HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

James H Kunstler had a great talk mentioning the Boston City Hall among many things that's wrong with modern design: https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

This is an old but worthwhile lecture on the topic by the, at times bombastic and over-the-top, James Howard Kunstler: https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

Seems like a good time to re-post this rant by James Howard Kunstler on what's wrong with modern USA urban planning:

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

But why is the job growth there?

I'd say it's because our postwar experiment with living far away from each other failed. It was a bad idea and it created spaces that were unpleasant to live in. Those of us who were born in such places, and have a choice in the matter, are getting out.

Certain skills are in high enough demand that people with those skills get to choose where to live. We choose places that don't look and feel like crap. We choose places that lots of other people choose. This makes them expensive. The arc of human history is towards urbanization, and those of us with in-demand skills are its primary agents simply because we have the most choice in the matter of where to live.

Of course it doesn't help that the places we choose believe they are already full.

I just watched this and it was electrifying: https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

That in turn reminds me of two things: James Howard Kunstler's rant against "public spaces not worth caring about", and the Camden Bench

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camden_bench

⬐ sitkack

Ha! Bum-Proof-Bench, another turd making existence worse for everyone.

⬐ sitkack

From the Camden bench I found http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/unpleasant-design-host...

⬐ vanderZwan

This is one of those phenomena that everyone who does design should study, if only to be consciously aware of it happening.

Although I can't come up with a clear bridge, I feel like the monobloc chair is also relevant to this discussion somehow:

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/bn5e4m/white-plastic-chai...

⬐ CaptainZapp

In German it's nicknamed Lawn Acne.

You don't have to ask why.

⬐ vanderZwan

Hah, I'll remember that one, thanks!

I spent four awful, expensive years becoming a dentist in a brutalist building that began its life with the name "Health Sciences Unit A". Christ, what a mess that building was.

The ugliness goes away after a while, the ugliness you get used to, the ugliness is a matter of opinion. What didn't go away, what wasn't a matter of opinion, though, was the utter disregard for what James Howard Kunstler calls "human scale". The walls of this building ran, STRAIGHT UP without interruption for 15 stories from the plaza outside of it. You couldn't sit next to it, get in it, see inside of it, or shelter under it. You COULD walk a half block away and sit in a nice park. But the building stood in disregard of and negligence to the humans attempting to use it.

Of course, I'm only just parroting the ideas of Kunstler, which you can read or watch here: http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...

I hope the winner of this call get all sent to live for 2 years in small (and not so small) unknown towns in Europe that have been growing organically for thousands of years and offer a great quality of life.

Places where rich and poor, kids, young adults, adults and elderly all live happily together (modulo the usual father-and-son generational problems).

Seriously, planners in "new" countries should be forced to spend some time in "old" countries, if not to learn the good things, at least to learn their mistakes.

And another compulsory thing should be listening to James Howard Kunstler talking about Suburbia: https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

⬐ archagon

Hear, hear. American cities have a lot of upsides to be sure, but I've never found more contentment vis-a-vis my everyday life than when I was living in cities and towns all over Europe (over the course of about a year and a half). Everything was within arm's reach, especially in regards to fresh and interesting food: you could stop by a dozen bakeries, butchers, and groceries on the way home, to say nothing of the weekly street markets. People hung out by the riverbanks, plazas, and parks to have lunch. The crooked streets, hidden stairs, and mysterious detours of an everyday walk always brought a sense discovery. And in the major cities, getting around was super simple with the efficient and reasonably inexpensive public transit. (Props to Paris!)

Whether the city was tiny or enormous, these factors seemed to somehow scale along with it. In contrast, practically every US city I've visited has felt inorganic and pre-planned. The only places in North America I've felt the European vibe in were Quebec, sort-of Montreal, and perhaps Boston. I imagine this largely has to do with the central focus on cars versus people. Quite a shame; I miss the sheer excitement of simply being a pedestrian. (The kind that isn't caused by almost being run over!)

⬐ eru

You don't need thousands of years. Most European cities are much, much younger.

⬐ rm_-rf_slash

Sometimes I wonder if Americans fucked themselves by creating cities with roads and cars in mind, thereby ruining the organic walkability of naturally sense cities which were historically limited by the distance one could reasonably walk in a given day for their regular necessities.

The only old American city that I think stands a chance is Philadelphia, which has a great number of single-lane one-way streets, which allow emergency services to get to where they need quickly enough while providing a decent amount of walkability. But then again, the original plan for Philadelphia is a hilarious testament to the utter failures of centralized city planning.

" Penn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart, with areas for gardens and orchards. The city's inhabitants did not follow Penn's plans, as they crowded by the Delaware River, the port, and subdivided and resold their lots" -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia

⬐ jsprogrammer

If you have single lane streets, what does an emergency vehicle do when the lane is blocked by vehicles, people, or debris?

