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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37941 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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YIMBY sentiment on this forum has (I think) been mostly focused on increasing the density of existing residential zones. However, it may be worth noting that there is an alternative: converting existing agricultural or unused land to low-density residential use (i. e., continuing to "sprawl"). In this article, a former employee of the libertarian Cato Institute accuses that organization of focusing exclusively on high-density housing, and of smearing as racist people who are not interested in long-term high-density living and clamor for more single-family houses. (In his view, upzoning imposed from the top down is not libertarian, because the existing owners have a sort of property right in the zoning of their neighborhood as a substitute for deed restrictions that could or should have been used instead of zoning codes.)

Another issue with increased density: does it actually help affordability long term? That is the reason we want density, right? When you add lanes to a highway, traffic gets better. For a while. Then people get used to the light traffic and change where they live (i.e., further away from town). Then traffic gets bad again. Who's to say that NYC will always be "unaffordable" no matter how dense it is? What if there's no bottom to the demand to live in NYC? What then?

Empirically, yes. You still have to pay to live somewhere, so induced demand is limited by price. We rarely charge for driving on roads. If we did that, the long-run elasticity wouldn't be so close to 1, but also we wouldn't have to build new roads in the first place, or at least not as many: We could use congestion pricing to limit traffic.

The ability to add more housing capacity is also much larger. Over time, you can slowly convert single-family areas to include townhomes or duplexes, then lowrises, then midrises, and all the way up to highrises if the demand is there. That's easily a 20-fold increase in density, if not more. But building up is much more difficult with roads--it's not really reasonable, if your 3 lane highway is congested, to build 30 more lanes, whether they're on the side or above.

"Induced demand" isn't a real thing for traffic, or at least, some of the new demand is proportional and will take up less than 100% of the new supply (and some will just be latent demand that was suppressed due to the system being previously congested). It is perfectly reasonable to just build more houses to alleviate the demand, much like you would supply more bread if the shelves at the grocery store kept running dry.

Of course, you could also recognize that much of the new demand for both housing and transportation comes from migration, and therefore argue that we should limit migration to prevent our transportation/housing system from being strained.

So when you add lanes, more people get to live where they want to live. Isn’t it great?

Except, of course, the ones who were evicted to have their homes razed to build those lanes.

The evictions are just one of the many negative externalities imposed by the construction of huge roads. Some others are pollution (local and global), obesity (from people using their cars instead of walking or cycling) and infrastructure that the suburbs can't afford and need subsidies for.

At some point the harm from the externalities starts to outweigh the benefit of people living "where they want to live" – in scare quotes because where people want to live is dependent on what's on offer, and if the only available form of housing is sprawling lifeless suburbs criss-crossed by lifeless eight-lane highways, then that's where people will want to live. I assume you're not suggesting that, if higher density housing were built closer to the centres of cities, it would stay empty. That would clearly be absurd.

Except, of course, the ones who were evicted to have their homes razed to build those lanes.

First, this is not something that routinely happens for traffic mitigation projects. Second, people who get eminent domained are compensated for this, typically more than their house is actually worth. Third, this is just as much of an argument against densification, upzoning, and public transit: those also displace people.

infrastructure that the suburbs can't afford and need subsidies for.

Somehow I knew without clicking that this will be a link to Strongtowns. I knew it, because nobody else is making this argument, and this is because their entire argument is completely bogus. I wrote about it years ago, see also this more detailed one.

Here's one more reason why it's entirely wrong: observe that every year, dozens of new master planned communities crop up. The development of these is basically entirely funded by the sale of the properties. The developers can't just come to some adjacent or local government and ask them to just build roads, water mains, electricity lines etc. This is not paid for by "someone else", it's the homeowners themselves who cover all of this cost, when they initially buy their new construction houses, and then later when they pay property taxes and/or HOA fees. Local governments do not build stuff for the developers, typically they actually ask developers to pay extra taxes and fees, labelled as "impact fees" and such.

At some point the harm from the externalities starts to outweigh the benefit of people living "where they want to live"

What externalities, exactly? On whom they fall? Where is the assessment that honestly tries to measure these, balance positive vs negative externalities, and compares to the balance of externalities of any alternatives? I've never seen anything of this sort, at best I see tendentious, motivated reasoning of the StrongTowns variety, one sided assessments that only calculate costs, do little to actually determine who pays these costs, and does not even attempt to assess the benefits.

Haha! Sure. But now traffic is bad again. Should we add a couple more lanes? Do we add homes until we observe demand decrease?

Note: I'm generally in favor of the goals here. I'd love to have my own place in Manhattan for under a thousand bucks per month. Wouldn't need to be nice either. Shared bathroom? Sure. I just want it to be clean and safe. How much does that have to do, really, with building... how much are we talking here, twice the amount of homes in NYC we have now? I honestly don't know.

In my opinion Randal O'Toole makes arguments that are mostly not worth taking seriously. For example, he writes a bunch about how density and affordability are negatively correlated. Obviously! Places that a lot of people want to live are both denser and more expensive than other places. That's how supply and demand works, especially when supply is artificially constrained! As far as I can tell, he never addresses this reverse causality. The best quality evidence (e.g. natural experiments) show a causal effect of more housing -> lower housing prices.

(This debate always baffles me because on on the one hand, you have some YIMBYs agreeing with most NIMBYs that restrictive zoning increases prices ("home values" from the NIMBY PoV), but then O'Toole is on the side of various leftist groups that claim to hate the rich suburbanites but also claim that building more housing doesn't make housing cheaper. It's literally parody, but real.)

Similarly with the CA growth boundaries. I don't like them as a policy, but the idea that most of the population of CA is "forced" to live in a few metro areas is absurd. Many people want to live near the places that have jobs, other people, things to do, etc. Telling them to live in even further suburbs and drive 3 hours is not a solution!

And, of course, the idea that zoning is a property right. Keep in mind that O'Toole freely compares the aforementioned growth boundaries to feudalism or communism. But your neighbors have basically unlimited right to tell you what you can and can't do with your property, because they're a majority--that's fine! It's one of the most obvious "coming to the conclusion first" arguments I've ever seen. I mean, take this:

Zoning land as a substitute for deed restrictions and then yanking away that zoning betrays the homeowners in such neighborhoods.

You can't just say that one thing is kind of like another thing, and therefore one counts as the other. For one, it's not even the case that zoning is fixed in place--the local government can modify like with any other law, and they often do. Or they put in a nebulous approval process without any restriction at all. But also, you could say the same about repealing any restriction or changing any law. It's a betrayal to alcohol and tobacco companies to legalize marijuana. We can never change IP law, even if it's clearly being abused to enforce a monopoly. Changing how taxes work betrays people who saved based on different laws. Repealing a tariff isn't fair to the company that bought off politicians lobbied for it.

In America, there is no unmet demand for dense housing. There's merely unmet demand to live in New York.

The supply is there. There's plenty of dense, non-car housing available in America. Nearly every dense, pre-car city in America has either grown more slowly or outright lost population, and the fasting growing cities are car-centered ones [1]. Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Baltimore were all built before the car, and there are millions of high-density transit-oriented housing units available for nearly nothing.

