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You just ADMITTED that people don't prefer apartments but that they SETTLE for them as a compromise, so they can live near things they want.
At least in the United States (a place you've never even been to - a place where I've lived my entire life) over and over and over again you will see that when people have the opportunity to CHOOSE they overwhelmingly choose single family detached houses. But of course it's often unfeasible to choose that kind of dwelling, and they end up in flats, rowhouses, duplexes, triple-deckers, etc. What makes it unfeasible? Mostly, cost. Other than lower Manhattan, if you've got enough money you can have a SFH pretty much anywhere in the US.
But don't mistake what people do as a compromise with their real-world finances, with what they prefer.
I don't know how many times I wrote this here, but I never denied the general dislike for apartment living for the majority of people. However things are more complicated than "people dislike density". Most people also want the benefits of density, such as benefiting from urban infrastructure and entertainment. Obviously as a matter of fact, most Americans do live in urban areas voluntarily. And they are trying to do so by cramping their single family home into an urban area, to have quick access to the city, while having their dream house. And this is the conflict and contradiction between the American love and dislike for density.
The problem is, that this compromise between urban living and big houses increases housing costs and leads to car dependent non walkable urban environments.
Saying that people should move to Manhattan I find very much less convincing than saying to accept private property rights of landowners who want to build apartments on their own property. If you don't like that, maybe you should move to the countryside instead. That's just fair to say.
Urban planning is not some nefarious plot to force those who don't want to live in cities to live in them. But it does seek to reshape the urban environments we do have to make them friendlier for those who either cannot or would rather not drive.
Our suburbs are urban, not rural, environments. They don't function as well as they could because we try to have it both ways.* And that doesn't necessarily mean apartment towers everywhere. It could be smaller lots and a lattice of streets rather than a dendritic (tree-like) street network. It could be legal granny flats or accessory apartments in existing houses or on their lots. It does mean commercial centers aligned around streets and intersections rather than ringed by lakes of parking along some six-lane arterial highway.
IF you look at the kinds of built environments the Congress for the New Urbanism crowd advocates for, you will find they look more like small towns than like Hong Kong. Ever read the CNU's explanation of its reason for being? You could say they want to go back to the future. The defenders of and apologists for the autocentric status quo like to portray them as wanting to force everyone into high-rises, but nothing could be further from the truth — that accusation is a canard.
*I've been known to say that "by 'moving to the country,' suburbanites destroy the thing they seek."
"Autocentric"...there's that pressure to move inward I speak of. Take away the ability for people to live an autocentric life if they choose to, or make it much more difficult for them, and what options are they left with?
There is definitely an aspect of urban planning that centers around pressuring people to live a more urban lifestyle. Many of us like our rural, exurban and suburban lifestyles. If urban planning would concentrate more on making existing cities better for those who choose to live in them and less about trying to engineer a society that makes life more difficult for those who choose to live in a different environment it would be a lot more interesting and productive endeavor. Try to draw people to cities by making them great places to live instead of pressuring folks in to them by making other choices more cumbersome. You'll still get people who prefer the countryside but you'll also draw some people in as well, people with enthusiasm instead of people motivated by outside stresses. Who wants reluctant neighbors?
If you really want to take my car away or make it more difficult for me to have one I'm not open to moving to a city but I am maybe open to something like jet packs and helicopters. Or those awesome ornithopter things from the Dune movies.
Oh and when it comes to back yards mine gets a lot of use with kids playing, backyard barbecues and campfires and just sitting next to the koi pond with a coffee and a newspaper. I guess a cell phone nowadays.
"Autocentric"...there's that pressure to move inward I speak of. Take away the ability for people to live an autocentric life if they choose to, or make it much more difficult for them, and what options are they left with?