Wouldn't wider streets be better in every case?

⬐ mikey_p

Recent Philadelphian transplant here: They move or take a different street. It's interesting that people here have accepting that if they're driving and a taxi stops to drop someone off, they just wait 30 seconds to proceed, or backup and take a side street over a few blocks to proceed around the blockage.

⬐ chris_7

If you have a narrow street, less people drive, and thus there is no issue getting an ambulance through. I see ambulances stuck in traffic on Manhattan avenues all the time (we should put grade-separated bus lanes on all of them, IMO, partially so that ambulances can always get through).

⬐ MajorLOL

>If you have a narrow street, less people drive, and thus there is no issue getting an ambulance through.

Huh? If you limit supply, demand goes down?

Your logic would say that the solution to Los Angles traffic problems is to close half the lanes and wait for people to sell off their cars?

⬐ hx87

> Huh? If you limit supply, demand goes down?

It works for cars, since there are acceptable alternatives (biking, walking, carpooling, Uber, etc). It works less well for housing, as leftist NIMBYs often advocate, since one alternative (homelessness) is very unappealing, and the other (living somewhere else) just exports the problem.

⬐ bryanlarsen

Yes. To decrease demand, you limit supply so that the price goes up. This can work dramatically if you increase price high enough that alternatives are cheaper.

In the case of transportation, price is measured in time and convenience as well as dollars.

⬐ MajorLOL

So we want to shrink our road infrastructure to drive the cost up in terms of pollution, fuel costs, time and convenience? This way less people will drive. I would propose that you are forgetting that you are going to price transport into the hands of the wealthy and business who will effectively rent-seek to loan cars or taxi people who cant afford a car around.

The idea of shrinking our roadways to discourage use of vehicles is challenging in a practical sense and it just cleaves off another aspect of life for business and the wealthy to enjoy without plebs interfering with the roadways they paid & still pay for.

⬐ st3v3r

Kinda, yeah. Keep in mind, this is traffic, not selling goods. "Supply and demand" economics doesn't really apply in the same fashion.

If you widen streets and add more lanes, then more people drive, until they've filled up that street's capacity. But they don't really stop driving.

⬐ nchammas

Relevant reading:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_destruction

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearing_traffic

⬐ rm_-rf_slash

Wider streets are good for getting a lot of stuff through - up to a limit. Los Angeles and Atlanta are full of massive highways of cars that barely move.

Larger streets also hurt street side commerce. Nothing chokes off wakability and storefront business vitality like multi-lane one-way streets.

EDIT: I feel compelled to mention from my experience that in Rome, the most active streets with the most vibrant businesses were not the arterial roadways - those seemed to mainly serve large businesses, government buildings, and tourist traps - but rather the tiny twisted streets in place for many centuries.

⬐ zardo

I think open straight streets don't fire up our spacial memory in the same way, and as a result aren't really "places" in our minds in the same way as more intricate and varied environments.

⬐ andrewl

The other thing I think Philadelphia has going for it is that rising water levels from global warming won't affect it as much as they will affect cities right on the ocean, or islands like Manhattan. The Delaware and Schuylkill rivers will rise, but the city won't be hit as hard as the coastal cities.

James Howard Kunstler gave an incredibly sharp, funny talk called "The ghastly tragedy of the suburbs" on both the history and design problems of the suburbs. https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

Unless this is the speaker of a very similar TED Talk, this guy borrowed tons of soundbites in the process of writing this article.

Edit: just finished reading it. He has plagarized 10+ 'jokes', and most of his content was heavily 'inspired', from this excellent TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub... . Very very uncool.

⬐ themgt

Agreed, I noticed that too. I was hoping he'd just subconsciously lifted some phrases, but the amount of the overall similar content/structure and the specificity of phrases do really kinda push it to the level of plagiarism.

⬐ abalashov

Hi, author here!

I am very familiar with Kunstler's talk and do cite it from time to time, but it's hard for me to see the basis for the notion that I ripped it off. Kunstler is hardly the only one to make New Urbanist architectural talking points or to formulate them in the way that he does, notwithstanding his rather specific sense of humour.

That said, I just rewatched Kunstler's talk (for the first time in maybe a year or two?), and I can certainly see why you say what you do, though I don't agree that it rises to the level of plagiarism; I sat there and made my formulations quite originally. It's probably a case of subconscious diffusion, as you suggest. I added a citation for his talk to the bottom of the post to reflect the discernible overlap.

That said, you really need to look at some other critical literature in this sphere. If you do, you might be led to accuse Kunstler of plagiarism! :-)

⬐ themgt

Thanks for adding the cite. To me that's enough to put this in the clear. It is a great summary of our problems here in the USA.

⬐ abalashov

Cool, thanks for making me consider it. It hadn't even occurred to me.

