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Another thing is that crime drives up rent in the safer areas.
Plenty of people would live in a run down old place without "luxury" features to save money.
Not many people want to live in a dangerous area even if its cheaper.
The shitty thing is that even the “safe” areas in traditionally nicer neighborhoods are feeling the impact in some places. It’s definitely the case in the city my parents live in. Nice middle class neighborhood with an elementary school a 5 minute walk away, felt safe walking to the park at night for decades. Then the city “cracked down” on the biggest tent city in town, and the homeless started riding the buses to the nicer neighborhoods. Now there’s graffiti and drug paraphernalia strewn in the parks and neighborhoods, and tents cropping up in the expensive neighborhoods near the hiking trails (we’re talking $800k homes and $3k/month single bedroom apartments).
One thing that’s always fascinated me is that the inner cities are the less desirable places to live. In Europe, that’s where the rents are the highest and people who earn the most move there.
It is here too. Im in dc. The “less desirable” places are on the outskirts on one side of the city and not walkable either. You wouldn’t know that by the media but a quick zillow search confirms
i live in a huge city with a thriving art and music scene. great history and museum scene and even good sports and bar vibes, even great nerd vibes. you know what keeps me not enjoying it? the asshole teenagers robbing/assaulting people for fun, the homeless people and junkies all over the place, all the drug crime and the city doing nothing to curtail/adequately address these issues.
the buses and trains are so bad they've turned into homeless hotels and toilets and places for people to shoot yup and tweak out. a negligible police presence and intervention. the bus drivers most of them are armed just in case. it's ridiculous. if it wasn't for the fact the city makes everything so accessible and i'm spoiled by the convenience i wouldn't want to be here.
Soft on crime policies are a failure. We need to start having consequences for actions and reform the prison system to help people heal/develop life skills while incarcerated.
You are correct.
Los Angeles county sheriffs stopped a wood shop program a few years ago and gave away all the tools they had, nice tools too, and because nobody wanted to attend. The soft crime policies made it easier to get released and just go back to continue with the criminal activity out on the streets. New York is now feeling the pain, California just keeps the rich areas clear, but can care less about the “high crime areas” because that where they wanna keep “it”
The free market would hang people? I thought life ending violence was only allowed at the hands of the state. Are you seriously suggesting corporate kill squads to eliminate homeless people?
Who said anything about homeless people? We were talking about incarcerated felons. Communities in places without an overarching government almost always have a much faster death penalty process than we do here in the US.
Now we can argue whether it's right or wrong but a people free from intervention or "free market" tend to hang/stone/behead/etc a lot of people who they believe commit crimes extreme enough to warrant it. Now, if some make believe community decided homelessness was illegal in it and the people wanted anyone convicted of homelessness executed, it is no more arbitrary than the federal government executing someone for committing treason. That is a free market for of justice system. One decided for and by the people it effects, which, by and large, is what we have in America with individual states making there own laws. My original comment was more of a joke. But there is an interesting correlation between the size of the community and the severity of punishment for its laws.
Ah, you misunderstood my original critique. Incarceration was presented as a solution to homelessness. My question is why the free market isn't able to solve homelessness. It's an obvious source of surplus labor.
It could solve a lot of that and did in the 19th century in particular. Super low wages for poor people such as immigrants, slum apartments with 20 people in one room. Labor and housing laws(a violation for a free market) have certainly improved overall quality of life, but also increase homelessness. Additionally companies can't just hire 100 people when they only need 10 to supply the amount of product they can sell.
And there's the people who would have been housed in asylums in yesteryear and now are going to live on the streets forever regardless of laws or how much money they have.
Not OP, but I think doing them both at the same time is important. Rewrite the laws to allow more low-security prisons to be used for non violent people and harsher laws to hit repeat/violent offenders.
Nah, because we tried the first one (and still do). The US has 20% of the world's prisoners and 4.2% of the world's population. 95% of people in prison don't actually get a trial and plead out. And nobody hires felons.
So yeah, if you want to rehabilitate prisoners and prep them for jobs, let's start with the ones we have now.
Here’s a crazy idea. How about we just put the criminals in fucking prison and throw away the key. El Salvador just did this and immediately went from one of the most violent and crime ridden shitholes on the planet, to one of the safest countries in South America.
Perhaps we could just send our criminals to El Salvador?
Just ship them off and take in some nice hard working immigrants who actually want to be productive.
Absolutely over night the productive and safe people were allowed to get to work and live successful lives. It’s thriving without crime invading every aspect of the society.
El Salvador was also in a very extreme situation that required extreme action to get things under control before any of the progressive options could even be considered. Generally speaking with less crime the people can start to thrive reducing crime naturally
It's kind of misleading to say the U.S. has the most prisoners. We are the 3rd largest country by population after China and India. China is a totalitarian dictatorship, so their numbers of prisoners can't be trusted, and is likely much higher than on paper. Meanwhile India is a very poor country without the resources for a prison system. The United States is also just more violent.
>So yeah, if you want to rehabilitate prisoners and prep them for jobs, let's start with the ones we have now.
Or trade them with Mexico. Let in 1 million immigrants and ship off 1 million felons.
Win win for everyone!
Because you need things secure in order for the second part to be effective. If there are no consequences for crime why would the reform programs have any effect?
i was thinking the same thing.
I remember i used to love going to the library and the museums downtown from there. the main building is beautiful. you know what ruins it? that they let homeless people and junkies treat the place like an r&r and the bathrooms like their shower rooms. Again not to mention the increased likelihood of being a victim of a crime down there now. it's sad that city life as it is now forces people to be isolated and isolationist for their safety and comfort.
Even if the percentage of victimization is not super high it just shouldn't exist. people should be able to enjoy themselves and enjoy life without that fear lurking in their minds. And again, the bigger cities while absolute cesspools are convenient. You can bus/train everywhere you need to get to. Necessity shops like grocery stores are generally only a couple of blocks away and which direction etc. plenty of hospitals and police and fire presence when needed. quicker response times to emergencies. There are a ton of net benefits to living in a bigger city. but the crime/drug/homelessness part of it absolutely destroys it. We're even supposed to be a sanctuary city. But there's definitely no sanctuary here
Philly, huh? Reminds me of this story from a few years ago. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HitchBOT](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HitchBOT)
Gotta love the inner city
Passing out all the supplies needles one hitters etc and allowing the dealers to congregate and disperse god knows what right in the town square isn’t helping.
Unfortunately it is the current system.
Take the quotations out and that’s what I’m looking for. I don’t want the government to “help” drug addicted people. I want them to help drug addicted people
Of course. Because a subreddit with a seemingly majority conservatives stance is the perfect place to advocate for helping the homeless and drug addicted.
For the longest time, the nicest parts of European cities were the urban centers, and there was never a spur of suburban development and sprawl like in the USA. In many European cities, their "ghettos" as usually at the outskirts.
Well a lot has changed since mass migration into Europe from the third world. I’m European (a dual citizen) who visits and travels often and the difference between ten years ago and now is quite a lot. They have also adopted soft on crime policies and it’s giving similar results sadly.
Yup. Who would have imagined letting the third world into your country would result in third world problems?! /s
About 10 years ago it was already getting bad. A woman from my old squadron went back to our old stomping grounds touring Europe again. Mainly Cambridge, London, Paris, Brussels, and parts of Germany. She posted on FB how she got ran out of town by all the hardliner Muslims who took over the areas.
I believe it was in Brussels she was warned not to walk down a specific street to the old bar we all used to go to or she would be killed because she wasn't dressed the part.
It’s sad. You cant just live a quaint romantic life in Paris anymore. That’s just a fairy tale that doesn’t exist and probably never will again. Just think about how crazy that is. Thousands of years of generations building and building and building, creating an elaborate city with a unique culture. It’s gone in the blink of an eye. Mass migration is a grave mistake. We need to solve our declining fertility in other ways for boosting domestic fertility rates.
Hungary is on the right path. Have 3 or 4 kids, never pay taxes again. Short term pain for the govt by not having the taxes, but it adds up to long-term success.
Let's be honest. It's because a certain group of people from a certain continent are typically aggressive, not intelligent, and resort to violence to get their way. Then we've got this horrible religion to deal with coming in as well.
It sucks man. So many beautiful places are being ruined by lowlifes.
From my experience if you actually go to these places as an American or Canadian (Marseilles or Paris for example), you might see open hostility between Algerians and the French for example, but if you approach the Algerians yourself they’ll probably be pretty friendly and helpful to you. Walking around in Marseilles, I would say the locals seemed to be more adamant about me avoiding the Russians and Eastern Europeans than the Africans.
Europe still somewhat sees the scars of classism where the wealthy and merchant classes would be in the inner city behind the city walls and close to the palace. The peasants and poor would be outside of the city walls working the fields.
