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As the article hinted at the simple answer is Car Dependency. Suburbs are regulated and built to accommodate cars now and not people. The topic is explored tho

As the article hinted at the simple answer is Car Dependency. Suburbs are regulated and built to accommodate cars now and not people. The topic is explored thouroughly on the 'Not Just Bikes' youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes which uses information from urban planning group 'Strong Towns' https://www.strongtowns.org/ https://www.strongtowns.org/.

theamk 5y ago
Nope, the article specifically addresses your point: > consider college campuses and their central quads, which typically do not have automobiles even today. The ones people admire are the older ones, not the newer campuses, which tend to be functional but aesthetically mediocre
- ironmagma 5y ago
  Not just with campuses, but cities too. We generally need to import good aesthetics from the past, which should be a sign that the current system is broken. Good things should be possible to create in the present.
  - JadeNB 5y ago
    > Not just with campuses, but cities too. We generally need to import good aesthetics from the past, which should be a sign that the current system is broken. Good things should be possible to create in the present. I suspect that there is considerable survivor bias going into that. There were plenty of bad aesthetic choices in the past, too; we just recognise and remember the good ones. Similarly, there surely are good aesthetic choices being made today—it's just that, as in any age, there are many more bad ones, and those are the ones that are easier to call to mind. A lot of good modern aesthetic choices borrow from the past, but that, too, is true of any age; the choices of the past we admire were not born ab novo, but were themselves inspired by still older design. This is not to make the ridiculous claim that nothing is changing, only that "we look to the past for cues to good design" is not in and of itself an indictment of some fallen modern age.
    - ironmagma 5y ago
      > we look to the past for cues to good design But by your very logic, we also look to the past for cues to bad design. There are plenty of ugly old towns and cities in the US. Regardless, the most beautiful cities in the US: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Charleston, New Orleans, Boston, Seattle are also some of the oldest. > there surely are good aesthetic choices being made today With how restrictive the building and city planning codes are, the amount of creativity is extremely limited.
  - UnFleshedOne 5y ago
    Might be related to the way modern art is ugly by design. Since it became easy to create beautiful things at scale, the "art" appreciation scene moved into ugly stuff, because only sophisticated art experts can appreciate the stuff, thus separating themselves from the common rubble.
    - ironmagma 5y ago
      I definitely think the ugliness of modern art is related to the economics. Why invest a lot of time or thought into something, when you can convince someone to believe that those don't matter?
- quadrangle 5y ago
  NotJustBikes and StrongTowns have addressed all of this. For just one of zillions of examples: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/6/3/cognitive-comfort-and-visual-clutter-is-it-time-we-started-regulating-style https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/6/3/cognitive-comfo... Neither source just simplistically says "it's the fault of cars", both are deeply thought-out perspectives on what is really going on. It's not just cars, it's certain engineering and bureaucratic decisions that were made around cars. It's also the scale of development, i.e. governments that are set up to work with large-scale developers and are too hard for small-scale developers to deal with, and the general trend toward all-at-once top-down development, and I could go on and on. StrongTowns has successfully diagnosed the entire systemic pattern. It's not just blame-the-cars. Check out the actual resources, don't just assume they are only the simple thing the poster had to say to make any point at all.
  - milkytron 5y ago
