my RO aneurysm: Uppity middle-class society destroyers don't want sidewalks!

The BBQ Pit
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[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
You’re a city planner? What do you think of the “New Urbanism”?

Specifically, is there any way to apply its principles to retrofit existing communities to make them more high-density, mixed-use, walkable, transit-friendly, etc.? Or is it only good for new PUD’s?
[/QUOTE]

I could go on for hours about it, bith good and bad. I think it’s a better way to build a community, but the ideals of New Urbanism – mixed use, mixed income communities, based on a reinterpretation of pre-WWII planning models – hasn’t been realized . Most NU communities are high-end developments where even middle-income families would have a hard time affording a home, and for various reasons, they’re quite scarce in parts of the country where sprawl is the worst, and they can do the most good - the Rust Belt, with growing suburbs that have some of the lowest densities in the country (thanks to cheap real estate, and NIMBY residents that aren’t too far removed from the days when they were crowded in cramped, working-class urban neighborhoods).

Retrofitting: easier to apply TND models of redevelopment in existing commercial districts, where much of the land is occupied by underused parking lots, parcel sizes are large, and commercial buildings are designed with a short functional lifespan, than residential areas.

As for that plan, it includes parks. If a community approached an engineer, and asked them to design a bridge, but not include guardrails, the engineer is going to say “no way!” - it would be gross negligence, even if it’s what the client wanted. It’s no different in planning. The problem is that few municipal leaders are going to ignore an engineer’s road or bridge designs, while those same leaders could take the best written comp plan and ignore it to their heart’s content.

62

[QUOTE=Merijeek]
Sidewalks are a rarity in Mississippi. I think that’s why they’re so goddamned fat.

-Joe
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There’s been a fair bit of discussion in Australia of late about the ways in which poor town planning has had an impact on obesity rates. One of the factors was the ways in which newer suburbs have been constructed so that people need to be more dependent on their cars at the expense of walking or cycling places.

So fear of pavements (and parks) can actually be seen as a part of a wider, and more serious public health issue.

It’s a sad world when people are so afraid that they would deny themselves important public amenities.

63

When our small, behind a wall but not gated townhouse development was built, sidewalks were included but only to the limits of the property. The county showed up about a year ago and extended our sidewalk down to and across the front of an apartment complex. The sidewalk has proven to be a big boon to the apartment dwellers inasmuch as it is now much more convenient for them to walk their dogs. The fact that said dogs defecate copiously and at random on townhouse property (and on the actual sidewalk) is NOT the dog owner’s concern; I’ve never seen a single one of them clean up after their dogs. Most of the residents in our little development regard the extended sidewalk as a curse; we would have been better off without it.