Roads, cars, and trucks aren’t going away, nor should they. That’s not my point.
Most of us live in cities. That includes those out on the exurban fringe who wear cowboy boots and drive a big SUV on their two hour commutes. American society can’t be healthy if the cities are chronically sick. We’ve done a lot of harm through bad policy, and we need to rebalance in a number of areas.
Rational transportation planning is not the most important thing, although it’s probably in the top five. FWIW, I would put school choice at the top of the list. Not everyone will pick the city as their first residential choice, but many do, and for young adults who make that initial choice, it is apt to be lousy schools that eventually push them out to the ‘burbs. Voucher the schools, and watch the next generation of young middle class parents stay in place. The cities would be transformed.
Low income housing is a second big issue. We need to break up the big toxic concentrations of government subsidized poverty. That is now generally understood by people in the field, but the remedy requires that suburbs accept a share. That doesn’t necessarily mean scattered site, low density projects or Section 8 (although it might); it may mean zoning to accommodate affordable housing, or relaxing occupancy rules so that renters can double up. We have to stop using cities as dumping grounds, which creates the toxic no-go areas that become the great generators of the underclass. And we should create mixed use neighborhoods so that low and moderate income folks can live in reasonable proximity to jobs.
What we do now is warehouse the very poor in areas where an employer would be insane to tread, and then we wonder why intergenerational poverty becomes the norm.
Housing policy quickly morphs into transportation policy. Again, mixed neighborhoods are a key. We want to maximize the percentage of people who live in close proximity to work. I live in such a neighborhood; this can and should be much more common than it is.
Fix the schools, rationalize housing and transportation, and the cities can be turned around. Not overnight, to be sure, but it’s a worthy goal. And so we need to proceed by small steps. For transportation, this means making sure that we provide sidewalks and bike lanes in urban and high density suburban locales, making sure that arterial roads don’t become barriers to neighborhood cross traffic, and respecting existing neighborhoods, as opposed to seeing them as impediments to the rapid transit of the imperial commuter class.
We’ve all laughed at the classic New Yorker cover of America as seen from Manhattan. A lot of suburbanites have a similar view of their cities, with their exurban leafy acres in the foreground, their job looming in the distance, and not much identifiable in between: drive through country rather than flyover country, but the principle is the same. That’s what needs to change.
Your commuter road would destroy my neighborhood if you ever managed to push it through. The road lobby has tried many times in the past and will surely try again. That’s the issue.
Thank you for responding, I appreciate your point of view. Mind you I don’t agree with all of it. I HAVE lived in New York City, I detested it. Way too crowded and the people there HAD to develop the mental protection of looking straight ahead while walking or riding the subway’s etc.
I’ve lived so far away from civilization that a trip to the city was like moving 50 years into the future. Very unnerving I must admit.
I’ve lived in exurbia where my job was an hours drive away. It was not the best situation but the job was worth it.
Now I live back out in the country on my farm and I visit the nearest small town once a week or so and the nearest city every few months. This is by far the best for me, but I do know my faults. Too many people creep me out, going to Wal-mart is okay if it’s a short trip but any longer than a half an hour and I break out in cold sweats and have to leave.
So in conclusion what’s a good lifestyle for you is NOT one for me. That means that there needs to be the freedom of movement for each of us to find our own place where we are comfortable and can thrive.
“We need to break up the big toxic concentrations of government subsidized poverty.”
Do that by ending the government power to subsidize.
We have, for all practical purposes, made functional poverty illegal. Cost of legal living is too high for functional poverty, and subsidization (welfare) removes any standing to challenge that prohibition. Between property taxes and zoning laws and housing requirements and other imposed “live in luxury or get out” rules, nobody can just acquire some land and live off it.
Remove the prohibitions, remove the subsidies, and let natural economic forces take hold. Affordable housing will arise where housing is affordable - and allowed.
As for roads: improve them where there is room to with minimal human impact. Don’t wipe out miles of homes for a new freeway, build more access to where housing etc is affordable but lacks only a speedy means to get there. More people means more strain on what’s there. Relieving commuting pressure by expanding or adding roads in the same region only gives reason for more people to flow in. The influx will continue until those there just can’t stand it anymore; stop encouraging more influx, LET the pressure build until it hits a LOWER point of discomfort and thereby encourage people to find solutions elsewhere earlier.
Stop cramming more into cities. Facilitate & encourage getting them out.