Zoning reform is the most achievable bad idea. It is better than status quo, but massively inferior as a solution to the less politically possible solution of mass government and non-profit housing, given carte blanche exemptions to zoning to favor it over private options.
The public should be kept out of all discussions about zoning and building. And a more biased one is that Ljubljana is urbanistically speaking the most underrated city in the world
Environmental studies are only useful if the net environmental impact of what you're building is negative. So no need for transit infra, dense housing, etc
An undervalued way to improve density is simply removing minimum lot sizes and required building separation/street frontage for detached residential lots, instead of focusing on vertical development.
American fire departments need to adopt smaller, more compact trucks built on standard chassis like their European counterparts. Saves space and money.
I'm trying to think of an example of when something raised might actually be useful. Like a resident pointing out that there's frequent mudslides there and the city wasn't aware of this fact? A resident informing them the sewer main is at capacity?
Your suggestions are i suspect things that the govt would know better than a member of the public.
There's the walkie talkie in London. Someone might have realised that putting a spherical concave surface on one side might cause it to make death rays.
I slept on it. You are absolutely right. There is almost no situation where a conventional building would cause a problem that a member of the public could identify.
One that I (very much a YIMBY) noticed in my town this week: some mid-dense 3-4 floor apartment buildings have been going in near the university, but the latest one backs up the the lot line just south of the north neighbors' backyards, so now their entire yard is completely shaded out (1/2)
I was on staff for six years in a local government neighborhood involvement program and I quit for two reasons: 1) aforementioned damage to the soul, and 2) guilt for using taxpayer money on my program to serve the same sixty cranky upper-middle class NIMBYs. God it was true hell.
Unless I’m not thinking clearly, yes, at least from a go-forward perspective. Two suburbanites versus one suburbanite and one urbanite is less overall co2 emissions.
I did laugh at your being chirped for not being willing to retrofit your house.
I appreciate the idea that changing your life (moving) to someplace more walkable doesn’t do anything to affect change. Something to consider as I envy walkable, bikeable areas from my car-centric community.
You could really stretch an argument that more demand in cities will increase building (uh, so far significantly less than it should) and population growth could center on cities rather than suburbia, and that would net reduce emissions? 🥴 but it’s a long a speculative chain.
Every highway construction or improvement project should be legally required to install or upgrade a parallel passenger rail line and find funding for its service.
As practiced, urban planning systematically undervalues future populations.
From exclusively weighting current residents' feedback over prospective residents', to ignoring induced demand, to shying away from master planning in favor of isolated projects, to financing that back-loads costs...
If you’re an urbanist but get around primarily by car (even if it’s electric), you are not really an urbanist. The amount of parking and road infrastructure needed to support SOVs works against everything that is great about cities.
Also, strict policies that prevent loitering and public drug usage on public transit are a good thing. Public drug usage and loitering scare people away from public transit.
Close down Heathrow Airport and turn the entire site into Canary Wharf 2.0 with lots of dense housing and office space, build a new hub airport somewhere in the Home Counties or expand Gatwick
You'd have desire paths running wild on private property, because there are no through lines. It would invite a lot of conflict between public space and private space.
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Decisionmakers should pay as much attention to the needs of people who come to a place (city or town or neighborhood) for work, school, or social reasons as they do to residents. Also, renters have just as much stake in a place as homeowners do.
Any municipality or neighborhood that shoots down new housing proposal automatically gets their property taxes raised. Devil is in the details, but that could get it done.
The lengths leftists are willing to go to be "anti gentrification" has crossed the line into intentionally sandbagging the quality of municipal governance in the name of lowering rents, on the verge of inducing white flight all over again in the name of "anti gentrification"
Plus the 'no new housing because it might gentrification an area' argument just pushes new housing into less sustainability located areas, and the cycle of mono-zoning and car dependence gets perpetuated at the periphery again
Seattleites should stop mourning the failed attempt to make South Lake Union a park. It became one of the most valuable job markets in the world instead, and that’s good!
I love @theurbanist.org, but its dismissive stance toward public safety initiatives is untenable. Here in Seattle, the core of our whole transit network is an open air fentanyl market. The city’s making progress cleaning it up, but The Urbanist has pushed back every step of the way, and I hate it.
