Low-income people need ‘15-minute cities’ the most
January 28, 2023 9:28 PM   Subscribe

"Those who think “15-minute cities” are for wealthy urbanites should consider this graph from a recent nationwide study. It shows a powerful reverse correlation between household income and use of services and amenities within a 15-minute walk of home. In other words, the wealthier you are, the less you rely on goods and services within your immediate neighborhood or adjacent neighborhoods. (You can easily afford to drive, or take a cab or Uber/Lyft to more distant locations)."

Direct link to the study (pdf), here's the abstract:
Americans travel 7 to 9 miles on average for shopping and recreational activities, which is far longer than the 15-minute (walking) city advocated by ecologically-oriented urban planners. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of local trip behavior in US cities using GPS data on individual trips from 40 million mobile devices. We define local usage as the share of trips made within 15-minutes walking distance from home, and find that the median US city resident makes only 12% of their daily trips within such a short distance. We find that differences in access to local services can explain eighty percent of the variation in 15-minute usage across metropolitan areas and 74 percent of the variation in usage within metropolitan areas. Differences in historic zoning permissiveness within New York suggest a causal link between access and usage, and that less restrictive zoning rules, such as permitting more mixed-use development, would lead to shorter travel times. Finally, we document a strong correlation between local usage and experienced segregation for poorer, but not richer, urbanites, which suggests that 15-minute cities may also exacerbate the social isolation of marginalized communities.

P.S. Here's the intro quote to "Why cities must build equality" - auto-downloading pdf from Dec 2009/Jan 2010.
As a municipal official, one has to decide whether to spend taxpayers’ money on road infrastructure, which in developing cities mostly serves higher income citizens with cars, or to spend it on public utilities and amenities, thus providing for a majority of the population, particularly benefiting the poor. This is why the major issues for today’s cities have to do with equality and politics, rather than engineering alone, writes Enrique Peñalosa*, former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia.
posted by aniola (81 comments total) 43 users marked this as a favorite
 
Is this not another way of saying high income people, statistically speaking, live in the suburbs?
posted by pwnguin at 10:39 PM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]


It's a feature, not a bug. People hate living next to poor people because of the perceived association with crime, they don't want their kids mixing with and making friends with the "lower classes", etc.

Developers will specifically exclude public transport and design neighbourhoods to be non-walkable for this reason - so that everyone is at minimum rich enough to afford a car and to drive it often. In fact the neighbourhood I am in demands (by contract!) that every house must have at minimum 2 covered garage spaces, in addition to having room for 2 more cars on your driveway. It assumes a minimum of 4 cars per household, and my neighbour actually has 7 cars, he parks on the sidewalk in front of my home since even his is full. You wouldn't pay that if you were planning to live a car-free lifestyle.

In fact, I have seen cases where town councils specifically block the addition of public transport to their town, because it could allow an influx of poorer residents, so all the existing residents vote against allowing public transport services.

Private developers build what they like on their own land, and sell it to people who vote to exclude public transport from ever coming into their neighbourhood. You'd need sweeping federal legislation funding and mandating a minimum level of public transport service and redesigning neighbourhoods for walkability - even worse, which would not be used / useful in many areas at all - and public support for that would be very minimal as well, just like how people in those rich neighbourhoods vote against public transport.
posted by xdvesper at 10:53 PM on January 28, 2023 [24 favorites]


It's not the same as saying that high income people live in the suburbs. For one thing, I'm not hugely knowledgeable about NYC but I believe many rich people live in Manhattan? But for another, I live right now in a lower-middle/working class neighbourhood that butts up against a much more affluent neighbourhood. They are both not very dense suburbs in a fairly car-dominated city. There is one shopping centre close to the border of the two that serves everyone. The poor people walk or ride bikes, or restrict their driving because fuel is expensive. The rich people drive everywhere and have the freedom to check out some fancy place on the other side of town if they want.

Interestingly both our neighbourhoods are relatively walkable because they're older and on grid layout, with no culdesacs, which destroy walkability. This was a major reason for me choosing to live here. But anyway I fully believe the walkability is of far more benefit to the poorer people than the richer ones.

My city has recently done away with carpark mandates for new developments and central government has imposed new rules alllowing denser development in suburbs. There has been grumbling and resistance but looks like those changes are here to stay. This is in a city (and really a whole country) that has been designed around and for cars since the early 1960s. These things can be done with political will and leadership.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:29 PM on January 28, 2023 [25 favorites]


(In case it's not obvious I brought up NYC because it is specially mentioned in the article)
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:37 PM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]


Have you ever been preparing a dish when you realize you're missing a key ingredient? I will be back in five minutes that jar of olives. That's why I pay a premium to live in the city. I can walk home from work for lunch. I don't get pizza delivered, I walk across the street.

The supermarket, butcher, bakery, green-grocer, they're all here. My neighbor needed a bluetooth mouse at 10pm on a Saturday night. I came back with the mouse and strawberry pocky. It was two blocks away.

Ok, this is a study of American cities. I live in Brisbane, which was laid out in Victorian times for horses. My street once hosted a tram-line.

I was a delivery driver in this city long ago. I drove a mercedes van full of drinks. I'd look at the orders in the morning and load the van, then spend the afternoon unloading it in the city. I had a big idea: ban private vehicles in the city. Only commercial vehicles with a job to do should be in the city. We have a common obscenity here: some parking spots in the city are rented for the same price as a house in the suburbs. It's disgusting. Take down the parking garages and make them into, um, parks. Leave your fucking car outside the city at some transport hub, and ride a fucking lime scooter, or a bus, or your butler.

Every commercial driver I've told my big idea loves it. Except for one problem. No-one will ever give up their car.

Anyway! I pay a premium to live in this city because I don't have to drive anywhere.
posted by adept256 at 12:34 AM on January 29, 2023 [35 favorites]


That night I bought the mouse was actually Halloween. I was waiting at a pedestrian crossing when I decided to open the pocky. A woman next to me was wearing a blood-stained bridal gown, and she said 'is that strawberry pocky'? Sure, I shared the candy with her and she told me that the blood on her dress was actually strawberry ice cream syrup. She offered me a taste. Why not? So I licked her dress. It was strawberry.

We were going in the same direction so she asked me about that. I showed her the mouse, I live here and I'm going home.

I'd actually forgotten about that until now. The pocky jogged my memory. I suppose the relevance is that you have a greater chance of meeting random people in a city.
posted by adept256 at 1:40 AM on January 29, 2023 [27 favorites]


I suppose the relevance is that you have a greater chance of meeting random people in a city.

True. As best I can tell, the suburbs are made for never meeting anyone unexpected or seeing anything out of the ordinary. An adventure in the suburbs is running into someone you know in the grocery store.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:26 AM on January 29, 2023 [27 favorites]


It's so true and so frustrating. Atlanta has had a major building boom around the new Beltline trail, which promised pedestrian/biking access to the whole city for everyone. But work wasn't done to ensure the new development provided a diversity of housing prices, and as a result, the area around this wonderful, walkable trail has become richer and whiter than the rest of the city. White people from other parts of the area drive in and park so they can walk on the Beltline for fun and visit the high end shopping/drinking areas that have sprung up along it. Meanwhile, the people who were promised this pedestrian and biking access was coming to the neighborhoods they already lived in now find themselves priced out and forced into the inner-ring suburbs, which are much less walkable, but it's still too expensive to have both housing and a car. Atlanta has the highest income inequality in the country and for the first time in more than 50 years, the City proper is now majority white even as the (unwalkable) suburbs become more diverse.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:01 AM on January 29, 2023 [16 favorites]


I left Atlanta around the time the Beltline development was really starting to pick up, and even I knew then that it was only a matter of time more poor residents would be forced out due to the vision Atlanta had of the Beltline's potential. The last time I was there was late 2016 and even in seven years, the places I loved best around the city were unrecognizable. So much tech money came in! Midtown appeared super shiny and skyscrapery, the Ponce Market hadn't even been started yet when I left in early 2009--I remember when the Whole Foods across the street was A Big Deal--and suddenly all my friends, the ones who rented like me, who worked retail like me, were looking for apartments in Druid Hills, then further out past Decatur. I have a friend who has still managed to cling to his dope apartment at the corner of North/Highland despite being a touring musician with occasional movie set tech work on the side.

