
The Future Is Not Retro - luu
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/09/08/the-future-is-not-retro/
======
jcadam
We recently moved to a large-ish (but not huge) city and since I would be
working downtown we looked at becoming urbanites (easy commute, can get rid of
one of our cars, proximity to restaurants, shopping, things to do, etc.).

Then we discovered that urban accommodations for a family of 5 do not exist at
_any_ price (and small 3bdr apartments can be had but are hard to find and
extremely expensive). So, into the suburbs we went. The only people that seem
to live in/around downtown here are either young singles (with good jobs,
given the costs) or homeless.

Maybe when the kids move out and I'm close to retirement, but then I'd rather
live in a shack on/near a beach somewhere, so nah...

~~~
Mountain_Skies
I lived in the downtown of a major metro for close to two decades. Many of my
neighbors vowed to raise urban street smart kids but when the children
actually came plans changed. They'd quickly discover their current condo
wasn't large enough, so they'd upgrade to something larger. Then transition to
a townhouse and eventually a detached single family home, though often inside
the city limits. Once they hit school age, things split between those who
could afford private school and those who made convoluted excuses as to why
the nearby inner city school wasn't appropriate for their child and then move
somewhere else. Most often to the suburbs but sometimes to wealthier part of
town. I moved away before any of the children became teenagers but it would be
interesting to check in and see how things evolve once that happens.

~~~
that_jojo
> a detached single family home, though often inside the city limits

Wow, to even have that as a viable upgrade path.

I don't even live on the coast and in my metro, with the local range for a
middling middle-class income, having a detached house within the city limits
is an absolute pipe dream.

~~~
tomatotomato37
It is weird how a house in Minneapolis has ended up costing more than a
comparable house in the Jacksonville, despite the latter having twice the
population, being in the tropics, and located on the coast.

~~~
alexhutcheson
Jacksonville is a weird case, because the city limits include a freakishly
large area compared to almost every other large city in the US: Jacksonville's
city limits span ~875 square miles, vs. ~58 square miles for Minneapolis (and
another 56 square miles of St. Paul). Jacksonville essentially includes a huge
chunk of its suburbs within the city limits. If you drew an 875 square mile
region around the MSP area, you'd find houses that were comparable in cost to
the ones you're referencing in Jacksonville.

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L_Rahman
Alon’s continued insistence on super spiky housing with a focus on towers
remains something I can’t get behind.

The East Village is mostly 3-5 story mixed use apartment buildings. It has a
population density of 82000 people per square mile.

If we could get Queens and Brooklyn up to that, we could literally double the
population of the city.

We know what happens when NY gets big tower housing - it turns into the Upper
West Side, Midtown West or FiDi all of which are miserable places to walk
through.

It’s not just NY. I spent a few months living in São Paulo (Pinheiros and
Jardin’s) which does exactly what Alon suggests - big towers near subway
stations that are spaced far apart often with awkward tiny buildings next to
them and fall off in density a kilometer or so away. Also miserable.

What the spiky housing near trains theory fails to address is that ultimately
housing is for people to have lives. And there is a scale at which life is
comfortable - it’s like the East Village, like Miraflores in Lima, like
Ximending in Taipei.

If we reduce the problem to people per square meter and transit carrying
capacity problem we can theoretically make space for people but I’m not so
sure they’ll want to live in them.

It is really hard for me to believe that it would be better to push past the
5-7 story mark instead of just trying to spread the 5-7 story housing zoning
wider.

If I haven’t convinced you yet, consider this - if you brought the greater NY
area to the density of the East Village it could fit over 370 million people
or roughly the entire population of the United States.

So yeah, no towers please.

~~~
dr_dshiv
Why can't we simply say, "what are the greatest places to live densely" and
just copy-paste design elements?

The Netherlands is one of the most dense regions in the world. But it doesn't
feel like it -- at all. It is human-scale.

We don't have to sacrifice our humanity or quality of life. There is plenty of
room.

