The older east coat cities built walkable neighbourhoods before they became illegal.
Existing areas in that style tend to be expensive, but are often (at least where I’ve lived) some of the most NYMBY areas in a city. They like the benefits their density has brought, but won’t tolerate the lot next to them getting one iota more dense.
Yes, but that's not because nobody wants to live in them. It's because a loud subsection of the people that already own single-family homes there don't want them built.
You seem to recognize this. That's different from saying "Americans don't want to live in this sort of housing".
Single family homes that are up to code don't bring in enough tax revenue to pay for the infrastructure that is necessary to suport them.
Same thing goes for strip mals.
You can try to run a deficit forever, it is just a really bad idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg&list=PLJp5q-R0lZ...
Yes.. because of the people's representatives. Why is that do you think?
> The older east coat cities built walkable neighbourhoods before they became illegal.
Technically, they were built before the modern automobile era when there was really no alternative. Additionally, geography played a part. Manhattan is land-constrained. So is San Francisco. LA, Chicago and Atlanta are not.
By any quantitative measure, Americans have clearly chosen a car-dependent lifestyle. Since WW2, houses have gotten larger while families have gotten smaller. When given the choice between less space is a downtown neighbourhood or more space in the suburbs the vast majority of people choose the latter.
People will even choose more space and pay exorbitant private school fees rather than live with less space but get a "free" excellent public school system, even though the latter is almost always more economically sensible, even more so the more children a family has.
I’ll admit it’s certainly possible. Or possible that decades ago people voted for this and the laws stayed.
But the argument seems pretty indirect given how few people are familiar with these issues.
Zoning is too local, so if I can't afford to live near my job I can't vote to allow me to live near my job.
Coffee-table planners seem content to frame everything as a political problem, as if developers are an extended civil service or some kind of unthinking machines. There is also an unsurprising lack of investigation into places in the world where zoning free-for-alls actually do exist. Most are not like Martha's Vinyard. Many people don't actually want to live in a favela, and they vote and spend their dollars accordingly.
The east coast built walkable neighborhoods because they were built before cars existed. Several of these states have a net negative domestic migration, which does not suggest that people want to live there.
https://strongtowns.org has a few good examples.
I’d say there is more demand for a house with a yard in the suburbs than a 2 bedroom apartment in the city.
Especially in a post-Covid world where people are working from home, who wants to be stuck in an apartment during the next lockdown?
Not per lot SQ feet
I suppose you can use some weighted combination of lot and house, but I haven't seen common and simple valuation metrics there.
I'd say that's kind of their point.
1. Zoning prevents density, which precludes having enough foot traffic for neighborhood stores to exist (if zoning actually allow them).
2. Parking minimums force things farther apart because so much of each lot is asphalt.
3. Street design that prioritizes car speed over pedestrian safety.
In the end, it's not safe, pleasant, or practical to walk in suburbs built from the 70s on. These things are a patchwork of local and state law so specifics vary by area.