I love walkable cities because you can do all the stuff: see the art! grab a coffee! meet up with friends for drinks at the Righteous Room!

But I feel like wealthy residents do not want that. They want the prestige of living in the city without actually engaging with city life.
posted by Kitteh at 5:05 AM on January 29, 2023 [10 favorites]


I drive past Ken's ( my neighborhood grocer) to go to Meijer (Midwest grocery chain) up the street, because the meat I buy at Meijer is less likely to go bad after 24 hours.

Is the conclusion of this article that:

-if we redesigned the street grid, there would be more healthy food within walking distance?
-redesigning a neighborhood to be more walkable increases low-quality, low-income walking destinations?
-people need more healthy food within walking distance?
-we need more regional grocers within walking distance?
-gentrification doesn't exist because poor folk use local healthy options more than rich folk?
-a rising tide of walkability lifts all boats?

I guess I'm just confused about the argument of this piece is making
posted by rebent at 5:12 AM on January 29, 2023


Walkability isn’t just for big cities.

I live in an old (1820), small village in an 1873 house originally built for mill workers who would walk to work or, if they needed to travel, take the train from the village depot. The train is gone but walkability remains. Post office, groceries, drugstore, dentist, etc are all easy strolls and for longer trips there’s the bus. A bonus: largely due to its age, our neighborhood is economically and racially diverse.

During Covid lockdowns we gained several neighbors who moved here from the NYC area. I spoke with one recently who said he’d been surprised to find things more convenient than they’d been in his old Queens neighborhood.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:16 AM on January 29, 2023 [10 favorites]


Have you ever been preparing a dish when you realize you're missing a key ingredient? I will be back in five minutes that jar of olives.

Unfortunately, many American cities are food deserts were there aren't many or even any supermarkets. I live very close to the center of my city and neighbors have been desperately lobbying Aldi to put a store in the are because there's nothing in walking distance.
posted by octothorpe at 5:27 AM on January 29, 2023 [5 favorites]


Private developers build what they like on their own land, and sell it to people who vote to exclude public transport from ever coming into their neighbourhood. You'd need sweeping federal legislation funding and mandating a minimum level of public transport service and redesigning neighbourhoods for walkability - even worse, which would not be used / useful in many areas at all - and public support for that would be very minimal as well, just like how people in those rich neighbourhoods vote against public transport.
This is a hard nut to crack but we don’t have to solve it to have major improvements. The first thing we need to do is stop subsidizing it: for half a century, most American cities were effectively run on a quasi-colonial model where they were redesigned at great expense and detriment to the inhabitants to suit the whims of powerful people who didn’t live in them and siphoned most of their economic value outside. Fortunately the political environment which made that happen has improved significantly, city governments are far less willing to support the racism which drove it, and the generations which grew up in those suburbs are more receptive to alternatives since they experienced the drawbacks first-hand and are keenly aware that the costs have only increased.

If cities start expecting suburban commuters to pay their fair cost and shifting designs to serve their actual residents a lot of this falls together very quickly: tolls on commuting thoroughfares and non-subsidized parking rates makes the cost favor the transit which the city budget now has room to expand.
posted by adamsc at 6:11 AM on January 29, 2023 [10 favorites]


Adept256, I often wonder the same, and at the same time, have appreciated having a car in the city when I had one.

I expect that in a city like NYC, people would just form businesses whose sole purpose was to own a car with commercial plates, because that's the sort of shitty workaround people do. Like not owning any buildings in their name because god forbid they be personally liable for anything. I mean, it's the logical thing to do given what is legally allowed, but the fact that it's allowed is problematic.

I don't get why municipal parking buildings towards the edge of town can't be more of a thing. I saw that a bit in Europe - the medieval core wasn't drivable anyways, so you park further out and walk/transit in. The parking was inexpensive and seemed plenty safe. Several stories above and below ground, dotted around the periphery of the towns. It's not perfect, but people have and use cars.
posted by jellywerker at 6:13 AM on January 29, 2023 [3 favorites]


The last two apartments I lived in were each between a block and a block and a half from grocery stores. (And those were small city blocks, not huge exurban blocks.) It was great; I pretty much shopped every couple of days for small quantities of food and never stocked up because the stores were basically an extension of my refrigerator.

Here, we are about a 15 minute walk from a grocery store. In good weather that feels close, but when it is cold or dark that becomes a distance that I prefer to drive. For me, ideally core services like groceries would be more of a 5 or 10 minute walk, not 15-ish. (There were other compelling reasons to move to this house, but frequently needing to drive for groceries is one of the minor downsides of the location.) But partly this is because the local buses are still on restricted schedules from the pandemic; if the buses were running normally then that grocery store would be a 2 minute ride away and it would feel much more accessible.

Having adequate services that are easily accessible by walking, bicycling, and/or public transit is something everyone deserves to have access to. But the quid pro quo of that accessibility is that other people can access your neighborhood, which seems to be a major dealbreaker for suburban residents in particular.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:17 AM on January 29, 2023 [1 favorite]


I live in a city that actively discourages car use (Zurich) and promotes all other ways of getting around. I still own a car but I don't use it for local journeys unless I have to transport something large and heavy. 95% of my car use is long distances trips that would require multiple changes and a lot of waiting by transit. Especially travelling for work, I can only work on the mainline train part of the journey and for legs > 20mins for it to make sense to get out the laptop and start to do anything.

I can walk to my office, walk to the urban train station and a couple of tram stations in less than 5 mins from my front door. Door to door it takes me 8 mins to get to the main station and 20 mins to get to the airport departure hall using public transit. These were my main reasons for picking the location when I was looking for somewhere to live. I didn't even consider other amenities because they are a given.......I can walk to a bakery, 3 different supermarkets, several doctors, a hand full of restaurants and other services in less than 5 mins. If I am willing to walk 10 mins, I get three more supermarkets, one of which is a discounter, countless restaurants and a lot more services, doctors, dentists as well as a DIY shop. The DIY shop has not a single dedicated parking spot yet is quite busy.

When I say the city actively discourage car use, this is what they do:

I live in a large apartment building, surrounded by other large apartment buildings. There are only about 20 visitor parking spots along the whole road, some of them are allotted to local businesses and can only be used if you display their parking card in your window. The parking enforcement checks if the parked car is registered to a resident or not. You get a nasty fine if you are a resident using a spot.

Not all buildings have parking garages and those that do have them do not have anywhere near enough parking spots for all the tenants. Nor do they need them because many people don't have a car (because they don't need one, not because they can't afford one). Quite a few of the spots in the garage for my building are actually let to people who work in the surrounding offices and only use them during the day. There are plenty of offices around and none of them have more than a fraction of the parking spaces that would be required to accommodate all the people who work there. And if employees want to use these spots they pay to use them. Which is why they are quite happy to just rent a spot nearby as well. Most people commute by transit.

If you use your car to drive to a supermarket or other large shop here you have to pay to use their car park. Not public garage prices but the cost for providing parking is not passed on to all shoppers, the drivers have to pay.

They put in traffic features that penalize car drivers or make it otherwise a pain to drive such as one way traffic, bus and cycle lanes, traffic lights set to prioritise public transit and pedestrians to a large extent.

They do promote car, bike and scooter sharing services and make parking/collection spots for these available readily. I can walk to several parking spots for car sharing services in under 5 mins as well.