~~~
rhacker
Are people in the Netherlands similar to people in the United States? In the
US you will primarily get a neighbor that is watching football, shouting swear
words and always accompanied with the smell of budweiser as you pass them in
the halls. You will always know when they are home... And if you don't get
that guy it will be the screaming couple.

~~~
pasabagi
I think the problem perhaps is that in house-owning countries, the apartments
are usually cheaply built, or cheaply converted, so leak sound like sieves,
because everybody who has any money wants to live in a suburb. In apartment-
living countries, they put earth between the floors, and the walls are pretty
heavy duty. So you don't really have that much noise pollution.

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cjf4
As it relates to the US, this post had interesting ideas regarding urban
development, and no grasp at all of suburban development.

While urban lifestyles are becoming more fashionable in the US, growth is
higher in the suburbs[1]. Whether this is because suburbs are the only option
for people moving to new cities (as urban cores become "full"), or because
Americans (including millennials) are much more comfortable with suburban
lifestyles than they are given credit for is up for debate. But to speak as if
a sharp turn towards public transit based cityscapes is America's fait
accompli betrays a serious lack of understanding of the country and it's
people as they currently are.

[1][https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/05/24/big-
cit...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/05/24/big-city-growth-
stalls-further-as-the-suburbs-make-a-comeback/)

~~~
abernard1
Indeed.

There is also this statement:

> It’s not even an imposition. It’s opportunity. People can live in high-
> quality housing with access to extensive social as well as job networks

Here's the author is saying that "high-quality" housing and social network is
supposedly stronger in urban areas. With regards to housing quality, I think
the urban/suburban quality is highly debatable. In terms of social network as
well, I think this is probably most true in the context of "professional
network". Many people move to more suburban or rural areas precisely because
of feelings of alienation and lack of personal connection traditionally
associated with large urban areas. This has been remarked on by social
observers for well over a century.

The most ironic thing about this whole post though is that it gives no
credence to how the "future" predicted by the '90s kind of won: The Internet
has made many professional and communication opportunities available to people
wherever they may live. While we might not live in that IBM commercial version
of an anonymized future where "The Internet does not care if you are X", we do
live in a world where the internet has disseminated many of the traditional
benefits of cities (and "civilization") to wherever a person may live.
Knowledge, education, communication, art, work: all of these are much easier
to obtain outside of cities now, and that has massively factored into why our
current "future" has allowed that demographic shift into the suburbs to
continue.

~~~
naravara
>Knowledge, education, communication, art, work: all of these are much easier
to obtain outside of cities now, and that has massively factored into why our
current "future" has allowed that demographic shift into the suburbs to
continue.

This is really underselling the simple fact that our federal dollars still
heavily subsidize suburban development at the expense of urban amenities and
development patterns. Most of the rapidly growing cities haven't actually
built any expansions of transit capacity or coverage since they hit their
growth spurts over the past few decades, and the housing supply hasn't kept up
either. If it's functionally illegal to build urban capacity you're not going
to get urban development. It's a much simpler story than grandiose tales about
how the internet obviates the need for human interaction.

~~~
abernard1
> This is really underselling the simple fact that our federal dollars still
> heavily subsidize suburban development at the expense of urban amenities and
> development patterns.

This is simply not true. Secondly, the restrictions around urban development
are self-imposed at either the State or Local level. SF, NYC, Chicago, etc.
have zoning and development restrictions that Houston, Atlanta, Austin do not.

Astute observers may determine for themselves why that is, but this is not a
federal or subsidy issue. (Just how much has the CA never-to-be-completed
train cost again?...)

~~~
fzeroracer
Honest question: Have you lived in Austin?

Because there's no way it's going to survive the influx of people it's seeing,
in part because it faces the exact same urban development crisis that other
cities are facing and making the exact same mistakes. For every person that
points to Houston or Austin as being exemplary examples, I wonder if they have
actually tried living there. This is before we even start talking about the
dire nature of trying to walk anywhere in these cities.

~~~
abernard1
Honest answer:

I have lived in Austin for 10 years off-and-on (I had a startup where I had to
drive 6 hours to a different State every 2 weeks for 3 years). I have lived
there permanently for 7 years.

I have also lived in Houston, 2 other cities in Texas (including Midland), 6
other states in the U.S., and was not born or raised in the United States.

For the last 7 years, I have also worked for companies where the tech
headquarters were either in NY or SF.

------
ThalesX
I don't feel this article has a very strong point or that it offers strong
arguments towards why this non-retro future is unavoidable and / or better.

