Take a photo of your main street at midday.
December 22, 2017 9:32 AM Subscribe
Does the picture show more people than cars? Across cultures, over thousands of years, people have traditionally built places scaled to the individual. It is only in the last two generations that we have scaled places to the automobile. We've actually embedded this experiment of suburbanization into our collective psyche as the "American dream," a non-negotiable way of life that must be maintained at all costs. The way we achieve real, enduring prosperity is by building an America full of what we call Strong Towns.
God, how I wish my town had a walkable center, like our last one (Norwood, MA) did.
It's classic, car-oriented suburbs in northern Rhode Island: a couple of main roads (no sidewalks, natch), with neighborhoods strung out along them, and a bit of town-owned "open space" land in between. A few pockets of businesses exist, and some light industry, but the notion of "walkable schools" get routinely laughed down every time the schools try to use it as a way to reduce bus costs. *eyeroll*
posted by wenestvedt at 9:57 AM on December 22, 2017
It's classic, car-oriented suburbs in northern Rhode Island: a couple of main roads (no sidewalks, natch), with neighborhoods strung out along them, and a bit of town-owned "open space" land in between. A few pockets of businesses exist, and some light industry, but the notion of "walkable schools" get routinely laughed down every time the schools try to use it as a way to reduce bus costs. *eyeroll*
posted by wenestvedt at 9:57 AM on December 22, 2017
Minneapolis was actually built around streetcars, not cars or people. Blocks are 1/10th of a mile (double that of eastern cities like NYC), while roads are long, perfectly straight, and narrow. Retail buildings are just a little too far apart to be comfortable to walk between. But the roads are too narrow for heavy car traffic and there isn't enough parking (except downtown, where the city demolished miles of streets to put in massive "walls" of parking structures on both sides, but that happened much later). Even though the streetcars are all gone, we're stuck with this legacy. Fortunately it's a good layout for bikes, which are everywhere.
posted by miyabo at 10:08 AM on December 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by miyabo at 10:08 AM on December 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
I am reminded by the lead of my business trip to Houston 25 years ago, where the downtown streets at midday were empty of people. Only cars used them. It was striking. Is the place still like that?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:56 AM on December 22, 2017
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:56 AM on December 22, 2017
Well, I haven't been to Houston since...probably about the same time you were there, but given Houston's climate, no, the streets weren't much used by pedestrians. That's what the underground tunnels are for.
posted by Four Ds at 11:42 AM on December 22, 2017
posted by Four Ds at 11:42 AM on December 22, 2017
I wish the founder Chuck Mahron would stop trying to turn his small number of great ideas into an overarching brand for solving everything. His articles/ideas for Portland and Los Angeles were terrible. Accept that StrongTowns is for towns and doesn't scale and then the solutions change. I accept that that might be boring. Fortunately others on the site are doing better work.
This guy actually writes better about prescriptions for cities/towns than Strong Towns but of course he thinks the world should go back to the gold standard too.
I guess you take the good and you take the bad and then you get the facts of life.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:56 AM on December 22, 2017 [7 favorites]
This guy actually writes better about prescriptions for cities/towns than Strong Towns but of course he thinks the world should go back to the gold standard too.
I guess you take the good and you take the bad and then you get the facts of life.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:56 AM on December 22, 2017 [7 favorites]
That's what the underground tunnels are for.
Houston's climate isn't that different than Miami and several other places around the world, and tunnels are for moles (and mass transit). Houston has some streetlife now; they have a progressive mayor (a few in a row actually) who are doing work to turn the place around.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:59 AM on December 22, 2017
Houston's climate isn't that different than Miami and several other places around the world, and tunnels are for moles (and mass transit). Houston has some streetlife now; they have a progressive mayor (a few in a row actually) who are doing work to turn the place around.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:59 AM on December 22, 2017
tunnels are for moles (and mass transit)
I was pretty fond of them when I lived in Houston. I thought they were a neat feature, I liked using them, I loved that there were races in them.
Is the ground in Miami less suitable for tunnels? For anywhere with that kind of climate, tunnels seem like a great thing if you can have them.
posted by Four Ds at 12:05 PM on December 22, 2017
I was pretty fond of them when I lived in Houston. I thought they were a neat feature, I liked using them, I loved that there were races in them.
Is the ground in Miami less suitable for tunnels? For anywhere with that kind of climate, tunnels seem like a great thing if you can have them.
posted by Four Ds at 12:05 PM on December 22, 2017
Four Ds: "Is the ground in Miami less suitable for tunnels?"
