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Interesting thread. I'm a big fan of the New Urban concepts, even though I personally prefer to live in a more spread out neighborhood. But I know many people who enjoy living in Reston, VA (a town built around the New Urban concept).
Regarding walking to the store: my own experience has been that this has more to do with the safety of the neighborhood than the nearness of stores. In my neighborhood, the grocery is at the end of the street and the path goes right by my house. It's a pretty walk, about a half mile, and you see a lot of people out walking at all hours. Yes, I think it is primarily for exercise but frequently I see someone at night carrying a grocery bag.
OTOH, when I lived in a more urban area in California I never saw people walking at night. If you came home from work and needed to go to Luckys, you drove-- even if it the store was just 3 blocks away. Carrying a bag of groceries after dark is a good way to become a victim in many urban neighborhoods.
I am intrigued by the arguments that city dwellers are somehow morally superior because the structure of a city makes it more convenient for a person to walk to the store than drive. I get your point, but just for laughs I should point out that logically this argument is backwards.
Think about it.
Supposition: Choosing to walk to the grocery store makes you "moral."
Point 1: People who live in cities walk to stores because the city design makes it more convenient. Therefore, they are manipulated into making this choice. Further, people frequently drive to stores anyway, thus DELIBERATELY making an "immoral" choice even though the city design made it easy for them.
Point 2: People who live in suburbs walk to stores as part of getting exercise. They have made a choice to walk, even though the city design made it less easy for them.
Conclusion: If you consider the definition of the word "inept," it seems obvious that it is the people in a city who drive to a store who are morally inept. People in a city who follow a design that makes the moral choice easier are neutral. People in a suburb who choose to walk to the store as part of their exercise are morally competent. (I use the word competent since it is the opposite of inept. Inept was a strange word choice to begin with.)
LOL, just teasing of course. It's fun to play with logic.
Good points. I'm not that familiar with Reston, VA, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Looks interesting.
Yes I suppose that walking may in some ways be tied to issues of crime, but to be honest there are a lot of really dangerous areas of the Bronx and that doesn't stop people from walking around there. It may stop your average white middle-class person from walking around there, but it doesn't stop people in general.
I think in Los Angeles in particular the city was developed around the car and there is a definite car culture in that city. So nobody walks, even if they could. Partially this is due to poor planning on the part of LA way back when, but another part of it is that people have become incredibly dependent upon the automobile in Los Angeles, which is somewhat odd now that the density has increased to such a degree that in many areas of LA you no longer need to rely upon your car.
One little point, I don't know if I would consider having a grocery store 1/2 a mile away to be walkable. I mean you could walk to it, but generally the idea behind a traditionally planned neighborhood or a new urbanist neighborhood is that the density in an area will be high enough so that local stores won't have to be 1/2 a mile away. So for example in my neighborhood the density is high enough that within 1/4 of a mile I have a grocery store, a barber, 2 laundromats, 2 banks, 2 pizza places, various other fast food joints, 3 corner stores, an assortment of businesses (lawyers, travel agents, dentist), nail salons, a pharmacy, and various other stores.
Parking in my neighborhood is at a scarcity. So as a result it makes more sense for me to walk out the front door and go aroudn the block to buy whatever I need than to go to my car and try to find parking somewhere.
I'm not going to get into the whole logic game, mainly because I took logic in college and did quite poorly in the course (ended up getting a C). I don't think living in a suburb is a moral decision. However if morality comes into play it doesn't have anything to do with abiding by the designs of the local zoning board.
Rather morality would come into play because someone living in a more dense neighborhood would be using their car less often, and therefore would be creating less automobile emmissions which have been shown to have a detrimental effect on the environment. Not only that but a large part of the oil used to power those cars are coming from despotic or quasi-despotic regimes that would like to harm this country (Iran and Venezuela being 2 good examples). Therefore reducing the use of automobiles can only be a good thing in my mind (less pollution, less usage of gasoline tied to bad countries).
Futhermore I would state that walking is just a better idea on the whole because this country has a huge problem with obesity. It certainly couldn't hurt anyone for our zoning boards to use the tools that they have at their disposal to "maniuplate" (your words) people into walking instead of using their cars. I see nothing but beneficial results from people having more walking in their daily lives. It might not seem like much exercise, but little walks here and there over the long term add up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by normie
Interesting thread. I'm a big fan of the New Urban concepts, even though I personally prefer to live in a more spread out neighborhood. But I know many people who enjoy living in Reston, VA (a town built around the New Urban concept).
Regarding walking to the store: my own experience has been that this has more to do with the safety of the neighborhood than the nearness of stores. In my neighborhood, the grocery is at the end of the street and the path goes right by my house. It's a pretty walk, about a half mile, and you see a lot of people out walking at all hours. Yes, I think it is primarily for exercise but frequently I see someone at night carrying a grocery bag.
OTOH, when I lived in a more urban area in California I never saw people walking at night. If you came home from work and needed to go to Luckys, you drove-- even if it the store was just 3 blocks away. Carrying a bag of groceries after dark is a good way to become a victim in many urban neighborhoods.
I am intrigued by the arguments that city dwellers are somehow morally superior because the structure of a city makes it more convenient for a person to walk to the store than drive. I get your point, but just for laughs I should point out that logically this argument is backwards.
Think about it.
Supposition: Choosing to walk to the grocery store makes you "moral."
Point 1: People who live in cities walk to stores because the city design makes it more convenient. Therefore, they are manipulated into making this choice. Further, people frequently drive to stores anyway, thus DELIBERATELY making an "immoral" choice even though the city design made it easy for them.
