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Old 04-08-2013, 03:19 AM
 
Location: Where they serve real ale.
7,242 posts, read 7,876,060 times
Reputation: 3497

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Quote:
Originally Posted by BMOREBOY View Post
This is hilarious considering I had this same mindset for a while, excluding the large church part. When I lived in Raleigh, NC we had plenty of cities that resemble what you describe with plenty of new strip shopping centers (including one town of like 15k with two Wal-Marts), new homes all over the place, new freeway construction, and the whole 9 but eventually that suburban lifestyle grew tiring and while I'd live in Raleigh again, I'm content with living a urban environment.
That type of low density development is possible in locations as long as land is cheap. In coastal California the cheap land is gone and now to make the economics work developers have to push higher density construction. There are just too many people and not enough land to go around.
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Old 04-08-2013, 06:27 AM
 
Location: Atlanta, Ga
2,490 posts, read 2,532,091 times
Reputation: 2052
The whole purpose of increasing density in the city is to reduce its effect outside of the city. This way everyone wins because the city people can get a true city life and the suburbs can get...whatever it is that they enjoy out of that. What good does it to to want more suburban type cities? Eventually your cost goes up because you've ran out of land space to build and now you HAVE to build up or face continued price increases. Think about this some while you're sitting in that 'wonderful' congestion you have.
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Old 04-08-2013, 07:23 AM
 
Location: North America
19,784 posts, read 15,042,582 times
Reputation: 8526
Quote:
Originally Posted by the city View Post
I think city planners and liberals, especially here in California, are pushing to stick people in dense housing developments or multi-residential units in urban areas.

First, I hope liberals realize those projects are extremely costly for someone to live there and second not everyone wants to live in an urban environment. Telling people to not use cars is just not going to happen. Most of this nation is built around roadways and suburbanization. If people liked it back in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, early 2000s, and it still works for people then great!

Secondly, liberals always blame the rich and corporations for getting tax breaks. A democrat's definition of "rich" is way different than mine. If one person makes $100,000+ you are considered upper middle class and rich in my books. And not all corporations are evil. Given some are, but not all.

Anyways back to the main point. Too many liberal cities and towns are becoming too costly to live in. Colleges+lots hiking+lack of affordable housing=a place only meant for rich and liberals.

I would rather take a brand new sprawled out development with homes at affordable cost. I want a nice big beautiful house to have bbqs and my own space! God Bless the American dream!

This environment damage information - no one cares. I am a Bible believer, and this Earth is going up in flames one day. So until then I'm going to live in a suburban, cheap home close to affordable and accessible big box centers and malls and large churches. Yes that's right! I said it! Get over it! I can't stand downtown shopping if there is a parking cost involved. And I am also not interested in the beauty of downtown developments or the liberal belief that cookie cutter homes are ugly. Because I think hills covered in homes are beautiful. It's peaceful and the sound of the freeway is relaxing!

Lastly, if tearing out nature for a new tax-generating business park or college or some sort of business comes up, please take your "save the environment" elsewhere. Europe perhaps?

In the mean time, please keep our liberal cities seperate from our conservative cities. Thanks!
Huh? Didn't get enough sleep last night?

If you don't want to live in the city, guess what, NOBODY is forcing you to.

Sheesh.
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Old 04-08-2013, 07:31 AM
 
315 posts, read 254,339 times
Reputation: 135
Just look at Pruitt-igoe. It not only failed it made the collapse of communism look like a feather softly falling to the ground. Blacks for the most part don't seem to have pride of ownership or community. Many would rather rip apart their own rear ends then take care of something and live civilized.

I used to work on housing where the government would go in to the Black area of the city and find very poor housing and remove the owners and put them up in hotels, burn demo the house and rebuild new homes. There was not cost to the owner. They had to sign a agreement that stated they would not sell it for at least 10 years.

After 1 year those homes were not far off from what was torn down. I saw one idiot who after moving in, sold off the washer and dryer for cash, and blew out the back of the garage because the POS Cadillac would not fit so they kept ramming the back of the garage so they could clsoe the door. they don't belong in a nice home.

Last edited by CaseyB; 04-15-2013 at 05:28 AM.. Reason: flaming
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Old 04-11-2013, 10:50 AM
 
Location: Chandler, AZ
5,800 posts, read 6,538,438 times
Reputation: 3151
The land is there in central California, but it's the obnoxious zoning restrictions, on top of the stranglehold which the 'no-growth' crowd has had on Sacramento and local governments for over three decades which accounts for our nosebleed-inducing real estate prices.

Toss in very short-sighted environmental extremism, in which a handful of folks get what they want while everybody else gets the shaft, which happens 100% of the time, and the state and most of its citizens except for the 'protected' classes including civil service unions, environmentalists and the welfare recipients are headed for disaster, and it's no wonder why 3,500,000+ people have left the state in the past twenty years according to Joel Kotkin.

Throw in a devastating shortage of children looming on the horizon in California, as opposed to soaring birthrates of onetime Californians-to-be now fleeing and/or residing in UT, AZ, CO, TX, NC, TN & tons of other states, all with much healthier economies and substantially higher standards of living as opposed to the constantly declining standards of living and education which the Democrats have systematically destroyed this formerly booming and thriving state, and the future for California remains bleak.

