Suburbs that don't Suck - Streetcar Suburbs (Riverdale, Toronto)

Not Just Bikes has a recent video[0] talking about the lack of middle ground for suburbs in North America. I think a big problem is that laws as they are prevent variety. Either everything must be single family homes with huge setbacks and wide roads, or it is doomed to be bought up by large apartment developers. Is it a threat to your ability to have a yard and two car garage if the house next door is a duplex and the end of the block has a corner store with a couple apartments above it? No, but the laws make it so that only your yard and two car garage can exist in your neighborhood regardless. [0] ▶ this video

> Relative to single family homes, apartments are viewed as decreasing property values, increasing crime rates, lowering school quality, increasing traffic, and decreasing desirability. The problem is most cities only allow two kinds of development: Low density or high density. We're missing the middle! link I've really enjoyed these two YouTube channels on the subject. "Oh the Urbanity" has a great video on Montreal's "missing middle" link And "Not Just Bikes" discusses a "missing middle" neighborhood in Toronto: ▶ this video

There is something in between NYC and an American-style suburb. I encourage you to take a look at Not Just Bikes [1,2]: [1] ▶ this video [2] link

> This is almost certainly still "consuming less" in the US. You just cannot pack as much combined square footage + individual private outside space as most Americans are accustomed to next to all the jobs. Depends on how you define "next to": does (say) 5km count? Because you can get houses like these: * link * link * link into neighbourhoods with densities where transit and cycling can practicable: * link * ▶ this video * link You still have a (back)yard, and can have a garage (attached to a laneway). Or perhaps something with less square footage (for more of a starter?): * link * link As you can see from street view, lots of folks still own cars, but they go from being obligatory to optional for many activities.

> You don't need tiny apartments to have density. Sure, it starts with "just do row houses" and "missing middle" and in two generations it becomes "we should allow SROs". > [1] ▶ this video That's a propaganda channel that "conveniently" ignores everything against their narrative. These kinds of density still require cars. Unless you want to have a stay-at-home spouse who can do full-time housekeeper duty (like in that Toronto neighborhood).

It’s a symptom of endless government regulation, bureaucratic overreach, and NIMBYism. One of the worst developments in the history of government is this incessant creep of regulations and codes that specify, in excruciating detail, how residential land must be developed. How wide the streets are, how many lanes of traffic there are, how far the sidewalks are from the road, how far the front door is from the sidewalk, how much of the back yard is visible from the sidewalk, how houses must be arranged, how wide a house must be relative to the property width, how short/tall a house must be, how many separate entrances are allowed, … and on and on and on the regulations go. This has the effect of making old style neighbourhoods (with real character) impossible to build in the modern day. It also highly restricts the usage of the land and the number of structures in a way that make it impossible to have multi-family dwellings, studio apartments above houses, artists’ cottages in the back yard, coach houses, small used book stores or cafes in residential neighbourhoods, etc. The new urbanist movement [1] talks a lot about this. They’ve argued for the return of streetcar suburbs [2] and I agree with them. These places are extremely beautiful to live in. They foster a far deeper sense of community than modern suburbia. They are wonderful spaces for humans to live in rather than places for urban planners who want to play SimCity in real life. I don’t blame old people or any other par

> that suburbanites choose to live in suburban areas because they want the isolation. I don't think most of them want isolation, I strongly suspect that most people moving to suburbs are doing so for their career, as most well-paid jobs are in metropolitan areas. In a metropolitan area your options are mostly: 1) city 2) suburb w/ very little mixed-use zoning Cities tend to be more expensive for less space. There are going to be many people who would want to live in a city with their family but simply can't afford the rent, so they live on the outskirts of the city (suburbs). Alternatively they may want the space, yard, etc. that a house provides, but this doesn't mean they want isolation . They may very well prefer suburbs with good mixed-use zoning and public transit, those are just very rare in the US. > It seems that if you took suburbs away from these people I'm not proposing taking suburbs away from people, nor are the vast majority of urbanists. We're proposing more ability to build denser suburbs (i.e. some multifamily housing in suburban areas), mixed-use zoning (so you can walk to stores), and better public transit in suburbs. See also: link . Suburbs that have these features tend to be in high-demand, they're just rare today because they're illegal to build in many places (I think there's some commentary on that here: ▶ this video ). > they'd most likely try to move into more rural areas Unlikely IMO because again I suspect that many/most have moved to suburbs for the