Point 2: People who live in suburbs walk to stores as part of getting exercise. They have made a choice to walk, even though the city design made it less easy for them.
Conclusion: If you consider the definition of the word "inept," it seems obvious that it is the people in a city who drive to a store who are morally inept. People in a city who follow a design that makes the moral choice easier are neutral. People in a suburb who choose to walk to the store as part of their exercise are morally competent. (I use the word competent since it is the opposite of inept. Inept was a strange word choice to begin with.)
LOL, just teasing of course. It's fun to play with logic.
Reston is great. Everything's in walking distance and there's a lot of nature too. Which is a good thing because I walk a lot. I'm not moral, I'm just not rich and I have a car with a sick battery.
I could walk to a little market that's nearby, but to tell you the truth I'd rather walk to trader Joes to do my shopping and that means walking more than a half mile. So I don't think it's crazy for people to walk 1/2 mile to do shopping. I do it all the time.
But I'm single. And young. And poor. Oh yeah, and apparently that also means I'm moral. Well allllllllright, becuase I've already accepted I'm financially inept and romantically inept by dammit I'm morally ept! My momma will be glad to hear it, she has another opinion but that's another story.
As for the logic thing, damn Normie you're giving me a headache. I gave up logic games after college. So I skipped that whole section. I don't think morals has anything to do with where you live, anyway. Just my opinion.
1/2 mile is not that long of a walk. 10 min. max, probably. When I was a kid living in a suburb of Pittsburgh, there was a convenience store about that distance from our home. I walked there many a time. When I needed more, I rode my bike, and carried it home in a basket.
There is much evidence that there is more of an obesity problem in the inner city than in the burbs, so apparently there are other factors besides the walkability of the 'hood that contribute to the problem.
You know it's funny to see the comment about people in California who drive to the market because it isn't safe to walk there. Now I have to admit there have been times I didn't think it was safe to walk to the market but that was because it was FREEZING COLD AND SNOWING and there was ice on the sidewalk. This just isn't a safety issue in California.
I think that urban obesity is a completely different subject that isn't relevant for your average middle-class or upper-class american.
People who are fat in urban areas of America are usually obese because they have a horrible diet. In some cases this is their fault (going to the local fried chicken joint and eating too much chicken and sweet potato pies) but in many other ways it is not.
In many inner city neighborhoods there is a lack of local grocery stores. As a result many people will shop entirely at the convenience store and this results in poor nutrition. Most convenience stores do not carry fresh produce or vegetables, but do carry lots of soda & snack food. So what happens is that the people living in these poor urban neighborhoods often end up eating junk food a lot, because that is the only food available to them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pittnurse70
1/2 mile is not that long of a walk. 10 min. max, probably. When I was a kid living in a suburb of Pittsburgh, there was a convenience store about that distance from our home. I walked there many a time. When I needed more, I rode my bike, and carried it home in a basket.
There is much evidence that there is more of an obesity problem in the inner city than in the burbs, so apparently there are other factors besides the walkability of the 'hood that contribute to the problem.
We are not in disagreement. I have read lots of research about obesity in the Journal of Public Health. It (obesity) is a multi-factorial problem, but seems to be the worst in the inner-cities. The "pro-city living" people frequently bring it up on these forums, blaming suburbia for it.
I do think that the car dependency of suburubia plays a large role in the obesity that you will see in the suburban parts of this country. This is why well to do, educated people in large parts of this country will often be seriously overweight. This is even though a lot of these people are eating fairly well balanced meals. In most of these cases people are simply just not getting enough exercise.
People living in poor inner city neighborhoods on the other hand are simply eating very unhealthy food and lots of it. If you eat fried chicken or cheeseburgers every night of the week, with a lot of snack foods on top of that, no ammount of exercise is going to help you. The diet is the main problem in those cases.
I spent a lot of time living abroad and I think the greatest component of America's problem with weight is that our portions are just way too big. In most other countries in the world the portion size will be about 1/4 to 1/3 smalelr than what we are accustomed to in America. I don't know how this came about or who to blame it on, but that is what I have noticed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pittnurse70
We are not in disagreement. I have read lots of research about obesity in the Journal of Public Health. It (obesity) is a multi-factorial problem, but seems to be the worst in the inner-cities. The "pro-city living" people frequently bring it up on these forums, blaming suburbia for it.
I do think that the car dependency of suburubia plays a large role in the obesity that you will see in the suburban parts of this country. This is why well to do, educated people in large parts of this country will often be seriously overweight. This is even though a lot of these people are eating fairly well balanced meals. In most of these cases people are simply just not getting enough exercise.
People living in poor inner city neighborhoods on the other hand are simply eating very unhealthy food and lots of it. If you eat fried chicken or cheeseburgers every night of the week, with a lot of snack foods on top of that, no ammount of exercise is going to help you. The diet is the main problem in those cases.
I spent a lot of time living abroad and I think the greatest component of America's problem with weight is that our portions are just way too big. In most other countries in the world the portion size will be about 1/4 to 1/3 smalelr than what we are accustomed to in America. I don't know how this came about or who to blame it on, but that is what I have noticed.
Well, the research says otherwise. Obestiy is much more of a problem in the city than in the suburbs. You can argue through time and eternity what the reasons are, but the facts are what they are. Anecdotally, I work in a pediatrics office in the Denver suburbs and we have very few obese or even overweight kids. Most of them are doing sports and other activities.
America's morals are backwards period... SUVs, big houses, big yards, yadda yadda yadda. Only concernced about themselves and the scratch on their Escalade door.
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