This is most interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI looking at the 'cost-per-acre' in a few different communities (most in the US)... #CarCentric #PoorSubsidisingRich tl;dw "in *every case* mixed used, walkable neighbourhoods outperform car-focused suburbs. Interestingly, Auckland is included.
I'm not much for watching videos on the internet. In this instance does "outperform" mean lower overall costs?
@dynamic Yup - return on municipal investment. Some are positive, others are negative (and the tax paid by others subsidise the latter).
@lightweight @dynamic I wonder how that 3D map of South Bend would have looked when I was growing up there. A lot of the suburban areas were still walkable to most resources. Of course this was 70s-early 80s. A lot of independent groceries, restaurants, hardware stores, drug stores, doctors, lawyers, etc. have been pushed out of business since then. The South Bend area is now covering some of its most fertile land with concrete now. :-(
#capitalism
On capitalism vs. urban planning as causes of non-liveable communities, I'm not sure that it needs to be one thing or the other. Capital uses its influence in local and national governments, as well as in marketing particular aesthetics (lawn, personal lawnmower, white picket fence, car, stand-alone home) to the public.
The affordability question seems to be one to approach empirically and analytically. If I understood Dave Lane correctly, he said the video indicates costs are *lower* for mixed use neighborhoods. That would indicate that this type of living should be more accessible to the middle class.
This is striking because it challenges conventional wisdom.
However, not having watched the video, I don't know how they got those numbers, nor what their conclusions are for the neighborhoods you are thinking of.
There are also nasty maneuvers that promote and preserve 20th-century U.S. style planning, including the presumption that road use should be free but that transit should cost money to use and in fact needs to make a profit.
@dynamic @lightweight I watched the video. I'm not quite sure if it was "costs to the city" or "costs to the residents of the community", but neither implies lower costs of attainment of the residences (which looked expensive in at least one example).
@lightweight @dynamic #CarCentric might be more due to #capitalism than urban design. The new mixed use neighborhoods might become "Welcome to WalMart Meadows". I think the answer lies more in wealth redistribution and more regulation of societal harm than in urban planning.
It also appeared that present day mixed use, walkable neighborhoods might be hard for the middle class to afford.