Americans will pay more to live in walkable neighborhoods
slate.com
slate.com
Currently spending $2400/mo to live in a big house 45 mins away from downtown Houston.
Cannot FUCKING wait to spend $3000+/mo on a (likely) much smaller and older house in downtown Houston.
Space, walkability, price; choose two.
First, he transformed four industries: computers, music, film and phone.
Second: the incumbents in the music industry were initially very resistant to aligning pricing around the $0.99 Steve Jobs insisted on setting. He was right it: changed the entire music industry to sell music that way.
He negotiated all those deals by taking the executives of those music companies on a walk behind the Apple headquarters.
Walking is the path to brilliance.
So that means you can save quiet a bit on housing if you choose to live in a non-walkable neighborhood.
It’s weird that this article makes such a seemingly wrong point.
Walkable neighborhoods tend to accommodate high densities quite nicely, so the per-person cost is reasonable, however there just are not enough of them.
BTW, DC + rideshare bike is an amazing upgrade to the usual DC sightseeing experience. You go from walking 10 miles to zipping around on bikes. It was incredible how well DC shrunk with a bike share.
Manhattan? Not so much.
Chicago? I mean, if you can get to the lakeshore, it gets better, but still not what DC was.
Houston was a city that SO BADLY needs to be converted to bikeability. You can bike year round! Alas, Texas + no zoning + oil company capital of America.
I just don't think any of that has to do with my point, lol.
I think COVID actually hindered the ebike transformation of major urban centers. People are asking what the point of cities is without offices... people, you need to experience a seamless ebiking experience in a large city, where the infrastructure of millions of people becomes walk out door, unfold and drop your very very portable scooter, ride 15 minutes in the city, stop, fold up scooter. No walk to garage, drive, find insanely expensive parking, walk from parking to your destination. The scooter/ebike is FASTER, practically door to door.
The ability of ebikes and scooters to take a big city and, it's like a superpower, shoom, shrinks the entire city by a factor of 5 or 6. Humans basically walk at 3 mph comfortably. Scooters and ebikes? 5x that easily, and with some good dedicated lanes, 8x that easily.
A portable escooter where you walz onto subway or el or bus for the longer stuff? Mass transit multiplier too.
Europe. I can't imagine what europe would be like for traveling. Backpack, e-scooter, get on train to new city, get off train, drop/unfold e-scooter, practically anywhere in new city is accessible within 15-20 minutes.
Fuck all those delivery apps. Why wait for them? If it's not pouring rain, you can get to what you want in 15 minutes. And it's fun, open air, social, sightseeing, get to know the city.
You should come back to visit DC. In the last two years they have been on an absolute tear building new bicycle infrastructure. It is better than ever before. Lots of people using personal bikes or CaBi combined with taking public transit to extend their mobility without needing a car.
> People are asking what the point of cities is without offices...
Evidently, those people don't live in cities. In DC there is a decently large and growing contingent of people who live close to downtown and work remotely for firms based elsewhere (included the surrounding suburbs) because the city is nice to live in and spend time in. Lots of conveniences, great access to transit, fantastic people from all over the world.
Tons of reasons.
No wonder 40% of the US population is obese.
The US is obese for many reasons including decades of nutrition education focused on a high carb diet ( food pyramid ), large portion sizes, and subsidized high fructose corn syrup
Under the provisions of Article 15, Section 706 of the Public Works Code, it is the responsibility of property owners to maintain the sidewalk in front of and/or surrounding their property, including driveways and sidewalk structures, and to repair any defects or conditions which may cause injury to persons or damage to property. In the event of such occurrences, property owners are liable for any claims that may arise.
This is a remarkably strong requirement. I wonder if the same holds in Los Angeles, and if so, how every property owner has not been sued out of existence by now. I don't know that I've ever seen a sidewalk adjoining private property being repaired, and the state of the sidewalks shows it. I've tripped over bulging chunks of concrete pushed up by tree roots I don't know how many times.
That is not true in most places I have ever lived, the Side Walk is an "public use easement" that the property owner is required to keep in good working condition at their expense including removing snow, mowing, ensuring it is not blocked, and does not pose a hazard
In every city I have lived The city can and will fine the property owner if the snow is not cleared with in 24 hours, if you allow a guest to block the sidewalk by parking over it (i.e more than a few cars in your drive where the care intrude in to the sidewalk) or of cracks or other hazards appear.
We just had to pay to have the sidewalks replaced in front of my grandparents home (who are dead but the family still owns the home) because there were in disrepair.
Fines are not exactly defines but are capped at $1000 per event
It seems the less stuff government owns, the more they respect the taxpayers.
The law requires that you maintain this ingress, e.g., shoveling snow, and if you fail to so will impose large fines.
If the government wants sidewalks, they should be maintained by the city and contiguous with the street.
I'm not sure why this isn't the case everywhere. We all want sidewalks, they are a public space and a public good, they should be maintained from the public purse (as are the roads)
Clearly we all do not, I do not. I never use them, I do not want to pay for them, I do not want my tax money to pay for them
Right now my kids are home schooled. Yet I gladly pay some of the highest school taxes in the area. Because I want my kids to grow up and perhaps marry in a literate society. Even when I didn't have kids I learned to appreciate living with people educated outside their family bubble.
Because that is what voting for it does. All government actions are backed by the threat of violence if you do not comply
You say that like it's a bad thing. Would you prefer the violence was not a threat? Or would you prefer that compliance with law were made optional?
Even those who disagree would probably change their mind after a few years without such services.
Now the question is why do you believe the government force is not only the best but the only way to provide "public education, safe road and walkways, police, fire, and healthcare services."
because not only do I not agree that government is needed for society to have those things, government providing them is of lower quality, especially in the case of "education" i.e schools, and police.
Ultimately I believe collective action and a monopoly on violence is best. Therefore a government, even if by another name, is the answer. Ideally one responsive to the people they rule.
as it is for me, and governments are a disaster. I am unclear how you can look at governments in history and not see a pattern of abuse, dysfunction, corruption, and over all terrible evil
>>And today we even have corporations so rich and influencial they are defacto governments.
Why do we have these mega corporations? I believe it is because of government, decades of regulatory capture by companies have made it impossible to be in business with out being a huge company these regulatory protectionist policies are what is driving out small business and the competition.
you see companies as the root of the evil.. I see beyond the companies and see their protectors the State as the root cause of this evil
>>Ideally one responsive to the people they rule.
Many problems here, even your terminology betrays your goals for if a government "rules over" the people the people by definition have no power over that government.
Violence is never "best", Using governmental force to impose a vision on others is intellectual sloth and typically results in unintended, perverse consequences.
Government is just a way to organize collective power and action against the forces in the world that would trample the weak. Some in power are corrupt, that doesn't mean the invisible hand of the market is the answer to magic away all ills.
It means we need responsive, representative, and well regulating government to maintain healthy and competitive markets. This government will need a monopoly on violence or else it becomes a war among the powerful with everyone else caught in the middle.
BTW I never said violence is best. Violence is unavoidable if disagreements cannot be solved by any other means. Rather my point is it should be monopolized under a government, not left to vigilantes and the whomever owns the most guns.
There is no contradiction here. It's defense in depth, balanced against the costs and inconvenience.
As to feeling entitled, you are the one who presumes to have absolute power over property which you cannot hold for more than a lifetime. Yet you want all the benefits of sacrifices made by others: wide roads and sprawling towns/cities built for primarily for cars, others to walk in more dangerous places to maintain some tiny expansion of exclusive space, and the usual affordances other (often unwilling) people's taxes pay for such as police and fire departments and schools.