Despite popular belief, transit, density and planning are not liberal vs. conservative issues.

And as much “live and let live” seems like an ideal life strategy, we have limited resources and we must learn to share them. That is the only way we will flourish in a finite world.

Planning is necessary to the efficiency and livability of cities. Would you propose that we plan nothing?

Regardless, I find it hard to believe that city planners are out plotting the interdiction of the personal vehicle or single family home…

Jebediah:

I have lived in Portland and i’m curious where you were staying, such that you drove 25 miles (!) to a farmer’s market. Portland certainly has suburbs and exurbs like all North American cities, but according to Google, a 25 mile drive in Portland would entail a drive accross the entire Metro area.

I like the idea of live-and-let-live, yet our limited resources are getting in the way of it. The highway that makes your commute better takes away funding for the subway that makes my commute better. Your highway makes my air worse, as it encourages you and a bunch more people to live far away from their offices and drive more. Your end-of-the-day rush to get on the highway and go home means that my cross-town trip to the market takes me twenty minutes longer. Then there are the environmental problems associated with suburban homes, lawns, etc.

The old saw, to each his own, is just not possible anymore. The car has been the basic atomic structure of urban and suburban design for too long. We need our environs to restore the human scale again, and that will require fresh ideas. This documentary was a great start.

Many of those are solved _by_ increasing density. As a Portlander recently returned from Europe, I now see how sprawled out my own city is. The public transportation is great (use it every day) but only serves to accomodate the exurbs in most cases.

As an example, the company I work for moved sixty blocks east of its old location in order to take advantage of business grants from one of the outlying towns. Built a new warehouse on undeveloped land. In other words, we got paid to create sprawl. I still take the same bus to work but now it takes an extra ten minutes.

So I counter that there will never be a renaissance until it is economically favorable to centralize business and have everything else follow.

The problem with everyone deciding for their own is that it causes a number of social problems. Some refer to it as the “Tragedy of the green.” Comes from an old greek parable where a town had a common green to graze their livestock. The trouble being that without restrictions overuse inevitably occurs and destroys it.

In this case, ex-urban development is destroying natural habitat, insanely expensive to serve, and ultimately the driving force behind car dependent culture. If we simply let people do whatever, wherever, this country is doomed.

Per the site, some of the criteria NOT included in the score:

-Public transit: Good public transit is important for walkable neighborhoods.
-Street design: Sidewalks and safe crossings are essential to walkability. Appropriate automobile speeds, trees, and other features also help.
-Pedestrian-friendly community design: Are buildings close to the sidewalk with parking in back? Are destinations clustered together?
-Topography: Hills can make walking difficult, especially if you’re carrying groceries.
-Weather: In some places it’s just too hot or cold to walk regularly

And it computes distances as the crow flies, not as the crow WALKS, resulting in some very misleading conclusions.

As I said, interesting concept, though.

What “major downtown metropolitan area” did you live in where you had a driveway and were encouraged, or even able, to own a car and drive to work? I’ve lived in NYC with 9 million other people, and had no car or driveway, didn’t drive to work, had no issues with crime or inadequate public services like schools or hospitals. What you’re describing is, in fact, the flaw in planning of many of our cities where people try to live a low-density, car-centric suburban lifestyle in “urban” areas. There is obviously transit where you live - you blame it for all the evils visited upon you by allowing “interesting” people to invade your neighborhood. Yet it doesn’t occur to you to USE it, only demonize it?

The old idea about the suburbs being a bucolic, crime free haven of (implicitly white) middle class people is the thinking that created them to begin with. Until we move past the stereotype that crime exists only in the cities, that education is poor only in the cities, etc. will there be any effort to broaden the national discussion on how we create the places where we live.

Amazing stat about downtown LA. It seems like one thing DC has done well is creating a lot of small independent walkable places–including some on the outskirts–whereas most of NYC is one giant walkable place (the discrete walkable neighborhoods all blending into each other) and not likely to be replicated in that respect.

Walkscore is a cool site. Freakonomics did a fun piece about it a few weeks ago.

Nowhere is this more evident than in a fantastic website I discovered recently called walkscore.com. The site’s aim is to measure and rate the walkability of several US cities, and while they clearly state that their methodology is flawed (they simply measure walkability by the density of amenities in a particular city, not taking into account safety, cleanliness, transit options etc.), it illustrates Catbus’ point perfectly.

Take Washington, DC for example (http://www.walkscore.com/rankings/Washington_D.C.). I live there, and I’d say it’s one of the most walkable cities in the US, and should be in the top 3. The reason it’s number 7 is pretty clear. Look at what happens on the outskirts of the city. The time-tested practice of using a grid street pattern completely falls apart once you leave the center city.

Another awesome feature of walkscore.com is that it shows you the population of each neighbordhood in the city. This is where you really start to see the dramatic impact of poor planning. Washington, DC, the nation’s capital, has a downtown inhabited by only 4,811 residents. There are city blocks in NYC that house more people! Perhaps the most dramatic example of this country’s failed planning policies is downtown Los Angeles. This is a city of almost 4 million residents, and I’m not talking about “metropolitan Los Angeles,” I’m talking about the City of Los Angeles proper. Take a look at downtown…7,574 residents! That figure speaks volumes…

Let’s see. When I was living in the city I lived closer to work but had to go through 20 stoplights on my commute everyday. My car was stolen from my driveway twice. My house was broken into while I was sleeping. The bus stop and light rail dropped off some very interesting people in my neighborhood. And this area was considered a nice part of downtown.

Now I have a big yard with lots of grass for my kids to play on. We have a great park down the street. The local grocery store is ten times the size, has better product and is half as busy as downtown. I can commute to work in half the time because of the highway. I wave hi to my neighbors and can leave my garage door open without worrying about my worldly possessions walking off.

Here’s a thought. How about we let people live their lives the way they see fit. Some people want dense living and some don’t.