If you could make sprawl illegal in your town.... (metro, suburban, crime)

[normie]

If you could make sprawl illegal in your town.... where would you put all those suburbanites who suddenly need to find a place to live in the city?

I know if we were talking about metro D.C., it would mean thousands and thousands (and thousands) of people. It's hard to find a place in Georgetown as it is... and you could forget about having any housing for poor people. What would be your solution?

Where would all these people shop? Would you be willing to build superstores inside the big city for them--or insist everyone try to cram into a corner convenience store.

Where would they put their cars? Would you build ginormous parking lots downtown? Or pass laws discouraging people from owning cars? Or... some other clever idea.

And if you could make sprawl illegal, where would you draw the line? Some suburbs probably aren't considered sprawl--how do you make the distinction? And how far out in the country would this law reach before you reach the end of sprawl?

I'm not taking sides (yet, anyway...) just trying to start a conversation.

[toughguy]

Besides the fact that making it illegal would be unconstitutional and impratical.....coming up with incentives for developers to densify the core and imposing strict regulation on sprawl development is the way to go. Unsustainable sprawl development will continue as long as the immoral developers don't have to take any heat for it.

[normie]

That's a good general answer--but I'm hoping that this thread will consider some of the details. The ramifications.

For instance, children. People choose houses out in the sprawl beucase they have a houseful of children. If you could pass a law requiring everyone to live in skyscrapers, where would the children play? Playgrounds would have to be large enough to accommodate a huge number of children AND a parental unit for each one, beucase (let's face it) parents don't let kids go to a playground unspervised anymore. It's too dangerous these day.

Mid-rise towers would probably not be adequate. If all these people manage to move into skysrapers, will they be able to keep their dogs? Will you design a special place every few floors for dogs to exercise and poop?

[normie]

... and, how will you stop the populatin of your town from growing? Or, would you simply pass an occupancy limit (like they have for elevators--"this city can accommodate 5000,000 and after that no more residents are alloewd until someone dies.")

[vegaspilgrim]

Normie, what you're inferring (but not explicitly saying) is a really good point, often missed by people who hate all suburban development: even if there was no such thing as "the suburbs," the people who live in the suburbs (which is the majority of the population of the United States) would have to live somewhere-- and there simply isn't enough room in "the city"-- the old, urban pre-WWII boundaries of America's cities. (BTW, I don't believe that modern suburbia was simply invented out of the blue in 1945, but since many people use that date as a frame of reference, just humor me here). If the "suburb" was never invented, "the city" would have to be much bigger than it is today, occupying much more land area to house the excess population. High density or low density, there is simply no way metropolitan areas today could NOT be much, much bigger than they were in 1945.

[mike0421]

I think Normie's point is that we are overpopulated as a nation. For the most part, that is celebrated as a good thing. I remember last October when the Census announced the U.S. had exceeded 300 million people. I might have been the only person who thought this was terribly bad news, instead of positive or neutral. People who either advocate or denounce sprawl must realize the root cause of it. To me, it's simple math. In 1960, we were a nation of 150 million. It took only 46 years to double our population. To me, this is unacceptable.

[normie]

Yes, I agree with your point (although that's not why I started this thread, see below). In the same way, it's always been interesting to me that people who can't wait to say they "hate" stores with large parking lots don't stop to think about how many people are actually being serviced by that store and that all those people could not possibly get groceries by running to the corner market. Even if transportation issues were resolved, the sheer volume of custoers would deplete the corner market on an hourly basis.

BUT getting back to the point of this thread.... My intention is to stimulate ideas.

We have several people on this board who engineers and city planning students. I'm sure they have considered these challenges and have interesting solutions. I'm hoping this thread results in some brainstorming and I'm hoping to read plenty of intriguing possibilities.

[HighPlainsDrifter73]

While not addressing your issue head-on, I will agree that the population of this country is too large and getting larger. This creates many undesirable side effects such as consumption of natural resources at a much quicker rate. If our population was half of what it is today, consumption of oil and water and other things would not be a problem and prices of commodities would be lower. Much of the sprawl that many here rail about comes from our population growing too quickly, but mostly many people including myself consciously make a decision to live in a lower density environment.

While I frequently get nostalgic about things past and look back at how many facets of life were more pleasant years ago, high-density living is not one of them. I am a country boy at heart and will never change.

Finally, this whole idea of immorality of suburban sprawl is really over the top. Does anyone really believe that families that move to lower density areas even remotely think that they are guilty of immoral behavior; that's insane. Immorality is mostly opinion anyway and I don't think that one of the 10 commandments has anything to do with living in sprawl. People that move into the sprawl know what they want and are pursuing it and for the most part are quite happy.

If we didn't have the 'suburban' sprawl, cities would be forced to grow larger to contain expanding populations - there's just no other way. Sure, you can grow buildings vertically, but is that any environment to raise a family in? Look at the shape of high rise public housing where the population density was very high. I don't think any city planner in this day would advocate building public housing like that anymore. Where I live in the Chicago area, much of the high-rise public housing from decades past is being leveled. Those projects have turned into breeding grounds for crime and everything else that is undesireable. Sure, there are examples of high density housing that works, especially the type that is occupied by rich folks, but on a much larger scale than we currently have, I have doubts.

Like I've said before, I'm OK with anyone who wants to live crammed into a smaller space, but just don't take my choice away from me - I'll get very upset.

[mpope409]

Sprawl is not that bad that it should be made illegal. It's the only way of life millions of people know. Why should they have to change that?

[toughguy]

So you are you suggesting that the only alternative to sprawl is packing people into skyscrapers? You seem to be setting up a false dichotomy. Suburban development can still exist, but it needs to be planned intelligently. Make sure it is serviced by transit, and make it walkable so that you aren't forced into using a car as your sole mode of transit. I understand people like elbow room, but we need to start densifying the existing burbs and quit building further and further out It is irresponsible and unsustainable. You don't need a giant 5,000 sf mcmansion on an acre lot for your family of four.