[Dave1215]

Interesting comment on Omaha in an interview by the "Next American City" a magazine that works in the area of Planning/Zoning/etc...

[…]So, I’m a pragmatist. I don’t a vision of what a city should look like, I have a vision of a process that allows people to live in the kind of city they want to live in. There’s a significant amount of people that want to live in a city like Manhattan or San Francisco. And there’s a significant amount of people who want to live in a city like Houston. And what I want is a process that allows people to live in whatever kind of city they do want to live in. I think that if a process were implemented that basically allows property owners to do what they want with their property as long as they’re not directly harming other people, and basically allows people to decide how they’re going to get around based on the real cost of transportation – making sure that auto drivers pay the full cost of their travel and making sure that people who ride transit pay the cost of they’re transit, with, perhaps, subsidies for low-income people who need help – if they have that kind of system I think most American cities would look a little more like Houston and Omaha then San Francisco or New York. But we’d still have dense areas – we’d still have Manhattan, we’d still have downtown San Francisco, for the people who want to live in places like that."

Here is the link to the full article/interview: http://americancity.org/index.php/an-interview-with-randall-otoole-the-anti-planner

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[Todd4]

That was a great article.

He has a different point of view than most and I think it is interesting.

I kind of disagree with him that "alot" of people would "choose" a city like Houston if they could live in single family lots but be within a walkable distance to mass transit systems. I do think people would "choose" not to have to pay for that system as we have already paid for a highway system through taxation.


If Omahans want a denser city based on mass transit stops and development around those stops, then that transit system should be paid for by shifting a portion of tax dollars to mass transit from highway dollars. This would create an equal starting point with roads vs. mass transit.