Perhaps you don't like legacy cities. A dirty truth about America is that local governments are essentially owned by the local developers. Large developers are completely unconstrained by existing zoning laws. If it's brownfield, they get the code changed, and if it's greenfield, they write the codes themselves. America builds over a million new units per year. DR Horton, Lennar, etc. will build whatever makes money and buy whatever politician is necessary to do so, and all they crank out is a million+ SFR units per year, with a sideline five-over-one Texas Donuts. Give a developer an entire city, and they'll create Irvine and The Woodlands, not a mini-Portland (Donald Bren and Donald Horton could easily afford to do so, if they thought it would be profitable)

Let's finally watch people reveal their preferences. Work from home decoupled housing from jobs, allowing people to move to where they actually want, not just where their jobs are. There was no huge urban boom as people packed up their suburban lives to finally move into the city of their dreams. The opposite happened. People poured out of the cities and into the exurbs, and small towns everywhere have been overwhelmed.

I have nothing against cities. It's fun to be young, single, and mildly intoxicated in a city. It's fun to be an empty nester in a city.

Suburbs and small towns are designed for kids. When my kids were small, they could walk to the local park a few blocks away. When they were bigger, they could bike to the grocery store to buy ice cream. Now I drop them off at school in a car, but this is only because of sporting gear. This seems better than moving to a dense, walk-able neighborhood, and have my kid walk through dense masses of whores, addicts, thieves, bums, and lunatics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_populous_cities_in_the_United_States_by_decade

"When my kids were small, they could walk to the local park a few blocks away. When they were bigger, they could bike to the grocery store to buy ice cream"

All of this is even more true about high density cities.

"have my kid walk through dense masses of whores, addicts, thieves, bums, and lunatics."

What you describe is not an endemic problem for high-density walkable neighborhoods. If some random noname russian cities can solve them, then it can be done in US as well.

What you describe is not an endemic problem for high-density walkable neighborhoods.

True. Tokyo is wonderful.

If some random noname russian cities can solve them, then it can be done in US as well.

False. America's underclass is far worse, and America's urban governments are even more corrupt.

"have my kid walk through dense masses of whores, addicts, thieves, bums, and lunatics."

What you describe is not an endemic problem for high-density walkable neighborhoods. If some random noname russian cities can solve them, then it can be done in US as well.

Great! I'll tell you the same thing I tell libertarians who talk about how open borders aren't fiscally suicidal because we can just get rid of the welfare; solve the problem first, and then we can talk.

I see no reason to believe modern America has the social technology to fix the problem of the underclass making dense/cheap/walkable neighborhoods unlivable and public transportation unendurable. That is a coup-complete problem. Until that day comes, we need expensive, car-centric suburbs as the only legal way to keep ourselves isolated from the human refuse while still living within working distance of cities.

Great! I'll tell you the same thing I tell libertarians who talk about how open borders aren't fiscally suicidal because we can just get rid of the welfare; solve the problem first, and then we can talk.

Are you talking to libertarians for whom the collapse of the government isn't a goal?

I see no reason to believe modern America has the social technology to fix the problem of the underclass making dense/cheap/walkable neighborhoods unlivable and public transportation unendurable.

I mean depending on your definition of cheap we did. There are plenty of Chicago neighborhoods that fit this definition. I'm living in one and I've lived in a different one and I have friends who live in still different ones. If your model of Urban living is on the city and not neighborhood level you really just have no idea what you're talking about.

What you describe is not an endemic problem for high-density walkable neighborhoods. If some random noname russian cities can solve them, then it can be done in US as well.

Then solve them. If you do it, and living in a big city is as great as you claim, people will move there without you having to nag them.

How do you explain why places like Silicon Valley, with extremely high rents and very low density, don't increase in density? I'm sure developers would love to build high rises there, but they don't. How do you explain ridiculous things in California's building code like the requirement to make new houses ready for the installation of solar panels?

I'm not familiar with the US real estate development industry as I am with Canada's, but from what I hear, they have very similar problems, and in Canada, there are a lot of serious barriers to development, granted that housing here is much more expensive than it is in the US. Permits require an enormous amount of paperwork and take years to get. Zoning by-laws prohibit dense development in most areas. Highly restrictive building codes make new housing unnecessarily expensive.

How do you explain why places like Silicon Valley, with extremely high rents and very low density, don't increase in density? I'm sure developers would love to build high rises there, but they don't. How do you explain ridiculous things in California's building code like the requirement to make new houses ready for the installation of solar panels?

California doesn't have a culture of mutual, business-like respect. If you have money, you're a target. Any time you interact with the regulatory state, every non-profit and advocacy group will crawl out of the woodwork and demand a payoff in exchange for withholding their veto (or delay). At this point the parasite has outgrown the host and it's no longer profitable to build in Silicon Valley.

I seem to remember that vacant lots with no permit are actually cheaper in LA than Dallas.

Forget it Jake, it's California.

How do you explain why places like Silicon Valley, with extremely high rents and very low density, don't increase in density?

CEQA and the ruinous delays and cost-overruns motivated and well-funded activist groups can inflict on projects that don't dot every "i" and cross every "t" perfectly.

California is a petri dish as to why progressive policy is incredibly stupid and counter-intuitive. In short, there is an entire class of activist rent-seekers whose job is to extract concessions from any new development, no matter how ruinous or stupid it may be. It is a kafkaesque gong show which even the schlerotic Soviet bureaucracy would compare well to. Imagine that in order to improve or change anything in California, you have a librum veto of which anyone can cancel the whole project. But instead of a congress of corrupt noblemen, you have a collection of junkies, homeless people, and rich white liberals - all of which despise each other but unified in hatred of you, who has the audacity to attempt to turn a decrepit coin laundry into an apartment block.

It is a miracle, frankly, that anything in California is built at all.

Low density car focussed suburbs don't scale. You just can't widen the highways enough to keep up with demand as you build out. It leads to ever worsening gridlock.

Trying to increase the density later is extremely difficult due to the large lot sizes and strict commercial - residential segregation.

I'm in Ontario where there's a significant housing shortage. Toronto has 360 housing units per thousand residents. Ontario has 398. Canada has 440 nationally. G7 average is 470.

So at least in Ontario we need to build an entire new city in the style of older, denser suburbs like Riverdale: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

Low density car focussed suburbs don't scale.

Actually, they're the only thing in America that is scaling. All the old cities are not growing, and all the car-dependent ones are growing.

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

You just can't widen the highways enough to keep up with demand as you build out. It leads to ever worsening gridlock.

Wrong again. Commute time in the mass transit focused cities (and LA, which is intentionally removing roads and replacing them with mass transit) is higher than car-focused cities. Jobs move out to the suburbs, following people.

https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/work-travel-time.html

The solution to that is to break up the city centers, either by dispersing cities into smaller towns, or by moving things farther out of the central business district towards the suburbs.

That doesn't solve the problem.

