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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Fuck Cars
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Electric cars are still cars, and therefore do fuck-all to fix the real problem of excessive use of land for parking lots, low-density zoning, and lack of walkability.
The only way to have communities that are healthy and sustainable (ecologically, financially, or otherwise) is to fix the zoning code so that folks don't need to drive in the first place.
Or just reduce the need to drive, for example by encouraging remote work.
Oh man when almost everything was remote my commute was so nice. 12 miles in 15 - 17 minutes instead of almost double that everyday.
Unfortunately I operate a forklift so I have to be there in person but damn was it super nice.
Currently I'm trying to encourage and raise support for more bike infrastructure locally so it's an actually viable option intead of it's currently not so viable state.
Convert all the empty offices to apartments. Solves housing supply problems, makes a lot of dense units instead of sprawl, puts them right next to any of the offices that have reopened, and would make the owners of the office buildings happy so they'd hopefully get out of the way of WFH (if they're doing any lobbying or propaganda or whatnot).
I know it's too expensive to be worth it, but it's a perfect thing for governments to give grants for since it has so many benefits.
It's happening a bit in Canada.
From here
one issue is that offices tend to have 1 bathroom per floor, and the internal plumbing to match, and apartments need roughly a bathroom every 4 rooms. That really matters when you have 15 floors and you're adding inlet and outlets filled with water, it drastically affects the weight and design of the building.
it might be easier, cheaper and safer to demolish and rebuild rather than convert.
Multiple such projects are underway in my Midwestern US city.
That's a great idea, I hope other communities follow.
That doesn't fix any of the problems mentioned.
You can have healthy and sustainable communities without high density housing or any of the comforts of urban living. In fact, humans have lived in low density rural communities for thousands of years.
No. Humans have lived in walkable villages and towns built at missing middle densities (hundreds to a few thousand people and markets all within walking distance linked by long distance travel corridors you walked to or what you are calling 'urban') with local services and a handful of people living on the outskirts.
Endless suburban seas of <500 people per km^2 were invented for the automobile. The past you are counterfactually claiming exists did not have half an acre of roads, car parks, 4-car garages, set backs and car yards per resident, nor did it have all the services in a central gigantic box building 20 miles away through a sea of identical houses, nor did your rural people demand those in higher density regions provode them with infrastructure for heating, cooling, water and sewerage. Nor did they demolish all the houses around the market just in case they wanted to leave a cart there.
You have a very US-centric perspective on "sustainability".
There are plenty of sustainable communities all over the world, today as in the past, that consist of 100s to 1000s of people living in low density housing within reach of a small center.
Some of their garages have two cars, some have only a moped, and some have no vehicles at all.
They are generally rural, not suburban. Not all are near big box stores. Those with big box stores existed before the big box stores arrived, and they would continue to exist if the big box stores left.
Their existence does not necessarily depend on support from higher density regions, especially in parts of the world where higher density regions will ignore their requests anyway.
These are the walkable non-suburban communities being talked about. Why are you trying to use examples of the desired outcome as a counter example (and reason to continue destroying said towns)?
I am responding to the suggestion that only high-density communities are sustainable. That's simply not true. It is possible for people to live sustainably in either low density or high density communities.
Which in turn implies that the problem with suburbs is not necessarily their density, but other factors.
If you can walk or use a low speed vehicle to get to your destination and you can walk to the second family down in 5 minutes it's not a low density settlement just because you can see a single story house.
Villages are missing middle (at least until the commercial center gets gutted and replaced with car yards and parking and 50% of the houses are demolished for highway).
If you take both the population and area of greater houston without the urban core, there is one hectare of suburban wasteland per person.
One person per hectare isn't the rural settlement in your imagined past, it's a single family and a few farm hands living on an unusually large and high-labor productivity farm way out of town.