> "The status anxieties of Basil Fawlty types who either can’t or won’t adapt
> to a world that has little use for their prejudices are not a serious public
> concern."

This is exactly what Urban Planning is concerned with. If Urban Planning
ignores a subset of people as they are not a serious public concern (hint:
they are), is it really building a future for people? Or a future designed to
optimize moving cargo (people?) around...

~~~
oftenwrong
Furthermore, it seems like a "strawman" argument. Where exactly are people
arguing that the future of urban settlement must be exactly the same as it was
pre-auto?

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vearwhershuh
The title of the article should be "I do not want the future to be retro" or,
more honestly: "I do not want the future to be traditional."

Given the authors biography, frequent relocation amongst expensive, elite
international cities, this is not surprising. The fact that the author ended
up settling in Paris, however, is very funny.

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wUabkSG6L5Bfa5
Having lived and worked in several highrises, I'll say that density advocates
(which includes me, mostly) almost always glaze over vertical commute time and
annoyance. Elevators and steps are a huge pain in the ass any time you're
carrying anything more than a messenger bag/handbag and a travel mug. And
there always seem to be way more doorways involved, somehow, with doors that
don't really want to be opened or stay open long enough to allow real-world
transit.

~~~
nradov
Now try it with a stroller and multiple crying children.

~~~
wUabkSG6L5Bfa5
Yes, I can only imagine!

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Nursie
> Already, people lead full lives in big global cities like New York and
> London without any of the trappings of what passed for normality in the
> middle of the 20th century, like a detached house with a yard and no racial
> minorities or working-class people within sight. The rest will adapt to this
> reality, just as early 20th century urbanites adapted to the reality of
> suburbanization a generation later.

What patronising guff. Some people love city living, a lot can't stand it. You
may be happy to live without a back yard and without your own space, that
doesn't mean that we all will, nor does it mean that many of those already in
cities aren't already compromising.

Yes, let's build train networks. No, let's not pretend that means everyone
will be happy to live in a box ten floors up, or that this is somehow
inevitable.

~~~
cafard
Not really an accurate picture of the big global cities in the middle of the
20th Century, either. If anything, the working-class density has declined in
core areas of New York and London, hasn't it?

~~~
ghaff
Well, by and large, people in the US at least who could afford to were
_leaving_ city cores in the latter half of the 20th century. And, even before
that, densities were down from their peaks as cities moved away from tenement
housing etc.

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johngalt
Solving population problems with density + transit isn't exactly non-retro.
Building trains and subways has been a thing for longer than interstate
highway connected suburbs.

It's historically rare for people to accept a reduction in convenience, or
quality of life. Even then it's only a reduction as a trade off for other
improvements.

If we are talking about future mass transit, I'd expect it to look more like a
larger version of Uber pool. Where a destination is entered into a smartphone,
and transit mode selection is handled in the background. Something along the
lines of smart buses combined with micro mobility.

The future of transit appears to be headed towards the smartphones and
e-bikes, not the train station.

~~~
bluGill
That future cannot work. In dense areas there are too many people trying to
get around and it leads to congestion just like individual cars do. Only mass
transit can solve the problem. In less dense areas the wait for the car is too
long as so you may as well have your own.

~~~
icebraining
How are buses not mass transit?

~~~
TheCoelacanth
They are, but for much lower passenger volumes than trains or subways.

A bus rapid-transit line with all the bells-and-whistles like grade-separation
(don't share any roads with cars), elevated platforms at every station for
faster boarding, etc. can't handle more than about 3k passengers per hour[1].
A standard bus-line without that extra infrastructure, much less.

A subway line can handle 30k passengers per hour. You could build ten times as
many bus lines on parallel roads, but it's probably going to cost more than
the subway line and you are going to run out of space when you consider
locations that have a subway station every quarter to half mile. Fitting ten
bus lines in that space would be one every 150 feet or so.