A. Workers will simply commute between the small towns, wherever they can get a good job, and will use whatever roads allow them to do that. The number of people who do this will be high; the area will effectively be a big sprawled-out metro area with too small a tax base to support the highway network.

B. Businesses don't want to sprawl. They benefit from agglomeration. source 1, source 2

Low density car focussed suburbs don't scale. You just can't widen the highways enough to keep up with demand as you build out. It leads to ever worsening gridlock.

They scale tolerably as long as the primary travel distances don't grow too large. The idea that a large fraction of the populace needs to commute downtown doesn't, but there are plenty of jobs (even office workers) that can find employment in suburbs.

I'm not going to say we actually build suburbs this way (in particular, people choose neighborhoods for things like schools that vary drastically in quality), but at least in principle it seems possible.

A central cluster, or clusters, of workplaces seems like the defining feature of cities everywhere and not a quirk of American urban planning. Are there cities of uniform density with workplaces scattered throughout and not some sort of central downtown cluster?

If you imagine a central downtown hub with residential space around it, then lots of workers have to commute but your commute time isn't going to change a lot of you switch firms. If you imagine a checkerboard of suburbs and office/industrial parks then workers might be able to live right next to their current workplace, but if they switched jobs they could end up far away from their new job. Plus any inputs one firm provides to another would have to travel much further.

I see this a lot in cities in Europe. The actual city center is often historical/tourist attraction where it is not very advantageous to be for most companies. Which is a general theme where you may see multiple "centers" often around certain industries often tied to certain infrastructure or even outright industrial parks. In that sense the city center is basically tourist industrial park with certain other related things such as government buildings, and related "businesses" that share infrastructure such as restaurants where lobbyists dining the politicians may share the space with tourists. Then you may have other industries centered around other infrastructure such as railways or universities or around major access by highway from certain part of the country depending on what supply comes from that way.

LA gets pretty close to this. "Downtown" is a big cluster of jobs, but there are subsidiary clusters all over. It's a remarkably decentralized "big city"

Right; it's the idea of a central business district that doesn't scale. As the CBD gets bigger the number of jobs within it grows quadratically (or worse if they start building upwards), but the number of people who can enter it in a given time only grows linearly.

But on the other hand, the attractiveness of a CBD also scales faster than the number of jobs it provides. Given two options:

  • move to the city of Caeliscalpium, where there's a hundred banks

  • move to the state of Rustica Perfecta, where there's a bank in every county capital

where would people prefer to live if advancing your career in banking meant changing your employer every few years? In Caeliscalpium this means commuting to skyscraper 27 instead of skyscraper 26. In Rustica Perfecta this means moving to another town, abandoning your community ties. All ambitious bankers would move to Caeliscalpium, and Rustica Perfecta would be left with those who don't really care either about either community ties or their career.

Yes, I am very interested in seeing how remote work changes this balance. On one hand, there should be some correction, as lockdowns meant not only the turn towards WFH, but also the closure of various services cities provided. As they reopened, they should have lured some of the people back to the cities.

Removing restrictions is unlibertarian because....people have already benefited from them? I can't help but wonder if he holds welfare, defense, and health spending to the same standard.

He may be on to something with institutes pushing high-density, but I'm not sure that reflects the actual development market. The impression in my area (North Texas) is that developers will shit out entire subdivisions, freeways and shopping outlets before stooping to landlording. Frontage roads get somewhat more dense development after the fact. Mixed-use happens occasionally, usually with luxury branding. We're firmly in the "sprawl" strategy.

I tried to find what fraction of development was single-family but didn't have much luck with the census site. There's far more units being started for sale than for rent, but I'm not sure I fully understand the terminology.

Overall, it sounds like this guy has arrived at either the least effort approach or the most ladder-pulling one. Whether he got there from first principles, I don't have much confidence that it's the optimum solution.

Removing restrictions is unlibertarian because....people have already benefited from them?

In the opinion of the author: People who owned urban houses many decades ago had two options that, at the time, seemed roughly equivalent in expected value—use deed restrictions to maintain neighborhood integrity, or use zoning to maintain neighborhood integrity. They had the democratic majority, so they picked the second option, especially since the first option would be cumbersome to apply to existing neighborhoods rather than new neighborhoods. Now, they are angry that the new democratic majority (consisting of people who don't live in their neighborhoods, or in the case of California don't even live in their cities) is threatening to destroy their neighborhood integrity from the top down. The author thinks that the first exercise of democratic power was just, and the second exercise of democratic power is unjust—as he states at the top of the article, "Yes in Other People's Back Yards (YIOPBY)".

I tried to find what fraction of development was single-family but didn't have much luck with the census site.

This PDF shows that there were 1,005,000 single-unit buildings (i. e., single-family houses) and 550,000 multi-unit buildings started in 2022 (preliminary figures)—that is, 65 percent of new housing starts were single-family houses.

Urban sprawl satisfies libertarian YIMBYs. More homes, more lawns, more castles, more basement home theaters and pinball rooms, more space for your children to grow up physically and socially distant from their peers, in places without sidewalks, where mom has to deliver them to and pick them up from soccer practice or their friends house. Where you need a taxi to be able to go drink with your friends. Where getting out of your car is inconvenient and so every service, from the bank to Starbucks, is drive ‘thru’. A place where you have to drive to walk your dog in sanctioned green space nearby. Hell, a place where you have to drive to walk at all.

The 80s called, they want their stereotypes back.

I bought my house a little over a decade ago, as a new build. The neighborhood has mini playgrounds or open parks every two blocks at most, and few larger parks with sports facilities a five minute walk away. There are sidewalks everywhere, there's minimal wasted space between hosues, which are anyways clustered into cul-de-sacs to minimize frontage, and the cul-de-sacs are structured so that you can cut from one to another without crossing the street. The elementary school is integrated into the neighborhood, and the "town center" has townhouses (two or three stories over a two car garage), a grocery store, cafes, etc.

My streets are full of kids. Your streets are full of shit.

Ah but they do build unwalkable suburbs.

They are seen as a cheaper way to make something similar to a gated community. No excuse to be in the community if you don't live there and there isn't anywhere to go.

Urban sprawl satisfies libertarian YIMBYs. More homes, more lawns, more castles, more basement home theaters and pinball rooms, more space for your children to grow up physically and socially distant from their peers, in places without sidewalks, where mom has to deliver them to and pick them up from soccer practice or their friends house. Where you need a taxi to be able to go drink with your friends. Where getting out of your car is inconvenient and so every service, from the bank to Starbucks, is drive ‘thru’. A place where you have to drive to walk your dog in sanctioned green space nearby. Hell, a place where you have to drive to walk at all.

Isn't this hellscape exactly the product of government regulation? I.e single-family zoning (with a lot of additional bizarre rules) in the US? Doesn't sound very libertarian to me. The rest of your rant is about how the moral failings of libertarians can be disregarded based on its shoddy premise.

Single-family suburbs wouldn't dominate a libertarian economy even if people really wanted it.. because they are grossly economically inefficient if not net burdens and when there are no subsidies you either abandon your white picket dream or pay a hefty price for it, most won't consider it worth bearing that additional cost.

