does strong towns do work outside of the US and canada? just wondering

Hey! I want to be part of the movement and make it into part of my career, what is an architecture career path that goes towards helping with strong towns? I'm thinking of studying in the US and staying to work there. I'm mostly thinking of urban planning/designer

I will donate when Strong Towns addresses how to accommodate the elderly, the injured and the handicapped into town/city planning. Everyone refurbishing old buildings simply brings back the limitations of the time they were built.

@@kylegonzales1402 www.strongtowns.org/journal/tag/disability 👀

The whole "get out of the way" part is something I mention and usually get attacked for. What I see is forcing a high density, low freedom(difficult to leave) development that is not organic. Some people gate being lonely, some want everything done for them, some want privacy and nature. When things grew organically all types of people were able to find they home. Went from being forced into the suburbs, then punished for being there, see the trend here? I like rural life especially with the high crime and political division of today, but at the same time I should not be segregated from the rest of society for being The type of person I am. As with zoning, you wouldn't build a power plant, water treatment plant, or other big Industrial building a block from your house. Those places are my income, I simply don't have "transit route skills" that would get me anything more than poverty. Im getting into my late 30s so the prospect of reeducating into a desk job isn't very attractive. Plus my slowing metabolism would make it difficult to avoid morbid obesity If im sitting or standing around all day, every day.

It’s can be profitable to develop the proper development, the city just needs to allow it

@@funky6399 True -- in principle -- but overlooking the difference in scale: the hundreds of millions accruing to suburban developers compared to the slightly smaller figure associated with the construction of a single granny flat. So important to maintain a sense of proportion, a key Strong Towns takeaway message. Cheers.

In the US, political campaigns are so expensive. So i guess you dont invest that money if you dont want to use your public office to do some business with your buddies/ for your donors

@@funky6399 Yeah, actually that's the only way that a city can be profitable but corruption seems to work best when things are insanely unprofitable.

There was an experiment where a scientist made a perfect mouse city it didn’t end well. Large cities bring crime and misery

you're wrong and you have a reddit account so double wrong

@@andrewstachowski3375 why?

@@andrewstachowski3375 brain damage?

@@andrewstachowski3375 tf??

​@@andrewstachowski3375 Theres no standing arguement on your end Average bot L

Also, the big high rises tend to ignore basic resources down below - you kind of noted this but in my rapidly growing town we have tons of dense, 10-14 story buildings popping up in the core, and literally no grocery store. So, we built dense and then force even those chosing to live in the walkable area to have a car to get basic necessities. And then we wonder why many people opt to not live in these (generally expensive) areas.

@@markarbanasin4 Yeah. Where I was staying, you really needed to take a taxi to the grocery store, but there was a 7-11 just about every block, pharmacies every couple of blocks, lots of street vendors and other resources. I'm okay with taking a taxi every week or so to go to the grocery store to stock up or to the mall. Also, I have noticed that cars off the road are often a big problem as the space for parking pushes everything further apart.

So move to Thailand. I guarantee you won't want to stay.

@@maxbrazil3712 you are being a jerk. You know nothing about me and my situation.

Nice if you want to live in rabbit cages

At least you have soulless chains for all your retail needs...

​​@@bingleflort4338a mix of unprecedented wealth and shortsightedness. For 20ish years the suburban model worked due to the wealth of the people who built them(think of the extremely rich single family home neighborhoods that existed in Europe before cars). Unfortunately that wealth declined (in part due to the housing/city planning model) and over time the houses stopped producing enough tax revenue to justify their existence. For reference as to just how wealthy America was at the time when suburbs started being a thing, the barrier to entry of the middle class was, adjusted for actual inflation, somewhere around $174,000 usd. That's not median middle class, that's not top end middle class, that's the bare minimum to be considered part of the middle class which at that point over 50% of the population met. For reference to where that number comes from its done based of off quality of life adjusted income rather than pure inflation numbers, which adjusts for more increases in cost of both living and of luxuries that a typical household would have. That wealth led to the misguided belief that the old ways of doing things was no longer necessary, which manifested in a ton of social change and a ton of economic change, some of which was for the better (race issues mainly) and a lot of which was for the worse (housing and city planning, outlook on government, and almost every economic decision post 1960)

Multigenerational housing has long been practiced in Italy, but the houses are closer together. The fatal flaw of the US and Canada is the prevalence of people thinking they have to be as isolated as they are from other families.

And their project connect is a bust

The worst part about Austin is many people will complain about housing prices and traffic in one breath, while opposing changes like public transportation improvements or building more dense housing in the other. Austin voted down what is essentially Project Connect 20 years ago, and many similar decisions only served to kick the can down the roads for today's youth to suffer the consequences

@@nihouma11 I generally agree with you, but would note that more housing is being built in Austin than in any other city in the country right now, much of it high-density towers and medium-high density 5/1s. Houston is not too far behind, but Austin's new dense housing is much more concentrated. This means lower prices in Houston, but also a less feasable urban future.