James Kuntsler talks about this very thing--the places we are building he describes as "places not worth caring about." https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

James Howard Kunstler has some pretty good talks/books about suburban obsolescence.

Here’s his TED talk from years ago: https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

⬐ JabavuAdams

That was great!

Basically in the 50's, we started building cities at automobile scale, instead of at human scale like we used to, and the design goal for roads was simply to move as many cars through as quickly as possible. Things like 12' wide travel lanes instead of 10', ridiculously huge building setbacks, right turn arcs, 140' wide lots instead of 70', wide neighborhood roads (encourages speeding), no street parking (drivers slow down on roads with parked cars and on roads with no marked centerline), etc. Also, everybody wants to live in a cul-de-sac, which greatly limits how far you can walk (https://www.walkscore.com/walkable-neighborhoods.shtml) versus a standard grid layout. (But if you look at real estate pricing, the data show people want to live in walkable areas; a home in a walkable area will often command a 1.5x to 2x price premium over a similar home in a typical car-centric suburb.)

All those details add up to create a poor and dangerous pedestrian experience. Now, most towns in America have realized that was extremely bone-headed, possibly unsustainable (it costs a lot of money to run all those electrical wires, plumbing, and roads), and we are trying to undo the past 70 years of engineering. Oh, and this was all mandated by building codes (law) so even if one wanted to build a walkable suburban business park, it was not possible.

There is a entertaining talk about all this by James Kuntsler at https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

⬐ learc83

>a home in a walkable area will often command a 1.5x to 2x price premium over a similar home in a typical car-centric suburb.

I suspect this has more to do with fact that walkable areas are much more likely to be located in city centers with higher overall real estate prices than with the desirability of walkable neighborhoods.

⬐ princeb

No doubt city centres are walkable but this comment begs the question though - why are city centres 2x as expensive as suburbs? If the density and land scarcity is the reason then why do developers want to build on more expensive ground in the city than in the suburbs? Why are people willing to pay 2x to live in cities than in suburbs? I think the real reason is that walkability (and hence city centres) are desirable which makes them cost more, and not because city centres are ipso facto expensive.

⬐ wildmusings

Let's say that BigCity has a residential capacity of 1 million people, but 3 million people want to live there. Meanwhile, its suburbs have a capacity for 5 million people, and 6 million want to live in the suburbs. Even though more people want to live in the suburbs, prices will probably be higher in the city.

⬐ eru

A city centre, in order to be a centre, has to be denser. Density and walkability go hand in hand.

But sure, the real test would be non-walkable neighbourhoods next to city centres.

⬐ nitrogen

I suspect this has more to do with fact that walkable areas are much more likely to be located in city centers with higher overall real estate prices than with the desirability of walkable neighborhoods.

One also has to consider that new families with young children are high on the list of demographics looking for suburban homes, and are likely to have less money, so suburban homes are cheaper by necessity.

Cul-de-sacs wouldn't be so bad if they had well-maintained pedestrian lanes that cut between them and neighborhood shops instead of big box stores.

⬐ wildmusings

What's so great about "neighborhood shops" over big box stores? Higher prices and smaller selection?

⬐ Tepix

You don't have to take the car.

⬐ nitrogen

We need both, but by neighborhood shops I mean little cafes, restaurants, galleries, markets, etc. that you can walk to for day to day needs, while still leaving the big box store for long-term and bulk purchases. The reduced density of suburbs wouldn't support very many of these shops, but if they're spaced well, they could serve as walkable gathering points for the community.

⬐ douche

If you're counting little cafes, restaurants, galleries and markets among your day-to-day needs, you've already gentrified yourself out of the range of 90% of the population.

⬐ douche

In the US, you don't see European style communities like this much outside of the fu-fu hipstery gentrified urban areas, or places like the coast of Maine, where they roll out the welcome mat in the summer for the tourists and their wallets, but don't actually go to such places themselves.

Most places, the closest thing you're going to find to a little cafe is your local 7-11 or Dunkin Donuts. Or the local package store. Generally, people go to the supermarket once a week, and they stock up enough that they don't have to go to the market every single day - when I spent a few months in Germany, this was one of the differences that struck me most oddly. Art is generally... not held in great esteem.

⬐ im2w1l

1. So what if he wants to live in a nice neighbourhood? 2. Those things are not exclusive to expensive places. Even the poor parts of town in far away countries have those things.

⬐ dagw

How so? Even the poorest and 'shittiest' parts of most cities have plenty of cafes, restaurants and markets.

⬐ Retric

Try actually driving though the shitty part of any us city, there are no cafes. They don't even have big box stores.

⬐ mattlutze

Most of my low EUR / year earning friends (in that 90%) would disagree.

All of these things end up being plentiful, cost-sensitive, and profitable when the space you live in supports and encourages plentiful foot traffic.