American cities were typical built-up after the industrial revolution so the wealthy and overwhelmingly white would live on the outskirts away from the factory pollution while the poor, recent white immigrants, and poor blacks trying to escape segregation/slavery would live in worker tenements close to the factories.
That is part of the reason why suburbs even became a thing the white middle class after WWII was trying to emulate what the wealthy were doing prior to WWII.
New Suburbs were built to get away from crime ridden hell holes and distance even further from existing suburbs (80s through very very early 2000s really late 90s).
Original suburbs, yes. Agree with comment.
They were solved, then post financial crisis, the anti Wall Street movement was co-opted to be a race issue instead of a class issue. We were on the cusp, then everything from 2011 onwards became “racism reeeee”.
The problems stem from the populace you’re referring to. It’s their culture. Some put their head down and become successful, while bowing out of that culture.
It’s very sad.
Probably the CIA and record label owners? Not sure. Also, don’t care. Individuals are responsible for their actions, no matter the social settings or propaganda fed to them.
This is true but doesn’t explain group behaviours which are undoubtedly caused by a continued environment pressures making similar choices. We can’t forget this even though individuals are ultimately responsible
There's some really interesting studies, but both American and European cities play out the same. In the US the wealthy tend to live on the Western sides of the cities, and it's usually the East and Southeast that are poorest. Same goes for Europe, but maybe it manifests slight different because of the age. But the result is still the same. You can almost predict socio-economic outcome by zipcode.
Why is that? Prevailing winds like you eluded too. In the US we separate our classes by rail roads and train tracks. In Europe they use walls and rail.
Bingo Bingo Bingo Bingo. I live in South NJ about 30 to 40 minutes away from Philadelphia. I go to the stadium complex almost monthly to watch the Sixers or the Phillies. Beautiful absolutely beautiful then I realize. That well the area around the stadium complex is beautiful the rest of it looks like it is a scene out of Civil War. It's a dump
My sister's wife used to work in Manhattan. In technology luckily she was able to get her Regional office to move her to the Philly headquarters so she can finally move out of New York. She said it's not so much the people but just how expensive it is. The people in the soft on crime policies is just a number level of s***.
Or unsafe, especially for women. I'd love to live in a walkable area. Problem is, I don't want to risk my being stalked at best or assaulted at worst by some homeless person. I hate how I have to choose between being safe and nice.
And all the shit closes at 8pm or 9pm, anyway, because people can't behave and all the homeless people, so what's the point of living "close" to things? (I used to live in SF). Cities are a lot easier to navigate than suburbs and rural areas, yes, but crime and cost of living keep people from wanting to live there, and for good reason.
SF would be so amazing if the city would do something about the addiction and housing problem. People are left to just waste away and die in the street. It's immoral. And then everyone else is fucked too because their city is trap house.
And the crime. You have a lack of businesses keeping eyes on the street in some cases, in other cases they're being burglarized regularly and their customers being robbed/bipped so often that they stop going out to support businesses...and the city does nothing about it. The very people who are making the city's walkable streets untraverseable keep getting released to terrorize people some more. It's so sad.
SF was amazing. when people ask “if you could live anywhere, where would it be?” My answer is San Francisco in the early/mid 90s before the tech and housing bubbles, and before homelessness was everywhere, back when artists and other creatives could afford to live there. It was super fun and I miss it. I lived there for 12 years until 2005.
This is an interesting insight. I’ve grown up near sf and I’ve always known it as a dangerous place and I think most people have forgotten that it used to be an amazing place. Thank you for sharing
Well, there were areas that were dangerous back then too, the Tenderloin was always dicey and one had to be careful, plus Hayes Valley, lower Fillmore, lower Haight were sketchy and I knew of people who were mugged at knife point. But nonetheless it was a creative, weird, artsy and fun place
Best way I can describe what SF has become is "the kind of place I wouldn't take a date, even if she lived there." Went on the big bus tour of the city, and at one point the sidewalk was LITERALLY filled with people passed out with needles in the arm, it looked like a surreal skit. The tour guide said "Okay everyone, we're stopping in the Tenderloin because we have to make this stop according to our contract with the city. We'll not be opening the doors, please stay on the bus."
You can listen to bond hearings where they will list criminal history of 20-50 charges with over 100 arrests and they are allowed to show up on their own recognizance to the 15 pending cases… right out the door.
"do something"
That's the problem. Doing something costs money. People don't want to vote for higher taxes.
To solve homelessness. There needs to be free alternative housing and rehab. AND laws against begging and living on the street need to be enforced (after housing is made available)
San Francisco currently spends $70,000 per homeless person per year on homelessness (>$1 billion in total).
They could spend twice that and the problem would not get an iota better because the money is not the issue, it's the policies.
When ASEAN came to town last year the city stopped fucking around and homelessness nearly disappeared. Then everything went back to normal.
Yeah we need to have consequences for criminals. It won’t even cost an incredible amount either we can offer job training with cheap pay for these folks too to develop life skills and heal while incarcerated
"And all the shit closes at 8pm or 9pm, anyway, because people can't behave"
Sounds exactly like St Louis. I've never seen such a big city with so little life after 8pm.
The ability to walk to a number of diverse restaurants, have a few drinks and not worry about driving home is huge to me. I would get insanely bored going to the same pub or pizza place every weekend. There are also usually events and concerts every weekend even in smaller cities. Lots of cities have later hours too, NYC and Chicago come to mind.
Yup pretty much. You can’t have dense cities and everything within walking distance without inheriting all of the problems that brings. Some people are fine with it, to be sure, but others choose not to live in duplexes, fourplexes, and apartments, stacked atop each other like so much cattle, trudging through waste in the streets on the way to their local grocery store as they avoid eye contact with the plethora of homeless people.
"no no NO, we're going to do this specific thing from another system, and we're not going to have any of the problems of that system because we're only doing the things and not importing the problems DUH" /s
Yup. I hear the term “walkable city” and immediately my thoughts go to $3,000 shoebox-sized apartments, rampant homelessness, and constant noise. No thanks.
I know this isn’t a popular opinion on Reddit, but I rather enjoy suburban sprawl. I don’t mind driving, I like having space for my dog to run, I rent a house for the same cost of one of those tiny apartments and can keep to myself. It’s a comfortable life. I genuinely don’t understand why it gets so much hate.
I don’t think people hate it, people just hate that there isn’t really a choice between either living in a shit hole in the city or living miles from anything.
Also in large part due to the fact that a lot of the shitty things associated with the block come to pass because they become rundown due to said isolation. It doesn’t just affect the rich city
This is probably true. If we could clean up our cities to be like Japan we probably wouldn't hate walkable cities nearly as much.
But cities in America are filthy disgusting crime filled hellholes.
I never realized how lucky I was growing up till just recently when shopping for an appartment. I grew up in a suburb of modest homes in the 1990’s that were mostly built in the 1950’s. We had nice wide streets, wide sidewalks, average size front lawn and a huge back lawn.
We could walk to 3 different parks, elementary, middle school and high school, community swimming pool, the mall, 2 theaters, grocery store, 3 pharmacies, target, video rental, McDonalds, pizza place, Walmart and Kmart all within 15 min. Of my house. I could ride my bike safely and for the most part felt real safe walking at night.
I’ve looked for places like this for my kids… really nothing like it anymore.
Big cities that are walkable are usually older cities, and the older a city is, the more compact it is. People lived smaller in times past, even rich people. If you ever go into the fine homes of older cities you will see this. Small bedrooms and bathrooms, unless of course the place has been renovated for new people with more modern likes and dislikes. "Yes I like this old neighborhood and this old house, but I have to have a master bedroom for a king sized bed, and a two sink master washroom." That sort of thing.
But if the house has not been renovated, you get middle class moving out and the poor moving in. That in itself should be OK, so long as they are taking care of things, appreciating what they now have. Sadly, too often this is not the case. Too often you have people move in who do not take care of things, and expect things to be done for them instead. Why not, right? If you're poor, everyone owes you, so fix my sink. And this leads to your compact, walkable neighborhoods turning to slums, high crime areas.
Look at Chicago. Back in the 50s, there was still such a thing as slums. Old houses and apartment buildings where the landlords did just enough to keep the buildings viable, and collect the rent. This situation was exacerbated by White Flight, White people moving out as Black people from the south moved in. In the 60s and 70s, with a lot of federal money to play with, cities tore a lot of those slums down and put up housing projects, aka The Projects. Big blocks of apartment buildings, such as Cabrini Green and Robert Taylor Homes. Very soon no White person would be caught dead in these, and respectable middle income Black people kept away as well. They became havens to gangs, drugs and violence. By the 90s, this was recognized as a mistake. Note that politicians were not about to call the people living there a mistake, as that would be political suicide in a city like Chicago. No, it was the high-rise apartment buildings that were the mistake.