> Why are we still trying to cram into small spaces? Define "small". Here are some examples houses in an urban area with front yards, back yards, and garages (attached to lanes): * link * link A little less square footage: * link * link The Oh the Urbanity channel has a video on the (mistaken) idea that "urban living" = Manhattan / Hong Kong apartment blocks, which is certainly not the case: * link Plenty of that was build pre-WW2 in ways that didn't depend on cars: * link * ▶ this video Suburban design is the worst of both worlds: lacking the density of the urban so infrastructure is inefficient and so is transportation, and basically bulldozing what makes more rural living nice (closeness to nature).

This take is very historical. The government heavily subsidized highway construction, set requirements for massive amounts of available parking, and through the FHA, provided affordable mortgages to white families to move to the suburbs - these new suburbs often had covenants prohibiting black residents. (The new highways were also often built through black neighborhoods, which were often seen as a "blight", were cheaper to acquire through eminent domain, and whose residents didn't have the political or economic power to put up much resistance.) Traffic policies were set up to maximize traffic flow, which often meant more roads, and wide roads, enabling faster speed. But these make it more dangerous to do anything except drive places. Restrictive zoning laws resulting in purely residential areas with no corner shop, so even something as simple getting some milk requires driving to the store. Certainly some people prefer that lifestyle. But the historical truth is that much of it was deliberate top-down policy to encourage people towards that specific lifestyle, and now it's pretty well locked in. Take for example how residential areas were often designed around cul-de-sacs. The idea was to have quiet streets where kids could safely play. However, once the kids get a bit older, what do they do? They can't drive, so can't even do a simple errand like pick up milk. Instead, one of the parents ends up as a private chauffeur, eg, a "soccer mom". Often this means the family must be

> What happens with most of these, is light rail goes to the city for a few surrounding suburbs with 50-100k people per town. To get to that train station every morning, you need a car. No, you cannot have a bus circle the suburb for an hour to pick everyone up. If the suburb is designed to be walkable then the bus is not needed in the first place: * link * ▶ this video Each individual community or neighbourhood can be fairly self-contained with regards to daily needs, and travel between them is done on rail or whatever. One could have all-day, frequent (e.g., every 5 minutes) service with trams (or buses) with-in an area, where you can travel with-in it, but also have connections to commuter rail to go to the Big City if the need arises: * link This is how things were generally built post-railway, pre-WW2. (Pre-railroad things were generally all walkable, but long distances being done on horses or boats.)

> This guy makes some good points, but jeez he is so condescending and pretentious. It's really easy for a guy who makes YouTube videos and lives in a crowded European city to pass judgement on people who live lives completely different than his. He has lived in those "completely different" places. He grew up in one of those areas: he moved to a crowded European city. He grew up in London, Ontario ("fake London"), lived in Toronto, lived all over the world. He used to consult all over the world and has visited many cities around the world: see his video "Why City Design is Important (and Why I Hate Houston)" for some of the backstory: * link After seeing all the different options, and initially trying to settle in Toronto—see his video "Suburbs that don't Suck - Streetcar Suburbs (Riverdale, Toronto)": * ▶ this video he and his wife decided to move to Amsterdam to raise their kids. It wasn't random chance that he ended in Europe, but a conscious choice . He looked at the options and chose the one that he though was best. And he has been asked about the 'tone' of this videos: his answer was/is: he doesn't care about how he comes off because (in his opinion) trying to be "nice" to the dumbasses that try to justify the stupidity of car-centric society that is destroying our planet is pointless. Either you have a brain and can see how bad this way of thinking/designing is, or you don't have a brain. He's tired of pussy footing around the (in his view) stupidity.

There is a middle point between city center and car-dependent sprawl. We’ve just mostly outlawed building any new places in this in-between style, so the only ones remaining are those that have been this way for well over a century. See “streetcar suburbs”: ▶ this video