
A Low-Cost Solution to Traffic - jseliger
http://www.governing.com/columns/urban-notebook/gov-traffic-housing-sun-belt.html
======
aetherson
I'd like to see a little more from new urbanists than for them to endlessly
restate their thesis. Yes, okay, we've now seen the 1,000th reiteration of the
idea that dense mixed use residential/commercial developments have a number of
advantages.

How do we actually get there? Is "just" changing zoning actually enough? Is
there a case study? Over what time-frame? With what downsides?

NIMBYism isn't a magical spell cast by Satan: it's an organic outgrowth of
people's incentives. What is the way around it? I don't believe that then
1,001st reiteration of the advantages of mixed use developments is the answer.
What kind of compromises work to keep NIMBYism from obstructing all of these
developments?

~~~
galdosdi
For god's sakes, just let property owners do what they want with their
property (within limits of safety). If they want to keep it empty or a small 1
family house, let them, and don't let their neighbors or city government bully
them into building larger. If they want to build (or sell to someone who will
build) a large apartment building, let them do that too.

You'll gradually get more density and less traffic this way over time,
assuming that's what people want (and if it's not, they'll get what they want
instead)

The root of the problem is the impulse to be disgusted by your neighbor's
choices, and wishing to harness violent force (government rules) to force your
neighbor to conform to your wishes. Enough already.

~~~
mjevans
Sure, but also TAX the property based on it's /potential/ value.

A land owner close to where the city is now shouldn't be able to squat on that
land at the cost of the opportunity it can provide to the neighborhood(s)
around it.

~~~
wozniacki
Please elaborate.

Should we also TAX vacant or idle storefronts that seem to have zero foot
traffic any given hour of any given day? (SF seems to have dozens of those
every city block. One wonders if those are some kind of fronts for illicit
activities. They seem to never change ownership even with skyrocketing rents
for office space nearby.)

Should a street level business that serves a large number of residents, get
TAX BREAKS? Like a grocery store that vends fresh produce as opposed to a
boutique book store that specializes in first editions?

Should they also get favorable lease terms, mandated by the city?

Should businesses that, by nature, serve out of town-ers be forced to move to
designated neighborhoods?

Should empty storefronts be forced to take up tenants who could serve the
needs of the residents?

Is TAXING even the solution to any of these problems?

~~~
mistermann
It's probably very complicated, but I would answer yes to many of these
questions. I think it would be worthwhile investigating a model where every
home has a mini-grocery _with affordable prices_ within 2 blocks of every home
in these neighborhoods - and to achieve affordable prices, there may have to
be some tax breaks involved, with some accompanying price limits on "staples"
(bread, milk, etc). Difficult, yes; impossible, no; worth it, I think so.

~~~
adrianN
Come to cities in Germany. Everwhere I lived the next supermarket was less
than fifteen minutes walking away. Price and density are inveresly
proportional.

------
ryanobjc
The problem is zoning. If zoning didn't outlaw the type of cities they are
describing, then perhaps it would happen.

This is why people are now becoming skeptical of new construction, new
neighborhoods in the Bay Area. For a San Francisco example, check out the new
mission bay developments. The area still feels dangerous and empty. Not enough
realistic businesses - there is no legitimate reason to be on the street,
other than wanting to 'hang out' in public spaces.

Once Mission Bay becomes a nightlife draw, with a mix of uses - like the
Castro or Polk for example - then it will be an example of something done
well. Until then, nope.

~~~
jessriedel
Does anyone know why we never see new apartment and office building with shops
on the street level? This seems like the most natural configuration for dense
city, and SF has quite a bit of land specifically zoned in this way. See the
orange regions here:

[https://williamhe4planning.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/sf_ci...](https://williamhe4planning.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/sf_citywide_zoning_map_jan2013.jpg)

But almost all modern buildings I've seen, both residential and commercial,
have huge lobbies. This means the shops are very thinly distributed at street-
level, even in downtown areas with tall skyscrapers.

~~~
chrismealy
New buildings tend to have boring street-levle commercial spaces (banks,
tanning salons, etc) because the underground parking requires ramps at street
level, and that makes the shops shallow. Interesting businesses generally need
a fair amount of space back (like old buildings all have). Basically if you
build for cars you're going to lose pedestrian amenities.

~~~
jessriedel
This may be a contributing factor, especially in places where they are
building small apartment building and each has a garage, but I don't think
it's a dominant factor.

