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  #61  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 12:30 AM
edale edale is offline
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Originally Posted by badrunner View Post
But why does it matter that a suburb within the city of Phoenix looks identical to a suburb in a neighboring city? We're not too concerned with arbitrary municipal borders here.
What does an urban neighborhood look like in Phoenix? Not downtown, but a walkable, dense urban neighborhood with a mix of multi and single family structures? Odd that there is a 'suburb within the city of Phoenix', and every place I dropped the streetview pin within the city limits looked similar to the example I posted. But that is also kind of my point. When you have city neighborhoods that look suburban, and your suburban areas are built fairly densely, it's hard to distinguish the two.
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  #62  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 2:16 AM
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One of the problems that the Twin Cities have is that the combination of rolling topography, a high water table and a propensity for severe thunderstorms means that there is a lot of land that is prone to flash floods. A lot of the low lying areas need high capacity storm sewer systems to be intensively developed but the property values aren't high enough to justify it. As a result, Twin Cities suburban development tends to have a checkerboard quality to it.

I live in one one of those flood prone areas but it is in the city so it was developed anyway. This is an example of what happens about once a decade during an especially strong thunderstorm:

mplsaug2010105 by Andrew Smith, on Flickr
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  #63  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 2:47 AM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Eschaton, those are not "fair" criticisms. Plano has no prewar urbanity. Plano has no non-car functionality. The fact that Norwalk has some urban gaps and some auto orientation does not make it remotely comparable to Plano.
I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here. As I said, there are clearly some apartments and the like within walking distance - about 1,000 or so middle class residents it seems.

Still, the business district's vitality is maintained in part based upon people driving in for a "night on the town." A traditional business district which is mostly dependent on car commuters isn't that different from one entirely dependent. Certainly more similar overall than a neighborhood business district in Brownstone Brooklyn or something.
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  #64  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 3:02 AM
mhays mhays is offline
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Originally Posted by 10023 View Post
There is tons of sprawl in Beaverton, Hillsboro, etc. The real constraint is probably that the traffic over into Portland proper is already awful.
Orderly sprawl, with clear dividing lines.

The point wasn't sprawl anyway. It was that growth management (not hills or water) created those clear lines.
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  #65  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 4:17 AM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
^ it's still so manufactured, disjointed, and disconnected.

outside of a cute little retail street (open air mall) here or there, it's never going to feel like an actual, cohesive urban burb.

from the air the stark differences in form, street-scale, organization, and interconnectedness are crystal clear.

plano: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pl...!4d-96.6988856

evanston: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ev...!4d-87.6876969
Yes for now but give it time and it'll mature.

As for your links, you posted Downtown Evanston and the Legacy area of Plano. This is Downtown Plano: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pl...!4d-96.6988856. Evanston and Plano aren't equal comparison suburbs (and Plano doesn't have a university in its center). I was only using it as an example of a suburb that is becoming denser. I think Denton, Texas would be a better comparison.

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No, it's the complete opposite environment. The Plano development is just a mall/suburban office park. If you can't distinguish between a civil-war-era streetscape and a suburban office park, I'm not sure what to say.