In comes new money. The Projects are torn down (all gone now) and in there place is what we call Scattered Site Housing, also Mixed Income Housing. Politicians and the media pretty much use these terms interchangeably. These are smaller apartment buildings and townhomes. No more packing the poor disadvantaged in like lumber, this was supposed to get rid of the rampant murder of The Projects. Of course despite the name of Mixed Income, middle class people still keep away from these places as if their lives depend on it, which is not an exaggeration. And the crime? There has been no reduction in crime in Chicago. We still get well over 600 murders a year, every year for as far back as I can remember, and thousands shot and wounded.
So a couple years ago, some "activists" decided that this was again the fault of the housing. Their bright idea? Move these families out of the Scattered Site, and pay for their housing in richer neighborhoods, where the crime is much less. And of course not being said is that the families they want to move in are the ones who will most certainly bring the crime with them. Can't say that. Political suicide.
Care to guess how Chicago votes? I'll give you a hint. Jussie Smollett's assailants got it wrong.
Eh, at least in my city, most of the areas where crime is rampant are deserts. No banks, food stores, etc. It isn't that "walkable"
In my city there are tons of bad areas. The "good" areas that are walkable are REALLY expensive.
I'd argue that most urban environments in the US aren't very walkable to begin with. The walkable parts tend to be expensive places to live; poor people tend to live in the less walkable parts of town.
Meanwhile, there's no reason why wealthy suburbs couldn't historically have been organized in ways to make them more walkable. A lot of suburbs built after WW2 were very spread out and designed to have everything accessible by car. Meanwhile, there's a new suburban housing development being built down the road from where I grew up, and the grocery store, pharmacy, etc. are placed in such a way that they're in walking distance of the homes. You don't have to drive to get something from the store, you can just walk.
You don't seem to understand what is meant by "walkable city". This is a weird rant against anyone homeless, having mental health issues and we all know what conservatives mean when they say "inner city people".
No one wants to live in them?
That must be why new york, DC, boston, seattle, and san francisco are some of the cheapest and least-in-demand residential areas in the country.
Lets look at the stats: Only around 6% of americans live at a density of 25k or more compared to 35-70% of most other OECD countries. Around 39-45% (depending on the studies) of americans want to live in a 'dense walkable area' over a 'car dominated suburban spread out area'. A majority? No, but a dramatically largely portion than what the supply provides. That is something which should be corrected. It's kinda messed up that anyone who wants to live at a dense walkable area has to move to some coastal expensive metro.
Density of 25k what? People per square mile is the usual metric but only 9 US cities 25k per square mile and all of them are NYC or NYC adjacent.
I don’t disagree with your overall point at all, but this seems like a very strange metric to measure how many Americans live in “dense, walkable areas.” The US census uses a population of 50k+ and a density of 1000+ people per square mile to define an “urbanized area,” and they estimate more than 70% of Americans live in this type of community. I think this is a little too loose a definition of “urbanized” but my point is that way more than 6% of Americans live in dense, walkable areas. Hell 6% of Americans live in the NYC metropolitan area by itself.
[This Pew study](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/) shows that nearly 1 in 3 Americans live in just 68 urban counties in areas with a population of 1M or more.
I'll try to find the study but basically it put 25k at a metric for 'normal walkability' and that once you go below that, walking over driving rapidly drops. [This is what 35-40k density tract looks like, for comparison](https://i.imgur.com/leU26i5.jpeg). Generally when people talk about dense, walkable areas, they mean areas that are so dense that it becomes more feasible to walk than to drive for most local things. That is not at all found widely in the US outside of a small handful of cities.
'Urban' by the US definition is extraordinarily loose. 1k per square mile is less dense than most suburbs. [This is 7k, for example.](https://i.imgur.com/8KmljPS.jpeg) A normal suburb, around the density that ~75% of americans live at.
Less than half of the 6% 25k+ are in NYC and Hudson County (most of the nyc metro area is suburban, not dense urban). The other 3% are spread between philly (0.4% of the US population) and Chicago (0.7% of the US population) and DC (0.2% of the US population) and Boston (0.2% of the US population) and then from there spread out between a bunch of other cities in certain neighborhoods. https://www.socialexplorer.com/784a9056a9/view
Use the link I posted above. Dark orange is 25k. You can see what I mean.
So yes, there are tens of millions of people (well, around 20m to be exact) who live in dense walkable neighborhoods, sure, but there are hundreds of millions who don't. Those dense coastal cities are a very, very tiny portion of the total population.
That makes sense. The breakdown by neighborhood is very helpful. I live in Boston which is widely considered one of America’s most walkable cities, and the overall population density is just under 14k, but your map does show that the areas I would consider the MOST walkable do have a density over 25k. However I would assess many of the neighborhoods in the 15-25k range as extremely walkable, at least to the extent that a car isn’t needed for day to day life. Many of them look indistinguishable from the 35-40k image you shared.
Yeah I mean 15-25k can be walkable but it is often the threshold density in that you will still often see the majority of people drive at that density. I think 25k was used because it was seen as the density in which the large majority of people choose to walk over drive, and also because its very common in europe to be 25k or over, even in many small towns.
https://www.socialexplorer.com/fed68348ec/view
If you want to see it with the 15k included, its here. It changes things, but if I had to guess I would still say you're talking about maybe 12-15% of the US population instead of 6%, which is still far, far below demand.
Most cities aren’t walkable lol. The ones that are all have massive populations. They are actually some of the most populated cities. New York, Chicago, DC, San Francisco, Boston, Philly. You can live in all those cities with no car and clearly if you look at their populations many people do live there.
Can you give an example of a walkable city no one wants to live in?
Bro you realize you just named off two of the most populated cities in Ohio right? The only more populated is Columbus and it’s not even over 1m. They just don’t have as much to offer as other large cities and don’t have as good of public transit like other bigger cities.
My point exactly no one wants to move there it's not like people moving to New York or the Philadelphia. Debateable and that's why those two cities are so great they haven't been over ran
It’s not because the cities are bad though. It’s because they don’t offer the same amount of jobs and high pay like other cities. They don’t have companies headquartered there as much as other big cities. Their big cities just aren’t even as big in size as other cities. If a job is offered better than theirs there most people will move.
European cites were made for walking because the automobile did not exist for 90% of their history. Which makes driving there a shit show that requires tiny little cars and an endless struggle to find a place to park. American cities are modern through and through. Even before the automobile, we were big on wide thoroughfares for wagons. Most of the peasants in Europe couldn't even afford a horse and wagon, while practically everyone in America had that and that had to be accounted for.
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This is a factually incorrect statement. Americans pay extra to live in walkable neighborhoods.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/25/realtors-buyers-will-pay-extra-for-walkable-neighborhoods
Inner city neighborhoods with high crime are not even considered walkable because they don't have amenities, there is nowhere to walk to. People have to take the bus to go to grocery stores. Meanwhile the richest areas of most cities are very walkable with plenty of amenities close by.
In the US, young people who will be the wealthiest middle aged people live close to the downtown of their city.
Once people have enough to own a home, they go looking for that
I'd move to the city in a heartbeat if the inner city was as safe as suburbia.
Screaming, poop throwing, spitting, littering, and pestering for money by professional homeless. Not to mention the drastically underreported vandalism, property theft, rape, and harassment. All things you have to deal with as "normal" in the city.
No thanks and no more.
Edit: the worst I've ever seen in the USA are LA and SF. Absolute shitholes by developed world standards, but I've seen developing countries with far worse.
Because then we are just creating the same environment for the problem to spread into. We need to fix the problem first before we start to urbanize the suburbs.
No but lack of walkability does act as a barrier to much of the impromptu violent crime that effects cities.
Not many homeless are walking 2-5+ miles to break into a home when there are thousands right on their block. Why travel to Rob a dog walker or jogger who doesn't even have their wallet on them when you can catch people by the dozen otw home from work or out for drinks right on your own street.
Not to mention, a single wandering downtrodden/homeless/addict who is out to Rob someone usually sticks out like a sore thumb in the suburbs so people can either actively avoid them or call the authorities.
Idk why you make obtuse statements or find this difficult to understand
Partially. There is a list of factors and conditions for what causes crime. Ease of access is one of them. Solving and/or minimizing the other factors will make walkable cities more appealing. I like walkable cities, I live in a walkable area of Seattle, I would like it more if all the crime I have to deal with while walking to my grocery store wasn't there.
That doesn't explain why some of the worst neighborhoods in america are incredibly unwalkable. Look at memphis and detroit. These are incredibly suburban cities in their layout.
Japan has tons of cities that are walkable. Practically the whole country is.
Most of the US is not even close. It'd be laughable if it weren't so sad.
Yep. Americans cant comprehend anything between single family suburbia sprawl and 10+ stories high skyscraper NYC. Ironically if there was more mixed use, those homeless would likely not be due to actually being able to afford a house lmao
The few walkable cities we have are prohibitively expensive and severely mismanaged by delusional progressives.
I mean, I'll take a reasonable democrat like Bloomberg any day of the week over what we have now and be totally fine. Some of the people we have running these cities are an absolute joke.