They also ensure public transport works well and is reliable. They here is not just the city and canton but the federal government as well. They invest in the infrastructure. They carry out user surveys asking where your trip started, about your destination, about where you plan to change. And users are quite happy to respond. They do that to optimise the timetable and route network.
posted by koahiatamadl at 6:20 AM on January 29, 2023 [26 favorites]


Where I live used to have two big business districts within walking distance including a huge city market similar to Philadelphia's Reading Market but they tore both of those areas down in the 1960s. One was torn down for a inside shopping mall that only lasted about 20 years before it failed and is now all offices. The other was torn down for a freeway so that suburbanites could leave the city faster.

My neighborhood dates back to the 1860s and was totally a 15 minute city for the first 100 years of its existence. Food and other amenities were only a short walk or trolley ride away but the government destroyed all that fifty years ago and it's never come back.

The fact that American cities are not 15 minutes cities is not an accident; it's totally by design.
posted by octothorpe at 7:13 AM on January 29, 2023 [16 favorites]


I'm not going to champion the suburbs or the way American cities are built at all

but....urban spaces can also be/become very, very unwelcoming. After years of living in walking/cycling distance from everything more than a few things motivated me to move further away from the city center & away from bigger cities forever

Noise, pollution, & proximity to EVERYONE ALL THE TIME everywhere.

It's gets old listening to the multiple bus lines go past on your street at night, or the endless traffic all day long, or the sound of the interstate (that is 3/4 of a mile away but you can still hear it in the background at all times) don't forget all that diesel exhaust from the bus and trucks that cover the front of your house with a black soot. in 2020! then, toss in a few city wide riots, a police force on strike after murdering those it's supposed to protect, crumbling infrastructure (literally bridges falling into the river below them) apparently there had been 52 inches of snow and counting this year so, see how that grabs ya!
- My 20 years in Minneapolis have turned me off off off to major cities. I get it, the desire escape while you can - it can change your life in ways you never expected.
posted by djseafood at 7:35 AM on January 29, 2023 [3 favorites]


I can walk to a bakery, 3 different supermarkets, several doctors, a hand full of restaurants and other services in less than 5 mins. If I am willing to walk 10 mins, I get three more supermarkets, one of which is a discounter, countless restaurants and a lot more services, doctors, dentists as well as a DIY shop.

This comment points to a related aspect of penalizing the less fortunate: the actual costs. The FPA talks about isolation and choice, but doesn't mention the monopoly that the single corner store has over the neighborhood. On foot, you're forced to pay $8 for a gallon of milk that costco will charge you $4.50 for if you had a car and your choice of strip malls.

Low income people pay literal penalties for being poor, and this is how it happens.
posted by Dashy at 7:43 AM on January 29, 2023 [21 favorites]


Within a few blocks of my house: grocery store, convenience store, post office, fire station, library, school, hardware store, multiple restaurants, multiple parks, bowling alley, a few coffee shops. I’m half a mile from work. Super walkable. And if we hadn’t moved into this house 12 years ago, we couldn’t afford to live in this neighborhood, because super-walkable urban sections of this city are in such high demand that property values are nuts. The land we live on is estimated at 3x what we bought it for. Not the property, just the base price of the lot. Want cheaper? Move out of the city proper and live in a suburb, where property values are slightly lower and walkability is zero.

Making these small-town-within-a-city neighborhoods is awesome and worth supporting, but not if the cost increase drives out people who have lived here for their entire lives. Rents are high enough that this is happening. One little corner shop near us has gone through 5 businesses in the past 8 years, largely because the property owner asks so much in rent that the stores struggle to remain profitable.
posted by caution live frogs at 7:47 AM on January 29, 2023 [9 favorites]


(the comment I quoted was about Zurich, which is engineered to be foot traffic. I was commenting and contrasting that to most USian inner cities. I hit enter too early and had to finish the comment within the edit window - hope this makes sense)
posted by Dashy at 7:51 AM on January 29, 2023


urban spaces can also be/become very, very unwelcoming.

I've lived in the city for 25 years. It's the suburbs that freak me out. It's too quiet. Someone slams a car door three blocks away and it's like a gunshot.

And where is everybody? No-one's walking around. Is ... is this the rapture? Am I the only one? I would think I was if I didn't see the occasional car.

And there are no tall buildings. This is vertigo inducing. It's alarming, where did they go! The mountains have fallen, there is no skyline.

We needed cigarette papers for fun reasons, this became a journey. What if I wanted a pie? Or a laptop? Not having everything at all times makes me feel stranded.

I want a dog, a cat, and a garden. One day I will have that, but I can't have that here. When that time comes, it's going to be a big culture shock.
posted by adept256 at 8:05 AM on January 29, 2023 [6 favorites]


If cities start expecting suburban commuters to pay their fair cost and shifting designs to serve their actual residents a lot of this falls together very quickly: tolls on commuting thoroughfares and non-subsidized parking rates makes the cost favor the transit which the city budget now has room to expand.

I know I say this a lot, but like most cities in North America, Toronto has a robust, well-funded social housing and full employment programs available to all, with only one real caveat: you have to be a car. If you're a human, or just don't burn gasoline for sustenance, you're out of luck.
posted by mhoye at 8:50 AM on January 29, 2023 [18 favorites]


One thing I observed back when I lived in South Brooklyn was that there was a decent symbiotic relationship between poorer residents, the cheap car services, and the "big box" retailers that had moved into the periphery of the outer boroughs.

Every time I went to Pathmark I would see somebody loading bags and bags of groceries into the trunk of a hired car, and this actually made sense - if you planned strategically you could use some of the money you save at the cheaper grocery to pay the $10 fare and still come out ahead. (You use transit or foot power to get there and call the car service when you are finishing up.)
posted by anhedonic at 8:52 AM on January 29, 2023 [1 favorite]


Funny this pops up right now. 7 years ago, I moved from the incredibly walkable city of Zug, Switzerland, back to the US. Wanted to be in the country, and wound up with a 26 acre spread. It's lovely, full of wild life.

But there is NO place to which one can walk. Or ride a bike, really. So, we're in the final stages of buying a lovely home in the center of the modest-sized city of Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Only, the center. Like, 100 block. LOL! Hard part is, almost no land to speak of. HUGE house, a victorian built in 1870.
posted by Goofyy at 9:05 AM on January 29, 2023 [2 favorites]


I was going to post about how much I love it here (a lot) and list out a bunch of our privileges we have here (many), but I think it's more important to say just how fucking expensive housing is in big, walkable cities. It's like, everyone knows how lovely it is to live in a walkable city, and everyone wants to live here, and man, we only managed to buy our condo by the motherfucking skin of our teeth. We spent a year with a private mortgage with ruinous fees because we had to buy the unit we wanted right then with both of us temporarily out of work or we would have been priced out even just a year later. And we could only afford this because we got lucky riding a housing boom back in our old city, buying a house at $X and selling it at 2$X a decade later. There's no way we could afford to live here without the enormous downpayment we put in; rents are absurd, fucking absurd. And, you know, I look out the window and I see cranes in place building literally ten thousand housing units just within my view and it's not enough, it's far from enough, these are all going to sell for astronomical sums because the demand is through the roof.

It doesn't have to be like this. God damn, it does not have to be like this. Everyone should be able to afford housing in a livable, walkable area without having to rely on owning an automobile. The only thing really standing in the way is the politics of the suburbanites who view any densification threat on their single or semi-detatched housing as if Satan himself were rising out of the ground to salt the earth forever (e.g. brown people might move into the neighbourhood).

Kyaaa it's so frustrating.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:06 AM on January 29, 2023 [14 favorites]


If cities start expecting suburban commuters to pay their fair cost and shifting designs to serve their actual residents a lot of this falls together very quickly: tolls on commuting thoroughfares and non-subsidized parking rates makes the cost favor the transit which the city budget now has room to expand.

