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Old 06-08-2013, 09:22 AM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nei View Post
Plenty of those towns did have shopping. The towns ckhthankgod posted are mostly larger than a farm town or a coal town. Auburn must have, it had 30,000 people in 1900, slightly less now. Here's its downtown in 1910:



Auburn, New York - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Many towns (I'm thinking a population of 10,000 to 40,000, maybe a little smaller), including his upstate examples, I've seen lost a lot of their downtown business to surrounding highway strip developments. Most towns of that size in New England or New York Statehad plenty of businesses. Greenfield, MA is better than most, it still has a few normal store (clothing, furniture).

The suburban downtown near where I grew up (Huntington, NY) had a number of large clothing stores; one or two have managed to survive to this day.
30,000 is beyond "small". Auburn is also a county seat and has a prison; is also kind of a tourist town.

I grew up in a town (actually city) of ~15,000 which had some suburbs that brought the population to about 30K. It had a nice downtown shopping area when I was a kid. However, many of the surrounding mill towns had literally no shopping at all. There were only two citeis in Beaver County that actually had such shopping, Beaver Falls and Aliquippa. Most of these Illinois farm towns had about 2000 people when I lived there. Those near Champaign have now become bedroom communities for Champaign-Urbana.
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Old 06-08-2013, 09:35 AM
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Location: Western Massachusetts
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiana View Post
30,000 is beyond "small". Auburn is also a county seat and has a prison; is also kind of a tourist town.

I grew up in a town (actually city) of ~15,000 which had some suburbs that brought the population to about 30K. It had a nice downtown shopping area when I was a kid. However, many of the surrounding mill towns had literally no shopping at all. There were only two citeis in Beaver County that actually had such shopping, Beaver Falls and Aliquippa. Most of these Illinois farm towns had about 2000 people when I lived there. Those near Champaign have now become bedroom communities for Champaign-Urbana.

I'd call it "small", 30,000 definitely a "small city", as the title of the thread. Most of the examples the OP gave were from 10,000 to 40,000, so I think 2000 is a bit different from what he had in mind [perhaps he could explain], something Beaver Falls sized might more like it. Or maybe Owego:

Owego, New York - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As for mill towns, in Massachusetts, most towns of any size had mills, but I don't think there are too many very small mill only towns, most were in bigger towns. But you can scattered mills in very small towns that had no shopping. The mills tended to follow water sources, and occasionally you'd find them in surprising (for today) places. This dammed river in Vermont was the site of a chair factor until 1918 (started 1820s?):





Today, not even paved roads in the location. Here's another mill building I found that was a location too small for me to consider a town (though in the legal sense it's in a town):

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Old 06-08-2013, 11:19 AM
 
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I meant small in relative terms to a nearby bigger city. Owego may be a good example of an even smaller community(village of 3900 or so and town/township of around 20,000): Owego Homepage

Historic Owego Marketplace - Have fun Shopping, Dining and Sightseeing in Owego, NY - Home

Google Maps Street View

Town of Owego Home Page

If you want go even smaller, the village of Skaneateles has around 2700(town of 7300): Welcome to the Village of Skaneateles!

Town Of Skaneateles Government Site

Skaneateles Area Chamber Of Commerce - Welcome to Skaneateles

Google Maps Street View

What is interesting about Skaneateles is that it is about 15 miles from Syracuse and 7 miles from Auburn.

Out of the original places I posted, Lackawanna was a steel town, Endicott and Johnson City were company towns built by the Endicott-Johnson Company(shoes), Solvay was also a company town created by the Solvay Process Company and East Syracuse is a railroad town. I believe that the others were mill towns.
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Old 06-08-2013, 01:43 PM
 
Location: Philaburbia
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HandsUpThumbsDown View Post
I think dwindling roadbuilding funds pose much more of a threat to exurbs than demand itself.
But isn't that why private roads -- and the ensuing HOAs to build and maintain them -- popped up? The main roads are already there; if the local political subdivision can't afford to build new roads, the developer will, form an HOA, and charge the homeowners for the roads' building and maintenance.
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Old 06-08-2013, 07:02 PM
 
Location: Vallejo
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81 View Post
But isn't that why private roads -- and the ensuing HOAs to build and maintain them -- popped up? The main roads are already there; if the local political subdivision can't afford to build new roads, the developer will, form an HOA, and charge the homeowners for the roads' building and maintenance.
What about outside of the subdivision, however? It's pretty common to have HOAs pay for pools, parks, etc here. They usually don't pay for the roads, however. That's handled by Mello-Roos. It's a good mechanism for handling things that HOAs really aren't equipped to do, like pay for sewers, electricity, schools, highway expansions, thoroughfares connecting the subdivision to the rest of town. The other was is impacting fees. Developers don't really like those, however, because it's a huge fee upfront they have to finance and carry. Most of the 'burbs here are pretty pro-development, so they're willing to issue Mello-Roos bonds to pay those expenses and float the interest payments. There's some risk if say you build a bunch of infrastructure and then the developer gets foreclosed on, I guess. Not really sure exactly how that works.
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Old 06-08-2013, 08:49 PM
 
Location: NYC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81 View Post
But isn't that why private roads -- and the ensuing HOAs to build and maintain them -- popped up? The main roads are already there; if the local political subdivision can't afford to build new roads, the developer will, form an HOA, and charge the homeowners for the roads' building and maintenance.
But the cars don't just drive around and around within their subdivision - they gotta leave once in a while on public roads (which may be burdened by the additional volume).
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Old 06-08-2013, 09:01 PM
 
Location: Philaburbia
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HandsUpThumbsDown View Post
But the cars don't just drive around and around within their subdivision - they gotta leave once in a while on public roads (which may be burdened by the additional volume).
True, but I was talking about new road construction ... which is what I thought you were talking about ...

Local municipalities are only too happy to let the HOA build and maintain them.
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Old 11-17-2016, 04:04 AM
 
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Kenmore NY may be another community that fits in terms of density, walkability, proximity to other popular urban neighborhoods with walkability/activity, safety and solid/good schools.

https://goo.gl/maps/LwwCgqdPtrH2

https://goo.gl/maps/cMb6jbLKTR62
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Old 11-17-2016, 09:21 AM
 
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Here the developer builds the roads to the city's standards, and when completed the city takes them over. Private roads tend to be gravel gravel driveways with 2-3 homes along them. Our car dependent suburb/exurb of 60,000 has almost doubled in population since we moved here in 1993. Our walk ability score is 6. We are just 23 miles from Seattle, and with the highly rated schools and low crime, homes are in high demand. Currently there are 2 developments under construction with single family homes starting at just over 1 million and they are selling before completion. Our only bus service is at commute hours, and they only go along the main arterial, so people have to drive to a park & ride or transit center in a nearby city unless they live close to that road. We still consider it a small city, however, since it's mostly just residential, with only two small strip malls.
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Old 11-17-2016, 04:42 PM
 
391 posts, read 283,174 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81 View Post
Repeating it over and over ad nauseam is not going to make it come true.
There's less demand than before. And during the 2008 financial crisis, housing prices in autocentric areas decreased a lot more than in walkable areas. I think that tells you there is a shift in the housing market, albeit maybe a slow one.
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