Japan's zoning laws are a lot less stringent than in the US, and you get more of what you consider good, not less of it.

Single-family suburbs wouldn't dominate a libertarian economy even if people really wanted it.. because they are grossly economically inefficient

Mr. O'Toole specifically asserts that that claim has been debunked. In the article linked above, he cites this presentation (made by a California developer) as basis for the claim that housing taller than two stories is much more expensive on a per-square-foot basis than single-story or two-story housing. (That's just a random presentation, so I wouldn't put too much weight on it, but that's the basis that he uses.)

In a different article, he suggests that, if indeed low-density housing results in inefficiencies—alleged by detractors of low-density housing to be equivalent to a lump sum of 11 k$ when a low-density house is built—when the city government is forced to extend services to the fringe of the city, then those inefficiencies can be levied as a special tax specifically on the low-density housing, rather than being spread across the entire city. (That article is sixteen years old, so it may be out of date.)

But, most importantly, in this article he claims that single-family housing and multi-family housing simply are not considered close substitutes for each other by most consumers of housing—building more apartments (or even condominiums) will not satisfy demand for single-family houses.

Multi-story housing is expensive to build, but those costs, as well as the cost of land, are spread out among more people. The relevant metric is cost per unit of housing. Single-family homes can easily be 3 stories, so it's not even like you're necessarily saving much. The cheapest housing to build in an area depends on many factors, but as the price of land goes up, you would (unsurprisingly) expect taller buildings to become more efficient. To consider the extreme case: Would a single family house in the middle of Manhattan be cheaper than 1 apartment in a building that takes up the same area?

But, most importantly, in this article he claims that single-family housing and multi-family housing simply are not considered close substitutes for each other by most consumers of housing—building more apartments (or even condominiums) will not satisfy demand for single-family houses.

This is exactly why we have markets, so that we don't have to have arguments like this. People want a single family house? Then they should be willing to pay for it at the efficient price. We wouldn't do a survey that found that a car and a private helicopter are not "close substitutes" and therefore we should only build helicopters or subsidize their use.

Multi-story housing is expensive to build, but those costs, as well as the cost of land, are spread out among more people. The relevant metric is cost per unit of housing.

Are you seriously suggesting that a typical 1,100-ft² (100-m²) apartment in a four-story building is just as attractive for a family of four or five people as a typical 2,200-ft² (200-m²) one-story or two-story house is, when the two options have exactly the same cost? No, cost per square foot is more important.

Single-family homes can easily be 3 stories, so it's not even like you're necessarily saving much.

Specifically, he alleges (again, based only on that one rather shaky source) that three-story buildings are only 30 to 50 percent more expensive than one-story and two-story houses. That's in comparison to 100 percent more expensive for four-story buildings and even worse for buildings taller than that. The (alleged) difference is not insignificant.

Are you seriously suggesting that a typical 1,000-ft² apartment in a four-story building is just as attractive for a family of four or five people as a typical 2,000-ft² one-story or two-story house is, when the two options have exactly the same cost?

I thought that "housing unit" referred to the space that ~ 1 person needed, so e.g. a 2 BR apartment would be 2 units, just like a 2 BR house. However, this does not appear to be the case, after googling, so I'm not sure what term I was thinking of. What I meant to say was something like, "what matter is the cost per person that you can house."

In any event, we can use square footage, but that isn't a perfect metric either: The first 1,000 square feet is much more important than the next 1,000: If you build only 2,000 square foot homes, but not everyone needs or wants that much space (e.g. a childless couple) and can't afford it, then an apartment that is half the square footage might be better, even if it's 60% the price and therefore more expensive per square foot.

Specifically, he alleges (again, based only on that one rather shaky source) that three-story buildings are only 30 to 50 percent more expensive than one-story and two-story houses. That's in comparison to 100 percent more expensive for four-story buildings and even worse for buildings taller than that. The (alleged) difference is not insignificant.

The linked presentation isn't clear enough on its own for me to completely evaluate. For example, what math is being done on slide 5? What are the obscured numbers? I think it's saying that you aren't going to get midrises (5+floors) in a suburb an hour's drive (without traffic) from the Bay itself, which isn't particularly surprising.

My impression is that a lot of developers have tried to build denser housing in the Bay for many years, and have been held up by legal challenges, artificially imposed restrictions, CEQA, etc and not by economic fundamentals. And if these types of dwellings aren't economic on their own, why do they have to be banned? Why have so many of them been built in other places, and are continuing to be built, even in cities like Austin, Denver, Houston, etc where land is substantially cheaper?

The density the author uses for single-family homes is 5 per acre. That's actually reasonably dense for such housing; many areas have minimum lot sizes of a quarter acre, half acre, or even an acre. They also claim that housing does generate sufficient tax revenue, but this is only due to the insanely high housing prices. What happens if housing prices come down?

I think most urbanists agree that it only makes sense to build extremely tall apartment buildings in expensive areas, but what is the point of this argument? Again, if it's really the case that small apartments are not economically feasible in areas that are currently SFR-only, then why do they need to be banned?

The reason midrises aren't feasible is ADA requirements to provide elevators.

Isn't this hellscape exactly the product of government regulation?

Yes, but a different government regulation than the one you are pointing to:

The real culprit is criminalizing racial covenants (and similar ones relating to status and income) in housing contracts. Because of this, the only way to separate yourself in physical space from the criminal poor is by making living in your general area very expensive. Thus, you need single family zoning, minimum lot sizes, and lack of public transit into your neighborhoods. If you could have a whole neighborhood where it was illegal to move in without being married and at least one spouse with a college degree, minimum income of $150k, then there would be no reason to ban duplexes.

How much of the problem do you think is caused by the racial element and how much by the other elements?

They are fairly inseparable.

Isn't this hellscape exactly the product of government regulation? I.e single-family zoning (with a lot of additional bizarre rules) in the US? Doesn't sound very libertarian to me... Single-family suburbs wouldn't dominate a libertarian economy even if people really wanted it.. because they are grossly economically inefficient if not net burdens and when there are no subsidies you either abandon your white picket dream or pay a hefty price for it, most won't consider it worth bearing that additional cost.

Yes, although IMO a lot of self-described libertarians seem fine with them for various reasons, mostly around the (IMO false) feeling of freedom that comes with cars.

The rest of your rant is about how the moral failings of libertarians can be disregarded based on its shoddy premise.

I don't get this claim at all.

more space for your children to grow up physically and socially distant from their peers, in places without sidewalks, where mom has to deliver them to and pick them up from soccer practice or their friends house ... A place where you have to drive to walk your dog in sanctioned green space nearby. Hell, a place where you have to drive to walk at all.

I've lived in many suburbs in a few states. This describes zero of them. My son's friends are right down our walkable suburban street. A really nice and large park is a few minutes walk away. It even has a large dogs-only section. It conveniently lacks a drug den/homeless encampment, so I can actually bring my young son there.

As a lifelong suburban dweller, I'm not suffering from childhood social and physical isolation. Suburbs are overrun with children who visit each other's houses and go to local parks. Most houses in my neighborhood have kids.