@yimbyland.com Eco-Georgism, where you would tax based on land value and not the value of the house would quickly densify cities and suburbs. Allow private property that allowed the public to use it to be tax free as green space. Land size ownership in cities and suburbs increases (1/2)
@yimbyland.com Replacing minimum wage with living wage based on cost of living by county would allow people to live nearer to where they work if they chose to.
@yimbyland.com Restructuring how schools are funded on property taxes, and instead give the same for every student in each school in a state would all people to live where ever they want and not have to move to a suburbs to get their kids into a good school reducing commute times
Density, or lack thereof, is no excuse for poor public transport. Integrated timetabling, across all modes to allow for a transfer-based service to provide anywhere-to-anywhere travel is achievable at low-densities with effective planning. Cr. Paul Mees, Transport 4 Suburbia
The unsaid reason SCRRA/Metrolink and non-L.A. Metro Board Members (i.e., SBCTA, RCTC, OCTA, and VCTC) haven't adopted L.A. County's TAP system is because of most officials' hostility towards anything L.A. County unless it benefits them directly.
Cities as markets misses the bigger picture of cities as human environments. Markets are a massive part of their formation and functioning, but non-productive people like cities too.
There should be straightforward, transparent rules and processes for applying to build things and when you follow them, you get to build the thing you’ve proposed
Almost all crosswalks should be at the same level as the sidewalk and vehicles should be expected accommodate instead of pedestrians accommodating vehicles.
Mandatory front setbacks just force houses to be on bigger plots than they'd otherwise need. For one lot, it doesn't make a lot of difference, but the amount of extra easy density that could have been created with every lot being 20' shorter is huge.
Residents should be able to sue for poor planning. Not planning for enough housing, not having safe bike lanes, not having walkable sidewalks, not having last mile solutions ought to come with a cost.
1 bus carries more passengers than 40 of any kind of bike;they should therefore get more dedicated mileage and higher priority by urbanists than a niche hobby.
1. Electric cars are OK, actually.
2. Suburbs can double their population withour pushing a single tree down, just build up.
3. If a city refuses to build safe space for bikes and ebikes, expect electric motorcycles to take their place.
Skyscrapers are overrated. High rise districts are often the most boring areas of the city. Corporate and sterile w/giant ugly parking podiums littering the streets. With the advent of Zoom do we really need everyone in giant office towers to increase productivity anymore?
For the construction industry to perform like we need it to, there needs to be a massive standardization effort. Universal codes, universal form based zoning, by-right approval, standard environmental rules, etc. Everything possible to improve predictability and modularity
In blue states its easier to pass reforms at the state level than city. In general, advocates can achieve more with less effort by organizing at the state level.
Transit shouldn't be treated as a traffic reduction tool because induced demand still exists, so any relief in traffic from people switching from cars to transit will eventually vanish.
Transit can reduce the impacts the negatives of traffic have on society, but it won't reduce the traffic itself.
Good point. I've made this logical mistake. Key is to focus on the outcomes efficient transportation enables (economic growth, tax base to fuel amenity creation and/or social safety net, population growth to increase political power, quality of life, etc)
Yes! Exactly. We find that when transit is planned as a traffic mitigation tool, you end up with a highway style approach, with bad land use and walkability, which are critical to truly effective transit.
And just to pre-empt the replies, no this doesn't mean we shouldn't build transit or that it doesn't help manage traffic better. If everyone has to drive, it makes traffic jams last longer and increases their negative societal impacts.
However, this also means we shouldn't plan transit as a traffic mitigation tool. So park and rides for example aren't always a great way to go because these are often targeted towards making people drive less along specific corridors, not reducing car dependence as a whole.
As someone whose whole family spent a decade using the PnR and KnR to get to work/Uni, while living in deep suburbia, I assure you that they did a great deal to reduce VMT.
That's the thing, it doesn't really in the long term. Induced demand doesn't just apply to surplus road capacity created by adding lanes. It also applies to road capacity freed up from people switching from cars to transit.
So eventually (shorter than you'd thing), traffic will always return.
I like this because no one bats an eye to someone sleeping on the floor or a bench of the airport, surrounded by their belongings, and having not showered in days (as long as they're not blocking other users).
People don’t like seeing people sleeping in the corners of subway stations but they’ll largely tolerate it so long as the homeless aren’t creating massive negative externalities like leaving lots of trash around or openly using drugs
The purpose of building roads is economic development, not traffic reduction, so everybody who talks about it in terms of traffic reduction is either bs-ing or clueless.
