[vkou]

Houston is 700 square miles of low-density sprawl, with what feels like 400 of them occupied by roads and parking lots.

That pattern of development optimizes for... Well, a couple of metrics, but most of them don't have much to do with efficiency or optimization.

[Ericson2314]

Yes getting rid of zoning and things (which as the artificial nicely points out means going beyond what Houston has done) is still not enough.

Cars are still uniquely terrible. I'm beginning to view them re development like a gene drive is to geneics: a single piece of technology that upends the careful balance from before and takes over everything.

Public transit + anti-car urbanism, while much more fragile due to today's rich hating it, still also has increasing returns though. Do a LVT and Carbon tax too to accelerate that.

[etrabroline]

>Public transit + anti-car urbanism, while much more fragile due to today's rich hating it

Then why does every billionaire and national newspaper support those things? For that to be true, your definition of "rich" would have to include the approximately 90% of Americans who bought a car and a home in a place that requires driving.

Having a back yard and guest bedroom and driving 15 minutes to the grocery store is preferable to the vast majority of people to living in a small apartment and relying on public transportation. If it wasn't these western US cities would have developed differently.

[zip1234]

America has laws (zoning) that almost require a car. Thus people drive and then more car centric areas are built which requires more driving and more cars. It is a loop that reinforces itself. Most Americans do not have a choice of car ownership since it is effectively required because of lack of other options. You say that it is preferable, but that is difficult to say since car ownership is so subsidized and prioritized.

[closeparen]

a) We have terrible transit even in places that approve ballot measures about transit, suggesting part of the problem is the administrative state's inability to deliver rather than the fundamental policy preference.

b) Small transit-connected apartments fetch much better prices than many sprawl houses, suggesting that the preferences people express with their wallets and they preferences they speak into the microphone at zoning board meetings are pretty different.

[etrabroline]

a) Its too late at that point. Denver is a good example of a suburban car-based city that is pouring billions into pubic transportation that can never compete with cars. pick two random spots and compare the driving directions with public transportation. The city would need to be rebuilt as high-density.

b) You have cause and effect backwards here. Apartments are built in those areas because real-estate is already expensive. The real-estate is not expensive because they built an apartment building in the middle of nowhere. Things have to be high-density from the beginning for it to work, and everyone building housing since the automobile has chosen to go low-density whenever possible.

Building a high-density city today would require preventing people from building low-density just outside city limits and driving into town, zooming past all the suckers who bought a cramped apartment waiting at the bus stop.

[Ericson2314]

> Building a high-density city today would require...driving into town

Actually you just said the solution. Let them buy all the exurb crap the want, but make driving hell in all the main destinations. Do that, and your transit investments will actually work.

Only spinless politicians that want to appease both sides make transit fail and let the car win.

[etrabroline]

>Only spinless politicians that want to appease both sides make transit fail and let the car win.

Welcome to democracy. The only way this could work is if you could decide to have a city where all the people who want cars aren't allowed to live there (or at least aren't allowed to vote there). In other words, a hard boarder with immigration controls, and ideally an independent budget so the Federal or State government can't tax you are require you to build highways to get your tax money back in the form of grants.

[closeparen]

The same metro area can present a tradeoff between short train ride/tiny apartment and long drive/big house. If your statement were true there would be little demand for the former. But it turns out there’s a lot.

[etrabroline]

Ok. I gave mine, so what's you're theory on why post-automobile cities are so spread out?

[cool_dude85]

Sorry, which national newspaper supports anti-car urbanism?

[specialist]

My local paper regularly rails against an imaginary phalanx of anti-car jihadists. Any dollar not spent in support of automobiles is sufficient evidence of a nefarious anti-car agenda. Meanwhile, pre-apocalypse, mass transit is chronically under funded and over capacity.

Apparently commuters choosing to not drive is an unforgivable affront to Freedom Markets™.

Cite: The Power Broker, Robert Caro

[jcranmer]

There are definitely some activists for whom the label "anti-car" might be fairly applied, as these activists appear to reflexively oppose any project involving cars. However, virtually every time I've seen the charge of "anti-car" labelled at an organization or individual, it's generally by the sort of people you describe, people who define "anti-car" as spending a dime on anything that doesn't support cars, irrespective of whether or not the targets also support car projects.