    > Check out the actual resources If anyone is interested in what's being discussed here and in Strong Towns, I'd highly recommend reading it[0]. I had been a fan of Strong Towns for a long time, but just finally read the book recently. [0] https://www.strongtowns.org/strong-towns-book https://www.strongtowns.org/strong-towns-book
- tortarga 5y ago
  These are most likely two separate problems. Car based urban planning which requires large wide roads, giant carparks and 'boxey houses' due to garages can overwhelm any other aesthetically pleasing design (notably green space). Admiring the old brick styles of the ivy leagues is simple confirmation bias due to their academic prestige. There are plenty of beautiful Modernist buildings, it comes down to if the college is willingly to pay for it.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    I would like to see some pictures of beautiful Modernist buildings. I live in an apartment, but the house I grow up in had more lawn space than was used by the car.
throwawaysea 5y ago
I often see urbanists and young people fantasize about life in car free mega cities. Having lived that life for years I can’t imagine why. A lot of cities that are beautiful and attractive also have room for cars. I would even argue it is a big part of what makes those cities attractive. There’s no substitute for the point to point on demand fast transportation that cars offer. In cities that aren’t overbuilt, it makes it so much easier to get things done, see people, and access the outdoors. All that time saved is time to live a richer life. A good example of a car centric city that is very attractive is Seattle from ten years ago. The city had a strong sense of community because it was composed of intimate neighborhoods mostly with single family zoning rather than mid rise boxy apartment blocks everywhere, ample green space for its population, and roads with little traffic. It is because Seattle was so attractive that people and businesses flocked to it. Now those aspects are going away as density, anti car policies, and other issues are making the overall quality of life worse.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Even famously “mass transit unfriendly” cities can be fit for a car-free lifestyle if you work at it. But I suspect a huge part of it is visiting Europe or Asia as a tourist and enjoying being without a car. But they didn’t actually live there.
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    > I suspect a huge part of it is visiting Europe or Asia as a tourist and enjoying being without a car. Agreed. As a tourist you also tend to visit the historic center of capital cities, which have by far the best public transport and fanciest architecture. Plus you're on vacation and having fun. When you live there and walk to your commuter train a gray november morning, it's a very different experience.
    - NumberWangMan 5y ago
      > When you live there and walk to your commuter train a gray november morning, it's a very different experience. Still preferable, to me at least! Getting in to work and shucking off your mist-covered coat and making a nice cup of tea made it just fine.
r_klancer 5y ago
It's interesting to note that Hacker News really loves Strong Towns. I chatted with Chuck Marohn (founder and face of Strong Towns) once at an event a couple years ago, and they're quite aware that they get a lot of traffic from HN.
- mobilewatch7 5y ago
  The strong town movement and its affiliated planning companies ruined my community. A lot of the mixed use re zoning is a pretext for opening up rural areas for heavy industry.
  - oblio 5y ago
    That's just ridiculous, though. Does anyone sane zone heavy industry together with residential?
mc32 5y ago
I like some suburbs. However, not far from downtown San Jose, within the city limits, there is some interesting tract housing developments: they have soundwall like structures surrounding these neighborhoods that are built like a maze. Once in it can be hard to find your way out without GPS to one of the few entrances/exits. So that’s in a city, not even the maligned suburbs!
- VHRanger 5y ago
  Are those single family zoned? Because if so they're also responsible for housing prices being insane in the area
  - mc32 5y ago