First, a couple of ramps that go underground is really not that much space in
the footing of a big tower. I see old neighborhoods with lots of shops that
nevertheless have underground garages. Second, I don't think shops are that
deep. New city blocks, especially hosting skyscrapers, are much deeper than
the typical blocks in (say) the West Village. Those shops seem to do fine with
very little floorspace.

------
brudgers
'Building Cities' is a non-trivial activity that occurs on a time scale such
that by the time it's substantially implemented driving won't mean what it
means today. Suburbia is not so much a response to poor planning as a reaction
to the mechanization of agriculture that sparked a demographic shift from
rural to 'urban' living.

Mechanization meant that a minimal family farms became approximately an order
of magnitude larger (from 1/4 section of 160 acres to a couple of sections and
>1000 acres). Along with all those farmers the shopkeepers had to find
someplace in the city too. Automobiles encouraged the migration by making it
easier to relocate off the farm.

Cities had not planned for that influx. Or for cars. Moreover, cities were
increasingly discouraging tenements...with sound scientific reasoning. The
suburbs were about the only quick fix. Cities take a long time and a lot of
money to build. It also costs more in political capital and financial capital
than building roads...multiple jurisdictions will float bonds for
transportation infrastructure versus multiple private interests that must
agree for many modestly scaled real-estate development
projects...[https://nypost.com/2014/09/19/nyc-church-bags-71m-for-air-
ov...](https://nypost.com/2014/09/19/nyc-church-bags-71m-for-air-over-
steeple/)

In the past couple of years, I've started thinking about real-estate in terms
of monopolies. Locations are not fungible and control of a parcel is an
absolute but localized monopoly. What suburbia does is disrupt (or maybe
bypass do to the locality) entrenched monopolies. Forty minute commutes are
somewhat fungible. Boxes made of ticky-tacky are also somewhat fungible. Chain
retail is very much fungible.

~~~
omegaworks
The expressway + car infrastructure to support suburban development was not
cheap. It was in no ways organic. It was supported by the FHA's race-based
redlining policies and banks that gave loans in the post-war era to white GIs
to build homes in white-only suburbs.

[http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-12-18/site/ct-per-
fl...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-12-18/site/ct-per-flash-
expressways-0218-20111218_1_southwest-expressway-dan-ryan-expressway-
construction)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining)

>Moreover, cities were increasingly discouraging tenements...with sound
scientific reasoning.

Please cite said "scientific" reasoning.

~~~
Spooky23
That's a tail wagging the dog issue.

Cars revolutionized society in a lot of ways. They're cheap and opened up
possibilities that were unthinkable beforehand. Greenfield building is cheaper
and easier than retrofitting, and since real estate cartels typically dominate
urban real estate, city life is _always_ more expensive than the bigger, nicer
and more stable suburban home.

A lot of things happened in the postwar era beyond redlining. The poor
Italians, Irish, Jews and Polish who lived in the tenements started making
more money and slighter better opportunity. Jim Crow sparked a great migration
of blacks from the south northward. Government thought that bulldozing
tenements would fix problems.

~~~
omegaworks
>Cars revolutionized society in a lot of ways.

The subsidization of cars and suburbs drives people away from public community
spaces and dense development.

Just look at what might have been had San Francisco not risen up against the
suburbification of the 1950s:
[http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2618/3897327276_33754ebfce_o.j...](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2618/3897327276_33754ebfce_o.jpg)

"Central Parking District"

>since real estate cartels typically dominate urban real estate

Perhaps had all the resources of government been focused on fixing this
problem instead of confining black and brown people to and divesting from the
inner cities, we might have more affordable, walkable, dense, valuable,
resource-efficient, revenue-positive neighborhoods today.

------
aidos
The simplest hack for the traffic issue I've heard is to just change work
schedules. Either run cities in 2 general shifts, or do several days of longer
hours and then take a day off.

Certainly in London there seems to be a slip towards more of the working from
home 1 day a week. It definitely feels like there are more working parents
doing flexible hours out of necessity but there's a a fair amount of bias in
that I've seen a lot more of that struggle from living it myself for the last
5 years.

I take the train from a commuter area and there's no real financial incentive
to do 4 days commuting with 1 day off. Which I find sad - I think Train lines
should _have_ to include discounted 4 day per week season tickets. Then again,
I'm in a southern trains area so the trains aren't running half the time
anyway....