There is definitely an aspect of urban planning that centers around pressuring people to live a more urban lifestyle. Many of us like our rural, exurban and suburban lifestyles. If urban planning would concentrate more on making existing cities better for those who choose to live in them and less about trying to engineer a society that makes life more difficult for those who choose to live in a different environment it would be a lot more interesting and productive endeavor. Try to draw people to cities by making them great places to live instead of pressuring folks in to them by making other choices more cumbersome. You'll still get people who prefer the countryside but you'll also draw some people in as well, people with enthusiasm instead of people motivated by outside stresses. Who wants reluctant neighbors?
If you really want to take my car away or make it more difficult for me to have one I'm not open to moving to a city but I am maybe open to something like jet packs and helicopters. Or those awesome ornithopter things from the Dune movies.
Oh and when it comes to back yards mine gets a lot of use with kids playing, backyard barbecues and campfires and just sitting next to the koi pond with a coffee and a newspaper. I guess a cell phone nowadays.
The other way around, people are pressured into an autocentric lifestyle i.e. by NIMBYs. R1 zoning, minimum setbacks, minimum parking requirements or road planning are forcible government policies that force people into an autocentric lifestyle. It's also a good way for the government to track you down by forcing you to put a number plate on your vehicle. Single family homes are also very good at locating where people do live. There is no escape in alleyways or tunnels. Anonymous lifestyle is impossible in low density areas, where all suspicious activity is reported by neighbors. It's impossible to have a walk in a neighborhood you are not living in yourself without being watched very well by others. If there is going to be a police state, the American suburban lifestyle is a perfect fit. There is also a cultural authoritarian/totalitarian aspect of it, as we have seen in the movie "The Truman Show".
"Autocentric"...there's that pressure to move inward I speak of. Take away the ability for people to live an autocentric life if they choose to, or make it much more difficult for them, and what options are they left with?
There is definitely an aspect of urban planning that centers around pressuring people to live a more urban lifestyle. Many of us like our rural, exurban and suburban lifestyles. If urban planning would concentrate more on making existing cities better for those who choose to live in them and less about trying to engineer a society that makes life more difficult for those who choose to live in a different environment it would be a lot more interesting and productive endeavor. Try to draw people to cities by making them great places to live instead of pressuring folks in to them by making other choices more cumbersome. You'll still get people who prefer the countryside but you'll also draw some people in as well, people with enthusiasm instead of people motivated by outside stresses. Who wants reluctant neighbors?
If you really want to take my car away or make it more difficult for me to have one I'm not open to moving to a city but I am maybe open to something like jet packs and helicopters. Or those awesome ornithopter things from the Dune movies.
Oh and when it comes to back yards mine gets a lot of use with kids playing, backyard barbecues and campfires and just sitting next to the koi pond with a coffee and a newspaper. I guess a cell phone nowadays.
Did you read the middle paragraphs of my post?
You're making a common mistake status quo defenders make, and it's one that I will grant the attitudes of my philosophical ally Stadtmensch might lead one to conclude.
And it's this: Your response rests on an assumption that unless the built environment is shaped so that everyone must drive, it will be impossible for anyone to drive at all.
I don't know how familiar you are with the 19th-century railroad suburbs found near most of the large cities of the Northeast, or early Auto Age developments like Radburn, N.J., or Kansas City's Country Club Plaza, or for that matter most American small towns founded before the Depression.
Save for the Country Club Plaza, which is ringed by high-rise apartment towers and shorter multi-unit buildings, all of these places consist of single-family detached homes either exclusively or predominantly. All of them are also either designed to accommodate automobiles or can accommodate them easily despite their not having become widely used when the towns were laid out. And all of them are also easily navigable on foot, and in a manner where the resident or visitor on foot isn't risking their lives by walking.
I include the Plaza in this group because it's a planned regional shopping center — the nation's oldest, now 103 years old. However, it's knit into the fabric of the city's street grid rather than surrounded by a sea of parking along a six-lane highway or two. Even so, it's not jammed with auto traffic, even though just about everyone who gets to it does so in a car (several city bus routes also serve it; that was how I got to it from the other side of the city when I was too young to drive).
