[MontyCarloHall]

Put solar panels on the roof and an electric car in the driveway.

The main strike against suburban lifestyles today is that they’re energy intensive and thus carbon-heavy. There is nothing wrong with a energy intensive suburban life if that energy is carbon neutral.

(And yes, as other posters point out, there are some additional environmental externalities associated with suburban versus urban lifestyles. It’s not clear to me how severe these externalities are, and thus whether they are worth the tradeoff of increased quality of life for the many people who love living in the suburbs. As an extreme example, living a pre-industrial lifestyle would be much more environmentally friendly, but it isn’t remotely worth the quality of life tradeoff.)

[kgran]

Electric cars are as zero-carbon as the cost-equivalent space of a freshly paved asphalt concrete highway or parking space. If not more than that due to the more special materials required to make them.

Also note that, due to much heavier weight of electric cars, asphalt concrete surfaces will be damaged a lot faster. The relationship between vehicle weight and its damage to the road surface is exponential, not linear.

[oblio]

You still need to drive places, which is the least efficient method of mass transportation. An entire infrastructure needs to be built and maintained for cars, which is super wasteful and in almost every country is pushing everyone into debt that is just punted into the future.

Sure, convenient for individuals but absolutely not sustainable for society, nor the planet. Even with electric cars and green energy.

The insane cost of cars: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ztHZj6QNlkM

The hard truth is that if we don't want to abandon our comfortable modern lifestyles, 80-90% of us will have to live in dense cities and use mass transportation 95% of the time.

[nlittlepoole]

I agree with you but I think one thing that might help people fear this change less is reiterating that the density necessary isn't Manhattan or Downtown Chicago. There are a lot of ways to make an efficient urban area without being a massive megalopolis. Neighborhoods like Park Slope in Brooklyn or Sunset in SF are good examples. Multifamily housing doesn't have to mean high rises.

People also don't have to live in what we think of as cities at all. Rural living is fine if people live closer together in those areas. Such that they live in walkable towns that don't require driving and can be easily connected to other towns and cities via a bus or train. Europe is much better at this but you see vestiges in New England. It's just nobody should really be living beyond walking or biking distance of core services (transport, shopping, etc). The benefit for those who love nature is more untampered natural beauty in the surrounding areas. If anyone has ever been to a place like Banff it's lovely when fine right.

[oblio]

Someone posted here that the maximum density with this type of housing is 3 stories, 75 dwellings per hectare, so about 7500 dwellings per square kilometer. At 3 stories, that has to be at least 6 people per dwelling, so about 45k people per square kilometer. Let's cut that to 5k people per square kilometer to account for infrastructure, shops, schools, etc, it still seems reasonable.

We don't even need more than that on average, we don't need Hong Kongs everywhere. "Brownstones" will do :-)

[mrcartmeneses]

Which is great. Living in cities in Europe is fantastic. Even the towns are great in some countries with great rail and tram connections

[nemo44x]

Who wants to use a train/tram to haul kids and their things around? Do you really think it's possible to haul an infant, a toddler, and a 4 year-old around and all their things using a train that will only get you so close and now you have to walk another 4 blocks? Who wants to do that?

A home with space and a nice sized yard and an automobile to travel around in is great. It's nice to have a local train too to get into the adjacent metropolis, etc.

[mrcartmeneses]

I do that all the time. Works well if you know how, which you do if you live in a city. We tend to use our transporter bike for short trips with the smallest child, long trips are usually a combination of bike and public transport and sometimes we’ll take a cab, car club or rent a car if there’s a specific need (such as when we go camping). Yes we have been on family camping trips where we get the train to the coast with all of our gear and a cab to the campsite from the nearest station. Yes we’ve also done trips where we rented a van. All of this was orders of magnitude cheaper than owning a car. It is also faster. A regular trip I do via bike + public transport takes 50 mins on a good day, 2.5 hours on a very good day by car. (I’ve done both multiple times)

I have three kids. The eldest is 15. I’ve never owned a car. I probably never will.