~~~
cbhl
I suspect the SF Bay Area is now well past the point where flexible work
schedules helps with traffic. AM rush hour starts at 7am and runs through
10am; the PM rush hour starts at 3pm and runs through 7pm.

~~~
aidos
Interesting. Found a video that shows that pattern on a specific day
[https://youtu.be/O4Bx0ygwBxo](https://youtu.be/O4Bx0ygwBxo)

I still think having people coming to the office less is prettty straight-
forward and would help.

------
justinzollars
I will never live further than 10 minutes from work again. Traffic is such a
waste of life.

~~~
DougN7
I totally agree, but also recognized how amazingly lucky we are to even
consider making such a commitment. Most folks don't have options like that.

~~~
ng12
I think that's part of the problem though, as a consequence of car ownership
we've normalized having a terrible commute. We can't build traffic-free cities
if we're not committed to the idea.

~~~
tropo
The commute is created by the expense of moving closer to work.

If renting, you may suffer a rent control reset.

If owning, you lose 10% of the home's value to various middlemen. You also get
a reset on property taxes.

Either way, you also have the opportunity cost associated with a house search,
and you have the moving expenses.

~~~
ng12
It's still a symptom of the root issue -- sparse, car-centric cities. I live
in NYC and the odds of me switching jobs to the point where I'd need to move
(or purchase a car) are basically nil. Even if the only job I could find was
in Stamford I'd still have a better commute than a lot of people in LA.

~~~
tropo
I think you aren't seeing all the options:

    
    
      1. super-dense city core (your current situation)
      2. mega sprawl like LA and Houston
      3. traditional suburb, with long commute into a city
      4. out on the farm/ranch, maybe telecommuting
      5. small town
      6. small city
    

In particular, I think #6 is what you are missing out on. By that I mean the
sort of place with 50 to 100 thousand people, laid out like a suburb but not
oriented around commuting to a big city. The population density would be 1000
to 2000 per square mile.

In this sort of place, commuting is easy by both bicycle and car. Traffic is
seldom much of a concern. Parking is plentiful. Usually the houses are cheap,
frequently 100 to 500 thousand for free-standing homes with yards. Usually the
schools are good, with enough people to have a full set of advanced classes at
the local high school.

I've lived in several of these in several states. My commute is typically
single-digit miles. I normally drive, but walking isn't much trouble.
Currently I walk less than a mile. I'll need to do 5 miles in the near future,
which should take 10 minutes by car.

What is not to like about it?

~~~
crooked-v
There's also option #7, small city that's a short commute away from a large
city. There are a lot of places in New England that are like this.

~~~
ghaff
Furthermore, there seems to be an implicit assumption that the job is in the
large city--which it often isn't.

------
tomcam
Low cost is not defined in this article. Absolutely no strategy is given other
than "build new walkable cities someplace else", which seems hard to justify
as low cost to me.

~~~
chadgeidel
What is the cost to maintain/upgrade our current car-based transportation
infrastructure? Streets, parking, enforcement, etc all have a cost and it's
not $0 and 0 square feet.

~~~
Spooky23
Not as much as civil engineering societies claim.

In my mid-sized city, roads are reasonably well maintained. The city budget is
78% police and fire salary/benefits. Less than 8% is allocated to the public
works department, which includes other functions as well. State grants ranging
from 1-3% provide some assistance for roads.

~~~
tomcam
Impressive! What city?

------
greggman
The average commute in Tokyo is 80 minutes on an extremely packed and
uncomfortable train with lots of sick and often smelly people. Urban density
is not in and of itself a solution traffic

------
sh87
I hear so much about traffic and congestion, its ill effects, disadvantages
and just rants of frustration. I face and feel it everyday. So why is it not
solved already ?

Here's why : 1. Traffic affects those who cannot/will not make a significant
difference to the problem and 2. the ones who can make a difference don't face
it/ don't consider it a top tier problem / can pay for a way around it (live
closer, don't have to drive the same route each day)

You also won't hear any political/marketing campaigns about reducing traffic
and congestion unless public transport becomes a private thing. I believe
there's tons of money to be made here but the initial funding required is
astronomical and not to mention deep connections in the public sector
(licensing) required to even get this off the ground. I can imagine a
decentralized mechanism to do this but there are just too many failure points
in any strategy that I can think of. Not a problem that a bunch of kids could
start solving in their garage you see.

I don't see this getting fixed anytime soon anywhere.