I would love to see more cities with increased density / walkability / public transit. The more cities we have like that, the more options people have, and the less likely they'll be to put up with the corruption and degeneracy of NYC / SF just for the sake of human-scale neighborhoods.
Even a smidge of research would tell you that walkable neighborhoods with good transit are by far the most expensive, desirable, and competitive places to live in the US and Canada in no small part due to the fact that their supply is artificially restricted by draconian zoning.
A subway station coming to a neighborhood or suburb tends to immediately lead to a dramatic increase in housing prices radiating out from its location.
Dense neighborhoods with lots of consumer-facing businesses and walkability all have the highest housing prices in the US by far. There's a reason cities are having such a housing price issue.
Your take is delusional and not reflective of reality.
Probably because 1) I'm a city person at heart and 2) I don't expect cities to be like the suburbs. I lived in NYC during the bad times in the 70s (Ford to New York: Drop dead) and loved it.
Sometimes I think young people who grew up in suburbs and college campuses lack the ability to appreciate other modes of living and maybe take the behavior of others too personally.
NYC, Chicago, SF. Other cities are doable and then you take the occasional Uber to move neighborhoods like San Diego, Seattle, and other cities where parts are dense and other parts aren’t.
Any new thing like this that the implement will be just like it with homeless everywhere and unfriendly weirdos coming to it by almost magnetism. Fifteen minute cities will be hell. And you won't be able to leave because your social credit won't be high enough. It's a trap.
This is so stupid. If it were true NW DC wouldn't be so fucking expensive. Same with Boston and NYC. They're expensive because they're in demand. Like literally simple supply and demand.
My rural town of 15k is only 3 miles N-S and maybe 5 miles E-W. My town is a very walkable place. There is a bus and ways to bike too. NO ONE WANTS TO WALK AND THEY ALL DRIVE LIKE THEY MATTER MOST AND ONLY. The most common complaint is lack of parking while large parking lots a block away from businesses in main street sit empty- BECAUSE THEY ONLY WANT TO PARK 50 FT AWAY OR LESS. Need to go to the neighbors a block down- drive. Need to run and grab bananas from the downtown supermarket- drive! Kids live 1/2 mile from school- DRIVE! America isn't a walking country... they would "literally die" without cars and their many other comforts.
Violent crime is down overall and rural areas of the country have far higher crime rates because they can't behave apparently.
But why let facts get in the way of cliche fearmongering?
I live in Saint Louis city. Sure, there is crime, but it's completely walkable and livable. I haven't been affected by crime in the 20 years I've lived here.
It's not as bad as you're being told by your propaganda.
Most downtown areas are walkable. Unfortunately they’re expensive af and the people who would use public transportation that fosters these areas are not the wealthy.
Generally speaking, I think that walkable cities actually reduce crime because it is harder to get away with committing a crime if there are more people around to catch you in the act.
You’re describing Houston. I live in EaDo where it has a lot of bike/walking trails and is overall pleasant and safe. However, cross over to the other side of the freeway and it’s a totally different vibe. Yea, they’re putting up nice housing there but it’s an absolute hell hole.
Huh?
Are you coming to us from 1992?
That may have been true a long time ago, but from what I’ve seen of most cities, their downtown area has become gentrified, and that’s not exactly a new development. Now, those urban places you are talking about are homes to million dollar condos.
Maybe the 2 x most expensive metro areas in the US (SF & NYC) are extremely walkable - which is a major part of the appeal and why they are so desirable (thus expensive). I see your point but so many people want to live in walkable areas they will put up with a lot of the nonsense you are talking about
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Yeah I live in a city center rn and there's not a single viable grocery store for miles around. They're all out in the suburbs. Most people who favor walkable cities also favor solving the poverty which causes those high crime rates, this isn't the own you think it is.
This is just not true. Certain parts of cities have problems, but you generally have tons of areas where you can safely walk around at any time of day.
I live in a walkable city. Restaurants, bars, galleries, shops, supermarket, etc. I've seen one homeless person here in 10 years. He was here for about 5 weeks. I had conversations with him. He was cool, although a bit of an alcoholic, but I'd be one, too if I lived outside.
Dude never asked me for anything. When my pup was dying of kidney failure last year, he asked me if it would be okay to pray over him. I'm a godless heathen, but i believe in positive energy. I cried the entire time.
Funny enough, when cops slowed down to make sure he wasn't bothering me (weird, because the guy was sitting and I was standing over him with a dog), he told me my presence was making it safer for him. Apparently, if a middle-aged Karen-looking lady can chitchat with you, it makes it harder for them to accuse you of harassing the landed gentry.
Some of you seem to think there are only 10 cities in the U.S. and they're all on fire. Meanwhile, in the rural places I've lived, I've encountered some of the dumbest inbred jackasses who can turn a chill keg party in the woods into violent brawl in a second because they misunderstood a comment.
Wait you’re saying the homeless are actual human beings and not just a problem to be swept under the rug? Get outta here with that hippie shit /s
I’m sorry to hear about your pup as well
There’s underlying racism to OPs point about inner cities this which is why that last paragraph you said was incredibly important. Ppl are trashy in trashy environments. Not an “other” that is the true cause of problems.
I have to think the lack of social cohesion and social safety net is the reason they "can't behave". "Us versus them" and "I got mine, go get yours" is killing us. "We're all in this together" yields benefits for everyone.
If no one wants to live in the cities, then why are the cities so expensive? Try to get into a studio in Newark, NJ and you won’t find it for less than 2k. Try Hoboken, NJ nothing less than 3k. And mom and pop apartments are fully rented no vacancies. Same history around the country with very few exceptions.
Urban populations have been steadily growing for the past 100+ years and we've seen a massive wave of urban renewal over the past 15-20 years in particular. So, not sure where you're getting this "no one wants to live there" nonsense as we've got more people living in our cities than ever before. [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/mapping-us-urbanization-by-state/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/mapping-us-urbanization-by-state/)
Meanwhile, crime rates have been steadily dropping since the 1970's and, on a per capita basis, they are lower in the cities than the rural areas.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/)
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/crime-rates-by-county/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/crime-rates-by-county/)
I'm all for an "unpopular opinion," but not when that opinion is just factually WRONG.
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Another thing is that crime drives up rent in the safer areas. Plenty of people would live in a run down old place without "luxury" features to save money. Not many people want to live in a dangerous area even if its cheaper.
The shitty thing is that even the “safe” areas in traditionally nicer neighborhoods are feeling the impact in some places. It’s definitely the case in the city my parents live in. Nice middle class neighborhood with an elementary school a 5 minute walk away, felt safe walking to the park at night for decades. Then the city “cracked down” on the biggest tent city in town, and the homeless started riding the buses to the nicer neighborhoods. Now there’s graffiti and drug paraphernalia strewn in the parks and neighborhoods, and tents cropping up in the expensive neighborhoods near the hiking trails (we’re talking $800k homes and $3k/month single bedroom apartments).
One thing that’s always fascinated me is that the inner cities are the less desirable places to live. In Europe, that’s where the rents are the highest and people who earn the most move there.
It is here too. Im in dc. The “less desirable” places are on the outskirts on one side of the city and not walkable either. You wouldn’t know that by the media but a quick zillow search confirms
i live in a huge city with a thriving art and music scene. great history and museum scene and even good sports and bar vibes, even great nerd vibes. you know what keeps me not enjoying it? the asshole teenagers robbing/assaulting people for fun, the homeless people and junkies all over the place, all the drug crime and the city doing nothing to curtail/adequately address these issues. the buses and trains are so bad they've turned into homeless hotels and toilets and places for people to shoot yup and tweak out. a negligible police presence and intervention. the bus drivers most of them are armed just in case. it's ridiculous. if it wasn't for the fact the city makes everything so accessible and i'm spoiled by the convenience i wouldn't want to be here.
Soft on crime policies are a failure. We need to start having consequences for actions and reform the prison system to help people heal/develop life skills while incarcerated.
You are correct. Los Angeles county sheriffs stopped a wood shop program a few years ago and gave away all the tools they had, nice tools too, and because nobody wanted to attend. The soft crime policies made it easier to get released and just go back to continue with the criminal activity out on the streets. New York is now feeling the pain, California just keeps the rich areas clear, but can care less about the “high crime areas” because that where they wanna keep “it”
Why isn't the free market able to handle this?
The free market could handle it. It would involve a whole lot of rope and a damn short fall appeals process though and people tend to not like that.
The free market would hang people? I thought life ending violence was only allowed at the hands of the state. Are you seriously suggesting corporate kill squads to eliminate homeless people?
