A huge upside to increasing density is that the theatre goes from having 100 people within 4 miles of it to 10,000. In addition, instead of having a 400 car parking lot surrounding it like a moat, people just walk right in off the sidewalk. This means the theatre makes more money and pays less in rent. This means they can hire more people to keep it clean and safe.
You start to get theaters like this: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Path%C3%A9+Rembrandt+Utrec...
That might be a small part of it, but some of the places I'm talking about have been there for 30+ years. And they were better before, when the population was even less dense than it is now. Culture plays a HUGE part in this stuff, and I think much bigger than any parking minimums or housing densities. Compare NYC at the various decades over the year to see an obvious example. There are decades where NYC would be a nice place to live if you're a urbanite, and others where it would have been absolutely miserable no matter how much you like high rise tenements.
And my personal feeling is right now the US as a whole is going through a down turn with respect to public behavior and pride, and as a result people want their own versions of these things. I think one place where density does have a factor is in being able to support multiple versions of something. You don't want your local theater servicing 10,000 people. You want the scales to be tilted more towards 100 theaters servicing 100 people each. Both for variety but also because each can serve the specific desires of a specific clientele. Part of the problem with shared spaces is you can only be so much to so many people before either you're not what they want when they want it, or you're so diluted that you're not what anyone wants.
Cue a bunch of online warriors on their high horses implying I'm a bad person for not prioritizing their need over my negative experience.
I'm still going to second-guess going out to eat a little bit, though. I want to create my own beautiful bubble, and that might be home.
Everyone on Earth should curate their own bubble--should live the life they want. This is not at all contradictory with efficient aid to help the unfortunate.
FWIW, it might be alien at first but there's nothing to be afraid of from people who want some food, any more than from anyone else. That is based on long experience with zero problems in many places. Those are the vulnerable people; it's the powerful ones you need to watch out for.
> Cue a bunch of online warriors on their high horses
You violated HN guidelines before anyone even replied!
not OP but FWIW my roommate was followed into an ATM vestibule while depositing his (5 figure) casino winnings, begged at aggressively, and then the destitute person kicked his suitcase, I'd say that's definitely something to be afraid of. now I don't use ATMs with people sleeping in the vestibule.
Yeah, I don't do that either. It's possible I don't have problems because I don't do stupid sh-t, but that goes for most things in life. When I cross the street, I watch the cars to see if they're stopping and don't just assume they will obey the lights (and that I read the lights correctly). When Covid struck, I kept my distance from people whether or not someone required me to.
I don't know what happened with your roommmate - that would be pretty alarming. There's no way someone is following me into an isolated ATM vestibule; I just keep walking if there's a question. And I'm not pulling out that kind of money anywhere but a bank teller window.
You are not a bad person for wanting to live in a mansion or even just a bungalow far away from the city center. That's honestly pretty great! In fact, it's my hope that building walkable, affordable communities will make it even easier for you to afford and live in such a place.
I assume--no, hope--people misread me, and thought I meant 'on the way to/back'. If not, I'm horrified: it is not normal, and should not be normalized.
Self-destruction. They are not victims.
There are examples of small towns with good urbanism - a lot of college towns fit this bill - but they are so rare that they just replicate big-city level prices, without the high-productivity jobs to pay them.
By the first I mean the continued destruction of smaller towns and semi-rural areas. Even if single family homes are more expensive to build than multi family apartments, the fact is we have ridiculous amounts of space in this country. But most people for various reasons don’t want to live where the space and “affordable” housing is or can be built. The more our population drifts to major metro areas for economic reasons and the more jobs go to where the people are, the worse housing affordability will be, even if we build huge sky rises and cram everyone into Tokyo size apartments.
By the second I mean that people want their own bars, theaters and restaurants at home because in a lot of cases going out to the shared versions of these sucks, sometimes a lot. There’s an overall lack of respect for being in public that just seems to permeates the American culture right now.
In my own experience just this past week someone was completely oblivious to the fact that I was leaving a parking space and their doors were open and they were flitting about making leaving unsafe. It only broke through to them when a gust of wind caught their door and slammed it into my car, to which they hurriedly apologized and swore it would “buff out” and then ran away.
Or the taxi driver who parked in the middle of the lot lane waiting for their fare blocking the whole exit.
There was the restaurant patron loudly having an argument on their cell phone. The cashier who was so stoned or distracted they needed 3 tries to get the order right. Or the waiter who got into a literal shouting match with their co-worker to which management did nothing but watch.
The theater floor is stickier than a fly trap and the seats aren’t much better. The food is awful, and over priced. The cost of just a few games of pool at the bar is crazy, even before factoring in your drink will cost you 4-6x what you could get it for at home and be lukewarm.
Why would people want to go to these shared places or live where they can’t have the space for their own version when this is more and more the norm.