@@denali637 Congrats on them couple downtown high rises most can’t afford but most development in the ATX area is tract housing suburbia in the northwest and north sides. The costs are still well above national averages even compared to cities on the east coast. Harris county voters since 2004 have voted for the currently 3 rail lines and expanding (7th busiest LRT system in America in terms of riders/track mile), the other 400 miles and counting of bike lanes and paths, a new revamped BRT and local bus system that has made getting around the inner loop with or without a car much easier. Austin has been debating fixing I-35 all 3 plus decades I’ve been alive 🤦🏿‍♂️ and the one train y’all got doesn’t run after 6pm.

Would be fine if they built many bus lanes like Curitiba instead. But I guess they did not do that. 1 bus lane is as good as 5 car lanes.

In the case of Houston, where I live, it’s about implementing zoning that makes sense. Homeowners are constantly at war with loud businesses.

@@bettyc1841 Agreed, unfortunately I saw this in the last suburban community I lived at, they voted against allowing mixed-used zoning and allowing higher density housing to be built. They all assume it'll be 'less desirables' moving in.

@@sparklesparklesparkle6318 because everyone in the US wants to live in a single family home, so only those who can't afford it live in high rises and those are the ones more likely to commit crimes. Besides, there's not just high density and low density. There's low rises (usually up to four floors) and mid rises (usually up to six floors with something around two to four apartments per floor) as well. In most of Europe, most of city centres are made up of those. No high crime there, just people living comfortably. The US has mostly cut those out, so it's either 'be wealthy enough for your own home' or 'be poor and live in a high-density area where there's a lot of crime' (as in a lot of poor communities).

Nothing says sanity like overcrowding. its great having 1 foot of lawn to share with ten other families in a concrete jungle.

Well ever live in a low income apartment complex. It's where you can always find drugs. And stolen goods. Ask me how I know? Years of experience.@@xtinafusco

The main irony is that doing it that way both saves money and makes driving easier as getting people out of cars reduce congestion and bike trails requires less maintenance then roads.

Not really

@NateBullock-ow6on Most current "multi-use" doesn't build for commercial use to be used by long term tenants. "Opitimizing " rents for REITs is corporate pillaging. "Multi use" is malarkey as Most of the "small business" are simply harvesting what other residents build. Not a coffee shop, grocery, hair salon, or ADU for gran, but a late night loud bar. and AirB&B party house That's where the short term fleece and run money is. Small businesses don"t "optimize revenue" for the REIT's. They don't attract long term tenants, the type who are not just looking for bars with high turnover.

Yeah, that's why it's sad seeing people still refer to the US and the EU as "democracies". Saddest part is that Marx predicted all of this, and what did those corporations do? Lie about him and mock him, even a century and a half after his death, as if his ghost is gonna come call them out somehow.

DURURRRR HURRRR CORPORATIONS EEEEVILLL 🤓🤓☝️

@@nano31742 most eloquent retort from the reactionaries as usual 😂

It's like this with London. It might be more dense than when it was first dreamt up, but each tube stop outside Zone 1 basically exists as a mini island suburb. A walkable bubble that has everything you need. I've lived here for a decade in four different places and I've never been more than 10 minutes walk from those typical services (groceries, pharmacy, doctors, barbers, dry cleaners, take-away).

@@Dekedence I remember the Jay Foreman video about the Northern Line. Every station was designed to be a civic center, with shops and establishments around the station, then more housing units were built all around it, basically building new towns along the way.

I know right. I grew up in a German village, then lived in car centric suburbs in Australia before moving to the city in Budapest, so I can compare those from first hand experience. I have lived in 2 different places in Budapest (first in Pest centre now in Buda) and every neighbourhood feels like a little village in itself. In between the arterial roads the small side streets are pretty quite and you see a decent amount of people walking around. Within less then 10 min. walking distance I have: 2 Grocery stores (Supermarket chains) 4 small corner shops, 3 tobacconists, 2 pharmacies, 1 butcher, 1 baker, one vegetable shop, a Police station, a Medical office, 1 florist, 2 kindergardens, 1 pub, 2 pizzerias, one kebab shop and 2 parks for having a stroll or other activities (both have open air gyms and the bigger one has a playground). If I need anything else, the post office, a rail station and a shopping centre are 2 bus or tram stops away. The suburbs in Australia were sterile. Eerily empty of people walking by except for Door to Door salesmen or Jehovah Witnesses. I had to drive the kids to Daycare, I had to drive 20 minutes to go shopping, I had to drive to get to the doctors and I couldn't even visit a pub without driving. So either you take a taxi, drive drunk or drink at home. There wasn't even a park nearby, you had to drive to get to a nice location to have a walk and a playground for children. Also the houses were stacked so close to each other, they could have as well have been apartment buildings, except apartments have better noise isolation. Here in Budapest it's all around the corner, I don't even own a car, it would just cost money. Even my office is only 2 Tram stops away. I have everything I need around me, I can get anywhere with public transport. The few times I go out of town I usually get away with taking the Train (or Plane). For those rare occasions I really need a car, I rent one. The cost of renting a car for about 1-2 weeks a year is still cheaper than the cost of buying one, paying insurance and tax plus fuel and maintenance on it. Sure in villages you need a car to get out of the village, but a village isn't a suburb. Suburbs are urban areas pretending to be rural and failing utterly at being any of those 2 worlds. I'd say well developed Urban areas are more like rural Villages, stacked next to each other in a box with public transport connecting them.