Just because you squeeze all the sprawl together and hide the vast parking fields doesn't mean it isn't the same sprawl. Just because you build a mall without a roof doesn't mean it's urban. It's the same autocentric mess just with Disney facades.
I posted a link of Plano's downtown which has been there since 1880 (so pre-WWI), yet you keep saying it's an open air mall. I don't get it. Legacy and Downtown Plano are on two opposite sides of town. Both places are urbanizing. They are two examples of what is happening in Sunbelt suburbs and why density isn't being lost with growth.
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  #66  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 4:35 AM
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Originally Posted by Trae View Post
Yes for now but give it time and it'll mature.
But it has nothing to do with "maturing". It doesn't have prewar fabric.
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I posted a link of Plano's downtown which has been there since 1880 (so pre-WWI), yet you keep saying it's an open air mall. I don't get it.
Because that's not what you posted. You posted "Legacy", which is a typical suburban office park/open air mall concept, using the now-standard New Urbanist typology. It's basically the polar opposite of a South Norwalk.
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  #67  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 4:38 AM
jd3189 jd3189 is offline
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I don't think I agree. Higher density is more environmentally friendly land-wise and also even if you wouldn't walk anywhere in a dense suburban area, chances are the places you wanna go(gas station, shopping, groceries, work etc) are closer. So you spend less time in the car but more importantly you use less gas and let out less emissions.
Plus, if you are in a dense car-centric neighborhood that’s on a grid and/or has mixed use built in, you can choose to either drive or walk depending on your needs. That’s the reality in places like Southern California and South Florida, but it takes a sizable immigrant community or just people who can’t afford cars to make it happen.
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  #68  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 4:46 AM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Because that's not what you posted.
Really? Then what is that there on the second link then:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Trae View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
You posted "Legacy", which is a typical suburban office park/open air mall concept, using the now-standard New Urbanist typology. It's basically the polar opposite of a South Norwalk.
Nope, the second link was downtown Plano which looked no different than the link you posted of Norwalk. The first link is the Legacy development which is on the opposite side of the city. I don't know how downtown Plano looks like an open air mall. Like what was said earlier, there are plenty of quaint downtowns in the DFW and Houston metro areas. It's just a matter of building them back up. That's been happening a lot over the last 10-15 years and is helping these suburbs become denser, self-contained areas. Thus saving land and helping the environment. Win-win.

Last edited by Trae; Aug 16, 2018 at 4:56 AM.
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  #69  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 7:24 AM
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Originally Posted by jtown,man View Post
I don't think I agree. Higher density is more environmentally friendly land-wise and also even if you wouldn't walk anywhere in a dense suburban area, chances are the places you wanna go(gas station, shopping, groceries, work etc) are closer. So you spend less time in the car but more importantly you use less gas and let out less emissions.
None of this is true.

Housing doesn’t take up more land because there is more space between it (especially in these really wooded Northeastern semi-rural areas, where people commonly have deer wandering through their property).

And very clearly, suburban density creates traffic congestion, which means you don’t spend less time in the car, use less gas or release less emissions, but rather more of all of the above.
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  #70  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 7:29 AM
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Plano appears to have one walkable block (15th between K and J). The rest is typical Texas. And this is a city of 270k? Come on...

Every Westchester village with a train station has more than that. Mt Kisco has a better walkable built environment than Plano:

https://goo.gl/maps/XH8pQd2YwsF2
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  #71  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 12:15 PM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
But it has nothing to do with "maturing". It doesn't have prewar fabric.


Because that's not what you posted. You posted "Legacy", which is a typical suburban office park/open air mall concept, using the now-standard New Urbanist typology. It's basically the polar opposite of a South Norwalk.
Connecticut? Don't kid yourself.A good deal of New England in all if its 18th century glory is far from walk able. Sure, they have train stations and town centers but in very limited spaces otherwise they are not very walk-able at all.
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  #72  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 12:54 PM
isaidso isaidso is offline
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So Guatamala City gets covered but nothing from Canada?
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  #73  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 1:02 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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Originally Posted by 10023 View Post
Housing doesn’t take up more land because there is more space between it (especially in these really wooded Northeastern semi-rural areas, where people commonly have deer wandering through their property).
If an area has one-acre lots instead of 1/16th acre lots, it will by definition fit only 1/16th the number of households. Thus the demand for housing has to go somewhere else - which often means the exurban fringes.

It can be argue that it's a nice amenity for those who live in large lot wooded suburbia to have the pastoral setting. But this benefits a tiny percentage of the metro as a whole, and it was only maintained by instituting extreme anti-density zoning in the first place. It's not optimal for a metropolitan area.

