Posted on 08/02/2004 8:55:24 AM PDT by hedgetrimmer
It's long been an irony that the same American who gushes over a delightful corner patisserie in the 16th arrondissement buys into a subdivision that is the antithesis of Parisian street life. There are no corner bakeries in the gently curving streets of suburbia, for an Old World clutter of transit, shops and residences is precisely what's been designed out of the suburban landscape.
Does the irony lie in our rote desire for a suburban home, or in the fact we've had so few choices?
Many of us would love to live in an urban neighborhood rich with transit and services such as San Francisco's Noe Valley or Oakland's Rockridge district; but those neighborhoods' very desirability render them unaffordable to all but the top layer of Bay Area wage earners.
If you can't afford to buy into a trendy neighborhood chock full of shops and services, what's left? Previously it had been either a hideously long commute to exurbia or a loft in a service-poor urban core. Now there's another choice. After a decade or more of effort by cities, planners, neighborhood activists and developers, a third choice, the transit village, is finally popping up all over the Bay Area. By building a mix of housing and services near BART, Caltrain and light-rail stations, they bring together the same conveniences of transit and pedestrian-friendly shops that make established urban enclaves so desirable.
It's all part of the mid-'90s New Urbanism movement, which calls for a renewal of the charms and conveniences of an urban landscape designed for people rather than parking. New Urbanism preaches that a diversity of housing types is better for both community and consumers than an either/or choice of suburban sprawl or highrise urban towers.
Given the Bay Area's well-established mass transit systems and its concentration of New Urbanist practitioners, it's not surprising that a range of transit-oriented developments -- TODs, in urban planning nomenclature -- are sprouting up from Richmond to Daly City.
Despite these advantages, more work needs to be done before transit villages reach their potential as great places to live and worthy solutions to the region's acute housing crisis.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Another example of socialism not working anywhere.
Article of interest?
Amazing the lessons we forget...
Chilling, isn't it?
I'll stick to my 26 acres, thankyouverymuch.
By building a mix of housing and services near BART,
I think these used to be called small towns. The country is full of them. I would guess the only real problem is that these small towns are full of regular people rather than homosexuals, metrosexuals and trend seeking idiots that are a bane on society.
If you haven't been paying attention to the Santa Cruz County planning department you should.
About 2 weeks ago the board of supervisors passed an ordinance that allows them to change the zoning of ag properties to high density developments without having to post notices to surrounding property owners or hold hearings.
The county is committed to creating "utopia" as you can see by the developments going in on the ag land in Watsonville right now.
I am terribly bad at keeping up with the shenanigans of the local socialists. I really should start paying more attention. I'm aware of a little of it. Just don't have as much "tilting at windmills" energy as I used to any more.
They aren't talking about me, I have no intention of walking up five flights of stairs with no air conditioning or heat to live in a room smaller than my dog's house.
In a city, you can communicate face to face, and you have options to move around. You generally have the option of more jobs available within a given commute/transit time. "New Urbanism" is really about rolling back a lot of separations forced on us by the widespread adoption of zoning and planning. Zoning started with the noble goals of keeping the steel plants away from the kindergardens. Once the citizenry accepted that reasonable goal, the P & Z bureaucracy has overwhelmed us with the theory that all uses should be separated, and all would have their designated place, and all you good little people will drop into your nice little slots. Today, of course, the large development companies play the P & Z game with "political contributions", and somebody who wants to work in an office in his basement (like me), has to get approved to do it, although the only person it effects is the UPS guy.
Kind of a disjointed post, but I get pretty agitated when thinking about "Planners".
There are too corner bakeries in suburbia, you just gotta know where to look.
I dunno. A lack of supermodels willing to go out with me?
Interesting article; thanks for posting it.
It's odd that the issue implied by the article's title is never really addressed. Why don't buyers go for transit-oriented developments with walkable access to shops and restaurants, instead of traditional single-family homes?
If you read the article without the title, it would appear that everyone's happy with the new trend.
Architect Christopher Alexander, who they credit with helping found the New Urbanism, does not seem to like New Urbanist developments. I haven't heard him precisely on the subject, but what he likes are houses built close to each other, each designed and customized to fit the personality of their owners. To say Alexander would advocate the typical impersonal 500 unit "housing community" is a libel on the man.
Alexander understands what I suspect is a lot of the reason why people don't buy in more heavily to these "communities". People want to feel like they own their home, like it is their own personal bulwark against the problems of life. I understand this well now that I own my own home; I feel the same way. Near the top of a hill, there is a cute little house I've improved with halogen track lighting and new plantings and such. It's mine. I don't have to get permission from a condo association to do anything. I don't have to hear my neighbors; I can blast music loudly or turn it down softly.
It's expensive to own a single family home around here. My home cost $428,000 and it was a cheap entry-level place. But it was built in 1960 and has some of Christopher Alexander's sense of "life" or "living structure". It feels very much like a real character in my life story, not something bland and characterless. It costs a lot of money every month for me to keep my home. But to me, it's worth it, even regardless of the enormous appreciation I have enjoyed in the last seven months.
The real problem is that the realities of real estate development here require that things be largely uniform, that housing be a bland commodity instead of something meant to give joy. For the new urbanism to succeed and attract enough people for it to grow, I think these issues have to be reworked.
D
Socialists and communists use a technique called semantic deception, to convince the masses that their plan for them isn't so bad.
"New urbanism" is a rehashing of 19th century immigrant slum neighborhoods, where the new immigrants lived in many storied apartment buildings above stores shops and factories. New urbanism recalls that the people who lived in these places did not own them, the new "homes" being built by the governmennt in partnership with developers are mostly apartments, so the concept of "ownership" and private property" do not pay out in new urbanism. Because there is no private property, there are no private spaces for people to go to. Children are forced to play in tiny postage stamped sized play areas, and they can only play proscribed games-- for example most play areas in the "new urban" development are for babies and toddlers, older kids don't have space for dodge ball, baseball or any other game that requires a field or space. Most of these developments also restrict the dweller from putting plants on balconies or having any kind of garden at all. In fact, any kind of individualism is frowned upon because it mars the architects "vision" of a development to have the input of anyone else in how it looks.
New urbanism is about loss of property rights, loss of freedom for families and children especially, loss of individuality and loss of control about the type of housing people would choose to live in, because in the cities where new urbanism is adopted, permits for single family homes and dwellings are sharply curtailed.
See #16
The key players there are bankers and real estate interests. They want your place to sell fast in case of a foreclosure. Seeing as they hold the mortgages, I don't see much different uless home-buyers start to pay cash.
I had no trouble getting my aesthetically pleasing, well-designed home financed, so I think you exaggerate.
In my neck of the woods - and, I think, yours - any housing that's not actually hazardous to live in is easy to sell in case of foreclosure.
D
Personally I prefer the 5th Arrondisement, but I digress. I say, if someone wants to have al fresco on every side walk, then move to where they have them. Of course, where they have them, 1 bedroom condos cost $900,000! But that's life - you get what you pay for. Choices, schmoises ... well, life choices and money ones, yeah, some truth there. But it's an individual thing. BTW - most of the transit villages here in the Bay Area look like $#@$#*$(@!
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