⬐ Symbiote

No, he hasn't, except for the galleries.

In England at least, a poor area still has little cafés [1]. The menu is similar enough — fried breakfast etc — but it will be served on an actual plate, rather than a chopping board or slate. The choice of restaurant might be a larger pub, or a place that also/only offers take-away (McDonalds or a small Cantonese place, for example). The market probably has less promotion of organic produce, and will sell produce as well as cheap clothes and household goods.

I used to live in a poor area of London, which I think was built in the 1960s. There were cul-de-sac roads, but most of them continued with footpaths so journeys wouldn't take too long. On the main road there was a school, church, doctor's office, dentist, library, small grocery store, beer/wine shop, bakery, cheap café, pizza take-away, Chinese take-away, Indian take-away, fish and chip shop, pharmacy, newsagent, youth club and 'village' green including play equipment. The pub-with-dining had recently closed, I'm not sure if that's still the case. All of this is within 5-10 minutes walk of most people, beyond that distance and they are close to the next cluster of shops.

There wasn't a market, but there was a market selling fruit and veg in the nearest 'town', which was about 5-10 minutes by bicycle, or 10-20 by walk+bus.

[1] http://www.constructionphotography.com/Details.aspx?ID=11957... — "builder's caf" or just "caf" is a slang term for them.

⬐ to3m

Yes, this has been my experience in the UK too (and probably everybody's). It may be a cultural difference but rows of local shops are not the preserve of gentrified areas. Anywhere people live, you will find these sorts of shops, because people will buy stuff from shops that are within walking distance. If anything, they seem to be slightly more likely in the poorer areas, presumably because there are more people who will want shops within walking distance.

⬐ forrestthewoods

Bone-headed? I dunno. The cost to upgrade cities is beyond absurd. Installing a subway or light rail into an existing city is comically expensive.

⬐ cmarschner

Lots of European cities built these systems after WW2. Lots of Chinese cities have been doing it since the 2000s. Apparently it makes sense. When I see that a city like Seattle is not able to build mass transit between west and east side, and instead is maintaining gridlocked 10 lane "free"-ways and wider bridges I find that very comical. It is one of the main reasons I feel alienated every time I visit the area.

⬐ wildmusings

I'd argue that trying to build widespread mass transit in America today is what's bone-headed. The road infrastructure already exists and connects just about every town in the US. Electric cars will solve the fuel efficiency issue to a large degree, and self-driving cars will fix congestion and safety.

I can't believe some of the outrageous stuff this Kuntsler guy says:

>We have about, you know, 38,000 places that are not worth caring about in the United States today. When we have enough of them, we're going to have a nation that's not worth defending. And I want you to think about that when you think about those young men and women who are over in places like Iraq, spilling their blood in the sand, and ask yourself, "What is their last thought of home?" I hope it's not the curb cut between the Chuck E. Cheese and the Target store because that's not good enough for Americans to be spilling their blood for. (Applause) We need better places in this country.

Really? We have a lot worth fighting for, and it's not any physical city, nor should it be. Rather, it's the 300 million people that call this place home, your family and friends among them. It's the idea--the reality--of mankind living in freedom, of opportunity for all, of equal justice before the law, of the dignity of the individual.

>We are entering an epochal period of change in the world, and -- certainly in America -- the period that will be characterized by the end of the cheap oil era. It is going to change absolutely everything. [...] We're not going to be rescued by the hyper-car; we're not going to be rescued by alternative fuels. No amount or combination of alternative fuels is going to allow us to continue running what we're running, the way we're running it.

This guy is just plain wrong. There's no reason why plug-in electrics, and a power grid running on nuclear & renewables, can't replace our current reliance on oil and internal combustion engines.

I've lived in suburbs and in cities, and my take is that the current zeitgeist (that suburbs are evil) is way off the mark. In suburbia, I had boundless privacy and freedom in my home. In the city, I can't play my speakers loud without getting a noise complaint. In suburbia, I could hop in my car and go wherever I want whenever I want. In the city, parking is expensive and public transit is not fun. I have to take several buses, at particular bus stops, at particular times. My door to door morning commute is twice as long by bus as by car. In suburbia, I might have heard a few cars passing by at night, or the occasional loud outdoor party. In the city, I have to choose between burning alive and trying to sleep to the tune of my neighbors' loud conversation on their balcony. There's a lot of great things about the city too--I choose to live in one! Different strokes for different folks. Or even the same folks at different points in their lives.

⬐ Johnny555

Try driving in rush hour traffic in the SF Bay Area, then imagine what it'll be like in a few decades when there are 40% more people in the area.

You can replace gasoline powered cars with electrics, but you can't build enough roads to handle the traffic -- there's going to have to be improvements in public transportation and smart planning to let people live closer to where they work and play.

