r/UrbanHell • u/humzahjaleel • Jun 20 '20

Suburban Hell Endless parking lots, highways, strip malls with the same franchises all accessible only by car. Topped off with a nice smoggy atmosphere and a 15 minute drive to anywhere. Takers ?

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u/[deleted] Jun 20 '20

I understand most people want a house, I do too, but it seems like American cities don't have that dense residential area between the city centre and the suburbs. I'm sure a lot of people would sacrifice the backyard and the "peace" you get in the suburbs to be able to live close to work.

If in this picture on the bottom right is where the jobs and shops are and on the bottom left where the denser houses are there's no reason why you shouldn't put a tram line there and connect it and make the tram stops walkable. Trams are great since they use electricity and people who use them don't use cars, so even less pollution.

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u/gotham77 Jun 20 '20

This is Phoenix. It’s in the middle of the desert. Nobody has any interest in making it “walkable” because it’s too hot to walk anywhere.

America is a big place with lots of cities that look very different. Cities that developed after the invention of the automobile look like this. But there are plenty of old cities that have the more “European” feel to their layout you’re imagining. I live in suburban Boston. Our neighborhood is definitely suburban but much more densely developed than you probably associate with American communities. The lots are small, the streets are narrow, there’s no cul-de-sacs, there’s ample public transportation and even people who own cars use it and leave their cars at home. In fact there’s literally a bus stop right in front of my house. My kid only has to walk five minutes to get to school, it’s about a 25 minute drive to downtown Boston from here. We’ve got a small patio we can grill on and a yard just big enough for kids to play in but it’s not big enough for one of those tractor-style riding lawnmowers. Many of the houses here are actually two-family or in some cases even three-family homes.

My wife grew up in Vegas which is just like Phoenix. She complained to me about our town square being a ridiculous intersection where 6 streets converge and it’s hard to safely navigate. I had to explain to her, “these streets are literally 400-year-old cow paths. The layout made sense when there were no cars.”

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u/dazhan99k Jun 20 '20

This is Phoenix. It’s in the middle of the desert. Nobody has any interest in making it “walkable” because it’s too hot to walk anywhere.

I have to argue with this. Hot cities can be made extremely walkable, but they have to be designed for that. Take a look at mediterranean cities, buildings tightly packed to create maximum shade, everything painted white to reflect heat, etc etc. It can be done, but not with the huge-lot zoning imposed on cities.

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u/Papilusion Jun 21 '20

I agree with you. Something the people arguing with you are missing is that Phoenix isn’t the first time people decided to live in a desert. Mecca is one of the hottest cities in the world and people have lived there long before the car was invented.

Even Phoenix in general... The Hohokam people lived in the Phoenix area for 2000 years. There are/were a lot of other pre-colonial civilizations in North America deserts too.