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We need a greater amount of mid-density suburban development in the US, similar to western Europe as well as England. Walkable and leafy developments could easily reach 6-10K people per square mile without too much compromise and would allow for better conservation of adjacent crop and agrarian areas. In Europe, governments often subsidize the farmers for keeping land in current use, therefore pressures to sell for short-term monetary gains tend to be less. Some might say this approach is more "static" but growth can occur in well planned mid density scenarios without a great amount of negative compromise within reason.
Yup it is. Riots are based on the social and economics of an area, not on the fact if it's a city or suburb. Lower socio economic communities will have the police to people race war.
The only way sprawl can end is if water and resources end out. I don't see that happening because we will come up with ways around it. A suburb can become a city over the years as well just a city can downgrade to a suburb or ex-urb of another city over years.
^^Not all suburbs were like that, even in the 60s.
True, you did have some that had downtowns over shopping malls and you had the streetcar suburbs. A majority weren't like that though. More progressive areas might have had those ones.
True, you did have some that had downtowns over shopping malls and you had the streetcar suburbs. A majority weren't like that though. More progressive areas might have had those ones.
It had nothing to do with "progressivity". Pittsburgh, not know for its progressiveness in the 60s, had (has) a lot of such burbs; ditto Denver, which was considered a "cow town" in the 60s.
Being legally organized as a city means different things depending on the state, it's just a name. Some states, the legal powers between cities and other types of municipalities is small, others large. Massachusetts has among the smallest: the difference between city and town is mostly just a name rather than anything substantial.
Dude, I actually live in St. Louis. You may not understand the government structure here, but there are over 90 municipalities or "cities" in St. Louis County alone, not to mention the 300,000 or so people that live in unincorporated St. Louis County. Just because they are technically "cities" does not exclude them from being suburbs. Nobody leaves this area in says "Hi my name is Bob, I'm from a small town named Ferguson", people say "Hi I"m from St. Louis" or "the St. Louis area". Under your definition, there is no such thing as suburbs, because the majority of suburbs in the U.S. are technically cities, because they are "municipalities". I don't really get what point you are trying to prove. The argument was not if Ferguson was a city, the question was is Ferguson is a suburb? The answer is yes.
I don't know how surprised or not people are by things. That kind of density is very common in the suburbs of San Francisco.
Eh, if you look away from the peninsula and at actual census tracts there is a much more broad range of densities in the SF Bay Area, including broad swaths of built land between 4k and 6k ppsm.
Regardless, my point was that reaching the 10k ppsm threshold doesn't require a shift away from SFHs or suburban living and I showed examples to that effect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Malloric
There's a good mix of housing stock to choose from, typical of most of the Peninsula and South Bay. There's not much in the way of very high density, but lots of mid density in many places. It's all really expensive. It isn't this story your painting about pent up demand for mid density with cheap low density. A 2bd apartment in Mountain View might go for $3,000/mo but then the dumpy mid century ranches nobody likes are in the $1.5-2 million and up range as well. It's just expensive. Comparatively, you'll get more house renting in the high density areas than you would buying in the adjacent lower density neighborhoods.
I was only using the SFBA as an example of what certain densities looked like. I did not intend to use it for CoL, as California housing is expensive to begin with, and the SFBA especially so.
But it is very common on here and elsewhere to read or hear the argument that, among other faults, more urban living is simply too expensive vs. the suburbs; to that end, I was making the point that may be because this country has so much supply of the one but a very finite amount of the other, making one seem artificially expensive.
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