    Pretty sure they are. Look at a map of San Jose and check out the areas around Quimby or Tully Roads in east(ern) San Jose.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      I just see standard developments - anything more specific? Heh found a trailer park.
      - mc32 5y ago
        To me a place like hidden glen north is odd. It's a tract surrounded by soundwalls and has few exits from the development, whereas in normal developments you have intersections with all streets. This kind of development follows the thoroughfare model where smaller streets feed larger streets which feed boulevards/expressways which feed freeways. They are built in such a way the actual city neighborhood is disconnected from its surroundings and makes transit by anything other than car difficult -buses don't go in, and biking is fraught -all relatively close to the downtown area. Suburbs are better designed than that.
        bombcar 5y ago
closeparen 5y ago
There are some very nice older suburbs, with much higher densities than would be thought of as suburban today, that provision parking for every home. The venerable alley is basically an accommodation for cars, but a much more humane one. The sweet spot seems to be about 1920-1940.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Yep, you're absolutely right. The parent's youtube suggestion has a video on this too, called streetcar suburbs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
- bradstewart 5y ago
  The Lake Vista neighborhood [0] in New Orleans nailed this as well, but sort of flipped the alley concept. Still has street access and parking for every home, but the "front" of most houses faces an alley-width, pedestrian walkway. It was always one of my favorite areas to hang out as a kid, never really understood why until now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeshore/Lake_Vista,_New_Orleans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeshore/Lake_Vista,_New_Orle...
xibalba 5y ago
There is not faster to way to discredit oneself than to offer a pat, single variable explanation. As others point out, Americans like and want to transport themselves by car. Let's accept this, work with it, and build around it instead of lusting after a minority defined Utopia.
- addicted 5y ago
  I am not sure if we can tell whether Americans like cars or not considering they don’t really have a choice.
- BrianHenryIE 5y ago
  Wrong. I tried to find the tweet, but it was succinctly put ~"it's said people in Los Angeles love their cars, but people in LA have no choice but to own a car, it's not love, it is necessity". In every city that has made a concerted effort to accommodate all modes of transport, driving as a percentage has gone down. "build it and they will come" is better suited to transport than it ever was to SaaS. It is easy to conclude that people don't "want" to drive.
  - AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
    Look, the fact is, even in places with excellent public transport, the car is still the best way to travel short of helicopter. How do we know this? Look at the rich and powerful of New York, they are driven to their destinations, they don't take the subway, and if they do, it's notably unusual.
  - dymk 5y ago
    “It’s said that” is not the same as “polls show” and then linking to a source LA is also cherry picked to be one of the worst places for cars. It’s legendary for its traffic. Writing in from the PNW where I wouldn’t trade my car, and the freedom it gives me and my friends and my dogs to travel, for anything.
    - forgotmyoldname 5y ago
sytelus 5y ago
I don’t think that’s what article says. Article just keeps blathering that new neighborhoods are not “beautiful” or “nice” without describing any objective measures for what author really meant. I do understand however what it is trying to say. My opinion is that housing development is vastly commoditized and builders wants tried and trusted designs at lowest prices and fastest speed. There is not much room for creativity and experimentation. I went to see houses build by Toll Brothers which are premium expensive builders and even their designs were regular with few bells and whistles only to show off. Lower end market basically just follows the template. This is extremely disappointing because house construction is something that lasts for so long.