My city does tax parking pretty heavily, but now that so many people are working from home, the revenue from parking has dropped through the floor. Suburbanites are now just not going into the city at all.
posted by octothorpe at 9:06 AM on January 29, 2023


For one thing, I'm not hugely knowledgeable about NYC but I believe many rich people live in Manhattan?

Rich people are literally everywhere in NYC at this point. And the non-Manhattan areas they tend to gravitate towards (Williamsburg, Park Slope, Cobble Hill, DUMBO, Ft. Greene, LIC, Greenpoint, Astoria, etc etc.) all have a surfeit of bodegas, delis and small grocers that meet the "I forgot to get eggs" need which is a critical part of the 15-minute city ideal. Sometimes a full-on grocery store is more than a mile away, which is over 20 minutes walking, but that's why people have rolling carts.

I my neighborhood in Philadelphia (Fairmount) we have 3 grocers within a mile - Aldi, Whole Foods and a local grocer with bad hours. There is also a small deli about a block and a half from us and a seafood joint on our block that for some reason stocks basic staples. There are new apartments going up everywhere and I expect the amenity situation to get even more robust in the near future.

So I don't really believe that rich people (excluding suburbs) aren't utilizing 15-minute cities, but it is borderline axiomatic that lower income people need them. Our area is still very mixed in terms of income, so I'm glad that these amenities have sprouted up and I hope Philadelphia makes the right choices in terms of land use and tenant protections (build more housing, protect tenants from eviction, help low-income homeowners - a large cohort in Philly - stay in their homes) so that those amenities can be utilized by everyone who needs them and not just rich people.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:21 AM on January 29, 2023 [3 favorites]


And there are no tall buildings. This is vertigo inducing. It's alarming, where did they go! The mountains have fallen, there is no skyline.
-adept256

This condition is so hilariously upside-down to me. The idea that there is something 'Natural" about a city environment with all the concrete, steel, hard angular surfaces and strange loud whirring & burping machines.
FWIW - I still live in a city, just not in the dense urban core, or even a posh part, just quiet and a bit remote. I just wanted quiet, and have mostly have found it.
posted by djseafood at 9:26 AM on January 29, 2023


but....urban spaces can also be/become very, very unwelcoming. After years of living in walking/cycling distance from everything more than a few things motivated me to move further away from the city center & away from bigger cities forever

And...

But I feel like wealthy residents do not want that. They want the prestige of living in the city without actually engaging with city life.

I think there's a lot of leftist thought that presumes poor people just love being in the city with all the amenities. As if they love engaging in the dynamics of dense city life. I don't think I personally have known anyone that fits that description, wealthy or poor. If anything, it's more the opposite.

And I can't think of any city where I've lived that has any prestige associated with living in its most urban areas. The wealthiest parts of town were always the least dense. I understand that may not apply to places like NYC, but trying to formulate some kind of universal urban planning based upon a NYC model, where everyone simply relishes the opportunity to engage other people, is a mistake.

My city does tax parking pretty heavily, but now that so many people are working from home, the revenue from parking has dropped through the floor. Suburbanites are now just not going into the city at all.

This highlights an annoyance I've had with attempts to limit traffic. In my city, there was one particular narrowing of a major artery that caused some aggravation. The sort thing that gets lauded by Metafilter's big thinkers. While it does discourage the local car culture dependence, what it also did was encourage the transformation of neighborhoods along its length away from its working class base. This had long been a working class corridor, people who worked trades, services, manufacturing, whose lives were made more complicated by restriction of traffic, and are further encouraged to leave by yet another factor. Livelihoods that are not transformable to work-from-home models. In favor of residents who don't have to leave the house as often just to make end meet. One way to improve the city turns out to make it more amenable to classes of people who are able to afford the inconveniences of poorer mobility.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:33 AM on January 29, 2023 [2 favorites]


Noise, pollution, & proximity to EVERYONE ALL THE TIME everywhere.
This isn’t unrelated: that traffic is because cities were redesigned not to have amenities nearby in many areas. People walking or biking don’t generate that noise - telling everyone that they should drive everywhere does.
posted by adamsc at 9:36 AM on January 29, 2023 [12 favorites]


The only thing really standing in the way is the politics of the suburbanites who view any densification threat on their single or semi-detatched housing as if Satan himself were rising out of the ground to salt the earth forever

A few years ago, before COVID, I was going down the footpath at a nearby shopping street in my power wheelchair, and there were people with a stand, chairs, petitions blocking the whole (very wide!) footpath.

I asked them politely to move so that I could get past, and they tried to get me to sign their petition against a new three-storey apartment block being built in a residential street.

"Actually, I think it's really important to have medium density housing within walking distance of train stations, so I think the apartment block is a great idea!" I said cheerfully.

The look they gave me was the same kind of look they might give someone who had just announced that they ate newborn babies for breakfast.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:39 AM on January 29, 2023 [24 favorites]


Zurich is lovely, but it is the most expensive city in Europe and one of the most expensive in the world. I don't think it's an example of how to make accessible walkable cities that work across income range.
posted by nat at 9:39 AM on January 29, 2023 [6 favorites]


Our suburb is a genuine old-fashioned car-centric nightmare, but to the city’s credit, when a nearby giant lot was subdivided, they reallocated part of it for a public pathway connecting the two streets on either side of the lot. It’s really improved walkability from our home to the centre of town (which previously involved a circuitous route).
posted by TangoCharlie at 9:41 AM on January 29, 2023 [3 favorites]


While it does discourage the local car culture dependence, what it also did was encourage the transformation of neighborhoods along its length away from its working class base. This had long been a working class corridor, people who worked trades, services, manufacturing, whose lives were made more complicated by restriction of traffic, and are further encouraged to leave by yet another factor.

See if we are pushing out anecdotes about 'leftists', I'd say this one is far more common, which boils down to "there was this neighborhood that was really crappy and poor people lived there, and then they improved it and other people moved in", which implies that keeping a neighborhood crappy is the only way to save it for poor people, and that the poor were forced to move out.

Even though actual empirical evidence says that is untrue, and that poor people also like to move to nicer neighborhoods when they can, and move at similar time period rates to what richer people do.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:43 AM on January 29, 2023 [12 favorites]


See if we are pushing out anecdotes about 'leftists', I'd say this one is far more common, which boils down to "there was this neighborhood that was really crappy and poor people lived there, and then they improved it and other people moved in", which implies that keeping a neighborhood crappy is the only way to save it for poor people, and that the poor were forced to move out.

Who said these neighborhoods were really crappy? They were not. The point is that improvements of the kind that leftists love, contribute to making such neighborhoods less welcoming to working classes.

Even though actual empirical evidence says that is untrue, and that poor people also like to move to nicer neighborhoods when they can, and move at similar time period rates to what richer people do.


The hell, you say?!?! Who in the world thinks poorer classes want to move to shittier places?
posted by 2N2222 at 9:56 AM on January 29, 2023


Who in the world thinks poorer classes want to move to shittier places?

Elon wants people to live on Mars, where there's no fucking oxygen. He will go to Mars later, after they've built the palace.
posted by adept256 at 10:02 AM on January 29, 2023 [2 favorites]


Are we really doing YIMBY/NIMBY here on the Blue? I thought that was relegated to Twitter. Oh well.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:09 AM on January 29, 2023 [1 favorite]


We ditched our cars a few years back. I can walk to 3 supermarkets and about 25 restaurants, but I find myself going on BART every weekend for about 30-50 minutes each way to get groceries at a better supermarket. Living without a car in the US is eye opening.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:16 AM on January 29, 2023 [2 favorites]


For one thing, I'm not hugely knowledgeable about NYC but I believe many rich people live in Manhattan?

