this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Public transport is unacceptably slow and/or prohibitively expensive in suburbs. It may work well in densely-packed cities, but that requires you to live in a densely-packed city, and that's straight-up dystopian in my book.
If you live in the suburbs and commute into a major city then traffic going into said city is also unbearably slow. But to quickly counter this point, millions of people commute using the NYC suburban spurs for metro north, and south and I can assure you the desnity falls of a cliff as soon as you pass the NYC border.
Likewise there are plenty of alternatives even for suburbs involving things like park and rides and train stations with garages that can help funnel people into roads and on public networks. Ideally a good station should be centralized in the town and but walkable(Ive seen some NYC train stations literally be a random parkinglot in the woods and then there's GoTransit in toronto) but as it will take a long time to right the ship I think making sure theres spots to park your car is important too.
Moving forwards though there should be improvements in zoning law to help right the ship when it comes to car-centric american infrastructure and urban planning.
The frustrating thing is decent density doesnt mean high rises and big city concrete jungle. There are tons of east coast and midwestern neighborhoods that are mostly single family homes on lots, with some multifamily and low rise apartments mixed in on tree lined streets near parks and shopping areas that have densities of more than 11,000 people per sqmi.
The problem with multi-family housing is that it's ripe for abuse by building managers. Unless you own the entire building you live in and the entire plot of land it sits on, you don't own anything, and your home can be taken from you at will without meaningful recourse.
I gather this isn't an issue in Europe, where people have actual protections under the law, but as long as real estate in America remains the Wild West, living in single-family housing is and will remain an absolutely necessary act of self-defense.
Mixed zoning would be good, though. Being able to walk to at least a convenience store would be, well, convenient. If the prices there aren't ludicrously high, anyway, which is a serious problem with convenience stores today.
10s of Millions of people in the united states live in multifamily housing. You're responding to concepts like multifamily housing and public transit as if these are abstracts that huge numbers of americans dont already rely on. There are plenty of areas with bad infrastructure today for this, but thats all the more reason to improve. More missing middle density housing is important to make housing more affordable and improve density and supply.
We can certainly use better and actual proper public housing options like in places like the netherlands, and better renter protections to keep a landlord from upping your rent too much, but thats all the more reason to push forwards.
And every last one of them is made to abide by unnecessary and cruel rules, like prohibiting the use of air conditioners because they change the exterior appearance of the building. Renters are also getting fleeced like sheep and regularly evicted to make room for richer tenants.
Building more non-single-family housing will only exacerbate this problem, not solve it.
No, it's not. Those protections have to happen first, and in this country, they never will.