Remote work has the potential to make neighborhoods more dynamic. With more people at home, there's more demand for nearby coffee shops, entertainment, food options. I prefer the decentralized neighborhood approach to the hub and spoke model where you commute to a big city from the boring suburbs.
Then you run into local zoning. I for one would love more mixed zoning in neighborhoods on city boundaries, but too many entrenched interests at the moment
> Is that really something that is actively legislated against in the US?
Yes. Zoning in the US tends to be restrictive and exclusionary, as in a given area is zoned for one type of use to the exclusion of any other. This means an area zoned residential does not allow any commercial use, not a local grocery, not a restaurant, not a barber shop. Furthermore, residential zones tend to be further restricted in order to preclude any sort of MDU or even townhouse, it's common for suburbia to have miles and miles of "single family" (exclusively detached residential) zoning.
And this is not small cities in the boondocks, Seattle, Charlotte, Arlingon, or San Jose, are above 80% single-family zoning.
I bought a house in a suburb a few years back. There is a little convenience store in the neighborhood a few blocks walk. Also a little Italian restaurant. It's pretty neat but this is the first time I've had this in 25+ years. Generally residential means residential. Nice part is it's pretty hidden inside the neighborhood so almost all clientele is local. I probably wouldn't like it if it was convenient to a major road and traffic was pulled in.
Yes. There's a recent Not Just Bikes video[1] about third places (think UK pubs) and how they are largely missing the US and Canada. For more about the reason for that (Euclidean zoning), which is touched on in that video, this City Beautiful video is good [2]
What if you do? In my experience in small European towns, shops close up at 5:00 or maybe a bit later but if you remember at 10:00pm (or on Sunday) that you need milk for the morning you are SOL.
The other responses are reasonable but disingenuous. The truth is you drive anyway. We have a fantastic drunk driving culture in America. It's really disappointing.
In much of the country, you either have it delivered or you go without it. There's commonly no reasonable way to get to a store without a car.
I'm just moving to the suburbs but I had to specifically go looking for one with shops in walking distance. It's far from the norm; I've lived in places before where the only way to a shop was along a major highway and it was too far to reasonably walk unless you had no choice.
Then you wait until tomorrow so you can drive half an hour to the Wal Mart. Or get it delivered. There are also places like Dollar General and gas stations which sell essentials for incredibly inflated prices nearby that you could walk to (but can still be miles away)
Other comments have described the situation well, but I want to note that “suburbs” like this are pretty common in the US, but not like the only place to live. In particular they are a place where lots of people move when they are getting established in their careers, and starting to have kids — lots of people grew up in them so they get an outsized weight I think.
We also have college towns and small cities! I tend to pick places where there’s something walkable, and have never lived in a place where I couldn’t walk to a shop or restaurant (although ”walkable” is subjective I guess, I’ve been in places where I had to walk 45 minutes through parking lots to get groceries).
I dunno, suburbs are a funny thing… it is easily knowable what they are and what you are signing up for when you move to them, but lots of people end up there as a sort of default choice (or maybe not really a choice, they can be the most affordable place to get a house that fits multiple kids comfortably and isn’t in the absolute middle of nowhere).
I would love more concentrated neighborhoods like I’ve seen in many places across Europe
many other places across Europe dont have this or most people arent conveniently located
but my point is that this doesn't seem to be an option at all in the US, unless you are in a nice development within one or two cities. not an option in the suburbs anywhere to my knowledge.
That's correct. US zoning laws have banned the construction of dense urban neighborhoods and required car-centric suburban neighborhood plans since about World War II. Mandatory density limits and setbacks and numbers of parking spaces and square feet per occupant and other zoning regulations make it illegal to build anything other than low density suburbs.
Many people still want to live in a dense, walkable neighborhood, though; supply is just fixed at ~1940 levels forever. The few prewar walkable cities that still function such as New York and San Francisco are very expensive as a result. Housing that was built for and occupied by working class people for generations is now too pricey for all but the rich.
That's an incredibly broad statement since most zoning is handled on the state, county or city level. There are plenty of places in the US where someone could build an equivalent SF or NYC and yet they don't.
> The few prewar walkable cities that still function such as New York and San Francisco are very expensive as a result.
You seem to be drawing a causal link here, walkable leads to desirable and expensive. Yet, as I mentioned before, not only is it possible to build walkable cities in many states, there are plenty of other walkable cities that aren't expensive or desirable.
I suspect that SF and NYC being the both historic and a hub of two giant economic engines of the US, the tech and financial sectors respectively, has a lot more to do with the pricing of those areas than their walkability.
> I suspect that SF and NYC being the both historic and a hub of two giant economic engines of the US, the tech and financial sectors respectively, has a lot more to do with the pricing of those areas than their walkability.
Demand - from various sectors over time, sure, but also geographic constraints
Each are different enough to only talk about in isolation, but of the commonalities you can't dismiss how interrelated the density and walkability are. A byproduct of the geographic constraints with a constant need to fulfill the demand.