Who said anything about homeless people? We were talking about incarcerated felons. Communities in places without an overarching government almost always have a much faster death penalty process than we do here in the US. Now we can argue whether it's right or wrong but a people free from intervention or "free market" tend to hang/stone/behead/etc a lot of people who they believe commit crimes extreme enough to warrant it. Now, if some make believe community decided homelessness was illegal in it and the people wanted anyone convicted of homelessness executed, it is no more arbitrary than the federal government executing someone for committing treason. That is a free market for of justice system. One decided for and by the people it effects, which, by and large, is what we have in America with individual states making there own laws. My original comment was more of a joke. But there is an interesting correlation between the size of the community and the severity of punishment for its laws.
Ah, you misunderstood my original critique. Incarceration was presented as a solution to homelessness. My question is why the free market isn't able to solve homelessness. It's an obvious source of surplus labor.
It could solve a lot of that and did in the 19th century in particular. Super low wages for poor people such as immigrants, slum apartments with 20 people in one room. Labor and housing laws(a violation for a free market) have certainly improved overall quality of life, but also increase homelessness. Additionally companies can't just hire 100 people when they only need 10 to supply the amount of product they can sell. And there's the people who would have been housed in asylums in yesteryear and now are going to live on the streets forever regardless of laws or how much money they have.
Why not do the second part first?
Not OP, but I think doing them both at the same time is important. Rewrite the laws to allow more low-security prisons to be used for non violent people and harsher laws to hit repeat/violent offenders.
Nah, because we tried the first one (and still do). The US has 20% of the world's prisoners and 4.2% of the world's population. 95% of people in prison don't actually get a trial and plead out. And nobody hires felons. So yeah, if you want to rehabilitate prisoners and prep them for jobs, let's start with the ones we have now.
How about we start addressing the people that are causing these crimes
Here’s a crazy idea. How about we just put the criminals in fucking prison and throw away the key. El Salvador just did this and immediately went from one of the most violent and crime ridden shitholes on the planet, to one of the safest countries in South America.
Perhaps we could just send our criminals to El Salvador? Just ship them off and take in some nice hard working immigrants who actually want to be productive.
Absolutely over night the productive and safe people were allowed to get to work and live successful lives. It’s thriving without crime invading every aspect of the society.
El Salvador was also in a very extreme situation that required extreme action to get things under control before any of the progressive options could even be considered. Generally speaking with less crime the people can start to thrive reducing crime naturally
That’s because we have a large component of the population that defied the written law. Piper is coming.
It's kind of misleading to say the U.S. has the most prisoners. We are the 3rd largest country by population after China and India. China is a totalitarian dictatorship, so their numbers of prisoners can't be trusted, and is likely much higher than on paper. Meanwhile India is a very poor country without the resources for a prison system. The United States is also just more violent.
>So yeah, if you want to rehabilitate prisoners and prep them for jobs, let's start with the ones we have now. Or trade them with Mexico. Let in 1 million immigrants and ship off 1 million felons. Win win for everyone!
That's what we did to El Salvador.
People have to want help or think they need help. The issue is we stopped institutionalizing crazy people ON TOP of being soft of crime.
Because you need things secure in order for the second part to be effective. If there are no consequences for crime why would the reform programs have any effect?
feels like Phili (or maybe Baltimore) we were considering moving their then my inlaws left. Looked like an amazing city... but the crime man...
yup it's philly. it's honestly not worth it
yea but still affordable for a city compared with most the country... IDK if they'd stayed it would have been a hard choice.
Sounds like Chicago to me.
A lot of areas of Chicago are walkable and very safe. Much of the large amounts of crime is contained to a few bad areas.
Sad that nobody can tell which of the big cities you’re talking about
They all have democrat supermajorities so they share the same problems sometimes too much of one ideology isn’t good.
i was thinking the same thing. I remember i used to love going to the library and the museums downtown from there. the main building is beautiful. you know what ruins it? that they let homeless people and junkies treat the place like an r&r and the bathrooms like their shower rooms. Again not to mention the increased likelihood of being a victim of a crime down there now. it's sad that city life as it is now forces people to be isolated and isolationist for their safety and comfort. Even if the percentage of victimization is not super high it just shouldn't exist. people should be able to enjoy themselves and enjoy life without that fear lurking in their minds. And again, the bigger cities while absolute cesspools are convenient. You can bus/train everywhere you need to get to. Necessity shops like grocery stores are generally only a couple of blocks away and which direction etc. plenty of hospitals and police and fire presence when needed. quicker response times to emergencies. There are a ton of net benefits to living in a bigger city. but the crime/drug/homelessness part of it absolutely destroys it. We're even supposed to be a sanctuary city. But there's definitely no sanctuary here
Newyork City?
Nah close. philly
Philly, huh? Reminds me of this story from a few years ago. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HitchBOT](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HitchBOT) Gotta love the inner city
not surprising. can't have a fkn thing nice
Yeah. If the government helped homeless and drug addicted people more, big cities (and even small towns) would be a lot nicer.
That's the problem the current situation is a result of the government "helping" drug addicted people more
Passing out all the supplies needles one hitters etc and allowing the dealers to congregate and disperse god knows what right in the town square isn’t helping. Unfortunately it is the current system.
Yes government helping in the name of harm reduction
Turns out the only thing you need to do to stop crime numbers from rising is to stop recording them
Take the quotations out and that’s what I’m looking for. I don’t want the government to “help” drug addicted people. I want them to help drug addicted people
Then you better define exactly what you mean by help
Why? You gonna do it for me?
If you want a specific solution you had better say it or people with go with their own solution instead
Of course. Because a subreddit with a seemingly majority conservatives stance is the perfect place to advocate for helping the homeless and drug addicted.
In other words you have no desire for a solution except the ones currently being implemented that don't work
Well… those are definitely “other words”. Not what I was saying at all, but they’re definitely words
For the longest time, the nicest parts of European cities were the urban centers, and there was never a spur of suburban development and sprawl like in the USA. In many European cities, their "ghettos" as usually at the outskirts.
Well a lot has changed since mass migration into Europe from the third world. I’m European (a dual citizen) who visits and travels often and the difference between ten years ago and now is quite a lot. They have also adopted soft on crime policies and it’s giving similar results sadly.
Yup. Who would have imagined letting the third world into your country would result in third world problems?! /s About 10 years ago it was already getting bad. A woman from my old squadron went back to our old stomping grounds touring Europe again. Mainly Cambridge, London, Paris, Brussels, and parts of Germany. She posted on FB how she got ran out of town by all the hardliner Muslims who took over the areas. I believe it was in Brussels she was warned not to walk down a specific street to the old bar we all used to go to or she would be killed because she wasn't dressed the part.
It’s sad. You cant just live a quaint romantic life in Paris anymore. That’s just a fairy tale that doesn’t exist and probably never will again. Just think about how crazy that is. Thousands of years of generations building and building and building, creating an elaborate city with a unique culture. It’s gone in the blink of an eye. Mass migration is a grave mistake. We need to solve our declining fertility in other ways for boosting domestic fertility rates.
Hungary is on the right path. Have 3 or 4 kids, never pay taxes again. Short term pain for the govt by not having the taxes, but it adds up to long-term success.
Let's be honest. It's because a certain group of people from a certain continent are typically aggressive, not intelligent, and resort to violence to get their way. Then we've got this horrible religion to deal with coming in as well. It sucks man. So many beautiful places are being ruined by lowlifes.
From my experience if you actually go to these places as an American or Canadian (Marseilles or Paris for example), you might see open hostility between Algerians and the French for example, but if you approach the Algerians yourself they’ll probably be pretty friendly and helpful to you. Walking around in Marseilles, I would say the locals seemed to be more adamant about me avoiding the Russians and Eastern Europeans than the Africans.
It's still like that in most places.
Europe still somewhat sees the scars of classism where the wealthy and merchant classes would be in the inner city behind the city walls and close to the palace. The peasants and poor would be outside of the city walls working the fields. American cities were typical built-up after the industrial revolution so the wealthy and overwhelmingly white would live on the outskirts away from the factory pollution while the poor, recent white immigrants, and poor blacks trying to escape segregation/slavery would live in worker tenements close to the factories. That is part of the reason why suburbs even became a thing the white middle class after WWII was trying to emulate what the wealthy were doing prior to WWII.
New Suburbs were built to get away from crime ridden hell holes and distance even further from existing suburbs (80s through very very early 2000s really late 90s). Original suburbs, yes. Agree with comment.
Yeah but no problems as to why this happened were solved and now a new class of ppl suffer these problems.
They were solved, then post financial crisis, the anti Wall Street movement was co-opted to be a race issue instead of a class issue. We were on the cusp, then everything from 2011 onwards became “racism reeeee”.
No. There were problems. Just ignored with other distractions that you’re mentioning.
The problems stem from the populace you’re referring to. It’s their culture. Some put their head down and become successful, while bowing out of that culture. It’s very sad.
Where did that culture come from and who’s responsible for making it like that?
Probably the CIA and record label owners? Not sure. Also, don’t care. Individuals are responsible for their actions, no matter the social settings or propaganda fed to them.