@@boomerix nice comparison between Hungary and Australia

Suburbs in the US are home to large grocers and the infamous strip mall..even traditional malls are in the suburbs now. More and more, cities have just become office buildings

I live over in the east bay too, and it is so close to being walkable. You still need a car for the most part which is frustrating.

But that said? As a committed pedestrian, Chicago is still pretty miserable. Traffic is terrible here and trains and buses can be really unpredictable. Every time I walk to go get groceries, it’s a 85% chance someone turning right on red out of some major parking lot (that doesn’t need to be there in a city so supposedly full of public transport) won’t see me and I almost get hit.

@@innocentnemesis3519 that’s not wrong either I remember it well people are terrible drivers

@@innocentnemesis3519 It's really sad how truly awful the country is in terms of walkability and public transportation. I've lived within about 2 hours of Boston my entire life, and despite the hatred people have for the T here, a full 50% of Boston's workforce uses it every day for their commute. And the subway system is only half the size it was 100 years ago. But even despite that, and the frequent fires, the Boston T still ranks in the top 3 public transportation networks in the country and is a full half hour shorter commute on average than the countrywide average.

I lived in the East Bay for my third decade and it's a large and varied area. Where I first moved to, at the edge of the South Campus area in Berkeley, it was _extremely_ walkable. When I moved to, first, South Berkeley by the Ashby BART station and then North Oakland near the MacArthur BART, it was a lot less so. I still managed to get around well enough by bicycle (being in my 20s and the area being flat), riding to my office job on the Emeryville Marina - but it was obvious that the expected method of getting around was by car. However, the area around MacArthur BART has been undergoing a lot of change lately, with a TOD in what used to be the station's enormous parking lot on the Telegraph Ave side, which has itself been redesigned to provide for bicycles and buses instead of just cars, some other TOD appearing on the other side of the tracks (the side I used to live on), and bicycle lanes being installed on that side too. Of course, when I lived there, it was long before the massive influx in tech development in Emeryville transformed the whole area west of San Pablo Ave - it was a run-down ghost town when I was riding through it on my way to work & back in the late-'80s. I think Genentech had moved in just before I moved to San Francisco; all the big development there happened after. But the area between the freeway/BART tracks and San Pablo Ave remained a static, neglected slum all throughout that period and I'm only recently (through the BART train windows) seeing some new buildings pop up on that side. I only hope that the new stuff doesn't price everyone who currently lives in the neighborhood out. But that's been the pattern. Developers constantly tell us themselves, there's no money to be made renting apartments to non-millionaires, we have to *force* them to set aside a meager percentage for that; given their druthers, they price *everything* sky-high and kick *everyone* who can't afford it out of the entire area.

I love this. In places with a enough land for everyone to spread out on, dense cities are pointless.

@@zncon The very existence of our current housing crisis proves that there is not enough land to spread apart, and that there is a place for urban density.

@@evanramee796 In the US at least, land is plentiful though. There's millions of empty acres out there. If a company wanted to build homes, they can find a place to do it. We have a housing crisis because not enough homes have been built for decades. There's a lot of reasons for that, but mostly it's just not that profitable to build houses. Consider this - If there was meaningful profit to be made building houses, corporations would be tripping over each other to do it. Cities wouldn't have to bribe and seduce builders to come in - they'd be making them to fight for contracts. Now why is there no money to be made here when houses sell for so much? Materials, procedures, and labor costs. Everything is inflated. This is also why the shortages are the worst for small/starter homes. 5% profit on a $500k home is a lot more attractive then 5% of $100k.

