Good. I think we all learned our lesson from Robert Moses the first time around...
> It's time for New York to think big again.
No! Think small, local, and build from a bottom-up design.
Perhaps we should make sure we don't let a racist man who could not accept criticism plan public works at a dictatorial level. But what sort of lesson did we learn about large scale public works in general?
What does this mean, practically?
The general trend in American urban planning has been highly prescriptivist and precise. Suburbs often have bylaws that prevent "too many" businesses of a particular sort in an area. It's based on a very centrally-planned vision for cities where you get your groceries from there, your haircuts there, and entertain yourself at that entertainment complex.
Using a place against its original planner's precisely envisioned purpose is verboten. No, you can't have another supermarket in the neighborhood. No, there is already another coffee shop too close to this proposed one. No, you can't repurpose this land for a playground, because the children are supposed to play over there.
Urban areas experience it too - if you've worked in a modern American downtown you've no doubt walked by the countless plazas that are deserted. Benches and tables that looked real good on the architectural renderings but are severely disused. Big office buildings fronted by "public space" that not even its own tenants use regularly.
This has been especially severe in public housing projects - they were designed with idyllic parkland and courtyards, which their designers envisioned as isolated utopias, but ultimately ended up being deserted, dangerous, and hotbeds of crime, because they were never where people wanted to be, and was just void space.
The opposite of this is something that resembles more of the free market - mixed use, relaxed zoning, so that the community can decide the amenities and businesses it needs. Maybe there should be a second supermarket, maybe that empty lot could be a playground.
The struggle between top-down prescriptivist and bottom-up market-like urban planning is a huge one. In many ways Americans crave the efficiency, character, and benefits of living in the bottom-up neighborhood, but also crave the precise, reliable, and ordered nature of top-down cities.
An actual "free market" - i.e., little to no zoning whatsoever - would likely be rather unpleasant. Sorry Houston.
In this school of thought the ideal urban planner sketches out the broad strokes while allowing natural forces to fill in the spaces, but of course, there is considerable disagreement over what exactly the broad strokes entail.
Houston is a great example of what you get with unbridled suburban sprawl. Much of the city isn't dense enough to justify real mass transit, which is part of the problem you are seeing. It's a great example of how to keep land prices low and automobile miles high, but not much else from a city planning point of view.
I agree that there's a distinct lack of planning in Houston which is a problem. But those aren't necessarily the same thing.
Further there are good local neighborhoods popping up all over, especially wherever the light rail is going. All without any zoning whatsoever.
I think you are missing the degree to which zoning is needed as a tool for effective planning.
Okay, so enlighten me! I totally understand how zoning and planning theoretically go hand-in-hand so that you build stuff near transit, and have transit near stuff, and the like.
But Houston's problem is that all the first-round development happens outside city limits. Meaning that the overarching plan (if there was one) would still not be able to influence in any way what's happening in places where the city has no jurisdiction. So how would zoning inside the city limits do anything to influence people building outside city limits?
In most cities the size of Houston you'll have a denser core with some strong arguments for living there, and these are strengthened by city planning, which zoning is part of. Houston has very, very little of that. Why buy a place in the loop if I still have to get in my car for most things I need or places to be? Part of the problem is lack of planning, and part of the reason is that lack of zoning allows redevelopment without much (any?) thought about impact.
I'm not suggesting zoning is at all the only issue, but it is part of why Houston is such a mess as a city in many ways. While I agree with another respondent that zoning can be part of the problem too, I disagree that it is inherent. It's a tool for planning, and can be used well or poorly.
Because traffic is a total nightmare, because they keep building bigger freeways and making it possible for people to live further and further out. They're exacerbating the problem, not helping it. That road planning is done 100% without zoning too, I might add.
But I agree with your point that doing smarter stuff at the denser core might make it easier to entice people inwards and perhaps start Houston growing up instead of out. What's interesting is that people are actually starting to do that now; suburban houses inside the loop are incredibly expensive so most of the new development goes like:
1. buy a $500k, tiny house for the land
2. tear it down
3. build 4-8 townhomes instead
4. sell each for 200k-300k
It's getting denser, though not fast enough to make traffic any better.
For what it's worth, $500k is still very cheap compared to many metros - a comparable house in many cities would be twice that. 3-4 times in (much of) NY, the bay area, Toronto, Chicago, Vancouver.
I think we are making the same point about infrastructure progams there - but traffic still sucks (although it's nothing like some cities) if you live in the core, but you still have to drive all over to do basic things.
But where prices are low enough and lots are big enough, that's absolutely how new housing is being built.
You can't buy nearly any detached homes in some metro cores today for less than a million. "Cute little house in the Heights" equivalent is more like 2-3 million.
If anything onerous suburban zoning tends to be far more painful than onerous urban zoning.
The lack of livability is the result of overly restrictive zoning. Instead of putting supermarkets and movie theaters where people want them, they go where planners have deemed The Proper Place. Most suburbs are characterized but this, and it turns out top-down planners aren't actually very good at foreseeing what residents want, and what will create the greatest quality of life for them.
Agree with all the points about sprawl and toxic car-centric lifestyles, but even in its own context, these neighborhoods are still failures.
I've personally never lived in Houston, but there's almost no major city in America where you can find actually lax zoning. In almost all places it's all incredibly restrictive - if anything urban areas tend to be a bit more lax (they at least entertain the idea of mixed-use development). Overplanning is the disease, and both urban and suburban places can manifest it.
It's possible to see his legacy as a series of lessons and pros and cons.
I care a lot more about bulldozing the South Bronx.
And I don't know you so I won't presume, but just about everyone who I've heard complain about Moses and the South Bronx has literally no relationship with the borough and couldn't name three major streets there.
Moses did bad things to the south Bronx, and Sunset Park, and rail transit. He did amazing things with bridges, and democratized access to the shoreline. And many other things. Like I said, his legacy is complicated.
The beach existed long before Moses, and he didn't exactly invent the idea of going to the beach.
Public accessible beaches and parks for hemmed in city dwellers back then in the era of tenements and no air conditioning were not at all common, creating something like Jones Beach was a major public good.
The story of Moses's contributions is generally one of incredible progress and public good in the first era of his career, followed by an increasing descent into arrogance and lust for power that was ultimately highly destructive in many cases.
It's an interesting and nuanced story. Were you to know the first thing about it you'd likely agree.