The Deleted Scenes - Distant By Design
This morning I want to go into a little more detail on a point in my Thursday piece, and specifically a comment I received that sparked a small back-and-forth. I wrote, basically, about how modest increases in density, and generally incremental sort-of urbanist changes in suburbia, are worthwhile. For example, if you could cut the amount of driving the average suburbanite has to do by a quarter—or, more ambitiously, make it feel possible to ditch one car (out of two or three), that would be a really big deal from an urbanist point of view. Forget turning sprawling, car-dependent suburbs into walkable paradises. It would be almost revolutionary to get these places to the point where anything could be done without a car trip. And that wouldn’t require wholesale transforming or reimagining them, either. One comment pushed back this way:
Another wrote:
But the most skeptical comment was probably this one:
He included a Google Maps link and added:
In other words, 1) commuting and job access cut against total walkability as a habit (I agree—the notion that people will work within their New Urbanist/walkable/etc. communities is always too much of an expectation) and 2) the notion that suburbs are unwalkable is a figment of the preference for driving and not an actual observation about these places. I disagree. Here’s the relevant Google Maps satellite view: This whole view is only about four miles across. So except at the very corners or edges, the absolute distances from any given home to the nearest grocery store or supermarket (and lots of others stores) is a mile or two on average. That is definitely walkable if you have some time and like walking, and it’s absolutely bikeable in just a few minutes. But if you zoom in, it looks different... Subscribe to The Deleted Scenes to unlock the rest.Become a paying subscriber of The Deleted Scenes to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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New and Old #181
Friday, September 27, 2024
Friday roundup and commentary ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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Partial urbanism is good enough ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Down On The Corner
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
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Surrounded
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #181 ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Liberty Or Death
Monday, September 23, 2024
The final (or first, or middle) stage of Flemington, NJ icon Liberty Village ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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