
The sorry state of neighbourhood design in America: a mother writes - antr
http://rethinkingchildhood.com/2013/01/22/neighbourhood-america-mother/
======
tjansen
That's interesting... I was born in Germany and live here in an extremely
densely populated, but quite affluent neighbourhood. Imagine 6-story houses,
each maybe 60ft long each, standing directly next to each other. Each house
has about 20 apartments. Because the city has not been designed for cars,
there are far too few parking spaces for all the cars. Many of the houses have
an underground garage, but not nearly enough for all the residents. So we have
relatively narrow streets with very wide side-walks that are completely filled
with cars, usually parking in two rows, sometimes three. When you come home at
night (BTW, I don't own a car, but I frequently rent one), it's not uncommon
for people to spend 15 minutes looking for a parking spot, driving through
narrow streets and in slalom around cars parked on street in the second or
third row. And when you eventually find a parking spot, it's quite possible
that it's a 10 minute walk home.

Whenever I am in the US, especially in the suburbs, I am amazed how easy life
can be. I just get into my car, without the usual 10 minute walk, and
immediately drive whereever I want on a nice, wide street. Admittedly, I
understand that for kids too young to drive this can be a problem, but for me
US suburbs are always a welcome change.

~~~
andyking
I agree with this. I live in the UK, and work in the centre of a major city -
and it's nothing other than a pain.

Driving is hard. You are always starting and stopping for endless traffic
lights, and when it's not the lights, you're stopping because you've got to
weave around clumps of parked cars at the side of the road.

Everything takes so long! I have a parking space where I live, but not
everyone is so lucky.

When I was living in the US (northern Indiana suburbs), I was so surprised at
how easy everything was - you just get in the car, drive where you need to go
on a street that's wide enough for two cars and not plagued with endless
parked cars and clutter, park right outside your destination and you're done.

~~~
mahyarm
You see, that breaks down whenever there is any sort of significant traffic
and you get stuck in frustrating bumper to bumper traffic, such as in LA.

~~~
hnal943
LA is hardly representative of the driving experience in the USA.

~~~
mahyarm
Most large cities have horrible rush hours in america. NY, Boston, Seattle,
SF, etc, etc.

------
gyardley
To me, the planning and density issues everyone's taking about feel like a red
herring. Plunk this woman down in the middle of NYC and remove her need for a
car whatsoever. Is she _really_ going to let her kid go wherever he wants
outside? Is she _really_ going to feel a sense of community, or will she be
like most New Yorkers and barely know who her neighbors are? (And before you
say 'that's because NYC isn't planned well, either,' would these problems
truly go away with more parks?)

I'm just theorizing, of course, but I suspect her real issues have a lot more
to do with cultural homogeneity and societal mobility. A community with people
from all over the place, constantly moving in and out? Low trust and lots of
alienation. My whitebread little Texas town, where every church is full on
Sunday and the average person's been here for decades? We're completely car
dependent out here, the streets are real wide, and for that matter, there's no
sidewalks and barely any parks - but there's unsupervised kids running around
all over the place, and I can't get through a supermarket trip without being
stopped for a conversation with someone I've met. It's nice, and as far as I
can tell, it's all without the benefits of urban planning.

~~~
roc
There used to be these things called small towns. [1] One wasn't forced to
choose between "20 minutes from anything" and "New York City".

Most people talking about the density issue are lamenting the lack of these
middle choices. The places where a family would probably still need a car, but
it would be conceivable to have a functional bus system to get you from one
small town to the next, or into the city. Where you can still own a house with
a yard, but walking to corner store wasn't a circuitous two mile hike with
intermittent sidewalks.

etc.

[1] Before they were largely converted to glorified open-air-malls for the
cul-de-sac dwellers to drive to on the weekends.

~~~
smackfu
I do wonder how many of these utopian small towns ever really existed, and
when (1920-1950 or so?).

~~~
roc
Count up the glorified open air malls in your area and do a little local
history.

This can be casually done by noting average home build dates in various
neighborhoods. Find a neighborhood with houses from the 40s/50s and note the
layout. Then find a neighborhood built in the 70s and note the layout. You can
do that with any number of real-estate tools and/or Google Maps.

Just in the county I grew up in there was at least a dozen of those small
towns -- each with shops, mainstreets, mixed-use zoning, surrounding homes,
often with train stations and/or bus depots (some surviving to this day), all
very walkable and livable.

Then the farmland around them was cut up into suburbs in the 40s and 50s.

But even those were notably different from modern suburbs: walkable, smaller
lots, still some mixed use with corner stores and restaurants. The cul-de-sac
and single-use zoning atrocities didn't start showing up until the 70s, when
they basically stitched the old towns and old neighborhoods together into one
largely-unbroken stream of Modern Americana.

And again, the thrust isn't that we should all have small towns or that
suburbs are wrong for everyone. It's that the old spectrum has been reduced to
a binary.

You have suburbs and you have New York City.

The fact that 'US city' discussions always revert to talking about a handful
of the oldest cities is itself a tell: if it didn't grow into a city before
suburbanization, they didn't really grow into _a city_. Many look for all the
world like a high-rise downtown bolted onto suburban sprawl like an upscale
version of a big box strip mall. They don't really "count" as a city like New
York or Chicago and we all know it.

