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First, there is no confirmation that people's lives were just as fulfilling before the development of now-modern US communities. There is evidence that people did not like their living situation, and pursued other living situations. That's how this all happened. There are storylines that assume that all those people are stupid rubes conned into something they didn't really want, but I find those offensive to my democratic sensibilities. Well... it'd be okay if they were offensive, but they also are far-fetched.

But more important right now: we can't just undo this. Metropolitan areas have become much larger than they were before, and you can't squeeze all that development into old boundaries or even old forms. There can't be one center to a metropolitan area.

And even the idea of local centers supposes that there are no useful decisions to make, that all providers of a service are equivalent except for their location. There will be a Catholic church in your neighborhood, but will there be a Baha'i temple? Can you get your kid to the daycare you want, then get yourself to the job you want, and get home, and have your partner do much the same, all within your local center or the limited mass transit connections you might find between centers? Is the entire concept of Costco wrong? Because there can't be Costco without decentralized multi-use transportation methods.

There's lots of smaller (single-center) towns with a nice downtown, and a crappy strip area elsewhere. In those towns everyone shops in the crappy strip, because they want a nice big grocery store with good prices, and you just don't get that with a local/small grocery store. And businesses that provide real value want to build new buildings, and it's damn hard to build the right building in built-up cores. Maybe resolvable, but it's hard, and regressing to older forms won't do it.

White flight and bussing issues certainly played a part. I'd argue that there were forces at work bigger than satisfaction with place.

added on edit:

There's lots of smaller (single-center) towns with a nice downtown, and a crappy strip area elsewhere. In those towns everyone shops in the crappy strip, because they want a nice big grocery store with good prices, and you just don't get that with a local/small grocery store. And businesses that provide real value want to build new buildings, and it's damn hard to build the right building in built-up cores. Maybe resolvable, but it's hard, and regressing to older forms won't do it.

That's right, but not for the reason you state. They shop at the strip-mall because it's probably closer and more convenient to them. That's the issue. A focused, mixed use center is the ideal but it requires neighborhoods to be integrated into it. The problem with modern American planning has been a desire to strictly separate (usually by massive boulevards) uses from each other. Work pods, retail pods, and living pods are all kept strictly apart. That's when the strip mall becomes more convenient. It's easy to park and quick to get to.

However, when you look at cities that do this right (Portland is my go-to example always) then it's a very different picture. They are pushing the concept of "20 minute neighborhoods" with the idea that all of the citizens within Portland will have essential living resource (Grocery Stores and the like) within a 20 minute walk of their house. They are building sidewalks and working to re-engineer neighborhoods to nicely integrate these areas into the actual fabric of the neighborhood.

It's a bold plan, but it reflects what has been very successful in that city. There are neighborhoods in Portland where everyone DOES shop in the city center. Between effective transit and smart planning the relatively small city of Portland has built something really cool. They HAVE grocery stores (large format and with those reasonable prices you mention) within easy walking distance of many peoples homes. Those stores are heavily used.

I think the issue with urbanism is simply that most people don't have the option. It's something we've had to rediscover and recent trends have certainly shown a movement back towards stronger mixed-use neighborhoods in the last decade.

I live in Vienna right above a big supermarket. It is a nice neighbour, I couldn't think of any reason why it shouldnt be allowed in a residential zone. It is as if I had a fridge in the cellar with unlimited supplies. Only I havent because that would be a stupid waste of power.

> However, when you look at cities that do this right (Portland is my go-to example always) then it's a very different picture.

Ah yes, Portland, where diversity is the guy with a tan.

Oregon exports folks who tell us how wonderful things can be, but Portland is significantly less dense than other US urban regions.

> I think the issue with urbanism is simply that most people don't have the option.

Of course they do - they can move to urban areas. Heck - they can even build new ones. There are plenty of places in the US where you can build whatever housing/work fantasy you'd like. If you're correct, folks will pay to live&work there. If you're not ....

