The Reagan White House moved to lower tax rates for developers in the 1980s and then years of low interest rates glutted downtowns with office buildings. Time's up.
Most downtowns are built for commuters rather than residents. They forced out residents in favor of building higher cost commercial real estate. What residential buildings there is targets only the highest incomes. No surprise they are struggling.
Hear me out, and this might sound crazy: but what if we build walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods with shops, parks, and libraries? That way people will boost local economy instead of getting into car and driving to centralized locations like Walmart or malls?
But then you will hear many decry the creation of 15 minute cities and they want to force us to never leave the area and take away our cars to control us.
I wish I could end this with /s but I’ve actually seen people post this sadly.
The problem is that once again people with genuine concerns get derided and insulted which pushes them deeper into these views - people have a lot of great reasons for not wanting their car taken away and fearing that the rich’s solution to population growth is going to be to force people into prison communities, that’s been a common theme in history - Australia and America only exist as they are because of the clearances, and the North of England owes most it’s population to poors getting tricked into moving to brutally compact works towns and treated like cattle.
Instead of hearing the fears and needs of people they’re just attacked, called stupid and going by most the times I’ve seen it come up flooded by people saying things like ‘cars are bad, it would be better if we got rid of them all’ which is super unhelpful, it’s like calling a movement ‘defund the police’ and having everyone yell about how we should get rid of them all because they’re all bastard’s but not address the actual needs society has for people tasked with stopping crime - why do people supporting sensible and important things have to make their views sound so intensely unpalatable?
We need to address all the great things that cars and suburban living have brought us, and yes I can already hear the comments from people yelling that it’s a literal hellscape and traffic and etc etc etc but what are people who are living lives they enjoy going to say when they hear that? What are people who don’t want to live the small community lifestyle going to say when told it’s the only good way of living? When people who enjoy the benefits of modern logistics get told they’ll just learn to adapt to having less?
The dumbest bit is we could be focusing on positive additions to peoples lives and offering greater efficiency and freedom through the use of modern planning and technology - that’s what the 15 min city idea is actually about (kinda, depending who’s version you look at).
The logistics of a 15 min lifestyle have to exceed in quality of life the current system, and people need to actually agree not just be badgerd into accepting less. I could talk for days about how this can be done, key points include integrated transport networks to facilitate travel and exploration, nationalised version of Amazon and eBay with community shipping, zoning rules based on measured impact rather than use type (e.g. you’re welcome to live in a high noise area or have shops in a low pollution and traffic area if you can accept the limitations), nationalised services for community utilities to avoid corporate monopolies, measures to improve temporary relocation and travel, investment in affordable and efficient multi-transport cargo (rather than a removal van taking your house the whole way you fill a cargo container and have it collected by a lorry to do the first mile journey to a station where it’s loaded onto a train or ship to move to a transport hub then forwarded to the final destination where it’s taken last mile to the new address by a lorry…)
Improving logistics has to come first, the rallying cry can’t be ‘you need this and will have to try and learn to live with it’ it has to be ‘this is how we can live better lives’
You are right. And that is because any departure from that 15 minute zone by a vehicle is supposed to be billed. And people don’t want to be restricted to move free of charge only within those 15 minutes. Nobody is stupid not to want everything they need on a daily basis within a spiting distance.
My local walkable grocery store is a Safeway. They sell a 3lb pack of ground turkey for $18.
Walmart, target, smart and final, and Lucky’s are all <$12, but I have to drive. And that’s one item. I save hundreds a month in groceries because I have a car and can shop around. I can wait for deals, I can buy in bulk.
The idea of a walkable city is nice, but if you restrict competition, prices skyrocket. And yeah, that Safeway is walkable to an apartment, the only grocery store that is, and they know it. It is infuriating to dismiss practicality for an dream.
Walkable cities and car hate are just another generations NYMBY’s. Those rich enough and finantialy secure to afford premiums that push others out. Meanwhile this transitional uncertainty greatly harms many of us struggling to make ends meet.
That doesn’t even make sense - you are in a neighborhood that only has one grocery store nearby due to car dependent planning, therefore walkability isn’t practical?
I live in a neighborhood that was definitely originally designed for cars and has been gradually getting better and I’ve already got at least two grocery stores I can easily walk to, plus two convenience stores and a pharmacy that’s kind of also a convenience store. Then I’ve got another three or four that I can easily bike to. And these aren’t small grocery stores, they’re all like massive supermarkets designed originally around car traffic.
If you spend time in places that have actual walkable neighborhoods, you find lots of much smaller grocery stores and you can easily shop around and compare prices on foot.
I think there’s a big difference in how you understand these things depending what angle you come from, logistically your situation makes no sense and only seems to exist, as you said, because of car centric infrastructure. Where I live was very much designed around foot traffic and yes it’s great being able to get all the daily things nearby, I love the parks and on rare occasions I actually went to go where the busses take me, plan to be back before they stop and don’t have to take more than a bags worth of stuff with me they’re great too.