[oblio]

What are we talking about? Long trips? Short trips? What's the use case?

For short stuff, bakfiets. For the second part, sure, why not? Get a baby buggy for multiple kids.

Walking is also good for you.

Also, is all of this happening as a single parent? How many single parents with 3 kids are even out there? 0.00001% of the population?

All these problems are solvable. With probably less than half the money spent on car infrastructure and 5% the pollution.

[nemo44x]

Ok it’s raining or snowing or very hot outside - I’m not throwing 3 kids into a wheelbarrow fitted to a bike and doing that. What an awful way to live.

Why does it matter how many parents? One could be away or working and the other has to go 5 miles to Costco or whatever. Your little bike things don’t work. Also there are lots of single parents with 3+ kids.

I don’t want your terrible solution or way of life. I like having a large home with a large lawn and a large SUV to drive my family where we want when we want. I take trains and walk too and use strollers of course. But that’s like 20% of the time. Your comment reads like a person who doesn’t have kids.

[mrcartmeneses]

If you think my way of life with my 3 kids is terrible and your way of life with your SUV is the only possible solution then I think you’d be happier if you widened your horizons rather than shitting on everyone else when they are having a good time.

[starkd]

He just proposed a housing solution. Now you are complaining because he hasn't produced a transportation solution as well?

[goodpoint]

That's not the point. Proposing a housing solution that encourage unsustainable transportation is not sustainable.

[oblio]

Those are tied.

It's impossible to service low density housing efficiently.

[tremon]

The main strike against suburban lifestyles is that the maintenance cost per square meter (water, sewage, electrics, roads, communications) is much higher than the area generates in taxes.

[criddell]

I've heard that before and believe it to be true, but then it makes me wonder why cities are often so eager to annex suburban developments? If a suburb isn't paying it's fair share, why don't cities raise taxes or un-annex them? (is there a word for un-annex?)

[adrianN]

https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ Cities need to grow new developments to pay for the existing developments.

[criddell]

Presumably when the infrastructure needs to be replaced local governments will finance with bonds (which I think makes a lot of sense). If the bonds are paid for by suburban taxes, do you think the suburbs will get to be as expensive as the city or maybe even more expensive?

The Strong Towns ideology is attractive (especially for northern US cities), but I think if self driving cars come into existence, the ideas might not get very far in most places. Self driving cars are going to encourage sprawl like no other force ever has. I know I'd move further out if I had a self-driving car.

[starkd]

A lot of people don't like to live in cities.

[nemo44x]

You have to remember a lot of people on this site are young people without families that prioritize social lives. They haven't related yet that people with kids and careers, etc. are simply not interested in what cities have to offer and that the quality of life in a city is terrible if you have a family compared to what you can get outside of a city in a nice town. Unless you're really rich and can get a huge apartment or condo and can afford to pay for parking or have a driver, etc.

Just look at NYC to find the typical pattern: Young person lives with multiple people in an area like the Lower East Side or Williamsburg (yay social life!), then begins to settle down in a place like Park Slope (just married!) and has a kid (dedicated to urban living) and then another kid comes along and/or the reality of urban living (the schools are awful, it's cramped and expensive, the city offers you nearly nothing since you don't go out like you used to) and the brownstone is sold for a tidy profit and they're off to the NYC suburbs to get more space and a better quality of life to raise a family in. The city is a short commute away still.

[MontyCarloHall]

That’s a separate issue from suburbs’ environmental impact. I’m all for raising property taxes in suburbs to make their residents pay their fair share for infrastructure.

[adrianN]

Suburbia also encroaches on wildlife habitat, reduces ground water replenishment, requires expensive infrastructure, and is material (not just energy) intensive.

[mrcartmeneses]

Other than the air pollution from your tyres, the pollution and murder from getting the materials for your car batteries and the taxes that poorer residents in the inner cities have to pay to subsidise the high cost of services and low tax intake from the suburbs