Putting aside the anecdote vs data problem for a moment, it seems your hypothesis is flawed. Manhattan has a median household income of $93,956, lower than the suburban counties of Suffolk and Nassau. Yes there are rich people in manhattan, but a) not enough to move the median, and b) rich doesn't necessarily mean "reports a high income on Census data." Especially for the non-resident owners with something to hide. And when aggregating the data into NYC metro area, Manhattan has like 1/10th the population of Long Island as a whole.

Going deeper, if you look at the methodology in the paper, they are using walksheds exclusively. Public transit is not part of their walkable city metric, in fact they even note their regression analysis shows the more access to public transit you have the less "walkable trips" you take. And well, Manhattan is very well covered in subway stations, while the Bronx is not. So if you live in Manhattan, even if you don't own a car, your regular trips to Central Park for jogging or softball league will drive their walkability metric down.

In general, I expect rich people to spend more money on things, transit included. A negative regression on "short trips" vs income shouldn't be too surprising.
posted by pwnguin at 11:30 AM on January 29, 2023


I live in the US in a place that is not a dense urban core of a large city nor a sprawling suburb nor a rural small town. This morning I walked 0.6 miles with my wife and 5yo kid to buy donuts, because I didn't feel like walking 0.5 miles to the bougie bakery that we went to last time. The cost of living is pretty low by city standards too! We call it "micro urban".

I bring this up not to brag, but to highlight the extreme rarity. Does anyone else know places like this? I made major life decisions and sacrifices to be here, and also got lucky. Having looked and lived all over the country, I've found maybe a handful of places that are similar, but it's baffling: why is this way so many of us want to live so hard to find? I mean I know the short answer is "cheap cars and gas, externalizing all downsides, and unchecked capitalism", but I'm still sort of surprised that unwalkable McMansion 'burbclaves with zero services continue to be built everywhere in the country, even while so many people seem ready to pay for a different way.
posted by SaltySalticid at 12:10 PM on January 29, 2023 [7 favorites]


The point is that improvements of the kind that leftists love, contribute to making such neighborhoods less welcoming to working classes.

I'm not following this. Narrowing a major artery makes it less dangerous for poor people to walk places. (I live on a major artery right now and I have never felt so likely to die in traffic as I do at the moment.) It also cuts back on the heavy pollution that makes a place unhealthy for people with limited access to healthcare in particular. Not to mention noise, which, contrary to some Mefi belief, is not universally beloved among the working classes. What is that you consider hostile to "the working classes" about this? Isn't this whole article largely about how wealthy people are more able to bear the costs of and thus more likely to use car transit?

Now, well-planned traffic restrictions are accompanied by improvements in public transit and bike infrastructure. I'm not saying such things can't be done thoughtlessly or incompetently. But the idea that somehow a tradesperson loves and benefits from living on or near a major artery just because they have to leave their home to work...no. (Also, your timing is off, because upper-middle-class people being able to work from home routinely is a feature of only the last three years.)
posted by praemunire at 12:30 PM on January 29, 2023 [9 favorites]


Manhattan has a median household income of $93,956, lower than the suburban counties of Suffolk and Nassau.

Which are very rich counties!

The U.S. median household income is like $70K.
posted by praemunire at 12:31 PM on January 29, 2023 [3 favorites]


Me and my partner (students) are lucky to live by a train station, bus stops, and several restaurants, cafes and shops, all a ten minute walk away. We specifically looked for somewhere affordable with walkable amenities - but the sacrifice we made was to live in a place where the bathroom floor is peeling off and old cat food appears from under the fridge (we don't have a cat).

I'm not knowledgeable enough to speculate on what could be done to make places like this more accessible for those with low incomes, but it does speak to how awful rents and house prices are right now...
posted by wandering zinnia at 12:32 PM on January 29, 2023 [1 favorite]


So the answer is some kind of government enforced balance of mixed income residential availability in cities, otherwise poor people are going to be priced out by rising rents or vital businesses like grocery stores will not choose to be or stay there, right?
posted by Selena777 at 12:38 PM on January 29, 2023 [2 favorites]


The answer is likely state-level bans on parking minimums and single-family zoning.

Without those developers will want to build more densely to maximize their return, which in turn creates the demand for more walkable retail and transit.
posted by thecaddy at 12:41 PM on January 29, 2023 [3 favorites]


Having looked and lived all over the country, I've found maybe a handful of places that are similar, but it's baffling: why is this way so many of us want to live so hard to find? I mean I know the short answer is "cheap cars and gas, externalizing all downsides, and unchecked capitalism", but I'm still sort of surprised that unwalkable McMansion 'burbclaves with zero services continue to be built everywhere in the country, even while so many people seem ready to pay for a different way.

It's a hard problem to solve because it is so complex. There isn't a single primary reason that car-centric, single-use development became the standard in the US; it stems from a whole host of reasons, from national tax policy to local development coalitions to massive automotive subsidies to redlining and white flight, and on and on. There isn't one central thing that you can "fix" and thereby change the situation.

And, despite all the downsides, this form of development is actively desired by a lot of people, so you have a substantial part of the voting population who don't think things as-is are broken (perhaps for good reasons, or for negative reasons like appreciating the results of racial and economic segregation).

Putting aside the anecdote vs data problem for a moment, it seems your hypothesis is flawed. Manhattan has a median household income of $93,956, lower than the suburban counties of Suffolk and Nassau. Yes there are rich people in manhattan, but a) not enough to move the median, and b) rich doesn't necessarily mean "reports a high income on Census data." Especially for the non-resident owners with something to hide. And when aggregating the data into NYC metro area, Manhattan has like 1/10th the population of Long Island as a whole.

Broadly speaking, post-WW2 urban development in the US shifted to a pattern of poorer people living more centrally in cities and wealthier people living outwards in the metro area, in suburbs. New York shares that broad pattern, despite having quite a few wealthy people in the central parts of the city. Since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been some reversing of that in US cities, with middle- and upper-class people sometimes choosing to live centrally (and thereby sometimes displacing existing residents of those areas), but not on the scale of actually shifting to the urban form of say, Paris or a lot of Latin American cities like Lima, where the wealthy live more centrally and the poor live out in far-flung marginal districts.
posted by Dip Flash at 12:52 PM on January 29, 2023 [2 favorites]


Suburban enclaves keep getting built because while it may not seem like it on here, a lot of people still want a yard and a fully detached house.

There's also a general aversion to public transport as it actually exists rather than as a vague public good--people like buses and trains in the abstract but in terms of physical comfort and status, the private car still rules. I remember a question on here about someone who didn't have a driver's license but refused to take the bus if their driving relative was ill, and everyone acknowledged that in comparison the bus was full of creeps, smelled, was more confusing and stressful, and in general had all sorts of disadvantages that an Uber or Lyft (or a willing family member) did not.
posted by kingdead at 1:07 PM on January 29, 2023 [3 favorites]


I think it's possible that the perception of the amount of people who want to live that way may be distorted by the circles people choose to dwell in, especially when it comes to people who have fairly broad financial options, which is what you're talking about when you're talking McMansions. Other people absolutely love cars, love a certain amount of routine protection from uncomfortable weather and social situations on a range of minor to extreme, love their yards and private spaces, are happy to catch up on their steps in a gym, think Europe is nice to visit but wouldn't want to live there and do not heavily prioritize environmental sustainability when making lifestyle choices.
posted by Selena777 at 1:12 PM on January 29, 2023 [1 favorite]



Suburban enclaves keep getting built because while it may not seem like it on here, a lot of people still want a yard and a fully detached house.


To clarify, I have a fully detached house with a pretty big yard in my very walkable micro-urban neighborhood. So I don't buy the idea that single-family detached housing prevents walkability, because I am living in a counterexample, and I know there is a small handful of others around the country too. Of course it's not only detached houses with big yards, we have a good range of houses in terms of price/size and lot sizes, but also condos and apartments too, ranging from maybe 4-200 units per building/complex. And re: McMansions/options, there are some pretty damn rich people in my neighborhood too, living in actual mansions, or at least houses the size of modern McMansions, but much older, better built, and look much nicer.

