Re:The American Jobs Plan Will Make Our Infrastructure Crisi...
by burlesona on Wednesday April 14, 2021 @11:15PM
(#26815851)
To be fair, the people who live in the suburbs aren't generally worse off for living there, assuming they enjoy that lifestyle.
To me, though, that's the biggest thing that puts the lie to the suburban lifestyle thing. Most of the people who want to live there don't want any more people moving out as soon as their neighborhood is finished, because they know it'll just mean more traffic congestion, noise, pollution, etc., and the things that attracted them to the suburbs will be diminished. The suburban pattern just doesn't scale well.
Sadly that is one of the easier problems to fix. Just build on a grid of small streets (or if you don't like grids, an interconnected web of curvy streets is fine too) and don't live giant gaps and the whole thing scales a lot better. The financial and environmental impacts are harder problems to solve.
To me, though, that's the biggest thing that puts the lie to the suburban lifestyle thing. Most of the people who want to live there don't want any more people moving out as soon as their neighborhood is finished, because they know it'll just mean more traffic congestion, noise, pollution, etc., and the things that attracted them to the suburbs will be diminished. The suburban pattern just doesn't scale well.
Sadly that is one of the easier problems to fix. Just build on a grid of small streets (or if you don't like grids, an interconnected web of curvy streets is fine too) and don't live giant gaps and the whole thing scales a lot better. The financial and environmental impacts are harder problems to solve.