Thank you for this important context. I think it is important to remember that we have more transportation technology than we have ever had before. The challenge comes in using it wisely. I recently visited my grandparents, who live 4 hours away by car. Before the automobile, the trip may have taken weeks. I thank the car for letting me visit my grandparents every year. I, however, do not think that the car is inherently superior to other modes of transportation, especially in cities. Transit on a dedicated right-of-way can move far more people with far less resources than a similar investment into highways. Walking and biking improve mental and physical health, and even electric scooter rentals can provide convenient, expedient travel with little upfront investment. I wholeheartedly believe that car access is fundamentally no different from pedestrian, bicycle, transit, or even unicycle access, and that nobody should live under the tyranny of a transportation system that does not serve them. Sidewalks should be safe and abundant, bike lanes should be separated and contiguous, transit systems should run frequently and reliably, and roads should run smoothly with available parking. I'm not anti-car, I'm pro transportation choice.

@@evanramee796 I am pro transportation choice also. Although I remember there used to be many more trains to smaller and large cities so sometimes you could visit your grandparents and other relatives with the train easier. To use an example with even a big city, Cincinnati used to have more trains at better times to travel to Cincinnati. However, now the only train that comes to Cincinnati that is a passenger train comes at a very odd time. I know that because I traveled with a relative that couldn’t take a plane because of a medical condition and I can’t drive a long way so I went with them

100% agree. So many people object to subsidizing public transportation that can potentially help every tax bracket, but never object to subsidizing vacation homes in places like you said. Also, we need to stop subsidizing suburbs with our property tax system.

That is called flood insurance and homeowners insurance. FEMA flood insurance allows the government to buy you out once you hit 2/3 of the value of the property in damage. I know of instances where people no longer claim damages because they would rather repair the damage than lose the house. Also local governments prefer the tax revenue on multimillion dollar homes that are beachfront property rather than unused land. Building codes are intended to prevent damage. I find the bigger issue is unethical developers who ignore flood hazards even when warned.

Taxing property is also a very effective tool for racists and classists to drive everyone who isn't rich out of an area where developers want access to the land. My late grandmother lived on the blind pension for the last twenty years of her life and the property tax on the house that she had inherited from her parents, a comfortable walk from the middle of her country town, was approximately six weeks' gross income for her. She just lived incredibly poor, saving up all year to be able to pay that tax, because otherwise she'd have been forced into a retirement home - and elderly blind people don't handle being pushed into new environments, so that probably would have killed her.

You could've omitted that last sentence. Just because someone is of a certain age doesn't mean they caused you misery. The folks in power did.

The policies in question where enacted before some of the Boomers for where even born.

@@robertbergren8680 And the folks voting (or not voting) at that time let them. I say this as a boomer.

@@robertbergren8680 at least here in the US, it's a fact that the baby boomer generation largely (and yes this is obviously a generalization, but it's true of more of them than not) voted for conservative politicians that supported current policies that resulted in what OP is describing.

@@timheilman2089 in many cases that's true. It's also true that a majority of baby boomers have consistently voted to continue them and are actively against changing them.

A bit of green space of your own should be counted as a human right. Food is a human right, and if you don't own your own bit of soil sufficient to grow your food, you're stuck with buying it from someone who has more than they need.

You mentioning gov assistance makes me think of a rule that you shouldn't rent a place that deosnt accept section 8 checks because their are so many slum lords who slather paint over a problem rather than actually fix it and with section 8 all faucets, electrical outlets doors and windows must work. I have seen plenty of slum lords prey on people who are on food stamps and such because they know those people don't have the financial support to sue them or fight for their rights

@@kateajurors8640 Where I live, section 8 housing means idle men, crime, drugs, and violence. Not the sort of place you want your wife to be near.

@@tonyennis1787 that's the system's fault more than it is any of the "idle men's" fault. We desperately need to change the status quo in the US.

TX has some serious issues, on so many levels. That said, the best city in TX IMHO is CC, because it's still smol, and the sprawl is rather minimal. The suburbs around the city have actual walk-able infrastructure still. Oh, to be back there again.

@@Runco990 that isn't a german thing, that's a "literally everywhere in the world" thing that has people living above shops

@@Runco990 You may like the German style, but it appears that most Americans do not. many Americans are still voting with their money & moving OUT of dense cities into suburbs. Please google the Atlantic - April 2022; Brookings Institute July 2022; the Business Insider August 2023; & the study published by the University of Toronto Sept 2023. All of these and more state that people are leaving dense urban areas and moving to more suburban locations. The people doing the moving are 30-to45 year-olds.

@@gregorybiestek3431 dude most Americans aren't moving out of cities because they don't like the "German Style" (despite that style being common in literally every country" . Americans are leaving cities because it's just too damn expensive to live in them.

