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Comment by pronlover723 | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty addicted to "Not Just Bikes" youtube channel which seems to be either directly or indirectly related to stongtowns

https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes

It's frustrating. Even though I'm currently in SF, SF still doesn't feel remotely as nice as many other places outside the US. Public transportation is slow and although the muni is okay the busses are kinda gross compared to good non-US cities. There are 10 or so walkable neighborhoods but they're missing something. Not sure what it is.

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The biggest problem with NJB is that he completely ignores important fact: there are many people that don't want to live in apartments or even close to other people. Surprise surprise, we really want to live on 10 acres of land in our 3500 sqft house, with our motorcycles, garage workshops, dogs et cetera. We don't need "sense of community", we just want to have quiet space for ourselves.

I think you're touching on really common mistake a lot of new urbanists make, and the linked article generally is about. The problem is there's a lot of demand for dense neighborhoods but not enough supply -- not that suburbs and rural developments are objectively bad or that nobody actually prefers them. In many cases certain interests, hobbies, preferences and lifestyles are completely incompatible with the dense developments preferred by certain opinionated urban planners.

New Urbanists should focus on "why dense neighborhoods are good" over "why suburbs/car-oriented neighborhoods are bad", because they probably need the support of all of us suburb-loving car-driving folks in the first place, and a lot of us interpret criticism of car-driving and suburban living as a heavy-handed attack on our way of life rather than as a reasonable argument for having affordable options for both lifestyles.

There are people who actually like the suburbs? It's the worst of all worlds.

Well, I do like to live in my suburban house. At least I like it more than living in apartments in "dense neighbourhood", where I grew up. I have parks, playgrounds, a grocery store, school for my kids, convenience stores, fast food places, a pet store, a booze store, even two cannabis dispensaries in 600m radius. I have a huge tech park with tons of jobs in 10 minutes of cycling. I'm happy here. Why would I need to move anywhere? For what?

Interesting. I grew up in suburbia and hated it.

sounds like the dream tbh. cities are overrated

The plurality of Americans do, even (and especially) those with the means to afford dense, walkable urban life. I don't see why this should be a surprise to anybody to be honest.

I dunno, the really rich tend to be attracted to cities more then the merely moderately rich. I think its possible that you are just working with a too low assessment of what really affording dense urban life looks like. Once you get into the realm where you can afford as much space as a generous suburban home but in a dense urban environment,...

The really rich have city homes sure. But they also have beachside cabins and vacation homes in rural and suburban areas, so they can enjoy both worlds. If you're still in the realm of merely moderately rich mortals who can't own both a penthouse apartment and a generously large villa in the suburbs, you'll have to choose one or the other -- and in most cases in America, they'll choose the suburban home.

> a lot of us interpret criticism of car-driving and suburban living as a heavy-handed attack on our way of life rather than as a reasonable argument for having affordable options for both lifestyles

It's just folks punching up. The vast majority of the US is zoned for the car. It's really difficult to find a place that allows a car-free or even a low-car lifestyle. People would react a lot differently if there actually were multiple cities that allowed these lifestyles.

I don't disagree, I just think that being anti-suburb is a less efficient strategy for fixing the problem than being pro-density.

That's fine, 99% of the US has been built to accommodate exactly this style of living.

Where's the space for the people who want density and public transit though? The comment you're responding to is lamenting the fact that even SF, one of densest urban areas in the US, is mostly vast tracts of suburban housing overlaid with a slow, barely acceptable transit system. Surely we can do better than that.

He literally has a video praising a suburb with detached houses, while attacking a suburb with 40-storey condo buildings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

Sure, we'd all love to live in spacious mansions with robot butlers. But in the real world, most people live in crappy suburbs, where much of the land is dedicated to useless front lawns and excessive parking requirements that make walking a major PITA.

When I was a kid, my dad would refer to the Urban Sprawl as "The Cancer." All of a sudden, beautiful orange groves and rural communities would be turned into noisy car infested bedroom communities for a city that was 30-40 miles away. If you want to have 10 acre rural homesteads, you also have to have good urban planning. Otherwise all the good farm land will turn into cookie cutter "Planned" communities where you can't fart without a permit.

SF neighborhoods are missing strong social fabric and welcoming vibes. I moved to Oakland after 7 years of stretches in the Lower Haight, Inner Mission, Outer Sunset, Outer Richmond, Cole Valley, Divisadero, and Potrero Hill, for a better sense of community. I love it here, but must admit I’m afraid to name my Oakland neighborhood for fear of (further) letting the cat out of the bag. I feel like SF is a sink for the forces that lead to social tension, and it protects Oakland somewhat in that way.

Does zoning prevent the walkable neighbourhoods from acquiring a full range of amenities?

Or maybe the planning restrictions prevent the kind of organic infill development that leads to these places acquiring their own local character?

Absolutely:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/heatherknight/article/S-F-...

Yes it does. I find it really ironic too because a lot of the places praised by modern planning doctrine were allowed to spring up more organically according to need and less subject to such intense planning regulation.

It's even worse in that, just like people complain about the personality types that go into policing, I find there's a particular common personality type among planners: weak/mousey people that tend to be low on the totem pole of organic social hierarchies, but who are strongly opinionated and happily embrace their bureaucratic positions to exert power over people and to impose their agendas on the world.

I think what it's missing is the full lack of cars. You still don't own your streets in SF! The few days Valencia street was closed to traffic in lockdown, for example, were incredible. Street musicians and people dancing, tables and picnics all over with people who wanted coffee having dinner with friends who wanted pizza alongside vegan sushi. It didn't feel like a party for festival, it felt like _life_.

And SF is way better than most other cities in america. The muni is "okay" but worlds ahead of transit in any other west coast city. Most of SF is way more walkable than most other US cities (outide of the North-East).

I take it you’ve never been to Portland and used Tri-Met? It’s the second best public transit system I’ve used in the US, NYC being #1. And I’ve used transit in Boston, Chicago, SF, Seattle, Philly, Denver, and a handful of other big cities.

That channel is pretty terrible for giving good information and more made to cloud people's judgement and appeal to emotional sides. There are reasons places are different and comparing the two is usually quite bad.

The channel, to anyone who has no emotional skin in the game, and has lived in both environments.... is sadly very shallow.

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