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We've talked about "woonerfs" before. An interesting topic. The last link was a relatively evidence-free fluff piece from Salon.
We've also talked about a lot of this stuff before. Zoning has been around for 99 years. Euclidean zoning legal definition of Euclidean zoning "Following the lead of New York City, which passed the first major zoning ordinance in 1916, most urban communities throughout the country have enacted zoning regulations."
As far as the comment "It was created by government regulation", the government is people! I love how some of you socialists (I believe you are a self-proclaimed socialist) want to give developers free-rein to do what they want (free market), while someone with an "inner libertarian" like me wants to pull in the reins a little.
It's a paradox.
Development has nothing to do with free market because the government subsidizes roads. This is true, to a degree although not so much as you'd think. It's also not like urban areas don't have roads, although maybe less lane miles per capita than suburban areas. But then urban areas usually have government subsidized transit. In most of the country, transit is subsidized to the tune of about 80%. Something like Muni costs $860/yr for a pass but the taxpayer picks up another $3,200.
For the most part, of course, the market still dictates. If you don't want to live somewhere, don't live there. If you're unhappy with the public policies, go live somewhere else where they're more to your liking. Mostly it's the people who live in San Francisco paying for transit and roads in San Francisco. Somewhere like Alameda county (Oakland and Dublin/Pleasanton) it's slightly more complex as roads get a lot of funding from sales taxes. It's only slightly more complicated because the money more or less goes back out to local governments about the same as it comes in, at least for the road portion of the sales tax. The transit portion, however, mostly goes Oakland as it's based on ridership and Oakland has much higher transit usage than Pleasanton hence it gets a disproportionate share of the sales taxes collected and the suburbs are in fact subsidizing the urban rather than the other way around.
It pretty much boils down to pretty simply. If a subsidy is for something I like, it's good; if the subsidy is for something I don't like, it's bad. Road subsidies are bad. Transit subsidies and Redevelopment are good. Same holds true for regulations. If regulations are for something I like, say sidewalks or TOD, then regulations are good. If regulations are something I don't like, setbacks or parking minimums, they're bad. Of course, again, that's mostly set by the market. You're free to live somewhere more progressive like Seattle which has extensive Transit Village designated areas with no parking minimums. Many suburbs are getting more urban, like Walnut Creek has the BART/Transit Village specific plan where parking has Good(TM) regulations. Choice often is abhorrent to people though, for whatever reason.
The thing is, I don't think cul-de-sacs are actually safer for kids. See here, where an academic study shows that more sprawl is associated with higher pedestrian fatality rates. Note that the study corrects for "pedestrian exposure." This is because in absolute numbers, more pedestrian fatalities happen in cities and inner suburbs, but adjusted for the number of people on the street, your likelihood of being killed in a suburban area when walking is much higher than being killed in an urban area.
I have never lived in a city or urban area and I don't remember hearing of anyone being run down in any neighborhoods I Iived. Your theory is flawed.
There are not as many car accidents; how can there be more pedestrians struck down by cars? The chances of being shot are nil compared to living in dense urban areas even though people out in the burbs are better armed. Maybe we have more sense.
I have never lived in a city or urban area and I don't remember hearing of anyone being run down in any neighborhoods I Iived. Your theory is flawed.
There are not as many car accidents; how can there be more pedestrians struck down by cars? The chances of being shot are nil compared to living in dense urban areas even though people out in the burbs are better armed. Maybe we have more sense.
Generally they're looking at rates relative to pedestrian activity. Suburban environments often aren't well designed and much like anyone who rides a motorcycle or bicycle knows, there's safety in numbers. It's the culmination of factors that makes many suburbs pretty bad places to be a pedestrian. Pedestrians are rare so people aren't looking out for them even with the best practical design, and speeds are higher. Of course, what usually gets brushed over is that generally it's the pedestrian at fault in pedestrian/auto accidents. As bad as the driving is in this country, the pedestrian-ing is even worse. Just today I was on a busy thoroughfare, eight-lanes and a 45 mph speed limit and there's a lady crossing in the middle of the street with two young children and a stroller while there's a crosswalk 50 feet away. Bicyclists ride the wrong way on the road waiting for a gap in traffic to shoot across eight lanes of traffic and hop the median without much regard to the fact they're causing cars to brake sharply to avoid running them over.