@@gregorybiestek3431 A lot of people, Americans and Europeans, move from cities to suburbs, for a few simple reasons: space, privacy, having a garden. If you're starting a family, suburbs are generally much better places for kids to grow up in. Most people who move there do not regret their choice, and do not return to an urban home until a much later stage in their life. The problem with some suburbs (in particular the American ones) is that it's homes only, as far as the eye can see. When we moved to a new Dutch suburb in the 70s, they planned a shopping center and some other amenities right in the middle of it. It was deemed so important that while the shopping center was being built, they opened a bunch of emergency shops in wooden barracks nearby, even though there were plenty of stores only a short drive away. The norm seems to be that basic amenities like stores, libraries, sports facilities, entertainment and bars, ought to be at most an easy bike ride away. Great for kids! Our parents wouldn't dream of driving us anywhere, and they let us go everywhere on our own.

Um, Hamburg's good only because Germans know how to work together. Texans just buy more guns.

quite the opposite. The city is easily the most unfree place you can live.

Start going to your local township meetings then.

@@ramsaybolton9151Which city? You're talking like there is only one.

@@rasputozen Some people have to go to work and have to take care of other things outside of their jobs themselves.

Are those people complaining in youtube comment sections about their lack of influence on town/city planning as well?@@eitkoml

That and Robert Moses.

True, but New York did allow businesses on the ground floor/ basement and upper level apartments. Which under all these new zoning rules would not be allowed. There are apartment building literally right next to single family homes and restaurants. It was well planned ( I always complain that cities aught to be laid out in a grid for ease of travel) but there was a lot of freedom in the planning

@@tinkthestrange Planning is often incremental. That is a common point in that more ideas are tried than implemented. huge redesigns ( Moses, Hausmann, Eisenhower's interstates) can fail big when not thought through and flexibly applied being devastatingly divisive rather than unifying.

So he planned the street layout and the utilities, but he wasn't dictating what sort of building could be built in each location. That's the difference between a well planned city and an authoritarian dictatorship.

None of those groups are organized or have a concentrated impact on politics, though. Car salesmen aren't even unionized. Organizations of REALTORS, though, are usually the #2 biggest spenders in state and local politics behind teachers' unions, I'd point directly at them for an explanation of why zoning is continually getting stricter. People who take a percentage of every home sale have a direct interest in keeping the price of housing high. And with regard to cars, it's not salesmen but the manufacturers and the investment banks who own most of the stock of those manufacturers who are influential on policy at the federal level and control how the money is spent for transport infrastructure.

@@xeroprotagonist Poor wording about car salesment maybe, but my point still stands. As for landlords though, I wasn't primarily talking about human landlords. The companies that maintain complexes of five-over-ones wouldn't be able to charge nearly as much in a healthy, natural housing market. This might be a controversial opinion but I actually don't think human landlords are that bad. They're just people who got tricked (or forced by availability) into buying a house which is excessive for their needs and taking debt which is excessive for their means.

It doesn't speak to conservatives at all. If you listen to what conservatives say, their complaints are crime, political corruption, and general decline. Cities are places to flee from, or places that you have to spend an insane amount of money to live in a nice place that still has some crappy things about it.

@@BulletRain100 Hate to break it to ya, buddy, but Strong Towns began with Chuck Marohn, a sweater-vest wearing Republican from Minnesota.

@@BulletRain100 but that's exactly what is weird. Why blame zoning for lapses in law enforcement? If the police are corrupt, why blame transit and housing?

​@@BulletRain100 It is speaking to conservatives where they live, not trying to convince them to move to the big cities. The things they are talking about apply to towns of all sizes.

I agree, so much of other content is just a climate change or anti-car tirade. It’s beat to death.

Most residents of expensive property resent cheaper housing bringing lower-income people into their neighbourhood. The question is, should we care if racists don't like it?

always the nimbys making things worse for everyone and too scared of change

And corporate profit. Car centric design and sprawling suburbs exist too because there's more profit in it than actually building the places we live in with people in mind. No developer wants to build mid-rise developments because there's less profit in it than selling single family homes individually. So we get either massive condo towers or suburban sprawl, with nothing in between.

no we subordinated it to the profit of real estate and car companies

Your "housing" is"Artist's sudios" for artistic attorneys, brokers and bankers Arch Digest spread before flipping.

start by disinviting hundreds of thousands of homeless people into the problem each year.

​@@marlenestewart7442 When we look in the mirror we see ourselves. Things mostly work as they were designed to work. Our cities reflect us , and we are sadly often narcissistic, racist, class bound, with diminishing equality. We don't want to sit next them or live next to them. Mirror, mirror in my hand, who's the fairest in the land?

Or have simple regulations about overshadowing and about looking in other people's windows, and the building designer has to show that their proposed building isn't going to breach those regulations. They don't need the neighbour's consent, but they're not allowed to build something that will objectively harm the neighbour either.

