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Comment by voidfunc | Hacker News Reader

You need to stop playing Sim City, walkable cities are a fantasy in the US. You need broad political support to basically redesign every city outside NYC and some parts of SF, Seattle, and Boston. It will never happen.

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There is a constant stubborn push back of "it's impossible" while time after time different parts of the world have proven it is in fact possible. The biggest impediment to walkable cities in the US is the broken political system that makes bipartisan efforts exceedingly rare. If a politician of one party advocates for it everyone on the other side needs to throw out bullshit arguments as to why it's dumb.

I'd even argue that the only reason it currently is hard to do it in many parts of the world is just because people believe it's impossible. You need general population support to make changes.

People believe it is impossible even when the evidence is right in front of them in the form of others walking and cycling. It most definitely is an issue of social will more than anything.

It's not only been done in cities all over the world, it's very much currently in progress in many places. Seattle is expanding rail, removing single family zoning, and building higher density while expanding transit. It maybe takes a decade or two, but it's extremely doable.

Over 80% of Seattle housing land is SFH. The "expanded rail" runs to non-walkable suburbs instead of filling out Seattle. Pretend we believed there was a climate crisis and decided to stop all cars. At our current rate of transit increase and our current population increase, I think we're at centuries before we'd even have the capacity.

https://www.theurbanist.org/2018/06/01/correct-percentage-si...

0% of Seattle is zoned exclusively single family housing. Everywhere it's legal to build more than one unit per lot.

And the trains have absolutely resulted in both increased density and upzoning.

Greenwood and Phinney ridge are both "suburban" but totally walkable.

All we need to do is properly fund transit. It's not hard, it's just not cheap.

I would not consider something you can't sell separately (ADU) a "unit", which would make me disagree with your second sentence.

The light rail doesn't go to Phinney or Greenwood, but I meant Lynnwood, Shoreline, etc stops.

It's not just "not cheap", it's ruinously more costly than cars. Housing just isn't dense enough to bake it affordable.

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