Walkable and unwalkable district1/28/2024 ![]() The pub-with-dining had recently closed, I'm not sure if that's still the case. On the main road there was a school, church, doctor's office, dentist, library, small grocery store, beer/wine shop, bakery, cheap café, pizza take-away, Chinese take-away, Indian take-away, fish and chip shop, pharmacy, newsagent, youth club and 'village' green including play equipment. There were cul-de-sac roads, but most of them continued with footpaths so journeys wouldn't take too long. I used to live in a poor area of London, which I think was built in the 1960s. The market probably has less promotion of organic produce, and will sell produce as well as cheap clothes and household goods. The choice of restaurant might be a larger pub, or a place that also/only offers take-away (McDonalds or a small Cantonese place, for example). The menu is similar enough - fried breakfast etc - but it will be served on an actual plate, rather than a chopping board or slate. In England at least, a poor area still has little cafés. There is a entertaining talk about all this by James Kuntsler at. Oh, and this was all mandated by building codes (law) so even if one wanted to build a walkable suburban business park, it was not possible. Now, most towns in America have realized that was extremely bone-headed, possibly unsustainable (it costs a lot of money to run all those electrical wires, plumbing, and roads), and we are trying to undo the past 70 years of engineering. (But if you look at real estate pricing, the data show people want to live in walkable areas a home in a walkable area will often command a 1.5x to 2x price premium over a similar home in a typical car-centric suburb.)Īll those details add up to create a poor and dangerous pedestrian experience. Also, everybody wants to live in a cul-de-sac, which greatly limits how far you can walk ( ) versus a standard grid layout. Things like 12' wide travel lanes instead of 10', ridiculously huge building setbacks, right turn arcs, 140' wide lots instead of 70', wide neighborhood roads (encourages speeding), no street parking (drivers slow down on roads with parked cars and on roads with no marked centerline), etc. ![]() Basically in the 50's, we started building cities at automobile scale, instead of at human scale like we used to, and the design goal for roads was simply to move as many cars through as quickly as possible.
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