> This isn't a fucking gotcha, it's a show of faith and compassion.
It certainly comes across that way, from the tone of your comments.
> Not just zoning laws in your suburbia, zoning laws in the city itself.
Yeah, I live in one of those single family walkable city neighborhoods. It’s a nice low density neighborhood. We don’t want it changed, but density advocates that don’t live here have “selected” us for an up-zone campaign. This isn’t a bad faith argument at all… This seems to be the serious lapse in understanding between pro density and pro single family zoning folks.
I’m super glad you were able to help someone move to a walkable area as well! I’m very happy someone discovered they wanted such a lifestyle over sprawl. That said, the vast majority in NA still prefer SF zoning and sprawl. I’m not convinced that will ever change unless sprawl becomes unimaginably expensive.
> I’m not convinced that will ever change unless sprawl becomes unimaginably expensive.
Right, but that's the core of my point: It is unimaginably expensive, it's just getting subsidized to ridiculous extents. (For the readers unaware of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI)
And saying the "vast majority" prefer it is wrong. They prefer it over the alternatives they have within the United States, not over the alternative possibilities. I'm absolutely not dismissing that some people prefer the suburbian lifestyle over EU-style walkable cities, but saying the majority of Americans do when so few even know what's possible is misplaced in the best possible read of it.
The demand for car-free neighbourhoods is also obvious if you look at what exists, and how exorbitant the prices are due to the high demand and low offer. Another example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWDFgzAjr1k
This song-and-dance of "Everyone likes suburbia because everyone wants to move there, it's illegal to build anything else because it would then be something else than suburbia, nobody wants the alternative anyway because it's too expensive, it's too expensive because it's in high demand, and it's in high demand because it's illegal to build something else" is like the definition of catch-22.
> It is unimaginably expensive, it's just getting subsidized to ridiculous extents.
Yep, that's totally true. But we as a society have chosen to subsidize it. We would not continue to subsidize it if society as a whole didn't find that lifestyle worth the immense weight on government finances.
> but saying the majority of Americans do when so few even know what's possible is misplaced in the best possible read of it.
Perhaps you're correct, but we're getting into conjecture at this point. The single family home on a quarter acre plot is ingrained into the physche of Americans at birth. It's the American dream. Cultural memes like that don't die without a herculean amount of effort. And when this dream is so well built into our urban design, uniformity across the country, the likelihood of it really changing is fairly small. Online spaces are really the first time I've seen anything different from the mainstream viewpoint here--never heard anything like this offline. Even San Francisco won’t upzone. If that isn’t a clear indication of preference, I don’t know what is.
> The demand for car-free neighbourhoods is also obvious if you look at what exists, and how exorbitant the prices are due to the high demand and low offer.
Definitely, we need more of these neighborhoods to satisfy demand. Again, I live in one, and I experience the price increases first hand. I just don't agree with the position folks take of changing existing neighborhoods into "urban, walkable" ones when the residents don't want that. There is a lot of space to try building these communities, especially since many people (even not in tech!) don't need to go to downtown offices anymore.
Streetcar suburbs are pretty awesome, because they allow single family home-style living while maintaining walkability. But density advocates want to see those neighborhoods built up into apartments and townhomes. That's tough for residents to swallow, since they have heavily invested in making their neighborhood the exact low-ish density but walkable, manicured living space they want to be in. And it's part of the appeal of unwalkable / HOA subdivisions, because such up zone conversions are difficult to impossible, or make little financial sense.
Vegetation, old architecture, etc. takes a long time to grow and "settle in". Destruction of backyards and old homes for large buildings that don't fit in with anything else in the neighborhood is not a fun time for existing residents. I don't really care about the property value (well, I would care if my neighborhood completely changed by a forced zoning change and I needed to move). It's about keeping the small town neighborhood vibes I chose to move here for.
OK but this is a completely different beast to what you posted earlier, which is:
> It’s good thing we moved from these old urban walkable designs to a car centric lifestyle, which the vast majority of Americans enjoy.
Your (non-)argument that american lifestyle being car-centric is a "good thing" is VERY different to "I enjoy suburbia and I'd like it not to be destroyed".
Your corner of the earth can remain. If some people are trying to destroy or change it, those people aren't me, nor anyone else in this thread, and they may or may not be "walkability advocates" or what have you that's pretty irrelevant.
The majority of walkability advocates argue for the following:
- US suburbia should not be subsidized as much as it is, it's putting cities in dangerous debt.
- Zoning laws preventing the construction of denser neighbourhoods that aren't skyscrapers should be relaxed.
- City centers should become more walkable and livable, less car-centric
- New constructions and renovations should focus on being human scale, instead of giving massive amounts of land and priority to cars.
> Your (non-)argument that american lifestyle being car-centric is a "good thing"
It's a good thing because it allows (or, rather, allowed) the supermajority of people to have the "countryside-style" living (while being able to work) that was available only to the wealthy a century ago. At the time suburbia was "invented", people moved out of the crowded cities to these new subdivisions in masses.
> is VERY different to "I enjoy suburbia and I'd like it not to be destroyed".
> The majority of walkability advocates argue for the following:
In a vacuum I would agree with you wholeheartedly. However, in practice, urbanists and walkability advocates almost always push increased density on neighborhoods whose residents don't want those changes. I very rarely see advocacy for building new walkable subdivisions, the only advocacy group that's even remotely close to this that I could think of is Strong Towns.
> It certainly comes across that way, from the tone of your comments.
There's no ill intent in my comments, you might be choosing to read them as hostile. I'm just giving you some perspective and examples of real life experience. Also you wanted to understand the downvotes, which is also why I chose to reply.
> I'm just giving you some perspective and examples of real life experience
Frankly, this comes across as a little bit condescending. Another example, a phrase like this from your first response:
> And honestly, most of y’all don’t know any better
Who are "y'all"? Why don't we know any better? This comes across as hostile, like you're coming at this from the perspective of "I'm definitely right and this guy is full of it." I don't believe that's true, but that's how it read to me. Perhaps it's just the challenge of no discernible tone in text.
> Also you wanted to understand the downvotes, which is also why I chose to reply
I still don't quite understand. Downvote != agree, and my comment wasn't rude or disrespectful. It's just not the majority opinion here.
It certainly comes across that way, from the tone of your comments.
> Not just zoning laws in your suburbia, zoning laws in the city itself.
Yeah, I live in one of those single family walkable city neighborhoods. It’s a nice low density neighborhood. We don’t want it changed, but density advocates that don’t live here have “selected” us for an up-zone campaign. This isn’t a bad faith argument at all… This seems to be the serious lapse in understanding between pro density and pro single family zoning folks.
I’m super glad you were able to help someone move to a walkable area as well! I’m very happy someone discovered they wanted such a lifestyle over sprawl. That said, the vast majority in NA still prefer SF zoning and sprawl. I’m not convinced that will ever change unless sprawl becomes unimaginably expensive.