1213
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Poggervania@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago

Might be a silly question, but would it be better if we somehow turned suburbs into being more akin to rural towns? Like the suburbs could maybe have nearby town centers that they could walk to in 10-15 minutes that would allow small businesses to operate in.

I don’t live on the mainland, so no idea how it actually works.

[-] Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Absolutely. Back in the day before the car, even rural towns were built fairly densely, typically around a train station. They had to be, because you had to be able to walk everywhere in town, and the train was the main way to get in and out of town. Even to this day, many streetcar suburbs exist, where they had lain out a streetcar line radiating from the city center into the countryside and built mid-density along it. Many of these suburbs exist to this day, and they are often dense, walkable, transit-oriented, highly desirable, while not being anything so dense as Manhattan.

This style of development has been made literally illegal in most of North America through restrictive zoning codes, parking minimums, setback requirements, and other local regulations.

If we just made a return to traditional ways of building communities, our cities and towns and suburbs would all be vastly more human-centric than they are today.

[-] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I can't see the NYT article, it's behind a paywall, or maybe just an email wall, I dunno, but I find it hard to believe that "most" of America restricts density. I live in NJ and density is almost a must these days, we've essentially developed everywhere. Even the towns with multimillion dollar homes are being forced to accept density.

Personally, the solution needs to be tax land higher. You want your 2 acre property? You're gonna pay for it. And that money will be used to help keep housing affordable.

[-] Slimy_hog@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

You live in one of the most dense parts of the country. Go West and you'll see more single family homes and WAY WAY WAY less density

[-] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

For sure, agreed. But there's so much goddamn land and so few people. It's not like the sprawling suburbia of NJ. I just don't know that we can apply the same standard, or what the value would be for doing so. It makes sense along the northeast corridor. Land is valuable, and it's a great place to live, and in an effort to keep things affordable we can apply density. Out west, in states that, when I look at a map, I need to really think about what state it is, I don't know that the density is as necessary. And where it is necessary, cities exist. But I'll admit, I've been to St. Louis once, but probably nowhere else within maybe 250 miles of it, so it's a mystery to me.

I'm not even sure what I'm talking about anymore, I've lost the point.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
1213 points (86.7% liked)

Fuck Cars

9368 readers
313 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS