what a lot of people like. Sure, some people don't want those things - young single people are more than willing to give up a nice home to be close to cool bars, but it's not a very big part of the population.

Unsure what city you are referring to, but I've lived in Seoul which matches a lot of what you describe. Excellent transit (IMHO, still the best subway system I've experienced in the world), vast majority living in superdense highrise towers.

It's one of the few cities I felt I actually wanted to use public transportation instead of grudgingly being forced to (like NYC).

Yet most people living there still want a car. Maybe things have changed in the past few years, but last time I was there a few years back, and based on what I see today in K-dramas and shows, it seems most young people still aspire to have a car.

What you seem to think is an unhealthy state to be in is actually what a lot of people like. Sure, some people don't want those things - young single people are more than willing to give up a nice home to be close to cool bars, but it's not a very big part of the population.

It's just a rhetorical trick.

"Everyone who doesn't like what I like is unhealthy" is just a milder form of the age old "everyone who doesn't think like me has some mental condition that I will use as a pretext for denying their agency and ignoring their opinion" reply. It steers the conversation away from the legitimacy of his opinion and makes people on the other side waste effort proving "no I'm not insane".

>in many cities that's all there is because all of the city was restructured/bulldozed to meet this preference.

This is just not true. Stop projecting west coast and southeast urban planning onto the entire country. In vast swaths of the midwest and northeast the overwhelming majority of the 20th century suburb development was purely additive.

people in high density urban areas are far more antisocial in my personal experience. small stores were largely killed by the repeal of fair trade laws and decades of policy that explicitly favored market consolidation, that has nothing to do with density.

> I genuinely think this is an antisocial and unhealthy state to be in

I think wanting to live crammed in with thousands of other people that you never interact with is unhealthy, but whatever. You know what they say about opinions.

Cities don't really have any redeeming features.

No redeeming features? Are you serious?

depending on your lifestyle, cities may not offer many benefits especially compared with the costs. when i go into the city i often find myself at a loss for what to actually do there because it seems like they largely facilitate consumption and nothing else. they are good for skateboarding but that is hardly an intended feature.

Name one.

Not having to live near you. I'm all for people who don't like cities not living in them. I hope you've acted on your opinion.

Call me antisocial then. L’enfer c’est les autres.

It seems like you just want to live in a rural area rather than a city, and are resentful that people want a city to be a functional city. Why ask a city to stay rural when that's not the purpose a city serves?

You have a strangely hostile relationship with small shops. Even the laziest suburbanite probably wouldn't single out local businesses as places they'd never go to, Costco being their favourite. That said, if you already live in the suburbs, most small shops end up being pretty awful chain stores, flavourless restaurants that serve people who favour convenience and predictable food, liquor stores, and commodity crap cafe's like Starbucks. So actually maybe none of your opinion is so surprising. Living in the suburbs is a kind of unimaginative antisocial hellscape

When I visit my parents in the suburbs of my hometown, the closest cafe is about a 30min bus/walk, and the coffee is grotesque at best. So... so bad.

There's plenty of space for people like you still, but for society, we actually have to learn to live with one another and be closer to one another, especially if the environment and the future of the human race is of any concern. The problem these days is that we don't have enough well-functioning tight urban areas in the US, which is probably why you don't like to live in them.

Whenever people bring up urban environments and how terrible they are, I always point to Tokyo where they manage to cram people denser than we can, and still maintain higher living standards than us (the USA).

But I do agree with you that our urban environments are crap. Plus, we have plenty of space, so American suburbs are decent ignoring the environmental and sustainability aspects.

is there any developed nation where birthrates are on an upward trend? why do we have to prioritize being closer together?

Being spread out means you’ll need cars, and it costs more in transportation cost to get things to you, and more things need to be built/consumed because it’ll be harder to share infrastructure of resources. Plus more heating and cooling costs as houses are bigger, and cannot share in heating/cooling.

All of this equates to a much larger carbon footprint.

> why do we have to prioritize being closer together?

Climate change is one reason:

* https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environment...

Congestion: if you are driving you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. (And EVs may help with climate change, but they don't help with congestion.)

And let's not forget the fact that suburban design leads to bankrupt cities:

* https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/28/the-growth-pon...

* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6...

