The biggest problem I have with walkable city proponents is their turning blind eyes to luggage, business clothes, bad weather, distance, and running errands on the way. I have lived in walkable cities, in suburbs, and in the boonies. The huge advantage of a car is increasing my flexibility in where I work and shop and live. Riding a bike to work on 90 degree 90% humidity days? Buying a week's worth of groceries on a bike? Stopping by my fav Thai restaurant for take-home dinner for four? No, no, and no.
Walkable cities for living, working, and shopping only work when everything is close together, and that limits my choices way too much. It's great having movie theaters, restaurants, grocery stores, and five and dime stores within a few blocks; but almost by definition, you can do that for only a fraction of the population, and the great demand raises the prices.
I moved out of one walkable city when I found living in the suburbs with a car was cheaper and had more opportunities.
For the other side of the coin, consider than cars get less subsidy per passenger-mile than any other means of transportation: https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=18116
Now, that link isn't dispositive of the matter, perhaps implicit subsidies (like parking requirements/on-street free parking/etc.) are much bigger than that. But it does highlight the problem of trying to predict what free-market urbanism would actually do. Maybe it'd be the Netherlands. Maybe it'd be Houston. Maybe it'd be some weird thing that doesn't yet exist and would ill-fit existing categories (I highly suspect that'd be the case). We might just get more of everything, as living arrangements try to target various customer niches.
Wanting a specific kind of outcome, and advocating for a deregulatory policy to achieve it, is likely to leave the asker disappointed. And it also blinds you to government interventions that favor your particular outcome (if you hate the suburbs you'll probably never bother learning about Urban Growth Boundaries and how these actively raise the price of suburban housing by limiting the supply of land).
I'm actually rather critical of 'Not just bikes" and similar (decidedly anti-libertarian) urbanists for two big reasons.
1) His content is very anti-suburban; it's fine to have preferences, I don't like suburbs much myself. But he, like many urbanists, has convinced himself that everyone would deep down rather live in a dense city, and the only reason suburbs exist is because of pernicious forces driving urban sprawl; he supports heavy handed regulations to counteract it. There's a surprisingly lack of comprehension of the fact that other people have different preferences. Many people like living in suburbs and prefer having lots of space and low density to walkability, and low taxes and the mobility of cars to the high taxes and constraints of mass transit.
2) He largely ignores the question of cost of living. He constantly criticizes Houston, for example, without ever acknowledging that, however unpleasant he (and I) may find Houston compared to San Francisco, the reason why the former is growing rapidly and the latter is shrinking is because Houston is cheap, and many of the reasons for its cheapness are because of things, like minimal regulation and low taxes, that he wants done away with.
I think this is actually a big problem with the urbanist movement. I say this as someone who prefers cities. There's such an obnoxious obliviousness to the idea that their preferences are subjective and not everyone shares them. They seem in denial of the fact that many people don't want to pay the high taxes necessary to support extensive public transit, for example. In fact cities like that are growing rapidly in the US.
Urbanists also suspiciously avoid many of the glaring problems of cities in the US (and to a lesser extend Europe) like crime, rising taxes, and deteriorating public services, that are driving people toward the suburbs because, it seems, such issues aren't politically convenient for them. Even in areas where one might think libertarianism and urbanism would be concordant, like deregulating development and land use, urbanists seem as often hostile as sympathetic. Urbanists tend to be fairly pro-central planning. Market urbanism would be a fine thing, but one shouldn't pretend that conventional urbanism wouldn't be one of its biggest enemies.
I don't think we will ever reach a zero car equilibrium and I'm not sure that that would be desirable. But I agree that cars as a means for transportation are subsidized by the government through roads and that has consequences. I think of this with regards to parking in particular. Many locales have mandatory parking minimums which are inefficient. Having big chunks of valuable land that go unused for parts of the day for parking seems silly. Dynamic pricing for parking might also help with.
It is so strange that "the environment" is often synonymous with "CO2 and greenhouse gases" when it's particulate pollution that kills thousands. Otherwise I am endorsing this letter.
Using passenger-mile is a dumb metric for comparing modes of transportation.
O'Toole promotes car-dependency because he is paid by an oil company. He's also a massive hypocrite, advocating single-family zoning while calling himself "anti-planner". Lol.
I ride motorcycles, have lived/worked in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Switzerland, and elsewhere: I had my own car and cycle, usually left them parked. Rode a pedal power bicycle with big panniers. Now ride ebikes, hate getting near traffic (Live in San Francisco Bay).
- Wet weather annoys when one is used to a poncho or so. Cold/Snow is really not an issue.
- Attire was sport coat and dress slacks. Same on motorcycle, carry rain suit/poncho.
- Hot weather, take bus or train.
- Used to stop and pick up carry out on my bike (and motorcycle here) all the time.
- Summary: one gets used to the norms of one's peers. Bikes are convenient in a non-car world.