~~~
chadgeidel
Regarding #1. It has been my experience that the folks who are affected by
traffic the most tend to think about it the least. When asked, they are
bewildered there are even other options.

"I can't take the bus/train - it doesn't go to where I need" \- start with the
5 whys and it's a pain to get even halfway to the conclusion. The car (and the
supporting infrastructure!) is just assumed in most folks' minds. At least in
the US.

~~~
Spooky23
I don't know why a 5 whys analysis is so hard. I loved my bus commute, but
it's no longer viable. Why should I limit my options?

Why do you drive?

A: Its the most efficient way to get to work in several dimensions including
time, flexibility and cost.

Why don't you get a job in walking/bus distance?

A: I'm a director on a good career path in an organization that I am happy
with. Opportunities with similar pay, influence and outlook are not trivial to
attain.

Why don't you move?

A: My son is established at a local school that he walks to and has friends
in. Migrating around like a day laborer is a miserable existence that no
professional will sign up for.

------
DubiousPusher
I think this article misunderstands a bit about how cities grow. Any place
that's now high density in a city, used to look something like a suburb.
Especially in the US, every place that has a recently built 5 story midrise
building probably used to be 1/4-1/3 acre lots with 2,000sqft houses on them.

Doesn't sound like a big deal but consider that land is cheap, land with
buildings is not. You can find an acre around where I live for 250,000-350,000
dollars but you want to buy four neighboring houses and build density, that's
going to start at 2.4 million.

And of course, you have to pay for each house what someone looking to live in
it would be willing to pay. Density is only acheived when the price of density
becomes worth it. If you're building a city from scratch, density is cheap but
very few cities get built from scratch.

~~~
kuschku
That’s not actually true, at all.

This is from a tiny village in Germany: [http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/03/GV-3...](http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/03/GV-3.jpg)

This is a village in Italy: [http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/03/iv3....](http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/03/iv3.jpg)

A Swiss village: [http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/07/sv2....](http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/07/sv2.jpg)

A French village from above: [http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/07/egui...](http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/07/eguisheim-alsace.jpg)

Another French village from above: [http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/07/ober...](http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/07/obernai-alsace.jpg)

Do you notice something?

These are tiny villages; around them for many kilometers is farmland. Yet
they’re very dense.

------
jgord
The _real_ problem is psychological - "managers" feel the need to control
"workers" by physical monitoring.

I suspect 80% of all office work could be done remotely.

We need a cute psychological trick like "daylight saving time", to give people
permission to break convention and do things like work remotely and work in
offset shifts [ so as to spread out rush hour peaks ].

~~~
emodendroket
I think you're in the wrong thread.

------
mason240
People want the personal freedom of driving cars, they want yards, and they
want room. They don't want to be packed into stacked boxes.

~~~
II2II
There is no need to sacrifice owning a home with a yard or the ability to own
a car. It is possible increase the population density in many suburbs through
more effective land use, making more modes of transportation feasible.

Once those other modes of transportation become feasible, the myth of the
personal freedom of driving may actually be true. Driving out of necessity is
not freedom. It is a burden. It forces people to work more to purchase,
insure, maintain, and fuel a vehicle. It forces people to work more to pay the
taxes necessary to build and maintain more roads as well as higher capacity
roads. It forces people to work more to pay higher taxes because the land lost
to roads, whether it is paved over or serves as a buffer, does not generate
property tax revenue. In cases where there is no business or residential
frontage on a road, people are paying more taxes to build yet more roads to
provide access the adjoining land. And even after you have considered how
people are slaves to their jobs because of the expenses incurred by automobile
centric cities, they are slaves to their vehicle because other modes of
transportation are not viable.

Personal freedom comes from choice. Many of our cities are not designed with
that choice in mind.

~~~
mason240
"Freedom is slavery" Very Orwellian.

------
fangsout
I live in Austin, and the traffic is ridiculous. just this week a co-worker
quit because he can't stand the traffic from Round Rock to Downtown

~~~
Cyph0n
How is the public transit in Austin?

~~~
ng12
Is it good anywhere outside of NYC?

~~~
Cyph0n
MARTA in Atlanta is pretty good from what I've seen. Rail has been on-time (+-
3 mins) every day since I started using it 6 months back. Service is decent,
facilities are pretty clean imo, and the MARTA PD is always present.

