I think you make some good points about the "pod" issue and yes, that is a problem to the use of everything but cars and most public transit. When it comes to public transit, it most definitely is a density issue, as higher density means it's more cost-effective.
The steps to fixing this for me are:
Allow the kind of upzoning that California does. A lot of young people, I think, like myself already live in single-family homes with housemates not in our family. It would make a lot of sense, to me, to convert our arrangement into a fourplex to allow some more privacy. So density is actually increasing anyway, despite the fact we still mainly have single-family homes. So allowing the construction of duplexes, fourplexes, and things like cottage courts over the next couple of decades I think can bring about quite a few changes. In areas where a lot of this happens, we will at least see more public transit become viable.
The next step would be to allow small shops to start opening in neighborhoods that people can walk to. It can be advertised as being for convenience and helping to build a community, creating a village. These "pods" would become villages, in effect, and biking will become quite viable. There can still be big box stores further away, but with increased density public transit will definitely be more of an option.
That is my thinking on this matter after looking at a bunch of different resources and looking at the concerns of suburbanites.
Indeed, I think it's a bit of a conundrum though, because the answer is "density" in some senses, but not "density" in ALL senses.
For instance, if I just build a huge apartment tower in the middle of a cul-de-sac, I'm increasing "density", but I'm not actually creating a livable or sustainable neighborhood, I'm creating a parking and traffic crisis.
Now, if we take what happened in my neighborhood, which is a coastal town in Connecticut set on a mostly grid pattern, where we replaced a number of the houses near the MTA station with those big ugly-new-style apartment complexes, well, we're increasing density, and it's mostly healthy in that a lot of those people are taking MTA into NYC or may even bike to work in the neighborhood, but it's not perfect. The local NIMBYs are bitching to high heaven about how this is the start of us transforming into the 80s-cocaine-flashback that Stamford (next city over) did. The big apartment towers displaced a bunch of minority residents and services for them. Barely anyone can actually afford the stupid rents, especially if you actually have one of the few jobs local to the neighborhood - they're mostly in poorly-paid food service, with a smattering of struggling startups who have modest pay. Relative to this context, even my 15-minute commute just 7 miles away makes me a less-sustainable newcomer than the Platonic ideal. Those stupid towers also eliminated several entire blocks' worth of what could have been storefront space. But don't you worry; the previous round of developments that did include their own storefront space, are currently sitting empty, because the mayor's a corrupt idiot who built a brand new mall no one goes to, while strangling all the other potential new business tenants with red tape.
You're right that across-the-board upzoning is probably the first, best start. If we'd just upzoned all those houses instead of putting up towers, the neighborhood would have grown at its own pace. More residents would have fueled more businesses filling up storefront space. Eventually, demand for new storefronts means we infill on the "main strip" area, and some of the more out-of-place businesses (like all these wierd interior design showrooms we have) upgrade to industrial spaces and are replaced with more retail and restaurants. As we run out of infill, we start extending the main strip of adjoined multistory retail/residential buildings.
That's the dream, at least. I think you and I are mostly in agreement about its general outline. But it's such a far cry from "just build more bike paths!" that it's laughable.
As almost is always the case Dave, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Density generally is a good thing, but how we get density and what it looks like can be difficult and needs to be situational.
Bringing density to the suburbs is totally doable as long as services can be near by. So back in your old neck of the woods, twin oaks built a massive 6 story apartment building on the site of an old grocery store (schnucks). They took a building that was abandoned for years and added 300+ residents paying $2000+ a month in rent (on the higher end for St. Louis). This resulted is increased business to the surrounding area of three strip malls bounded by a large intersection seeing an increase in business.
A few years later this has led to a similar proposal for development along a major road right next to a city park. This is when NIMBYs decided to show up. The development would replace a recently shuttered city hall building and add a few hundred cars to an artery that already see 30,000+ a day. Accusations of government officials ignoring the “majority” of citizens and only focusing on money have been thrown about. Worries about density bringing the infamous St. Louis city crime level to our leafy suburb were made plain.
One of the main differences between the two developments, developments were the municipalities. One, Twin Oaks is a pocket city of only 600 or so people, offering almost no city services. The other, Ballwin, over 30,000 people but almost nearly built out from massive growth between 1970s and 1990s, provides some services but has a much larger footprint. The city likes to pretend it’s still the bright shiny new place, not realizing that much of its growth has long since plateaued. Very few attempts have been made to modernize the city plans, big box stores are seen as the savior. It’s set up to be a mess. Definitely a place that needs a little density.
Here's the wierd thing, though... the street vs road distinction would tell us that that Twin Oaks location is TERRIBLE for "good density", at least not unless you're willing to just rip up everything at that intersection and start a street grid right there.
If I were to pick an ideal place to densify in West County, it'd be the old downtown of Manchester. Plenty of traffic already, a street grid already in place. Build a big 'ol parking garage on the south side of the road, and infill the street grid with mixed-use first-floor retail+2-3 stories of housing. Plop one of those Yuppie Fishtanks off to the side somewhere, maybe right along that creek that runs behind that section.
And then you just let the whole thing grow... after it proves incredibly successful, you rip out those ugly, failing strip malls lining Manchester, block by block, and replace them with new blocks of "New Downtown Manchester".
