Are walkability and urban living important to real life Yinzers? (Pittsburgh: lease, wages)

[PghYinzer]

Originally Posted by Goinback2011

The point is, when neighborhood business districts were thriving, people DID visit the shops on a daily basis. I know my mother did, as did the legion of mothers who were home all day. The social structure changed and the need for walkable business districts declined. Now their purpose is fading further as more brick and mortar goes away. When neighborhood business districts were needed, there were no estabishments dedicated to coffee.

Today "walkable" is just a milllenial fad except for the need for a nearby bar to avoid drunk driving laws.

I walk to the shops in my business district all the time, but never to the bars there. Post office, liquor store, library, pharmacy, dry cleaners, seamstress, chiropractor, etc.

[Goinback2011]

There are plenty of suburbs in Europe and they don't all contain poor immigrants. Go to Dublin. Most people live in suburbs built in the last 30 years. The difference is the homes are small and attached. But everyone drives there. The pubs in these areas were going under because of drunk driving laws. Or take the train from old Amsterdam to the airport. High rise after high rise where working people live. Americans mostly visit the center cities and imagine that's all there is.

[gg]

Originally Posted by Goinback2011

Today "walkable" is just a milllenial fad except for the need for a nearby bar to avoid drunk driving laws.

As much as I want to disagree with you, I have to be honest. I think you are right. Sure someone can walk to some store and carry some stuff now and again, but people for the most part drive if it isn't a block away. Heck I see people drive when it might not take any more time to walk. People like the idea of being able to get somewhere fast if they need to and haul things.

Of course there are the few people that don't have a car, but a lot of them use Lyft often.

People like to dream about walking to a store, restaurants and such, but they drive or get driven often.

[Goinback2011]

You can't design life from the top down, which is what urbanists imagine they can do. At best you get a fad. To return to the kind of neighborhood I grew up in, the social structure has to change where a family has 2 parents, only 1 working, and 1 car at most.And retail rents have to be affordable for proprietors.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by PghYinzer

I walk to the shops in my business district all the time, but never to the bars there. Post office, liquor store, library, pharmacy, dry cleaners, seamstress, chiropractor, etc.

I envy you, actually, for living in a solid neighborhood where there are USEFUL businesses within easy walking distance.

I'm not sure what the hell I'm supposed to do with a comic book store, record store, smoky dive bars, a sunglasses store, and offices within easy walking distance of me yet we have to drive to do almost everything else.

[erieguy]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

I envy you, actually, for living in a solid neighborhood where there are USEFUL businesses within easy walking distance.

I'm not sure what the hell I'm supposed to do with a comic book store, record store, smoky dive bars, a sunglasses store, and offices within easy walking distance of me yet we have to drive to do almost everything else.

You could move to an area where you can walk to the things that you would use.

[PghYinzer]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

I envy you, actually, for living in a solid neighborhood where there are USEFUL businesses within easy walking distance.

I'm not sure what the hell I'm supposed to do with a comic book store, record store, smoky dive bars, a sunglasses store, and offices within easy walking distance of me yet we have to drive to do almost everything else.

Our record store just closed, but the comic book store is going strong. I do wonder about your sunglasses store? It only sells sunglasses in one of the cloudiest cities in the country?

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Goinback2011

Except for mall shopping, I'm not seeing the retail decline in the burbs. I don't go to malls, so I'm not really sure how bad it is at say South Hills Village. Century III is a unique case. I live near Caste Village, which is booming and always busy. It serves a much larger population than any walkable neighborhood business district because you can drive to it.

There's been plenty of articles detailing how the retail decline is hitting the suburbs harder proportionately. Here's one from Slate in 2017. Here's one from CityLab from 2018. The "pivot to entertainment" that city business districts have done isn't as feasible for suburban strip malls.

Originally Posted by Goinback2011

Decentralized service provision is the future, and that reinforces the suburbs, not the city.

