We should be promoting greater density, not lower, doltmitter. CIties, especially the walkable sort, are considerably more efficient, both economically and ecologically.

Suburbia is an artifact of American land wealth and plentiful fossil fuels. The former we still have; the latter, not so much.

Your blog sucks.

TofuTheAlmighty: We should be promoting greater density, not lower, doltmitter. CIties, especially the walkable sort, are considerably more efficient, both economically and ecologically.

Suburbia is an artifact of American land wealth and plentiful fossil fuels. The former we still have; the latter, not so much.

I would have settled for the "anything Villaraigosa wants is bad" argument, but I guess logic works too.

TofuTheAlmighty: We should be promoting greater density

I don't know about parts of California due to earthquakes, but I understand what you mean
/Or any coastal city in dangerzones

TofuTheAlmighty: We should be promoting greater density, not lower, doltmitter. CIties, especially the walkable sort, are considerably more efficient, both economically and ecologically.

Suburbia is an artifact of American land wealth and plentiful fossil fuels. The former we still have; the latter, not so much.

I know, right? No matter how much I insult people, no matter how many times I call them dolts, they still won't see things my way. Stupid farking people.

So this guy is mad because LA is making it more difficult to build sparse single-family developments and LA isn't growing any more?

Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: I'm not sure what the point TFA was trying to make. I think it was "don't build stuff that you want; build stuff I want."

[stoplikingstuffidontlike.jpg]

Server's already down, so I guess I can't contribute to the dicussion...

Bwahahahaha I almost could get through saying that with a straight face

StopLurkListen: Server's already down, so I guess I can't contribute to the dicussion...

Bwahahahaha I almost could get through saying that with a straight face

Yeah, webmasters of small sites must hate Fark.

Since stealthd: already used "blog sucks", I'll have to go with:

JackieRabbit: StopLurkListen: Server's already down, so I guess I can't contribute to the dicussion...

Bwahahahaha I almost could get through saying that with a straight face

Yeah, webmasters of small sites must hate Fark.

If only where were a word or phrase to describe this effect. When a popular website links to a smaller one, resulting in a sudden and massive increase in traffic, often creating slowdowns or outages due to the load.

I think all multi-family structures should have some sort of park/play area available to its residents (either a park located with a couple blocks or outdoor community space attached to the building. Single-family homes in the middle of L.A. seem wasteful though.

Oh noes! LA wised up and is building in a way that is unfriendly to constantly using my gas guzzling amurrika-mobile to go 3 blocks to the mini-mart for chips and beer.

/planning cities around cars instead of people got us into this problem
//building suburbs that are reliant on a single traffic modality (cars) was the death of the city

TofuTheAlmighty: We should be promoting greater density, not lower, doltmitter. CIties, especially the walkable sort, are considerably more efficient, both economically and ecologically.

Suburbia is an artifact of American land wealth and plentiful fossil fuels. The former we still have; the latter, not so much.

Screw that jazz. I work in the city and, after my shift, get the fark out a retreat back to suburbia. No way would you catch me living in a city.

JackieRabbit: StopLurkListen: Server's already down, so I guess I can't contribute to the dicussion...

Bwahahahaha I almost could get through saying that with a straight face

Yeah, webmasters of small sites must hate Fark.

Hehehe. Back in the late 90s, I had a 24/7 dialup connection and I was hosting a small page that got published in some big computing magazine. PC World, I think. If I'd known they were going to publish my link, I would have moved the site to the ISP side of the connection. Instead, I woke up to thousands of unique hits instead of the usual tens and the send/receive lights on my modem were solid for about a week.

Abe Vigoda's Ghost: Maybe some people don't want to live right next to closed minded assholes like you.

/not subby

No one's forcing you to live in the city; feel free to trade more house for long commutes and tithes to the house of Saud. But we city dwellers shouldn't have to subsidize your chosen lifestyle.

TofuTheAlmighty: We should be promoting greater density, not lower, doltmitter. CIties, especially the walkable sort, are considerably more efficient, both economically and ecologically.

Suburbia is an artifact of American land wealth and plentiful fossil fuels. The former we still have; the latter, not so much.