[1] [https://www.liveabout.com/passenger-capacity-of-
transit-2798...](https://www.liveabout.com/passenger-capacity-of-
transit-2798765)

~~~
bluGill
The context here is app based transit. A fix route bus stuck in traffic can
handle 30x as many passengers as the same bus running an app based route. Add
in the other features you name and the bus can get 10x more than the bus in
transit. Then you can go to a train (subway or elevated) and get another 10x
over that!.

Conclusion: app based transit isn't useful if you need to move masses. (Apps
can be useful if there are a few rare trips that the otherwise good local
system cannot handle)

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gok
The trouble with Alon is that he starts with the conviction that we should
build more fancy trains, and then works backwards comes up with policy
arguments so that makes sense.

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notJim
Given the huge spike in interest in outdoor recreation [1,2] we've seen in the
US, I have a hard time believing that the future of tourism is urban. Even as
someone who thinks decarbonizing should focus more on public transit than
electric cars, outdoor recreation is one area where I think electric cars make
sense. I also think it's not a crazy idea to build public transit to popular
outdoor areas. Ski areas in Colorado and popular national parks have huge
high-season traffic jams that would be helped immensely by having public
transit. Rail is nice if the traffic warrants it, but busses are great too.

[1]: [https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/visitation-
numbers.htm](https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/visitation-numbers.htm) . [2]:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/191240/participants-
in-h...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/191240/participants-in-hiking-in-
the-us-since-2006/)

~~~
tlb
Passenger rail is barely economical for routes that are used year-round. Like
it barely works in the NY-DC corridor, and not at all for SF-LA. It seems
unlikely that it'd make sense for something as seasonal as a ski area.

~~~
barry-cotter
Do the interstates make a profit? Municipal roads in New York? The economic
reason to improve transportation is that reduced travel time leads to greater
communication and commerce which increases growth. This applies as well to
subsidizing rail as to subsidizing automobile use and rail is vastly safer per
passenger mile.

~~~
tlb
Neither interstates nor rail make profits. But they are funded for with some
consideration of ROI. The government shouldn't (and mostly doesn't) build
interstates that are used only a few weeks a year.

If the government has money to spend on rail, it should put it where it'll
serve the most passenger-miles/year.

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mwcampbell
I hope the future is more distributed teams and therefore more remote jobs, so
people can get good jobs wi5thout having to move to a big city or its suburbs.

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TOGoS
I was following up until "They’d have uniform missing middle built form in
most of the US and UK", at which point I threw an ERR_CANNOT_PARSE.

~~~
icebraining
I believe it's

uniform(missing-middle(built form))

built form: function, shape and configuration of buildings as well as their
relationship to streets and open spaces.

missing middle: built forms between high-rise buildings and single detached
homes which promote walkable urban living and fit into the character of many
residential neighbourhoods, which "have gone ‘missing’ from many of our cities
in the last 60 to 70 years."

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jeltz
Is this group really any significant amount of people? In my experience most
people realize that progress and change are inevitable, the question is only
how.

"One faction of urbanists that I’ve sometimes found myself clashing with is
people who assume that a greener, less auto-centric future will look something
like the traditional small towns of the past."

~~~
alexhutcheson
Strong Towns has gained a decent following, and their core arguments[1] are
pretty compelling, although their founder has the tendency to express half-
baked theories about monetary policy that I think undermine his credibility
somewhat.

[1]
[https://www.strongtowns.org/newcomers](https://www.strongtowns.org/newcomers)

~~~
Gunax
What are the monetary theories?

------
skybrian
National parks becoming less crowded seems especially unlikely. It's not that
hard to rent a car. Hopefully electric cars will become more easily available?

------
dajohnson89
How do we feel about places like brooklyn and queens -- which are essentially
urban in nature, but technically auxillary/suburban cities?

------
coldtea
> _The theme of the future is that, just as the Industrial Revolution involved
> urbanization and rural depopulation, urban development patterns this century
> involve growth in the big metro areas and decline elsewhere and in
> traditional small towns. This is fine. The status anxieties of Basil Fawlty
> types who either can’t or won’t adapt to a world that has little use for
> their prejudices are not a serious public concern._

The world will go in a trajectory based on its current dynamics and the
factors at play, not the author's ideologies. And it can develop new
prejudices, compared to which Basil Fawlty types might seem inoccent and
quaint if not preferable (much like the current era, with Trump et al, seems
more frightening to the starry eyed days 90s).

In fact, if climate issues worsen, and the trade wars and splintering get
worse, the future might do away with the whole "urbanization" concepts as
peddled by the author.

So I wouldn't so so smug as to think some provincial echo-bubbly thinking is
on right side of history...