It happened to me, it sucks!

That's not even the problem. Due to the backwards economics we've created with suburbs, people most often build a bigger house where the already large house they bought was. Those homes are built to maximize value. That means building as much house as possible on the property. Which leads to suddenly having walls and windows where your view used to be. And places where people can turn their head and look right into your home.

And it would be very sad if suburban sprawl made its way to your nice, quiet spot and took the tranquility away from you. People who like their space should be advocating for density and preserving urban living in downtown areas the most! Just because you don’t want to live in an apartment downtown doesn’t mean a hundred young people wouldn’t. If their only option is a single family home in Nowhere, WY, they’re going to have to live there, go into debt for it, and drive thousands of miles in commutes every year. Advocate for mixed use development to keep natural places natural.

@@sarahrose9944 Thanks. I take your comment in the light of the constructive intent I imagine it was made with. Metropolitan areas will eventually expand to just about everywhere. I found things that will mitigate it though it for myself though, by the covenants of the subdivided land I have lots cannot be smaller than 4 acres and the people that are moving in now are very wealthy. They are millionaires that are being displaced by billionaires from places like Jackson Hole and Aspen. Some are coming straight from Silicon valley. The town that is 5 miles away has a population 770, but oddly enough they built an airport with a runway that can handle private jets even at the rather high elevation of 7,000'. These people are displacing the less well heeled but they are paying the people they are displacing handsomely. Property values are rocketing. These people will have the clout to keep it looking as beautiful as it is today because it is theirs. I live at the end of a private dirt road abutting a national forest on two sides and thus no one can build to my south or east. It will very likely stay secluded. It took a lot of thought and search to find such a place and I bought when it was still affordable to non-millionaires. That said. I am advocating for people to save themselves rather than spend there lives fighting the system. Cities are becoming increasingly dysfunctional and quite dangerous. If one is willing to sacrifice, one can avoid going down with that ship. One doesn’t need the high paying jobs, good restaurants or the public entertainment venues of cities to live a happy and fulfilling life. I have lived in San Francisco, Chicago, LA, Charlotte and Paris France - I know what I am missing and I don’t miss it much.

It's all part of the plan. Go back and read about that guy Noah, and his take on flood plains. only now , instead of two by two, you just take your phone. That helps avoid the whole trans/cis issue as well.

The other side of the coin is that Cars have always been a part of the modern American experience. In places such as Chicago, NY, and other traditionally designed cities the focus was still on people. Most modern urban planners design cities around moving people with cars, at the expense of ALL other things . . . especially the safety and well being of the citizens. Cities are supposed to be where people live, not cars . . . but modern America is a nation built for CARS. Lobbying, Corporate over reach, and lots of underhanded dealings over the last century has really reduced social spaces and actual space for people BECAUSE of the cars. Bus, bike, and sensible city design removes the need for every single person needing a car ALL of the time. I lived in a sprawl city many years ago, not even my own house had a sidewalk to or from it. There was no safe way to get to the main strip or downtown. Petrol and The Big Car companies are huge part of the problem.

​@@WhatWillYouFindI think that cars are going to disappoint America. The makers are increasingly using circuit boards (PCBs)--in order to cheapen them--as well as to increase MPG. The feds reward the makers handsomely for the latter. The boards add trouble and costs--later--when parts deteriorate and wear out You won't be able to get these circuit boards from AutoZone or NAPA. The makers desire solely that their dealers do repairs. Furthermore, they wish to patent parts The car makers aren't really talented in this PCB tech arena: Stupidly, it's merely a slipshod afterthought. Mr. Snap-On is dying-off--fewer tradespeople are studying to get their SAE bonafides: The writing's on the wall! Besides, the car industry is unanimously hell-bent on electric: In many ways, it's more versatile--it features less parts and complexity, as well--far less future expense. Battery tech is red-hot: That certainly will improve. Sure, it will transition--cocoon into butterfly.. As with the mobile revolution, battery tech will encase, protect, and bolster the industry, mightily--really, society. Related infrastructure will enhance. Furthermore, infrastructure needs instead require plumbing, electrical, welding--and, other trades. Auto repair traditionally was considered a mere and minor ancillary cost of a vehicle: Will hapless owners, later on, be able to get their increasingly costly, flaky, and frustrating vehicles fixed? None of the makers care about ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles anymore--or, their owners: It's over! Big petrol agrees: They'll push plastics....