Retrofitting cities with pub transit is expensive today, but it will be even more expensive tomorrow.

⬐ mattlutze

Traffic congestion is also a question of person density. If there were ways to increase people density per sq ft on those roads, with buses or, heck, some weird quadruple-stacked short-distance car transports, you can reduce traffic and commute loads as well.

⬐ wildmusings

Traffic is a compression wave. You brake, then the person behind you brakes, then the person behind them, etc. You accelerate, then the person behind you...

Highways that become automated-only will not have this problem. The cars can communicate with each other and change speed in unison. You don't even need to convert a whole highway, you can just reserve a single lane for automated cars and get most of the same benefits.

⬐ Johnny555

The near gridlock on SOMA streets every rush hour isn't because of a compression wave - there are simply too many people trying to drive out of the city at once. Even if magical cars could erase congestion on freeways, there's still the problem of not enough parking for everyone that would have to drive without public transit.

And don't say "But self driving cars will fix everything! They don't even need to park, they can drop you off at work and drive away". If the cars aren't parked, they are contributing to congestion. And since commutes aren't generally balanced, it's not like the self-driving car will leave Walnut Creek at 8am, drop you off in SF at 9am and then pick up a new passenger to head back to the East Bay - that car is going to be loitering around SF somewhere, waiting to take someone back home to the East Bay.

SF Muni carries 600,000 passengers/day. BART carries 400K (though not all to SF). Caltrain contributes another 50K. How could you possible accomodate all of these people without transit?

Like I said, building effective transit in existing cities is very expensive -- the BART system cost around $1.5B when it was built (around $20B today), but few would argue that SF would be better off without it.

⬐ wildmusings

>If the cars aren't parked, they are contributing to congestion. And since commutes aren't generally balanced[...] that car is going to be loitering around SF somewhere

You're right, traffic patterns are not balanced, so the cars returning to the hot areas for pickups will not be contributing to the traffic in the most-congested direction.

Also, SF already has BART, Caltrain, and SF Muni. I'm not familiar with the specific history here, but transit and housing are the limiting factors for where people live in the first place, so the number of commuters will expand when capacity increases. The better question is, what if SF didn't build those systems? It wouldn't be San Francisco today minus the trains, it'd be a totally different San Francisco. So you can't really take the ridership numbers from today as evidence that city couldn't cope without trains.

Also, this was all happening when self-driving cars were not around the corner. It's a different story today.

⬐ Johnny555

>You're right, traffic patterns are not balanced, so the cars returning to the hot areas for pickups will not be contributing to the traffic in the most-congested direction.

Except that in a city, all traffic contributes to congestion,there is no single "commute direction".

>Also, this was all happening when self-driving cars were not around the corner. It's a different story today.

That "corner" is decades away, meanwhile, people need to get to work today -- and you still haven't explained how self-driving cars can replace a million+ trips/day on city streets that are already at capacity during rush hour. They may be self-driving, but they still drive on roads.

⬐ seanmcdirmid

Self-driving cars can optimize limited road infrastructure. Of course, this means ALL cars would have to be in on it, but that isn't infeasible for 10 or 20 years from now.

So I kind of agree with parent. Doing something today might be outdated given tomorrow's technology enabling better solutions. But that is always a risk in infrastructure investment.

⬐ jschwartzi

Why not just never improve anything, ever? I mean we might have self-driving cars in 20 years, but another 20 after that there will be something even better than self-driving cars, and who wants to own something that will be obsolete in 20 years, anyway?

⬐ seanmcdirmid

We will have self driving cars in 3 to 5 years at this point...the writing is on the wall. We will have pervasive self driving cars in 10 or 20 years.

So to ignore something that is pretty much a sure bet to redesign your city over 20 years, when what you are building is meant to last 50-100 years, is kind of stupid. You do what you can with all information available.

⬐ Johnny555

I think you're overly optimistic with that estimate -- we'll have "driver assist" cars in 3 - 5 years that can navigate most roads in normal conditions, but will still need the driver to step in from time to time to help with unexpected conditions.

10 - 20 years is more likely for true self-driving cars that can operate completely without human control.

⬐ isolate

Kunstler has been writing about peak oil for ages, and is something of an expert in this area, despite being "crazy" - I mean, he definitely sounds crazy, but then again, there's a reasonable chance he could be right about the pending apocalypse, it's not like we're below the carrying capacity of the planet (given our resource usage) or anything.

⬐ wildmusings

There is no pending apocalypse. We'll hit peak oil around mid-century, and it's not like all of the oil just runs out at that point. We're investing heavily in research into renewables, and I figure that the politics of nuclear will improve in the next couple of decades.