~~~
colomon
Don't know where you live, but we still have boatloads of small towns here in
Michigan. Farms and rural townships too. As far as I can tell from my travels,
the same goes for the state of New York, too. (And Ohio, Wisconsin,
Indiana...)

~~~
roc
Funnily enough, Michigan.

The small towns exist, some moreso than others, but (at least the ones to
which I refer) they don't really exist in the same way. The shops and
amenities and zoning that used to make them _work_ aren't there in many
places.

In how many could you walk to a local grocery store, rather than having to hop
in a car and drive several miles to a 'supermarket' or outright to a big box
store? How many have a local hardware store, so you don't have to hop in a car
and drive? How many have the apartments and lofts that make the place a viable
neighborhood for people who can't/don't have a car? How many have bus routes
to get you across town or to the next town? Many still have restaurants and
small shops, but even the small town movie theatres are pretty much extinct.

~~~
colomon
Thank you for conceding they do indeed still exist.

Of _course_ they don't exist in the same way. This is 2013. What you're
describing is some sort of semi-mythical pre-WWII world.

Technology changes everything. TV killed small movie theaters. Netflix, etc.
killed video rental stores. Amazon killed brick-and-mortar bookstores.
Ubiquitous cars killed passenger trains, and meant putting the big shops on
the outskirts of town made more sense than putting them in a smaller building
right in the middle of downtown.

And guess what? If you live in a small, rural town, pretty much all those
changes were huge net positives. (Presuming, of course, that you have a car, a
TV, and Internet access.) Sure, you don't have a local theater anymore. But
the local theater was the only way you could watch a moving picture of any
sort back then. Now you've got 200 channels of TV and cheap streaming movies
on a big screen right in your living room. That supermarket you disdain
probably has 5x as many products as the old grocery store downtown did,
including entire categories of food they probably never dreamed of carrying,
and better prices to boot.

All that said, most of the small towns I'm familiar with have a grocery store
within city limits -- and they're small enough places that means they are
walkable, at least in the summertime. Indeed, every place I've lived since
leaving my childhood home has had a grocery store within walking distance,
even though I never even vaguely considered that a factor when considering
apartments or houses.

~~~
roc
Some small towns definitely still exist, but they're the minority exception
instead of 'the way'. That's all I was ever saying. You used to have _dozens_.
It used to just be the way that population centers _grew_. Now you have a
handful of conspicuous exceptions.

And _technology_ has little to do with this change. Plenty of places are still
_trying_ to run bus services. Because ubiquitous cars still _aren't_. But all
the intervening challenges have made that near impossible to do
(cost)effectively.

Similarly the theatre is gone because once zoning presses you into a car to
get there, what's the real difference between 5 minutes to the local downtown
or 15 minutes to the multiplex at the mall?

The root cause was largely a socio-political failure. Self-segregation, myopic
zoning, a belief in perpetual growth all abetted by enough wealth on the part
of the builders to not care about long term efficiency.

------
pg
Towns are an interesting case where the free market system breaks. The reason
is that developers work in units that are too small. If they built whole
towns, people would pay more to live in the ones that were walkable and human.
But currently developers mostly just build a few hundred houses on the edge of
some existing town. Which means they compete with one another at the level of
houses rather than towns. Which produces grim expanses of McMansions.

I'm not saying developers _should_ switch to building whole towns. It would be
a harder problem. The kind of people who currently build houses might not be
capable of solving it.

~~~
Gormo
> Towns are an interesting case where the free market system breaks.

What you're observing isn't the output of a free market; for that, see towns
built primarily up until about the 1930s; these are traditional, walkable
towns, with a coherent downtowns and organic patterns of settlement.

Since then, zoning laws and land-use planning have drastically altered the
common patterns of development and led to the rise of master-planned
subdivisions that are all too common today.

If not for the artificial segregation of residential and commercial uses and
for equally artificial restrictions on density of development, modern suburbs
would likely be smaller satellite towns, each with its own coherent walkable
core, instead of megatowns with purely residential sprawl extending great
distances away from the only urban core permitted to be developed.

~~~
rahulnair23
One counter example to your claim is Houston. While it exhibits the same urban
sprawl, there is no legal master plan that divides the city to different uses.

~~~
dctoedt
> _One counter example to your claim is Houston. ... [T]here is no legal
> master plan that divides the city to different uses._

Houstonian here. What you say is correct --- but many, many neighborhoods in
Houston have legally-enforceable deed restrictions [1]: When you buy property
in those neighborhoods, you are deemed to have agreed to a (typically, very-
detailed) set of restrictions about what you can or cannot do with, or on,
your property. Local homeowner associations can be pretty vigilant in seeking
out and going after violators.

Moreover, some neighborhoods are in fact separate, incorporated cities that
_do_ have zoning laws. (I live in one such.)