Some of the things both Stadtmensch and I have mentioned here — eliminating "R1" zoning (which limits development to single-family detached homes exclusively), building new developments around a lattice of streets rather than tree-like cul-de-sacs branching off of a trunk*, allowing accessory apartments — or other changes like reducing the width of main roads (which would be possible if we had lattices of some sort that allowed for the existence of other through routes), requiring sidewalks on at least one side of every street, and so on — would make it easier to build truly walkable places yet would not require you to give up your car.
You've probably also heard me reference the "neighborhood unit principle" in these discussions. This concept was first introduced to the planning lexicon by a fellow named Clarence Perry in 1929. As outlined in the Urban Land Institute's 1948 Community Builders Handbook, it includes just about all the features I have commented on positively above: it has a density gradient, a gridded street network (with main roads on the edges), a mix of apartments and single-family homes organized around a commercial center. Nothing about that would make you give up your car. And while I suspect it's less dense than Stadtmensch would like because he considers the more compact cities of Germany superior in plan to those of the United States (a place whose vastness lets us waste land without much penalty), it's still dense enough to make walking from place to place practical.
You can see an illustration of a "neighborhood unit" in this Robert Fishman essay on J.C. Nichols, the Kansas City-based developer of the Plaza, co-founder of the ULI and principal editor of the Community Builders Handbook.**
*I do find it amusing that the development in Tempe, Ariz., that bills itself as "the first car-free community in America" was built by a company that calls itself Culdesac. But: even doing things like building pedestrian paths between cul-de-sacs — a practice I've seen in some developments from the 1950s and 1960s — also makes a suburban neighborhood more walkable and (with proper placement of schools) would cut down on the need to bus kids to school in so many places.
**Nichols was also an ardent promoter of racially restrictive covenants, the real estate industry's effort to create American apartheid by other means after the legal means of doing so was closed off by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1917. Because of this, the City of Kansas City has removed Nichols' name from the fountain at the entrance to the Country Club Plaza and the boulevard leading to that entrance from the north, with the blessing of Nichols' descendants.
building new developments around a lattice of streets rather than tree-like cul-de-sacs branching off of a trunk...reducing the width of main roads (which would be possible if we had lattices of some sort that allowed for the existence of other through routes)....
That's a TERRIBLE idea. You really want high speed traffic roaring through your residential neighborhood twice a day at rush hour? That's why you have cul-de-sacs in the FIRST place!
In my neighhorhood, two streets serve as a cut-through to avoid a traffic light. From 4;30 to 6:00 pm it's simply impossible to walk along those two streets due to a constant stream of cars at 30 mph cutting through. The best thing the city could do for the health of my neighborhood would be to put up barriers to our neighborhood to eliminate that cut-through, but they won't do it because we don't have the right pull at City Hall.
Even when used from time to time here and there, the utility of mostly empty lawn is disproportionate to the wasted space. This wasn't an attack against your private lawn and I am sure you are using it for barbecuing as well, but I am more broadly speaking. If what you tell me is true and you do live in some of these older neighborhoods, your lawn is probably more efficient than the average one.
It is not up to you to judge how people use their yards. We use ours for hours per day playing with our dogs. Our yard is large, so our Belgian Malinois has plenty of room to run around off leash without having to worry about other dogs or other people.
That's a TERRIBLE idea. You really want high speed traffic roaring through your residential neighborhood twice a day at rush hour? That's why you have cul-de-sacs in the FIRST place!
In my neighhorhood, two streets serve as a cut-through to avoid a traffic light. From 4;30 to 6:00 pm it's simply impossible to walk along those two streets due to a constant stream of cars at 30 mph cutting through. The best thing the city could do for the health of my neighborhood would be to put up barriers to our neighborhood to eliminate that cut-through, but they won't do it because we don't have the right pull at City Hall.
And here's the problem: While I understand the source of your objections, every time you respond, you seem to find nothing that you might could live with. There's always something wrong, and you started with the opposite extreme, which I've attempted to show you isn't necessarily what must happen.
