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Hm, you know, I'm not really sure. All I know is I'm never going to live in an urban environment. That much I can tell you for sure....
By "urban area" do you mean a statistical urban area (city, suburbs, and everything in between), or just a densified area? Just wondering.
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Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81
Accessible to who(m)? Define "easily".
Anyone from anywhere across the metro area. For example, if you have an employment center at the edge of the metro area, how are individuals from the other side of the metro supposed to reach there? That could be an unbearably long (and possibly highly-trafficked) commute.
Until the trip between one end of a metro area and the other is unbearable? Many say that is already the case. Long Island to New Jersey is one example. How about Oxnard to Anaheim? Incidentally some areas that we consider suburban are actually classified as their own MSA. Examples: Naperville/Aurora IL, Riverside/San Bernardino/Ontario CA, Ogden UT.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OuttaTheLouBurbs
Anyone from anywhere across the metro area. For example, if you have an employment center at the edge of the metro area, how are individuals from the other side of the metro supposed to reach there? That could be an unbearably long (and possibly highly-trafficked) commute.
Yep, Oxnard to Anaheim would be "unbearable" in my book. I would move, I think, if faced with something like that. It would be almost the same dilemma as living in El Paso and being offered a job in Phoenix; do I want to accept the job and move, or do I want to stay where I am and keep looking for jobs within reasonable distance?
Yes, I am aware that El Paso to Phoenix is MUCH longer than Oxnard to Anaheim, so my comparison seems absurd at first glance. But my point is that after a certain time/distance in the commute, I, and probably many others, would just assign it to the "unthinkable" category.
By "urban area" do you mean a statistical urban area (city, suburbs, and everything in between), or just a densified area? Just wondering.
Anyone from anywhere across the metro area. For example, if you have an employment center at the edge of the metro area, how are individuals from the other side of the metro supposed to reach there? That could be an unbearably long (and possibly highly-trafficked) commute.
Well I think a lot of big cities have reached the point where commuting from one end of the metro to the other is enough of a pain that few people do it. It's not that no-one does it, just that it's pretty rare.
For example, the Toronto suburb of Ajax has 23,570 jobs.
Based on the proportion of the total metro population, you'd expect about
2,500 to be held by Mississauga residents, but in reality, it's only about 100 (census data is rounded to 5). So about 4% of the expected value.
Ajax is an eastern suburb, here's how the percentages work out for various parts of the Greater Toronto Area.
Western suburbs
Mississauga: 4%
Brampton: 4%
Halton: insignificant (<%5)*
The pattern is similar in the other direction, in Oakville, which is a western suburb. Commuters from the eastern suburbs are as under-represented as commuters from places like Fort Erie, Norfolk County and Waterloo, where commuters cross two metropolitan areas before getting to Oakville.
So if you have an employment center in a big metro area's northern suburbs, I think the expectation is that it's mostly people from the northern suburbs that will work there. I think this is also part of the reason why certain cities tend to grow more in certain directions (DFW, Atlanta, Chicago) since housing and employment development attracts each other in one part of the metro area, while having little positive effect on the other side of the metro.
*National Household Survey only shows municipalities with at least 20 commuters (or 18 due to rounding), none of the 4 Halton municipalities reached this threshold, but theoretically it could be up to 17x4=68.
The US has plenty of land left in many states. Its really the increase cost of supporting urban cities that is getting out of hand for most taxpayers. A city has to have a very high industrial tax base to survive as homeowners can not support much of the infrastructure. Its what has happened to urban main areas for years now. Richer gentrification is limited but helping. High density is complex and costly.
I'm really hoping that condo-living makes a return, because as suburban sprawl continues, jobs become decentralized. Take LA for my example. Had all jobs been centralized in DTLA, LA would be much more centralized. But supporters of suburban developments created the concept of "office parks" which takes away jobs from downtowns and out into little districts closer to the sprawling suburbia, thereby allowing suburban sprawl to continue growing outwards further and further from downtown. Suburbia is cheaper to live in and office parks are cheaper to run a business in. This type of growth model is practiced in Texas and Atlanta where jobs are scattered throughout the region, allowing expansive suburban growth.
The US has plenty of land left in many states. Its really the increase cost of supporting urban cities that is getting out of hand for most taxpayers. A city has to have a very high industrial tax base to survive as homeowners can not support much of the infrastructure. Its what has happened to urban main areas for years now. Richer gentrification is limited but helping. High density is complex and costly.
Wait-wouldn't low density cost more? With lower density developments you're paying the same amount of $$$ for infrastructure that covers less people, thus raising the per capita cost. So how would higher density cost more, apart from the bigger buildings?
Anyone from anywhere across the metro area. For example, if you have an employment center at the edge of the metro area, how are individuals from the other side of the metro supposed to reach there? That could be an unbearably long (and possibly highly-trafficked) commute.
They're not usually too many employment centers on the outer edge of a metro, most suburban job centers are in inner suburbs rather than the metro edges. Exceptions are if there's a pre-existing city at the edge of the city. Either way, in most metros people don't commute from one to the other if they can help it. I think in most large metros, commutes from one side to the other are really unpleasant.
The trends will reverse as demographic changes will leave vacant suburban homes. Gen Y doesn't want to commute 90 minutes each way to work.
Those sorts of decisions don't happen in a vacuum, though.
I've had a few jobs where I would've loved to live in the neighborhood and be able to walk to work in 10 minutes or less but I couldn't afford it.
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