[1]
[http://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Neighborhood/deed_restr.ht...](http://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Neighborhood/deed_restr.html)

------
kyro
Recently I realized something about city/neighborhood design in America on a
much more general level: We just don't care, or at the very least, it seems
that way.

The contrast is striking every time I travel abroad. I go to London on an
almost biyearly basis where this contrast is really pronounced. Things as
trivial as the way bathroom stall doors are built, to much more important
components of city life, like the airport/roadway/metro signage, reflect the
weight that each city/state/country puts on the importance of design.

Comparing London to New York City, it feels as if I'm better taken care of
design-wise when in London, like the people running the city actually give a
damn about making it easier for me to find my way around the city, with color
labeling, maps that are easy to understand, typefaces that are consistent, big
and bold for anyone to see. The tube stations are all remarkably consistent in
both easily guiding me to the correct subway line, and cleanliness -- two
things you definitively _cannot_ say about NYC. The same goes for their
respective airports, Heathrow and LaGuardia/JFK.

And I pick these two cities because they're the two big metropolises I've
spent considerable amounts of time in, but the contrast extends far beyond
them. You can pick Berlin and Los Angeles, if you want!

I don't know why we as a country don't see just how critical good design is.
It seems as if it'd be almost un-American to care.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I know the feeling - and I put it down to distrust of government or
regulation.

London has fantastic park / green spaces. In the Victorian and Edwardian eras
paternalistic legislation required access to parkland throughout London, and
it is virulently defended even today.

In New Jersey/Newark, it feels that such legislation should be fought tooth
and nail by every right thinking patriot. In New York, they agree except for
the nice bits.

edit: not sure I hit the right note - the US approach to such govenrment
"interference" can be beneficial, but its really just part of the DNA, not a
easy to change choice. I cannot imagine it changing much.

~~~
defrost
> In the Victorian and Edwardian eras paternalistic legislation required
> access to parkland throughout London, and it is virulently defended even
> today.

Sort of ballpark but not quite exactly true, and a story that deserves
telling.

In Victorian and pre Victorian times wealthy landholders had extensive private
gardens and follies, the money spent on and by top landscape designers to
simulate Arcadia (idealised pastorial setting mixed in with follies after
classical antiquity) was substantial and the passive aggressive competition to
outdo others ratcheted upwards.

In Victorian times a philanthropic movement started to "gift" the concept of
private parks and gardens to the public and the unwashed masses (well, to the
middle classes more than to the actual unwashed and more seriously socially
challenged).

Rather than being government required parks these were more individual gifts
and many were passed into local government management using "peppercorn
leases" (some of which I've actually handled) which bestowed the land to the
public use in return for a nominal "rent" (a peppercorn a year, or somesuch)
and under the proviso that the the land use be retained as public parkland ...
if it is not maintained as such then the control of the land reverts back to
the original owners and their estates (which now, a few hundred years on would
be a nightmare of dividing up prime central city real estate between
potentially several hundred related claimants).

The parks are a result of paternalistic (and often maternalistic) gestures
which used land transfer legislation to ensure continued public access in
perpetuity.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Thank you - I have often wondered - do people actually pay real peppercorns or
has there been some adjustment in contracts to the equivalent cash?

~~~
defrost
In the initial days of various parks there are stories of a jar or two of
uncracked pepper being sent to the head of the family that granted the land,
this was somewhat in light hearted humour and also more or less took care of
the rent for a few hundred years into the future.

These days there may well be the odd case in which a centenary celebration for
a park might well invite a descendent of the family that bestowed a park and
"formally" give them a peppergrinder, I can't think of many off hand.

At some point it may be the case that (say) Hyde Park in Perth, Western
Australia becomes delinquent in rent and the descendants of the <redacted>
family step up and form a class action demanding the return of the Park to
themselves by the City of Vincent (or whomever holds the deed at that point).

The City could settle by simply throwing them a sack of peppercorns to
squabble over amongst themselves.

The spirit of the lease is a "forever rental" for a sum of something trivial
of actual value ( tea, spice, pepper, etc. once were more valuable in English
society ) to make it binding but trivial to pay.

The more interesting case would be if a council did something with the land or
a portion of the land that was deemed outside the terms of usage ( a private
residence for the mayor rather than a groundskeeper's flat, perhaps ) - if
public access wasn't restored then there would be a case to claim back half a
billion dollars worth of real estate.

That would be the makings of an epic legal shitstorm and drama.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Thanks - love the technical legal terms "epic shitstorm" and "throw them a
sack of peppercorns"

:-)

cheers

------
sp332
Here's a TED talk about bad decisions in the design of public spaces, and how
to make them better.
[http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...](http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html)

 _The public realm in America has two roles: it is the dwelling place of our
civilization and our civic life, and it is the physical manifestation of the
common good. When you degrade the public realm, you will automatically degrade
the quality of your civic life and the character of all the enactments of your
public life and communal life that take place there._

Edit: There was some talk here a while ago about roads that were built by
developers "for free" and then given to cities for maintenance. Sounds good on
paper but results in ridiculous amounts of roads being built... Anyone
remember a good link for that?

~~~
lux
City planning in North America always makes me think of Kunstler. I saw him
speak at the Winnipeg Art Gallery years ago about peak oil, and bought his
book The Geography of Nowhere ([http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-
Americas-Man-Made-La...](http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-
Made-Landscape/dp/0671888250)). That book completely opened up my thinking
about how the elements in a city relate to each other, and how community and
economic activity are so fundamentally intertwined. Great read!