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And very clearly, suburban density creates traffic congestion, which means you don’t spend less time in the car, use less gas or release less emissions, but rather more of all of the above.
This is a valid point - density does cause more traffic. It's harder to say however if it causes longer commutes. A more sprawled metro, with lower-density suburbs, should have less traffic overall, but the individual drivers will have to drive many more miles for things like work and shopping. Hence it might be a zero-sum exchange when it comes to commute times.

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Originally Posted by JManc View Post
Connecticut? Don't kid yourself.A good deal of New England in all if its 18th century glory is far from walk able. Sure, they have train stations and town centers but in very limited spaces otherwise they are not very walk-able at all.
For whatever reason, my home state suffered very, very badly during the urban renewal area compared to say Massachusetts, with most of the traditional downtown areas chopped up to hell, or in some cases completely obliterated.
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  #74  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 1:08 PM
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Originally Posted by Chef View Post
One of the problems that the Twin Cities have is that the combination of rolling topography, a high water table and a propensity for severe thunderstorms means that there is a lot of land that is prone to flash floods. A lot of the low lying areas need high capacity storm sewer systems to be intensively developed but the property values aren't high enough to justify it. As a result, Twin Cities suburban development tends to have a checkerboard quality to it.
we have this problem in the st. louis area that were developed outside of the city limits. while it's all the same sewer system now, the suburbs didn't properly plan or have the capacity to build heavy duty sewer infrastructure. as a result, people occasionally get swept from their streets/yards in the suburbs, THROUGH/UNDER the city in it's massive underground tunnels and drainage canal, into the mississippi.
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  #75  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 1:29 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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Originally Posted by Centropolis View Post
we have this problem in the st. louis area that were developed outside of the city limits. while it's all the same sewer system now, the suburbs didn't properly plan or have the capacity to build heavy duty sewer infrastructure. as a result, people occasionally get swept from their streets/yards in the suburbs, THROUGH/UNDER the city in it's massive underground tunnels and drainage canal, into the mississippi.
Wait? People swept into the river? How do people get into the sewers to begin with?
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  #76  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 1:31 PM
ThePhun1 ThePhun1 is offline
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Originally Posted by JManc View Post
There are plenty of Dallas older suburbs that started out having noting to do with Dallas that have since been sucked into DFW's orbit with Panera Breads and cookie cutter housing developments but still retain their old downtowns and identities. I was just in one last weekend for my wife's grandmothers's funeral; Forney. Houston has some too. Nothing like the northeast because Texas was much much smaller and more sparsely populated in the turn of the century but Texas is absolutely loaded with small towns that now only recently coalesced into the bigger metros. Not every suburb is a Plano.
Houston has them too but many have been so engulfed by typical suburban sprawl that you can't even tell they used to be real towns, including the town I grew up in. You have to go to the center of town to realize it used to actually be a real town that has structures built before the 1980's.
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  #77  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 1:50 PM
McBane McBane is offline
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I haven't followed the posts on this thread (they usually veer off topic or focus on a specific city after a while anyway). But getting back to the original premise, this article doesn't share initial baselines. Here in America, where we have so much sprawl, we blindly cheer density as a good thing.

But some cities, especially those in the developing world, were super dense to begin with, to the point it was unsanitary and uncomfortable. Cairo and Calcutta are two cities that saw density decreases. But from where those cities were in 1988, I'm certain the decline in density was welcomed. And even still, it's doubtful that these cities are experiencing American-type sprawl with SFH on large plots of land.
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  #78  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 1:56 PM
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I just can’t fathom that people seem to be claiming that this is somehow laudable, because it’s slightly denser than Northeastern suburbia:



That looks like hell on Earth.
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  #79  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 2:01 PM
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I just can’t fathom that people seem to be claiming that this is somehow laudable, because it’s slightly denser than Northeastern suburbia:



That looks like hell on Earth.
Brand new housing, public park, pools, close to neighbors for a sense of community, low traffic streets, walking distance to a school.

WHO would want that?!
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  #80  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 2:03 PM
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I just can’t fathom that people seem to be claiming that this is somehow laudable, because it’s slightly denser than Northeastern suburbia:



That looks like hell on Earth.
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