Efficiency does not correlate with quality of life. In fact one could argue that it is at odds with it. Here are some disadvantages to cities:

-Cost of real estate
-Air pollution
-Noise pollution
-Crime rates
-Stress level (anecdotal)
-Spread of disease

I guess I agree with you that cities are more "efficient" but to be honest I am more concerned with looking out for #1 (and #2, #3, etc...), than I am about the human race being efficient. I suppose If I ever have 3 kids, I'll have an obligation to do so. Until then, I am happy there are plenty of people that actually like living in the city, so I don't have to. It's worth it (to me) to pay more for gas.

CthulhuCalling: JackieRabbit: StopLurkListen: Server's already down, so I guess I can't contribute to the dicussion...

Bwahahahaha I almost could get through saying that with a straight face

Yeah, webmasters of small sites must hate Fark.

If only where were a word or phrase to describe this effect. When a popular website links to a smaller one, resulting in a sudden and massive increase in traffic, often creating slowdowns or outages due to the load.

They got /.ed.

BigNumber12: CthulhuCalling: JackieRabbit: StopLurkListen: Server's already down, so I guess I can't contribute to the dicussion...

Bwahahahaha I almost could get through saying that with a straight face

Yeah, webmasters of small sites must hate Fark.

If only where were a word or phrase to describe this effect. When a popular website links to a smaller one, resulting in a sudden and massive increase in traffic, often creating slowdowns or outages due to the load.


The Reddit effect?

I thought it was "slashdotted"?

CthulhuCalling: JackieRabbit: StopLurkListen: Server's already down, so I guess I can't contribute to the dicussion...

Bwahahahaha I almost could get through saying that with a straight face

Yeah, webmasters of small sites must hate Fark.

If only where were a word or phrase to describe this effect. When a popular website links to a smaller one, resulting in a sudden and massive increase in traffic, often creating slowdowns or outages due to the load.

Slashdotted? Reddited? Drawing a blank here.

Abe Vigoda's Ghost: Maybe some people don't want to live right next to closed minded assholes like you.

This is fark, we know what is best for you. Raise your family on the 8th floor in a tiny 1 bedroom and like it. Plus don't have kids, buy a cat.

hailin: I think all multi-family structures should have some sort of park/play area available to its residents (either a park located with a couple blocks or outdoor community space attached to the building. Single-family homes in the middle of L.A. seem wasteful though.

And community garden space (of the use-it-or-lose it variety, not the tragedy of the commons style).

California would be a great place to live if only everything to the left of the San Andreas fault would fall into the ocean. It would make a good syfy channel movie as well.

This sounds like the old "reduce resource usage through efficiency" argument, which doesn't hold water. It remains a fashionable idea in certain circles, but virtually all processes and machines are vastly more efficient than they were 100 years ago, and overall resource usage continues to grow exponentially. In fact, efficiency is driving it.

[itsatrap.jpg]

Mildot: California would be a great place to live if only everything to the left of the San Andreas fault would fall into the ocean. It would make a good syfy channel movie as well.

Learn to swim, learn to swim...

Iniamyen1: TofuTheAlmighty: We should be promoting greater density, not lower, doltmitter. CIties, especially the walkable sort, are considerably more efficient, both economically and ecologically.

Suburbia is an artifact of American land wealth and plentiful fossil fuels. The former we still have; the latter, not so much.

Efficiency does not correlate with quality of life. In fact one could argue that it is at odds with it. Here are some disadvantages to cities:

-Cost of real estate
-Air pollution
-Noise pollution
-Crime rates
-Stress level (anecdotal)
-Spread of disease

I guess I agree with you that cities are more "efficient" but to be honest I am more concerned with looking out for #1 (and #2, #3, etc...), than I am about the human race being efficient. I suppose If I ever have 3 kids, I'll have an obligation to do so. Until then, I am happy there are plenty of people that actually like living in the city, so I don't have to. It's worth it (to me) to pay more for gas.

I'm not a civil engineer (although I am an engineer), but I'm pretty sure that air pollution doesn't have to be higher in big cities. Most air pollution comes from automobiles, and if a big city is easily walkable and has good public transit, people are less likely to drive. Unfortunately, most big cities in the U.S. are not built that way.

"Suburbs" in LA go out for miles and miles and miles and miles. Downtown LA, Santa Monica, and Long Beach built a few tall buildings here or there, but the whole basin is one monstrous suburb. It's not really a suburb anymore. It's just one large sprawl, top to bottom, w/ some "rural living" in the canyons. A few 3-4 level apartment buildings w/ a carport for every single unit doesn't really count as dense, does it?