~~~
mc32
There is a great Jane Jacobs book about the death and life of American cities.
[http://www.amazon.com/American-Cities-Anniversary-Edition-
Li...](http://www.amazon.com/American-Cities-Anniversary-Edition-
Library/dp/0679644334). It goes into how architects and other well intended
people overthought and did things which destroyed usability of cities.

Also, OT, but "The New Topograpphics" is a great and seminal photographic book
about the new American Landscape.

------
brudgers
There's a saying in Florida.

"We don't care how you do it up North."

Sure some of it is just Southern obstinacy. But some of it is an understanding
that with a 67 billion dollar tourist economy and 8400 miles of coastline
(more than the U.K.) replenishing beaches is a priority and snow plows aren't.

Likewise, European urbanism doesn't scale to the U.S. California has half the
density of Germany. Washington is the median state for density it has 1/6th
the density.

The ODP soccer program in Alabama regularly requires interested players from
all parts of the state to convene at a single location. Alabama is about the
size of England. You'd have to be daft to require all the top youth players in
England to come to a single location for a one day training. You'd have to be
insane to propose 10,000 miles of railroads for a population of 8 million.

U.S. development patterns aren't a function of bad planning. They are a
function of distance. Paris is closer to Moscow than St. Louis is to Los
Angeles and doesn't require crossing a continental divide.

That doesn't mean it can't be improved. Just that the solutions aren't _a
priori_. They have to recognize the issues on the ground.

------
tokenadult
The city of Woodbury, Minnesota (the city profiled in the blog post kindly
submitted here) is a city I specifically rejected living in when my family
moved back to Minnesota from Taiwan in 2001. Woodbury offered some interesting
work possibilities for my wife, but when we drove through the city to look
around, we were appalled to discover that it was nearly impossible to find a
place to live that was within walking distance to any kind of shopping, much
less to both shopping and services. In Minnetonka, Minnesota, about fifty
minutes away by car across the Twin Cities metropolitan area, the lifestyle is
still very car-centered, being far from the urban core. But city planning here
in Minnetonka has been very intentional about building a city walking and
biking trail system, with links to a regional rails-to-trails biking trail
network, such that we can walk to the public library (as we are about to do
just now), a mile out and a mile back, and walk to much of our shopping (the
same distance in a different direction) by the city trails. My wife can bike-
commute year-round, and we are able to substitute a LOT of biking or walking
for what would be driving trips in most of the United States. My children are
fit, healthy, and fearless. They walk all over the place in our crime-free,
friendly, diverse neighborhood. I still like the higher density of Taipei or
Panchiao, Taiwan even better, and my oldest son likes living in car-free
Manhattan now that he works as a programmer for a start-up, but the lifestyle
here is not too bad. We know lots and lots of neighbors by sight, having met
them repeatedly while walking, and we see deer, coyote, wild turkeys, and much
other wildlife while we are on our walks. The United States has a long way to
go to be weaned off of car-dependence, but it can happen, and each
municipality's government can help make it happen.

[http://www.eminnetonka.com/public_works/parks_trails/trails....](http://www.eminnetonka.com/public_works/parks_trails/trails.cfm)

[http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/1-bike-
city-m...](http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/1-bike-city-
minneapolis)

[http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/media/Minnesota-
Monthly/Trav...](http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/media/Minnesota-
Monthly/Travel-Leisure/Traveler-Resources/Minnesota-Biking-2007-2008/Bike-
Trails/Twin-Cities-Area-Bike-Trails/)

~~~
theycallmemorty
I'd love to hear the logistics of biking to work in Minnesota in the winter. I
live in an area with a similar climate and have to give up biking from October
through May.

~~~
zargon
What is it about the winter logistics that keeps you from cycling?

You need a route that has paths or roads suitable for biking, but this is not
any different from cycling in the summer. I switch to studded tires in
November (<http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/studdedtires.asp>) and wear
clothing layers appropriate for the weather. My thermo tights are good down to
15 F or so depending on the wind. Below that I wear another bottom layer. One
to four layers on top, warm windproof gloves, sometimes a balaclava, sometimes
goggles. Below -5 F I usually drive. And when it has freshly snowed and the
roads are a mess.

------
Gravityloss
Having had a car and also having spent time without one, it creates a striking
difference how much you see other people. If you travel by bike and public
transport, the places that are easiest to get to are geographically close or
with large population densities (= good public transport). You never do "take
away" or go to a drive in. At the tiny local hamburger joint between your
workplace and home, you might see some people that you might otherwise avoid
(you then realize why the drive in was invented) - and you reflect about your
difference and are happy that you have a steady job. Or you can hang out with
a laptop in a cafe in the city center, bump into an old friend and go
somewhere together.

