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.
Your perception about commuting does not match reality.
The longest commutes in the US -
1. NYC 39.4min transit/driving alone/walking
2. Jersey City, NJ 35.6min transit/driving alone/walking
3. Newark, NJ 33.9min driving alone/transit/carpool
4. Chicago 33.7min driving alone/transit/carpool
5. Philadelphia 32.2min driving alone/transit/carpool
6. SF 31min driving alone/transit/walking
But the types of places that can be built in smaller towns are very, very limited. In fact, the only businesses I ever really see succeeding in towns are restaurants and cafes. More and more "places to see" and "things to do" are these two types of businesses. Retail just can't survive except in high end cities with high end product.
Take my town for instance. Post-industrial town of about 32,000 people. Used to be over 60,000 about a hundred years ago. City leaders are trying to turn it into a touristy place with lots of condos in the center of town. They recently had a major development put in with a corporate offices building for a major chemical company, a hotel, a hospital building, a high end seafood joint and a few small boutique storefronts. A few blocks north is the traditional downtown, which looks nice and does draw visitors. Yet most of the businesses are so niche that the ones I've talked to barely turn a profit, if at all. The businesses are merely passion projects for retirees or kids out of high school trying to make something of themselves. Few have been there more than ten years and I doubt few will be there a few years from now.
None employ more than maybe one full-time employee. Most are worked by the owner and their spouse or a family member. I don't see how that would change if the Wal-Mart closed shop. Those 300 employees wouldn't be replaced by employment at these boutique shops. People would just go to the Internet. I only really see markets and restaurants as being able to thrive in a downtown for a smaller city. The rest are just temporary window dressing.
Again, the exception would be big tourist spots like Mackinac City (which isn't a very attractive city when you really look) or Traverse City, to use examples from my home state.
I guess my point is that for most cities (there are way more small cities than big) these utopian visions for revitalization are just that--utopian. You can't go home again. It's sort of like when President Obama admitted manufacturing jobs are never coming back to the US. Small brick and mortar operations are probably not going to save our small cities. I'm not sure what will. Walkability certainly makes the cities more pleasant, but that's not something to build an economy on necessarily. Those businesses you're walking to probably aren't big enough to make a major difference in the local economy.
Nothing you're saying is a point against walkability. Any place that exists and has pedestrian patrons (e.g., anything other than a drive-thru-only shop) benefits from being designed for walkability. Even if all shopping and eating is done mail-order, you can still design walkable residential. More realistically, people will always want a place to socialize in person, so you'll have some restaurants and cafes. Maybe it's because I haven't read this book of yours, but I don't know why you think walkability is dependent on a critical mass of 1850's general stores.
I'm reading The Geography of Nowhere (20th Anniversary Addition) and while it's a good read with some good ideas, to me it really reads more like the railings of a bitter old man against change. He never mentions the Internet (obviously because of the year he initially published the book) that I've seen (about 60% finished with the book) but seems to believe that simply reducing the role of the automobile and encouraging vertical housing will suddenly make neighborhoods pleasant and walkable again. I'll give him a pass since he wrote before the Internet was so widely available, but it struck me that I've never heard any other planners mention it as a factor, either.
Yes, Wal-Marts destroy small mom and pop shops, but so does the Internet. Even without the big box stores, how could a small store generate enough revenue to survive? Oh, sure, they'd get some business but if the idea is to have shops in every neighborhood other than markets, it just isn't going to happen. And if online grocery deliveries ever take off outside of the major cities, markets will have a hard time, too. We will never be able to frequent local stores and fulfill most of our needs. Walkability is nice but we're always going to have to either A) Drive elsewhere for many necessities and wants or B) Stay inside and order them.
Have modern planners really considered the role of Internet shopping in the disruption of their utopian town layouts?
I'm assuming, of course, the effects on a normal town, not some touristy destination town where brick and mortar can survive because of travelers.
A lot of these Urban Uberlords and City Commissars just hate normal people and want us all to live according to their whims.
James Howard Kunstler is notoriously one of these. And it doesn't matter if the last two and a half decades have disproved his jeremiads, he will keep on making them for the next generation of academia young skulls full of mush.
I don't think the internet will replace small, specialized mom and pop stores that sell stuff that's hard to get on the internet. People go out shopping for fun. The internet doesn't replace that experience.
Boutiques, and perhaps tailored goods like clothes (no pun intended), you are absolutely correct. And the guy who needs a quick gallon of milk who lives nearby, also true.
But the weekly buy in bulk shopper? They are just getting necessities mostly, and nifty "big ticket" items sometimes. Rest assured that shopping is mostly a necessary chore for them.
If anything, I think that internet shopping increases demand for walkability because a car-free lifestyle becomes more viable. My parents are nearing retirement and they are considering cutting back to one car or even no cars. The main things keeping them from this are grocery and home supply shopping. They live within walking distance of several restaurants, and they rarely eat out anyway.
I get that impression that in England especially (any English on the forum?) Auto owners don't use them to commute to work, they don't need to. But they enjoy the Sunday drive or trip to the country.
I guess you never had the joy of sitting in rush hour traffic going into/out of London. Or the almost constant traffic jam traveling from London to Cardiff.
Walkable urbanism isn't inherently expensive. There are just so few of them around in the US because for the past 50 years, the federal government has in many ways favored low density suburbs i.e. the mortgage interest deduction and toll-free freeways. Now all of a sudden demand is increasing. And zoning laws are slow to change in order to allow more housing construction. So the supply is constrained. And the federal government too is slow to change. I'm sure if you've taken econ 101 before, then you'd understand.
Also, European suburbs usually are much denser and more walkable than American suburbs.
"Toll Free" ignores "fuel taxed".....
"The mortgage interest deduction" means a property owning class widely distributed. Perhaps Mr. Kuntzler and his ilk (is he related to the late radical lawyer namesake?) don't like that, because that stops the social revolution for which he longs, but the rest of us DO like that.
I have no idea why in discussions of walkability, that people do not go back in time a little and look at the USSR and China. Those are two countries in which cars truly were more of a luxury and the society was not anything close to care centric.
But as we see, even in a society that was built around being walkable, as soon as economics permitted, everyone got a car.
The anti-car types will never get it through their heads; people like cars. Everywhere in the world where economics have permitted, people have gotten cars. So instead of addressing walkability and resource issues with people liking cars in mind, the anti-car types exert all their energy and solutions that do anything but incorporate people's desire to have a car. This pretty much results in nothing getting done.
I was talking about distance and energy use, not time. Thought that was obvious.
It is only obvious to you. When you ask people about their commutes, they don't say "12 miles" , they say "12 minutes". For commuting, time is the measure. New York is one of the most walkable and transit friendly cities in the US, yet it also has the longest commuting times. Maybe high density cities are not so efficient.
"The mortgage interest deduction" means a property owning class widely distributed. Perhaps Mr. Kuntzler and his ilk (is he related to the late radical lawyer namesake?) don't like that, because that stops the social revolution for which he longs, but the rest of us DO like that.
Tax breaks for the wealthy don't distribute property more widely, just the opposite. I could see the argument, maybe, if the cap were lowered to like $100k, i.e. it actually was focused on people who might not otherwise afford property. Or if it were spent specifically on paying PMIs for the poor or something.
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.
