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The thing with significant "building up", is that it tends to mean a fast and drastic pace of change, rather than a gradual one. It's not always bad, but it can easily mean mistakes get made/things aren't thought out well, and by the time the consequences become apparent, you're already long past the point where you could mitigate the damage.
So I do think there's a wisdom in not letting redevelopment happen too fast. One or a handful of buildings that don't work aren't a disaster if you learn from them and alter the rules before allowing the next ones. Permitting 50 of them before you've seen how the first 5 worked out, now you have a problem if you realize that your assumptions weren't right.
In San Diego, the City's first stab at adding density (60s - 80s) was an utter disaster. They built Huffman apartments. Individual houses were randomly torn down and replaced with 8 unit apartment buildings that
A) turned the entire front of the building into a concrete parking apron,
B) removed any place to plant street trees to shade the sidewalk and encourage walking,
C) removed any place to install pedestrian lighting to make the street well lit at night and to encourage walking,
D) didn't add park space to accommodate all of the apartment dwellers who now had no yards,
E) and spread them randomly throughout neighborhoods rather than concentrating them on busy streets.
In later incarnations of density, they have done a much better job by mandating good design and infrastructure improvements. But for the previously installed density, the damage has been done and the City is still struggling to get out the hole it dug for itself. As millerm277 said, they built 1000s of these Huffmans and kept building them even after people knew they were manure.
High density means crime, congestion,dirty streets and weird people running loose.
I don't need it and definitely don't want it.
Depends on the density, high density of condensed low income housing can definitely bring on those things. High density of mixed incomes or high incomes does not tend to have those things.
High density means crime, congestion,dirty streets and weird people running loose.
I don't need it and definitely don't want it.
This is a myth on this forum that appears to refuse to die. There isn't really a clear causal relationship between density and crime. If it was true that "high density means crime" then one would expect Manhattan to have a really high crime rate considering it is the densest place in the country. In fact the crime rate is among the lowest of any major city and even lower than some small towns.
This is a myth on this forum that appears to refuse to die. There isn't really a clear causal relationship between density and crime. If it was true that "high density means crime" then one would expect Manhattan to have a really high crime rate considering it is the densest place in the country. In fact the crime rate is among the lowest of any major city and even lower than some small towns.
The density=crime myth seems to stem from stories passed down about how dirty pre-war and, more specifically, early industrial cities were plus real problems brought about by public housing projects.
But statistics are complicated and cold, so people prefer to believe narratives from people they trust about the the urbs and suburbs. I mean, you don't see Daredevil being set in suburban Vancouver. The narrative persists.
High density means crime, congestion,dirty streets and weird people running loose.
I don't need it and definitely don't want it.
These are silly myths, like the tooth fairy. NYC and Paris are much denser than Clearwater, yet Clearwater has much higher crime. The safest major U.S. city is also by far the densest major American city.
Density will not happen unless conditions allow it. How many cities had plans for high-rise condos, theaters and retail that never came to pass because developers passed on it?
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