I like Market Urbanism because it's what cities naturally gravitate to when people are given choices. Americans will pay more to live in walkable, convenient neighborhoods. Harness that market demand and consumer preference to create sustainable cities.
I live in Manhattan and will walk to anything within a 2 mile radius, which means I'm almost always walking. I think this is a very worthwhile cause and I'd love to see walking more prioritized in NYC and other cities.
That said, the people who bike in my neighborhood are more dangerous to me than drivers, because bikers, mostly, do not believe they have to obey any traffic signals. I've been to Amsterdam and there, in contrast, I found the bikers to be considerate and obedient to the rules.
Maybe it's a New York or maybe even an American deficit of civic awareness and duty.
When I think about how American cities are designed it always reminds me of Bastiat’s “Petition of the Candlemakers”. We build cities as if 80 years ago there were a successful petition of automobile manufacturers and associated industries to stop the unfair competition of people’s legs.
Hmm. I wouldn't vote with my dollars to walk 3 miles to work in subzero temperatures. Nor would I want to live in the type of housing that would be available 3 miles from anyplace that would hire me. I hike when I want to, but it's not when it's freezing or sweltering hot and I had a poor night's sleep before a business meeting, etc.
I’m glad that so many American cities are realizing how stupid parking minimums are and have subsequently ended their minimum parking requirements. We’re seeing an exponential growth in cities repealing parking mandates.
Zoning reform is making progress though much slower. But because there’s such a huge demand for walkable neighborhoods it’s basically an inevitability.
This sounds like an idea driven by the particular weather of Europe and the American west coast. I defy anyone to make Chicago or Houston into walkable cities, because of their winters and summers respectively. So this is a recipe calling for everyone to leave those cities.
Does anyone know of some walkable cities in the US? or even Canada, New Zealand, UK, Australia? I would be interested in living in a walkable city, but, learning a foreign language is really more of a commitment than I'd be willing to make.
I'll +1 the request for a post digging into Market Urbanism, with a focus on what startup cities (like Próspera and Itana) can do differently from the very start and in the incentive structure. Ciudad Morazan can act like a development landlord and maintain control, but I'm curious how one can create an environment where Jane Jacob's dynamic city thrives.
The biggest problem I have with walkable city proponents is their turning blind eyes to luggage, business clothes, bad weather, distance, and running errands on the way. I have lived in walkable cities, in suburbs, and in the boonies. The huge advantage of a car is increasing my flexibility in where I work and shop and live. Riding a bike to work on 90 degree 90% humidity days? Buying a week's worth of groceries on a bike? Stopping by my fav Thai restaurant for take-home dinner for four? No, no, and no.
Walkable cities for living, working, and shopping only work when everything is close together, and that limits my choices way too much. It's great having movie theaters, restaurants, grocery stores, and five and dime stores within a few blocks; but almost by definition, you can do that for only a fraction of the population, and the great demand raises the prices.
I moved out of one walkable city when I found living in the suburbs with a car was cheaper and had more opportunities.
For the other side of the coin, consider than cars get less subsidy per passenger-mile than any other means of transportation: https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=18116
Now, that link isn't dispositive of the matter, perhaps implicit subsidies (like parking requirements/on-street free parking/etc.) are much bigger than that. But it does highlight the problem of trying to predict what free-market urbanism would actually do. Maybe it'd be the Netherlands. Maybe it'd be Houston. Maybe it'd be some weird thing that doesn't yet exist and would ill-fit existing categories (I highly suspect that'd be the case). We might just get more of everything, as living arrangements try to target various customer niches.
Wanting a specific kind of outcome, and advocating for a deregulatory policy to achieve it, is likely to leave the asker disappointed. And it also blinds you to government interventions that favor your particular outcome (if you hate the suburbs you'll probably never bother learning about Urban Growth Boundaries and how these actively raise the price of suburban housing by limiting the supply of land).
I'm actually rather critical of 'Not just bikes" and similar (decidedly anti-libertarian) urbanists for two big reasons.
1) His content is very anti-suburban; it's fine to have preferences, I don't like suburbs much myself. But he, like many urbanists, has convinced himself that everyone would deep down rather live in a dense city, and the only reason suburbs exist is because of pernicious forces driving urban sprawl; he supports heavy handed regulations to counteract it. There's a surprisingly lack of comprehension of the fact that other people have different preferences. Many people like living in suburbs and prefer having lots of space and low density to walkability, and low taxes and the mobility of cars to the high taxes and constraints of mass transit.
2) He largely ignores the question of cost of living. He constantly criticizes Houston, for example, without ever acknowledging that, however unpleasant he (and I) may find Houston compared to San Francisco, the reason why the former is growing rapidly and the latter is shrinking is because Houston is cheap, and many of the reasons for its cheapness are because of things, like minimal regulation and low taxes, that he wants done away with.
