Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I am sure the single, the childless, and the gay enjoy "walkable urban neighborhoods", provided they are not infested with criminals and their workplaces are nearby. But those with families? Not so much.
Not to hijack the thread too much: here's a view from a French poster:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rozenn
Yes the general rule in the suburbs is that high rises are mostly social estates and residences for the poor. There are some middle-class ones though. In the city, it's the contrary, most high rises are for the middle class or even the upper class.
A lot of urbanites dream of living in the countryside or in such districts. I guess raising a family in such a district is still a quite popular aspiration among couples in their 30s. I've read about municipalities near Eurodisney (like the Magny Le Hongre example above) obliging developers and individuals to buy a minimum amount of land in order to build homes, the purpose being to keep density at low levels and to filter out middle and lower class buyers.
It's roughly the same pattern as the one you describe here, though a lot of families will stay in the city or inner suburbs because of the more accessible cultural and leisure activities and have no interest whatsoever in moving to the outer suburbs. It also depends on the city. In Paris, land is expensive compared to a city like Toulouse, which is much more "suburban". As for the yard thing, most people are fine if they have a nearby park. Some absolutely want a little garden of their own to invite friends for a BBQ or watch their kids play without worrying about their security, but overall people seem to need less space than Americans to be happy. And that's fine, because there is less.
I am sure the single, the childless, and the gay enjoy "walkable urban neighborhoods", provided they are not infested with criminals and their workplaces are nearby. But those with families? Not so much.
Met a guy with a small child living in an apartment above a store in the center of town. He had moved from Brooklyn and said he wanted to live in someplace that felt busier; felt more like home. Not your typical white hipster stereotype but black whose accent was an combination of NYC + something foreign (West Indian? )
A relative had a teenager from Spain, who grew up in the center of a city (mostly apartment blocks), the suburban house with a yard was a bit of a culture shock to him, more than any US-Spain difference!
I am sure the single, the childless, and the gay enjoy "walkable urban neighborhoods", provided they are not infested with criminals and their workplaces are nearby. But those with families? Not so much.
Yes, there is a rise in "new urbanism" in the USA, but it comes from and with a declining birth and marriage rate.
The single, childless, and gay...guess what, they're still tax-paying Americans! Ditto for students and the poor and the physically challenged.
If you have children, it's probably for 20-30 years of your 70-80+ year life expectancy, so ...
Please let's stop extrapolating the transportation needs and logistics of healthy, well-to-do suburban families to the rest of America!!!
Personally I think living in an inner-city without a car close to work would suck.
I'd be trapped in one little corner of a city without an easy way out.
I don't wanna plan my life around bus/train/etc schedules.
I live in the suburbs and drive everywhere. Fork the haters.
Why do you need to drive from end to end of the metro you live in regularly? Even when you drive, most people don't drive everywhere and tend to stick to their portion of the metro they live in.
I don't imagine the other 75% would look much different seeing the commute to and from work is probably going to be where most people use transit.
The other 75% of trips are not people going to or from work. That's the point. Most transit agencies are reporting much stronger growth in off-peak ridership when compared to peak travel demand and even back in 2009 non-work trips were making up 65% of transit travel. http://traveltrends.transportation.o...avel_web_2.pdf
Those other 75% of trips are for really mundane things like picking up a prescription. Getting groceries. Dropping off the kids at school. Going to visit a friend. Going to the movies.
1/3 of Americans live in the 15 largest metros (Seattle). 1/2 of Americans come from metros larger than Milwaukee. Most of us are going a few miles to do those things and in a lot of cases, less than a mile.
If I take the train to work (lately it's been the ferry but same difference) and go out to lunch it's on foot. If I want to pick up a new book, stop by the pharmacy, get a bottle of wine on the way home, stop by the post office, etc - all of those trips are on foot. But sometimes I drive to the grocery store or to Target. Sometimes I ride my bike to those places. When you have useful transit nearby, even if you only use it once or twice a week, you're probably mixing up modes a lot more often than what your journey-to-work trip would show.
Telling us how people get to work - when 75% of travel is for non-work purposes - is not useful for telling us the best way for kids to get to school or for people to buy bread and aying "oh, people make more car trips than transit trips because people prefer to drive" would be like going back to 2004 and saying "oh, more people use dial-up than broadband because that's what they prefer."
It's surprising that Europe's model share by car is so high (80%+) considering there are lots of disincentives for Europeans to drive (ie. $10/gallon gas, high congestion charges, etc.). Maybe they should tax drivers more on gas, it's obviously not high enough!
LOL. Gas in most of france is around €1.30/liter which is roughly €4.92/gallon. Diesel would be around .75 cheaper per gallon. In Germany it's roughly the same. In Spain it's 15 cents cheaper per liter.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
)