Development has nothing to do with free market because the government subsidizes roads. This is true, to a degree although not so much as you'd think. It's also not like urban areas don't have roads, although maybe less lane miles per capita than suburban areas. But then urban areas usually have government subsidized transit. In most of the country, transit is subsidized to the tune of about 80%. Something like Muni costs $860/yr for a pass but the taxpayer picks up another $3,200.
For the most part, of course, the market still dictates.If you don't want to live somewhere, don't live there. If you're unhappy with the public policies, go live somewhere else where they're more to your liking. Mostly it's the people who live in San Francisco paying for transit and roads in San Francisco. Somewhere like Alameda county (Oakland and Dublin/Pleasanton) it's slightly more complex as roads get a lot of funding from sales taxes. It's only slightly more complicated because the money more or less goes back out to local governments about the same as it comes in, at least for the road portion of the sales tax. The transit portion, however, mostly goes Oakland as it's based on ridership and Oakland has much higher transit usage than Pleasanton hence it gets a disproportionate share of the sales taxes collected and the suburbs are in fact subsidizing the urban rather than the other way around.
It pretty much boils down to pretty simply. If a subsidy is for something I like, it's good; if the subsidy is for something I don't like, it's bad. Road subsidies are bad. Transit subsidies and Redevelopment are good. Same holds true for regulations. If regulations are for something I like, say sidewalks or TOD, then regulations are good. If regulations are something I don't like, setbacks or parking minimums, they're bad. Of course, again, that's mostly set by the market. You're free to live somewhere more progressive like Seattle which has extensive Transit Village designated areas with no parking minimums. Many suburbs are getting more urban, like Walnut Creek has the BART/Transit Village specific plan where parking has Good(TM) regulations. Choice often is abhorrent to people though, for whatever reason.
Red: I agree, and it's often more expensive to live in cities because of the higher demand and lower supply quality urban neighborhoods.
Blue: It's not that simple. For example, there is a very small part of NE Ohio where one could live comfortably without a car. And I may move there someday. But, if I can't move there, for whatever reason, I will want to stay in NE Ohio for other reasons: my family is here, my job is here, I like the climate, I like the landscape, etc. etc.
Are you talking about brand new tract housing or any type of tract housing development built since the dawn of mankind? Because my current home is in a tract ... built in 1926. I assure you my neighborhood is quite walkable, built in a grid, and quite connected. The only garbage around here is in the 70-gallon totes behind everyone's garage.
I know of plenty of tract homes built in the 50s that are in very desirable neighborhoods; same with developments built in the 70s through the 90s.
Not to mention the millennials who are moving into 1920s tract housing by the droves.
You can't go painting one type of housing with the same brush. There's something your generation has yet to learn.
Now looking into the future.... these subdivisions decrease walkability. Instead of potentially walking 20 yards to the main road, you may have to walk through you're entire subdivision to get there. My generation, the millennials, love living in a place that is walkable, authentic, and has a good sense of community. As we get more buying power and buy as close as we can to the city center, will the tract subdivisions turn into the ghetto? We are already seeing "inner-city" ghettos being gentrified significantly. With the price of homes near the city rising significantly, I can only see those thousands of p.o.s. tract housing developments turn into ghettos. Then how do we fix it? The streets and pipes are already laid out.
Can't we go back to basic grid neighborhoods?
Do you guys agree? If not, please convince me I'm wrong.
I grew up in a 1950s-60s-70s subdivision with curvilinear streets unconnected to anything else, accessible only by car, no sidewalks and unwalkable. I hated it then, and determined I would not live in a place like that as an adult. I couldn't quite afford as old, and walkable of a neighborhood as I wanted, but I got some of it: sidewalks, street trees, garages in back, small lots. The only thing it lacks is neighborhood serving commercial.
As far as the comment "It was created by government regulation", the government is people! I love how some of you socialists (I believe you are a self-proclaimed socialist) want to give developers free-rein to do what they want (free market), while someone with an "inner libertarian" like me wants to pull in the reins a little.
As Nei pointed out, I was countering someone making a libertarian argument against "liberal" urban planning. Land usage regulations in the U.S. are neither conservative or liberal (in the U.S. sense) - rather they tend to provide privilege to existing homeowners to say what their neighbors can and cannot do with their property.