⬐ mahyarm

Traffic is bad in general. The average SFite gets around on train, bike, walking and uber. To drive your own car is pretty hellish. If you try to drive a car over the bay bridge whenever there is traffic, it can take an hour. When there is no traffic, it takes 8 minutes. With the BART, if there is 'traffic', then your standing for 8 minutes in a somewhat cramped car as you go through the transbay tube. If there is no 'traffic', then your sitting for 8 minutes instead. Traffic is not an issue with a subway.

I hate suburbia. It's isolating and bland. It's always a 10 minute car production to go fetch something quick from a 7-11 or equivalent. It encourages obesity and a lack of walking because you always have to get in a car. It encourages long commutes and rush hour hell on the highway. With a long train commute, I can read a book or do something productive with my time.

If I want to play my music loudly at 11pm, then I will get a unit that was constructed with soundproofing. If a city is hampered by inept NIMBYs that prevent new construction with soundproofing being made, then that has nothing to do with urban vs suburban.

I think you haven't experienced a proper metro system by saying public transit is a bus. Go to new york, and see how there is no 'traffic' delays in taking the subway. Where everything is avialable 24/7 and the city is alive.

⬐ wildmusings

That I can remember right now, I've taken the subway/train in New York, Boston, Chicago, London, San Francisco, and DC. Some of them are really great, others are not (looking at you, Green Line on the Boston T). Building these systems was almost certainly a great idea at the time.

My main point is that technology is now changing and I think that de-centralized mass-transit through fleets of automated cars is close at hand. And it can use the infrastructure that we already have. So building super-expensive fixed-line transit infrastructure within cities is not a good investment anymore. Even more so when you consider the turnaround time from initial planning to opening to the public is probably a decade.

⬐ cmarschner

Private transport takes up way too much space and is also inefficient. Why spend the energy and resources to build a 1-2 ton car for transporting 1-2 people? It seems like an odd idea.

⬐ wildmusings

1. You wouldn't need a car per person, only enough to comfortably serve peak demand. There's never a single point of time at which everyone in a city is on the road. (Except evacuations, but see point 3).

2. There is already about one car per person in the US.

3. Automated car fleets would presumably have a cheaper carpooling option, where the car picks up other passengers on the way to the destination. Like UberPool today.

4. Fixed-line transit costs millions to billions of dollars per mile, and easily takes a decade from planning to completion. Building roads takes a fraction of the time and money. And the roads already exist.

⬐ mahyarm

Automated car fleets work well for suburbs. But past a certain point, heavy rail train subways have far more throughput than the equivalent amount of cars.

Look at this image for example: http://imgur.com/gallery/v3ff7FY

Building & maintaining roads and highways does take a lot of money too. Building new roads vs building new railroad track on new land isn't that much different cost wise.

⬐ BrainInAJar

The #1 reason why cities are not built to human scale and why chain businesses with slim margins survive and local businesses do not is 100% civil politics. It's parking minimums. Eliminate parking minimums and commercial real estate becomes cheaper, building setbacks get smaller, and walking becomes the rational way to get around because stuff is closer together & driving short distances becomes more difficult.

There's a great and funny talk by James Kunstler about how are are doing city planning badly.

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

He talks about similar issues with some other big buildings in the urban landscape.

⬐ apecat

Over 9000 internet points for posting Kunstler.

His TED talk is literally how I in my early twenties realized that I hated life in my native, post-WWII Helsinki modernist, mid-rise suburbs.

Without being able to put my finger on it, I'd always despised the whole ideology of your home being a generic place to put your crap and sleep in, separated from the rest of society on the condescending premise that being surrounded by generic "nature" is good for you. I never wanted a car, and I loathe hanging out in spaces where every adult supposed to drive one.

I totally get why the Le Corbusier crowd saw 19th and 20th century inner cities as cramped, dark and unhealthy. Poor sanitation and fumes from lead mixed gasoline alone are good reasons to escape the urban core.

But technology has improved to the point where suburban sprawl is nothing but a tragedy in how it formed whole societies and middle classes around compulsory car ownership. I love how Kunstler angrily summarises thinkers like Jane Jacobs: The quality of culture and civic life is limited by the quality of the built spaces around us.

I've moved downtown to the Kallio district in Helsinki. I'm certainly building my adult life around the assumption that a significant chunk of my income will go to paying high rents. I'm not the only one who has realized that life is better in the small number of dense neighborhoods of pre-war Helsinki that were built like a real European city with services and life in mind.

I love the TED talk by James Kunstler on urbanism. Here's the bit where he addresses blank walls:

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

A nature Band-aid?

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

I think it really says something impressive that the F.B.I. is preparing to abandon the Hoover building. Opened in 1975, pretty universally reviled, and has become such a maintenance nightmare that the government is finding it cheaper to site a new location, build an all new headquarters and then move the Bureau out of D.C. than to just maintain it.

That's correct, it's only 40 years old.

