The Suburban Solution

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Suburban Solution

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

sitchensis posted:

It usually devolves into pointless debates using anecdotal evidence about whether city living or suburban living is better.

They both have their pros and cons, but American suburbs suck in ways that they don't have to. You can have suburbs that are still walkable/bikeable, with at least decent transit to whichever city the suburb is a suburb of. We've just chosen to have super low-density, car-dominant suburbs almost everywhere.

Stickarts posted:

Yea that is actually a sincerely interesting topic.

I remember listening to an interview once where the urban planner was theorising that within a generation or two, suburbs would become lower and working class communities ("ghettos") and inner cities would be gentrified back to the middle class. His logic was that the suburbs are far away from amenities and places of employment and that the houses themselves are 1) larger, and thus more matched to the generally larger families of lower economic classes and 2) generally of fairly shoddy construction which might encourage current middle class families to move on instead of hitching their ride to an ever-deepening money pit. Part of his argument was that as cost of living continues to rise, those smaller houses closer to city cores would once again raise in attractiveness to young professionals etc.

I mean there are obvious holes to this, but it makes a certain degree of sense.

Poverty is already moving to the suburbs; it's the flip side of the gentrification we usually hear about in the news as middle-class/upper-middle-class people move back into cities. Those poor people have to go somewhere!

The blog Strong Towns also talks about how a lot of neighborhoods in America were built with an unsustainable growth pattern where the tax revenues generated can't cover the service/repair/replacement cost of the infrastructure (sprawl increases the amount of infrastructure per person without increasing the tax base): http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/

Then when said infrastructure falls into disrepair, yeah affluent people move out and poorer people stay/move in.

edit: Suburbs and the New American Poverty - http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/suburbs-and-the-new-american-poverty/384259/

CityLab has also had a bunch of short articles on suburban poverty

Cicero fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Dec 2, 2016

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 00:16

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 08:45

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Ardennes posted:

If you want to give an alternative to suburbs you are probably going to have to go a European if not Soviet route of high density public housing and inordinate investment in public transportation. In the case of the US, there was actually some improvement on the transportation front but really housing still remains the core issue.

The problem is neither the left or the right is very on board with denser housing. The right isn't on board because they're scared of poors and public transit. The left is more on board in theory but in practice isn't on board because they hate when old things get demolished by ~*~for-profit~*~ developers and replaced with bigger, newer things (just look at how many people in SF scream about 'Manhattanization').

# ¿ Dec 9, 2016 18:32

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

This is like anti-vax but for real estate. "Why do we use these dumb umbrellas?? I never get wet"

Completely getting rid of zoning is a bad idea but radically loosening the restrictions is a good idea. Specifically, generally allowing for higher density, and for mixed uses in a zone would both be really good.

I believe Japanese zoning works with the idea of a zone having a sort of maximum nuisance level (based on noise, traffic, pollution, etc.) and so instead of explicitly allowing/disallowing specific uses per zone, each potential use has a nuisance level associated with it, and so you're good to go as long as a proposed use is under the max for that zone.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Dec 11, 2016

# ¿ Dec 11, 2016 21:34

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

A guy who thinks "endless lovely tract housing in desert scrubland" is a model for how the real estate industry should work

???

He's clearly saying that the reason they do that kind of housing in the middle of nowhere is specifically because zoning makes it harder to build significant housing in areas that are already at least somewhat urbanized.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

No, then they would just build the easy thing in more places.

Land in cities where the metro is growing in population is too valuable to build the kind of crappy McMansions you see in exurban areas; with zoning loosened it would make much more sense to build to higher densities. That said I don't think anyone is suggesting getting rid of basic building codes that mandate a minimum quality of construction.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2016 00:52

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

quote:

See what happened here is Fargo Fukes said a dumb insane thing, and I said "yo that's dumb and insane" and everyone started piling on me going "Why don't you like smart sane things? It's not like anyone suggested something dumb and insane" and hi, everyone, please meet Fargo Fukes.

Actually what happened is that you inferred something that wasn't there, although it's an understandable mixup.

When people are talking about zoning regulations they're almost always talking about what uses are allowed for an area, not fundamental building standards. Those are different things. The latter is mostly about safety, the former is more about neighborhood character.

See:

quote:

There are instances when some local jurisdictions choose to develop their own building codes. At some point in time all major cities in the United States had their own building codes. However, due to ever increasing complexity and cost of developing building regulations, virtually all municipalities in the country have chosen to adopt model codes instead. For example, in 2008 New York City abandoned its proprietary 1968 New York City Building Code in favor of a customized version of the International Building Code.[7] The City of Chicago remains the only municipality in America that continues to use a building code the city developed on its own as part of the Municipal Code of Chicago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_code

Obviously most cities in the US still have zoning regulations.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Dec 12, 2016

# ¿ Dec 12, 2016 01:11

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Thanks for the wikipedia link, cool argument guy. Now who will be enforcing building codes if not for local governments? You keep pretending I'm opposing sane things, when I'm actually criticizing something we both think is insane. If you thing governments and zoning regulations should still exist, you are on my side, not idiot libertarian Fargo Fukes' side. This really isn't that complicated.

