West Coast baby
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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I don't understand how the high density housing solves traffic. In lieu of an additional solution (public transit) I think it would make traffic worse.
Edit
The argument seems to be: high density housing would naturally result in public transit infrastructure. I don't think that line of reasoning makes sense, it's certainly not an obvious inevitability that public transit will always, naturally appear.
With density and admitily mixed development, it is pretty simple to live within walking distance of everything around you. A car just needs much more space then a pedestrian and you do not park your body at the site of the street. Other then that the key to good public transport is high frequency. So for a transit connection the more people want to travel the route, the more high frequency makes sense.
The only reason not to build public transport is not having the density to support it....
Public transit works perfectly fine in a low-density situation. Your urban planning needs to accommodate it, though, with walkability being a prime concern.
A car-centric city will never mesh well with public transit no matter how dense it is. The best you can hope for is good subway coverage but that's expensive and can't be done everywhere. Nobody wants to take the bus if they feel they have no safe route to the bus stop.
But if everything is opened up with proper sidewalks and bike lanes and maybe tram tracks, if street lights prioritize pedestrians over cars, if walking to the nearest convenient stop feels safe and effortless even if it's two miles away – then you get public transit that actually works.
It's not terribly difficult. But your urban planning can't be car-centric or you're getting nowhere.
I think when a lot of people say high density, they don't mean 100floor residential buildings are all the housing, but tend to think of something more akin to densely packed midrise buildings and green spaces. If you have the later, there simply is not space for cars and high density. Large universities come to mind, where there may be 50k people using 1-2sq mile while 5+ story buildings are rare. You would have to walk a mile or two to get to a car to drive 6 miles around to the other side of campus at 5mph to walk a mile or two to get to you class 1000ft away from your starting point if they were car centric.
You don't even need public transit at that level of density but it's an option.
I agree with everything except your first point. It doesn't work at all in a low density setting, to the point that low density areas are always subsidized by high density areas. Low density needs to start paying their taxes and stop relying on the urban centers to build their infrastructure.
What do you mean by "low density"?
Density is a spectrum. There's low density as in bikable Dutch suburbs, and low density as in US rural farms.
Public transit doesn't work for US rural farms, but does for bikable Dutch suburbs. Pedestrian-unfriendly infrastructure is bad for public transit for to the last mile problem, sure. But even with Pedestrian friendly design, making very low densities work with public transit is difficult.
That's because public transit relies on economies of agglomeration. With lower and lower density, fewer and fewer things are within a walkable or bikable distance to the public transit stop.
Many US suburbs have bad public transit partially from pedestrian unfriendly design, and partially from the walksheds of public transit having very little in them.
You can't have efficient public transport with low density housing. Also high density housing makes it easier to have things like supermarkets within walking distance of everyone.
It doesn't solve it, but I can see how it would help to solve it. If everyone lives in super low density suburban neighborhoods, public transportation doesn't make any sense. You can't build a train station that would realistically serve a dozen people tops.
Higher density makes public transportation a viable option, which in turn reduces traffic and pollution.
Also high density mixed used means you don't need the car every time you need to go grocery shopping, or to a bar or even to a park. You can go by foot
How do you get all your groceries on foot? Do people buy personal handcarts or something? I live in a 1 BR apartment and I just would not have space for something like that.
Simple, you don't buy a carts worth of groceries at a time. When you can walk to the grocery store in 5 mins it's easy to go twice a week or more. Hell, I went to the grocery store 3 times in a half hour because I kept forgetting stuff for a recipe I was making.
Also there are plenty of foldable carts that could fit under a bed or in a closet.
Well, it depends. Where I live I have a grocery store like 100m from home, and I go by foot there. One or two bags (the reusable kind that don't melt away) and you just go, get what you need, go back home. Nothing special. I've also seen older people use like a mini trolley thingy with a bag attached in order to bring home the groceries. When you get home it folds and you can just put it behind a door or something.
In Holland I've heard they also really like cargo bikes, but where I live there's not enough bike infrastructure for that. I don't live in a big city center like Paris or Milan btw, but in a medium density city on the outskirts, so I can also use a car and often do, especially if I need to buy lots of stuff. But if I just need a couple things, going by foot is way easier and faster.
High density basically makes the case for transit itself.
If you can walk/bike to your job without the threat of being run over, you are one less car on the road.
Thihk of it in levels:
People will skip work-commuting by car (including students) when there are other viable options that are not made life-threatening by other people in cars. Fewer trips= less traffic
People will avoid driving for errands when there is decent local public transit that lets them shop where they want. Even fewer trips = even less traffic
People will stop owning cars when there is decent local public transit and decent regional networks. Fewer cars = less traffic
Same with homelessness. The last city I lived in offered free housing with 3 meals a day for the homeless, as in they got their own little tiny house basically that was actually kinda nice. But tons of homeless weren't interested. They just stayed on the street. I'm curious how just making dense apartment style buildings would just fix the problem.
Often, those programs failing is because of having strings attached that people don't like.
However, ask yourself this: why do people become homeless in the first place? Does it have anything to do with the price of housing?
Similarly I've heard they are not always nice/safe places to stay and belongings are often stolen.
I'm not sure about the extra strings attached on that program but you're probably right, there was probably something in there that was deterring some of them. It was still surprising to me to see so much disinterest in the program.
As for why there are homeless... in my experience, no it's usually not the price of housing. It usually has to do with drugs or mental illness. Now i'm absolutely no expert so the price of housing may be the main reason by a long shot but in my limited experience with people i've known and met that were homeless (which is admittedly and obviously a tiny number compared to all the homeless in this country), the large majority of them were put in that situation cause they were super addicted to drugs so that's where all the money went and they couldn't hold a job, or they had big time mental issues.
Given the same drug addiction, are you equally likely to become homeless somewhere with really cheap housing vs somewhere with really expensive housing?
I would imagine less expensive obviously. But I would have also thought the same if the housing was free and that wasn't the case! lol
Housing price is highly correlated with homelessness. In fact, homelessness rates across geographic areas are much more closely correlated to local housing costs than to local substance abuse rates, mental health problem rates, poverty rates, social safety nets, etc.
Whereas if you were right, you'd expect homeless rates to correlate better with local substance abuse rates.
Which is to say: if you ask yourself why one person in San Francisco is homeless and another isn't, the answer is probably losing a job or drug abuse. If you ask yourself why someone in SF is homeless but someone in Huntington West Virginia isn't, the better answer is access to cheap housing in WV.