You can add to all of this the taxpayers are already on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in civil service pension obligations, and with the Calpers pension fund bound to bleed more revenue thanks to their hysterically high projected returns of 7.5% due to agressive and asinine bets on the real estate market which was widely predicted to implode over ten years ago, with those returns failing to materialize back then or anytime soon.

Count on yet another fiscal cliff hitting the state when the absurdly high projected revenue of $6,000,000,000 as a result of the passage of Prop. 30 not only misses by several million dollars, but most of that revenue will wind up in the pockets of state employees as the OC Register reported recently, Governor Moonbeam and his fellow Democrats will be exposed once again as pathological liars.

When protecting fish is more important than protecting the ultra-crucial agriculture industry, let alone the 36,000,000+ citizens of this state, everybody else is guaranteed to lose.
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Old 04-14-2013, 08:25 PM
 
7,300 posts, read 6,702,487 times
Reputation: 2915
Quote:
Originally Posted by Randomstudent View Post
First off I live in a college town, and we don't want sprawl and the traffic issues it creates. If you don't like it you don't need to live here or similar places. The town has basically decided it is going to grow up instead of out and basically to enforce this we won't run water and sewer out. I like there not being insane traffic and being able to walk places again if you don't like this as you have said there is lots of sprawl elsewhere. Go there and have fun. Don't tell me I need to **** up my town for your convenience.
Great post!
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Old 04-14-2013, 09:40 PM
 
Location: Maryland
18,630 posts, read 19,340,232 times
Reputation: 6460
Quote:
Originally Posted by Think4Yourself View Post
The OP has the cart before the horse. The reason desirable cities are expensive is because so many people want to live there and that is what is driving density in development not the other way around.
Maybe but a lot of these cities of severe restrictions on development. They also have rent regulations that even liberal economists oppose that distort the housing markets to such a degree that they generally serve to increase housing costs for the masses.
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Old 04-14-2013, 09:43 PM
 
Location: Maryland
18,630 posts, read 19,340,232 times
Reputation: 6460
What's ironic is that often times the outcomes liberals advocate for such as affordable housing would be attained if they just left things well enough alone.
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Old 04-14-2013, 10:33 PM
 
Location: Portland, Oregon
46,001 posts, read 35,003,949 times
Reputation: 7875
Quote:
Originally Posted by EdwardA View Post
What's ironic is that often times the outcomes liberals advocate for such as affordable housing would be attained if they just left things well enough alone.
False, cities that are expensive are expensive for a reason and affordable housing isn't what has a major effect on the cost of housing, the demand for housing is what has the effect.
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Old 04-15-2013, 12:44 AM
 
Location: Midwest City, Oklahoma
14,863 posts, read 8,146,545 times
Reputation: 4590
Well, I think we need to better try to understand why there is sprawl.


If you look at New York City for instance. Parts of Manhattan were many times more densely populated than they are today. In fact, most of the older cities, were incredibly densely populated. Why?

Well, thats simple, in the past, there weren't cars. Nothing has contributed more to urban sprawl, than the automobile. But even with the existence of the automobile, urban sprawl still wasn't too bad, until we built the interstate highways. And almost all development these days are along interstate corridors. All towns/cities which aren't along interstates, are basically dying a slow death(well, unless there's oil or other natural resources there).


The problem is that, most commutes are 20 minute to about an hour. Some people commute even further, but thats only in areas with extremely high real estate costs... If you take Manhattan for instance, how far can you really travel in 20 minutes by driving? Not very far really. Probably only a few miles. In fact, because of traffic and the slow speeds, driving isn't even that much faster than other forms of transportation. So many in Manhattan will walk, or ride a bike, or ride the subway. Even the buses in Manhattan,

If you take a city in the south though, with good interstates. In 20 minutes, you could probably drive about 15 miles. So, in that city you'll probably have a city based on a 30 mile diameter. And then if you consider that many times land prices are significantly cheaper further from the city center. It is economically beneficial to live basically a distance, that your housing bill is low enough to offset the cost of gas for the commute into the city.

So how do you get rid of sprawl? Well, there are several ways to combat sprawl. One proposal is to limit where people can build, so they don't build far from the city center. Another is to raise the cost of driving largely through gas taxes, or emissions taxes, or some kind of other tax, to such an extent that its just too cost prohibitive to drive very far at all. That would make alternatives like walking more attractive.

But the problem with these proposals, is that they always drive up costs, which will be hardest felt by those who can least afford to pay. Limiting where people can build, drives up land prices because land will be scarce. If you drastically increase the cost of driving, it disproportionately affects the poor. Because many poor people aren't able to buy fuel efficient cars, and fuel costs the same regardless of income(thus, the poor would pay a larger share of their income for gas than a wealthier person).


In my opinion, there are really only two ways to solve the problem which wouldn't disproportionately hurt the poor. And that is, either to have a form of urban transit that is so cheap and practical, that people will basically stop driving their cars. Which doesn't include basically any current forms of mass transit, but would include something like a personal rapid transit.

The only other way, would be to get rid of the problem. The roads.

Even though I don't particularly believe its a good idea to get rid of the roads. But keep in mind, roads are extremely expensive. They are publicly funded so as to be free, but that effectively creates almost a monopoly in transportation for the automobile. Most cities put in bus service, but rarely rail service. Because, buses are so much cheaper, because the infrastructure already exists. In the absence of the existence of the infrastructure, there would be much more competition in transportation, and we might see some pretty interesting alternatives. And the best part is, it would not negatively affect the poor.
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