[AnthonyMouse]

> But it's amazing how much modern-ish suburbia just has no place for you to even exist without a car.

It's trendy to blame cars for this but the problem is fundamentally zoning. It's not that there is nowhere for you to exist without a car, it's that there is nowhere for you to exist there at all, and you thereby need a car to leave the vicinity in order to get anywhere you can.

If you want to build a cafe or an arcade or a hackerspace out in suburbia, can you? That's not even about density. If you could put those things there then people would and there would be something kids could walk to. But everything other than residences is banned, so of course there is nothing else there.

[oersted]

As a European, I don’t understand why there’s such resistance to this. I get it NIMBY, but why? Surely good amenities would improve property values and life quality. If it’s right next to your home all the better.

Peaceful quietness is so overrated by US and northern Europe. It feels creepy and dead to me, a liminal space.

Besides, modern insulation does wonders for blocking noise if that bothers you, not to mention the savings on your energy bill.

I want my streets to feel alive!

[macNchz]

In most of the US, only single family detached houses are built (by law), which makes things spread out enough that people will want to drive. To address that, businesses are required to have a bunch of parking space. The end result of that is that, outside of a few places built before these rules took hold, living near amenities means living by parking lots and car traffic. The kind of street that "feels alive" is basically just precluded by rules that facilitate a car-first way of getting around.

[oersted]

Surely there could be small shops and restaurants dispersed at walking distances that don’t require parking space.

I get that it is low density, but not that low, and there is some money to spend in such areas. They would do good business.

[steveklabnik]

> Surely there could be small shops and restaurants dispersed at walking distances that don’t require parking space.

I know it sounds insane, but no, in many places, this is not possible.

My city, Austin, eliminated mandatory minimum parking in 2023, and was at the time the largest US city to do so https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/02/austin-minimum-parki...

I know of at least one business in my neighborhood that died due to these rules. They needed to expand to make the business work, but doing so would require that they buy even more land, in a fairly dense neighborhood, and turn it into parking.

[oersted]

Oh I understand that it is a regulatory constraint. What I don’t understand is why the regulations aren’t changed. Who is benefiting?

I don’t see why it wouldn’t be better for everyone, both in terms of business and living standards.

[steveklabnik]

People who primarily drive don't think through the second order implications.

I have been in the car with someone more than once, looking for parking, where they re-invent the idea from first principles. "Ugh, we can't find a spot, why don't they require this place to provide enough parking?"

It was a tremendous political fight to get these sorts of reforms through. People get really upset when they perceive you as taking away their convenience.

[macNchz]

There's definitely plenty of suburban development in the US that could support small neighborhood businesses without parking spaces, but in the overwhelming majority of the country, they're literally not allowed to exist without special permission.

In theory this ensures that any one business doesn't put undue strain on the local supply of parking spaces, but in reality I think it creates a sort of feedback loop that hollows out walkable downtowns/village centers, in favor of sprawl, where a car is required for 100% of trips (which in turn further increases demand for parking).

[bombcar]

Even where it's allowed (which is more places than you think, look at zoning maps) and some places where it's not (variations exist) the places that do pop up usually die.

It takes serious dedication and time to turn a culture around, throwing in a few "desired third places" isn't going to cut it - at least not before the rents become too much to bear.

[amanaplanacanal]

The whole parking thing is just so weird. Looking around my neighborhood, every house has a two car garage and enough room in the driveway to park either 2 or 4 more cars. But somehow street parking is at a premium.

[carlosjobim]

Suburbia = New developments, not inherited through generations of family

New developments = You buy your land plot, you don't inherit it

Restaurant or small shop = Very small profits

Restaurant or small shop outside city centre = Even smaller profits

Very small profits = Not a good investment of time or money to build restaurant or small shop in suburbia

Compared to:

Inherit restaurant in European town = No rent or interest to pay

Inherit restaurant in European town = No cost to build restaurant

Inherit restaurant in European town = Mortgage the building to borrow money for reforms and investments.

> They would do good business.

Then why aren't you opening restaurants and small shops?