Again, zoning regulations and building codes are not the same thing (although there are probably some bits where they overlap). Just about any discussion about zoning will not be talking about building standards. For example, see this discussion about whether Houston has zoning or not: https://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard-houston-really-does-have-zoning-sort-of/#.WE3tYPkrJaQ

quote:

Festa also rattles off a list of other policies that bolster his case that Houston effectively has zoning.

Deed restrictions: In Houston, developers create rules to prevent things like corner stores within residential neighborhoods. Those rules are called deed restrictions. Houston is unique in that it will represent residents when they try to enforce those covenants.

Density: Historically, the area within the confines of the 610 Loop have been permitted to have higher levels of density than the rest of the city. But recent changes to city policies extend the higher density levels all the way to Beltway 8. �Those are rules that tell you what you can and can�t do, based on where you are on a map,� Festa said.

Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones: The controversial tool allows certain areas within distinct boundaries to retain property tax revenue for uses within their borders. The word �zone� is right in the name.

Airports: The Houston area has three major airports, and under federal rules, the communities around them are subject to zoning requirements. �It�s a good chunk of metropolitan Houston, and it�s flat out zoning,� Festa said.

Buffering ordinance: New rules restrict tall buildings to �major activity centers� by limiting their height, set back requirements and construction styles.

Historic preservation: Residents can ensure many types of building restrictions within their communities if they get enough votes to create a historic district.

Lot sizes: City rules restrict lot sizes, but neighborhoods can petition for even tighter restrictions if they get the votes.

Notice how none of those subject areas are about minimum building standards to make sure things won't fall over or blow up? By "zoning laws" Fargo was obviously talking about this kind of thing, not "let's get rid of all building codes" because he didn't say that.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Dec 12, 2016

# ¿ Dec 12, 2016 01:24

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Rekinom posted:

This is actually in interesting discussion, but I feel like we're completely glossing over the whole aspect of kids. While that may not be a concern of your average single early 20's D&D poster, the simple fact is, in America, most people with the money to buy a house (aka the target of developers) are aged 30-50 with kids, so naturally trends are going to follow that group. Anyway, from firsthand experience, I can say I prefer to live in the city because there's more to do. At least, I did when I was younger. But now I've got 2 kids. Most schools in the city suck. The parks in urban areas are nice green spaces, but there needs to be kid poo poo around so the little bastards can wear themselves out instead of bothering the poo poo out of me at home and destroying the house.

The issue isn't that all suburbs are bad, but that American ones mostly are. They're generally car dominant and hostile to walking or biking (which ironically means that they're hostile to kids getting around on their own, although maybe that's the point?), with no decent transit to be seen.

By contrast, if you look at suburbs around, say, Munich, you'll find that most are still somewhat dense (by American standards anyway), highly walkable, with a commuter rail line that goes to and from the city center every twenty minutes: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.1328987,11.5889884,10z/data=!5m1!1e2

quote:

Having said all that, I've lived for years in Japan and they manage to have a good mix of urbanization and family-centric areas. As discussed before, zoning has a lot to do with it. But then again, the Japanese are generally more group-conscientious about that sort of thing. Americans have a bad habit of "gently caress you got mine", where families look out for themselves and gently caress over young single people, and vice versa. I don't think we'll ever have a decent solution in this country.

Japan is a good example. Japan is safe enough for kids that it's not uncommon for six year olds to take regular transit to school by themselves, and there's a show called My First Errand about even younger kids going out to the store by themselves. Granted part of that is the different culture and social expectations, but urban design factors in too.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 12:15 on Dec 12, 2016

# ¿ Dec 12, 2016 11:41

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Badger of Basra posted:

In this scenario does everyone still have their own car that sits around doing nothing when they're not using it? That need to park the car somewhere close by causes a lot of land use problems.

Some people will still own their own private cars (especially families, but they'll probably just have one instead of two), but automated taxi fleets will firmly and obviously push personal car ownership in general from 'need' into 'want'. When that happens, reducing or eliminating parking minimums in zoning regulations will get a lot easier politically, because people will see having dedicated space for a car as a luxury.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2016 19:19

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 08:45

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Also "look at how sturdy these hundred year-old houses are!" is a pretty obvious example of survivorship bias.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2016 18:10

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