You are correct, I am a socialist. But I'm not the sort of socialist who wants everything to be determined by state planning. I actually don't disagree with the findings that markets are generally a more efficient way to provide for many demands of citizens (with some notable exceptions, like healthcare, education, pensions, etc). My issue with capitalism is the exploitation of the employer/employee relationship. Regardless, as we've discussed multiple times, since urban areas which are similar to suburban ones in general desirable factors (e.g., low crime, good schools) are always far more expensive suggests that there is a shortage of supply of urban environments - that there is pent up demand.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TN2HSV
Well, duh!!! That's because those neighborhoods were established before automobiles were mainstream! Had nothing to do with gov't involvement or lack thereof. Everything was close-together and in close proximity b/c what takes us 20 days now in a car would have taken all day back then! Many people alive during that time lived their entire lives within a 50-100 mile radius of where they were born. That sounds absurd to us today, but it was very common back then.
When cars became more prevalent, people had the freedom to go out, push boundaries, explore & settle in new areas they had never seen before. I guess it's the American frontier spirit...just like the settlers who kept moving West.
People don't like to be fenced in.....literally, or figuratively.
Of course, AFAIK there is no country which has absolutely no zoning today, so it's hard to say what the "natural" outcome would be. But if you compare autocentric suburbia virtually anywhere else in the world, you see things like driveways, attached garages, and often somewhat similar housing styles. You don't tend to see large-lot suburbia though. Which makes sense, because in the U.S. large-lot suburbia was forced on developers by the formerly rural towns who wanted to ensure things didn't get too congested.
Quote:
Originally Posted by armory
I have never lived in a city or urban area and I don't remember hearing of anyone being run down in any neighborhoods I Iived. Your theory is flawed.
There are not as many car accidents; how can there be more pedestrians struck down by cars? The chances of being shot are nil compared to living in dense urban areas even though people out in the burbs are better armed. Maybe we have more sense.
Are you seriously countering an academic study with personal anecdote? Really?
Malloric explained this already, but I'll give another analogue. In any city, the highest absolute numbers of crimes tend to happen in/around the Central Business District. Yet the CBD is usually not the least safe neighborhood. This is because it has a high absolute number of people who are there working or passing through on any given day. Hence your likelihood of being a victim of a crime if you happen to be there is very low. Higher numbers, but lower percentages basically.
You are correct, I am a socialist. But I'm not the sort of socialist who wants everything to be determined by state planning. I actually don't disagree with the findings that markets are generally a more efficient way to provide for many demands of citizens (with some notable exceptions, like healthcare, education, pensions, etc). My issue with capitalism is the exploitation of the employer/employee relationship. Regardless, as we've discussed multiple times, since urban areas which are similar to suburban ones in general desirable factors (e.g., low crime, good schools) are always far more expensive suggests that there is a shortage of supply of urban environments - that there is pent up demand.
As an aside, using a self-description of "socialist" seems to lead to confusion as different people have different ideas on how extreme "socialist" means. George Orwell's conception of socialism included such political goals as most land and productive goods owned by the state and maximum income
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It's hard to determine what form is in demand — in reality, people choose among many other factor than neighborhood form. But calling an arrangement where much of a city's area is limited to single family detached home or large lots is hardly a free or unregulated market.
As an aside, using a self-description of "socialist" seems to lead to confusion as different people have different ideas on how extreme "socialist" means. George Orwell's conception of socialism included such political goals as most land and productive goods owned by the state and maximum income
It's been a good many years since I've read Marx, but I don't recall anything about centralized state planning in the Communist Manifesto or Capital. Socialized ownership of the means of production yes. Also the concept of "production for use" rather than profit. But even though the Soviet system developed central planning of the economy, there was nothing within orthodox Marxism that required it. And of course Marxism isn't the be all end all of socialism.
We've talked about "woonerfs" before. An interesting topic. The last link was a relatively evidence-free fluff piece from Salon.
We've also talked about a lot of this stuff before. Zoning has been around for 99 years. Euclidean zoning legal definition of Euclidean zoning "Following the lead of New York City, which passed the first major zoning ordinance in 1916, most urban communities throughout the country have enacted zoning regulations."
As far as the comment "It was created by government regulation", the government is people! I love how some of you socialists (I believe you are a self-proclaimed socialist) want to give developers free-rein to do what they want (free market), while someone with an "inner libertarian" like me wants to pull in the reins a little.
Houston has no zoning code and they have suburbs there. Noone told those developers how to build those suburbs or told people they had to buy there.
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