"The latter definitionally cannot have the same economic development as the former"
Sure they can. If you can send 2,000 trucks down a road instead of 1,000 trucks, there is clear economic benefit.
And also the second point still stands, whatever econ growth is enabled w the road expansion and the 2nd thousand trucks...could have been delivered better via other methods
so what you’re saying is the priorities should be safety and throughput, therefore every street in any given downtown should really just be pedestrianized.
yeah i’m being glib but i unironically agree. every time they close streets to cars on a weekend and im shoulder to shoulder with tons of people buying things i realize how popular it would be.
I just assume it's to get more people where they want to go.
Just reciting "induced demand" to dismiss more lane-miles is kind of silly. That means lots of people have a bunch of trips they're foregoing due to traffic! More people getting to go where they want to go is probably good.
Maybe it’s good for the destination spot and the driver but what about all that area between the two? It’s noise, pollution, accidents, and road maintencnace costs for no economic benefit.
Also “induced demand” is a proven phenomenon you can read about extensively if you like.
Yeah I'm not saying "ergo all highway widening is good", I'm saying opponents of new lanes should face the reality that there are benefits to be weighed against all those real costs you cite.
it's perfectly legitimate for opponents of new highways to point out to the people being sold on 'faster driving' are being mislead. the conversation gets away from the base relationship too easily but that's the problem
The actual argument against highway widening is if you introduce a toll to pay for it, it will almost always reduce traffic by so much the widening isn't necessary. From which we can surmise the induced extra travel is pretty low value
That's a nice argument. I'd be curious how broadly it holds. Variable tolls on HOT lanes routinely bump into their limits and still get congested, like in Seattle and DC area highways. Tolled SR-520 also still gets congested here in Seattle.
Most people don’t want to drive until they qualify, but they do because it’s easier to build exurbs and highways on greenfields than it is to build denser housing in existing cities and suburbs
Cities should have public spaces where people can watch the local sports team play on a big tv screen or projector. These could be surrounded by bars with outdoor cafe tables where people can allowed to drink, smoke and cheer, holler or boo if they want to.
Developers should not be bogged down with overly bureaucratic regulations for affordable housing mandates. This is a major flaw of progressive city governance.
Urban farms/gardens should only be encourage as a blight mitigation strategy and should not be allowed to become permanent greenspaces because they poorly serve that need while not reflecting the land's value.
Transit/bike/pedestrian infrastructure projects should be planned to build a minimum viable product with expansion to immediately follow & open as able rather than trying to build & open the whole enchilada all at once.
Get something moving, let surrounding communities see results ASAP.
Max 2-hour street parking in residential areas. Residents should be required to prove access to off-street parking as part of vehicle registration. Parked vehicles create danger to cyclists/ pedestrians and ruin streetscapes
abolishing single-family zoning isn't enough, new SFHs should be banned and incentives should be provided for converting (read: demolishing) SFHs to multi-family buildings
Urbanism in general has done an extremely poor job accounting for the needs of families and it’s both damaged the movement and served the needs of the investor and developer class over the needs of prospective owners and occupants.
We should adopt the Private Road Association model for rural and exurban roads from Sweden and stop paying for anti-social weirdos, who have nothing to do with natural resource extraction, to easily get to Walmart.
Nah, I USE the pedals & gears, and get more power, range & exercise thereby!
Power assist just levels hills, makes longer trips easy.
It chuffs me when I see chumps going along wo pedaling.
Els are:
- cheaper
- healthier (air quality in subways is awful)
- better pax exp (less vertical offset from street)
- quieter than the roads they invariably accompany
on the other side of the ledger, els have visual impacts
interesting how this one concern carried the day across the western world
There are at least a few curves in the line in Vancouver where the train is a lot louder than the nearby traffic, and the lines are sometimes offset from the major roads here. But in general it's a fair point, I just wish they were quieter.
I’ve only experienced bangkok skytrain and copenhagen metro, and those are both pretty quiet. but yeah rail facilities definitely create noise pollution!
That rail transit is over valued and rail transit to the airport is especially over valued. I think rail transit to the airport makes sense for places that have a lot of downtown tourism and airports that are close to cities but expect more airport workers than tourists to use such a service.
