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Comment by oceanplexian | Hacker News Reader

> "I think our country has used its land wastefully, like a drunk lottery winner that's squandered their newfound wealth," said resident Tai Hovanky.

This sounds like a comment from someone who lives in a city and doesn’t get out. There is an incredible, vast, mind-boggling amount of empty space in the US. I have flown and driven across the country many times. City dwellers are occupying a fraction of 1% of the space available.

The idea that we must live in hyper-dense cities is utter nonsense. If you like that lifestyle, great, but it’s not reasonable to force it on everyone else.

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I actually agree with that - and I grew up in a rural area.

The US has been building a lot of low-quality low-density suburban neighborhoods. They are actively hostile to the people living there, as there are both no amenities within a human distance from your home and there is no space for recreation. Life is constantly being strangled by a forced dependency on car travel.

In cities everything is a stone's throw away, and you can get there either walking or by bike. In rural areas there's plenty of space for outdoor hobbies and for children to play. The suburbs are a worst-of-both-worlds scenario.

I lived in Davis, CA for a while and I feel like they had the right balance of suburban and urban development. I felt like it was extremely fair to cars despite being super walkable and one of the most bike friendly cities in the country.

They embrace mixed zoning, where homes and apartments mix with low density commercial, even in the same building. You can own a single family house if you need that, walkable to grocery and restaurants. Portland does this at a greater scale and it’s fantastic, unfortunately zoning and public transit won’t fix the other problems the city has.

This is about arbitrary parking regulations. Not about dense cities.

The idea that we must live between enormously huge parking lots is nonsense. If you like that lifestyle, great, but it’s not reasonable to force it on everyone else.

This is precisely it. Those of us who would like more density and walkability have very limited options in the US, because those who prefer to drive everywhere have their preferences enshrined in law.

Cities should be dense so rural lots don’t get subdivided into 7000 sqft suburban lots. As you say, literally no one is forcing you to live in cities. But preventing dense cities will force you to live in the suburbs.

What would you consider Austin or the suburbs of Austin? If you live in a city or close enough to one, sprawl is terrible as it gives you all the cons of car dependence with fewer benefits of a concentrated population center. The rest of the country can decide they want to live 45 mins drive from a grocery store, but fixing car dependency in cities should be a priority, and I think you'd agree with that.

The density of downtown Austin has increased _substantially_ since 2015, but it's still not straightforward to live there without a car. Most of the shops downtown sell tourist tat, not useful items, and most of the everyday commercial districts are inaccessible by public transit.

Almost all new high rise construction just has a couple of floors of parking garage, and handles it well. I can't see buildings without that being commercially successful, especially since much of the work that attracts people who like downtown is out in the burbs (sometimes not even in the same county).

> I can't see buildings without that being commercially successful

There is no parking ban being enacted. It is a removal of an arbitrary parking minimum. If they can't sell the properties without it why would they remove parking?

Exactly what about my comment makes you think I believe that anyone will?

If it is a non-issue, why raise it?

To point out that the intended effect of removing the minimums in Austin is highly unlikely to change actual behaviour in practice, other than perhaps in the units designated for low income people who likely will have to make do without parking.

I will parry my uneducated guess against yours and say that it will possibly help and will certainly not hurt. I guess we will have to find out.

How is parking legislation like this forcing 'that lifestyle' on everyone else?

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