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ToxicSlurpee posted:It's this. Up until very recently people generally lived very close to where they worked often in the same building. The smith's house was also probably his shop so if you needed a new tool made you just paid him a visit. That worked because there was like, lifelong hereditary professions. You lived in the house your father built doing the job he did, changing jobs is something you'd maybe do once in your life and it'd be a big deal if you ever changed at all. I think everyone wishes there was more job stability in the modern world, but I don't think most people would want to live above the mcdonalds and move every time they switched jobs. There is only a small segment of the population that does or even wants to just keep the same job for 20 years. People are mobile and will move for jobs but probably aren't going to want to be pulling their kids out of school literally every single time they work at a different target or switch companies for website design or whatever. Anyone that owns a blacksmithery is probably still sticking in one job forever, but no one else can or wants to do that.
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Mar 18, 2019 13:53
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Insanite posted:Say I’m in a neighborhood of two- and three- story multifamily homes in a streetcar suburb. I’ve lived here for a decade or two, I have kids in the school system, and I love the feel and routine of where I live. You shouldn't have to sell it to that particular neighborhood, because each neighborhood will naturally fight to push those things into other neighborhoods or cities. That's why these things should be planned at the regional level (or higher), so that you don't get random areas vetoing poo poo that needs to get done. In practice that kind of behavior means rich neighborhoods are untouched and poor neighborhoods get all of the 'undesirable' elements, because shocker of shockers, the rich neighborhoods have more political power. Community input is good, but only so far. Part of why gentrification/displacement of poor people in poor neighborhoods is such an issue is that we're so scared of touching SFH-only neighborhoods where the affluent live that all the increased housing density goes elsewhere. Cicero fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Mar 18, 2019 |
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Mar 18, 2019 13:58
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Insanite posted:Say I’m in a neighborhood of two- and three- story multifamily homes in a streetcar suburb. I’ve lived here for a decade or two, I have kids in the school system, and I love the feel and routine of where I live. That you can build dense buildings that don't compromise the feel of the neighborhood. Why not build a 20 unit apartment building that is three stories? This will bring business to your area and keep your taxes lower as the property that just was built will add to property tax levies. And, most importantly, without housing homeless situations get worse.
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Mar 18, 2019 14:12
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Cicero posted:It's basically the same as selling a homeless shelter or halfway house. I'd probably join up with an obnoxious civic group to block these regional changes, in this case. You're trying to bumrush my neighborhood, and I've seen how your types derisively call me a racist NIMBY in other discussion venues.  Mooseontheloose posted:That you can build dense buildings that don't compromise the feel of the neighborhood. Why not build a 20 unit apartment building that is three stories? This will bring business to your area and keep your taxes lower as the property that just was built will add to property tax levies. And, most importantly, without housing homeless situations get worse. My hypothetical neighborhood feels pretty dense already. Say we've achieved 16k+ people per sq mi thanks to small lots, row houses, triple deckers, etc. I'm okay with small apartment buildings--we already even have a few--but developers are proposing much larger buildings the next neighborhood over, and I fear that mine is next. We already have plenty of businesses in my city. Our tax base is doing just fine. Is it wrong for me to have anxiety about this? (Something I'm trying to think through is when anxiety about densification is 'okay' and when it is not. I actually do live in a really dense streetcar suburb, and our zoning changes at the moment are limited mostly to eliminating parking minimums near mass transit. No one except the bleeding edge of YIMBYs here are for total zoning deregulation.)