The bank and the Starbucks are indeed too far to practically walk to. The high school is much too far away for walking. I'll gladly bear that burden.

I grew up in a "suburb" that was less walkable than even the one @ResoluteRaven describes. Literally zero destinations in walking distance other than single-family homes. Maybe a few dozen of those in walking distance at most depending on how you count and exactly one of them had a child my age; only a handful of others had children at all. "Walkable suburb" is an oxymoron to me; I'd just call that a single-family zoned urban area, but I think I'm the one with the wrong definition here.

I think what's going on is (1) there's a lot of different densities of all single-family home zoning that get called suburbs, with newer ones or ones closer to the city center being a lot denser, and (2) new suburbs are pretty uniformly families with children because when there's a lot of new houses for sale at once, that's who's buying them. But as they age, they don't necessarily immediately move out and sell to another family with children, so over time, there's a lot more older families mixed in with the younger ones.

Since @wlxd mentioned the Seattle metro, I think there's also a bit of East Coast vs. West Coast difference here: the West Coast seems to pack things much more closely to the cities or go so spread out no one is going to come up with "suburb" instead of just calling the area rural. The East Coast is a lot more evenly spread out with suburbs just going on forever. Some of them happen to be close enough to a city to actually be somewhat walkable, but a lot of them aren't.

For what it's worth I mean West coast suburbs only. Outside of various major West coast cities I grew up walking and biking to schools, friends houses, jobs and college. What an independent and enabled free range childhood I was privileged to live in those various suburbs. And I'm not some old timer. I'm in my 30s. I may be so enormously biased in their favor because they were so great for me. There's some correct way of organizing walkable bike-able suburbs. A child with a cheap bike is empowered in them. I've never not lived in a "15 minute city"; and I've never lived in the city.

I have heard that people in certain Arizona suburbs had very different experiences. They got driven to yet another repetitive strip mall or they went nowhere. They couldn't walk or bike anywhere given the distances and temperatures involved. I don't have actionable solutions for them.

N=1 of course, but the suburb I grew up in had precisely one thing within walking distance besides single-family homes: a gated community center with a pool and gym. There was one bike path that I could have theoretically taken to school if I wanted to cross a highway, but that was it. Any trip to the grocery store, cafe, restaurants, arcade, parks, doctor's office, dry cleaners, pharmacy, or shopping mall was done by car and children had to be chaperoned by their parents to any sort of activity outside of visiting their immediate neighbors.

I didn't mind this at the time, but from where I am now I envy those people who got to grow up traveling independently to hang out with their friends, explore their community, and learn the skills of life without adult supervision. I don’t feel like I have a hometown in the sense that those people do, just an endless sprawl of houses with no distinguishing characteristics, unique architecture, local culture, or collective memory.

from where I am now I envy those people

I had all these enviable things. I had a cheap bicycle, so the entire suburban town was within my easy grasp starting around the end of elementary school. And that was true for more than one suburb growing up. My family moved around and I was an enabled little biker about town.

I suppose I grew up in a few good West coast suburbs, so my childhood memories are a series of independent free-range biking from one activity to the next. Maybe the anti-suburbanites grew up in horrible un-bikable suburbs and have miserable memories of sitting in cars.

I also live somewhere where walking even to the nearest grocery store would be a real trek. Doesn't help that it gets unbearably hot in the Summer.

I have lived in Seattle metro for a couple of years, and I am yet to encounter a location within it which is more than 15 minutes bicycle ride from a normal grocery store. I just tried to find one using Google Maps, and only places I can find are at the very edges of farthest exurbs.

My experience with suburbs is exactly the same as /u/TIRM . Ability to form social relationship with your neighbors, and for your kids to play outside with other kids is one of the things that’s attracting people to suburbs, not repelling them!

As token_progressive mentioned, there are wildly different "suburbs." Urbanist youtube channel NotJustBikes has a video praising a suburb of Toronto known as Riverdale: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&ab_channel=NotJustBikes

It differentiates between "streetcar suburbs" or similar, and "car-dependent suburbs" and explicitly states that suburbs are not inherently bad.

What about most normal suburbs, which were built way after streetcars left the living memory, and still allow kids to bike to a store?

This conversation is revolving around some archetypes, but why don’t we focus on a specific example? For example, let’s focus on DC metro mentioned by /u/ResoluteRaven. How far do we have to go from the White House to find a place that’s more than 15 minute bicycle ride to closest supermarket?

Why would anyone take a 15 minute bike ride to the closest supermarket? Walkable means there's a shop within 500 meters. Maybe it doesn't have everything, but a convenience store like the one Dante worked in in Clerks should work.

Using Manhattan distance means each shop covers a 500x500m square. With small plots of 200sqm this is at most 1250 single family homes. More realistically, it's 1000, with the rest occupied by roads, other public spaces and commerce.

According to this report on Statista, a C-store needs about 5000 transactions per week. I don't think this is achievable at this density if everyone walks, but a five-minute bike ride should make each C-store reachable by 4000 homes. Even if each domicile shops there only twice a week, this should already be 8000 transactions.

Why would anyone take a 15 minute bike ride to the closest supermarket?

The context of the discussion was kids living allegedly isolated lives in the suburbs. We don't expect kids to drive, but they very much can and should bike. Adults will, of course, just drive.

Walkable means there's a shop within 500 meters.

The actual definition is 1/2 mile (0.8 km).

More comments

It definitely does not match my experience that most American suburbs allow kids to bike 15 minutes to a store. Like, it might be possible but it's not particularly safe, there's not usually infrastructure for it, etc.

DC is one of the least car-dependent places in the US. According to this, it has the lowest car ownership rate outside of the NYC metro area. The White House and immediately surrounding area is very bikeable, in my experience--it's right in the middle of the city! It seems like a weird choice to focus on. What about a city like Houston, LA, or Miami?

The neighborhood around Walt Whitman High School in Maryland (which has been in the news lately for other culture war related reasons) is around 8 miles from the White House and looks to be about a 15 minute bike ride from the nearest grocery store, maybe longer if you lived to the north or west.

I'd say from looking at the intersections that need to be traversed and knowing the poor quality of the local drivers that the helicopter parents in such a wealthy neighborhood would never let their kids make that particular journey, but that of course has no direct bearing on your question.

If you're looking for the closest places to the White House without nearby grocery stores (as opposed to convenience stores), you want to go the other way down Pennsylvania Ave.

The place I described is in the DC metro area and could plausibly be called a "far exurb." I make no claims as to whether this is a typical suburban experience because I have no idea, only that the type of place that YIMBY's complain so vociferously about does in fact exist somewhere.

Sure, I don’t dispute that places like that exist, but if the argument is “some far exurbs are too remote for kids to even bike to the store”, then it is much different than claiming that this is a typical suburban experience, that it is hell for kids, and we need to change zoning rules across the board to fix it.

People have different preferences, and that's fine. By and large, rich parts of the suburbs and rich parts of cities are nice; poor parts of the suburbs and poor parts of the cities are horrific. What would be nice is if it were cheaper and there were fewer regulations around building, because that might make the poor parts a bit more like middle class parts and middle class parts a bit more like rich parts.