With a car, you're insulated from all that. You drive alone, you order your
hamburgers from the drive in and go home and eat it alone. You avoid city
centers since there's too much traffic there. You try to get your errands and
hobbies done in industrial areas and suburbs by the outer ring roads circling
the city. Your car whisks you there effortlessly, covering tens of kilometers
in a few minutes. You live in a totally different world.

After a while you notice you haven't seen another person besides family and
colleagues up close for a week. Your physical condition gets worse as well. On
the other hand, you might get into deep personal talks with your friends while
giving them a lift in the night. You don't drink anymore. In theory, you could
start a hobby that requires traveling to hard to get places with large
equipment, but that might just as well be a fantasy that justifies the
convenience of owning a car.

It's a striking contrast in life style. I wish the best sides from both could
somehow easily be combined.

(If I didn't live in a North European city, I could bicycle much more.
California weather could be ideal for something like that, if only city
planning supported it.)

Nobody ever told me that this happens when you get a car?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Two years ago I drove 100miles a day to and from work, put on two stone and
nearly broke my marriage

For the past year I work twenty minutes walk from home, see my children for
breakfast each day and actually recognise people in the local neighbourhood

It's soooo much better without commuting - by car or not.

The simplest rule of thumb is everything you need for life should be 20
minutes walk away. Schools, shops, doctors, work, parks. It is true of great
cities (most of London is like that).

------
jamespitts
I would suggest that we all get involved in how decisions are made in our
local governments regarding the structure of our neighborhoods. It is a lot
easier than you think.

Recently I joined a community-based effort in Ann Arbor to create a large
civic space / central park downtown. The city is planning to make downtown
much more concentrated and I feel that hackers need to get involved in the
process and make sure people are thinking about future needs. We've managed to
change the direction of the discussion although it is still early in the game!

[http://annarborchronicle.com/2013/01/19/parks-group-to-
weigh...](http://annarborchronicle.com/2013/01/19/parks-group-to-weigh-in-on-
downtown-needs/)

Every municipality has a mayor, City Council, relevant departments, as well as
assorted committees and development organizations. All you have to do is show
up with some other neighbors and you are having a big influence. You can bet
that real estate developers are involved, pushing their own plans and visions
through.

Are you?

------
rdl
Comparing Germany to _Alaska_ seems a bit unfair. If you want to live in a
walkable, dense small town in the US, they do exist.

I'd personally prefer to live in a place with multi-acre lots and driving and
no kids. Trees are fine, though. The great thing about the US is you actually
have everything from dense SF downtown to fairly "German" Palo Alto to
Atherton/Hillsborough/Portola Valley, all within the same job market metro
area.

~~~
_delirium
There are some choices, but I think you overestimate the amount of choice most
people have with American development patterns. Sure, you could live in SF or
Palo Alto, if you're well off (my brother pays over $1000 for _one room_ in a
shared apartment in the Mission). But if you aren't, you're going to be
commuting from somewhere else; your only choice is whether you're going to
commute from Gilroy or Fremont or whatever. With different development
patterns, that's not necessarily the case: in Copenhagen or Berlin, you don't
have to be particularly wealthy to live in a centrally located apartment.

~~~
rdl
Even if you are poor, you could live in Oakland or San Jose in the Bay Area,
or in Fremont/San Leandro/etc for the crappy suburb experience, or south of
San Jose or west of the hills for rural.

------
sheri
I lived in Mountain View for a while. The walking distance between locations
was large, but not too bad. There was a Starbucks and a few restaurants around
15-20 minutes walk from my place. Despite this, I would not see anyone on the
streets. I felt odd, almost like everyone was staring at me, when I would walk
from my place to the Starbucks. There are large enough footpaths, but everyone
would be in their car.

I also lived in a residential neighborhood in San Francisco for a while, and
despite being more walk-friendly (with restaurants/coffee shops nearby), I
wouldn't see too many pedestrians. The situation was much better than Mountain
View, but still very sparse. Despite the housing being more dense, I just
don't see people on the streets.

I agree that the streets are huge compared to the rest of the world. Crossing
a major intersection in Mountain View seems like an eternity.

~~~
tjansen
Here in Germany it's also pretty normal that even in a densely populated
residential neighbourhood there are not too many people on the street, unless
there's a larger store nearby or something like that. Otherwise, if you do see
many people on the street, that would be a sign of high unemployment...

------
gtank
Kunstler's "The Geography of Nowhere"
([http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_N...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_Nowhere))
examines this issue in depth. Excellent read.

------
monkeyfacebag
It's a bit disingenuous to make straight comparisons between the neighborhood
designs in the US and Germany given that the latter has something like 4% of
the area of the former and almost 7x the population density. That said,
Americans did consciously choose to make full use of the country's land mass
to spread themselves out, prioritizing investments in interstate highways over
local transportation and I'd like very much to see those priorities shift.

~~~
scarmig
The numbers you bring up aren't really meaningful. The salient figure isn't
total country population divided by total country area: it's population
density as people experience it. Vast swaths of land with no one in it aren't
really relevent to social analysis.