[AnthonyMouse]

It's some kind of perverse regulatory capture by landlords with the self-destructive assistance of homeowners. Actual urban real estate is preposterously expensive, but the only reason it stays that way is that you can't create more of it, i.e. put urban developments in high demand areas that are currently suburbs.

The landlords who own the urban real estate correctly deduce that allowing more to be built would lower rents. They then convince suburban homeowners to go in with them on preventing that from happening, even though it's not really in the homeowners' interest, because rezoning would reduce the value of housing (i.e. price per square foot) but increase the value of land because you could build more housing on it. The urban landlords are the only losers there, because they have a high ratio of housing to land, so they want the housing to be expensive rather than the land. The ordinary suburban homeowners, by contrast, have a high ratio of land to housing, so they benefit from making the land worth more, i.e. allowing more to be built on it, but are bamboozled into wanting the price of housing to be high and therefore oppose urbanization.

You also get a lot of rubbish arguments about "induced demand" which try to imply that building housing would raise prices, when what it actually does is raise prices in the area immediately surrounding the new development (because people like new developments) while making it more affordable in all of the places they're moving from. Which is then used as an excuse not to do it, even though it improves affordability on net while creating more of the areas people actually want.

Something similar happens with commercial space. The landlords want it to be scarce. The argument used in that case will be something like "businesses will buy up houses to build Starbucks" or "it will make traffic worse" as if they wouldn't happily give you a Starbucks and a dozen new housing units on that piece of land if you'd let them, and as if traffic gets worse instead of better when people are closer to things and therefore drive fewer miles. But again it's really the landlords with the limited land that is zoned for those things trying to keep anyone else from getting any, and the other arguments are just the kayfabe because "we want rents to be high" is unsympathetic.

[oersted]

I do understand why it is kept as low-density, that makes sense. But why not allow intermingled small shops, family-friendly restaurant/bars, schools, sport facilities… Surely they would make the area more desirable?

[galangalalgol]

I read that the banks often set minimum rents on the commercial real estate built or renovated with their loans. The minimum is too high for most any business to be profitable, so you see a series of failed attempts until a big chain like 711 or Starbucks rents it. They still don't profit and just close the store but keep the rental because longer terms usually. Not sure why the banks have this incentive.

[MSFT_Edging]

A pet shop in a strip mall closed a few years ago due to a rent increase. The spot has been empty since. I really think there needs to be some reverse market incentives. No tax breaks on empty space if you can't show you're making honest effort to rent it out, and progressively lowering the cost of rent to reflect the lower property value.

If it's actually a market, it should go up AND down. Otherwise it's just a scam.

[steveklabnik]

A lot of this boils down to decades of compounding preferences. Americans were taught that their birthright is to live in detached homes in low-density areas. The density is seen as a negative, yes.

I don't get it either.

[smallerfish]

There isn't resistance. It comes from development patterns.

A developer buys 10 hectares of land and wants to max out the returns, so they pack it full of houses. Another developer buys the adjacent 20 hectares and follows the same strategy. Rinse and repeat. Purely market driven housing development orients towards developer profit, not long term quality of life of the neighborhoods being constructed.

[oersted]

I am sure that they could better maximize their returns by making room for local businesses and increasing the appeal of the area. And who says that a house will be worth more than a shop?

It sounds more like “this is the way you do it” momentum.

[bluGill]

You need about 10 houses per shop (anyone with better numbers? this works for discussion but it is likely wrong). However everybody needs many different shops and so it isn't a case of 10 houses 1 shop - since you always need to go elsewhere anyway wouldn't even think of the local shop when it would do and so they fail. Even in dense cities it is common to see one street of ground for retail then several streets of no retail.

Shops do better when clustered together. People combine trips and so if they need to go one place for any reason that will often enough "drop in" to a different one.

All this is to say, in most cases a shop is worth less than a house on those developments even though a shop would get higher rent when it is rented!

[AnthonyMouse]

> However everybody needs many different shops

That doesn't matter to any given one because they rarely need multiple types at the same time, so they just go to the nearest one of whatever they currently need. If you could build them in the suburbs then for many people in the suburbs, that would be the nearest one and it would get enough business to be sustainable. While reducing traffic because now some subset of the customers can walk to it instead of 100% of them needing to drive.

