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Well, there is always a difference in interpretation. If you wish to Google Evans and University, you will see I'm talking about streets with shops and restaurants. University is the busier of the two, but it is not considered a major highway, yet it has an incredible amount of truck traffic.
Even in places in LA I have not seen them having a commercial strip and building homes next to the commercial strip it is on other road or 3 or 4 blocks away from stores with less traffic.
The commercial strip or any where by the shops and restaurants get more traffic.
I wasn't really refering to whether an area was within city limits or not, just that new developments could have built in a more urban form whether inside a city's limits or outside (don't really care that much about that, that's a government contrast rather than an urban form contrast).
Ditto with back east. Newer parts of Staten Island (within city limits) are similar to parts of closer in Long Island (outside city limits). Though style is similar density is still higher, probably because of differing zoning rule.
Yes, but which urban form could these new developments look like? Fauntleroy, U District, Belltown/Denny regrade were all new developments and all have seen continual development. They don't look much alike. Should the new developments look like Fauntleroy urban or Belltown urban, or U District urban, or Florin Shopping center urban? And what era are these new developments supposed to look like? Belltown has undergone drastic changes. For one, they hydraulic mined the Denny Hill (or lack thereof) out of existence. Belltown has some landmark buildings (Austin Bell, for example) that date back quite a time (for the West Coast, anyway), but it doesn't look anything like it did a hundred years ago.
I agree it doesn't much matter what the city limits are. I just think it's perplexing that new developments could look like some version of old urban form. That's very odd to me. Old urban form is almost never anything like what it looked like when it was new development. For example, Old S.F..
I believe some of the original Levittown lots are fairly small. Multi-family housing does exist in the burbs as well.
Levittown housing is on average lots, at least for the area; 6000-7000 sq ft lots (closer to the city Long Island single family home lots are 4000-5000 sq ft). But it's far, far lower density than most housing within the city limits or what was built previously in the metro. The density drop leaving the city limits, considering the lack of available land, it's likely housing would have been built quite a bit denser. That area doesn't have much multi-family housing.
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There is a big continuum between super-urban neighborhoods and exurbs.
Well, there is always a difference in interpretation. If you wish to Google Evans and University, you will see I'm talking about streets with shops and restaurants. University is the busier of the two, but it is not considered a major highway, yet it has an incredible amount of truck traffic.
Yea, the streets are wider and faster moving than I was thinking of. I prefer my commercial streets narrow and with trafficed enough it's possible to cross at a whim, though obviously not every road can be that way. The intersection of two arterials scare me a bit; there's always turning traffic to deal with crossing.
The intersection of two arterials scare me a bit; there's always turning traffic to deal with crossing.
I've been impressed with Maryland's attempts in the last decade to make some big suburban arterials far more safe for peds than they've been. I won't say pedestrian-friendly because it's still not exactly pleasant to walk along these highways, but definitely safer, in some places.
Pedestrians get their own "islands." They cross the turn lane onto the curbed island and wait for the walk sign. Pedestrians don't encounter turning traffic except in the turn lanes, where the cars are easily visibile.
The cars should stop for the pedestrians but they never do, not in our burbs.
something i never understood with urbanist, why would you want us suburbanites in your city anyway. Do you actually think that if you achieved your goal of burning suburbs to the ground and made us move back into the city, were all just going to suck it up and live in 200 sq ft apartments. You already have examples of what happens of what your cities would look like if you had us in there, its called atlanta, houston, nashville, new orleans, and any city in florida. Its also called gentrification, its called more parking lots, big box stores, chain restuarants,more unfriendly pedstrian roads. You think all that stuff goes away, no, it will just get moved into that same neighborhood with the mom and pop stores.
something i never understood with urbanist, why would you want us suburbanites in your city anyway. Do you actually think that if you achieved your goal of burning suburbs to the ground and made us move back into the city, were all just going to suck it up and live in 200 sq ft apartments. You already have examples of what happens of what your cities would look like if you had us in there, its called atlanta, houston, nashville, new orleans, and any city in florida. Its also called gentrification, its called more parking lots, big box stores, chain restuarants,more unfriendly pedstrian roads. You think all that stuff goes away, no, it will just get moved into that same neighborhood with the mom and pop stores.
Concepts of urban planning aren't limited to the city or the most urban cities. My impression of your posts today is that you think there are a bunch of urbanists out there trying to get everyone moved into places like Manhattan. This is simply not true. No one wants to live in 200 square ft apartments, and no one wants to get rid of cars. The typical suggestion by the regulars on here is to balance the use of the car and low density suburban environments with less completely car-centric environments and more mixed use development to support walking and biking (healthy alternatives that almost everyone likes, but few have access to). That's also not to say that the folks on this site are trying to get rid of car-centric places, rather, it's to discuss the benefits of doing things a different way than they've been done for the past 60 - 70 years.
*sigh*. It would help if self-described New Urbanists would avoid obvious nonsense, like
"This exchange - a near-term cash advantage for a long-term financial obligation - is one element of a Ponzi scheme."
Err, no. That exchange is one of the bases of capitalism. Any debt instrument works like that. A Ponzi scheme is special in that there is no source of funds to back the obligation; a municipal bond is backed by future taxes and/or user fees.
*sigh*. It would help if self-described New Urbanists would avoid obvious nonsense, like
"This exchange - a near-term cash advantage for a long-term financial obligation - is one element of a Ponzi scheme."
Err, no. That exchange is one of the bases of capitalism. Any debt instrument works like that. A Ponzi scheme is special in that there is no source of funds to back the obligation; a municipal bond is backed by future taxes and/or user fees.
There are some in P&OC who would call all government borrowing a ponzi scheme.
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