Most US zoning is pretty similar. There are exceptions like Houston, but by and large, zoning codes aren't that different from place to place. A lot of the model codes were derived from similar sources, IIRC
> Many people still want to live in a dense, walkable neighborhood
I believe this is not true. Some people want this, yes, and it may be that they are overrepresented here or tend to form bubbles so that they think this view is predominant.
If a majority of people wanted it, it would happen due to the majority electing people to their local governments that support it.
This assumes there is a strong link between government policy and the way constituents vote, which there is increasing cause to doubt, particularly at the local level.
More importantly, it assumes you can vote on the result of a policy, when in reality you can at best vote on the policy. For example, you can elect politicians who promise to lower gas prices, but in practice, their influence is limited. A more relevant example is that people may want to vote themselves lower housing prices, but who vote to restrict development in ways that ultimately increases the cost of housing.
It seems to me that it's the best we can do. How else are you going to change anything?
I can support candidates who campaign on allowing mixed-use in their zoning policy. Or I can support candidates who support keeping business, industrial, and residential areas separated. It seems that most people (not all) support the latter.
I managed to find a suburban area with restaurants, groceries, and shops within walking distance in the US and it is an amazing, life-changing thing. I am never ever ever ever ever leaving. US zoning laws need to change.
It took some digging, but essentially they work in a university town. University towns are basically the apex example "walkable" with good restaurants, good shopping, good services, etc etc etc.
The happiest existence I had lifestyle wise was living in university. It is the closest socially acceptable communal living experience in modern capitalists.
There were stories of colonists captured in Indian wars by tribes, "freed", and they ran away to go back to the tribal group rather than go back to colonial life. You know, Dances with Wolves but in real life.
There was a slight uptick in communalism in the early internet, but the MBAs have stamped out that out hard.
Honestly, for places like San Francisco where Silicon Valley essentially destroyed the communal aspect of the city, all of those tech bros moving away would be good in the long term. Of course it would also take a massive collapse in property values, and kind of like revolution, that's never a good thing.
Most inner-ring streetcar suburbs of old major cities are like that. Nassau County in New York, the North Shore in Chicago, anything off the Green Line in Boston.
Under the existing framework of zoning, you were able to find a place that well met your preferences and you never ever*4 plan to leave. From that place of extreme contentment, you conclude that zoning laws in other places need to change (emphasis yours). Interesting.
Yes, because this type of area is so rare. I’ve never lived in another place like it (in the US). But it was built in the 70s, before zoning in the region got fucked. It’s a walkable oasis in a desert of stroads and strip-malls.
> but my point is that this doesn't seem to be an option at all in the US
There's quite a bit of this on the East Coast as it tends to be older. Pre-war towns in particular. Some rather affluent places too with trains to the local major city, etc. It's nice to have large single family homes and yards and be able to walk to the butcher, coffee shop, bookstore, or restaurants and the train. However, in Europe you generally won't find large, single family homes in this type of setting. Mainly multi-family and very small by American standards. Especially the UK.
you might have a point, there is a lot of identical suburban sprawl throughout the east coast but is also that older setting
I would need some specific examples to look at for inspiration though, and see whats wrong with them
> However, in Europe you generally won't find large, single family homes in this type of setting. Mainly multi-family and very small by American standards. Especially the UK.
You're right, I want the rich person's classic large Parisian apartment facing the main thoroughfare, with alleys of winding shops and cafe's in the back.
I would be surprised to find this in suburbs, though Boulder might fit.
Some wfh people have easily found it in resort mountain towns in USA, which have similarities to European resort mountain towns (outdoor activities, walkable, size constrained by geography).
humorous way to say it, since architects and their cousins, urban planners, have had vast and creative ideas for decades, while local government, real estate sales and their colleagues, real estate lending have crushed their hopes with coffee each day.
source: professional urban planning office in California
I lived with urban planners and architects for 20 years, read books about zoning, about the effects of urbanization on aquifers and rivers, about the differences between cities that grew organically like São Paulo or Mexico City vs cities that were bulldozed to fit a central plan like NYC.
Never ONCE in my life I had read contemporary literature or heard a urban planner defend suburbia, or advocate for single use zoning only, or even say neutral things about American Suburbs. A majority of Urban Planners and Architects across North America, South America and Europe (my sample) are very much against it as it's not sustainable, creates traffic and other myriad of problems.
I agree with your comment, but: I don't think NYC was bulldozed to fit a central plan. The city's (really, just Manhattan's) street plan was developed in 1807 and finalized in 1811[1], at a time when most of the island was still wetlands and marsh.
(That's not to praise the Commissioners' plan, per se, but only to observe that no dense city was bulldozed to enact it.)
Sure, they had a central plan in the 1800s but only to fit a part of the population that came to live there in the coming centuries. A lot of NYC expansion to support and grow the city was done through displacement[0] and bulldozing[1] of existing buildings.
Most of it wasnt done maliciously, but a city doesn't create square blocks, nice and uniform, on its own as it grows from a few hundred thousand to a few million inhabitants. If it grows organically, as in without a central plan driving it and pruning uncontrolled growth, you will get a very heterogeneous city layout.
The big problem with that is that zoning laws in america compartmentalize everything and you don't have many places with intertwined shops/markets with residential areas.