There are very real problems though, local library is useful if you order books and don’t mind waiting forever, shops likewise are great for bread, cheese and snacks but unless you want a very boring diet and dont mind paying a premium otherwise you need to go somewhere with a higher volume of trade than the walkable zone around the local shops can support - that’s before you consider things beyond food like tools, clothes, and services.
All the small grocery stores their entire customer base can walk to are more expensive than larger stores and they all sell the same basic items - it’s just logistics. It’s not hard to look at the lives people here lived before cars, they had less and did less and lived much worse lives - well those the couldn’t afford a horse drawn carriage of course, personal wheeled transport has been deemed a necessity of good living for centuries.
I’m thankfully not American. There are 3 large grocery stores within walking distance of my home. Also 5 bakeries, 3 greensgrocers, 2 furniture sellers, 7 butchers, 5 banks, 3 stationeries, 4 hairdressers… the list goes on and on. I’m not even very close to the city center, either.
Homer : Sir, I need to know where I can get some business hammocks.
Hank Scorpio : Hammocks? My goodness, what an idea. Why didn’t I think of that? Hammocks! Homer, there’s four places. There’s the Hammock Hut, that’s on third.
Homer : Uh-huh.
Hank Scorpio : There’s Hammocks-R-Us, that’s on third too. You got Put-Your-Butt-There.
Homer : Mm-Hmm.
Hank Scorpio : That’s on third. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot… Matter of fact, they’re all in the same complex; it’s the hammock complex on third.
Most downtowns are built for commuters rather than residents. They forced out residents in favor of building higher cost commercial real estate. What residential buildings there is targets only the highest incomes. No surprise they are struggling.
Hear me out, and this might sound crazy: but what if we build walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods with shops, parks, and libraries? That way people will boost local economy instead of getting into car and driving to centralized locations like Walmart or malls?
Then who would we sell gas to?
Sadly this is one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle, even more sadly the rest of it is probably racism
That sounds like some of that communist soci-libral nazism to me, for sure for sure /s
We had that. We bulldozed it.
I mean, what kind of healthy life are you trying to live?
But then you will hear many decry the creation of 15 minute cities and they want to force us to never leave the area and take away our cars to control us.
I wish I could end this with /s but I’ve actually seen people post this sadly.
We will reach a point when the “I can’t park anywhere” crowd is outvoted by the I want to walk to run errands crowd.
That’s already happening in some places. The cities right outside Boston, for example.
The problem is that once again people with genuine concerns get derided and insulted which pushes them deeper into these views - people have a lot of great reasons for not wanting their car taken away and fearing that the rich’s solution to population growth is going to be to force people into prison communities, that’s been a common theme in history - Australia and America only exist as they are because of the clearances, and the North of England owes most it’s population to poors getting tricked into moving to brutally compact works towns and treated like cattle.
Instead of hearing the fears and needs of people they’re just attacked, called stupid and going by most the times I’ve seen it come up flooded by people saying things like ‘cars are bad, it would be better if we got rid of them all’ which is super unhelpful, it’s like calling a movement ‘defund the police’ and having everyone yell about how we should get rid of them all because they’re all bastard’s but not address the actual needs society has for people tasked with stopping crime - why do people supporting sensible and important things have to make their views sound so intensely unpalatable?
We need to address all the great things that cars and suburban living have brought us, and yes I can already hear the comments from people yelling that it’s a literal hellscape and traffic and etc etc etc but what are people who are living lives they enjoy going to say when they hear that? What are people who don’t want to live the small community lifestyle going to say when told it’s the only good way of living? When people who enjoy the benefits of modern logistics get told they’ll just learn to adapt to having less?
The dumbest bit is we could be focusing on positive additions to peoples lives and offering greater efficiency and freedom through the use of modern planning and technology - that’s what the 15 min city idea is actually about (kinda, depending who’s version you look at).
The logistics of a 15 min lifestyle have to exceed in quality of life the current system, and people need to actually agree not just be badgerd into accepting less. I could talk for days about how this can be done, key points include integrated transport networks to facilitate travel and exploration, nationalised version of Amazon and eBay with community shipping, zoning rules based on measured impact rather than use type (e.g. you’re welcome to live in a high noise area or have shops in a low pollution and traffic area if you can accept the limitations), nationalised services for community utilities to avoid corporate monopolies, measures to improve temporary relocation and travel, investment in affordable and efficient multi-transport cargo (rather than a removal van taking your house the whole way you fill a cargo container and have it collected by a lorry to do the first mile journey to a station where it’s loaded onto a train or ship to move to a transport hub then forwarded to the final destination where it’s taken last mile to the new address by a lorry…)
Improving logistics has to come first, the rallying cry can’t be ‘you need this and will have to try and learn to live with it’ it has to be ‘this is how we can live better lives’
I’m not reading all that.
