California Declares War on Suburbia, Planners want to herd millions into densely packed corridors

Not to sound conspiratorial...but there was an article up at Drudge about mandatory black boxes in all automobiles in the near future. One has to wonder with this administration if it includes a kill switch. DHS is planning on road checks

They are purposefully shutting down domestic oil production, devaluing the dollar , resulting in an increase of gas prices.

The TSA has made flying intentionally very unpleasant. May be a nudge not to fly, reduce your carbon foot print.

The TSA is now involved in a program in Houston - Bus Safe.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2873573/posts

What will you do if your “office” moves to Montana?

Huh?

Don't tell me, let me guess. You are either an architect or a "planner" who has completely bought into the new urbanist school.

You folks are easy to spot.

You, FRiend - are definitely posting on the wrong site.

If the office moved to Montana ... good question. I’m fairly close to retirement. I suppose I’d have to move some decisions ahead a few years.

And no, I’m neither an architect nor a planner. I grew up in small town southern Indiana and have lived for the last 35 years in the city. Moved onto Capitol Hill, east of Lincoln Park, well before the rebound. People thought I was crazy to buy here ... grain of salt in the pepper shaker, so to speak. Great neighbors over the years, but you needed situational awareness when out at night. I don’t take any guff from libs who try to run a racial riff. I’ve paid some dues. Gentrification has been very good to me. And my politics are somewhere to the right of Ghenghis Khan.

Along the way I’ve developed some biases. One of those is against exclusionary zoning in the suburbs. It’s classic “I’ve got mine, pull up the drawbridge” thinking, and it tends to be coupled with the idea that the city should be the dumping ground for all the problem cases. Another peeve is with people who choose to live 20 miles from their jobs and then want to punch commuter sewers through other people’s front yards to shave a few minutes off their drive time. If you want to live out in Timbuktoo, be my guest, but don’t complain to me about your two hour commute, and don’t try to add lanes at the expense of destroying the neighborhoods of people who made better choices.

Gentrification is now displacing a significant number of lower income working folks. These are mostly solid citizens who are being priced out of their old neighborhoods. You shouldn’t be phobic if some of them move out your way. We are also bit by bit shutting down LBJ’s follies, i.e. the big housing projects. This is a rougher clientele, but they have to go somewhere. I’m open to your suggestions. Just don’t run to a suburban enclave that is zoned up tighter than a drum, turn your back, and say the poor are someone else’s problem. If that’s your answer, I’m in favor of putting a dozen or so into illegal rentals on your cul de sac, so that you can begin to address the issue a little more constructively.

Finally, I have the blessing of living in a walkable, bikeable neighborhood, and it’s great. My humble point on this and many other threads over the years is simply that a little intelligent planning could make such neighborhoods much more common than they are. I am amazed at the visceral reaction some people have against the very mention of sidewalks and bike lanes. Bad planning forces people into cars. Good planning gives them options. It is nice to be able to live without a car in a decent neighborhood with jobs, basic shopping, church, school, etc. within walking distance. This should not be considered an exotic, utopian objective. It’s the way urban neighborhoods ought to work routinely.

We have “bike lanes” all over Oregon....do you know what biking in the rain is like?

I own several motor vehicles and frequently drive them just for the sake of driving them. My 2 favorites are a 1-ton diesel pickup that weighs 9,000 lbs empty and will throw you in the back seat if you stay on it when the turbo kicks in. If it had 6 more gears, I could probably drive it to the moon. The other is a SVT Raptor that not only will throw you in the back seat, but actually will get airborne and in my estimation, cannot get stuck in anything.

The 1-ton gets 22 MPG whether it's just hauling me or a 20,000 lb. trailer.

I can't even park the 1-ton anywhere in your ideal community because it is 22' long from bumper to bumper, makes a lot of noise and emits glorious diesel fumes. The Raptor, I could park on your roof, if I really wanted to do so.

I think I will keep them both.

If I lived in Montana and were a lot younger, I could see driving something like that. But you're right. You would be hard pressed to park anything like that in the city. In any city, not just mine. But you sure would look pretty sitting in gridlock four hours a day in NoVa.

I'm not arguing that we all need to make the same choices. I AM arguing that we should try to build cities that are less car-cenric. A lot of people are getting tired of spending the bulk of their non-work waking hours fighting traffic. That's what is driving gentrification, and it's beginning to change the architecture of at least some of the suburbs. On a positive note, I see more and more examples of good planning/design popping up, sometimes in unexpected places. Small neighborhood shopping strips here and there are being revitalized, and some of them have become quite nice. This trend clearly reflects a nearby clientele that has rediscovered the attraction of local shopping as opposed to hopping in the car and fighting beltway traffic to run minor errands.

Out in the burbs, there are more and more examples of smaller scale "town center" type developments, with mid-scale shopping areas surrounded by townhomes and rental housing, changing to single family homes in the next ring. Again, it is a pattern of development that puts a lot within easy reach without getting out onto the arterial roads. There has been smart planning along several of the metro lines -- the Ballston-Clarendon-Courthhouse strip in northern Virginia is a great example. I am hopeful that the redevelopment of the Anacostia riverfront in DC turns into a similar mixed use area. A riverfront in the middle of a major metro area, if not an active port, should be a mecca for residents, with housing, retail, recreation, and offices all mixed in. DC has a rare opportunity to reclaim a wasted waterfront. That's exciting.

The common denominator in all this is an emphasis on mixed use neighborhoods, as opposed to putting strictly residential areas in one place, job centers in another, and shopping somewhere else, and building expressways to link them all up. There will still be plenty of people who opt for longer commutes, or who fall into them because their jobs change, but we can at least create a more balanced range of options for those of us who have better things to do than bonding with our cars.

Done right, city neighborhoods can recreate the convenience of a small town. That's a worthy goal.

If I wanted to bike in the rain, I would move to Portland where it rains every day.

I am not a spandexed euroweenie wannabe. Nor am I a bike Nazi, in serious training, or a long-distance commuter. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm just an overweight guy pushing 60 who spends too much time behind a desk and doesn't get nearly as much exercise as I'd like. If the weather's good, it's nice to be able to hop on the bike for a 10 minute ride to work. In my case, I don't think the car saves me more than a couple of minutes on a typical day; if there's traffic, the bike is probably faster, and I don't have to pay for parking.

If it rains, I'll hop on the bus, or drive. Nice to have options.

Came from a small town, currently live in a small town.

No, thank you