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Mar 18, 2019 14:30
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Insanite posted:I'd probably join up with an obnoxious civic group to block these regional changes, in this case. You're trying to bumrush my neighborhood, and I've seen how your types derisively call me a racist NIMBY in other discussion venues. quote:My hypothetical neighborhood feels pretty dense already. Say we've achieved 16k+ people per sq mi thanks to small lots, row houses, triple deckers, etc. I'm okay with small apartment buildings--we already even have a few--but developers are proposing much larger buildings the next neighborhood over, and I fear that mine is next. We already have plenty of businesses in my city. Our tax base is doing just fine. Is it wrong for me to have anxiety about this? quote:(Something I'm trying to think through is when anxiety about densification is 'okay' and when it is not. I actually do live in a really dense streetcar suburb, and our zoning changes at the moment are limited mostly to eliminating parking minimums near mass transit. No one except the bleeding edge of YIMBYs here are for total zoning deregulation.) The argument for why we should accommodate people moving around is basically twofold: first, it's fundamentally American to allow freedom of movement, and blocking people from coming in by intentionally keeping an area expensive is un-American. Yes, you're never going to make every single area perfectly affordable for everyone, just like you're never going to stop every murder, but that doesn't mean you stop striving for the ideal. Second, it makes sense at a societal level to let people move where the economy is booming (which is generally why a place is growing rapidly). If an industry is successful in an area and is offering lots of good jobs, then telling people and companies that they should just try to duplicate it elsewhere, where it's currently not happening, is deeply stupid. I mean, if they want to try that too, fine, but you shouldn't force the issue by blocking them from the successful area. Also SFH-only neighborhoods shouldn't exist, at a minimum small apartment complexes and townhomes and 4-plexes should be allowed everywhere, SFH-only neighborhoods are gated communities backed by the government, which is absurd. The government should not be using its resources to fund economic segregation. quote:No one except the bleeding edge of YIMBYs here are for total zoning deregulation. Cicero fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Mar 18, 2019 |
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Mar 18, 2019 14:44
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a major source of NIMBYism is that land use decisions are often left up to the free market (within constraints) but transportation networks to support land uses are firmly a governmental decision, and thus the two systems develop out of synch with each other and one often has to catch up to the other. this generates traffic issues and other friction from development which seems ill advised because the effects of development shake out on a much longer timescale than on which people get annoyed at changes in neighborhood character
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Mar 18, 2019 14:46
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That's a major concern of mine, yeah. It seems impossible to plan things out smartly without governments taking a more active role in urban development.Cicero posted:In America this is an extreme edge case, as 16k+/sq mi suburbs are a rarity. Like, that density level is a bit higher than Boston proper, and a bit lower than SF proper. This actually sort of describes where I live (we're at 18k per sqmi, and without any tall buildings). A weird side effect of living in an ultra-progressive, developer-friendly outlier city is that we're crawling forward on necessary zoning reforms, but many of our neighbors aren't. Capital swoops in to build high-end structures as it can, poor people increasingly have nowhere to go, and our neighbor cities continue to do nothing to address the housing crisis. Regional planning and regulation would be swell. e: My gut says that this is why a lot of American 'urbanists' fetishize skyscrapers so much. You're not going to see a brilliant regional plan put into action anywhere--the best you might get is a big rear end building plopped down (that serves private interests first). Insanite fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Mar 18, 2019 |
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Mar 18, 2019 15:00
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the sanctity of home rule and lack of effective regional planning is one of the cornerstones of Why American Cities Are Bad. it doesn't help that this is useful for both developers seeking to get buddy buddy with powerful local officials, as well as home rule being generally popular as a shortcut to enforce racial segregation
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Mar 18, 2019 15:06
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Insanite posted:e: My gut says that this is why a lot of American 'urbanists' fetishize skyscrapers so much.
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Mar 18, 2019 15:48
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I don't have a spreadsheet or anything. Just around over the years, for the most part--and if not always skyscrapers, then certainly big, girthy buildings. You've seriously never seen heard or read folks calling row houses and triple-deckers insufficiently dense or ambitious? e: Like, isn't this one of the things that Ed Glaeser's been banging on about for years? And certainly ending or relaxing height limits are a thing, with just what is appropriate in the end to be left up to local conditions and the wants of the private sector. Insanite fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Mar 18, 2019 |
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Mar 18, 2019 16:01
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Cicero posted:I dunno where you've been reading urbanist opinions but I haven't really seen this. Like, they're certainly okay with skyscrapers and want them in certain areas, but they also want medium-density buildings (spread throughout a larger area) as much if not more. This is kind of my impression too. I don't recall reading anyone getting excited about skyscrapers recently.