Sorry for you tho. Or happy that it happened.
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You are right. And that is because any departure from that 15 minute zone by a vehicle is supposed to be billed. And people don’t want to be restricted to move free of charge only within those 15 minutes. Nobody is stupid not to want everything they need on a daily basis within a spiting distance.
because I love spending 4 hours in the bus to go to a park for lunch.
Not a problem if there’s a park and a cafe 5min walk from your house.
I cant tell if there were a bunch of people who missed the inherent sarcasm in my post.
Or if they genuinely believe a 4 hour bus ride to the park is a good thing.
Take this /s, we are on the internet, tone and intent don’t communicate via text. Use it wisely.
You must be talking about that liberal agenda to make communist “15 minute cities!”
Not today, bill gates!!
My local walkable grocery store is a Safeway. They sell a 3lb pack of ground turkey for $18.
Walmart, target, smart and final, and Lucky’s are all <$12, but I have to drive. And that’s one item. I save hundreds a month in groceries because I have a car and can shop around. I can wait for deals, I can buy in bulk.
The idea of a walkable city is nice, but if you restrict competition, prices skyrocket. And yeah, that Safeway is walkable to an apartment, the only grocery store that is, and they know it. It is infuriating to dismiss practicality for an dream.
Walkable cities and car hate are just another generations NYMBY’s. Those rich enough and finantialy secure to afford premiums that push others out. Meanwhile this transitional uncertainty greatly harms many of us struggling to make ends meet.
That doesn’t even make sense - you are in a neighborhood that only has one grocery store nearby due to car dependent planning, therefore walkability isn’t practical?
I live in a neighborhood that was definitely originally designed for cars and has been gradually getting better and I’ve already got at least two grocery stores I can easily walk to, plus two convenience stores and a pharmacy that’s kind of also a convenience store. Then I’ve got another three or four that I can easily bike to. And these aren’t small grocery stores, they’re all like massive supermarkets designed originally around car traffic.
If you spend time in places that have actual walkable neighborhoods, you find lots of much smaller grocery stores and you can easily shop around and compare prices on foot.
I think there’s a big difference in how you understand these things depending what angle you come from, logistically your situation makes no sense and only seems to exist, as you said, because of car centric infrastructure. Where I live was very much designed around foot traffic and yes it’s great being able to get all the daily things nearby, I love the parks and on rare occasions I actually went to go where the busses take me, plan to be back before they stop and don’t have to take more than a bags worth of stuff with me they’re great too.
There are very real problems though, local library is useful if you order books and don’t mind waiting forever, shops likewise are great for bread, cheese and snacks but unless you want a very boring diet and dont mind paying a premium otherwise you need to go somewhere with a higher volume of trade than the walkable zone around the local shops can support - that’s before you consider things beyond food like tools, clothes, and services.
All the small grocery stores their entire customer base can walk to are more expensive than larger stores and they all sell the same basic items - it’s just logistics. It’s not hard to look at the lives people here lived before cars, they had less and did less and lived much worse lives - well those the couldn’t afford a horse drawn carriage of course, personal wheeled transport has been deemed a necessity of good living for centuries.
I’m thankfully not American. There are 3 large grocery stores within walking distance of my home. Also 5 bakeries, 3 greensgrocers, 2 furniture sellers, 7 butchers, 5 banks, 3 stationeries, 4 hairdressers… the list goes on and on. I’m not even very close to the city center, either.
Homer : Sir, I need to know where I can get some business hammocks.
Hank Scorpio : Hammocks? My goodness, what an idea. Why didn’t I think of that? Hammocks! Homer, there’s four places. There’s the Hammock Hut, that’s on third.
Homer : Uh-huh.
Hank Scorpio : There’s Hammocks-R-Us, that’s on third too. You got Put-Your-Butt-There.
Homer : Mm-Hmm.
Hank Scorpio : That’s on third. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot… Matter of fact, they’re all in the same complex; it’s the hammock complex on third.
Homer : Oh, the hammock district!
Hank Scorpio : That’s right.
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Aw, man, two thirds through your comment I upvoted you cuz I felt bad your joke got taken wrong.
But the winge-fest in the edit… Dude sometimes a joke doesn’t land, take the L.
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Ehh, all you really did was look obnoxious more than anything else. I don’t think you actually managed to upset anyone.
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I feel like fuckcars acts as a magnet for some of the more rabid redditor transplants from the antiwork sub.
Theres plenty of good points to be made but some of these kids are just red lining it all the time.
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I see only one that is sensitive here, and it is the one adding edits screaming about nobody liking their joke.
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