> I don't personally have a single friend in North America or Europe to whom it would be a "reasonable alternative" to travel on highways (where it is prohibited) by bike or bus and invest maybe 90 minutes to simply get to the closest grocery store and then be able to
Right. That’s like calling water wet. Of course we live this way, we designed our cities to make us live this way…
I’m not sure what you’re talking about w.r.t Europe. Even if you have friends that drive everywhere that just is not how most people live day-to-day.
Best thing about living in older European cities is they don't have this stupid zoning, they mixed commercial and housing because that's how people chose to live before planners got invented after ww2. Now planners are patting themselves on the back for recently inventing the 20 minute community, Which is exactly the same thing. My one major thing I want in life is to never ever live in a suburban development with zero to do except drive to places.
Urban planning is probably as old as cities. Based on my limited experience, European planners just focus more on actual planning than mere zoning.
When an area is being (re)developed, the planners try to figure out many of the details. How should be public transport and parking organized? Where are the walking and biking routes? Where should the parks and commercial spaces be? And so on. Older European cities are not as much organically grown as planned and replanned over centuries.
You might be right, but there was an interesting thing on BBC radio 4 s few years ago, an British architect who grew up in Lebanon explained that he thought the UK should bin it's planners completely as all that had been built post ww2 when that arm of government was created, was monstrosities or at best only allow the equivalent of music's James blunt records. Not great but at least boring and acceptible.
Lack of zoning is one element of the equation but having developed before the car is pretty crucial too. Houston, TX has no zoning laws to speak of but because most of its growth happened in the last century, it grew outwards instead of upwards.
>Of course we live this way, we designed our cities to make us live this way…
I feel like you're almost making a moral statement there, it doesn't have the nuance I think exists.
1) You have people like my parents, siblings, and friends in the Midwest. The idea of living somewhere where they don't have the practical privacy of living on a farm literally horrifies them. I can't convince them otherwise, I've tried. They view me as simply "weird". Literally no hope, but maybe you can convince their kids.
2) You have people like me who love the energy, convenience, and stimulation of high density living but still end up driving and having a car because the cost differential is just way too extreme to logically justify living where I want to.
There's a mystery to me in it. I spent time in Bangkok and Shanghai and why does it seem really easy to rent a centrally located place in a quality tall building, as if it's just normal, and without a prices that seems insanely disproportionate to other life expenses? Yet in the US, it's very rare. There's not enough demand? Labor costs are too high? Laws like building hight limits in the US prevent it? I've heard there are taboos in Europe for high buildings as well.
I think there is also an element of culturally dictated space demands that comes into play. You can have these nice dense places in Bangkok because people will see 300 SQ ft and still rent it. In the US people told me I was brave for trying to survive by myself in "only" 500 SQ ft. They could never "stand not even being able to breathe". You won't have an easy time changing people's minds about this. Personally I'm willing to live in 150sq ft if I'm at the heart of the fun.
I live in the midwest too. The vast majority of people live in the suburbs or an urban area. I don’t know why those who live on farms who already have the roads they need should be the primary voice we listen to, especially when nothing changes for them. That’s the thing. Nobody is changing their way of life.
> 2) You have people like me who love the energy, convenience, and stimulation of high density living but still end up driving and having a car because the cost differential is just way too extreme to logically justify living where I want to.
Right but those places are so expensive because they are so rare. Why are they so rare? Because we don’t build them.
> I think there is also an element of space demands. You can have these nice dense places in Bangkok because people will see 300 SQ ft and still rent it. In the US people told me I was brave for trying to survive by myself in "only" 500 SQ ft. They could never "stand not even being able to breathe".
This is another end of a spectrum, one which I don’t like either. We don’t need skyscrapers. We can build with a great level of density and have the best of all worlds.
This is in Columbus. You can have a car, you can even have two, you can have a garage, or park on the street. But you can also ride your bike to work or walk. These aren’t 500 square foot homes.
“Yea but all of that is so expensive” yes because we don’t build them. There is no reason this isn’t affordable except that we simply choose to not build like this. That’s it. We just choose to amputate our mobility and pay outrageous amounts of money to have the privilege of driving. The high prices of these homes demonstrate that they are desired.
I don’t advocate for skyscrapers. They are an anti-pattern enabled by cheap energy and oil. The other end, the car-driven suburb is bad too. Ideally we’d have towns like they do in Europe with rural communities surrounding them. So your family can have their space and farm. And everyone who wants a town can have that too.
“Choose” is a critical word, too. We’ve chosen it partially because some laws setup over half a century ago have a lot of inertia, and have literally made it illegal to build many of the places you’re describing.
Even when it’s not explicitly illegal, it can be stymied by people who were appointed who simply can’t imagine people wanting to live near public transit and not own a car. Just recently in Boston, a building that was 5 stories high, and a 5 minute walk to an excellent subway station, was rejected by the Zoning Board of Appeals. [1]
The arguments made included that the building was too high, and that it lacked parking. At 5 stories high, it was 1 story higher than a very nearby building, and 2 stories higher than many residences near it, which are 3 stories.
And it’s a 5 minute walk to a subway. That’s exactly the kind of place to live and not own a car. But the city zoning board didn’t think that was an acceptable way to live, and they chose not to… partially because the law gave them the ability to choose that, because not having minimum amounts of parking is illegal when building a new place to live. It’s illegal even if you live a 5 minute walk from a subway stop.
