a) We have terrible transit even in places that approve ballot measures about transit, suggesting part of the problem is the administrative state's inability to deliver rather than the fundamental policy preference.
b) Small transit-connected apartments fetch much better prices than many sprawl houses, suggesting that the preferences people express with their wallets and they preferences they speak into the microphone at zoning board meetings are pretty different.
a) Its too late at that point. Denver is a good example of a suburban car-based city that is pouring billions into pubic transportation that can never compete with cars. pick two random spots and compare the driving directions with public transportation. The city would need to be rebuilt as high-density.
b) You have cause and effect backwards here. Apartments are built in those areas because real-estate is already expensive. The real-estate is not expensive because they built an apartment building in the middle of nowhere. Things have to be high-density from the beginning for it to work, and everyone building housing since the automobile has chosen to go low-density whenever possible.
Building a high-density city today would require preventing people from building low-density just outside city limits and driving into town, zooming past all the suckers who bought a cramped apartment waiting at the bus stop.
> Building a high-density city today would require...driving into town
Actually you just said the solution. Let them buy all the exurb crap the want, but make driving hell in all the main destinations. Do that, and your transit investments will actually work.
Only spinless politicians that want to appease both sides make transit fail and let the car win.
>Only spinless politicians that want to appease both sides make transit fail and let the car win.
Welcome to democracy. The only way this could work is if you could decide to have a city where all the people who want cars aren't allowed to live there (or at least aren't allowed to vote there). In other words, a hard boarder with immigration controls, and ideally an independent budget so the Federal or State government can't tax you are require you to build highways to get your tax money back in the form of grants.
Not at all. Small towns and cities have been pedestrianizing a few key blocks for years.
In the case of Denver or some place like it, do a few blocks around the light rail stations. The car owners won't really notice (yet), but the small businessmen will complain. Ignore the small businesses, they are wrong about their own situation: Foot traffic will more than make up for any lost parking.
In fact there is a name, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_urbanism, for this sort of bootstrapping, to build a loyal constituency over people defending their new car free privileges rather than merely imagining an alternative future.
This sounds wonderful. I would love to live somewhere like that. Cars suck to be around and having a massive boulevard all to yourself to walk down is a fantastic feeling. I'm not sure Tactical urbanism will be enough to overcome the problem you identified above.
I mean, America is deeply behind and I'm not sure it can be reformed. Maybe the best thing to do is move some place that does it better and hope to help set an example, I'm not sure.
But stuff like congestion pricing, the 14th street bus lane, and bridge conversions, in NYC gives me a little hope. Manhattan can also set a better example for the rest of the US --- active measures rather than simply basking in good decisions made 100 years ago.
The same metro area can present a tradeoff between short train ride/tiny apartment and long drive/big house. If your statement were true there would be little demand for the former. But it turns out there’s a lot.
Anywhere that’s a candidate to become high density is low or medium density first. Crossroads becomes village becomes town becomes city becomes megapolis. Incumbents were not consulted about these changes; they were economically inevitable. Then progressivism took hold, institutions got more democratic and accountable, we stopped letting economics run roughshod over the hapless little people. Plus the high modernists did some incredibly tone-deaf fuckups which prompted every community to develop a hair-trigger immune system against sweeping changes from above. Heavy consultations and veto points mean a handful of motivated people can kill any project.
The first time a place is developed it’s almost always going to be low density. And once a place is developed the first time, the only way it can be substantially changed is with near-unanimous consent. There are enough people with an innate distrust of change that this consent is not forthcoming. So the initial conditions are permanent. Cities can’t evolve anymore.
> There are enough people with an innate distrust of change that this consent is not forthcoming.
No amount of 'trusting change' will transform the millions of spread out homes already constructed over 80 years into densely packed apartment buildings without tearing the houses down and putting the apartment buildings up. Pre-car cities were built high-density from the beginning. They were never low-density.
Even New York started out looking like a small town. There are lots of places that look like this in California today, and are under comparable economic pressure to grow. They're just choosing not to respond.
b) Small transit-connected apartments fetch much better prices than many sprawl houses, suggesting that the preferences people express with their wallets and they preferences they speak into the microphone at zoning board meetings are pretty different.