To pick an entirely not uncommon example from my own life...
I'm just moving to the suburbs but I had to specifically go looking for one with shops in walking distance. It's far from the norm; I've lived in places before where the only way to a shop was along a major highway and it was too far to reasonably walk unless you had no choice.
For reference I live 3 miles from the center of a town with a population of about 280,000.
Yes. Zoning in the US tends to be restrictive and exclusionary, as in a given area is zoned for one type of use to the exclusion of any other. This means an area zoned residential does not allow any commercial use, not a local grocery, not a restaurant, not a barber shop. Furthermore, residential zones tend to be further restricted in order to preclude any sort of MDU or even townhouse, it's common for suburbia to have miles and miles of "single family" (exclusively detached residential) zoning.
And this is not small cities in the boondocks, Seattle, Charlotte, Arlingon, or San Jose, are above 80% single-family zoning.
We also have college towns and small cities! I tend to pick places where there’s something walkable, and have never lived in a place where I couldn’t walk to a shop or restaurant (although ”walkable” is subjective I guess, I’ve been in places where I had to walk 45 minutes through parking lots to get groceries).
I dunno, suburbs are a funny thing… it is easily knowable what they are and what you are signing up for when you move to them, but lots of people end up there as a sort of default choice (or maybe not really a choice, they can be the most affordable place to get a house that fits multiple kids comfortably and isn’t in the absolute middle of nowhere).
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvdQ381K5xg&t=8s
[2] U.S. and European Zoning, Compared https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNe9C866I2s
many other places across Europe dont have this or most people arent conveniently located
but my point is that this doesn't seem to be an option at all in the US, unless you are in a nice development within one or two cities. not an option in the suburbs anywhere to my knowledge.
Some wfh people have easily found it in resort mountain towns in USA, which have similarities to European resort mountain towns (outdoor activities, walkable, size constrained by geography).
Many people still want to live in a dense, walkable neighborhood, though; supply is just fixed at ~1940 levels forever. The few prewar walkable cities that still function such as New York and San Francisco are very expensive as a result. Housing that was built for and occupied by working class people for generations is now too pricey for all but the rich.
That's an incredibly broad statement since most zoning is handled on the state, county or city level. There are plenty of places in the US where someone could build an equivalent SF or NYC and yet they don't.
> The few prewar walkable cities that still function such as New York and San Francisco are very expensive as a result.
You seem to be drawing a causal link here, walkable leads to desirable and expensive. Yet, as I mentioned before, not only is it possible to build walkable cities in many states, there are plenty of other walkable cities that aren't expensive or desirable.
I suspect that SF and NYC being the both historic and a hub of two giant economic engines of the US, the tech and financial sectors respectively, has a lot more to do with the pricing of those areas than their walkability.
Demand - from various sectors over time, sure, but also geographic constraints
Each are different enough to only talk about in isolation, but of the commonalities you can't dismiss how interrelated the density and walkability are. A byproduct of the geographic constraints with a constant need to fulfill the demand.
https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines has some good, if brief history of all of it.
Can you name some of them?
I believe this is not true. Some people want this, yes, and it may be that they are overrepresented here or tend to form bubbles so that they think this view is predominant.
If a majority of people wanted it, it would happen due to the majority electing people to their local governments that support it.
I can support candidates who campaign on allowing mixed-use in their zoning policy. Or I can support candidates who support keeping business, industrial, and residential areas separated. It seems that most people (not all) support the latter.
The happiest existence I had lifestyle wise was living in university. It is the closest socially acceptable communal living experience in modern capitalists.
There were stories of colonists captured in Indian wars by tribes, "freed", and they ran away to go back to the tribal group rather than go back to colonial life. You know, Dances with Wolves but in real life.
There was a slight uptick in communalism in the early internet, but the MBAs have stamped out that out hard.
Honestly, for places like San Francisco where Silicon Valley essentially destroyed the communal aspect of the city, all of those tech bros moving away would be good in the long term. Of course it would also take a massive collapse in property values, and kind of like revolution, that's never a good thing.
There's quite a bit of this on the East Coast as it tends to be older. Pre-war towns in particular. Some rather affluent places too with trains to the local major city, etc. It's nice to have large single family homes and yards and be able to walk to the butcher, coffee shop, bookstore, or restaurants and the train. However, in Europe you generally won't find large, single family homes in this type of setting. Mainly multi-family and very small by American standards. Especially the UK.
I would need some specific examples to look at for inspiration though, and see whats wrong with them
> However, in Europe you generally won't find large, single family homes in this type of setting. Mainly multi-family and very small by American standards. Especially the UK.
You're right, I want the rich person's classic large Parisian apartment facing the main thoroughfare, with alleys of winding shops and cafe's in the back.
https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/houston-doesnt-have-zoning...
source: professional urban planning office in California
I lived with urban planners and architects for 20 years, read books about zoning, about the effects of urbanization on aquifers and rivers, about the differences between cities that grew organically like São Paulo or Mexico City vs cities that were bulldozed to fit a central plan like NYC.
Never ONCE in my life I had read contemporary literature or heard a urban planner defend suburbia, or advocate for single use zoning only, or even say neutral things about American Suburbs. A majority of Urban Planners and Architects across North America, South America and Europe (my sample) are very much against it as it's not sustainable, creates traffic and other myriad of problems.
(That's not to praise the Commissioners' plan, per se, but only to observe that no dense city was bulldozed to enact it.)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811
Most of it wasnt done maliciously, but a city doesn't create square blocks, nice and uniform, on its own as it grows from a few hundred thousand to a few million inhabitants. If it grows organically, as in without a central plan driving it and pruning uncontrolled growth, you will get a very heterogeneous city layout.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan_Hill,_Manhattan [1]The creative destruction of Manhattan, 1900-1940