You've gotta have at least some amount of urban planning and zoning laws to avoid chaotic sprawl (just look at Houston) but the long-running obsession with preventing residential and commercial units from existing in the same building has destroyed so many neighborhoods for no reason. All it does is increase journey times and force car-centric living with no improvement to quality of life. "Oh, we can't allow residences to be built above businesses! Nobody wants to live in an apartment that's directly above a restaurant/bar/store!" What are you _talking about? Tons of people_ want that! I've heard people say that their "dream apartment" would be one above a grocery store or local cafe! It's ironic, now that I think about it... You're starting to see a return of multi-use structures that host businesses on the first floor and housing above, but mostly just in "luxury" apartment buildings. Residences located above a business used to be considered a sign of (relative) poverty, but as we come to our senses about how convenient and life-enhancing it is to have amenities in walking distance, they've become reserved for the (relatively) wealthy.

@@Sammie1053 Even in "luxury" apartments, the businesses on the first floor are not terribly succesful. People aren't in the habit, and more importantly, business just isn't conducted on that scale. Stores are mega.

@@josephfisher426 Every small business has to start somewhere, and it's usually not with a "mega" store. There's plenty of examples of business being conducted on that scale. Where do you think Walmart started off?

No convenience stores in neighborhoods!

I'd say rather "effective government". The problem with limiting government is that the parts remaining are still for sale to the highest bidder, just like today. Government itself isn't the problem. The way it's practiced in the US is the problem. Get the money out of politics and we can debate whether something should be regulated or not. I'm absolutely here for that discussion. But the way it stands right now, limiting government will just make it easier for the plutocrats to buy up whatever's left for themselves.

That's where the stroad goes.

That's me for sure. I want space. The idea of crowding more and more people into smaller and smaller spaces is crazy. My city describes more and more people as 'vibrant communities'. I call it noisy! I would love to live on a 1000 acres if I had the money. I have no need to be near people

And no one is saying you can’t have that. But… that type of development loses cities money in the long run (infrastructure costs exceed tax revenue in the long term). So, are you okay with having lots of space, but outside the city? And being responsible for sewage and water and other services yourself? If your answer is “yes”, then there’s no problem, you do you.

@@solidaverage a well, septic, and a genny aren’t exactly rocket science. If you can’t handle that stuff, just stay in the city with the rest of the people who can’t function on their own.

Move to Alaska, you will have as much room as needed, this is assuming that you only care about space.

The younger generations complain they can’t afford a house. Why should they need one? They aren’t marrying and they aren’t raising families. They don’t even want to work for the same employer long enough, or work on the premises. Cities and leasing are the perfect arrangement for people who can’t commit to anything.

Consider 330million people...

@@coachhannah2403 It's not that far different to livestock farming. You can either put the animals in a feedlot where they'll need antibiotics routinely just to survive the crowded conditions and use a big fossil-fueled tractor to cut the grass, turn it into hay, and bring it to them in a big truck, or you can put them out in the fields to eat the grass for themselves. Cows wouldn't choose to live in a stinky feedlot if they were given a choice, so why do we fool ourselves that humans prefer it? Moving people to where their food is grown, and even better, to where they can grow a fair bit of their own food, will slash your emissions. Think the design of a "walking city" or "ten minute city" but put single blobs of it in the countryside, where everybody can have a decent size backyard for a vegetable garden and a few hens, while still having everything they need within walking distance of their front door.

The Japanese mentality around housing would be great. The wealthy don't like buying older houses they want new builds and in general see houses the same way we see cars, a depreciating asset. It's not a solution but it does seem to help keep rent and house prices at a reasonable level.

Issa start, but we need real apartment building. High rises too. We need high rises until all Americans have homes

@@thenotoriousmichaeljackson8938 we need to get over the idea that the "american dream" is a 2500 sq ft single family home on a half acre lot.

Also, the amount of housing trapped on the rental market by giant corporations who snapped it up during the 2008 crash would do a big dent if we made them sell it to people would be a big dent. Also if more people make basements apartments or granny shacks and let family use them, it means that more working adults can be helping pay the same mortgage. The minimum wage still needs to be higher as well

I live in Midtown and have an HOA.

@@denali637 True, I worded that a bit poorly. I should have specified I was referring to SFR communities. My sister also lives in midtown :)

String Towns is the truth. Dangling fantasy in front of developers and HGTV types that have newly found religion.

Don't forget huts for the walkers and cyclists to overnight during their long treks.

@@whazzat8015 Most errands are less than five miles away, and most of those less than two. Well within the capacity of a healty adult on a bicycle.

@@comment8767 Not in the city itself. But in the sububs?

sounds more like the theory of alienation to me.

We have all of human knowledge easily accessible by anyone anywhere and somehow instead of that making us all smarter it just made us all dumber and easily manipulated. Truly a dark age.

Hey, what's wrong with staying alone inside, huddling around our appliances? Makes for good use of high density land . See Sherie Turkle's work. Your phone is your only true friend, even if you keep replacing it for a newer model.