Did you look at any of the links I've provided?
BTW, maybe a delicious irony here: Stadtmensch mentioned the movie "The Truman Show" above as evidence of what's wrong with American suburbia. Perhaps it's a commentary on the CNU, then, that the town that served as the "stage set" for that movie was Seaside, Fla., a neotraditionally planned community along American Small Town lines, designed by husband-and-wife architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, two of the co-founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism. How much do you know about Seaside?
Also: Two words: Speed cushions. They've become quite popular as traffic-calming devices on residential side streets in Philadelphia, and there are even some on the higher-speed (30 mph) thoroughfares. (I live on a block with a school on it — I'm across the street from the school — and all four of the streets surrounding the school got speed cushions, in keeping with Philadelphia Streets Department policy, which now calls for speed cushions on every street around a school. I suspect this street is a little denser than you'd like and not as dense as Stadtmensch might want, but it checks off all of the boxes I've mentioned above as far as walkability is concerned. And parking isn't much of a problem, either, thanks to many residents who, like me, do not own cars. I do have a driver's license, however; if I need to use a car for some errand or trip, I can book a car share — there are several Zipcars parked at nearby locations — or rent a car for longer-distance or multi-day travel.)
One more question: Does that street have sidewalks? One could walk along it at any time of the day if it did.
Edited to add: Oops! Ignore my first paragraph and most of the questions I've asked here. I thought I was responding to Toxic Waltz. You definitely lean towards the current status quo but don't strike me as completely opposed to modifications to it. My last question, however, remains valid. And what would you say to the idea of pedestrian paths connecting cul-de-sacs?
Last edited by MarketStEl; Yesterday at 11:22 AM..
Also: Two words: Speed cushions. They've become quite popular as traffic-calming devices on residential side streets in Philadelphia, and there are even some on the higher-speed (30 mph) thoroughfares. (I live on a block with a school on it — I'm across the street from the school — and all four of the streets surrounding the school got speed cushions, in keeping with Philadelphia Streets Department policy, which now calls for speed cushions on every street around a school. I suspect this street is a little denser than you'd like and not as dense as Stadtmensch might want, but it checks off all of the boxes I've mentioned above as far as walkability is concerned. And parking isn't much of a problem, either, thanks to many residents who, like me, do not own cars. I do have a driver's license, however; if I need to use a car for some errand or trip, I can book a car share — there are several Zipcars parked at nearby locations — or rent a car for longer-distance or multi-day travel.)
One more question: Does that street have sidewalks? One could walk along it at any time of the day if it did.
...You definitely lean towards the current status quo but don't strike me as completely opposed to modifications to it. My last question, however, remains valid. And what would you say to the idea of pedestrian paths connecting cul-de-sacs?
People in my neighborhood have tried on multiple occasions to have speed bumps put in but to no avail. Yes, there are sidewalks - but only on the north-south streets, which of course is just nutty; I have no idea why there aren't sidewalks on the east-west streets, especially since this subdivision was built right at the end of a streetcar line and the logical walking path for people coming from the streetcar stop would have been down those east-west streets. However, in 1939 there was no money for much of anything so that's probably where it got started, then after the war the streetcars were shut down.
At any rate, you still have to cross the street which is troublesome when there's a constant stream of cars at 30 mph, even if you can walk along a sidewalk for most of the way.
Yes, there should be walking paths connecting cul-de-sacs. Of course there's enormous variation from one subdivision to the next but I have the general impression this is quite common, at least to leave a little easement between houses at the end of any dead end street. After all the utility companies have to be able to get back there. We haven't lived in a lot of cul-de-sac areas but when we have, there's almost always been such an easement every few houses. It's a pretty minor matter to throw down some gravel for a path.
My real objections are to the way increased density is promoted as a panacea for eveything that's wrong with American cities, and at least some of the promoters on this forum simply refuse to acknowledge the negatives that come along with more people in less space - more noise, more congestion, crime, increased difficulty in getting people to keep their homes maintained, increased demand on all city services, and so on.