Well: figuring out cause and effect is hard.

E.g.: "They shop at the strip-mall because it's probably closer and more convenient to them. That's the issue."

There's more than one way to interpret that. An alternate interpretation that I will offer: the strip grocery store is cheaper and bureaucratically much easier to build (the nature of green field development), and the logistics of using that store are easier (just more space), so that big-box suburban-style stores have driven other kinds of stores out of business, and suppressed the building of new stores. Maybe that's because of subsidies and whatnot, though even if so it's not clear that removal of those subsidies would reverse the trend.

Now I'm not just trying to be cynical and pro-suburb. I don't choose to live in suburbs, and yet we still do a lot of our shopping there, and I believe our and many other people's decisions are based on rational reasons. Reasons based in the-way-things-are, not the-way-things-could-be, but still rational. I lived in Chicago for a long time too, and there the suburbs were simply too far away. And a lot of things are a complete pain in the ass to do in that environment. Walking 20 minutes with your groceries in a handcart is not awesome, and most people aren't going to be very excited about that option. Not because they are unable to see the benefit, but because it's tiring and cold to walk 20 minutes with groceries, you can't get a full load, if you have a child everything is twice as hard, and if you have a baby then it's just plain shitty.

I think if density and urban environments are going to take back growth from the suburbs, we need new forms to support that. The corner store won't do it. The city big box store is just aping the suburbs. But we need something new.

One option frankly is many fewer stores. Amazon works great in the city. This is contrary to what many Livable Cities proponents want (local business), but personally I don't care about commerce. Commerce is a pathetic excuse for public life, and if it is automated away then so be it. I guess it's the same desire: if the old way of public life doesn't seem good enough, instead of regressing let's consider new forms.

Honestly, no, that's completely wrong. There are in fact plenty of places like that to live in America. And americans like them, in fact routinely paying far higher prices for property there than they do in the awful suburbs.

Americans live in sprawl because they like it. It's simpler in many ways, cheaper (often due to hidden subsidies, but cheaper nonetheless), and broadly more attractive than life in the urban core is.

And this isn't a trait unique to Americans. I work, as do many here I suspect, with a very international group of people. When european and east asians arrive in the US and look for housing, where do they live? Yup, in the sprawl.

Basically, if you want to win this argument (and really, I'm on your side) you have to get off the high horse. You can't just rely on people finally "getting it" and moving back into the city.

I am moving into San Francisco from Europe, and exactly in this situation of city versus further out.

By Americans SF is probably considered a car-free, and public transportation friendly city, but as an European I am shocked to see that almost every street more resembles a free-way than a living-space, and not just in SOMA. China-town so far is the only bit that reminds me of an European city in terms of it's street-life.

And I went looking for apartments/rooms to the north of Market street today, and was shocked to see that what could have been an exciting urban neighbourhood (and the only one built to human dimensions, within walking distance from the financial district), is a shady place, the Tenderloin.

It seems a critical mass issue as well, to some extent. In Europe the exciting young people live in the center, in human-sized communities, while in the US even for Europeans that want to be in the city, the city is made unattractive by crime, drugs, and trash in the street.

I guess I will be settling for something a bit further out, the Haight neighbourhood, or something north of Chinatown (people there don't seem to put their rentals/rooms on Craigslist), and a daily commute on the bus. Still pretty central probably on US-terms, but almost a flight to the suburbs in European terms...

(am still looking, if anyone has anything, mail at wybowiersma dot net)

Some images of the way cities should be built (and can be, as these are from real Dutch cities): http://www.aankoopmakelaargroningen.com/images/websites/56//... http://cache.virtualtourist.com/789252-AMSTERDAM_ZUIDERKERK_... http://home.kpn.nl/hemmoheidekamp/32/ooftstraat%20concordiab... http://v6.cache4.c.bigcache.googleapis.com/static.panoramio....