For an example: imagine the United States now, and then imagine it suddenly
got ownership of all of Mars. It would drastically increase the total area of
the USA, but it would not suddenly make everyone a nomad who has a hundred
square miles to live in alone.

~~~
afterburner
The population density in Germany means that there is at least a small village
_every 1-2 miles_. I don't know if that's relevant to the conversation, but
it's definitely a big difference between Germany and the US, and affects the
culture of both. (For example, the tradition of travelling tradesmen in
Germany probably makes sense because of this.)

------
cafard
There was very little paranoia about letting kids run loose 50 years ago, when
I was walking a few blocks to school, and playing untended in my own back yard
or my neighbors'. This was I think in large part because of low key but
pervasive surveillance, largely by state-at-home mothers. That few mothers
worked outside the home also affected traffic levels in a couple of ways: they
didn't commute, and the fathers, freed of pick-up obligations, could carpool.
We had in general pretty good schools, partly because there were few
professions yet open to women, partly because men who were teachers didn't get
drafted, partly because professionals sent their kids to the same schools as
everyone else, so there weren't long commutes to a private school--I didn't
hear of an elementary school that was other than public or parochial until
later.

It was a very homogenous middle class world--how homogenous, and how kept that
way, has been documented in civil rights cases in the years since.

------
Zak
I have some relevant personal experience. I grew up in Alaska, where Andrea,
the woman who wrote in lived for 15 years and raised children. We lived in the
woods outside a small town for most of my early childhood, then moved to a
city when I was 11. Now, I live in Florida, I'm dating a German and spend
several months out of the year in Hamburg.

I had a great deal of freedom of movement as a child. I could run around in
the woods all day by myself if I wanted. In town, I could ride my bicycle
anywhere starting from around 6 years old. I may have had a bit more freedom
than other kids in the area, but not enough to shock anyone. When I got a bit
older, I had access to snowmobiles and three/four wheelers - pretty much as
soon as I had the physical size and strength to pull-start the engines and
operate all the controls without assistance. This, too was not unusual in that
area at that time.

My freedom of movement was pretty good when we moved to a city as well. The
city wasn't especially designed to be bike-friendly, but it was possible to
get most places without having to ride in traffic. A snowmobile was an option
for a lot of things in the winter. Even when we moved a few miles out of town,
it was practical to ride a bike to town.

Where I live now, I still use a bicycle for quite a bit of my transportation.
It's a good workout and doesn't cost much to operate. There are a few places I
ride that wouldn't be safe for a young, inexperienced or slow cyclist, but
there are alternate routes available in most cases. Public transportation is
not very good here, but it's an option that can fill in some of the gaps.

Germany certainly offers better parity between children and adults as far as
transportation. Design may play a role, but it's also important to consider
that it's 90 million people in an area smaller than Montana. Not owning a car
can work for a greater percentage of people because economies of scale work
for a larger percentage of possible trips. That, in turn allows all the
infrastructure to be designed for a smaller number of cars per person, hence
the smaller streets and multiple grocery stores in every neighborhood. This
situation is probably objectively better when you're 12, but may not be when
you're 21.

What's really different is parents in this time and place. They're now
terrified of things that are less likely now than they were 25 years ago. It's
that attitude we need to change more than anything.

------
ohwp
The book "A Pattern Language" describes a lot of these problems and solutions.
Although its from 1977 I think its still valid.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language>

~~~
praptak
Same thoughts here, I immediately thought of "Connected play" pattern when
reading this article. Growing up in communist Warsaw had its downsides but at
least my walkable play area was _huge_ so there was always someone to play
with (that's more or less the spirit of this pattern.)

link: <http://www.jacana.plus.com/pattern/P68.htm>

------
juan_juarez
Welcome to our post-WWII 'prosperity'. When we decided that everyone should
have a car & own their own home with a yard, we forced ourselves into this
suburban sprawling. While Alaska, which the article talks about, might be a
rather extreme example the entire western US is built up like this.

------
petercooper
Neighbourhood design is one (minor IMHO) component but society and attitudes
play a bigger role. When I was a kid in England in the 1980s it was common to
be out on your bike all day, to walk to school, to head into the woods, etc. I
continue to live in a quaint, safe, rural town and the amount of kids I see
out and about is tiny. This is not down to changes in neighbourhood design.

Kids do continue to walk to school (but this has supposedly dropped from 90%
in the 70s to 10% now for elementary school pupils [1]). Other statistics [2]
note that TV watching is up 12% in just the past 5 years and time 'in front of
a screen' is up 40% in a decade. A poll commissioned by the Children's Society
shows that half of adults believe the earliest a child should be allowed out
unsupervised nowadays is 14(!) - it was incredibly common for children to be
playing on the streets from 7 or 8 in the 80s.

I guess all I'm saying is that even if you give Americans (or Brits) cosy
neighbourhoods with everything hooked up just right, there's a bigger and more
important problem to be dealt with to get kids out _and_ to get parents to
_let_ them out.