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Mar 18, 2019 16:02
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Insanite posted:I don't have a spreadsheet or anything. Just around over the years, for the most part--and if not always skyscrapers, then certainly big, girthy buildings. In the vast majority of Americans urban land row houses and triple deckers barely exist so I’ve definitely seen more fetishizing of those forms in particular than I have of skyscrapers Like in a lot of places “relaxing height limits” could mean going up to like 60 feet
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Mar 18, 2019 16:35
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But row houses are cool and should be fetishized. Fair on 60', though I live in one of the densest little cities in America and we have vanishingly few buildings that are that tall. Thinking of here as an example, I don't think that allowing higher construction across the board without some regional coordination would be great for us. In the end and forever, I guess I'm frustrated with development being so atomized and driven by private interests.
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Mar 18, 2019 16:49
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Insanite posted:I don't have a spreadsheet or anything. Just around over the years, for the most part--and if not always skyscrapers, then certainly big, girthy buildings. quote:And certainly ending or relaxing height limits are a thing, with just what is appropriate in the end to be left up to local conditions and the wants of the private sector. Badger of Basra posted:In the vast majority of Americans urban land row houses and triple deckers barely exist so I’ve definitely seen more fetishizing of those forms in particular than I have of skyscrapers
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Mar 18, 2019 16:51
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Insanite posted:Thinking of here as an example, I don't think that allowing higher construction across the board without some regional coordination would be great for us. Which is kind of the exact problem. As long as you and everyone else are just looking out for themselves the result will bad decisions for society as a whole. You might even be right, but that doesn't get you out of the prisoner's dilemma.
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Mar 18, 2019 16:54
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Squalid posted:Which is kind of the exact problem. As long as you and everyone else are just looking out for themselves the result will bad decisions for society as a whole. You might even be right, but that doesn't get you out of the prisoner's dilemma. I guess I wouldn't call "resisting capital turning every inch of my little city into a smart investment vehicle" a bad decision.
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Mar 18, 2019 16:57
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Squalid posted:Which is kind of the exact problem. As long as you and everyone else are just looking out for themselves the result will bad decisions for society as a whole. You might even be right, but that doesn't get you out of the prisoner's dilemma.
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Mar 18, 2019 16:58
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yeah there's really nothing wrong with looking out for your own best interests so long as the primary driver of neighborhood change is speculators looking to obtain private profit
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Mar 18, 2019 17:03
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That's where I'm at, yeah. Like, someone unveils a Greater Boston regional compact that means green, gorgeous, efficient, transit-oriented urban development? Awesome. I'm on board. The status quo, though, or something even a little more libertarian than that? Less on board.
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Mar 18, 2019 17:10
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Insanite posted:I guess I wouldn't call "resisting capital turning every inch of my little city into a smart investment vehicle" a bad decision. Presuming your city is in the United States it is already that. Cicero posted:He's right though that regional coordination is the answer here. Transportation and housing should both be decided primarily at the region/metro area level. It's close enough to take local concerns into account, while avoiding most of the problem of "some other city/neighborhood take the growth". That's the point of the reference to the prisoner's dilemma. In this analogy the local governments are the prisoners, and the way out of the dilemma is regional coordination. Insanite might be right that blocking local development is a good decision for himself. However if everyone makes that same decision simultaneously the result is bad for everyone. Anyone unilaterally trying to change course will end up bearing the costs for the selfish and self interested. We all benefit from development. It's just we'd prefer that all the related costs be borne by somebody else. Unless we can force everyone to share the burden, its just natural that people are going to try and free ride or push the burden onto people who can't defend themselves.
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Mar 18, 2019 17:12
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Squalid posted:Presuming your city is in the United States it is already that. Not true. We have thousands of inches of public housing and CLT-managed homes. But yes, everything sucks.
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Mar 18, 2019 18:22
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Cicero posted:In practice that kind of behavior means rich neighborhoods are untouched and poor neighborhoods get all of the 'undesirable' elements, because shocker of shockers, the rich neighborhoods have more political power. Community input is good, but only so far. Part of why gentrification/displacement of poor people in poor neighborhoods is such an issue is that we're so scared of touching SFH-only neighborhoods where the affluent live that all the increased housing density goes elsewhere. Seems like anywhere you put undesirable things would become an undesirable neighborhood. Seems like you could mandate putting stuff into nice neighborhoods but it'd be hard to mandate it stay that way. The pork rendering plant and the paper mill are always going to be in the poorest part of town, regardless of if it started that way or not.