I think this is actually a big problem with the urbanist movement. I say this as someone who prefers cities. There's such an obnoxious obliviousness to the idea that their preferences are subjective and not everyone shares them. They seem in denial of the fact that many people don't want to pay the high taxes necessary to support extensive public transit, for example. In fact cities like that are growing rapidly in the US.
Urbanists also suspiciously avoid many of the glaring problems of cities in the US (and to a lesser extend Europe) like crime, rising taxes, and deteriorating public services, that are driving people toward the suburbs because, it seems, such issues aren't politically convenient for them. Even in areas where one might think libertarianism and urbanism would be concordant, like deregulating development and land use, urbanists seem as often hostile as sympathetic. Urbanists tend to be fairly pro-central planning. Market urbanism would be a fine thing, but one shouldn't pretend that conventional urbanism wouldn't be one of its biggest enemies.
I don't think we will ever reach a zero car equilibrium and I'm not sure that that would be desirable. But I agree that cars as a means for transportation are subsidized by the government through roads and that has consequences. I think of this with regards to parking in particular. Many locales have mandatory parking minimums which are inefficient. Having big chunks of valuable land that go unused for parts of the day for parking seems silly. Dynamic pricing for parking might also help with.
It is so strange that "the environment" is often synonymous with "CO2 and greenhouse gases" when it's particulate pollution that kills thousands. Otherwise I am endorsing this letter.
Using passenger-mile is a dumb metric for comparing modes of transportation.
O'Toole promotes car-dependency because he is paid by an oil company. He's also a massive hypocrite, advocating single-family zoning while calling himself "anti-planner". Lol.
I ride motorcycles, have lived/worked in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Switzerland, and elsewhere: I had my own car and cycle, usually left them parked. Rode a pedal power bicycle with big panniers. Now ride ebikes, hate getting near traffic (Live in San Francisco Bay).
- Wet weather annoys when one is used to a poncho or so. Cold/Snow is really not an issue.
- Attire was sport coat and dress slacks. Same on motorcycle, carry rain suit/poncho.
- Hot weather, take bus or train.
- Used to stop and pick up carry out on my bike (and motorcycle here) all the time.
- Summary: one gets used to the norms of one's peers. Bikes are convenient in a non-car world.
Great share, I'm a fan of Scott's work and had him on my podcast here: https://rss.com/podcasts/stranded-technologies-podcast/789782/
Another great blog I can recommend is Zach Caceres, this post gives a good first impression: https://www.startupcities.com/p/why-do-cities-blame-their-customers
Here is also a map (of my own) of the emerging space of new cities & network states, to develop entrepreneurial solutions: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger/status/1652651110174273536
I'm myself based in Prospera - the most advanced and ambitious new city development in the area: https://prospera.hn/
See you in a few weeks talking on my podcast, Bryan!
I like Market Urbanism because it's what cities naturally gravitate to when people are given choices. Americans will pay more to live in walkable, convenient neighborhoods. Harness that market demand and consumer preference to create sustainable cities.
I live in Manhattan and will walk to anything within a 2 mile radius, which means I'm almost always walking. I think this is a very worthwhile cause and I'd love to see walking more prioritized in NYC and other cities.
That said, the people who bike in my neighborhood are more dangerous to me than drivers, because bikers, mostly, do not believe they have to obey any traffic signals. I've been to Amsterdam and there, in contrast, I found the bikers to be considerate and obedient to the rules.
Maybe it's a New York or maybe even an American deficit of civic awareness and duty.
When I think about how American cities are designed it always reminds me of Bastiat’s “Petition of the Candlemakers”. We build cities as if 80 years ago there were a successful petition of automobile manufacturers and associated industries to stop the unfair competition of people’s legs.
Hmm. I wouldn't vote with my dollars to walk 3 miles to work in subzero temperatures. Nor would I want to live in the type of housing that would be available 3 miles from anyplace that would hire me. I hike when I want to, but it's not when it's freezing or sweltering hot and I had a poor night's sleep before a business meeting, etc.
I’m glad that so many American cities are realizing how stupid parking minimums are and have subsequently ended their minimum parking requirements. We’re seeing an exponential growth in cities repealing parking mandates.
Zoning reform is making progress though much slower. But because there’s such a huge demand for walkable neighborhoods it’s basically an inevitability.
This sounds like an idea driven by the particular weather of Europe and the American west coast. I defy anyone to make Chicago or Houston into walkable cities, because of their winters and summers respectively. So this is a recipe calling for everyone to leave those cities.
Does anyone know of some walkable cities in the US? or even Canada, New Zealand, UK, Australia? I would be interested in living in a walkable city, but, learning a foreign language is really more of a commitment than I'd be willing to make.
I'll +1 the request for a post digging into Market Urbanism, with a focus on what startup cities (like Próspera and Itana) can do differently from the very start and in the incentive structure. Ciudad Morazan can act like a development landlord and maintain control, but I'm curious how one can create an environment where Jane Jacob's dynamic city thrives.