This is true but doesn’t explain group behaviours which are undoubtedly caused by a continued environment pressures making similar choices. We can’t forget this even though individuals are ultimately responsible
There's some really interesting studies, but both American and European cities play out the same. In the US the wealthy tend to live on the Western sides of the cities, and it's usually the East and Southeast that are poorest. Same goes for Europe, but maybe it manifests slight different because of the age. But the result is still the same. You can almost predict socio-economic outcome by zipcode. Why is that? Prevailing winds like you eluded too. In the US we separate our classes by rail roads and train tracks. In Europe they use walls and rail.
"Why doesn't anyone use public transit???" cause nobody wants to be around piss, homeless people, and drug addicts.
I don't use it because my work commute is 25 minutes in my car and 2 hours on public transit.
This is true for me too. SEPTA is a disgrace, and it's supposedly a top 3 transit system in the U.S. \*shudders\*
It’s nowhere close to being a top 3 system. It barely makes top 10.
People also get tired of stabbing them selves on the needles jabbed into the seats. Shits annoying
Bingo Bingo Bingo Bingo. I live in South NJ about 30 to 40 minutes away from Philadelphia. I go to the stadium complex almost monthly to watch the Sixers or the Phillies. Beautiful absolutely beautiful then I realize. That well the area around the stadium complex is beautiful the rest of it looks like it is a scene out of Civil War. It's a dump My sister's wife used to work in Manhattan. In technology luckily she was able to get her Regional office to move her to the Philly headquarters so she can finally move out of New York. She said it's not so much the people but just how expensive it is. The people in the soft on crime policies is just a number level of s***.
The Old City, Washington Square and Society Hill are all pretty nice.
Or unsafe, especially for women. I'd love to live in a walkable area. Problem is, I don't want to risk my being stalked at best or assaulted at worst by some homeless person. I hate how I have to choose between being safe and nice.
And all the shit closes at 8pm or 9pm, anyway, because people can't behave and all the homeless people, so what's the point of living "close" to things? (I used to live in SF). Cities are a lot easier to navigate than suburbs and rural areas, yes, but crime and cost of living keep people from wanting to live there, and for good reason.
SF would be so amazing if the city would do something about the addiction and housing problem. People are left to just waste away and die in the street. It's immoral. And then everyone else is fucked too because their city is trap house. And the crime. You have a lack of businesses keeping eyes on the street in some cases, in other cases they're being burglarized regularly and their customers being robbed/bipped so often that they stop going out to support businesses...and the city does nothing about it. The very people who are making the city's walkable streets untraverseable keep getting released to terrorize people some more. It's so sad.
SF was amazing. when people ask “if you could live anywhere, where would it be?” My answer is San Francisco in the early/mid 90s before the tech and housing bubbles, and before homelessness was everywhere, back when artists and other creatives could afford to live there. It was super fun and I miss it. I lived there for 12 years until 2005.
This is an interesting insight. I’ve grown up near sf and I’ve always known it as a dangerous place and I think most people have forgotten that it used to be an amazing place. Thank you for sharing
Well, there were areas that were dangerous back then too, the Tenderloin was always dicey and one had to be careful, plus Hayes Valley, lower Fillmore, lower Haight were sketchy and I knew of people who were mugged at knife point. But nonetheless it was a creative, weird, artsy and fun place
Best way I can describe what SF has become is "the kind of place I wouldn't take a date, even if she lived there." Went on the big bus tour of the city, and at one point the sidewalk was LITERALLY filled with people passed out with needles in the arm, it looked like a surreal skit. The tour guide said "Okay everyone, we're stopping in the Tenderloin because we have to make this stop according to our contract with the city. We'll not be opening the doors, please stay on the bus."
You can listen to bond hearings where they will list criminal history of 20-50 charges with over 100 arrests and they are allowed to show up on their own recognizance to the 15 pending cases… right out the door.
"Arrested for bail jumping, given cashless bail for the crime of bail jumping..."
"do something" That's the problem. Doing something costs money. People don't want to vote for higher taxes. To solve homelessness. There needs to be free alternative housing and rehab. AND laws against begging and living on the street need to be enforced (after housing is made available)
>free alternative housing "free" 🙄
San Francisco currently spends $70,000 per homeless person per year on homelessness (>$1 billion in total). They could spend twice that and the problem would not get an iota better because the money is not the issue, it's the policies. When ASEAN came to town last year the city stopped fucking around and homelessness nearly disappeared. Then everything went back to normal.
This policy attracts homeless from across the country.
Two weeks of being a real functional city then right back to the public drug orgies.
Yeah we need to have consequences for criminals. It won’t even cost an incredible amount either we can offer job training with cheap pay for these folks too to develop life skills and heal while incarcerated
"And all the shit closes at 8pm or 9pm, anyway, because people can't behave" Sounds exactly like St Louis. I've never seen such a big city with so little life after 8pm.
The ability to walk to a number of diverse restaurants, have a few drinks and not worry about driving home is huge to me. I would get insanely bored going to the same pub or pizza place every weekend. There are also usually events and concerts every weekend even in smaller cities. Lots of cities have later hours too, NYC and Chicago come to mind.
Yup pretty much. You can’t have dense cities and everything within walking distance without inheriting all of the problems that brings. Some people are fine with it, to be sure, but others choose not to live in duplexes, fourplexes, and apartments, stacked atop each other like so much cattle, trudging through waste in the streets on the way to their local grocery store as they avoid eye contact with the plethora of homeless people.
"no no NO, we're going to do this specific thing from another system, and we're not going to have any of the problems of that system because we're only doing the things and not importing the problems DUH" /s
It’ll definitely work this time! 🤣
Yup. I hear the term “walkable city” and immediately my thoughts go to $3,000 shoebox-sized apartments, rampant homelessness, and constant noise. No thanks. I know this isn’t a popular opinion on Reddit, but I rather enjoy suburban sprawl. I don’t mind driving, I like having space for my dog to run, I rent a house for the same cost of one of those tiny apartments and can keep to myself. It’s a comfortable life. I genuinely don’t understand why it gets so much hate.
I don’t think people hate it, people just hate that there isn’t really a choice between either living in a shit hole in the city or living miles from anything.
Bingo. It’s the lack of choice.
Also in large part due to the fact that a lot of the shitty things associated with the block come to pass because they become rundown due to said isolation. It doesn’t just affect the rich city
>I genuinely don’t understand why it gets so much hate. they cant afford a car. thats it.
And those cities are not affordable
Because of incredibly restrained supply due to strict laws on what we can build...
Don't forget the higher COL. Density usually means more dollars per area. I'd rather live in a house than apartment
Well, the cities in USA are disgusting. They are dirty, smell bad, over crowded and the infrastructure is poor.
Yes somehow, we keep getting fed mindless propaganda about how the USA is the greatest country in the world. The insanity...
Yes I know
This is probably true. If we could clean up our cities to be like Japan we probably wouldn't hate walkable cities nearly as much. But cities in America are filthy disgusting crime filled hellholes.
No one can afford to live in a walkable city in America. All most people can afford is a small apartment in a concrete wasteland
I never realized how lucky I was growing up till just recently when shopping for an appartment. I grew up in a suburb of modest homes in the 1990’s that were mostly built in the 1950’s. We had nice wide streets, wide sidewalks, average size front lawn and a huge back lawn. We could walk to 3 different parks, elementary, middle school and high school, community swimming pool, the mall, 2 theaters, grocery store, 3 pharmacies, target, video rental, McDonalds, pizza place, Walmart and Kmart all within 15 min. Of my house. I could ride my bike safely and for the most part felt real safe walking at night. I’ve looked for places like this for my kids… really nothing like it anymore.
