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"It's not like the government is forcing you to buy a car!"
If you live in a city with parking minimums, yes they fucking are.
this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
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Probably would be better off with relatively minor adjustments to overarching standards over time, much akin to parking requirements, but probably that would look more like parking-protected bike lanes downtown, mixed-use zoning, making missing middle housing more available by getting rid of lots of zoning requirements on housing, or, like japan, making them much more comprehensive. None of that costs you anything economically. Parking protected bike lanes just require paint, and you can do that when you need to repave and repaint the main high traffic roads downtown. Eventually you may be able to justify an upgrade to a totally separated bike lane, or you might be able to justify shutting down main street to through traffic and routing things around.
Then you don't really have to shell out for anything in terms of city transit, you're just changing some regulations around, and people can walk or bike 2 to 3 minutes to the grocery store on their street corner, from their apartment, which is above a pizza place or whatever the fuck. Bike 3 minutes from the edge of downtown in their rowhome into main downtown where they can pick up groceries. Those people can also have jobs and be economically productive with the higher job density that such a development provides, and this all provides a much healthier and more stable tax base for the city since the utilities cost per person and per business is going to be much less. Course, you're not gonna get heavy industry like that, but I haven't really cooked up a solid approach to that sort of commute to a factory or industrial district that doesn't involve a bus or passenger rail line that just heads straight there, like the USSR did.
The more significant problem with this isn't so much that it's some sort of like, totally impossible thing, it's that any city doing that shit will probably be overrun by a shit ton of annoying gentrifiers, which is a harder problem to solve.
I feel like it's pretty obvious that the main problem here is with the local NIMBY voters which might not like such a thing, and a significant lack of federal funding. There isn't really a solid argument against any of the fundamental and somewhat universal planning principles which increase density, walkability, public accessibility, economic efficiency and productivity.
Dude, that's not gonna happen. As you said, it's the voters who are the "problem." Our City Council straight-up banned rezoning any districts to multifamily or 2-family. We have a mixed-use district in the code because we're required to, but it must be on a plot of land of at least 50 acres along a state highway. The largest single tract of land in the city is 15 acres, and it's not on a state highway.
We also have a minimum lot size of 1 acre and minimum street frontage for a single-family lot of 150 feet for all newly-platted lots. The citizens super duper don't want the poor moving in.
But you also have to look at it from a different perspective. Many of these suburban towns are made up of people who actively chose to live a less-urban lifestyle, and as the sprawl approaches them they get very, very hostile. They don't want new people or more affordable housing. They bought their houses 15 years ago when they cost 80 grand. Now people are buying those same houses for a million dollars and tearing them down to build a 7-million dollar house.
@chiliedogg @daltotron Yes, they have swallowed a lot of lies. A lot needs to change.