Actually, it was determined the building was already in a dreadful state 15 years ago, when the building was only 25 years old, and it was literally starting to fall apart by 2006. The review that came after that determined that the cost to repair the building and get it back up to usable was not justifiable.

In 2008 the building was appraised and it was determined that even if all $660 million in repairs and renovations were made, the quality of the original building was so poor it would still not be classified as "Class A" space.

By 2011, the renovation estimate increased to $1.7 billion. It would be cheaper, at $850m to simply demolish the building and put up a new one.

I think it's one thing to experiment a bit with architecture, it's totally another to keep building poorly designed ugly garbage piles. The world will be a slightly better place when that building is demolished. Even if it was replaced with an empty lot.

People actively dislike these kinds of urban spaces. They don't visit them, photograph them, enjoy them. They avoid them. But that isn't the only hideous building in D.C. [2]

Here's one of the best talks on this issue [3]

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover_Building

2 - http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/the-7-most-heinously-ug...

3 - http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...

It's not necessarily that there are no sidewalks. Walking through retail/commercial-zoned suburbia can be mind-numbingly boring.

Straight roads, boring 'architecture', giant parking lots between the sidewalk and the retail buildings.

Compare Atherton, UK - nice, homely "typical UK" town with busy high-street.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.523623,-2.491372,3a,75y,92.9...

Now, San Jose, CA, USA suburbia: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.323192,-121.972195,3a,75y,25...

Boring. Thankfully planners seem to have recognized this, and now the trend is to build high-density housing, and right out to the street.

James Howard Kunstler has a FANTASTIC Ted talk about this subject, which cracks me up every time. Highly recommended:

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...

⬐ adevine

I remember the first time I came to San Jose how surprised I was. This was the Silicon Valley of lore, and it basically looked like every other boring, nondescript suburb in America.

Urban planners have been predicting the demise of malls for years. 10 years ago James Kunstler gave a hilarious, biting talk on "the ghastly tragedy of the suburbs" in which he suggests some great ways of repurposing them for urbanization. It's a fantastic video: http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...

I really love any ted talk on cities. Here are a few of my top picks.

http://www.ted.com/talks/aziza_chaouni_how_i_brought_a_river...

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barasch_a_park_underneath_the_h...

http://www.ted.com/talks/edi_rama_take_back_your_city_with_p...

http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_speck_the_walkable_city

A few others that I can't really find right now, Creating Forrests in Cities, and Unique City building design

Edit for readablility

Kunstler says it quite well too:

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

The writer James Howard Kunstler believes that the American choice of suburban-oriented development was the "greatest misallocation of resources" in history. His TED talk on the topic is worth watching.

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...

⬐ bane

"...that we threw in the garbage after WW2..."

I think this is a very salient point. I'm glad to see him focus on terrible urban design as well.

Pre-WW2 public spaces and areas are beautiful wonderful places that people spend significant fractions of their yearly income and travel across the planet just to spend a few days in.

The world really would be a better place if we followed what he's advocating here. I'm so heartened to see many new urban projects following this exact plan. http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/tysons/

⬐ mesaaz

Another good source on human-scale urban design is Nathan K. Lewis. He has a great set of postings on traditional cities. An interesting point is the surprising commonality of organic urban building throughout the world, with the exception of the US.

His recipe is mass-transit, "really narrow streets," and mixed-zoning.

http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/tradcityarchive.ht...

Anyone who has not seen his TED talk, should take a couple of moments and watch - for me, it finally distilled some of the discomfort I had always felt, growing up in the exurbs of Philadelphia:

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...

> "“The public realm in America has two roles: it is the dwelling place of our civilization and our civic life, and it is the physical manifestation of the common good. When you degrade the public realm, you will automatically degrade the quality of your civic life and the character of all the enactments of your public life and communal life that take place there.”" — James Howard Kunstler

>"“I like to call it ‘the national automobile slum.’ You can call it suburban sprawl. I think it’s appropriate to call it the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.”"

⬐ mark_l_watson

Thanks, that video was great. I,sometimes try to talk to friends and family about how our economy will contract after QE2 and other financial scams fail, and to hear Kunstler talk makes me more confident in my own thoughts on how society needs to become more local, less energy dependent. Good stuff.

Here's a TED talk about bad decisions in the design of public spaces, and how to make them better. http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...

The public realm in America has two roles: it is the dwelling place of our civilization and our civic life, and it is the physical manifestation of the common good. When you degrade the public realm, you will automatically degrade the quality of your civic life and the character of all the enactments of your public life and communal life that take place there.

Edit: There was some talk here a while ago about roads that were built by developers "for free" and then given to cities for maintenance. Sounds good on paper but results in ridiculous amounts of roads being built... Anyone remember a good link for that?