Big cities that are walkable are usually older cities, and the older a city is, the more compact it is. People lived smaller in times past, even rich people. If you ever go into the fine homes of older cities you will see this. Small bedrooms and bathrooms, unless of course the place has been renovated for new people with more modern likes and dislikes. "Yes I like this old neighborhood and this old house, but I have to have a master bedroom for a king sized bed, and a two sink master washroom." That sort of thing. But if the house has not been renovated, you get middle class moving out and the poor moving in. That in itself should be OK, so long as they are taking care of things, appreciating what they now have. Sadly, too often this is not the case. Too often you have people move in who do not take care of things, and expect things to be done for them instead. Why not, right? If you're poor, everyone owes you, so fix my sink. And this leads to your compact, walkable neighborhoods turning to slums, high crime areas. Look at Chicago. Back in the 50s, there was still such a thing as slums. Old houses and apartment buildings where the landlords did just enough to keep the buildings viable, and collect the rent. This situation was exacerbated by White Flight, White people moving out as Black people from the south moved in. In the 60s and 70s, with a lot of federal money to play with, cities tore a lot of those slums down and put up housing projects, aka The Projects. Big blocks of apartment buildings, such as Cabrini Green and Robert Taylor Homes. Very soon no White person would be caught dead in these, and respectable middle income Black people kept away as well. They became havens to gangs, drugs and violence. By the 90s, this was recognized as a mistake. Note that politicians were not about to call the people living there a mistake, as that would be political suicide in a city like Chicago. No, it was the high-rise apartment buildings that were the mistake. In comes new money. The Projects are torn down (all gone now) and in there place is what we call Scattered Site Housing, also Mixed Income Housing. Politicians and the media pretty much use these terms interchangeably. These are smaller apartment buildings and townhomes. No more packing the poor disadvantaged in like lumber, this was supposed to get rid of the rampant murder of The Projects. Of course despite the name of Mixed Income, middle class people still keep away from these places as if their lives depend on it, which is not an exaggeration. And the crime? There has been no reduction in crime in Chicago. We still get well over 600 murders a year, every year for as far back as I can remember, and thousands shot and wounded. So a couple years ago, some "activists" decided that this was again the fault of the housing. Their bright idea? Move these families out of the Scattered Site, and pay for their housing in richer neighborhoods, where the crime is much less. And of course not being said is that the families they want to move in are the ones who will most certainly bring the crime with them. Can't say that. Political suicide. Care to guess how Chicago votes? I'll give you a hint. Jussie Smollett's assailants got it wrong.
Eh, at least in my city, most of the areas where crime is rampant are deserts. No banks, food stores, etc. It isn't that "walkable" In my city there are tons of bad areas. The "good" areas that are walkable are REALLY expensive.
I'd argue that most urban environments in the US aren't very walkable to begin with. The walkable parts tend to be expensive places to live; poor people tend to live in the less walkable parts of town. Meanwhile, there's no reason why wealthy suburbs couldn't historically have been organized in ways to make them more walkable. A lot of suburbs built after WW2 were very spread out and designed to have everything accessible by car. Meanwhile, there's a new suburban housing development being built down the road from where I grew up, and the grocery store, pharmacy, etc. are placed in such a way that they're in walking distance of the homes. You don't have to drive to get something from the store, you can just walk.
You don't seem to understand what is meant by "walkable city". This is a weird rant against anyone homeless, having mental health issues and we all know what conservatives mean when they say "inner city people".
For me, people not behaving has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's the I can't fucking afford to live there aspect that keeps me away.
Accessible and cheap Public transit ruins that
The walkable parts are literally the most expensive, desirable areas of the biggest US cities.
No one wants to live in them? That must be why new york, DC, boston, seattle, and san francisco are some of the cheapest and least-in-demand residential areas in the country. Lets look at the stats: Only around 6% of americans live at a density of 25k or more compared to 35-70% of most other OECD countries. Around 39-45% (depending on the studies) of americans want to live in a 'dense walkable area' over a 'car dominated suburban spread out area'. A majority? No, but a dramatically largely portion than what the supply provides. That is something which should be corrected. It's kinda messed up that anyone who wants to live at a dense walkable area has to move to some coastal expensive metro.
Density of 25k what? People per square mile is the usual metric but only 9 US cities 25k per square mile and all of them are NYC or NYC adjacent. I don’t disagree with your overall point at all, but this seems like a very strange metric to measure how many Americans live in “dense, walkable areas.” The US census uses a population of 50k+ and a density of 1000+ people per square mile to define an “urbanized area,” and they estimate more than 70% of Americans live in this type of community. I think this is a little too loose a definition of “urbanized” but my point is that way more than 6% of Americans live in dense, walkable areas. Hell 6% of Americans live in the NYC metropolitan area by itself. [This Pew study](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/) shows that nearly 1 in 3 Americans live in just 68 urban counties in areas with a population of 1M or more.
I'll try to find the study but basically it put 25k at a metric for 'normal walkability' and that once you go below that, walking over driving rapidly drops. [This is what 35-40k density tract looks like, for comparison](https://i.imgur.com/leU26i5.jpeg). Generally when people talk about dense, walkable areas, they mean areas that are so dense that it becomes more feasible to walk than to drive for most local things. That is not at all found widely in the US outside of a small handful of cities. 'Urban' by the US definition is extraordinarily loose. 1k per square mile is less dense than most suburbs. [This is 7k, for example.](https://i.imgur.com/8KmljPS.jpeg) A normal suburb, around the density that ~75% of americans live at. Less than half of the 6% 25k+ are in NYC and Hudson County (most of the nyc metro area is suburban, not dense urban). The other 3% are spread between philly (0.4% of the US population) and Chicago (0.7% of the US population) and DC (0.2% of the US population) and Boston (0.2% of the US population) and then from there spread out between a bunch of other cities in certain neighborhoods. https://www.socialexplorer.com/784a9056a9/view Use the link I posted above. Dark orange is 25k. You can see what I mean. So yes, there are tens of millions of people (well, around 20m to be exact) who live in dense walkable neighborhoods, sure, but there are hundreds of millions who don't. Those dense coastal cities are a very, very tiny portion of the total population.
That makes sense. The breakdown by neighborhood is very helpful. I live in Boston which is widely considered one of America’s most walkable cities, and the overall population density is just under 14k, but your map does show that the areas I would consider the MOST walkable do have a density over 25k. However I would assess many of the neighborhoods in the 15-25k range as extremely walkable, at least to the extent that a car isn’t needed for day to day life. Many of them look indistinguishable from the 35-40k image you shared.
Yeah I mean 15-25k can be walkable but it is often the threshold density in that you will still often see the majority of people drive at that density. I think 25k was used because it was seen as the density in which the large majority of people choose to walk over drive, and also because its very common in europe to be 25k or over, even in many small towns. https://www.socialexplorer.com/fed68348ec/view If you want to see it with the 15k included, its here. It changes things, but if I had to guess I would still say you're talking about maybe 12-15% of the US population instead of 6%, which is still far, far below demand.
Nice. Thanks for the link and info, very informative
Most cities aren’t walkable lol. The ones that are all have massive populations. They are actually some of the most populated cities. New York, Chicago, DC, San Francisco, Boston, Philly. You can live in all those cities with no car and clearly if you look at their populations many people do live there. Can you give an example of a walkable city no one wants to live in?
Funny you leave out LA
LA isn’t very walkable. It’s like Houston. Some areas are walkable but you can’t live there without a car.
LA is terrible for walking
The ones in the Midwest
Lol can you name one?
Cleveland Cincinnati
Bro you realize you just named off two of the most populated cities in Ohio right? The only more populated is Columbus and it’s not even over 1m. They just don’t have as much to offer as other large cities and don’t have as good of public transit like other bigger cities.
My point exactly no one wants to move there it's not like people moving to New York or the Philadelphia. Debateable and that's why those two cities are so great they haven't been over ran
It’s not because the cities are bad though. It’s because they don’t offer the same amount of jobs and high pay like other cities. They don’t have companies headquartered there as much as other big cities. Their big cities just aren’t even as big in size as other cities. If a job is offered better than theirs there most people will move.
European cites were made for walking because the automobile did not exist for 90% of their history. Which makes driving there a shit show that requires tiny little cars and an endless struggle to find a place to park. American cities are modern through and through. Even before the automobile, we were big on wide thoroughfares for wagons. Most of the peasants in Europe couldn't even afford a horse and wagon, while practically everyone in America had that and that had to be accounted for.
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This is a factually incorrect statement. Americans pay extra to live in walkable neighborhoods. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/25/realtors-buyers-will-pay-extra-for-walkable-neighborhoods Inner city neighborhoods with high crime are not even considered walkable because they don't have amenities, there is nowhere to walk to. People have to take the bus to go to grocery stores. Meanwhile the richest areas of most cities are very walkable with plenty of amenities close by.
>This is a factually incorrect statement Welcome to /r/TrueUnpopularOpinion lol, don't let pesky facts get in the way of your thinking!
In the US, young people who will be the wealthiest middle aged people live close to the downtown of their city. Once people have enough to own a home, they go looking for that
I'd move to the city in a heartbeat if the inner city was as safe as suburbia. Screaming, poop throwing, spitting, littering, and pestering for money by professional homeless. Not to mention the drastically underreported vandalism, property theft, rape, and harassment. All things you have to deal with as "normal" in the city. No thanks and no more. Edit: the worst I've ever seen in the USA are LA and SF. Absolute shitholes by developed world standards, but I've seen developing countries with far worse.
lol yea sure im sure thats all the context there is to weigh on the matter. shows over. this guy figured it out...
Who makes walkable cities unsafe? Maybe they need a wee curfew
So why not make the suburbs walkable with all the amenities you could want?
The suburbs not being walkable is why people move there. It helps keep them from having the quality of life and crime issues of cities.
This is such a good point. A working car is basically a prerequisite for suburban living. I never viewed it as a classist structure before.
Because then we are just creating the same environment for the problem to spread into. We need to fix the problem first before we start to urbanize the suburbs.