There's a big density difference between having exclusively detached housing vs say 50% detached housing, and that's enough to support mixed-use and walkability, at least in some cases. So why aren't developers building out planned subdivisions more like that, and even making more profit from the higher density of buyers?

Maybe it's because of the (real or perceived) notion that people not only want detached housing, but also demand to have nobody below their SES in sight, no apartments etc.
It could be that, because yes, we only got to to the situation via a vast source of racism and classism working together with the car-centric-as-default mindset.
posted by SaltySalticid at 1:38 PM on January 29, 2023 [6 favorites]


Seconding SaltySalticid -- I live in a detached house that's a mile and a half from my mid-sized city's downtown, and it's pretty walkable as these things go. Two grocery stores within half a mile, two drugstores within two miles (though those would be longer walks, I can get there on my bike mostly using sidepaths). Lots of restaurants, a few stores selling housewares, clothes, etc. Some salons, some music venues. Anyway it's pretty good as these things go.

The idea that the bus is only for the unwashed is sort of offensive, sort of funny? Maybe I'm the unwashed? I'm a remote worker these days, but for many many years I was a bus commuter and let me tell you, during commute hours it was mostly people like me, thirty to sixty five year old middle class people working for state government in one way or another. Yeah, on weekends it's a different crowd, but in my experience it's not so much "creeps" as "black dudes," which, yeah, racists gonna racist but I promise having a little diversity in your day is not gonna make you melt.
posted by eirias at 1:52 PM on January 29, 2023 [6 favorites]


for many many years I was a bus commuter and let me tell you, during commute hours it was mostly people like me, thirty to sixty five year old middle class people working for state government in one way or another. Yeah, on weekends it's a different crowd, but in my experience it's not so much "creeps" as "black dudes," which, yeah, racists gonna racist but I promise having a little diversity in your day is not gonna make you melt

As a short white woman working for the Federal government in Australia, I used to catch two buses to work each day between 2003 and 2010 (four bus rides per day total), where the buses were 99% white people or 100% white people, and I had multiple experiences of

the bus driver taking off at speed before I got a chance to sit down, so I was almost knocked off my feet (happened almost every day);

misogynist harassment by white people;

being shoved/pushed in ways that were physically painful by white people;

being deliberately physically attacked (in both cases, by elderly white women);

and one time my bag was stolen by a white person.

One of the problems is that bus drivers are told not to get involved/not to leave their seat if one passenger gives another passenger a hard time. (There was a case recently where a teenage girl was being seriously sexually harassed and the bus driver didn't intervene - the girl got off the bus because the bus driver didn't help, the harasser followed, and she was sexually assaulted.)

I support public transport. But people deserve public transport that is better.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 2:56 PM on January 29, 2023 [8 favorites]


As if they love engaging in the dynamics of dense city life. I don't think I personally have known anyone that fits that description, wealthy or poor. If anything, it's more the opposite.


I live in a city, and spent half my childhood in a rural area, and half in the suburbs.
I personally know, and have known, lots of people who enjoy the dynamics of dense city life.

Cities are energizing to many people, they like having people on the street at all times because it feels safer; they like having buses and streetcars because their kids can get around on their own and they don't have to pay for cars; they like arts and entertainment and buskers and knowing all kinds of different people; they enjoy sitting on the stoop and talking to passers-by; they love going to the park and seeing people biking, walking, rolling, skating, sitting; they enjoy the anonymity afforded while reading a book in the bar or eating lunch outside the courthouse; they enjoy the quiet solitude of walking to the train at 6:30 am, and then coming home to the activity of people grilling or cooking or drinking beers on a hot afternoon; they enjoy bands in the park and free days at the museum or tiny art shows in their neighbor's garage; they know the entire congregation at their place of worship and have known them all their lives; they feel comforted by having a block or street or neighborhood with numerous other people from their culture- and then crossing the street to experience their neighbors' culture; they appreciate that their neighbors can watch their kids if they need to run to the store; they feel a calm sense of regularity and consistency hearing the tram begin it's first pass of the day.
posted by oneirodynia at 2:59 PM on January 29, 2023 [10 favorites]


There's a big density difference between having exclusively detached housing vs say 50% detached housing, and that's enough to support mixed-use and walkability, at least in some cases. So why aren't developers building out planned subdivisions more like that, and even making more profit from the higher density of buyers?
In many cases, because it was made illegal by white flight-era zoning laws preventing multi-family dwellings and requiring things like massive amounts of car storage, and once that became established the number of people relying on their home equity not to retire in poverty has worked as an effective NIMBY ratchet against change.

I know some people really like the traditional detached suburban design but any time I hear someone claim it’s what most Americans want I’m reminded that if this were true there would be no need for legal prohibitions and concerted campaigns to prevent cities from permitting alternatives. California’s accessory dwelling unit reform is educational in this regard: tons of people want housing but change-averse neighbors have been major impediments.
posted by adamsc at 3:00 PM on January 29, 2023 [10 favorites]


I think there's a difference between what people with a lot of money want from housing and what people with very little money will settle for. There are legal prohibitions and standards to keep landlords from resurrecting tenement housing, for instance.
posted by Selena777 at 3:47 PM on January 29, 2023 [1 favorite]


chariot pulled by cassowaries - I support FREE public transport. But people deserve public transport that is better. My wife has had some seriously disturbing incidents on the bus commuting just about a mile and a half to and from work. I myself have witnessed things on metro buses that frighten, disturb and make me recoil.

How many times does another passenger on the bus need to flash a pistol and threaten the other riders before it's not OK?

No one has even mentioned how Covid affected Bus/transit services world wide.
posted by djseafood at 7:58 PM on January 29, 2023 [3 favorites]


Where I live we have really inadequate transit. As in long waits between busses. Bad behavior is less than it was on busses since you get free WiFi on our busses.
A friend of mine lives in Toronto, Canada. There has been a serious rash of violent and often inexplicable acts on busses, trams and the subway. Stabbings, shootings, robberies, assaults, a swarm attack by teenaged girls on an adult woman. People are living in the subway tunnels. A completely naked man got on a subway.
Safety is an issue on public transit in many places. This has been true decades. San Francisco had armed undercover police on busses. I was helping chaperone school kids on a field trip when a really undercover police officer took down someone. I had a bunch of kids and my two, 8 kids get under the seats in case there was shooting because I saw the gun. I had NO idea what was going down, just that there was a gun. Later learned that a drug dealer was being arrested.
The point is if you have bad experiences like that you don’t want to be on the bus.
I’m sure most people who live in cities in North America have similar stories.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 8:29 PM on January 29, 2023 [3 favorites]


Please provide a detailed list of the kind of improvements "leftists" love? Please be specific, use your numbers, and cite some credible references, who actually know what leftists are, and then the improvements they like.
posted by Oyéah at 8:39 PM on January 29, 2023 [1 favorite]


The leftists derail seems to be another instance of the problem of the US political middle being so far right that what a lot of folks there call “left” is really middle or center-right, and the consequent erasure of actual leftists in the US. One might think that ostensibly liberal or centrist people who are worried about the rightward trend and the rise of the radical right in the US, with the Republican Party now being a radical right wing party instead of a more traditional right to center-right party, would try to highlight the existence of actual leftists who they disagree with to help them reclaim the middle, or at least to avoid feeding into that rightward shift. But I suppose that’s of a kind with various notable strategic failures by the national or certain state Democratic Parties.