> Even in dense cities it is common to see one street of ground for retail then several streets of no retail.

Isn't that mainly because of zoning? The area with all the shops is the area where shops are allowed, or the area where something that pays higher prices for space than shops isn't.

> All this is to say, in most cases a shop is worth less than a house on those developments even though a shop would get higher rent when it is rented!

You should be able to have the shop and a housing unit or three on the same piece of land, which not only allows you to make more valuable use of the land, it also puts more people (i.e. customers) near the shop.

[hansvm]

> 10 houses per shop

Broadly speaking, that sounds super low, and it also doesn't echo the business density I typically observe. I think even for lifestyle businesses you need hundreds of homes actively using your services, maybe thousands total. Suppose you really could live off just 10 houses; you'd need something like $2400/yr/person in revenue at 100% cash operating margins to turn it into a reasonable income (which, given your risk exposure via rent, capital, etc, I don't think most people would start a business with the intent of the owner making less than $60k/yr in income, perhaps scaled down in much smaller, cheaper towns). There aren't many kinds of businesses where I spend that much money, and those definitely don't have anywhere near 100% margins. Just right off the bat, 100 or 1000 feels closer to correct than 10.

Most small businesses have fairly low margins. Even when you factor the cost of owner labor at zero (common for "lifestyle" businesses -- splitting it out this way so that we can look at COGS and then compare to a single family's income), you might see 10-20% cash operating margins for various shops, cafes, restaurants, 5-10% at groceries and pharmacies, 20-40% at bike shops and gyms, and 50%+ at barbers (details, especially for higher-margin industries like barbershops, depend a lot on the exact terms of rent and local tax laws, but this is a halfway decent ballpark).

Let's run some numbers.

The average person waits 2 months between hair cuts. Let's assume a moderately expensive cut at $40. The owner keeps $120/yr/person, or $300/yr/house. In the sort of town likely to have $40 be a reasonable baseline haircut price, $60k/yr is probably the bare minimum you'd want the owner to make to call this endeavor successful, especially when you factor in the increased financial risk they're taking on, so you need 200 homes actively frequenting your establishment in particular.

The average grocery bill for a single person is $300/mo, or $750/mo per household, of which the grocery store owner keeps $37.50-$75/mo, or $450-$900/yr. You need 66-133 homes frequenting that establishment in particular to keep its lights on, but I'd argue $60k/yr, while low for a barber or hair salon, is extremely low for a capital-intensive business.

Suppose you have a local cafe or bakery you visit every weekday on the way to work, or maybe every weekend on your morning walks. You spend $10 on a couple nice croissants, a single stuffed croissant, or something to that effect -- averaging the two customer types together, you spend $5/day, $1825/yr, $4562.50/yr/house, and the bakery keeps $456.25-$912.5/yr/house. You need 65-132 homes actively supporting that business. If you have customers like me who basically only stop in to the bakery when extended family is in town (preferring to cook my own), I might slightly bolster the grocer's margins (not a ton if I'm just buying flour, yeast, butter, and salt), but you need 1249-2500 homes like mine to support the bakery.

Retail shops (bookstores, local artwork, etc) have a pretty dismal outlook too. Used books are dirt cheap, I don't read as much as I used to (picked up other hobbies like playing the piano), and I do a lot of my reading online nowadays anyway. I spend maybe $100-$200/yr on books. I think that's above average, though I don't really know. The bookstore owner keeps $10-$40/yr though after rent and other expenses and needs 600-2400 homes filled with people like me (and who also don't share their books) for its support structure.

Instead of looking at rough estimates based on profit margins and usage, you can look at towns you understand reasonably well. One county I know of, for example, which does all of its business in a single, central town, has around 15k people, or 6k households (or if we're just counting the town population itself for some reason, 1200 households, but I think that's a significant underestimate). It has two grocery stores, two hardware stores, two music stores (instruments, lessons, etc, and another store outside of town), 15 restaurants (and another 5-10 in the rest of the county), and three pharmacies. Depending on how you slice and dice the numbers, it takes 400-3000 households to support most of those businesses, and 48-400 to support various kinds of restaurants. When factoring in just the county population, it's 2000-3000 households for normal businesses and 240 for a restaurant.

