bike/walk/transit rich usa that isn't dominated by cars or how to mentally cope?

[mizzourah2006]

I'd throw Bentonville, AR (or NWA in general) into the mix of a bike oriented town and getting more bike oriented by the year. There are greenway trails that run from Bella Vista all the way down to Fayetteville and weave in and out of the downtowns of all of the areas in between. Also have hundreds of miles of single track/mountain biking. On any given nice Saturday or Sunday in downtown Bentonville you see more bikes rolling around than cars.

[seattlecyclone]

The revealed preferences of your typical American are no secret.  They're on display: cheap square footage, slightly-exclusive schools, and a perception of safety/low crime.  Big cars, cheap gas, and high speed traffic on high volume roads are the enabling factors for those (strong!) preferences.

I'm not sure I'd agree that the preferences are as strong as you think they are. People's choices are shaped very heavily by financial constraints. "Drive until you qualify" is a common mantra among new home buyers and the real estate agents who work with them. This phrase wouldn't exist if most people actually preferred to live 30 miles out of town. Many would actually prefer to live closer but it costs too much.

In my city the most expensive neighborhoods are also the most walkable ones. This is no coincidence! People like these types of living conditions—not everyone certainly, but enough that they've bid the prices up pretty significantly where local amenities such as walkable business districts, frequent transit, and higher housing density exist. The land under my house is worth half a million dollars. I could add a small ADU to my basement or backyard, but aside from that it's literally illegal for me to split up my half-million dollars worth of land amongst more households to make room for more affordable living options. Cities tend have zoning regulations that severely restrict the creation of new pockets of walkability, and limit the number of homes that can be added to meet demand for housing in existing walkable neighborhoods.

So is it really that people prefer auto-oriented suburban life, or is it that most folks are forced into it because that's basically all anyone has been allowed to build in the last 75 years?

The ongoing subsidy of highways doesn't help with this situation. Gas taxes don't come close to paying for the full cost of highway construction and maintenance, not to mention paying for all the climate change mitigation that our driving habit will require in future decades. If driving had been priced appropriately all these years, suburban living would look a lot more expensive than it currently does.

[PDXTabs]

The revealed preferences of your typical American are no secret.  They're on display: cheap square footage, slightly-exclusive schools, and a perception of safety/low crime.  Big cars, cheap gas, and high speed traffic on high volume roads are the enabling factors for those (strong!) preferences.

I'm not sure I'd agree that the preferences are as strong as you think they are. People's choices are shaped very heavily by financial constraints. "Drive until you qualify" is a common mantra among new home buyers and the real estate agents who work with them. This phrase wouldn't exist if most people actually preferred to live 30 miles out of town. Many would actually prefer to live closer but it costs too much.

In my city the most expensive neighborhoods are also the most walkable ones. This is no coincidence! People like these types of living conditions—not everyone certainly, but enough that they've bid the prices up pretty significantly where local amenities such as walkable business districts, frequent transit, and higher housing density exist. The land under my house is worth half a million dollars. I could add a small ADU to my basement or backyard, but aside from that it's literally illegal for me to split up my half-million dollars worth of land amongst more households to make room for more affordable living options. Cities tend have zoning regulations that severely restrict the creation of new pockets of walkability, and limit the number of homes that can be added to meet demand for housing in existing walkable neighborhoods.

So is it really that people prefer auto-oriented suburban life, or is it that most folks are forced into it because that's basically all anyone has been allowed to build in the last 75 years?

The ongoing subsidy of highways doesn't help with this situation. Gas taxes don't come close to paying for the full cost of highway construction and maintenance, not to mention paying for all the climate change mitigation that our driving habit will require in future decades. If driving had been priced appropriately all these years, suburban living would look a lot more expensive than it currently does.

I concur entirely that it has been illegal to build walkable communities in the USA for most of the past century and that the ones that still exists are in great demand. I would add that automobile ownership is subsidized by government tax revenues. On an individual level it is a good economic decision to buy new tract housing in the suburbs and then drive to work. Both your property taxes and automobile ownership costs are getting subsidized.

[Askel]

So is it really that people prefer auto-oriented suburban life, or is it that most folks are forced into it because that's basically all anyone has been allowed to build in the last 75 years?