The point of view of the reviled NIMBY is at least in part motivated by the recognition that the cost of construction isn't the sole determinant of how terrible an area is; the people who are your neighbors also play a role. My last trip to Whole Foods was marked by two fights breaking out in the 15 minutes I was there, one over an attempt to steal a bottle of wine and the other over an attempt to steal a cake. It's still probably net positive to loosen rules, but it's also a transfer of value from the people living in a place currently to the people who'd move there.

I don't see how that is an "alternative." Is that not exactly what we have been doing for the past 70 years? The YIMBY argument is precisely that that mode of development is bad for economic, social, and aesthetic reasons. You can disagree with that, but presenting this model as being on an equal playing field with high-density urbanism when it has had a decisive advantage in zoning laws and government subsidies for decades seems a little odd.

Is that not exactly what we have been doing for the past 70 years?

In the author's view, no. Rather, many cities have used zoning (e. g., urban-growth boundaries) to prevent sprawl.

During my first year, Cato published my 416-page book, The Best-Laid Plans, which showed that urban planners had an irrational mania for density that was making housing less affordable in regions that attempted to stop the growth of low-density suburbs. In the same year, Cato published a paper that I wrote showing that San Jose’s urban-growth boundary was rapidly densifying that city to the detriment of congestion and affordability, along with two other papers on housing issues.

In 1990, a planner named Douglas Porter urged planners to use metropolitan governments to halt urban sprawl and force people to live in higher densities, policies that became known as smart growth.

The self-described market urbanists also fail to recognize the role the suburbs play in keeping housing affordable in the cities. Land is more expensive in the central cities than in the suburbs, but so long as the suburbs are allowed to grow, they will stay affordable and the central cities will remain affordable as well, though still more expensive than the suburbs. If growth-management policies prevent the suburbs from meeting housing demand, then prices will rise dramatically in both the cities and suburbs. By focusing on the cities instead of the suburbs, they arrive at wrong-headed policies such as eliminating single-family zoning.

If we're focusing on California, the system there is uniquely dysfunctional due to a confluence of factors, including the onerous costs of environmental and other assessments.

Japan is an example of a place with cheap rents in dense cities; they have simply built enough apartments to keep up with demand.

If we extrapolate both models, building outwards will run into land use problems much sooner, as the space taken up by roads and parking lots will crowd out homes and businesses, unless we can decentralize work entirely so that not everyone is trying to drive downtown in the mornings from farther and farther away.

This does seem like a big problem in California. It’s not just low density which is an issue. There’s tons of government owned land that’s very valuable. I’ve heard of theories of making rural agricultural land that’s hardly used into national parks and flipping it for high value California land for development. Makes a lot of sense to me.

Wouldn't that just worsen social car dependency?

Wouldn't that improve me being able to avoid urban decay ruined public transportation?

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-14/horror-the-deadly-use-of-drugs-on-metro-trains

If you really want to avoid them, you should purchase a plane ticket to the civilized world. In Australia people standing at train stations are there to travel by train, not take drugs. We don't even have a single open-air drug market, against the best efforts of our local decriminalization operatives.

Before Morales boarded the train to smoke his drugs, he was outside the station plaza in a brisk breeze as people whizzed by. Women held their children’s hands. Others talked on phones. Then there were those with drawn faces who looked as though they hadn’t slept in days. Many were thin and some, like Morales, had bloody marks on their faces or limbs. He didn’t sleep the day before but seemed happy to talk.

I love this implication that thinness is associated with drug addiction in the US, as opposed to being normal. What a sad article.

I can't help it Australia is better on this for the same reason it was worse on covid lockdown. The natural rights libertarians that make up the US haven't quite made their mind up about reconcile things like this. But then they don't think much about city problems because they are just generally not city people.

I wondered why America is so uniquely bad at doing cities. It's vitally important to get away from our underclass in a way it's not in NZ or Australia. Because the distance between the underclass disposition and everyone else's is not so insanely large, I figure. Does it really boil down to America's essentially open and nature? We really did get all the poor miserable huddled masses. We got the worst people of Europe. The version of myself that remained in Ireland is less beset with personality defects.

I have a friend who lives in Australia. He says he misses the US, where he grew up, because Australia is boring. Plus he really really really hated lockdown. I guess the grass is always greener...

I'd say that, historically, for some, the dream of America was to have your own little kingdom of sorts, a small slice of bountiful heartland to call your own. This was the agrarian dream of people like Andrew Jackson (IIRC, or was it Thomas Jefferson), and it has a sort of charm to it. That America had so much land for the taking made that dream possible.

This was the agrarian dream of people like Andrew Jackson (IIRC, or was it Thomas Jefferson), and it has a sort of charm to it.

Jefferson thought that farmers were more virtuous and more suited to democracy.

Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phaenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those, who not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistence, depend for it on the casualties and caprice of customers. Dependance begets subserviance and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. This, the natural progress and consequence of the arts, has sometimes perhaps been retarded by accidental circumstances: but, generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good-enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption. . . The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. - Notes on the State of Virginia, 'Query XIX. Manufactures’.

Yeah, we have a small underclass that indulges in horrific bouts of violence and thuggishness. But they're out in the country, in remote towns in the Northern Territory or Queensland. Much less prominent than in the US.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-64389869

It seems humorous, but by "thin" they mean "starving because they are addicted to powerful appetite suppressants". I get to see these sorts of people too much. The drugs turn them into ghouls.

Public transportation ridership has crashed. So now the local public transportation system is more a rolling homeless hangout than a way for working professionals to go from home to office.

I don't think he sees "car dependency" as a problem.

Every city in America is a 15-minute city if you take automobiles into account. Thanks to automobiles, the typical U.S. urban resident lives within 15 minutes of more than 100,000 jobs, several different supermarkets that compete hard for their business, one or two shopping malls, parks and other recreation facilities, a variety of health care facilities, friends and relatives, and many other potential destinations and activities. Even the densest cities in the world can’t provide that kind of variety and opportunity within 15 minutes on foot.

An older article:

According to the 2000 census, Los Angeles is the densest urban area in the United States, and 89.5 percent of Los Angeles commuters usually drive to work. Just to the south, San Diego is only half as dense as L.A., and 90.9 percent of its commuters drive to work. Atlanta is only half as dense as San Diego, and 93.5 percent of its commuters drive to work. And Lompoc California is about half as dense as Atlanta, and 94.4 percent of its commuters drive to work. So doubling density might get a little more than 1 percent of commuters out of their cars. That’s not much.

Low densities, large parking lots, and other indicators of sprawl are effects of automotive technology. They don’t make people auto dependent; they enable people to be auto liberated. Density and various design features planners want to impose will have, at best, marginal effects on the amount of driving people do.

Thanks in part to cars, the average American takes only about three or four thousand steps per day and looks like a WALL-E character. I suppose that the standard libertarian perspective on this would be that the revealed preference of Americans is to avoid physical movement and that governments should try to accommodate that preference, but it's surely not how I'd like my city to approach things.

