Reddit mentions of The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Modern Library Series)

> Are you against people choosing to live in suburbs if they pay the full cost of doing so? ie: transportation & other infrastructure requirements

Why do you ask? Because as things stand, the cost of infrastructure and transportation is heavily socialized. And that is not even taking into account the significant externalities imposed by a sprawled, highway-heavy suburb on the environment as well as traffic problems into whatever city such highways end up in.

Even if suburban residents actually paid these cost (and I would argue that aforementioned externalities make this almost completely impractical), you still have to deal with the fact that adding to highway capacity actually makes traffic worse, not better.

People will bear a particular commute until the point at which it becomes... unbearable (duh). So because suburban living is attractive (which I'm not denying), not to mention almost always cheaper (at least to the individual) people will keep moving into the suburbs so long as their commute is still bearable, until eventually it isn't. Then they demand more highways, and the cycle repeats, though the actual commercial center of the city where everyone is going hasn't necessarily changed, so it's actually much, much harder to cram all these extra people in via highway after each cycle.

My favorite author on this topic is (Jane Jacobs)[http://www.amazon.ca/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/0679600477] - she made some remarkably accurate predictions about the problems with highway-based sprawl and her arguments have not aged one bit.

>I believe he is referring to research showing that up to now, higher density cities with extensive transit have failed to improve commute times as too many people who live in condos end up driving to work anyways.

What research is that?? All the obvious super-dense residential cities (New York, San Fran, even Vancouver) have excellent ridership figures for public transit.

>Most jobs in a city are in the suburbs, so there is a lot of cross city travel that people use their cars for.

This isn't quite true - at the very least you'd have to agree that city centers have a much higher concentration (per capita, not square mile) of jobs. Think downtowns and commercial districts.

Other then heavy industry (which has been on the decline for a while now in terms of employment), most jobs in the suburbs are caused by office parks which basically come to exist the exact same way residential suburban development happens (cheap land, free highways, woo!), just for commercial tenants. Anything you do to one happens to the other.

> I would expect this should change as self-driving cars are implemented and road capacity doubles or more. High-speed trains of cars will be able to zip through cities.

But that's the point! We dont' have self-driving cars today (and probably not for a while) - but we DO have self-driving trains, as well as trams and elevated rail and subways and ferries and car coops and taxis and bike lanes.

I am sympathetic towards the argument that punishing people for driving is not a good way to encourage public transit use. The much better way is to simply provide better public transit. European cities make great use of transit and ridership is high throughout social classes.

> It goes without saying that housing affordability goes down as density goes up. At the moment, it's still cheaper overall to build low density 2-story houses out of wood than high density steel & concrete buildings.

But again, this is simply by virtue of the numerous externalities that you can get away with for single family homes. They are cheaper to build, yes, but are they actually more affordable to live in once you consider the cost of transport, the cost of providing public and civil services and so forth?


I should probably also mention that I'm not against suburbs as an idea, only against highway-based suburbs. "Street car suburbs" are actually quite sustainable and can contain their costs much more effectively. Ever watch Mad Men? Don Draper lives in the idyllic suburban wonderland of the 60s, but even he usually takes the train to work.

There are plenty of "healthy" suburbs to be found if you look for them. They maintain a pleasant low-density lifestyle but also introduce mixed-use blocks and localized medium-density "mini-downtowns". If you just want to do some shopping or go see a movie (or go to school) you can get by with walking, bus/trams or biking but you definitely have to take a commuter train to work. And of course all of this still combines just fine with occasional car use, which is now far less painful since you aren't perpetually filling up the streets to the point of unbearability.

Hey, you almost sound like a libertarian now :-)))

Recommended reading - for you and for all -

Jane Jacobs: The Death And Life Of Great American Cities

http://www.amazon.com/Death-American-Cities-Modern-Library/dp/0679600477

"The Death and Life of Great American Cities" http://www.amazon.com/Death-American-Cities-Modern-Library/dp/0679600477/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293317786&sr=8-1

Looks pretty compelling.