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Mar 18, 2019 18:48
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Seems like anywhere you put undesirable things would become an undesirable neighborhood. Seems like you could mandate putting stuff into nice neighborhoods but it'd be hard to mandate it stay that way. The pork rendering plant and the paper mill are always going to be in the poorest part of town, regardless of if it started that way or not. As for homeless shelters and the like, to a certain extent that's true, which is why you should spread such buildings throughout a city, the same way you do desirable ones. Plus, with more higher density zoning, the distinction between richer vs poorer neighborhoods becomes blurrier to begin with. Living in Munich, unlike basically every US city I've been to, it's actually challenging to tell how rich or poor most neighborhoods here are. Almost all of them just seem kind of middling.
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Mar 18, 2019 19:05
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Insanite posted:I guess I wouldn't call "resisting capital turning every inch of my little city into a smart investment vehicle" a bad decision. I also agree with others in the thread that I've never heard urbanist circles really push skyscrapers—there's instead a massive focus on the "missing middle" (duplexes, rowhouses, 5-story apartment buildings). Some even go further and fetishize a city like Paris, without accounting for it actually being an example of the poor being priced out of the city proper by strict height and aesthetic restrictions (and an unhealthy dose of anti-African and anti-Arab racism). We need to enable and provide construction for what the population needs to have easy, environmentally-friendly access to employment and culture, not hold it to an arbitrary standard. And, again as mentioned above, we need governments to act on a city-wide or even metro-wide basis to ensure the rich and influential living in homogeneous neighborhoods don't have the ability to carve out an enclave for themselves at the expense of others.
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Mar 19, 2019 00:22
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Cugel the Clever posted:I also agree with others in the thread that I've never heard urbanist circles really push skyscrapers—there's instead a massive focus on the "missing middle" (duplexes, rowhouses, 5-story apartment buildings). Some even go further and fetishize a city like Paris, without accounting for it actually being an example of the poor being priced out of the city proper by strict height and aesthetic restrictions paris is beautiful as hell. problem is, you need a literal dictator to hand over absolute control of site planning and eminent domain to an aesthetics obsessed architect-tyrant
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Mar 19, 2019 00:42
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Cicero posted:Bringing in industrial uses as examples to this discussion is stupid. Nobody wants to change the part of zoning that separates heavy industry from homes. Clearly it wouldn't be as extreme as a papermill, but there has to be more to a plan in the long term than just building unpleasant stuff in high income areas and pleasant stuff in low income areas since (rich) people can relatively easily move.
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Mar 19, 2019 01:22
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luxury handset posted:paris is beautiful as hell. problem is, you need a literal dictator to hand over absolute control of site planning and eminent domain to an aesthetics obsessed architect-tyrant That's just my glancing impression from living in the country for two years, at least. Definitely welcome any actual français ou françaises pointing out holes in my understanding of the Parisian banlieues.
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Mar 19, 2019 02:56
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at this point haussman paris is an essential part of the city's economy. it would be like knocking down the statue of liberty to build projects. so long as paris can keep the outlying suburbs from falling apart (they aren't keeping this from happening) then it's fine to keep the city core intact i mean, this is a bit much and all, if you're going to start putting up dense new development there's no reason to tear down irreplaceable cultural heritage to do it 
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Mar 19, 2019 03:16
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Build Peach Trees Mega blocks, gently caress NIMBYs
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Mar 19, 2019 05:39
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There's more to promoting density than simply building type or height as well. Japan has tons and tons of SFH neighborhoods that are dense enough to support public transit. Mandatory setbacks and insanely massive road widths contribute to sprawl as much as limiting building height. Quiet residential side roads in modern American suburbs have almost the same width as major thoroughfares do in a lot of Japanese cities (or even older cities in the Northeast)
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Mar 19, 2019 19:21
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There is room for a middle ground between single-family homes and tower blocks, but at the end of the day, the issue is very much how modern American cities are constructed. At the end of the day, American cities almost certainly need tens if not hundreds of billions of infrastructure development, particularly in transportation, to get competitive on an international level. Otherwise, you get stuck increasing density with overburdened and inefficient infrastructure which will spiral into other issues. The ultimate result will probably be a muddle but it isn't a surprise it will be a mess.