Core ideas: - More room for green, less room for driving, still some parking-space (it is the fast driving, not the sitting cars that kill city life) - Very slow driving (15 miles an hour max) within residential blocks (a single narrow lane + speed-bumps and obstacles/hedges can enforce this) - No cars at all in certain streets, playgrounds instead, keeps young families in the city - Finally, build more densely, so shops / public transportation becomes economically viable. How hard can this be? (/me wonders what stops architects from simply copying historic styles and neighbourhood-layouts)

We have some places like this in the US. Both http://www.aankoopmakelaargroningen.com/images/websites/56//... and http://home.kpn.nl/hemmoheidekamp/32/ooftstraat%20concordiab... look exactly like the projects. I used to walk through them daily and imagined how nice the place could have been. Instead, they were barren, unkept, and used for loitering.

Now scale this idea to American metropolitan areas. 27 US metro areas are bigger than the Amsterdam metro area, and about a dozen are at least twice as big. Having been to Amsterdam, I can say that while it's denser then most American cities, it's not that dramatically different then say DC.

London?

Looks exactly like the Soviet era planned cities to me. Huge project complexes everywhere. All of this sounds like communism wrapped up in some hippie "green" facade. Granted, something needs to be done, but this is NOT the answer.

Those photos are a mix of dutch housing in Amsterdam, including an old canal street. It is about as far as you can get from "Soviet era planned city."

People definitely live in smaller spaces in the Netherlands (and Europe in general), but the quality and amenities of the public spaces is so outstanding, that it more than makes up for lack of square footage in one's house.

It's not a matter of people just moving around, it's the entire attitude towards urban planning and development. Laws can be a real barrier to the evolution of effective, human-scale, mixed-use communities.

Houston is a good example of where it's not simply people choosing to live in suburbs, rather the city itself is one giant sprawling mess. Until the last decade, Houston had a law requiring all single-family homes to use at least 5,000 square feet of land. Laws require roads to be extremely wide, and laws require buildings to have parking[1]. This makes it really hard to have pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods.

Also, while it's an old article (1996) and becoming slightly outdated, "Home From Nowhere" is a classic essay on the subject[2].

[1] http://www.planetizen.com/node/109

[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/96sep/kunstler/k...

Absolutely, I completely agree with everything you say. But the grandparent post seemed to be arguing that Americans simply need to be "taught" the right way to live, and that's wrong. Suburban life in america is subjectively better in many ways that urban life (for some people, obviously not everyone). You need to "fix" that part first before expecting people to move where you want them to.

It's a policy problem, not an education problem.

If you liked that comment, you'll love this TED Talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...

I think this comment leaves out the possibility that one can be well aware of both possibilities and prefer the suburban lifestyle. Having lived in SF, I can tell you unequivocally that I cannot stand the city lifestyle. Its crowded, loud and bustling - you have no space, no large yard, rarely a garage, and driving is a nightmare. While taking public transit or walking is a nice pipe dream, and maybe it works for some people - its just not a suitable replacement for owning a car when I want to buy groceries (more than just a day or two's worth), electronics, or anything else that might be cumbersome to carry.

Currently I live in the suburbs of St Louis and I cannot conceive of a better arrangement - I have a large yard in which I can grill, socialize in and enjoy - all the conveniences of modern living (big box retailers, etc) and on weekends or whenever I need a dose of culture I can drive into the city (or take the metro) to take in the theater, a concert or show, the casinos, nightlife, festivals... whatever.

Believe it or not - I don't want to walk to the grocery store and frankly wouldn't - no matter how close it was because I buy multiple weeks worth of stuff at a time and don't want to deal with carrying 25 grocery bags around. I would rather deal with the minor inconveniences that come with owning and using a car than deal with the hassle of not having one.

What are the full costs of your choice? Are you paying for all the externalities?

Traffic density is the real problem. Main street still exists, but crossing it is a game of Frogger.