Miami's water table is too high to build anything in the ground. That's a big reason why South Florida is likely to be especially hard hit by climate change in the next few decades.
posted by crazy with stars at 12:13 PM on December 22, 2017 [3 favorites]
Miami's water table is too high to build anything in the ground. That's a big reason why South Florida is likely to be especially hard hit by climate change in the next few decades.
posted by crazy with stars at 12:13 PM on December 22, 2017 [3 favorites]
Houston's water table is pretty high too, if I recall correctly, with the ground seeming pretty saturated much of the time. It doesn't have the sort of karst topography Florida does, though.
posted by Four Ds at 12:29 PM on December 22, 2017
posted by Four Ds at 12:29 PM on December 22, 2017
None of this scales, and there are a ton of cultural, environmental, and infrastructural reasons actual cities are preferable to "Strong towns."
posted by aspersioncast at 12:43 PM on December 22, 2017
posted by aspersioncast at 12:43 PM on December 22, 2017
I wish the founder Chuck Mahron would stop trying to turn his small number of great ideas into an overarching brand for solving everything.
Exactly this. His Growth Ponzi Scheme series should be beat into the heads of elected officials and the journalists who interview them across the country, I really think it's a vital addition to the discussion of towns and small cities and recovering cities desperate to attract jobs... and that should be enough! It's great work, and I don't often say this, but maybe Mahron should coast on that one great work for a while longer instead of trying to be so prolific.
posted by jason_steakums at 1:17 PM on December 22, 2017
Exactly this. His Growth Ponzi Scheme series should be beat into the heads of elected officials and the journalists who interview them across the country, I really think it's a vital addition to the discussion of towns and small cities and recovering cities desperate to attract jobs... and that should be enough! It's great work, and I don't often say this, but maybe Mahron should coast on that one great work for a while longer instead of trying to be so prolific.
posted by jason_steakums at 1:17 PM on December 22, 2017
His "strong town" test is weird for large cities.
1. Main street at midday - why yes! More people than cars! Because main street, downtown, is a heavy business zone and midday is when the entire district lets out for lunch. This is true for many cities in the SF bay area; even though they're packed with cars, "downtown" is full of people moving around too.
2. In case of revolution - the Mueller firing protest plan has that covered. Three years ago, that might've been a reasonable question. This year, it's laughable.
4. Adding a rental property to a home - easier than it used to be.
5. If your largest employer left - for this to happen, first you'd have to sort out the arguments over what "largest employer" means, but in any case - yeah, the city would survive just fine. Very dense urban cities have many large employers; if one leaves, that's a vacuum to fill, not a sinkhole to make a city collapse.
8. Locally-grown food (within 100 miles) - this seems more likely a matter of regional abundance and climate than town infrastructure. All the SF bay area cities pass this one - there's plenty of local food.
Already, San Francisco is looking like a much better "strong town" than his hometown of Brainerd, MN, which has under 14k people. It's not a bad list to check for a city's resilience and flexibility, but weighing the questions equally gives a very distorted picture of the available support networks.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 2:43 PM on December 22, 2017
1. Main street at midday - why yes! More people than cars! Because main street, downtown, is a heavy business zone and midday is when the entire district lets out for lunch. This is true for many cities in the SF bay area; even though they're packed with cars, "downtown" is full of people moving around too.
2. In case of revolution - the Mueller firing protest plan has that covered. Three years ago, that might've been a reasonable question. This year, it's laughable.
4. Adding a rental property to a home - easier than it used to be.
5. If your largest employer left - for this to happen, first you'd have to sort out the arguments over what "largest employer" means, but in any case - yeah, the city would survive just fine. Very dense urban cities have many large employers; if one leaves, that's a vacuum to fill, not a sinkhole to make a city collapse.
8. Locally-grown food (within 100 miles) - this seems more likely a matter of regional abundance and climate than town infrastructure. All the SF bay area cities pass this one - there's plenty of local food.
Already, San Francisco is looking like a much better "strong town" than his hometown of Brainerd, MN, which has under 14k people. It's not a bad list to check for a city's resilience and flexibility, but weighing the questions equally gives a very distorted picture of the available support networks.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 2:43 PM on December 22, 2017
Even though the streetcars are all gone, we're stuck with this legacy.
I've lived in Minneapolis, Boston, and San Francisco / San Jose and I'll take the Minneapolis layout over the other two by a wide margin. I think it's a good compromise between walkable and drivable, and I don't find the parking situation to be bad at all, certainly not versus any metro area that is larger.
posted by MillMan at 3:36 PM on December 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
I've lived in Minneapolis, Boston, and San Francisco / San Jose and I'll take the Minneapolis layout over the other two by a wide margin. I think it's a good compromise between walkable and drivable, and I don't find the parking situation to be bad at all, certainly not versus any metro area that is larger.
posted by MillMan at 3:36 PM on December 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
« Older New York, in other words, needs London. But what... | The ones to decide what happens next Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by crazy with stars at 9:33 AM on December 22, 2017