You're a wasting your time. Most of this urbanist lads are somewhat socialist and tend to blame the greedy housing cartels.

Oh, boo-fucking-hoo. Acting like the free-market never had any say in any of this. And I say that as market anarchist: The free market has never been at the mercy of any legal fiction. And there is no bigger legal fiction than the state. I'm so over anything that sounds even remotely like, nOtHiNg We DoN't lIkE iS cAuSeD bY aNyThInG We lIkE. If the free market didn't consent to all of this, there is nothing any threat of force could do about it. Because it would have to be free market actors using threats of force to uphold it. Which might work in the short term, but eventually the enforcers would have mobs of violent protestors to deal with.

Urbanism is just urban fetishization from "performative progressives". People with a Hollywood image of these places that they like to indulge in until they are out of their early 20s and actually have kids, and no longer see life as eating out and partying.

I think you mean librarian.

@@whazzat8015 Ha!

The free market sort of works. Look at the mess Chicago used to be. It was government that fixed it. However, excessive zoning doesn't work either. Govt should do what it's best at and a free market with reasonable controls can do the rest.

So, you don't think Chicago is a mess right now?@@henrivanbemmel

I'm assuming when he speaks of suburbs, he means specifically the post WW2 auto oriented, mass produced suburbs, and not older suburbs that developed more traditionally. Many city neighborhoods in older cities were actually at one point considered suburbs.

I think the distinction is the suburbs in northern New Jersey started more as independent "towns" before complete dependence on cars.

Modern suburban development is largely spurred by 3 things: car centric design, isolation of uses into separate zoning, and land being sold to developers in large lots rather than parcel by parcel. All of which happened post WW2, with the last one being largely due to cities having to sell land to developers to pay for the maintenance of existing suburbs, only for those developers to create more suburbs since they're the most profitable, thus repeating the cycle and making the problem worse because existing suburbs don't increase in density and provide more revenue for the city, they just continue to be a net drain on city resources.

There's a concept called "streetcar suburbs" - older, pre-war suburbs that were once serviced by public transportation as cities grew and industry and commerce needed access to work forces and customer bases further out than a five or ten-minute walk. When car-centrism came into vogue, part of what fueled it (pun intended, haha) was the decommissioning of other means of public transit--fewer trolley lines meant more people needing cars, more cars meant more places needing parking lots, more parking lots led to less housing, longer distances led to the need for larger roads, which led to highways which led to large swathes of neighborhoods being cleared out wholesale...etc. You get the idea. Revitalizing older or "inner ring" suburbs (the ones that are on the inside of whatever Interstate "ring road" that allows traffic to bypass cutting through a given urban area) with the return of public transport like trolleys and streetcars, bike lanes, and returning bus lines or light rail would allow for soft increases of density while keeping the "car creep" from exponentially skyrocketing. Right now, most people have two choices--either in the city on top of each other where a car may not be required, or separated from your neighbors in the 'burbs, but where a car is definitely required to go anywhere. More "streetcar suburbs" would provide a third option--a way to be closer to places like school, work, or shopping with a short hop on a trolley, but still have enough space for breathing room between you and the people on the other side of the wall.

I grew up in Hialeah Florida and that describes the way Hialeah was from the 1940s to the early 1970s, no one one builds any new suburbs like this in Florida and I suspect most anywhere in the USA.

Florida is all going to be underwater anyway by the time the ice caps finish melting. Its problems are definitively short term problems.

Terrace housing is brilliant. It's the sweet spot between suburbia and apartments - everyone has their own front door, their own back yard, and their own roof, just like suburbia, so they can have a substantial level of independence, but by making the houses have a smaller footprint and going up instead of out you can fit a lot more households per hectare, more like apartments.

BS. Gran don't live there. It becomes an AirB&B party house Most current "multi-use" doesn't build for commercial use to be used by long term tenants. "Opitimizing " rents for REITs is corporate pillaging. "Multi use" is malarkey as Most of the "small business" are simply harvesting what other residents build. Not a coffee shop, grocery, hair salon, or ADU for gran, but a late night loud bar. and AirB&B party house That's where the short term fleece and run money is. Small businesses/gran hflat ADU's don"t "optimize revenue" They don't attract long term tenants, the type who are not just looking for short term use with high turnover.

Well except in this case it's probably also going to take some active government incentivizing, because the "free market" has at present convinced itself that what people want are these awful residential-only suburbs full of McMansions on oversized lots.

Cool story. Live there all you want, but the burbs are becoming popular again because of the big elephant in the room that urban fetishists want to ignore. CRIME.

You need to think a few steps further if you think de-icing roads with electricity is a practical and successful solution.

You might like to read Suburban Nation, or Death and Life of Great American Cities, or the Architecture of Community.