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Urbanlife, your post #243 demonstrates that you are woefully ignorant about development pattern in most of the US.
That exact development pattern is very common. Now in a fast growing city the choice may be high cost or high crime but if you can afford Portland you can afford most anywhere.
What you will find is a shopping center will be located at a cross road and subdivisions will start off the cross road DIRECTLY BEHIND the shopping center. If you had bothered to read my post you would notice that I said 5% of the homes were convenient to shopping. in some cases more than 5%. No need to rant about the 95% that aren't convenient.
I realize you are a kid living in the NYC metroplex but I urge you to spend some time on google earth before you waste our time with your ignorant screeds.
I grew up in suburban cities, lived in Portland, Oregon for about a decade, and have been in the NYC metro for about a year and a half.
I did understand your comment about strip malls, I also remember a friend who grew up behind one and instead of being able to walk out his go around the corner and be in the strip mall in a matter of minutes, we had to walk down the sidewalk away from the strip mall until we got to the main road that ran through the subdevelopment. Once on the main road, we would walk along that road until the sidewalk ended, then you had to try and walk on the edge of the road due to there being a big ditch running along the road. Once out to the Boulevard, you would walk some more having to be cautious of people turning into the gas station and other things we passed before finally reaching the strip mall that was directly behind his house. It would take about 30-40 minutes each way on foot because the neighborhood and strip mall were designed to put cars first rather than pedestrians. And if we wanted to go to the comic shop, which we often did, we would then have to walk through a large parking lot that put cars first and provided no safe sidewalk through it to a 6 lane road that we would cross, then another 6 lane road, then another parking lot that put cars first with no safe sidewalk through it to walk on before finally making it to the strip mall.
That is my example of what happens when you put cars first, and the moment I learned to drive, I never made that walk again because who would want to do a 5 minute walk that takes you 40 minutes to do when you can just hop in a car and drive over in 5 minutes.
In most places I've been the handicapped parking spaces are well-used. I've never seen an alternative-fuel parking space, but I'd be offended by the discriminatory nature of it, as if parking space should be used as a weapon for social engineering .
Exactly my thinking. Public transit and choice in a development is good, but if a place is designed for driving and just about everyone uses cars, the transportation policy should put roads and car drivers first. It is stupid to cater to pedestrians where there are no pedestrians to cater to and walking is not viable. The starkest example of this in my daily life is a nearby school where during the entire 2012-13 school year I saw no one walking to school, yet a 15 mph school zone is in place for pedestrian safety. If there was a horde of students walking to school I could understand a slowing-down of car traffic, but if there are no pedestrians what is the point?
Most suburbs are simply not designed for walking. 30 minutes walking (about the upper limit for a reasonable intracity trip time) will get you about half a mile, and in the vast majority of suburbia there is nothing within a half-mile radius other than housing. 30 minutes bicycling will get you 2 miles, and for a good chunk of suburbia there are jobs and stores within a 2 mile radius, and the potential of this distance factor has not been tapped in the vast majority of cases. Since through bikes require less pavement than through cars, it's possible to build direct bike paths in places that have a hierarchial street pattern, which gives bikes a leg up, e.g. by car the distance is 4 miles but by bike it's 2 miles. So, for suburbia as it exists today bikeability is a more realistic objective than walkability; achieving bikeability is easy with suburbs more or less similar to what we have today, but achieving walkability requires a different (i.e. denser and New Urbanistic) built environment that a lot of people just don't want to live in.
Of course, in many places even the more expansive 2 mile radius has nothing other than housing in it, in which case everyone will (quite sensibly) use cars even if cyclists and walkers have world-class accommodations. In many places nothing other than cars can be viable, in which case the only objective should be fast, uncongested thoroughfares for car traffic. Fast roads that eliminate stop-and-go are more fuel-efficient, and also save people's time and money. That should be an objective everywhere, but it's the objective in a hopelessly car-dependent area.
Alternative fuel parking spots take up less space than a gas station and do not involve needing giant containers of gasoline stored on site.
I agree that suburbs should be more bikeable, the issue with that is that bikes often times follow the same model as making a place walkable. If we put biking first, we might as well put walking first too. When you do that, you have better designed areas that accommodate multiple forms of transportation. It also makes it easier to plan bus routes and regional rail routes.