That fareless transit, except in well off small towns dominated by a few large employers (think college town) would require something close to a police state to keep safe in a way that people of means would be willing to use it.
That every transit plan should prioritize organization, over electronics, over concrete. We have plenty of routes begging for more service and yet oftentimes we don't provide more because we're waiting on the concrete of a new BRT or LRT line.
It's okay to start operating BRT buses before your Busway is built. My local transit agency bought a fleet of new BRT buses but they're still getting bids on the busway. We could put them into operation now, even with a wood platform and put them to use.
It's an equal protection violation to plow right-of-ways for people inside motor vehicles but not for people outside of motor vehicles.
#PlowSidewalksToo
One more. The nation's most segregated communities aren't the cities with people of color in concentrated in one neighborhood, they're the suburbs & small towns with no people of color.
There is a market failure with roads. They are a natural monopoly because you can't build two roads in one place. If every road was a privately owned toll road, it would be a mess!
Parking can be competitive where it accesses lots of stuff (high land value) or free (low land value).
Comments
When a tower is proposed, the public is entitled to request wider sidewalks to accommodate the additional pedestrians.
Also fully appreciate that genuine submissions on issues are unicorns.
There's the walkie talkie in London. Someone might have realised that putting a spherical concave surface on one side might cause it to make death rays.
But that isn't a conventional design.
Are there even any examples?
(what if we worked on making hostile places less hostile instead)
I appreciate the idea that changing your life (moving) to someplace more walkable doesn’t do anything to affect change. Something to consider as I envy walkable, bikeable areas from my car-centric community.
Every highway construction or improvement project should be legally required to install or upgrade a parallel passenger rail line and find funding for its service.
From exclusively weighting current residents' feedback over prospective residents', to ignoring induced demand, to shying away from master planning in favor of isolated projects, to financing that back-loads costs...
Honestly not an awful block shape, but I do think squares are the best
If I were to build a city from scratch, I'd be very tempted to try a hexagonal grid...
👇🏽
https://www.michigan.gov/taxes/questions/iit/epay/general/what-cities-impose-an-income-tax
This affects casual commuters like myself as well as children who want autonomy.
Especially if they run end-to-end along main roads and connect with rail.
It's why the buildings on main streets sit so close to the sidewalk: the city reclaimed their full road allowance.
If there’s pedestrian space conflict, which is , in aggregate, rare, take space from the roadway.
2. Suburbs can double their population withour pushing a single tree down, just build up.
3. If a city refuses to build safe space for bikes and ebikes, expect electric motorcycles to take their place.
- EVTOL & similar can help, encourage it for rural and ban it from cities & suburbs
Transit can reduce the impacts the negatives of traffic have on society, but it won't reduce the traffic itself.
So eventually (shorter than you'd thing), traffic will always return.
No smoking, no screaming, no weapons and no pan handling.
Otherwise you’ll never get middle class families to ride the subway again
"building new roads into hitherto unreached areas"
w/
"widening existing roads between already connected areas"
The latter definitionally cannot have the same economic development as the former
Let alone (I would argue) that development is better delivered differently
Sure they can. If you can send 2,000 trucks down a road instead of 1,000 trucks, there is clear economic benefit.
Similar to a community before the rail line to after...it helps to have a second one but nearly as much as just having one
Just reciting "induced demand" to dismiss more lane-miles is kind of silly. That means lots of people have a bunch of trips they're foregoing due to traffic! More people getting to go where they want to go is probably good.
Also “induced demand” is a proven phenomenon you can read about extensively if you like.
What may be good for Toronto may not work in Ottawa or Brockville or Niagara.
(Cause I'm both triggered, and in reluctant agreement).
Get something moving, let surrounding communities see results ASAP.
But when you look to places like Queens today, which lack public parks, some of the large old cemeteries should be converted.
Power assist just levels hills, makes longer trips easy.
It chuffs me when I see chumps going along wo pedaling.
- cheaper
- healthier (air quality in subways is awful)
- better pax exp (less vertical offset from street)
- quieter than the roads they invariably accompany
on the other side of the ledger, els have visual impacts
interesting how this one concern carried the day across the western world
#PlowSidewalksToo
There is a market failure with roads. They are a natural monopoly because you can't build two roads in one place. If every road was a privately owned toll road, it would be a mess!
Parking can be competitive where it accesses lots of stuff (high land value) or free (low land value).