Anyway, yeah, actual leftists want stuff like homeless shelters, mixed income housing, social services available in neighborhoods, safe injection sites, libraries, anti-gentrification policies, rent control, tenants unions, band practice and performance spaces or similar hangout spaces for underage youths, skate parks, zine libraries, union halls, interesting graffiti, affordable food co-ops, other co-operative businesses and manufacturing, etc.
posted by eviemath at 8:59 PM on January 29, 2023 [12 favorites]


(Tool libraries, bicycle libraries, inexpensive cafes and diners, a walkable grocery store that’s affordable but has food that’s not going to go bad in two days, a park suitable for setting up a Food Not Bombs serving, or other meal programs, well maintained public showers and restrooms, …)
posted by eviemath at 9:02 PM on January 29, 2023 [11 favorites]


Piggy: Gottingen Street
posted by eviemath at 9:04 PM on January 29, 2023


A friend of mine lives in Toronto, Canada. There has been a serious rash of violent and often inexplicable acts on busses, trams and the subway. Stabbings, shootings, robberies, assaults, a swarm attack by teenaged girls on an adult woman.

In Toronto last year, 50 people were killed by motor vehicles, every single one violent; maybe that's okay because they feel explicable? Or maybe because it's not a serious rash of violent deaths, but rather a steady drumbeat year after year?
posted by Superilla at 9:08 PM on January 29, 2023 [6 favorites]


I’m sure most people who live in cities in North America have similar stories.

I've spent more than fifteen years commuting 5 days a week via bus and/or LRT in small and large cities in Canada and I've never seen a gun in those areas. I've never really saw anything worse than a homeless person screaming into the void (and the enclosed shelter near my home was used as a bathroom every few months in the winter). The transit cops wear body armour (but then so do RCMP and ByLaw officers who have to deal with motorists) because they are afraid of getting stabbed but it is far from a regular occurrence.

I've personally witnessed much more severe road rage incidents directed at me when I was on foot, riding my bike or driving a car. On at least three occasions I've had car drivers try to kill me with the lethal weapon they are piloting. Transit is much safer than driving or riding in a personal vehicle on a per mile basis.
posted by Mitheral at 9:48 PM on January 29, 2023 [8 favorites]


> It doesn't have to be like this. God damn, it does not have to be like this. Everyone should be able to afford housing in a livable, walkable area without having to rely on owning an automobile. The only thing really standing in the way is the politics of the suburbanites who view any densification threat on their single or semi-detatched housing as if Satan himself were rising out of the ground to salt the earth forever (e.g. brown people might move into the neighbourhood).

@henryzcohen: "America built one (1) non-car dependent city, it became the center of our cultural and financial aspirations, and than we proceeded to never make one again."

@plannerdanzack: "Your point is excellent and 100% spot on! I might say it this way instead, though: 'America built thousands of non-car dependent cities, destroyed all but one, it became the center of our cultural and financial aspirations, and than we proceeded to never make one again.'"

@jmhorp: "The rise of the suburbs and the decline of downtown as a residential space was not due to cars, zoning, or race riots. It preceded all those by several decades. The reason is more mundane: downtown land values increased because businesses discovered agglomeration benefits."

@culturaltutor: "Why did the USA do this to its cities?"

@dbroockman:
1978: SF NIMBYs downzone SF, banning 180,000 potential homes

Less than a decade ago: the YIMBY movement is born in SF

This week: the SF BOS voted to make over *HALF A MILLION* new homes legal, counteracting the '78 downzoning by >3x

Thank you @Scott_Wiener: "SF Board of Supervisors is poised today to approve a strong housing plan (housing element) that plans for 82k new homes in next 8 years: 3x the # of homes planned for in the last plan. This transformative moment didn’t happen randomly. We changed state law to MAKE it happen..."[1]
@alex_lee: "Today, I've reintroduced Social Housing as #AB309 more exciting updates to come soon..."

@ArmandDoma: "new social housing bill text just dropped..."

@cityplannerd: "Costco, typically known for giant buildings full of bulk goods surrounded by massive parking lots, is working on a deal in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles that would put apartments full of potential customers on top of a planned store."

@Noahpinion: "Nice! Now allow stores on the first floor of 5over1s all across America!"

The High Cost of Expensive Housing (and How Auckland Fixed it) [thread] - "Why housing is so expensive in the developed world."[2]
The economics of high housing costs are very well documented. They are mainly caused because of restrictive housing regulations that limit the supply of housing. Zoning restrictiveness is strong predictor of housing costs, and it explains much of the variation in prices

The high cost of expensive housing is that it makes everyone poorer! If fewer people move to San Francisco, that's lesser startups for everyone. If fewer people move to Oxbridge, that's lesser biotech companies for everyone (and so on).

High housing costs reduce hurt *everyone*, by limiting output in high productivity cities. Hsieh and Moretti estimate that if New York and SF didn't have their strict zoning laws, the average American would be about 3% richer!

These effects are much higher for the average renter and homebuyer in these cities of course. But does it actually work? Auckland reduced regulations for zoning in 2016, and that is a good test of our theory.

First, it led to higher housing construction in upzoned areas which increased supply.

Second, it led to lower prices in Auckland relative to the rest of NZ!
@Tesho13: "Density creates affordability..."

Actually, Japan has changed a lot - "Japan's fervor for constant scrap-and-build construction is a major reason why rent there is so affordable, and why local politics haven't halted dense development as they have in the West."
Wingfield-Hayes opens his article[3] by complaining that Japanese houses tend to depreciate instead of appreciate:
In Japan, houses are like cars.

As soon as you move in, your new home is worth less than what you paid for it and after you've finished paying off your mortgage in 40 years, it is worth almost nothing.

It bewildered me when I first moved here as a correspondent for the BBC - 10 years on, as I prepared to leave, it was still the same.
Weirdly, this is presented as a chronic problem — something Japan should have fixed long ago, but hasn’t. But in reality, depreciating real estate is one of Japan’s biggest strengths. Because Japanese people don’t use their houses as their nest eggs, as they do in much of the West, there is not nearly as much NIMBYism in Japan — people don’t fight tooth and nail to prevent any local development that they worry might reduce their property values, because their property values are going to zero anyway.

As a result, Japanese cities like Tokyo have managed to build enough housing to make housing costs fall, even as people continued to stream from the countryside into the city. If you think Japan is stagnant, consider this comparison between Tokyo and some leading Western cities...

Even more amazingly, Japan managed all of this while increasing the size of the average person’s home... In the bubble era that Wingfield-Hayes pines for, Japanese urban apartments were widely derided as “rabbit hutches”, but four decades later their floor space per person is similar to European standards and higher than in the UK.

Why does Wingfield-Hayes think depreciating housing is a problem? Perhaps he believes this means the Japanese middle class is unable to build wealth. But when property tends to depreciate, it means that houses don’t cost as much to buy in the first place; that lower price frees up household cash that can be put into stocks and bonds.

Basing wealth on productive assets instead of unproductive land is good for the economy — housing scarcity might pump up prices and build individual wealth for homeowners, but at the national level it simply holds back economic growth.[4] And as it turns out, it’s good for middle-class wealth as well — in 2022, Japan’s median wealth per adult was about $120,000, compared to around $93,000 in the U.S. (And this is despite the fact that Japan’s once-legendary household savings rate has collapsed!)

So Japan’s somewhat unusual choice not to tie middle-class wealth to housing prices seems like a smart one. Over the past two decades, the country has done better in terms of housing policy, construction, landscaping and urbanism than just about any country in the West. And it did this by embracing constant change rather than the physical stagnation that has prevailed in Western cities.[5,6]
posted by kliuless at 11:26 PM on January 29, 2023 [9 favorites]


I've lived in Atlanta for 12 years, riding MARTA multiple times a week both trains and buses as well as Gwinnett County Transit buses, and the only violence I've ever witnessed has been committed by MARTA cops. Yes, there are people who don't have houses who use MARTA as their homes. Yes, sometimes those people smell bad or act oddly. But no violence.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:04 AM on January 30, 2023 [5 favorites]


I live in Toronto and my 17 yo son’s on the bus and subway several days a week. We are indeed having a rash of incidents that are scary.