I don't know, I'm often amazed at how entrenched car habits can be. I live in an old copper mining community that became a university town.  Copper mining started to go bust just as the automobile started to take over and we ended up with a surplus of old mining houses that we never really used up until probably this year (up until these crazy real estate times, you could buy perfectly livable houses around here for $25k). As such, we avoided most of the suburban sprawl that ruined many cities.

End result- other than our weather (very very snowy) and the fact that the city is built on a rather steep hill, I'd peg this as one of the most walkable communities you can find in this country. And we've got a fairly decent bus system too.   

BUT....

Most of our students come from car-centric rust belt suburbs- i.e. the Detroit metro area.  Not owning a car is just beyond comprehension to some. And it's often comical just how deep the habit of "driving to work" is ingrained.  I have had many, many co-workers and fellow students who literally get in their car every day and drive less than a mile to campus. I come from the same stock. It's taken me way too many years to realize how insane this is and exactly how much cars have cost me over my life.  I'll often get wistful about where I'd be had I figured this shit out sooner.

People see me riding bike now and are often curious how many DUIs it took before I was forced to do this.  :)

     

[roomtempmayo]

So is it really that people prefer auto-oriented suburban life, or is it that most folks are forced into it because that's basically all anyone has been allowed to build in the last 75 years?

Nobody is being forced to live 30 miles from downtown Dallas on what was probably a cow pasture last year.  People choose it as their perceived best option.  There are certainly cheaper ways to live than renting an SFH in the middle of nowhere, including apartments and condos that are likely right near where they work.  But that's not the choice people make.  The choose the house in a less dense area rather than higher density housing in a  higher density area.

The other issue that attracts people to neighborhoods of new builds is the conscious or unconscious desire to culturally sort.  The people who are going to be the first renters of those houses 30 miles from Dallas aren't going to be a cross-section of the population, they're going to be of a demographic and cultural type.  Whether it's retirees or new parents, I bet we all know people who have been attracted to a new community because it's full of people just like them.

I can imagine someone saying that this just begs the question of whether all of what people find attractive about new builds couldn't be preserved while also bringing the neighborhoods down to human scale with 50 foot lots and 1500 sq ft houses instead of 250 foot lots with 3000 sq ft houses.  I guess it's possible, but I see absolutely zero energy in that direction.  No municipality wants to be the one with all the cheap, small houses providing a ton of social services to a large population for relatively lower tax revenues.  The municipal incentive is to maximize tax dollars per capita, not reduce them.  No state is interested in resolving metros' collective action problem for them by banning minimum lot or house sizes because they see it as a metro issue, and people who genuinely want large houses and lots don't want small houses and lots near them dragging down their property values.  All those issues, plus a big dose of apathy, exist at the federal level.

I think expanding towns and cities on a livable and affordable scale is a great idea, I just think there are way too many social and structural forces pushing against it happening.

[GodlessCommie]

Car-centric life is a choice people make, but they make in in the environment where economic incentives are skewed. Federal funding for highways, zoning, selective mortgage availability (AKA red-lining) - the list is long, and it produces the situation where suburban lifestyle is not as expensive as it would have been in a saner system. And I'm not even going into pricing externalities.

[GodlessCommie]

No state is interested in resolving metros' collective action problem for them by banning minimum lot or house sizes because they see it as a metro issue, and people who genuinely want large houses and lots don't want small houses and lots near them dragging down their property values.

Well, California effectively banned single-family zoning, so there's that at least.

[roomtempmayo]

No state is interested in resolving metros' collective action problem for them by banning minimum lot or house sizes because they see it as a metro issue, and people who genuinely want large houses and lots don't want small houses and lots near them dragging down their property values.

Well, California effectively banned single-family zoning, so there's that at least.

Good reminder.  I recall that they minimized off street parking requirements, but did they eliminate minimum lot and structure sizes for new builds?

[GodlessCommie]

Good reminder.  I recall that they minimized off street parking requirements, but did they eliminate minimum lot and structure sizes for new builds?

This is a good summary:
https://slate.com/business/2021/09/california-sb9-single-family-zoning-duplexes-newsom-housing.html

[TomTX]

At a highly local level (a bike lane on a particular street, repaving a path) activism can work.

But I have zero faith that there will be any larger cultural change around transportation in the US in our lifetimes.

I've been having success beyond the "highly local" level. YMMV, of course.