Well then don’t live on a farm? I mean I’m not sure what they’re expecting. If anything there would be fewer cars on the road and less traffic.
Maybe we should buy the land surrounding their farm and just place apartments and Wal-Marts and tear down the trees? They can live next to the city they wanted. Oh and that way I can go visit a farm whenever I want, easily and conveniently and feel like I’m on the countryside. Similar to a farmer getting to feel like they are part of the city or town. This cuts both ways.
“But Eric this is already happening”
Yea because we build suburbs, and have to spread everything out.
Of course they are. I love farmers. I wish I could buy their fresh produce directly similar to how it occurs in small European towns and city markets. I want local farmers feeding me and my family. But… those farmers apparently prefer that I live in a suburb and go to the grocery store and buy produce from somewhere else instead so they can have a highway and easy parking to the city center they don’t go to.
> I spent time in Bangkok and Shanghai and why does it seem really easy to rent a centrally located place in a quality tall building, as if it's just normal, and without a prices that seems insanely disproportionate to other life expenses? Yet in the US, it's very rare. There's not enough demand? Labor costs are too high? Laws like building hight limits in the US prevent it?
There aren’t enough of them because in huge swaths of the country it’s illegal to build anything denser than a single-family home. There’s plenty of demand for it, there’s just not enough supply.
Doesn’t even have to be high-rises, in most places it’s illegal to build the sort of mid-rises that are everywhere in European cities.
EDIT: Oh, and it’s also usually illegal to put a business in a residential area, which forces things further apart and forces people to drive to get to anything.
I would happily live in a 150 sq ft shed if it kept me out of the city and the "fun". It's not that I'm not willing to make do with a small space, it's that I don't want to be tripping over my neighborsband dealing with their noise and idiosyncrasies.
The biggest problem with increasing density is noise. Some of it can be solved with better building standards, but that increases cost again.
And in western countries there seems to have been a general erosion of the kind of local level government authority you need to deal with the one household that is a chronic noise problem for the hundreds of people they disturb around them.
These discussions tend to gloss over the fact that more density is going to require tackling antisocial behaviour head on, and local government are neither willing or able to do so.
> The biggest problem with increasing density is noise.
Noise can be managed with sound insulation, but the biggest problem with density is the crowds. Big lines and waits for everything because there are so many people. I'm very happy to live in a borderline-rural suburb. No lines anywhere, no traffic, no waiting anywhere. It's so nice.
The stomping noises upstairs in my old apartment were from cars? And cars pumped Tejano music through my vents? (Didn't actually mind that one. They were very loud, but during reasonable-ish hours) I guess what I thought was a screaming child in the hallway was also cars. Crazy.
Most of the noise might be from cars, but the noise that makes me want to hurt people is from stereos and parties and dickheads with power tools at fuck off O'clock in the morning.
Edit: and motorbikes, fuck motorbikes. I'll give you that one.
> Personally I'm willing to live in 150sq ft if I'm at the heart of the fun.
How could that work? Do you own anything? Do you have any hobbies? I'm having trouble imagining how that could possibly work.
That's smaller than my office and my office only contains two desks, a few ikea shelves and a handful of computers and books. No beds, no kitchen, no bathroom (there's a bathroom in the office building elsewhere), no personal posessions, nothing.
> I’m not sure what you’re talking about w.r.t Europe. Even if you have friends that drive everywhere that just is not how most people live day-to-day.
I'm european and I've lived in several european countries. It's definitely how a huge percentage of the european population lives day to day.
Not even 40% of the european population lives in cities. 30% is towns + suburb and 30% is countryside/seaside/mountain/rural.
That's 60% right there where car is the de facto daily way of moving.
And even in cities like Brussels or Paris you have those who do use their car on a daily basis, for short trips (like going to drop/pick the kids at school a few kilometers away). Insane statistics (x% of all car trips in Brussels are for less than y kilometers with both x and y being very low: although I forgot the numbers).
I guess it depends on who your friends are but around me, in the various place I've lived in Europe, the car is totally king.
Ah ok. I didn’t realize Europe was built like places like Houston, LA, and Atlanta and everybody took cars everywhere, they did the whole 2hr car commute to the office, and they didn’t walk to the grocery store in their neighborhood and instead they all got in their big SUVs (which they own at least 2 of of course) to the local grocery store about a mile away with the huge parking lot. It’s a small wonder that Europeans can even afford to do this, given how expensive gas is compared to America.
"Europe" is much less homogeneous, from an urban-planning perspective, than the US. We have medieval cities with narrow streets, like Barcelona or Firenze, mixed with '70s developments, suburban dormitories, megalopolis like London and Paris, and so on. So depending on who you ask, you will get a very different picture of their habits around transportation. Undoubtedly, you Americans drive more and longer than we do; but we still drive some, and have a similar issue with choosing our development models post-1980. But undoubtedly, ditching cars would be significantly easier for us than it would be for you.
Right. That’s like calling water wet. Of course we live this way, we designed our cities to make us live this way…
I’m not sure what you’re talking about w.r.t Europe. Even if you have friends that drive everywhere that just is not how most people live day-to-day.