I think most of people does not want to eliminate suburbia as some kind of aim, they just want to stop subsidizing it and want to end its strange "you can't touch this" status.

You can live in suburbs if you like, just don't expect others to pay for your life choices and don't expect area where you live now will always be suburbs (I am sure there will always be suburbia somewhere else).

In addition, I think many people would be quite happy living slightly denser housing than the single-family homes that are the only permitted type of housing in some parts of the USA due to restrictive zoning laws.

> Am I like the last person on the planet who doesn't want to live in a dense city?

There is currently more people who want to live in dense cities, than there are supplies of homes (apartments) in dense cities. It would be nice to build homes in the dense urban area so that the supply would match the demand.

It would be to your benefit, too, if the "dense-loving" people would all get to move into the dense city area that they like. Currently some of these people fail to find a home in the city, so they are competing for the same suburban homes as you, and they don't even want to live in the suburbia.

Also, the denser the city is for those who like dense, the less land area it takes, and then also your suburbia can fit a bit closer near the city. At least for those suburbanites who still prefer to have a relative short distance to the urban core.

By and large, Americans like living in suburbs. You aren’t remotely alone.

The problem, which others have already pointed out, is one of sustainability: America’s suburbs do not pay for themselves, and are on a crash course for insolvency (and consequently disrepair) over the next half century. You can hate cities all you’d like, but the faucet is going to stop flowing at some point.

> I'm current in suburbs, and I can almost touch my neighbors house through my window if I lean out very far, and I don't like that, but can tolerate it.

You must be in an extremely dense suburb then, or you have absurdly long arms ;)

I'm in an urban neighborhood with a population density of nearly 10000 people per square mile, and if I tried to reach to my neighbors house I'd fall out the window before I touched it (it is about 6 feet away).

In the sparse suburb I grew up in the neighboring houses were 20-30 feet away on the sides and hundreds of feet away in the front and back. Also it had zero public transit. That was a suburb.

I like:

  * Clean Air
  * Quiet

Building codes currently don't do enough to require _all_ exhausts be scrubbed. Positive pressure housing with scrubbed intakes would be nice too. Nor do they mandate acoustic isolation and insulation to ensure privacy. I'd even be for cars inside of a service layer, which would also have scrubbed ventilation and fresh air circulated in. This would work even better if we were in a post-ICE vehicle world.

I've learned that in the US the closer you are to other people, the worse these issues. Those Canadian trucker protests are an exaggerated example of all the things I hate about living near other people.

"Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud"

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8

Personally fine with that. Plenty of land on this big blue ball, you want to live like that, go for it!

That said, I do like to live in a city, and right now my city is designed for you. I’m excited for cities to cater to pedestrians!

> Am I like the last person on the planet who doesn't want to live in a dense city?

Define "dense". Is this "dense":

* https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+O...

* https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+...

It's an example of a street car suburb:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

50-100 people per hectare seems to be the point where you don't have places like Manhattan or Hong Kong, but still can support non-car transportation efficiently:

* https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environment...

I agree with you that people have different preferences. If only the suburbs would start paying their fair share. As it is they are subsidized by the cities

https://youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI

According to some my < .5 acre plot of land and home are going to be the downfall of society why this topic makes so many crank the emotion up to 10 I just don't understand.

You could always stick it to them by using your land to engage in an economically useful activity.... like parting out cars.

They'll stop hating your house real quick.

America is mostly empty. If every town of more than 10,000 starts building homes slightly closer together, you’ll still have plenty of space for solitude.

That depends a lot on your definition of empty.

Not containing significant numbers of people or human settlements

You can always find some old farm house or like far away from anything. Or even get the land and build something. The other way around is much harder.

You are not alone.

Infrastructure in my home city is at least a decade behind, and every new road isn't intended to alleviate the ever increasing commute and toll road bill, but instead trampoline new high density developments, even along the city's periphery!

Our cities are getting more and more crowded and even environmentally conscious mainstream media is busy shilling for developers to tear up parks, even schools, for new high rise developments.

> Infrastructure in my home city is at least a decade behind, and every new road isn't intended to alleviate the ever increasing commute and toll road bill, but instead trampoline new high density developments

Seems like that's exactly the right move actually. How else would they improve anything otherwise?

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