What a cute suburban garage, it almost looks like a house
Suburbs are isolating. It's so natural to think of the suburbs as the fulfillment of the American Dream, or as the middle-class goal, but that's just familiarity. Getting into a car, driving for 12 minutes each direction onto a collector road then an arterial and back to grab more dish soap is normalized if that's the only way it's ever done. Having a few close friends in nearby houses seems like 'the way things are' until you start investigating alternatives. It's easy for confirmation bias to kick in and say "I know lots of people in my suburb, and they're some of my closest friends; I've had a wonderful time living in my suburb," but what you don't ever have is a point of comparison to something different, because all suburbs are so similar.
In this post, I'm not going to advocate for getting rid of suburbs, or single family homes on big lots, or big wide streets with lots of on-street parking. What I will advocate for is zoning laws that make other types of suburbs possible.
Currently, nearly all suburbs (any by land area, most of all cities) are zoned as single-family homes on big lots. This is Residential zoning (R), at the lowest density (1), making this a R1 zone:
A suburb in Anywhere, USA (I zoomed into a spot on Google Maps with labels turned off, and ended up in West Des Moines)
R1 zones contain homes with no access to any retail, except by car. While parks, churches, schools, and childcare can be built in these single-family residential zones, simply having a corner market within walking distance would save many car trips, but these zones disallow even that small convenience.
A vehicle is a necessity for living in single-family R1 zones. In order to get anywhere that isn't zoned for R1, you need to get into a car, which necessitates that the people you are meeting there are less likely to be neighbors. People love a small town feel where they know their neighbors, but balk at ideas like putting a coffee shop in a suburb. R1 zones lack any third place (work and home are the first two places, the third place is where you can go to socialize), like a coffee shop, bowling alley, salon, makerspace, bookstore, arcade, lodge, social club, or coworking space. These are all destinations accessible by car only, and when you get there, it's usually full of strangers unless you've planned to meet up with friends. Part of the reason that churches are so popular in America is because they function as one of the only third places easily accessible from deep within R1 zones.
Children growing up in this environment are incredibly isolated until they get a car. That's why getting a car can seem like it has life-or-death importance to children in suburbs. Taking away the car is tantamount to trapping them in an environment that lacks any stimulation or fulfillment.
Imagine growing up here as a child with no car.
There are better ways to make suburbs.
Think of this neighborhood in your (large) city: narrow alternating one way streets, with one lane of travel and one lane of on-street parking. Small to medium houses line the street with small front yards that are right up against the sidewalk. Trees cover the sidewalk and part of the street, and there is a corner market where you can buy staples like flour, milk, and eggs. Now that you have that in mind, answer these two questions:
How expensive are the houses?
How old is the neighborhood?
A typical house in Capitol Hill. Bonus point for someone walking their dog.
For me, this description reminded me of Capitol Hill, Washington Park, and Central East Denver. These are old and expensive neighborhoods. Part of the reason they are so expensive is because they are rare - they are in fact illegal to build today in any zoning district. We updated the regulations to mandate things like parking minimums, wider lanes, two way traffic, no mixed-use zoning, setback requirements, minimum lot sizes, and clear zones for the fast-moving cars to roll into when they crash. These regulations make those quaint, human-scale, livable neighborhoods a thing of the past. We can regulate them back. Not only are they more livable—they are far safer than the neighborhoods built with updated road standards.
Wide residential streets with large clear zones, straight roads, lots of on-street parking, and setback houses encourage faster driving, making these roads less safe than complex narrow streets. In fact, these wide residential streets have 4x the number of accidents as narrow streets.
Again, we can fix this problem. Single Family R1 Zoning can be a thing of the past.
A note before moving on: I'm not advocating for eliminating this type of suburb. At least not for everybody. If you can live with it yourself, and can justify subjecting children to the isolation, no one will stop that from happening. Developers can (and will) still create these neighborhoods. Eliminating the zoning simply opens more options, it doesn't shut any down.
Simple Solution #1: Eliminate R1 Zoning or change the R1 zoning district for single-family homes to allow variable lot sizes, duplexes and fourplexes, and small apartment complexes in keeping with neighborhood aesthetic, as well as small commercial corner markets and third places that save car trips to commercial zoned developments.
These changes helps make these areas more walkable and less car dependent, as well as more serviceable by public transit. Duplexes, apartments, and smaller lots increase density, giving the corner markets and third places a greater customer base and public transit more justification—more density means fewer transit stops service more people.
Simple Solution #2: Change standards to increase safety by narrowing roads, reducing on-street parking and setbacks, reduce lot sizes, and make the area more difficult to navigate by car to promote slower, safer neighborhood speeds.
These changes functionally bring back the old style of neighborhood that demands such a premium nowadays. These neighborhoods experience far fewer vehicle accidents, despite being built before the new standards surrendered space to fast moving cars, presumably to keep things safer (it's actually due to an adherence to a measurement of traffic flow called "level of service" which makes things less safe in order to keep cars moving, but that's perhaps a story for another time).
No comments:
Post a Comment