------
nwah1
Tax policy is key here. The most effective approach is to reduce
underdevelopment of prime land, and this can be achieved through shifting
taxes away from improvements and onto land value. see: Land Value Tax

~~~
edblarney
It's not taxes - it's 'zoning'.

And culture. Big suburbs = lots of traffic.

We don't need 'Hong Kong' style density ...

But 'European style' density would work fine.

There are basically 0 residential high-rises in Frankfurt (they're just
banks), but they still pack a lot of people in.

And it doesn't 'feel' tight or congested.

It works.

\+ Trams, Trains and Subways - it's amazing.

~~~
nwah1
Tax reform, zoning reform, and light rail are not mutually exclusive ideas.
The density issues we face aren't so much about too much or too little
density, but uneven density.

We have urban wasteland regions, and then nearby you might see very crowded
areas. Car culture and zoning play a big role in that, but land speculation
ought not be underestimated. Every vacant lot or abandoned building is owned
by someone. If it is left vacant, that is because the owner is choosing to
keep it that way. A high tax on land value, regardless of whether it is in
use, would ensure that those who aren't making use of prime locations sell it
off or rent it out affordably to people who do intend to make use.

It isn't as if vacant lots provide breathing room, and make cities nice places
to be. Parks do that, sure, but not vacant lots. Vacant lots just attract
weeds, vermin, and used heroin needles.

I admit, my focus on tax reform is actually because it would raise wages,
reduce unemployment, and improve economic efficiency... and thereby improve
the rate and trajectory of social progress. But the benefit of more rational
land use is a nice little bonus on top of that.

------
jandrese
I've got an incredibly cheap solution to your problem!

Step 1. Tear down your city Step 2. Rebuild a completely new city in its
place.

How expensive could it be?

~~~
Xyik
apparently japan is really good at this.

~~~
WillPostForFood
The US helped clear the cities though.

~~~
ghaff
It's not really funny (though it kinda is) but back when all the talk was
about how the Japanese were eating the US's lunch a frequent claim was it was
because they got a fresh start after WWII. Someone or other--don't remember
who--then once retorted that the problems of the US steel industry probably
wouldn't be solved by dropping an A-Bomb on Gary Indiana.

------
davidw
See also: [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/02/10/the-happy-
city/](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/02/10/the-happy-city/)

------
rojobuffalo
Relevant TED talk "4 ways to make a city more walkable":
[https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_speck_4_ways_to_make_a_city_m...](https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_speck_4_ways_to_make_a_city_more_walkable#t-54704)

------
tromp
This site has some interesting proposals:

[http://www.carfree.com/](http://www.carfree.com/)

[http://www.carfree.com/intro_cfc.html](http://www.carfree.com/intro_cfc.html)

------
austinjp
US-centric commute conversations always seem to revolve around the primacy of
the car. So, USA people reading this... Where are you, and could you commute
by cycle or public transport instead of by car? What prevents you doing this?

~~~
maxsilver
> Where are you, and could you commute by cycle or public transport instead of
> by car? What prevents you doing this?

I'm in Michigan's second largest city. _Technically_ I could commute via
bicycle or public transit. Practically speaking though, almost no one ever
actually does either of those.

Public transit is old diesel buses (exclusively), which run on poorly spaced
and poorly timed routes, do not run reliably, and require long distances to
walk to/from the bus stops. Walking 15-20 minutes just to get to a bus stop
sucks, waiting another 15-20 minutes for the bus to arrive also sucks. They
keep the buses reasonably clean, but a common subset of typical passengers are
often... _not_. So having to deal with lice or bed bugs is not uncommon, which
_really_ sucks.

Bicycling is fine if the weather is nice, but for about 7+ months of each
year, the weather prevents it. (It was 15 degrees _below freezing_ this
morning, for instance). It also sucks to arrive all sweaty to work.

Time is also a big factor. A public transit commute would take me about 110
minutes daily (if I time it perfectly, it's 150 minutes daily if I don't). A
bicycle commute would take about 60 minutes daily. Driving takes just 20
minutes daily, in any weather.

The car is also flexible. I can leave to run errands and grab a meal during my
lunch break no problem. If I took the bus, by the time I walked to the bus
stop I'd have to immediately turn around and start walking back.

