Just think of how much worse the traffic would be if they built more capacity.
And I’m not sure how we went from Sophia Loren, Yvonne DeCarlo, and Gina Lollobrigida to urban sprawl in 50 posts.
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The thing about these is that you still have to drive there because for decades it’s been against zoning/deed restrictions to mix commercial and residential. Which means that nothing is within walking, cycling distance.
You need a pint of milk? Drive 10-20 mins through your sub-division to get to the gas station.
You need a pint of beer? Keep driving until you get to the endless stretch of chain restaurants on your stroad artery. Or further if you want something less formulaic, but be careful drink-driving on the way back.
In Montrose, I could walk 3 mins to the end of my street where there was a convenience store where I could get a shockingly wide range of things I needed last minute. A sub-10-minute walk got me to any number of local bars and restaurants, ranging from cheap taco/burger joints to high-end (and one Michelin-rated) fine dining establishments.
Yes, but the design is horribly flawed yet we keep doing the same thing over and over.
I get that you think it is flawed. 90% of population disagrees.
I wonder if the scantily clad Essex girls in their white FMP stand around on the corner hoping you’ll wander by on your way home from the pub…
i don’t find it like that at all, at least for us. There’s a Kroger a mile from my house that we sometimes walk to. That same Kroger center has a couple of decent restaurants (albeit smallish chain ones), a wine bar, ice cream, a pizza place and more so plenty to entertain one’s self and not have to drive after drinking. Our area is full of master planned communities though, so that might have something to do with it.
People do. All the time. My renters did.
One of the things that planned suburban communities create is a siege mentality. People live in terror that their kids will be abducted off the street because it happened somewhere so now their kids must be driven everywhere like the Queen King.
At the same time, they’ll happily and regularly leave them in the care of priests and wrestling coaches without a second thought.
Widening freeways is just an expensive way of proving induced demand.
No doubt there is a siege mentality. But I’m not sure it’s a result of suburbia, nor would parents find it safer to let their kids wander around pubs, cheap taco stands, and bus stops. Well…they’d be safer than they are around priests, I guess.
The only people who don’t absolutely hate their commutes are people who don’t have one, or have an easy one. That’s the absolute rarity. Give people a viable way of doing something different/better, and see what they choose. There are already major hints (as discussed above) that people will choose different/better.
Yes, people hate their commutes, but they hate living on top of their neighbors over a bus stop more. It can’t be all beer and skittles.
Can you guys knock it off with the priest jokes? I have a nephew being ordained a priest in June and he isn’t a pedophile. Thanks.
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Ah, another “Houston we have a problem”
Why is kids having to walk past a pub or a taco stand inherently bad? We don’t live in The Purge; there aren’t gangs roaming the streets with nefarious intent. People day-drinking while kids walk home from school aren’t interested in snatching off the street as they pass by.
The biggest danger to kids on a macro level is the global warming caused in no small part by the carbon emissions from all the parents’ cars driving their kids to school and, on a micro level, the predators who embed themselves in positions where the kids are brought to them. By car.
I’ll confess my respect and admiration for priests when you do the same for Art Briles and Baylor athletics.
Same thing going on in Mueller with allowing people to park parallel to the curbs on the streets. The purpose in to slow the traffic which is in narrow lanes.
It sets a bad example for the impressionable young kids.
You are making a bold assumption. People buy houses in the suburbs because the prices/taxes are cheap compared to what you can get in town. But what this decision does not factor in is the cost of the longer commute to your wallet and your health. It’s not just wear and tear on your car and you; time is money, even if it’s just higher day care costs because you have to add 2 hours on the front and back end of every 8-hour work day.
Such things are incremental, so they aren’t immediately apparent, but it’s also why the whole country freaks out when gas goes up because then its not an incremental issue, it’s an immediate financial crisis.
I disagree that people don’t factor in the cost. I think you discount that people get features in a suburban home that they don’t get in urban living.
And yes, time is money…if people would otherwise be paying me. But they’re typically not.
My wife uses this logic all the time, reminding me of her CPA billing rate, as if someone is paying her that much while she drinks wine working a puzzle on the kitchen table.
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