theamk 5y ago

Nope, the article specifically addresses your point: > consider college campuses and their central quads, which typically do not have automobiles even today. The ones people admire are the older ones, not the newer campuses, which tend to be functional but aesthetically mediocre

ironmagma 5y ago
Not just with campuses, but cities too. We generally need to import good aesthetics from the past, which should be a sign that the current system is broken. Good things should be possible to create in the present.
- JadeNB 5y ago
  > Not just with campuses, but cities too. We generally need to import good aesthetics from the past, which should be a sign that the current system is broken. Good things should be possible to create in the present. I suspect that there is considerable survivor bias going into that. There were plenty of bad aesthetic choices in the past, too; we just recognise and remember the good ones. Similarly, there surely are good aesthetic choices being made today—it's just that, as in any age, there are many more bad ones, and those are the ones that are easier to call to mind. A lot of good modern aesthetic choices borrow from the past, but that, too, is true of any age; the choices of the past we admire were not born ab novo, but were themselves inspired by still older design. This is not to make the ridiculous claim that nothing is changing, only that "we look to the past for cues to good design" is not in and of itself an indictment of some fallen modern age.
  - ironmagma 5y ago
    > we look to the past for cues to good design But by your very logic, we also look to the past for cues to bad design. There are plenty of ugly old towns and cities in the US. Regardless, the most beautiful cities in the US: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Charleston, New Orleans, Boston, Seattle are also some of the oldest. > there surely are good aesthetic choices being made today With how restrictive the building and city planning codes are, the amount of creativity is extremely limited.
- UnFleshedOne 5y ago
  Might be related to the way modern art is ugly by design. Since it became easy to create beautiful things at scale, the "art" appreciation scene moved into ugly stuff, because only sophisticated art experts can appreciate the stuff, thus separating themselves from the common rubble.
  - ironmagma 5y ago
    I definitely think the ugliness of modern art is related to the economics. Why invest a lot of time or thought into something, when you can convince someone to believe that those don't matter?
quadrangle 5y ago
NotJustBikes and StrongTowns have addressed all of this. For just one of zillions of examples: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/6/3/cognitive-comfort-and-visual-clutter-is-it-time-we-started-regulating-style https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/6/3/cognitive-comfo... Neither source just simplistically says "it's the fault of cars", both are deeply thought-out perspectives on what is really going on. It's not just cars, it's certain engineering and bureaucratic decisions that were made around cars. It's also the scale of development, i.e. governments that are set up to work with large-scale developers and are too hard for small-scale developers to deal with, and the general trend toward all-at-once top-down development, and I could go on and on. StrongTowns has successfully diagnosed the entire systemic pattern. It's not just blame-the-cars. Check out the actual resources, don't just assume they are only the simple thing the poster had to say to make any point at all.
- milkytron 5y ago
  > Check out the actual resources If anyone is interested in what's being discussed here and in Strong Towns, I'd highly recommend reading it[0]. I had been a fan of Strong Towns for a long time, but just finally read the book recently. [0] https://www.strongtowns.org/strong-towns-book https://www.strongtowns.org/strong-towns-book
tortarga 5y ago
These are most likely two separate problems. Car based urban planning which requires large wide roads, giant carparks and 'boxey houses' due to garages can overwhelm any other aesthetically pleasing design (notably green space). Admiring the old brick styles of the ivy leagues is simple confirmation bias due to their academic prestige. There are plenty of beautiful Modernist buildings, it comes down to if the college is willingly to pay for it.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  I would like to see some pictures of beautiful Modernist buildings. I live in an apartment, but the house I grow up in had more lawn space than was used by the car.

throwawaysea 5y ago

I often see urbanists and young people fantasize about life in car free mega cities. Having lived that life for years I can’t imagine why. A lot of cities that are beautiful and attractive also have room for cars. I would even argue it is a big part of what makes those cities attractive. There’s no substitute for the point to point on demand fast transportation that cars offer. In cities that aren’t overbuilt, it makes it so much easier to get things done, see people, and access the outdoors. All that time saved is time to live a richer life. A good example of a car centric city that is very attractive is Seattle from ten years ago. The city had a strong sense of community because it was composed of intimate neighborhoods mostly with single family zoning rather than mid rise boxy apartment blocks everywhere, ample green space for its population, and roads with little traffic. It is because Seattle was so attractive that people and businesses flocked to it. Now those aspects are going away as density, anti car policies, and other issues are making the overall quality of life worse.

bombcar 5y ago
Even famously “mass transit unfriendly” cities can be fit for a car-free lifestyle if you work at it. But I suspect a huge part of it is visiting Europe or Asia as a tourist and enjoying being without a car. But they didn’t actually live there.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  > I suspect a huge part of it is visiting Europe or Asia as a tourist and enjoying being without a car. Agreed. As a tourist you also tend to visit the historic center of capital cities, which have by far the best public transport and fanciest architecture. Plus you're on vacation and having fun. When you live there and walk to your commuter train a gray november morning, it's a very different experience.
  - NumberWangMan 5y ago
    > When you live there and walk to your commuter train a gray november morning, it's a very different experience. Still preferable, to me at least! Getting in to work and shucking off your mist-covered coat and making a nice cup of tea made it just fine.

r_klancer 5y ago

It's interesting to note that Hacker News really loves Strong Towns. I chatted with Chuck Marohn (founder and face of Strong Towns) once at an event a couple years ago, and they're quite aware that they get a lot of traffic from HN.

mobilewatch7 5y ago
The strong town movement and its affiliated planning companies ruined my community. A lot of the mixed use re zoning is a pretext for opening up rural areas for heavy industry.
- oblio 5y ago
  That's just ridiculous, though. Does anyone sane zone heavy industry together with residential?

mc32 5y ago

I like some suburbs. However, not far from downtown San Jose, within the city limits, there is some interesting tract housing developments: they have soundwall like structures surrounding these neighborhoods that are built like a maze. Once in it can be hard to find your way out without GPS to one of the few entrances/exits. So that’s in a city, not even the maligned suburbs!