As an added bonus, my car is an EV that is effectively silent and produces
zero emissions and zero exhaust (the electricity it uses is from 100%
renewable sources too) where as public transit buses spews an awful lot of
diesel exhaust. It gives me a crazy amount of freedom, with no additional harm
to the environment.

~~~
austinjp
Yep, car freedom is a powerful thing.

EVs are not completely harmless in my understanding, even if powered by
renewable energy. There's the production impact, for starters. But of course
you're right, it's a far better option than outdated diesel transportation.

Arriving sweaty at work is soluble. Wear cycling kit, take work attire in a
panier. Your workplace may have showers. Failing that, wet-wipes work wonders
:)

Anyway, thanks for your detailed reply. I cycle in temperatures just below
zero but -15 daily would indeed be hard.

------
dangjc
I'm very much looking forward to self driving cars to save us. It's hard for
public transit to cover enough of a city, but we can easily build trunk lines
or commuter lines and have self driving cars carry people the last mile.
Public transit could then focus its limited dollars on rail for the most
heavily trafficked corridors. No more slow and infrequent public buses. This
would also encourage density around stations, while allowing those who want
their back yards to live further out.

~~~
jellicle
Why wouldn't the people in their self-driving cars just.... drive to their
destination?

~~~
dangjc
Traffic (along those trunk routes). Cost (some say Uber's price would drop by
2/3 with self driving, but for a long commute, a $3 train ticket is probably
still cheaper). Self driving cars would be great though if your route is not a
standard suburb to downtown route.

------
Shivetya
Well one thing people always love to overlook. Married couples just might not
have employers with sites near each other, employers can also move, and you
can change jobs.

most people just cannot pick up and move to make it easier to get there. all
the solutions usually involve telling people where to live and how which is
completely the opposite our society wants.

I am still waiting for a viable arcology to be built, might take a big
religious group to do it but I doubt technologist ever will except off planet

------
tabeth
Isn't the low cost solution just to ban cars or tax them ridiculously and
install a network of buses, instead? Cars have terrible density, in theory and
in practice.

~~~
CalRobert
Well, we could at _least_ stop massively subsidizing them. I mean, all these
people complaining about how the train never pays for itself don't seem to
mind all that tax money dumped in to asphalt.

------
kashkhan
rebuilding cities with new housing is the opposite of low cost.

~~~
stale2002
Not really. The price of building the house or building is a fraction of the
cost of the land, in high demand areas.

It is land and zoning that makes things expensive.

Tear a building down and replace it multiple times, it doesn't matter.

~~~
kashkhan
The cost of land stays the same whether you rebuild or not.

The cost of rebuilding is the difference. 1 > 0

------
transfire
Government needs to reduce property taxes and find ways to lower cost of
construction of building mix-use towers. While they don't need to go quite
this far, something like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimizu_Mega-
City_Pyramid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimizu_Mega-City_Pyramid) is the
direction they need to move in.

------
keepkalm
Really need to talk about why people choose to live where they do, and usually
the answer is school districts. It's difficult to say exactly what kind of
living environment families in the USA would choose if public schools in urban
areas were better choices compared to suburban schools.

------
jsilence
The book "A pattern language" by Christopher Alexander might give some good
ideas to achieve this.

------
keyle
This article, all respects to the writer, brings no solution what so ever but
to cram more people in smaller places.

Instead we should be talking about effective decentralisation of work places,
with more satellite offices and/or effective tele-presence and remote work.

------
edblarney
Yeah, it's called 'Europe' or 'Asia'.

Cities built before cars.

The 1970's idealists in 'Urban Planning' are the one's who created our 'new
urban utopias' built around cars ...

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ensiferum
Here in Europe we have this amazing thing called public transportation with
dense high capacity high frequency trains, trams, busses and metros. Works
great!

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njharman
TIL that building cities is cheaper than building roads!

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mentos
I think the best solution to traffic is remote working!

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visarga
The "Low-Cost Solution" is merely "building cities". Well, that was cheap!

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BoysenberryPi
Places that don't require driving more often than not have high cost of
living.

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randyrand
"Low cost" means building entire cities from scratch. hmmmm.

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agumonkey
Makes me think we should design cities as kd-trees networks.

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mac01021
Building cities doesn't sound low cost to me.

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gonzo
> Metro Austin has 2 million people. All of them seem to be driving on
> Interstate 35 all the time.

Not really, no.

Author is a professor at Rice. In Houston.

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thomasrognon
I-35 visually looks like it's about 1/4 to 1/3 large trucks transporting
goods. I've heard a lot of it is goods going to and from Mexico. I wonder if
it would be just as crowded without all the trucks.

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known
One SSN = One Car

This will reduce air pollution;

~~~
randyrand
Ya, screw all those people that drive multiple cars _at the same time_ /s

