The New Urbanism: How do we retrofit?

[BrightShinyGirl]

That's what Democrats say though. Not progressive enough for their liking = fascist.

Not all Democrats support urbanization. There are lots of NIMBYs on the left who use zoning laws to prevent new housing being built in their neighborhoods. At lot of Democrats are also really committed to car culture. They want the government to subsidize private electric cars by building infrastructure for them.

 

[BabyBoomer50s]

BSG is right about suburban bedroom communities. They were never designed to be urban villages, densification projects don’t pencil out for developers, and most suburbanites strongly resist it. Suburbanites like big backyards, two car garages, wide streets, and conveniently located shopping malls.

To fund core services like water and sewage, police and fire, road maintenance, parks and libraries, they seek to attract commercial enterprises and the tax revenue they generate. Retail and office campuses for large corporations are natural targets for business development.

For example, the suburban city of Cupertino, CA thrives thanks to tax revenue from Apple. The city of San Jose is the largest city in the Bay Area due to its sprawling suburbs. It’s lured a number of tech companies over the past decade and has been pursuing a major mixed use office, retail, and residential campus with Google for years.

Densifying established urban cores near regional mass transit hubs makes sense. Densification of suburban enclaves does not.

 

[TrailerHitch]

But, could not new houses be inserted between the existing ones?

And how do you plan to do that? Just take privately owned land? That would not play well here.

 

[BabyBoomer50s]

And how do you plan to do that? Just take privately owned land? That would not play well here.

The state of California thought the answer was to outlaw single family zoning. They did just that a couple of years ago, allowing 4 plexes and ADUs on any single family zoned lot in the state by ministerial right. That means local governments and neighbors can do nothing to stop it. They also allowed lot splitting in single family neighborhoods. A duplex plus a ADU can be placed on each of the split lots.

The intent was to densify suburban neighborhoods and increase the supply of housing. There’s been some traction with ADUs, but only a handful of parcels in the entire state have been converted from single family homes to mutifamily structures. The math doesn’t pencil out.

 

[Politruk]

BSG is right about suburban bedroom communities. They were never designed to be urban villages, densification projects don’t pencil out for developers, and most suburbanites strongly resist it. Suburbanites like big backyards, two car garages, wide streets, and conveniently located shopping malls.

They never seem to understand that nothing is "conveniently located" if you cannot walk to it.