I walk a ton living in San francisco. But I also step over a lot of shit and see a lot of demoralizing stuff on the street. Couple days ago saw someone feeding a mouse near a dumpster to their pitbull.

I walked way more when I was in grad school and lived with my parents in a far exurb of LA. I almost never walk at all now that I live in a very "dense and walkable" urban neighborhood. Walking in the exurbs was pleasant, leaf-dappled, and contemplative. Every fifth house or so, kids playing in the front yard. Dogs running behind backyard brick walls and barking "who are you!?!"

Walking in the city is an exercise of stepping to the curb to let other people pass every 10 feet, having to rewind the podcast I'm listening to because of sirens, stepping over homeless, trying not to trip on the shitty uneven sidewalks, and not skewer myself on all the wrought-iron and chain-link fencing. Not appetizing at all.

Yesterday I walked to a large park down the street from my suburban house and kicked a soccer ball with my son. I am lean and my son walks, runs and bikes through large parks and trails with me regularly.

The suburbs are great for outdoors exercise. Rather than walking him past open air drug markets and homeless encampments, we're walking through clean parks and trails.

I choose not to be a fatty and the suburbs easily accommodate me. I do drive to work though, so I suppose I get fewer steps in than some alternative. But then I absolutely won't live by my office building and I will not subject myself or my family to the urban blight ruined public transportation.

I guess I'd say I'm revealing a preference for an active life in a clean environment. So of course I don't live in the local major urban center.

That’a certainly one of the drawbacks, but it’s also worth considering this in both historical and global contexts.

From historical perspective, Americans have been driving a lot for many decades now, but obesity rates have only shot through the roof relatively recently. This means that other factors contributing to obesity might have much bigger impact than driving.

Second, it is worth observing that European countries, which allegedly are more walkable, and where people drive less, are rather quickly catching up to obesity rates of Americans. The upward trend is clear and is not looking like it is plateauing in most countries. See eg. Germany or UK.

The fat people I know might very well walk to the store but prefer to drive. You only need to get fat once, for whatever reason, and walking suddenly becomes unfeasible. And there are many reasons for which people become fat regardless of whether their neighborhood is walkable. What's more, I suspect that the kinds of people who get fat are the kinds of people who would not want to walk in the first place.

Linking walkability to obesity is largely nonsense, in my opinion. I can't give you a definite cause for why obesity has become more prevalent, but it has little to do with sidewalks and distance to possible walking targets.

What explains Europe? Is it the food? It can't be smoking or leaded gasoline that was keeping the obesity down over there (unless they regulated those things later than us).

This is not Europe, this is everywhere. As for explanation, I like how Charles Murray's wife has put it:

We decide exactly what we're hungry for and make it for dinner, every day, from a far longer list of favorites than people had 60 years ago. The perfect way to generate weight gain. And we are not alone.

Even if you refrain from eating snacks or sweets (and these also have been extremely optimized for palatability, with many different local maximums to choose from), we are no longer constrained by difficulty of obtaining ingredients, or cost for normal breakfast/lunch/dinner sort of food. Everything is available close by (or can be ordered online), and everything is very cheap relative to our incomes.

...That does make sense. We're more globalized, and we're also the opposite of starving, in general.

In this article, the same author considers various studies on alleged links between sprawl and obesity. According to him, one study (peer-reviewed in a medical journal) shows only "small but significant associations" between sprawl and obesity, and two other studies suggest that "obesity causes sprawl. That is, obese people choose to live in sprawling communities because such neighborhoods are better suited for their needs."

Of course, that article is sixteen years old at this point, and many of the links in it are dead, so maybe the conclusions to which he comes in it are wrong.

Furthermore, even in FRANCE, 69% of urban workers commute by car:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1017215/car-usage-to-go-to-work-by-residential-area-france/

Cars are so popular because they are incredibly useful and greatly improve the lives of those who use them. I find it curious that so much effort is spent trying to reduce the quality of life of car owners, and not in improving the quality of life of non-car owners.

This seems like a pure strawman. The bulk of the urbanist content I'm aware of is focused on things like "make walking safe", "have stuff closer together", "run more frequent trains" etc. that all are based around improving the QoL for non car-users. And you even have https://youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k which is about how driving is better in the Netherlands! What, specifically, are you referring to?

Well, many of the stuff they champion as improving the QoL of non-cars also just happens to worsen the QoL of car users, e.g. Oxford's traffic filters plan. I think this difference is easier to see if we talk about the proposals they say don't increase the QoL of non-cars, even though they do. For example, Not Just Bikes complaining about pedestrian bridges, and claiming they're "only built for the benefit of people driving, not walking", even though that doesn't make sense. I highly suspect the real reason he dislikes them is because, as he says later, they don't hinder the flow of traffic, and therefore don't worsen the QoL of car users.

And then there's articles like this which directly address your (NJB's) claim that the Netherlands is the best country in the world for driving by saying "...and that's a bad thing."

Well, many of the stuff they champion as improving the QoL of non-cars also just happens to worsen the QoL of car users, e.g. Oxford's traffic filters plan.

If you look at the video I linked, he makes the point that requiring cars to sometimes take a slightly longer route makes it faster to drive, since some people won't drive, reducing congestion.

Ironically, sprawling suburbs often have these exact same limitations. Cul de sacs are very popular, and suburban roads are often windy rather than direct, because everyone realizes that having cars go through your neighborhood sucks--but for some reason we don't think about these forms of road design as "limiting freedom to drive" or whatever.

NJB's argument about pedestrian bridges seems to focus entirely on how they lower QoL for pedestrians, in direct contradiction to the claim that "so much effort is spent trying to reduce the quality of life of car owners, and not in improving the quality of life of non-car owners." You say this doesn't make sense, but he makes several specific arguments and you don't offer any explanation at all, you just make an assertion about his state of mind.

There might be people who hate all driving and want to ban cars, so fine, it's not a "pure strawman." I still think it's a weakman to boil all arguments in favor of urbanism down to "they just hate cars" so all arguments can be ignored.

Ironically, sprawling suburbs often have these exact same limitations. Cul de sacs are very popular, and suburban roads are often windy rather than direct, because everyone realizes that having cars go through your neighborhood sucks--but for some reason we don't think about these forms of road design as "limiting freedom to drive" or whatever.

In that case it's not exactly about improving the quality of life of car users, just mitigating their externalities. Which, for the record, I agree with in this case.

If the route is only slightly longer though, I doubt it would make a meaningful difference in the amount of traffic. But this argument does have some merit to it and is why, for example, I-5 in California doesn't go through populated areas like Fresno.

NJB's argument about pedestrian bridges seems to focus entirely on how they lower QoL for pedestrians, in direct contradiction to the claim that "so much effort is spent trying to reduce the quality of life of car owners, and not in improving the quality of life of non-car owners." You say this doesn't make sense, but he makes several specific arguments and you don't offer any explanation at all, you just make an assertion about his state of mind.

Okay, I will elaborate.