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Mar 19, 2019 19:41
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american cities are generally expanding their own transit but given the jurisdictional/governmental hurdles in the way and the laughably small to nonexistent support provided by the federal government in the last few decades it's slow going today, gwinnett county georgia is having a referendum on whether or not the county will join atlanta's metropolitan transit agency and it's up in the air as to how the vote will shake out. if they do approve the contract, then the other large wealthy county (cobb) will likely follow in a couple years
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Mar 19, 2019 19:45
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https://www.popville.com/2019/03/me...meE30nYnLL2EJdI This is kind of a cool pilot program for traffic and buses. I am interested to see where it goes.
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Mar 22, 2019 14:38
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Are there already bus-only lanes? Because I can't see how this would work unless the bus always happens to be the first at lights.
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Mar 22, 2019 19:05
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mobby_6kl posted:Are there already bus-only lanes? Because I can't see how this would work unless the bus always happens to be the first at lights. the cheap solution means that cars moving in cohort with the bus also get preferential treatment
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Mar 22, 2019 19:07
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This may not be the right place to ask, but I'm in a bit of an unknown unknown situation. I'm considering a career in the vast urban planning/urban sociology/urban studies field, however, I don't really know what jobs are out there–either for the city, a non-profit, or anything. I'm in the DSA, so ideally I want to make cities and spaces more equitable. I don't have an explicit focus yet, but I'm into affordable housing and mass (preferably rail) transit. I have a BA in Cultural Anthropology, and I'm planning on going to grad school in a few years, but I want to narrow down what I want to do so I can pick the right program. So where should I start?
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Mar 29, 2019 01:14
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community organizing, or something political. there's already loads of well meaning urban planners in government, it's a crowded field. what is more necessary for change are people who can organize and advocate and get voters out to enact real change. if social justice were possible to enact from bureaucracy alone we'd be well on our way by now
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Mar 29, 2019 02:57
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luxury handset posted:community organizing, or something political. there's already loads of well meaning urban planners in government, it's a crowded field. what is more necessary for change are people who can organize and advocate and get voters out to enact real change. if social justice were possible to enact from bureaucracy alone we'd be well on our way by now I work for a nonprofit that uses community organizing and advocacy/lobbying to push for better streetscape and transportation infrastructure and policies. It's extremely effective. We can claim a large part (and sometimes essentially all) of the credit for almost every cool streetscape thing the city has done in decades. We're now in a position to be directly advising policymakers on transportation policy, which makes us a lot more powerful than a single legislator with a term limit. We're far from the only urban planning org with this model. Oh and as for the actual jobs involved - we have a staff of community organizers but if that's not appealing (and it's definitely not for everyone) there are a ton of other options. I think our head comms guy has a planning degree, we've got research positions, writing positions, etc. I'm a grant writer, and although I'm not directly doing the organizing work, I get to have some input on program planning. showbiz_liz fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Apr 3, 2019 |
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Apr 3, 2019 00:06
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So, a bill repealing a ban on rent control is up for debate in my home state. Landlords are against it; community justice orgs are for it. Shocking. As I understand it, rent control is a broad category of measures (including price controls) that hamper real estate markets a bit to preserve human dignity and social capital. The response I see most often to it is that it’s been tried in NY and CA, it’s poison, and that every economist ever disagrees with it. From what I can see, it can suppress housing supply, but plenty of places around the world have it it varying forms and they do fine. Depending on how you implement it, it seems like stability for renters is worth the costs that it carries. Are my instincts correct, or is my leftism blinding me to a universal economic truth?
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Apr 6, 2019 01:35
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rent control is not ideal as a policy mechanism as it really only benefits people who can get a rent controlled apartment and stay in it. but its difficult to pass more effective legislation so 
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Apr 6, 2019 01:37
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