WENDELL COX IS A LOBBYIST NOT A PLANNER OR 'URBANIST'.

His article was total dreck and amounts to whiny resistance to changing the status quo masquerading as urban planning. Anyone who with even a cursory understanding of urban planning or transportation engineering can tell you that his assertions in the article make no sense and he completely misinterprets what he is presenting as citations.

t3knomanser: Biv: No way would you catch me living in a city.

Good. More city for me.

Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: with streetcar suburbs

That's where I live. I'm 5 miles or so out of the downtown core, and I live right on a "busway"- a highway dedicated to public transit. I'm in-and-out of downtown in 5-15 minutes.

I tend to think that most of the, "I'd never live in a city!" folks have never actually spent time in the residential parts of cities. My neighborhood has a great mix of commercial, multi-unit and single-family houses, along with a fantastic quantity of greenspace. I've got a gigantic multi-acre lawn that I never have to mow, complete with baseball fields and manicured gardens.

Name an amenity, and it's probably in walking distance of my house.

I think we found Mitt Romney's fark handle.

High density development does not stop urban sprawl, as LA is finding out. All it does is make developers richer and creates horrible congestion problems. We still haven't learned this lesson in Metro Atlanta and no one seems to care. There's only one way to stop urban sprawl: tightly regulate development and approve only the best and most efficient development plans that are consistent with a sustainable land use plan. No variances ever. This will lower available housing units, which slows population growth, decreases unemployment, and increases home values.

Notice the author is railing against minimum density standards for single family housing... so houses in new tracts will have small yards rather than slightly larger ones. He argues that increased density is causing rising housing costs and higher traffic, but those are misnomers; low density housing means substantial tracts of LA are priced well out of new homeowners' budgets, and look around LA, there's no open space left to sprawl low density housing into. The entire basin is all but paved and the urban blight is spreading in all directions already. Oh boo hoo, Broad couldn't have figured out how to become a billionaire with building codes today? It's his low density tract housing plans that caused the 405 to become a parking lot. Low density doesn't help traffic problems when everyone still needs to be in the same place every day, they just travel even farther through feeder highways of unconscionably poor design that still feed into the worst congested areas.

The author wishes he was in Texas, I think. His idea of proper development follows the Dallas model; enormous houses on wide, utterly flat tracts stretching out hundreds of miles from the city center, 2 hour driving commutes, often in congestion every bit as bad as LA, but over a larger area.

Just right off the top:
1. People living further away from jobs means further travel which takes up more space (for roads and such). There is just no way at all around that. This requires building more roads and is extremely costly for tax payers. (Internet suggests Cox has been on the payroll road builders.)
2. He completely ignores the use of biking and walking which can be a substantial portion in areas that make it possible. (Think 10%, 20% or more.)
3. Saying most trips will still be by car is vague. Some areas, even just outside of cities are around 95-99% trips by private car. If this were reduced to 51% most trips would still be by car. Point is, his claims are worthless

One response (not mine): http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-avenue/102536/low-density-suburbs-are-not- free-market-capitalism

/If there is so much single family home development already how could this be a kill shot?

t3knomanser: I tend to think that most of the, "I'd never live in a city!" folks have never actually spent time in the residential parts of cities.

Has it ever occurred to you that some people just don't like crowds - that some people find high population densities to be oppressive, no matter how cleverly the artificial environment is designed to fool the brain into thinking it is not in the midst of an anthill of other humans? I, for one, find cities interesting - in short, infrequent visits - but not interesting enough to contemplate being cooped up in one on a long-term basis.

Huck Chaser: TofuTheAlmighty: We should be promoting greater density, not lower, doltmitter. CIties, especially the walkable sort, are considerably more efficient, both economically and ecologically.

Suburbia is an artifact of American land wealth and plentiful fossil fuels. The former we still have; the latter, not so much.

Well said. As long as they're including enough public parks that the region isn't turning into something out of a William Gibson novel, I'm not seeing the problem.

The closer to downtown I move and the shorter my commute the more i just want to be able to walk to work.

t3knomanser: "I'd never live in a city!" folks have never actually spent time in the residential parts of cities.

Anyone who doesn't like what you like just doesn't know any better?