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-
tongue/8623152/Child...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-
tongue/8623152/Children-no-longer-enjoy-playing-outdoors.html)

[2]
[http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/servlet/file/store5/item8233...](http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/servlet/file/store5/item823323/version1/Natural%20Childhood%20Brochure.pdf)

~~~
purplelobster
You're right, it's not neighborhood design, it's happening all over the
western world. The question is why? My take is that it's an out of control
spiral, where more kids stay inside to play video games and watch TV, so fewer
kids are on the street, so parents become more concerned about kids being on
the street, so they don't let their kids out as much, so the kids do more
indoor activities etc.

I was born in '86 and I and everybody I knew were basically free roaming kids.
I remember being about 5 and taking my bike and ride a kilometer or two away
from home, just exploring by myself. That would get my parents arrested today.
By the time I started playing video games I was already independent, so it
didn't affect me. Got my own keys to the house at 8, came and went as I
pleased as long as I call home to say if I'd be home for dinner or not.

I wish I could let my kids out when I have them, but I'm afraid that either
they won't want to, or I'll be arrested for not supervising them every minute
they're outside. And really, what fun would it be running around outside
today? It's completely desolate, void of other children to play with.

~~~
petercooper
_.. or I'll be arrested for not supervising them every minute they're
outside._

See, I think a lot of parents share concerns like this (I have two myself but
they're not quite at the right age) yet I don't think the actual laws have
changed (?) so I wonder how fair it is.

I think a key part of the problem, if it's one, is that it's so _easy_ to keep
children entertained in the house nowadays and it's therefore easier to do
that than let them "risk" being outdoors.

As a geek, if I hadn't had lots of friends, I could have easily stayed in the
house playing on my computer all day in the 90s, but most of my friends didn't
have such pursuits so _had_ to go outside to alleviate their boredom. And..
all kids have become geeks now (in a sense we may have understood it in the
early/mid 90s). Even the popular kid can stay glued to their cellphone or
computer on Facebook or playing games for hours every evening without it
seeming odd in 2013.

And if they can do that and stay safe in their own homes.. it must be tempting
to many parents to let them do that.

------
dkhenry
So this is not a universal maxim for all of America, remember that America is
a big country and we have lots of diversity even in neighborhood design. Some
of the older places are really well designed for the raising of children, its
just most people don't want to put up with the other things that go along with
living in those neighborhoods (congestion , taxes , house design ,... ).

~~~
colomon
For what it's worth, our neighborhood isn't walkable enough to allow you to
function without a car, but it does have plenty of space for kids to roam
including elementary and middle schools about four blocks away and lots of
businesses with a mile and at most one major street crossing. Plus our 1978
house is good-sized and our lot is nice with lots of trees. It was not wildly
expensive or congested.

Edited to add: Just occurred to me it might sound like I was disagreeing, when
actually I was agreeing and then some. It's just not that hard to find
whatever sort of neighborhood you'd like to in the US, if you're willing to
pay the price. (Which might be money, or having a smaller house, or living
somewhere that isn't trendy.)

------
paganel
I highly recommend Jan Gehl's "Life Between Buildings", which even though was
written at the beginning of the '70s is still very relevant today.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Gehl#Influence>)

> Gehl's book Public Spaces, Public Life describes how such incremental
> improvements have transformed Copenhagen from a car-dominated city to a
> pedestrian-oriented city over 40 years. Copenhagen's Strøget carfree zone,
> the longest pedestrian shopping area in Europe,[2] is primarily the result
> of Gehl's work. In fact, Gehl often uses the phrase "copenhagenize" to
> describe his vision of how urban centres can embrace bicycle culture and
> urban cycling.

------
zacharydanger
Being from Texas I can tell you, we spread everything out. Just looking at my
Runkeeper logs, it's a __quarter of a mile __from my apartment door to the
nearest street.

~~~
xradionut
North Texas you can choose to live in various environments, from very rural to
very urban and various degrees between. Where you chose depends on what
lifestyle you and your family wish to have. I can walk to my city hall or
train station in 10 minutes or choose to drive to the majority of the area in
a reasonable amount of time, traffic withstanding.

~~~
enjo
When I lived in Dallas we had tremendous trouble finding _anywhere_ to live
that was "very urban". Outside of a couple of areas in the park cities (which
we could never afford) it was really hard to find. Even Downtown was nothing
but large streets with limited retail options. I remember looking at a condo
building near McKinney ave. that had as a main selling point "parking for your
Suburban". When I asked what was within walking distance they pointed in the
direction of McKinney and went "some stuff is that way, about a 10 minute
walk".

That was 6 years ago granted. Maybe things are better now?

------
zwieback
European settlement patterns are basically a continuation of medieval
patterns. In the US, especially in the West we have a continuation of the
westward expansion. There are plenty of examples of very livable, older towns
all over the US and there are plenty of examples of suburban sprawl outside of
the US.

I think the main problem is that too many affluent families actually prefer a
minivan-based lifestyle and the growth of online commerce and culture is going
to make it even more enjoyable.

For those of us who prefer denser, walkable neighborhoods there are plenty of
options but job choice may have to take a back seat to livability. I can see a
renewed interest in that type of lifestyle but in the US the trend is driven
primarily by younger people and will take some time to show results.

------
harrylove
The limited reading I've done on this subject has come from the published
works of Christopher Alexander[1]. In short, he espouses a process of letting
living spaces unfold (or evolve, or develop, if you like) in a way that mimics
nature. He applies this living process from the rug on the floor, to the
location of the doorway in the wall, to the layout of the city. I think The
Nature of Order series is especially profound.

Read these: * The Timeless Way of Building (1979) * A Pattern Language (1977)
* The Nature of Order (vols 1-4, 2002-2005)

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander#Published...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander#Published_works)

------
softgrow
A useful counter blog about ignoring the perceived dangers of the environment
is Lenore Skenanzy blog "Free-range Kids - How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant
Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)". <http://www.freerangekids.com/> Why
wait for planning to change and consequent environment change which will take
years when you can send the kids to the playground/school/shops now!

------
rfb
Another great resource: [http://www.abebooks.com/9780195019193/Pattern-
Language-Towns...](http://www.abebooks.com/9780195019193/Pattern-Language-
Towns-Buildings-Construction-0195019199/plp)

Presents the reader with a series of patterns which describe well designed
regions, town, buildings, decending right into rooms and living spaces. A
fantastic read which has provided a vocabulary to describe the spaces I enjoy.

