MajorRewrite
Iffy
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2014
- Posts
- 1,366
Dense walkable cites are not the future, they are the past. It's what existed before transportation was available, when people had to walk to work. They also kept pigs and chickens in the yard and grew vegetables.
Then there were trains & busses and the commuter was born, living in the suburbs away from the stink of tanneries and breweries.
As soon as it was possible, people voted with their cars and shunned mass transportation. Strap-hanging crushed against a variety of sweaty armpits was no-one's aspiration. Asking people to go back to those days is a fine ideal but it's never going to happen. The future has been defined by Covid; working from home is what people want, fast & reliable internet has proved it can be done. It's been years since I went into a town center except for a very specialised purpose, there are no shops there worth the car parking fee. In fact, my local town looks derelict with all the boarded up shops.
If the planners reversed the policies of the last 50 years and banned out-of-town malls with their cheap rents and free car parks, to force people back to town it might have some effect but it'd be swimming against the tide.
It’s amusing when someone tries to pretend that people don’t choose to live in cities now. The truth is city living is so popular that demand has caused the price of city real estate to skyrocket.
I live in a small US city (187,000 population) and the downtown is lively with people throughout the day and evening. There are more than 40 restaurants, 2 concert halls, movie theaters, museums, galleries and assorted shops. There are events almost every weekend. A 1-bedroom condo downtown costs about $500,000, and larger ones can be up to $2 million.
If your local town or city is derelict, then you must live in a desperately poor place.