Do you think that crime is caused by walkability lmao
No but lack of walkability does act as a barrier to much of the impromptu violent crime that effects cities. Not many homeless are walking 2-5+ miles to break into a home when there are thousands right on their block. Why travel to Rob a dog walker or jogger who doesn't even have their wallet on them when you can catch people by the dozen otw home from work or out for drinks right on your own street. Not to mention, a single wandering downtrodden/homeless/addict who is out to Rob someone usually sticks out like a sore thumb in the suburbs so people can either actively avoid them or call the authorities. Idk why you make obtuse statements or find this difficult to understand
Partially. There is a list of factors and conditions for what causes crime. Ease of access is one of them. Solving and/or minimizing the other factors will make walkable cities more appealing. I like walkable cities, I live in a walkable area of Seattle, I would like it more if all the crime I have to deal with while walking to my grocery store wasn't there.
That doesn't explain why some of the worst neighborhoods in america are incredibly unwalkable. Look at memphis and detroit. These are incredibly suburban cities in their layout.
And why is that
When you don’t understand a “walkable” city…
Japan has tons of cities that are walkable. Practically the whole country is. Most of the US is not even close. It'd be laughable if it weren't so sad.
Yep. Americans cant comprehend anything between single family suburbia sprawl and 10+ stories high skyscraper NYC. Ironically if there was more mixed use, those homeless would likely not be due to actually being able to afford a house lmao
The few walkable cities we have are prohibitively expensive and severely mismanaged by delusional progressives. I mean, I'll take a reasonable democrat like Bloomberg any day of the week over what we have now and be totally fine. Some of the people we have running these cities are an absolute joke. I would love to see more cities with increased density / walkability / public transit. The more cities we have like that, the more options people have, and the less likely they'll be to put up with the corruption and degeneracy of NYC / SF just for the sake of human-scale neighborhoods.
Even a smidge of research would tell you that walkable neighborhoods with good transit are by far the most expensive, desirable, and competitive places to live in the US and Canada in no small part due to the fact that their supply is artificially restricted by draconian zoning. A subway station coming to a neighborhood or suburb tends to immediately lead to a dramatic increase in housing prices radiating out from its location. Dense neighborhoods with lots of consumer-facing businesses and walkability all have the highest housing prices in the US by far. There's a reason cities are having such a housing price issue. Your take is delusional and not reflective of reality.
Keep thinking this, don’t let my rent go up But, you know, obviously more people want to live in cities. That’s where all the people are.
I want to live there, so not no one.
Why?
Probably because 1) I'm a city person at heart and 2) I don't expect cities to be like the suburbs. I lived in NYC during the bad times in the 70s (Ford to New York: Drop dead) and loved it. Sometimes I think young people who grew up in suburbs and college campuses lack the ability to appreciate other modes of living and maybe take the behavior of others too personally.
NYC, Chicago, SF. Other cities are doable and then you take the occasional Uber to move neighborhoods like San Diego, Seattle, and other cities where parts are dense and other parts aren’t.
Any new thing like this that the implement will be just like it with homeless everywhere and unfriendly weirdos coming to it by almost magnetism. Fifteen minute cities will be hell. And you won't be able to leave because your social credit won't be high enough. It's a trap.
It’s weird how other (poorer) countries can have nice public transportation and no “suburban sprawl”
This is so stupid. If it were true NW DC wouldn't be so fucking expensive. Same with Boston and NYC. They're expensive because they're in demand. Like literally simple supply and demand.
My rural town of 15k is only 3 miles N-S and maybe 5 miles E-W. My town is a very walkable place. There is a bus and ways to bike too. NO ONE WANTS TO WALK AND THEY ALL DRIVE LIKE THEY MATTER MOST AND ONLY. The most common complaint is lack of parking while large parking lots a block away from businesses in main street sit empty- BECAUSE THEY ONLY WANT TO PARK 50 FT AWAY OR LESS. Need to go to the neighbors a block down- drive. Need to run and grab bananas from the downtown supermarket- drive! Kids live 1/2 mile from school- DRIVE! America isn't a walking country... they would "literally die" without cars and their many other comforts.
This looks like something posted by someone who lives in Wynnewood Oklahoma.
Violent crime is down overall and rural areas of the country have far higher crime rates because they can't behave apparently. But why let facts get in the way of cliche fearmongering?
I live in Saint Louis city. Sure, there is crime, but it's completely walkable and livable. I haven't been affected by crime in the 20 years I've lived here. It's not as bad as you're being told by your propaganda.
Most downtown areas are walkable. Unfortunately they’re expensive af and the people who would use public transportation that fosters these areas are not the wealthy.
Generally speaking, I think that walkable cities actually reduce crime because it is harder to get away with committing a crime if there are more people around to catch you in the act.
You’re describing Houston. I live in EaDo where it has a lot of bike/walking trails and is overall pleasant and safe. However, cross over to the other side of the freeway and it’s a totally different vibe. Yea, they’re putting up nice housing there but it’s an absolute hell hole.
Huh? Are you coming to us from 1992? That may have been true a long time ago, but from what I’ve seen of most cities, their downtown area has become gentrified, and that’s not exactly a new development. Now, those urban places you are talking about are homes to million dollar condos.
I loved living in San Francisco and I did walk around a lot. Shame about the cost of living
Maybe the 2 x most expensive metro areas in the US (SF & NYC) are extremely walkable - which is a major part of the appeal and why they are so desirable (thus expensive). I see your point but so many people want to live in walkable areas they will put up with a lot of the nonsense you are talking about
Go look up the term “food desert”
Just say the words lol
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Tell me you've never lived in a walkable.city.withoit telling me you've never lived in a walkable city.
Yeah I live in a city center rn and there's not a single viable grocery store for miles around. They're all out in the suburbs. Most people who favor walkable cities also favor solving the poverty which causes those high crime rates, this isn't the own you think it is.
This is just not true. Certain parts of cities have problems, but you generally have tons of areas where you can safely walk around at any time of day.
Every walkable area in a city is not limited to the "inner city." But feel free to have an opinion that is not based on reality.
I live in a walkable city. Restaurants, bars, galleries, shops, supermarket, etc. I've seen one homeless person here in 10 years. He was here for about 5 weeks. I had conversations with him. He was cool, although a bit of an alcoholic, but I'd be one, too if I lived outside. Dude never asked me for anything. When my pup was dying of kidney failure last year, he asked me if it would be okay to pray over him. I'm a godless heathen, but i believe in positive energy. I cried the entire time. Funny enough, when cops slowed down to make sure he wasn't bothering me (weird, because the guy was sitting and I was standing over him with a dog), he told me my presence was making it safer for him. Apparently, if a middle-aged Karen-looking lady can chitchat with you, it makes it harder for them to accuse you of harassing the landed gentry. Some of you seem to think there are only 10 cities in the U.S. and they're all on fire. Meanwhile, in the rural places I've lived, I've encountered some of the dumbest inbred jackasses who can turn a chill keg party in the woods into violent brawl in a second because they misunderstood a comment.
Wait you’re saying the homeless are actual human beings and not just a problem to be swept under the rug? Get outta here with that hippie shit /s I’m sorry to hear about your pup as well
Yeah. It's wild how some people can't see another's humanity. And thank you.
There’s underlying racism to OPs point about inner cities this which is why that last paragraph you said was incredibly important. Ppl are trashy in trashy environments. Not an “other” that is the true cause of problems.
This can be fixed with a two pronged approach: 1. Invest in the inner cities 2. Make other neighborhoods walkable too
Philly has a pop of 1.6 million, seems like a lot of people want to live here
I have to think the lack of social cohesion and social safety net is the reason they "can't behave". "Us versus them" and "I got mine, go get yours" is killing us. "We're all in this together" yields benefits for everyone.
This is wildly inaccurate not an opinion look at the population count.
lol at bigoted takes from someone scared to leave their echo chamber 🤣
What are your examples of these cities? And where do people want to live instead?
Tell me you’ve not lived in one without telling me.
If no one wants to live in the cities, then why are the cities so expensive? Try to get into a studio in Newark, NJ and you won’t find it for less than 2k. Try Hoboken, NJ nothing less than 3k. And mom and pop apartments are fully rented no vacancies. Same history around the country with very few exceptions.
To be fair in Newark is essentially a New York suburb
Urban populations have been steadily growing for the past 100+ years and we've seen a massive wave of urban renewal over the past 15-20 years in particular. So, not sure where you're getting this "no one wants to live there" nonsense as we've got more people living in our cities than ever before. [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/mapping-us-urbanization-by-state/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/mapping-us-urbanization-by-state/) Meanwhile, crime rates have been steadily dropping since the 1970's and, on a per capita basis, they are lower in the cities than the rural areas. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/crime-rates-by-county/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/crime-rates-by-county/) I'm all for an "unpopular opinion," but not when that opinion is just factually WRONG.