He says they lower the QoL of pedestrians in contrast to the alternative that they will "just walk across the ground to get to where they're going", but this is a false alternative. The alternative to a pedestrian bridge is not being able to cross the road at all. And it's not like people don't use them; they're plenty popular and packed on weekends in Las Vegas. See also this response by Road Guy Rob (he misspeaks and says "crosswalks" instead of bridges, but the message is still the same).

When he points out that some pedestrian bridges and/or underpasses have crackheads on them, that's not the fault of pedestrian bridges or underpasses. That's just the fault of a city not willing to crack down on drugs and drug addicts. Otherwise, I could say that a city having alleys is bad because alleys are places out of sight where people deal drugs (and then claim that NYC is a great place because it has no alleys). It's actually quite infuriating that this is one of the only instances where Not Just Bikes will acknowledge that crime exists, because to my knowledge he doesn't acknowledge crime elsewhere in his channel, and crime (and policing) is probably one of the biggest differences between North America and the Netherlands (or, hell, even Portland, Oregon and Las Vegas; CityNerd's recent TEDx Talk talks about how he moved from Portland to Vegas but he doesn't acknowledge crime (i.e. why Walmart and Cracker Barrel have closed or are going to close all stores there) and gives other, seemingly-virtuous reasons why he moved).

And the bridge he derides as a "concrete ditch" actually looks pretty okay. But this is just a beauty/subjectivity argument, which I'm not a fan of.

There might be people who hate all driving and want to ban cars, so fine, it's not a "pure strawman."

What, like this guy with 1.2 million views? Or this guy? Or /r/fuckcars?

To some extent I have sympathy here because, to some extent, all movements are plagued by radicals and extremists, but my sympathy wanes when movements don't self-regulate in this matter.

I still think it's a weakman to boil all arguments in favor of urbanism down to "they just hate cars" so all arguments can be ignored.

Alright, well I'm not doing that.

In that case it's not exactly about improving the quality of life of car users, just mitigating their externalities. Which, for the record, I agree with in this case.

It may not be the primary intention, but it does help.

The alternative to a pedestrian bridge is not being able to cross the road at all.

I think there's just a very far inferential distance here. Why are the only options "bridge" or "nothing" in the first place? The thing being complained about is not that "a crosswalk would annoy those damned cars" it's that "pedestrians are forced to take a much longer and more difficult route to prevent cars from experiencing even the slightest inconvenience." It's not that making driving miserable is an end goal; it's that most American cities have unlimited appetite to add the slightest convenience for drivers at the cost of arbitrary QoL loss for every other form of transportation.

The very short mention about the drug users seems to be taken as more of a joke--as far as I can tell, he doesn't linger on it or claim it's because of the bridge. (He does actually talk about public safety around 1:50 in https://youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw&ab_channel=NotJustBikes, with the concept of "eyes on the street".)

What, like this guy with 1.2 million views? Or this guy? Or /r/fuckcars? To some extent I have sympathy here because, to some extent, all movements are plagued by radicals and extremists, but my sympathy wanes when movements don't self-regulate in this matter.

A weakman can exist (that's the whole point) and be popular, but it's still the weakest form of the argument. The original claim was "I find it curious that so much effort is spent trying to reduce the quality of life of car owners, and not in improving the quality of life of non-car owners." There's quite a lot of the latter. I could say something like "people who like zoning are just racist and greedy." Probably there are some people who support strict zoning for those reasons; it wouldn't be hard to find example of NIMBY's using "home values" as an explicit argument. But there are certainly lots of other arguments, and it doesn't matter if the relative size of each group is 1:99 or the other way around.

What self-regulation do you want to see? I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone on this forum even go so far as to disclaim the worst NIMBYs. It's not like NJB or City Beautiful or CityNerd or Oh the Urbanity can do anything about /r/fuckcars or an opposing blog. Would you want to be grouped in with everyone who posts here on TheMotte, and have your arguments dismissed because of who posts here?

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Because non car owners are either poor enough that they’re unnoticed in public conversation, or they’re weird enough no one wants to talk about them.

Significantly improving the quality of life of non-car-owners, especially with the additional constraints that whatever you do has to work for everyone and not exclude anyone (including the unsheltered homeless), is not feasible. Making car owners lives worse is pretty easy. So if you actually just don't like people to have cars, it makes sense to use the stick rather than the carrot.

That's because many proposals for improving the quality of life of non-car owners, such as building pedestrian bridges, are ridiculed by urbanists for improving the quality of life of car owners too.

That's because many proposals for improving the quality of life of non-car owners, such as building pedestrian bridges, are ridiculed by urbanists for improving the quality of life of car owners too.

The issue with pedestrian bridges is that unless the road they cross is a freeway, they make the quality of life worse for pedestrians (and better for drivers) compared to a crosswalk, by adding an unnecessary vertical component to the journey. The bridge only helps pedestrians if the baseline is no crosswalk. Assuming that there is a pedestrian route crossing the road with sufficient traffic to justify building the bridge, this is not a sensible assumption. Pedestrians have the same right to cross a road safely that cars in a cross street do, and everyone agrees that cars in a cross street are entitled to some kind of arrangement allowing them to cross at-grade within a reasonable waiting time (generally 30 seconds typical, 60 seconds maximum) - usually a traffic light.

A crosswalk costs less than a pedestrian bridge - even if you install a push-button operated traffic light to fairly allocate priority between cars and pedestrians (as opposed to a zebra crossing where pedestrians have priority at all times). The additional cost to build the bridge has negative benefit to pedestrians (climbing the steps takes longer than waiting for the green man), so it isn't pedestrian infrastructure.

If your response is "But the crosswalk would never be built, but the bridge might be" then you have to ask why. The reason is probably "because it is politically impossible to ask cars to wait for pedestrians the way they wait at red lights for cars in cross streets". If your community is serious about that, then I suppose the bridge does benefit pedestrians, in much the same way that a mugger benefits you if he lets you keep your ID while he takes your cash and credit cards.

Unless the vertical component is excessive (e.g. several ramps), I don't think it's "unnecessary". The pedestrian bridges in Las Vegas have a simple staircase and elevator and they get plenty of foot traffic.

Pedestrians have the same right to cross a road safely that cars in a cross street do, and everyone agrees that cars in a cross street are entitled to some kind of arrangement allowing them to cross at-grade within a reasonable waiting time (generally 30 seconds typical, 60 seconds maximum) - usually a traffic light.

Okay, but this conflicts with many of the positions espoused by urbanists I've seen that say that pedestrians and cars are different and therefore should be treated differently in some respects. E.g. urbanists ridicule when pedestrians are told to make sure they look both ways when crossing the road, even though when cars cross the road, they are taught (at least in drivers' ed) to look both ways too. The standard here doesn't seem to be consistently applied.

In any case, underpasses (which don't have a vertical component) are ridiculed by urbanists too. They also ridicule even at-grade solutions like HAWK signals.

If your community is serious about that, then I suppose the bridge does benefit pedestrians, in much the same way that a mugger benefits you if he lets you keep your ID while he takes your cash and credit cards.

This analogy does not follow. No one is being "robbed" here in any metaphorical sense.

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