The national newspapers I've seen have broadly been pro-infrastructure of all kinds, whether car or mass transit.

[Ericson2314]

Right but mass transit are cars in inherent conflict. There's no way to "do both" and not be incredibly wasteful.

A lot of newspapers are for a little for-show light rail with park and drive for 9-5 commuters only, but this is a waste that just begets more car-oriented suburbs.

True urban development is going to force a lot of people comfortable in their subdivisions and predictable slowly-to-the-moon single family home prices to comfort a different world, and nobody likes change.

So it's rich people + status quo inertia. That's a lot to confront.

[etrabroline]

>mass transit is chronically under funded and over capacity.

Ironically in most places it's hardly used at all and the few places where people actually use it are where its underfunded and overcrowded.

[vkou]

> Then why does every billionaire and national newspaper support those things

1. Most national news, by number of publications leans left. Conservative publications get more eyeballs per outlet, though. Most local news, of course, takes the installation of a single bike lane as evidence that the ghosts of Pol Pot and Stalin have just succeeded in an unholy socialist coup of the local city council.

2. Right leaning billionaires tend to keep their mouths shut more than left-leaning ones.

[refurb]

Where I live (not the US) has clean, efficient public transit and high density urban planning.

What do most of the middle class want? To move out of their cramped apartments into a single family home. And to own a car.

People act like suburbanism was forced on people when the reality is it’s preferred by many.

[ZoomerCretin]

>People act like suburbanism was forced on people when the reality is it’s preferred by many.

That some people prefer suburbanism does not imply suburbanism is not being forced on a large proportion of the population that prefers affordable housing in cities dense enough to support efficient public transit. When people moved to the suburbs, large corporations followed and built sprawling offices, often in areas with poor public transportation and without sidewalks. When the choice is between an apartment with a hellish commute and a house close to work, of course many opt for the suburbs, but that does not imply that this is their preference. A suburban home and a car are nice to have if it's an option, but too frequently it's a requirement to own a car, and painful to not live near your suburban office.

[vkou]

> And to own a car.

Who wants to own a car? Between tolls, parking, insurance, maintenance, and the sticker price, it's a large hole in the ground that I throw money into.

I do want to be able to use a car... To go out of town a few times a year.

[refurb]

Plenty apparently. Like I said, the public transportation is great here but owning a car is very popular. No more waiting for transit. No more trips that take 30 min that you can drive in 15 min. Easier to cart your kids around.

And it’s not cheap at all (import tax of 100%), yet people are more than willing to pay it.

[vkou]

Ah, so the problem with this is that it stops being something to aspire to when everyone gets one. Because then, that 15 minute trip turns into 30 minutes of gridlock, followed by 15 minutes of looking for parking.

That's the problem with cars. They are great in theory, but absolutely ruin a city in practice. Which is fine if you are the only person on your block who owns one...

[alistairSH]

This is mentioned in the article. The city did reduce the minimum lot size considerably in the late 90s. But, that wouldn't have undone decades of too-large lots for SFH and lot size so large THs were completely untenable.

All that said, it sounds like Houston could be a good "experiment" for something more efficient/optimal than the normal US city/suburb zoning scheme. Reduce the lot sizes a bit more, remove parking minimums, etc.

[ska]

> The city did reduce the minimum lot size considerably in the late 90s.

Only inside the loop, which is a small fraction of the city's area. They also point out the pervasive use of restrictive convenants, which make most of the suburbs much like their counterparts in other cities.

One thing they didn't mention is that some parts of the inner loop are not getting any kind of development; mostly the south west loop. As always it's complicated but there are socioeconomic and race issues bundled up in it. At least that was true a dozen years ago.

[jcranmer]

> All that said, it sounds like Houston could be a good "experiment" for something more efficient/optimal than the normal US city/suburb zoning scheme. Reduce the lot sizes a bit more, remove parking minimums, etc.

The problem is that Houston is extremely lacking in offering any transit-based options for people, which means the "solution" is going to be extremely biased towards whatever is most comfortable to people who travel exclusively via single-occupant vehicles.