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I shop at the grocery store 1-2x a week. I get a box of produce weekly, and then I typically buy some things over the weekend to tide me over. Sometimes I pick up stuff at the grocery on the way home from work. I work downtown in a small city, and we don't have many parking spaces in my building, so I park in the downtown lots. As a result, I pass several specialty markets, and just fill in what I am missing before I get in the car. And do my main shopping on Saturday and Sunday.
I don't buy bread or milk much. (Stick with Almond milk at home.) I can't fathom only going to the store less than once a week. I change my mind about dinner daily!
Makes sense, you live in an building and likely have very limited storage space for food stuffs. People who live in houses tend to have more space to store stuff and can buy in bulk. People that have Children also tend to buy in bulk. With small numbers of people, eating it before it expires is more an issuse.
In my area it is the poor people who get ripped off. They can't drive to an larger store to get something fresher, cheaper or in bulk. I only run out to the stores within walking distance to get something when I have run out and I usually drive becuase I am likely cooking or need to cook and need to get back to that task asap.
The only time I ever walked was when it was like barely 2 blocks from my house and it didn't make any sense to drive there(no lot).
I never knew strip malls posed a problem. In my opinion, the design makes sense for small/medium-sized shopping centers, it's efficient. I don't get the obsession with urbanity (or whatever the term is), nor do I agree with the idea that strip malls are a suburban/sprawl thing, even NYC has them.
In my opinion, walking past all the other stores is a good thing. It's good for business, and it maintains foot traffic. People will want to walk there.
Doesn't maintain foot traffic to the stores you are passing. As far as "wanting" to walk past additional stores -that's again a silly comment. To get to the destination they must walk past everything anyway - regardless of whether what they are walking past is a big box store, a parking lot, a bunch of smaller stores, etc.
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Walking into a store that is adjacent to the sidewalk is shorter than walking through a parking lot to get to the store.
Previously you touted putting more buildings up to increase density because it would make for shorter distances. This obviously is not true. Adding more stores near one sidewalk does not shorten the distance to the store you are trying to get to.
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I think you're more interested in quieting down the people you deem as "complainers".
Just illustrating that the complaints about "density" and "walkability" are all pretextual for aesthetics. The "arguments" asserted in this and many other threads by the "walkability" and "urban fabric" crowd lose credibility because their nonsense words quickly boil down to aesthetics to the exclusion of utility and economics.
Last edited by IC_deLight; 02-18-2014 at 07:11 AM..
The ONLY benefit of greater density is aesthetics? Completely false. Just to name perhaps the biggest concern, over 30,000 people die in car accidents per year. Places with higher density tend to have lower fatality rates because people don't drive as much when there is higher density.
For every 1% increase in the index (i.e., more compact, less sprawl), all-mode traffic fatality rates fell by 1.49% (P < .001) and pedestrian fatality rates fell by 1.47% to 3.56%, after adjustment for pedestrian exposure (P < .001).
Doesn't maintain foot traffic to the stores you are passing. As far as "wanting" to walk past additional stores -that's again a silly comment. To get to the destination they must walk past everything anyway - regardless of whether what they are walking past is a big box store, a parking lot, a bunch of smaller stores, etc.
Just as a highway that has strip malls and big boxes will be busy with car traffic, a city street that has buildings scaled to pedestrians will be busy with foot traffic. Yes, in both cases the traveler will need to pass other places to get to their destination. If it's scaled to pedestrians, walkers will be able to pass more properties, increasing the usefulness by having many stores in a smaller space.
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Originally Posted by IC_deLight
Previously you touted putting more buildings up to increase density because it would make for shorter distances. This obviously is not true. Adding more stores near one sidewalk does not shorten the distance to the store you are trying to get to.
If stores were closer together and adjacent to the sidewalk, the distances would be shorter. It would be scaled for pedestrians. A good example is inside of a shopping mall.
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Originally Posted by IC_deLight
Just illustrating that the complaints about "density" and "walkability" are all pretextual for aesthetics. The "arguments" asserted in this and many other threads by the "walkability" and "urban fabric" crowd lose credibility because their nonsense words quickly boil down to aesthetics to the exclusion of utility and economics.
That's how I feel about "elitist" - it's a nonsense word.
I've always felt that the best way to explore a city that I'm visiting, whether for the first time or even multiple times if it's a city that I enjoyed on previous visits, is to take a nice walk and explore things for myself and my own personal enrichment, or to take a bus tour to get 'the lay of the land', and then go back and explore areas which intrigued me on foot.
I agree that strip malls are in many cases an eyesore, and the one a block away from me here in LA has the ubiquitous dry cleaners/donut shop/mini-mart/checking-cashing is just like a ton of the rest of them.
The ONLY benefit of greater density is aesthetics?
You did not read the post. I never claimed that aesthetics was ever a "benefit" of density to begin with.
These arguments about "urban fabric", "walkability", are pretexts for the proponent's subjective personal aesthetic preferences. You won't find me claiming or suggesting that "density" is somehow aesthetically desirable.
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Completely false. Just to name perhaps the biggest concern, over 30,000 people die in car accidents per year. Places with higher density tend to have lower fatality rates because people don't drive as much when there is higher density.
So?
The logic is flawed but your objective is exposed.
A greater population density does not inherently eliminate cars. Look at an apartment complex.
A greater store density does not inherently eliminate cars. Look at any typical shopping mall.
What you are really saying is that by adopting an anti-car agenda you will eliminate accidents with cars. But your motivation isn't even elimination of accidents - it's really just "densification" for the sake of densification. Your slip-up above shows that you actually believe densification is aesthetically pleasing. You're spending time trying to come up with reasons why other folks need to conform to your preferences regarding aesthetics. "Saves pedestrians"...not.
How many people die of heart attack? Eliminate hearts and solve the "problem", right?
Pi is hard to understand - so just legislate that it be rounded to 3 to solve the "problem", right?
For every 1% increase in the index (i.e., more compact, less sprawl), all-mode traffic fatality rates fell by 1.49% (P < .001) and pedestrian fatality rates fell by 1.47% to 3.56%, after adjustment for pedestrian exposure (P < .001).
Yeah, and the "study" claimed "walking one of the most dangerous modes of travel". So following your logic just eliminate walking and you "saved" all those pedestrians. The study also expressly stated "because sprawl was not measured explicitly, the possible association between sprawl and traffic fatalities could not be tested". You have also confused correlation with causation.
You also ignored the self-admitted flaws of the study which included:
1. "It treats each county as a unit of homogeneous density and accessibility and assigns to it a single fatality rate, though large differences within borders are likely." So in other words, "increasing density" elsewhere for density's sake alone isn't going to solve the location specific problems that gave rise to the conclusions to begin with because of assumptions and averaging.
2. "We recognize that the fatality data studied are based on the location of a crash, whereas the population density and street accessibility data are based on place of residence, which may be different. To the extent that fatalities occurred during the morning or evening commute, a (reassuring) bias toward the null may exist. In other words, because most commuters who cross county borders live in lower-density bedroom communities and work in higher-density central areas, the traffic fatality rate in urban counties would be inflated relative to the population living there."
3. Of course there is the manner of characterizing "sprawl" to begin with
A greater population density does not inherently eliminate cars. Look at an apartment complex.
A greater store density does not inherently eliminate cars. Look at any typical shopping mall.
That's density done poorly - no one (well, no one but sub urbanist) think this is a good idea. Now, mix the uses, front the streets with buildings, design streets that are pleasant to be on with shade, trees, on-street parking - and it starts to resemble the kind of city where people cannot wait to park their car and get out and walk.
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