A monday thought about houses etc

[crazycanuck]

I'm currently in 2 classes regarding housing & population and have a thought for your Monday..What are the challenges facing your area regarding growth??

If you were asked to think about how your community/city will accommodate everyone in 20yrs time, what would you suggest? Where will we put everyone?

In Perth, people don't want to live in the burbs nor do they want to live in high rise apartments (they're shunned in most areas).

Can you see the connection to cycling?

Just a monday thought.

[DebW]

First of all, why must we assume that there will be continual growth? Stabilizing the human population seems like the first thing we ought to do to protect the earth and ensure good quality of life for everyone. I think most people will only bicycle to work a majority of the time if they are within 4-6 miles of their place of employment, so housing policies should focus on high-quality living enviroments within that distance of employers. Perhaps rental-based rather than ownership-based housing makes most sense to minimize commute distances and keep employees flexible in their housing choices. Just some thought for Monday from eastern Mass...

[indigoiis]

I live out in the sticks and have plans in five years (once the kid gets through school) to get out into the even stickier sticks. I know in some ways it will make me somewhat car dependent, but my plan is to minimize use of stuff you have to buy so that trips to town are infrequent and efficient. Right now is practice.

The neighborhood I live in is rural zoned with minimum 2 acre lots. Who knows how this will change in 20 years when people stretch away from the cities and create suburbs even further away from their jobs. It's already happening here.

[NbyNW]

Will try to answer with the caveat that I have only been in Edmonton for 5 months and arrived just in time for winter weather, so only had a couple of opportunities to cycle the area immediate to where I was staying at the time.

..What are the challenges facing your area regarding growth??

As I've observed it, new development seems to be dominated by McMansions sprawling out from the city center. Street layouts in these new developments are quite confusing, and as the terrain is mostly flat, there is really no clear rationale for some of these layouts. Kind of ignores the principles in A Pattern Language.

There is no concept of mixed-use development here. While a new light rail system has recently gone into operation, there does not seem to be a recognition that adopting a different mix of housing & business development might help reduce car dependency. We stayed for two months in a condo development on the SW edge of the city limit (if you know Edmonton, we could see the Henday from our back window). Nearest retail and services were only 1.75 miles by car, but if you wanted a ped-friendly or bike-friendly route, much longer and very confusing to navigate through the curly street layout.

The climate may be part of it. There doesn't seem to be any real sense of urgency regarding emissions reduction here, for example.

I don't know WHY Edmonton is developing in this way. This city is definitely growing. The oil sands attract workers, and then they have to build housing for the workers. The University also attracts people from outside the province. I don't know if they are choosing to build housing like this because of market demand (perceived or real), because of a lack of a long-term master plan or a lack of will to enforce it. I've heard of a master plan that governs development at the ravine edges, which seems to have eroded in its power, literally, but that's another story.

If you were asked to think about how your community/city will accommodate everyone in 20yrs time, what would you suggest? Where will we put everyone?

I don't think the leadership of this city or the public perceives this as a problem. There is plenty of land to go around here.

Can you see the connection to cycling?

Not sure what you mean by this, but there do seem to be separate systems of paved trails throughout the city. It seems that they are not yet fully linked as a network, though I have seen a river valley master plan that calls for that. Sometimes they dead end or don't connect. But that's my roadie perspective. The further away from downtown you are, the harder it is to link to the center. We are now only a few miles from downtown, so I expect I'll be able to access a lot. Seems like mtbs are much more useful here, so I will probably be trying to explore those options when it gets warmer.

ETA: here's an editorial regarding Edmonton's growth plan, from this past November: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/...764/story.html

[bmccasland]

Keeping the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Pontchartrain out. Nothing quite like living below sea level.

The idealist 20 and 30-somethings that have moved in, growing up watching "Friends" and think it's cool to live in the city instead of living in the suburbs - there's more of a desire to actually live in-the-city. So these folks, bless them, want bike paths, public transit and other such things and think that it's normal for middle class people to use them. Now if they'll just stay around long enough, and vote (it's voluntary here), to help see some of their visions through, before they become jaded, and utterly fustrated with the old-guard/old money bastion that really runs the city.

[channlluv]

I live in a city of approximately 3million. 95% of the buildable land inside the city limits is built up. The county itself is larger than the whole state of Rhode Island and has 17 microclimate zones. (It's 70 degress and sunny where I'm sitting as I write this, down near the harbor, but an hour east of me, there's a snowy ice storm blowing in the mountains.)

The people who live here are nearly as varied. I live in a suburban neighborhood about 25 minutes north of here that I like to think of as ethnically rich. I work at an elementary school in this neighborhood, also suburban, but within sight of the city skyline, and my daughter attends a charter middle school in the same building where I work.

I visit downtown as little as possible - all those people make me nervous. The only highrises are downtown. The apartments elsewhere are rarely above two stories tall.