~~~
scarmig
Also, FWIW, the inspiration for the idea of design patterns in software.

------
malyk
A great book that was recently released that talks about how to "fix" cities
is Walkable City by Jeff Speck. Very compelling read.

[http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-
America/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-
America/dp/0374285810)

------
loceng
It's because the design is driven by development companies with profit-
motives.

~~~
potatolicious
And large urban centers like NYC, SF, and Boston _aren't_ driven by
development companies with profit motives?

Blaming BigCorp seems misguided when we practically begged them to build it
this way. It's like walking into McDonald's, ordering a dozen Big Macs, and
then complaining about how McDonald's makes you fat.

~~~
alxp
> And large urban centers like NYC, SF, and Boston aren't driven by
> development companies with profit motives?

They also have to contend with larger local populations, often with a stronger
political voice. It's also more capital-intensive and planning-intensive to
build in a city than to plop down the same McMansions on cul-de-sacs outside
of town, so there's a lot less uniformity. So the answer to your rhetorical
question is no, not like suburbia is.

------
martinced
As a foreigner the one thing that strikes me the most as alienating is that in
too many places it's the exact same pattern that is applied.

Same roads. Same neighborhoods. Same places with restaurants and shops and a
big parking in the middle of the square lot. Same toilets.

It's alienating because it feels "fake" nearly anywhere you go. Nature, in a
lot of places, doesn't have its rights (just look at how some states are
"divided" by a straight line: terrifying).

Probably one of the worst place for that is Irvine in southern California.

Even if it's not "cookie cutter" everywhere, all the neighborhoods still look
identical.

These decisions may look pragmatic but to many foreigners it feels alienating.

~~~
akdetrick
I wouldn't call it pragmatic, but alienating is definitely the right word.

There are few (affordable) places in America right now that you can live
without complete car dependence. The poor, elderly, young, and disabled are in
fact alienated.

It's easy to understand why this pattern of settlement began when you consider
the novelty, freedom, individuality (which can not be understated as something
Americans valued), and convenience that came with the availability of
automobiles.

Somehow though, we've moved forward through almost a century of such
development, placing the car above all else. I'm reminded of Raquel Nelson,
charged with (but thankfully not convicted) manslaughter because a hit an run
driver killed her child while she was allegedly jaywalking [1].

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/18/woman-
convic...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/18/woman-convicted-of-
homicide-after-drunk-driver-kills-her-child/)

Edit: clarity

~~~
billpaetzke
A few places? I can only think of one (NYC) where you can be efficient w/o a
car and it's socially acceptable not to own one.

If you can think of more cities, let us know.

~~~
jaaron
I lived in Santa Monica for a year without a car (intentionally). It's totally
doable, but it takes planning.

~~~
billpaetzke
Ya I'm living in Hollywood right now w/o a car by choice. It's totally
functional for me since I live next to a subway stop and my work is also off a
major stop. And the neighborhood is incredibly walkable--everything I need or
want. Taxis readliy available should I need one.

Although being a single guy here, I think women see it as a red flag (at least
from what I see on okcupid). Interested in moving to NYC unless I find
somewhere cheaper and still interesting.

~~~
look_lookatme
Aside from the red flag aspect (which I can understand) does it make certain
social activities inconvenient, such that you require a friend to pick you up?

~~~
mixmastamyk
Zip car is in Hollywood.

------
youngerdryas
This is market forces in action. If more people wanted to live stacked on top
of each other then more of those projects would be built. Families with
children want to have a backyard, treefort, garage etc. To a large extent
space is freedom.

~~~
dspeyer
And yet, let's take a look at the market. A one-bedroom Manhattan condo costs
more than twice what a two-story house almost anywhere else does. There's no
lack of demand.

Building more housing in a city is hard. You have to buy out all units in the
existing building, and the current residents may be quite reluctant. And
actually extending a city is even harder.