Their fantasy of a Norman Rockwell neighborhood where you've got shops on the ground floor and apartments above with happy cheerful big Italian families and the kids playing stickball in the street and everyone's just hap hap happy all day long is something that never even existed when it did. You know, there's a reason why the very INSTANT that US homebuilding capacity caught up to demand after the war, all the GIs enthusiastically used the GI Bill to buy - not apartments in central cities! no, they ran out as fast as they could to buy SINGLE FAMILY HOUSES on separate lots. Why? They'd had a bellyfull of boarding houses apartments and army barracks and they wanted to have a place of their own, no shared walls, a yard, a garden, place for kids to play OUT of the street, etc., etc.,etc.
Now, 80 years down the road, the revisionists and neo-urbanists are trying to tell us those people were all brainwashed and had it all wrong, that they would have been far happier moving into apartments, riding the streetcars, and living over the barbershop. Well, maybe they WEREN'T stupid. Maybe they DID know what was going to make them happier with their housing. Now we're even seeing Stadt-uber-alles-guy ADMITTING that in the US people prefer the single family house to the apartment; but he's got a new set of intellectual backflips to account for that.
Look, I'm not unaware of reality here. I understand that with continued population growth, environmental degradation, inflation, etc., people are going to be living more crowded in the future. And I know that people in the highly crowded apartment blocks, rowhouses, etc., of the future will still make ways to have fulfilling lives. But don't try tell people that moving from a world where the standard is the detached single family house with two cars, to a world where the standard is a flat or rowhouse with subways and streetcars, will be an IMPROVEMENT in the standard of living. That's just lying to people, and people don't like being served weenies and being told it's steak. If you can't afford steak and all you can afford is weenies, fine, call it weenies and be honest about it.
That's a TERRIBLE idea. You really want high speed traffic roaring through your residential neighborhood twice a day at rush hour? That's why you have cul-de-sacs in the FIRST place!
In my neighhorhood, two streets serve as a cut-through to avoid a traffic light. From 4;30 to 6:00 pm it's simply impossible to walk along those two streets due to a constant stream of cars at 30 mph cutting through. The best thing the city could do for the health of my neighborhood would be to put up barriers to our neighborhood to eliminate that cut-through, but they won't do it because we don't have the right pull at City Hall.
So you realize, that traffic is a problem, but by promoting a car dependent lifestyle you are contributing to the problem yourself. It's a circle. However even in connected streets there is a distinction between busy main streets and calm side streets.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WRM20
It is not up to you to judge how people use their yards. We use ours for hours per day playing with our dogs. Our yard is large, so our Belgian Malinois has plenty of room to run around off leash without having to worry about other dogs or other people.
I can judge whatever I want. It's called free speech. It seems that some Americans need lessons about constitutional rights such as property rights (e.g. the right to build an apartment complex on your own property) and other fundamental unalienable rights.
Yards are government population control. By living in detached single family homes with yards as opportunity to spend much of your time there, you have created clearly identifiable personal locations, the government can find any person much more easily at any time, as contrary to finding people who are spending time in crowded public areas such as parks.
That said, yards are pretty useless for the most part, not entirely, but most of the space is never fully utilized. Yes, this is a fact, wherever you like this fact or not is irrelevant to the matter of the fact. 20% of Americans own a dog. Even if everyone of them would live in an urban area, the vast majority doesn't need giant laws for their dogs. And the majority of Americans also never hold barbeques that utilize the full 23,301 square feet of lawn.
People in my neighborhood have tried on multiple occasions to have speed bumps put in but to no avail. Yes, there are sidewalks - but only on the north-south streets, which of course is just nutty; I have no idea why there aren't sidewalks on the east-west streets, especially since this subdivision was built right at the end of a streetcar line and the logical walking path for people coming from the streetcar stop would have been down those east-west streets. However, in 1939 there was no money for much of anything so that's probably where it got started, then after the war the streetcars were shut down.