I'm not saying that upscale suburbs will become a thing of the past. But the idea that the inner city will be a place of concentrated poverty and high crime is outmoded. Already in Pittsburgh the city is on a per-capital basis significantly less poor than a lot of suburban municipalities (admittedly mostly mill towns) and PPS outperforms Wilkinsburg, Penn Hills, Woodland Hills, etc.

Originally Posted by Goinback2011

There are plenty of suburbs in Europe and they don't all contain poor immigrants. Go to Dublin. Most people live in suburbs built in the last 30 years. The difference is the homes are small and attached. But everyone drives there. The pubs in these areas were going under because of drunk driving laws. Or take the train from old Amsterdam to the airport. High rise after high rise where working people live. Americans mostly visit the center cities and imagine that's all there is.

The structure of European suburbs varies from country to country. In the UK, they're full of rowhouses. In Scandinavia, Germany, and France, they're mostly detached single-family homes with small yards, similar to our prewar suburbs. But if you go to a somewhere in southern Europe like Italy and Spain, people will be living in apartment buildings even in very small villages. The major difference between the U.S. and Europe is Europe tends to consider farmland part of their "heritage" and thus tries to minimize suburban sprawl into it, which results in much more compact (if not always walkable) suburbia.

Regardless, the point isn't that no one wants a suburban-style life. It's that there's no stigma against city living. Cities all have wealthy areas right in the core with relatively low crime and good public schools. People make the choice to live or not live in the city based upon different priorities. The cities still have "bad" areas right in the urban core of course. But the suburbs do too. I don't think we're heading to a future where the cities are rich and the suburbs are poor. But we are getting to one where the city is more or less a representative cross-sample (economically speaking) of the metropolitan area as a whole.

[Goinback2011]

Originally Posted by eschaton

There's been plenty of articles detailing how the retail decline is hitting the suburbs harder proportionately. Here's one from Slate in 2017. Here's one from CityLab from 2018. The "pivot to entertainment" that city business districts have done isn't as feasible for suburban strip malls.



I'm not saying that upscale suburbs will become a thing of the past. But the idea that the inner city will be a place of concentrated poverty and high crime is outmoded. Already in Pittsburgh the city is on a per-capital basis significantly less poor than a lot of suburban municipalities (admittedly mostly mill towns) and PPS outperforms Wilkinsburg, Penn Hills, Woodland Hills, etc.



The structure of European suburbs varies from country to country. In the UK, they're full of rowhouses. In Scandinavia, Germany, and France, they're mostly detached single-family homes with small yards, similar to our prewar suburbs. But if you go to a somewhere in southern Europe like Italy and Spain, people will be living in apartment buildings even in very small villages. The major difference between the U.S. and Europe is Europe tends to consider farmland part of their "heritage" and thus tries to minimize suburban sprawl into it, which results in much more compact (if not always walkable) suburbia.

Regardless, the point isn't that no one wants a suburban-style life. It's that there's no stigma against city living. Cities all have wealthy areas right in the core with relatively low crime and good public schools. People make the choice to live or not live in the city based upon different priorities. The cities still have "bad" areas right in the urban core of course. But the suburbs do too. I don't think we're heading to a future where the cities are rich and the suburbs are poor. But we are getting to one where the city is more or less a representative cross-sample (economically speaking) of the metropolitan area as a whole.

I agree brick and mortar retail will decline, I'm just not seeing it yet. We saw a decline of small shops with the advent of malls and big box stores, but locally I'm not seeing any retail decline (besides malls) over the past 7 years since Ive lived here. I suspect big box retail will disappear or be reduced to warehouse facilities over the next 5 to 10 years.

An interesting story from Tampa (which has a much more robust small retail sector than Pittsburgh): Recently, the Sam's Club was shuttered and converted to a Walmart Warehouse shipping facility in my sister's neighborhood. It had always been a busy store, but Walmart announced they were concentrating resources in online shopping. This will be a big trend for all surviving big box retail like Best Buy and even Home Depot and Lowes. That would provide an entry point for small retailers in neighborhoods with affordable commercial rents.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by erieguy

You could move to an area where you can walk to the things that you would use.

Considering it. Fantasized today about larger and cheaper rentals in Beechview, which also has a useful business district.