[bluGill]

You are not running the same numbers I am. If there are 1000 houses I'm claiming there should be about 100 retail shops. That people only get a haircut every few months is why those can't spread out.

[handle584]

Problem with insulation is that it kills off all sound, not only noise. For example people might actually enjoy the sound of wind blowing leaves, squirrels running around or an occasional car driving by. There are devices generating natural noise for Passivhaus because its insulation is so great that people starts to feel eerie.

[breezybottom]

That's easy to say if you'd never had to live in a slum, but constant noise actually has negative health effects.

[buellerbueller]

Apparently all cities now are slums?

[breezybottom]

Us plebians don't live in expensive NYC penthouses.

[buellerbueller]

All urban living situations that are not NYC penthouses are slums?

[breezybottom]

Even in the nicest apartment I ever had, I still had to listen to my upstairs neighbor scream and beat up his wife.

[HDThoreaun]

As someone who has lived in NYC, yes. The vast majority of housing in NYC is slum quality at insane prices

[stephen_g]

That’s a false dilemma if I’ve ever seen one. As if those are the only options - that’s just silly defeatism and reductionism!

[HDThoreaun]

> I want my streets to feel alive!

Most american suburbanites completely disagree with this take. They want their street to be quite and devoid of people. I think this is largely because there is no recourse for anti social activity in the US. People who have spent a lot of time in cities start to notice that anti social activity doesnt really get stopped and many decide it would be better to just not be around outsiders who could annoy them so they enact exclusive zoning to minimize interaction with people they dont know.

[oersted]

I can see that. But this really sounds like an imagined picture of someone that has lived in suburbia their entire lives.

Even in low income areas, seeing actual antisocial behavior is very rare. People simply have better things to do than to be problematic, especially those struggling to make ends meet. And they are smart enough not to shit where they eat, and generally band together to prevent bad apples from getting out of hand. They have families too.

Fine yes there are areas actually infested with gangs, addicts and the homeless, who do not have better things to do and are anti-social. But those are rare in the grand scheme.

I have been in most of the so-called dodgy areas in the Bay Area and SF. I was quite confused, it was rather nice! Just lower-middle class.

A lot of it is built up in people’s heads, and reinforced by media.

[HDThoreaun]

Ive lived in Chicago my whole life. Anti social behavior is not common, but it's definitely not rare. On public transit it is pretty standard. I think the lack of enforcement is what really rubs people the wrong way though. Not like someone being loud in public or whatever is that big of a deal, but it can create a mentality that quickly turns into a low trust society. When people dont respect your wishes why should you respect theirs kind of thinking. Most of chicago is absolutely a low trust society. Everyone acknowledges that rules arent enforced and are therefore optional. Low trust society + optional rules is an environment that many do not enjoy. The exclusionary zoning is just a reaction to that. When these people think of streets that are "alive" they remember that time they almost stepped in human shit in the park and they feel helpless. That feeling of helplessness easily overwhelms all the great times they had. Maybe theyre wrong to feel that way, maybe not.

[tech_ken]

> It's trendy to blame cars for this but the problem is fundamentally zoning

> you thereby need a car to leave the vicinity in order to get anywhere you can.

I hear your point but I think your causal model is misguided. It's two different things augmenting each other, not "one is a more primal cause than the other" (in my opinion, anyways). Like yes road diets in the suburbs won't 'solve' the problem by themselves, but the impact of the zoning changes you're pointing to may also have the impact of reducing car dependency in the area (although not guaranteed, I've seen USians drive even just half a mile). Cars collapse distance, and zoning policy eats up those gains greedily. SFH zoning spaces everything 10 miles apart, so all the residents buy cars because there's no alternatives. It's multiple threads reinforcing each other; I think if you dig into the ""trendy"" anti-car arguments you will find a lot of backing for mixed-used zoning policy as well because both types of changes are needed at once.