⬐ iterationx

I was going to post the exact same thing. Also I enjoyed related books "ReThinking a Lot", and "Streets are for People"

⬐ Spooky23

The funny thing about Kunstler is that he lived in a fairly livable small city/bedroom community with good public spaces (Saratoga Springs, NY) and moved to a gentleman's farm out in the countryside.

Many people reach a point in life where they want to live somewhere with a slower pace of life and less disturbance than the city. That's why suburbs exist.

⬐ sp332

Living in the country is fine. Living in a city is fine. But suburbs are dumb. They're too high-density to have good privacy or really have a "slower pace of life", and too low-density to have good relationships with your neighbors.

⬐ Spooky23

It depends on your lifestyle IMO.

Where I grew up, in the country, about 50% of the people had something to do with the community that they lived in. The other half were people living in the ex-urbs, commuting to the state capital an hour away or some other place.

A 5 acre lot ex-urb is the same as a half-acre suburb, just a bigger lot and bigger lawn mower.

The "city", even low-density parts of a city with say 50x100 lots and detached housing is different. You interact with your neighbors (for better or for worse), share public utilities and your kids walk to a bus stop or walk to school vs. get picked up at the door.

⬐ majorlazer

You may think it's dumb, I know a ton of people that love living in the suburbs. To each his own.

⬐ jwoah12

Shades of gray, my friend. Saying that suburbs are too high density to have a slower pace of life than a city is a massive generalization (and one I don't even understand as a generalization). I live in Manhattan and grew up in a suburb about one hour west of Manhattan, and the pace of life was most definitely slower there. Of course there are all kinds of cities, suburbs, and rural areas. The density, culture, and pace of life vary to different degrees everywhere.

⬐ VLM

"have good relationships with your neighbors."

Classical optimist / pessimist outlook on neighbors. You're optimistic you'd like your neighbors and so would everyone else. I live in a neighborhood stuffed with teabillies and multiple time convicted DWI alcoholics and sports/tv addicts. I'm perfectly happy not hanging out with the majority of them. Somehow, I'm guessing they're perfectly happy not hanging out with me. Now don't confuse wanting to associate with wanting to respect each other. VERY libertarian where everyone has the opinion "they don't mess with me, I don't mess with them" "no problem for me, means no problem for you". I REALLY don't want to live somewhere non-free where everyone is all into everyone else's business.

Technology means you are not forever enslaved to interact solely with people who's only connection with you happens to be, being nearby you. I like that.

⬐ lux

City planning in North America always makes me think of Kunstler. I saw him speak at the Winnipeg Art Gallery years ago about peak oil, and bought his book The Geography of Nowhere (http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-La...). That book completely opened up my thinking about how the elements in a city relate to each other, and how community and economic activity are so fundamentally intertwined. Great read!

⬐ mc32

There is a great Jane Jacobs book about the death and life of American cities. http://www.amazon.com/American-Cities-Anniversary-Edition-Li.... It goes into how architects and other well intended people overthought and did things which destroyed usability of cities.

Also, OT, but "The New Topograpphics" is a great and seminal photographic book about the new American Landscape.

If you liked that comment, you'll love this TED Talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...

In the recent year or two I've been reading dozens of books about urban planning, suburbia, traditional neighbourhoods, modern neighbourhoods, traffic planning, pedestrian planning, cityscape and from there I'm slowly moving now especially to the roots of modernism and its various derivatives in architecture and city planning.

There are lots of books about the former, with a huge number of various angles. Dom Nozzi has a couple of books with critical analysis on traffic planning and suburbia; well, he's not against all that per se, he just carefully points out the planning patterns that do not work for humane living. Then everybody probably knows Kunstler who has been a vocal author on the subject for years; I can recommend his TedTalk[1] to sum up many of his books. On the contrary, a delightful book about the appeal and history of the British suburbia by Paul Barker is the book 'The Freedoms of Suburbia', to be enjoyed slowly over the cup of hot tea.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...

⬐ Isamu

Contrary to the title, much of what he talks about is problems of badly designed urban areas.

He must be better to listen to if you already agree with him. I am interested in the problems of urban/suburban design, but he comes across as a bit too flippant after a while.

The author of this article gave one of my favorite Ted Talks on the same topic:

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...

⬐ wpeterson

I wish this TED talk were the topic rather than his older Atlantic Essay. Much better job of advancing and conveying his ideas.

James Kunstler said it best:

“Please, please, stop referring to yourselves as ‘Consumers.’ OK? Consumers are different than citizens. Consumers do not have obligations, rights, responsibilities and duties to their fellow human beings.”

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/james_howard_kunstler_diss...

⬐ masterj

Kunstler's demeanor rubs me the wrong way a lot of the time, but he makes very good points. That TED talk changed the way I look at a lot of things in life after I saw it years ago.

There's an excellent TED talk by J Kunstler about livable cities and how we stopped building them: http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...