I think you make some good points about the "pod" issue and yes, that is a problem to the use of everything but cars and most public transit. When it comes to public transit, it most definitely is a density issue, as higher density means it's more cost-effective.
The steps to fixing this for me are:
Allow the kind of upzoning that California does. A lot of young people, I think, like myself already live in single-family homes with housemates not in our family. It would make a lot of sense, to me, to convert our arrangement into a fourplex to allow some more privacy. So density is actually increasing anyway, despite the fact we still mainly have single-family homes. So allowing the construction of duplexes, fourplexes, and things like cottage courts over the next couple of decades I think can bring about quite a few changes. In areas where a lot of this happens, we will at least see more public transit become viable.
The next step would be to allow small shops to start opening in neighborhoods that people can walk to. It can be advertised as being for convenience and helping to build a community, creating a village. These "pods" would become villages, in effect, and biking will become quite viable. There can still be big box stores further away, but with increased density public transit will definitely be more of an option.
That is my thinking on this matter after looking at a bunch of different resources and looking at the concerns of suburbanites.
Indeed, I think it's a bit of a conundrum though, because the answer is "density" in some senses, but not "density" in ALL senses.
For instance, if I just build a huge apartment tower in the middle of a cul-de-sac, I'm increasing "density", but I'm not actually creating a livable or sustainable neighborhood, I'm creating a parking and traffic crisis.
Now, if we take what happened in my neighborhood, which is a coastal town in Connecticut set on a mostly grid pattern, where we replaced a number of the houses near the MTA station with those big ugly-new-style apartment complexes, well, we're increasing density, and it's mostly healthy in that a lot of those people are taking MTA into NYC or may even bike to work in the neighborhood, but it's not perfect. The local NIMBYs are bitching to high heaven about how this is the start of us transforming into the 80s-cocaine-flashback that Stamford (next city over) did. The big apartment towers displaced a bunch of minority residents and services for them. Barely anyone can actually afford the stupid rents, especially if you actually have one of the few jobs local to the neighborhood - they're mostly in poorly-paid food service, with a smattering of struggling startups who have modest pay. Relative to this context, even my 15-minute commute just 7 miles away makes me a less-sustainable newcomer than the Platonic ideal. Those stupid towers also eliminated several entire blocks' worth of what could have been storefront space. But don't you worry; the previous round of developments that did include their own storefront space, are currently sitting empty, because the mayor's a corrupt idiot who built a brand new mall no one goes to, while strangling all the other potential new business tenants with red tape.
You're right that across-the-board upzoning is probably the first, best start. If we'd just upzoned all those houses instead of putting up towers, the neighborhood would have grown at its own pace. More residents would have fueled more businesses filling up storefront space. Eventually, demand for new storefronts means we infill on the "main strip" area, and some of the more out-of-place businesses (like all these wierd interior design showrooms we have) upgrade to industrial spaces and are replaced with more retail and restaurants. As we run out of infill, we start extending the main strip of adjoined multistory retail/residential buildings.
That's the dream, at least. I think you and I are mostly in agreement about its general outline. But it's such a far cry from "just build more bike paths!" that it's laughable.
As almost is always the case Dave, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Density generally is a good thing, but how we get density and what it looks like can be difficult and needs to be situational.
Bringing density to the suburbs is totally doable as long as services can be near by. So back in your old neck of the woods, twin oaks built a massive 6 story apartment building on the site of an old grocery store (schnucks). They took a building that was abandoned for years and added 300+ residents paying $2000+ a month in rent (on the higher end for St. Louis). This resulted is increased business to the surrounding area of three strip malls bounded by a large intersection seeing an increase in business.
A few years later this has led to a similar proposal for development along a major road right next to a city park. This is when NIMBYs decided to show up. The development would replace a recently shuttered city hall building and add a few hundred cars to an artery that already see 30,000+ a day. Accusations of government officials ignoring the “majority” of citizens and only focusing on money have been thrown about. Worries about density bringing the infamous St. Louis city crime level to our leafy suburb were made plain.
One of the main differences between the two developments, developments were the municipalities. One, Twin Oaks is a pocket city of only 600 or so people, offering almost no city services. The other, Ballwin, over 30,000 people but almost nearly built out from massive growth between 1970s and 1990s, provides some services but has a much larger footprint. The city likes to pretend it’s still the bright shiny new place, not realizing that much of its growth has long since plateaued. Very few attempts have been made to modernize the city plans, big box stores are seen as the savior. It’s set up to be a mess. Definitely a place that needs a little density.
Here's the wierd thing, though... the street vs road distinction would tell us that that Twin Oaks location is TERRIBLE for "good density", at least not unless you're willing to just rip up everything at that intersection and start a street grid right there.
If I were to pick an ideal place to densify in West County, it'd be the old downtown of Manchester. Plenty of traffic already, a street grid already in place. Build a big 'ol parking garage on the south side of the road, and infill the street grid with mixed-use first-floor retail+2-3 stories of housing. Plop one of those Yuppie Fishtanks off to the side somewhere, maybe right along that creek that runs behind that section.
And then you just let the whole thing grow... after it proves incredibly successful, you rip out those ugly, failing strip malls lining Manchester, block by block, and replace them with new blocks of "New Downtown Manchester".