Infrastructure alone to Bungalow jungle is never cost-effective: as Detroit learned, it never pays for itself with property tax.
I say we jack the property tax on low-dense residential to properly reflect a 20-year amortization and all the operating expenses of the infrastructure used, all the way back to City Hall, so that it does pay for itself (and the farther out, the more expensive to fix, the more expensive the tax).
At the same time, the city will
- wreck a park (wait for it)
- put up 40 storeys of mixed use
- offer to buy the shitty bungalows around the building, with an option to buy into ready condo space
- same for businesses, because #mixed-use
- use adjacent bungalow space for central square. Start with transit station underneath
- build 7 more towers
- offer same buy-up to adjacent bungalows
- surround with greenspace and one really ineffective laneway to connect garages under building with roadway out there
- begin offering more incentives for bungalow people to give up their home for agri space and move into mixed-use
- repeat until city is transformed to efficient walkable oases linked by transit
People think they can’t do apartments, but I’m sure a spacious 1200sqft place planned with an eye to sight-lines isn’t what they’re thinking. We love our (smaller) apartment near the mixed-use block that sprung up , and everything we need is within that block. From daycares and pet stores to restaurants and coffee-shops and take-out, and gyms (plural) and insurers and a market and a chemist and an insurer and a physio… it’s endless, and they’re still building out more commercial space.
But you have to build the new space, properly configured with GOOD (rail) transit, before you can get people out of their cars.
bluGill@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
Most suburbs have plenty of density to support transit as proved in other countries that provide good transit to their areas of similar density. However most suburbs have such bad transit you can't use it for anything and to people start believing the idea that it is impossible to get them good transit and so they won't agree to get it.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The American style suburbs where you have just single family homes and the closest stores are 5 miles away?
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I live in the suburbs. The older kids can bike to the local Walmart (save it) as there is a pedestrian tunnel that crosses under the main road, providing a complete pedestrian/bike path from one end of the town to the other.
I’d prefer if we had more of those, but it’s something.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s amazing you guys have actual transit infrastructure, near me you can find that in towns and cities but as soon as you get to the cookie cutter suburban developments you need to take 45mph roads with little to no shoulder to get to any stores
bluGill@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
Most suburbs a store is not that far. you will often drive more than that for a store you like but something is closer.
american suburb covers a lot of variation. If you have a horse as some of the least dense support that is different from ones where you get a postage stamp lot. Streetcar suburbs designed before cars are ess dense than the new developments they are putting is around me today.