At any rate, you still have to cross the street which is troublesome when there's a constant stream of cars at 30 mph, even if you can walk along a sidewalk for most of the way.
Yes, there should be walking paths connecting cul-de-sacs. Of course there's enormous variation from one subdivision to the next but I have the general impression this is quite common, at least to leave a little easement between houses at the end of any dead end street. After all the utility companies have to be able to get back there. We haven't lived in a lot of cul-de-sac areas but when we have, there's almost always been such an easement every few houses. It's a pretty minor matter to throw down some gravel for a path.
My real objections are to the way increased density is promoted as a panacea for eveything that's wrong with American cities, and at least some of the promoters on this forum simply refuse to acknowledge the negatives that come along with more people in less space - more noise, more congestion, crime, increased difficulty in getting people to keep their homes maintained, increased demand on all city services, and so on.
Their fantasy of a Norman Rockwell neighborhood where you've got shops on the ground floor and apartments above with happy cheerful big Italian families and the kids playing stickball in the street and everyone's just hap hap happy all day long is something that never even existed when it did. You know, there's a reason why the very INSTANT that US homebuilding capacity caught up to demand after the war, all the GIs enthusiastically used the GI Bill to buy - not apartments in central cities! no, they ran out as fast as they could to buy SINGLE FAMILY HOUSES on separate lots. Why? They'd had a bellyfull of boarding houses apartments and army barracks and they wanted to have a place of their own, no shared walls, a yard, a garden, place for kids to play OUT of the street, etc., etc.,etc.
Now, 80 years down the road, the revisionists and neo-urbanists are trying to tell us those people were all brainwashed and had it all wrong, that they would have been far happier moving into apartments, riding the streetcars, and living over the barbershop. Well, maybe they WEREN'T stupid. Maybe they DID know what was going to make them happier with their housing. Now we're even seeing Stadt-uber-alles-guy ADMITTING that in the US people prefer the single family house to the apartment; but he's got a new set of intellectual backflips to account for that.
Look, I'm not unaware of reality here. I understand that with continued population growth, environmental degradation, inflation, etc., people are going to be living more crowded in the future. And I know that people in the highly crowded apartment blocks, rowhouses, etc., of the future will still make ways to have fulfilling lives. But don't try tell people that moving from a world where the standard is the detached single family house with two cars, to a world where the standard is a flat or rowhouse with subways and streetcars, will be an IMPROVEMENT in the standard of living. That's just lying to people, and people don't like being served weenies and being told it's steak. If you can't afford steak and all you can afford is weenies, fine, call it weenies and be honest about it.
Your basic argument here is correct and accurate, but there's one detail that throws off the narrative a bit:
As both the FHA and VA mortgage guarantee programs were also intended to stimulate housing production, they could only be used to purchase new homes, and I believe that didn't change until sometime around the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. I could be wrong here, but don't think I am as far as the decade of the 1950s is concerned. (Edited to add: Or am I wrong? My parents — one a VA nurse, the other an Army vet — bought an existing house in an east-side Kansas City neighborhood four years before I was born, in 1954. I also think they did get a Federally guaranteed mortgage, or did they? They did get a mortgage, as the neighborhood they bought in at the time was just about all-white and wouldn't have been redlined.)
It might well be the case that had recipients been able to purchase existing homes, they still would have sought out new ones, for Americans, in general, tend to prefer the new over the already there. But I'll wager there might have been some buyers who might have opted to buy in a neighborhood they already knew.
One of the points I try to make here is that more density doesn't mean apartments for everyone (that seems to be what Stadtmensch argues, and I'm not even sure he totally argues for that, for many of those German cities have lots of single-family houses as well; they just tend to be either attached to their neighbors or on smaller lots). I will concede this to your argument, though: Even a rowhouse with a front and back yard would be seen as a step down in the eyes of many suburbanites. But would a block like the one I live on be similarly regarded?
Last edited by MarketStEl; Yesterday at 01:01 PM..
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