We do have bike paths all over the place, though, and pretty large recreational areas in all areas built for multi-use, and they are very popular.

I think this city is fairly bike-friendly. It's just so sprawling that it's hard to really consider biking to work. It's 17 miles from my door to the school and would take me two hours with all the lights.

I live where I can afford. If there were more affordable housing close by, I'd consider it, but the houses near here are upwards of $500,000 - and that's for the small townhouses. San Diego is an expensive city to live in, unless you're way out in east county, in the really rural area where people keep horses and things.

As far as population migration, we've already had some schools close because so many people moved away from their neighborhoods. I think our population may be shrinking here, but when you've got 3million to start with, it's really not all that noticeable.

In 20 years, who knows. I know they're building up our freeway from four lanes to six. What used to be beautiful rolling hills across the canyon from us is now an unbroken swath of cookie-cutter McMansions. There's nowhere else to build housing except the rural areas way north and way east, and the residents out there fight it every time there's a resolution on the ballot to open up rural land to development. More power to'em. When we go up there, it's not to eat at the new strip mall Subway.

Our business economy seems pretty stable compared to a lot of other regions. We have a lot of foreclosures, but not whole blocks like in some areas of the country. I think our unemployment rate is a little better than average, too, but I also know several big companies left San Diego in the last few years.

So to finally answer your question, in 20 years, where will we put everyone? North and east, and there will have to be smaller city-centers in each community because we're already sprawled as far as we can go here, I think.

Roxy

[maillotpois]

I used to live in San Diego - for years.

We're really lucky in that our county (pretty small population-wise) has a huge percentage of the land set aside as parks or protected farm land. So building is really limited, and sprawl is pretty well contained. However, that does result in a pretty high cost of living and cost of housing. We're pretty much hanging on to our house by our fingernails at this point. But we'll stick it out.

I hope that if population does grow here that the greater Bay Area explores more live/work options in the larger cities, and even in the smaller towns, like mine. Having people densely populate the urban areas is, I think, a good thing in the long run. There definitely is some suburban sprawl in the greater Bay Area, but I also notice a lot more farm land, ranches and parks than in southern CA. And I really like that.

[moonfroggy]

my community can't grow. there is not enough water for it to grow and so people move away to other communities. unless the water treatment here changes it will not grow and most people who live here don't want it to grow people here want the forest, lagoon all the wildlife to have it's space. i want to own a house and since they are so expensive in my community i plan to move to a different one but i will be nearby and will be able to ride my bike here and that will be nice.

it is a bit sad that people who have grown up here can't afford to stay here and have to leave but that the wildlife gets to stay wild seems worth it.

the population here is around 2000

[Crankin]

There really isn't any room for growth here. I live in a town of about 25,000 that does have 2 town centers. I live just a bit too far to walk there quickly (just under 4 miles), but it is perfect for a bike trip/errands. We have lots of protected conservation land and people generally go nuts and protest any new growth or change.
What bugs me is they are protesting even some of the "smart" growth ideas that CC mentioned, such as smaller homes/townhomes in closer proximity to each other. These are people who are supposedly into "the environment," but they really want to keep their suburban-semi rural environment the way it is. Since moving to MA, we have lived in 2 other towns that were decidedly more rural. Neither had a town center and it was 6-7 miles to a grocery store. The first town did have shopping on the edge of town, that bordered a large mall/shopping area in Nashua, NH. It brought a lot of $ into the town from taxes, but caused congestion.
Generally, towns here that have some type of central shopping area and might be bikeable/walkable are expensive and don't have a variety of housing. And I agree with Deb. Bike commuting was awesome for me when it was 6.7 miles. When it became 13.5 miles, I did it, but it was less enjoyable and required more planning. I am hoping to find a commutable job when I graduate in 2011, but it is not going to be the deciding factor.

[tc1]

I'm in Seattle, where squabbling about density is a pastime enjoyed by people of all political persuasions.

Basically, the urbanites want more density in town, which is good. But they fight against any kind of infrastructure to support that density tooth and nail.

The Vulcan/Lake Union redevelopment is a perfect example of the Seattle schizophrenia. The developer offered twice to turn it into a Central Park kinda thing, if the city would also put up some money. So the city put it to a vote, twice, and it failed, twice. So now it is being heavily developed with biotech, and we are all complaining about the development.

The local alternative paper actually gave grant money to an obstructionist !@$%^&* that doesn't want a major through highway rebuilt, because it is in her neighborhood, even though the highway was there decades before she was. And she is publicly admired! !@#$$ oughta be in jail.

20 years from now, I hope the sensible people rule, and we keep the main arterials, and add some more light rail to them, and get an east/west bike route from North Seattle to Ballard that isn't the Burke-Gilman trail. That is the main problem with our suburbs, they aren't served by rail yet.