Reply to Why is walkability to public schools & stores so hard to find?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The short answer to your question is 50+ years of poor urban planning and car-centric design. In most cases, the decision to make things unwalkable was very much on purpose. We've (mostly) realized the error of that approach by now, but walkable spaces are now pretty scarce outside of pre-WWII neighborhoods, and they're enough in demand that they go for a large price premium even though walkability doesn't really cost more to build.

We're starting to retrofit walkable infrastructure into suburban neighborhoods, but it'll take decades, and we're limited with what can be done within the constraints of many of the choices that are already baked in.[/quote]

[b]Ding ding ding. Basically op, it’s literally illegal to build walkable neighborhoods in most of America. That’s the reason AU Park is so absurdly expensive[/b] [/quote]

I'm sorry... ILLEGAL??
Please cite your sources or explain.
[/quote]

I'm the PP they were responding to (not the poster who said it's illegal), but they're not being inaccurate. Minimum lot size and occupancy regulations often make it impossible to build anything that we would think of as walkable in any kind of practical sense. In many jurisdictions, sidewalks are still not required consistently, which makes walking difficult. Regulations often require roads to be built in ways that prioritize car throughout but make walking unpleasant or dangerous. It may not be illegal to walk, but laws and regulations often make it illegal to build anyplace where you would want to.

[/quote]

NP here. Our built environment is also the product of historical racism. Black neighborhoods were destroyed by highways leading to car dependent sprawl for white people. Proponents of the car industry ripped up public transportation in favor of roads and tried to make SFH areas inaccessible except by car.

Also traditional development had always been more like a spoke and hub. That is why older cities have so many bedroom communities which have their own little downtowns, and then those little communities are transit accessible to the bigger community. Also, roads used to be built in grid patterns.

But then some rich guys who had a personal interest in making the US car dependent decided we should build retail, housing, and job centers in different locations. Add in some cul de sacs and lack of connected roads, everyone must commute on the major parkways. When those get backed up, you are essentially stuck. I don’t know how we even begin to undo it, but I find large swaths of outside the beltway to be so horrifically unattractive. Anytime I find myself visiting family out there and driving on the Fairfax County Parkway or crawling along the strip malls off route 50, it feels so utterly depressing. And I can’t even imagine living in a townhouse right off some major Loudoun County road with cloud storage buildings all around. We have made this country so damn ugly in the name of car worship.[/quote]

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