VHRanger 5y ago
Are those single family zoned? Because if so they're also responsible for housing prices being insane in the area
- mc32 5y ago
  Pretty sure they are. Look at a map of San Jose and check out the areas around Quimby or Tully Roads in east(ern) San Jose.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I just see standard developments - anything more specific? Heh found a trailer park.
    - mc32 5y ago
      To me a place like hidden glen north is odd. It's a tract surrounded by soundwalls and has few exits from the development, whereas in normal developments you have intersections with all streets. This kind of development follows the thoroughfare model where smaller streets feed larger streets which feed boulevards/expressways which feed freeways. They are built in such a way the actual city neighborhood is disconnected from its surroundings and makes transit by anything other than car difficult -buses don't go in, and biking is fraught -all relatively close to the downtown area. Suburbs are better designed than that.
      - bombcar 5y ago

closeparen 5y ago

There are some very nice older suburbs, with much higher densities than would be thought of as suburban today, that provision parking for every home. The venerable alley is basically an accommodation for cars, but a much more humane one. The sweet spot seems to be about 1920-1940.

brailsafe 5y ago
Yep, you're absolutely right. The parent's youtube suggestion has a video on this too, called streetcar suburbs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
bradstewart 5y ago
The Lake Vista neighborhood [0] in New Orleans nailed this as well, but sort of flipped the alley concept. Still has street access and parking for every home, but the "front" of most houses faces an alley-width, pedestrian walkway. It was always one of my favorite areas to hang out as a kid, never really understood why until now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeshore/Lake_Vista,_New_Orleans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeshore/Lake_Vista,_New_Orle...

xibalba 5y ago

There is not faster to way to discredit oneself than to offer a pat, single variable explanation. As others point out, Americans like and want to transport themselves by car. Let's accept this, work with it, and build around it instead of lusting after a minority defined Utopia.

addicted 5y ago
I am not sure if we can tell whether Americans like cars or not considering they don’t really have a choice.
BrianHenryIE 5y ago
Wrong. I tried to find the tweet, but it was succinctly put ~"it's said people in Los Angeles love their cars, but people in LA have no choice but to own a car, it's not love, it is necessity". In every city that has made a concerted effort to accommodate all modes of transport, driving as a percentage has gone down. "build it and they will come" is better suited to transport than it ever was to SaaS. It is easy to conclude that people don't "want" to drive.
- AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
  Look, the fact is, even in places with excellent public transport, the car is still the best way to travel short of helicopter. How do we know this? Look at the rich and powerful of New York, they are driven to their destinations, they don't take the subway, and if they do, it's notably unusual.
- dymk 5y ago
  “It’s said that” is not the same as “polls show” and then linking to a source LA is also cherry picked to be one of the worst places for cars. It’s legendary for its traffic. Writing in from the PNW where I wouldn’t trade my car, and the freedom it gives me and my friends and my dogs to travel, for anything.
  - forgotmyoldname 5y ago

sytelus 5y ago

I don’t think that’s what article says. Article just keeps blathering that new neighborhoods are not “beautiful” or “nice” without describing any objective measures for what author really meant. I do understand however what it is trying to say. My opinion is that housing development is vastly commoditized and builders wants tried and trusted designs at lowest prices and fastest speed. There is not much room for creativity and experimentation. I went to see houses build by Toll Brothers which are premium expensive builders and even their designs were regular with few bells and whistles only to show off. Lower end market basically just follows the template. This is extremely disappointing because house construction is something that lasts for so long.