But the average rides per week in October 2022 were 6.3 million (down from 1.7 million a day pre-pandemic.) A couple of the incidents were teens and a BB gun and teens and a “replica gun” - weird and freaky. I’m not denying the trauma of it but those weren’t downtown hardened criminals, they were suburban teens being sociopathic.

There have been several very serious stabbings, including a 20 yo woman stabbed in the face (life altering) by a 40yo woman who was a stranger, and transit related only in that’s how they got downtown - a group of teenagers who stabbed a homeless man originally from Hong King. The 8 girls met on social media and came from all over the city, including…the burbs.

This last was again, suburban teens being sociopaths.

Our housing costs are out of control, welfare and disability hasn’t kept up in the slightest, our shelters and mental health supports are overrun. So yes, this shows up on the transit system. It does show an underfunded city in distress, hit by the pandemic but also our property taxes have been low for decades. (I live on the border of Pickering, where property taxes are 1.5x higher.)

However we’re also going through a very weird dehumanizing experience. I lately have been wondering how genocide tracks with existential threats (disease, drought, famine.) Seeing other people as either disease vectors (remember 6 ft apart) or sheeple can’t be good for our monkey brains on top of the fear of dying ir lifelong injury from a novel coronavirus. Collective PTSD (and associated denial/amnesia) can’t be great. Blaming recent events on urban density seems off to me.

It is contributing to fear though.

From what I hear in my neighborhood, there is something terrible going on with teens. Truly out of control incidents. But it’s not exactly urban issues. It’s something else.

But cities can address these things too. Also happening in Toronto: The Burn
posted by warriorqueen at 4:23 AM on January 30, 2023 [5 favorites]


I've ridden buses a lot and have never seen a serious incident -- some disturbed or drunk people, a few of whom the bus driver had to evict, but never an incident where I thought the police might need to be involved. But someone I know commuted for a few years on a bus line that connected between a not-great neighborhood and the downtown area that is like a mini skid row, and his bus ride was full of unsafe and unpleasant events. As a burly younger man, he felt safe enough to keep riding the bus though always had new crazy stories, but lots of people would not have felt safe on that bus and would have sought out any other option they could afford.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:37 AM on January 30, 2023


1978: SF NIMBYs downzone SF, banning 180,000 potential homes

If you check the document, in 1950 Los Angeles-proper was zoned for 10 million people, and then over the years downzoned to 2.5 million, or less than it's current population. Since many of those downzonings are still in effect, one can generally expect its population to continue to fall.

There have been some recent upzoning rules, but they are pretty minor and the effect unknown.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:32 AM on January 30, 2023


Putting aside the anecdote vs data problem for a moment, it seems your hypothesis is flawed. Manhattan has a median household income of $93,956, lower than the suburban counties of Suffolk and Nassau. Yes there are rich people in manhattan, but a) not enough to move the median, and b) rich doesn't necessarily mean "reports a high income on Census data."

You have to be a bit careful with this - just because a place (like Manhattan) has a lower median household income than some other place, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It can very well mean it has more singles, young people, immigrants, or others who are not yet earning high incomes. It can also mean more age diversity, like college students diving down the median.

If you want to increase your household income it's actually pretty easy via zoning: large lots, fewer apartments, no college, no immigrants.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:36 AM on January 30, 2023 [2 favorites]


If you want to increase your household income it's actually pretty easy via zoning: large lots, fewer apartments, no college, no immigrants.

In general that is true, but specific to Manhattan I don't think any of those are even remotely feasible. But Manhattan is extremely unusual within NYC itself as well as nationally; it's just not a good generalizable example, despite its cultural recognizability.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:47 AM on January 30, 2023


In general that is true, but specific to Manhattan I don't think any of those are even remotely feasible.

No, that's true, and that's why comparing median income in Manhattan, which has all of those things, to some suburbs is not going to be terribly accurate.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:00 PM on January 30, 2023


Weirdly, this is presented as a chronic problem — something Japan should have fixed long ago, but hasn’t. But in reality, depreciating real estate is one of Japan’s biggest strengths.

It's also pretty wasteful from an embodied energy perspective. There isn't much difference material wise between houses that physically last 20 years and ones that last 50 or 100 years (or 200 for that matter). Replacing a 40 year old house just because it has full depreciated isn't very energy conscious.

Similar results anti speculative bubble wise could be obtained by just building homes in a social manner. Just keep building social housing until the price of privately owned homes doesn't appreciate more than the rate of inflation (or a target of some multiple of annual income). This is going to seem impossible in places where there isn't even socialised medicine but it is something that could happen and be made to work and it is something I think we (in Canada at any rate) are going to have to embrace at least partially if we don't want half our population living rough. Being in a 15 minute city is still going to suck if your home is a tent on some stroad corner.
posted by Mitheral at 6:07 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]


It's also pretty wasteful from an embodied energy perspective.

In fairness it's a unique situation to them - from a practical perspective, their buildings mostly used the bare minimum cheap construction, a necessity after WW2's total destruction of many cities, but a practice that became engrained in their building practices for decades afterwards. Then there were constant updates to building safety standards in the face of destructive earthquakes, so if you took possession of a 20 year old house, you'd almost certainly want to destroy it and build a safer one.

That's like, yeah a 12 year old car is perfectly fine, but try watching a head to head crash between a 1998 car and a 2015 car, it's a literal deathtrap.
posted by xdvesper at 10:12 PM on January 30, 2023 [3 favorites]


The summary seems to be claiming the study says something it absolutely does not. Steuteville completely fails to mention the final section of the paper, which seems highly relevant.

The study identifies a strong correlation between '15-minute access' and '15-minute usage.' (It should be noted these definitions include only a subset of businesses--but whether this is important I do not know.) It suggests that the relationship is causal based on zoning policy changes in New York using an instrumental variables approach. In short, it claims "if you build it, they will come. The study also identifies a negative correlation between neighborhood income and 15-minute usage.

In section 3.4, it then looks at differences in experienced segregation and finds (as summarized in the final sentence in the abstract) "a strong correlation between local usage and experienced segregation for poorer, but not richer, urbanites, which suggests that 15-minute cities may also exacerbate the social isolation of marginalized communities."

I do not understand how somebody could read that last sentence and summarize the findings as: "Low-income people need '15-minute cities' the most."
posted by dsword at 11:51 AM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]


Maybe they just perceive "less likely to run into Elon Musk at the gym" as a positive.
posted by pwnguin at 5:57 PM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]


My city has recently done away with carpark mandates for new developments
This will end badly. My city did the same many years ago and it's become a fucking nightmare to find any parking anywhere, at any time and, in most places, there's little to no public transport. You can't do this without first (or simultaneously) providing actual usable public transport and convincing people to use it. Removing car parking doesn't reduce the number of cars, it just clogs up the roads even more. I understand and support the concept, but it's not enough on its own. Developers lobby for things like this so they can reduce building costs and make more money and governments let them. It can't be that hard to work out what the saving is to a developer and levy that saving to put towards public transport and pedestrian infrastructure if only they had the will.
posted by dg at 7:18 PM on January 31, 2023


Regular people aren’t going to equinox, pwnguin.
posted by Selena777 at 8:34 PM on January 31, 2023


Study shows: Low income people need 'unhealthy babies' the most.
posted by dsword at 8:29 AM on February 1, 2023


@Qagggy: "COUNTDOWN OF THE TOP 30 PEDESTRIAN ZONES (that I have visited recently)."
posted by kliuless at 11:59 PM on February 13, 2023


“How have 15-minute cities become a conspiracy theory?” Jonn Elledge, The New Statesman, 13 February 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 10:01 AM on February 15, 2023 [2 favorites]


“15 Minute Cities - The Weirdest Conspiracy To Hit The UK”Feed the Machine, 27 February 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 11:18 AM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]


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