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[Reelya]

The best plan at this stage is to scale back car production entirely and refit the US for trains and buses while dismantling the suburbs. Cars are a plague in more ways than one.

Isn't the best plan, especially with a modifier of "at this stage", something that has a reasonable chance of being implemented?

It's too easy for people to drum up strong opposition to your plan. 52% of Americans state their location as "suburban", so it's too east drum up majority opposition to any "dismantle the suburbs" plan, which involves removing cars, by just telling 52% of America that you plan to take their houses and cars away. At that point it's not really much of a stretch for them to say "what's next: a one-child policy like China?" because you're already threatening taking their house and their car, so nay-sayers can manipulate things like that with "they'll take your right to a family away next".

So, yeah, that plan exactly as you stated it is pretty much guaranteed to hand votes to the right wing if you implement it with language like "dismantling the suburbs", because 52% of people can be convinced you're taking their houses away, and the additional 30% of people in urban centers can be convinced that you're going to cram everyone else into the urban center thus driving up their rent sky-high.

[MrRoboto75]

you can't take my house, I'm unable to afford one anyway

[scriver]

Quite so. We shouldn't be dismantling the suburbs, we should be enmantling the suburbs. Make the suburbs Lorkhan actually liveable towns/villages.

But hey that doesn't project hate so it's probably not cool enough to talk that way for the edgy bois.

[McTraveller]

I'm all for making suburbs "livable."  I'm not for increasing population density in suburbs too high.

Remember, urbanization is not "free" - yes it may be more efficient in some areas like capital resources per capita, but it has costs in others that are typically not accounted for.  For instance, an acre of land is able to passively provide clean water and manage sewage for some small population utilizing well and septic systems.  When you have a higher population density, you have to start using technology to provide water and treat sewage.  Diseases travel faster in urban areas because the probability of transmission is higher.  Air pollution by many metrics is much higher in urban areas than suburban (excepting special cases of course).  Noise and light pollution?  No contest.  Travel times? Oddly from what I understand it takes about the same time to get from point to point in a city as it does in suburbia, even though the points are much closer together.

This is because population and manufacturing scales as volume of buildings in a highly urbanized region, not their area.  Since resources and waste can only transport through a surface area, too much urbanization runs into the square-cube law where there just isn't enough surface area to get that waste out fast enough, so you end up with higher concentrations of pollution.

Therefore "urbanize just enough" is the correct approach, not "urbanize everyone!".  Unfortunately, it's difficult to know what that "just enough" is.

Also - I personally can't stand the "urban" life.  It feels... stifling.  We need to support both urban and suburban options - trying to make everyone have the same thing is a cause of too many problems as it is.  Vilifying people who like some space (which is one way that "you suburbanites use a lot of resources!" can be interpreted) is just another divisive mindset.

[scourge728]

Oddly from what I understand it takes about the same time to get from point to point in a city as it does in suburbia, even though the points are much closer together.

I believe they refer to this phenomenon as "traffic"

Also: I have to agree that "dismantle the suburbs" sounds exactly like "take away the homes of people living in the suburbs" which isn't really something I can get behind. given my location

[MrRoboto75]

Suburbs are deliberately ass at handling traffic, as only maybe 2 or 3 roads in them actually go somewhere.  The rest of them are worthless cul-de-sacs that dump into those 2 or 3 roads.

[PTTG??]

What we need are communities that aren't built by developers looking to make a quick buck, but rather by the people who are going to live in them, and which by design include features that make them pleasant to live in and sustainable for generations. Above all, this must be the dominant living style, or else its greatest benifits aren't available; thus, it must be available to all people, not just the rich.

I am not an urban usability expert, but I do know that those features are not found in the way cities and rural areas are currently managed.

[Trekkin]

I am not an urban usability expert, but I do know that those features are not found in the way cities and rural areas are currently managed.

That's not entirely the fault of greedy evil developers, though. Cities aren't so much planned as they are continually re-planned and expanded, which means that all the new construction and renovation has to fit within the physical and infrastructural envelope defined in large part by everything around them. This is true even of suburbs, although there it's more defined by how everyone hates commuting but also hates seeing or living near the infrastructure and industry underpinning everything they do. Even if everyone designed their own homes, NIMBYism would still make sure that every city planning decision was going to massively piss off someone.

Even if you could find a generally fair and robust solution to city planning -- and as much as it makes me physically ill to say it, you might be able to get part of something workable out of complex systems theorists if you forced one or two of them to grow up and do something concrete -- your choices for implementing it boil down to gigantic construction projects or working at the speed of urban renewal. Would you rather curse arcology architects or eminent domain?

[Reelya]

What we need are communities that aren't built by developers looking to make a quick buck, but rather by the people who are going to live in them

Uh not actually. if you sit people down and get them to vote on improvements a lot of stuff they vote for will backfire due to unforseen consequences. For example, people will say "wider roads" are good, except in practice, road widening is bad.
http://plazaperspective.com/road-widening/

And adding extra roads to try and increase capacity can also slow traffic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox

I'll just leave these as examples. We do need experts and specialists for planning because "what everyone wants" is not the same as "best thing to make everyone happy". You need modelling and complex math to work out what's actually going to happen from all the  simple changes.

The point here is that the developers built these places then people decided to move there. they weren't herded at gunpoint. if you let those same people vote on improvements they're going to vote for bullshit like the wider roads and adding more roads. Or more sports stadiums. They're not going to vote to spend their rates money on building train stations, or probably public amenities such as a free public library. They'll vote to lay cable for cable TV into their personal houses before they vote for that.

it's the same with art: things happen in fiction that viewers don't like. but they keep watching. If the creators listened to fan letters and only did "crowd pleasing" things then the show would be off the air within one sesaon.

Hell, you got Trump from giving people a choice.

[Naturegirl1999]

I would vote for a city park if I lived in the suburbs. I personally don’t understand why people want wider roads, thst would mean less space for buildings

[Reelya]

But you have to pay every year for the upkeep of the park, and it also takes up space. Also, if you're in the burbs, there's nature visible in every direction. Can you see that residents might not vote to expend their own money for more trees? There's going to be woods and stuff visible, and that doesn't cost money to maintain.

[Rolan7]

I would vote for a city park if I lived in the suburbs. I personally don’t understand why people want wider roads, thst would mean less space for buildings

Because commuting is horrible for a lot of people... most, maybe... and it makes common sense (the worst kind of sense) that a wider road will help with that.  Yet as Reelya pointed out, it doesn't actually work that way.

[MrRoboto75]

There's going to be woods and stuff visible, and that doesn't cost money to maintain.

uhhh

[Reelya]

I guess if you count the people actively trying to get rid of the nature near them, there are costs.

[MrRoboto75]

I guess if you count the people actively trying to get rid of the nature near them, there are costs.

There's also the cost of me raking leaves via lawnmower every fall, or say fallen branches from storms.