That is my example of what happens when you put cars first, and the moment I learned to drive, I never made that walk again because who would want to do a 5 minute walk that takes you 40 minutes to do when you can just hop in a car and drive over in 5 minutes.
I do not think that any place was deliberately designed to "put cars first". Cars are inanimate objects, they're tools, if you will.
I do not think that any place was deliberately designed to "put cars first". Cars are inanimate objects, they're tools, if you will.
I disagree, when you create zoning and codes that favor cars then you are deliberately designing to put cars first. Same goes for when designing someplace to be walkable/bikeable, that would be a deliberate design choice.
We build for the car first because we have created a society that focused on the car as the means of transportation. When you put pedestrians first, cities and neighborhoods and suburbs begin to change to reflect that change. Just like if you build a place that is only for the car, then only a car will use them.
Basically you are saying that we created this car dependent therefore we must continue to feed our addiction to cars.
We put the car first because people wanted cars. People demanded cars and cities must continue to be built around how the people that live in them actually want to live, not around how an eccentric few who don't even think anyone in a car is even a person envision they should live. That would be forced. The car was a choice.
We put the car first because people wanted cars. People demanded cars and cities must continue to be built around how the people that live in them actually want to live, not around how an eccentric few who don't even think anyone in a car is even a person envision they should live. That would be forced. The car was a choice.
If you live in an area that puts cars first and designs accordingly, people do not have the option to demand anything else because a car dependent suburb is all that is available.
Now if you have noticed, a number of cities in the US have seen lots of new growth in their inner city neighborhoods and downtown areas that have been in favor of options for transportation. When people choose to live out in the suburb doesn't mean that our urban areas should be seas of parking because the suburbs only have one option.
If you build an area with only one option, then there is only demand for one form of transportation.
I understand your frustration about the comic book store. There is a HUGE commercial development in Knoxville (Turkey Creek) that backs up to some residential subdivisions. I swear I noticed someone had put a ladder over their privacy fence so they could acess the stores. Planners really should require pedestian paths to the surrounding subdivisions. Easy stuff that could open up a lot more "walkablility". Not as quaint as the new urbanism, but walkable nonetheless.
I understand your frustration about the comic book store. There is a HUGE commercial development in Knoxville (Turkey Creek) that backs up to some residential subdivisions. I swear I noticed someone had put a ladder over their privacy fence so they could acess the stores. Planners really should require pedestian paths to the surrounding subdivisions. Easy stuff that could open up a lot more "walkablility". Not as quaint as the new urbanism, but walkable nonetheless.
Me saying that a suburb needs to put walkability first doesn't mean the area needs to be urban, it just needs to have easier routes to get to a destination that doesn't have to follow the same route as vehicles. Which when doing this, a bike infrastructure can be built as well. Bike infrastructure is relatively inexpensive when it comes to designing areas around the bike and is a very easy task that can be done in most places.
If you live in an area that puts cars first and designs accordingly, people do not have the option to demand anything else because a car dependent suburb is all that is available.
Now if you have noticed, a number of cities in the US have seen lots of new growth in their inner city neighborhoods and downtown areas that have been in favor of options for transportation. When people choose to live out in the suburb doesn't mean that our urban areas should be seas of parking because the suburbs only have one option.
If you build an area with only one option, then there is only demand for one form of transportation.
Interesting. Cities are seeing population growth in inner city neighborhoods like Seattle where the population growth is 500% as great as the rest of the metro area. And yet people don't have the option to demand anything else. The only place they can live is out in the suburbs in a sea of parking. They couldn't possible move to Seattle's downtown area. I wonder where all these people are coming from. The birth rate must just be astronomical.
It's either that or people actually can demand what they want in vote with their feet. One of the byproducts of living in a highly mobile society is... the society is highly mobile. Shockingly, people can and do move to where they like. It's a two-way street, people can actually move back from the suburbs to the cities just as easily as they moved from the cities to the suburbs.
I understand your frustration about the comic book store. There is a HUGE commercial development in Knoxville (Turkey Creek) that backs up to some residential subdivisions. I swear I noticed someone had put a ladder over their privacy fence so they could acess the stores. Planners really should require pedestian paths to the surrounding subdivisions. Easy stuff that could open up a lot more "walkablility". Not as quaint as the new urbanism, but walkable nonetheless.
I agree. I'm very much in favor of pedestrian/bike paths.
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