r/fuckcars • u/Dreadsin • 1d ago
Rant Shouldn’t the fact that cities are more expensive be enough to justify that walkability is desirable?
Think of the most expensive and desirable housing in America, and the first places that come to mind are places like manhattan and San Francisco, especially in the more walkable areas
I’ve noticed even within my city (Boston) that if something is close to a square with transit, the price skyrockets. Comparatively, go not even 1 mile away, and the price drops like a rock. I see some places at 800k near transit and a comparable place not even going for half of that a little outside of transit
The least expensive places are generally very car dependent. Somewhere like Houston is quite affordable per square foot compared to Boston. I was even looking in Southern California and found some decent stuff if you give up any semblance of walkability
What that tells me is that the demand for these places is significantly lower than supply. People WANT walkability
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u/ErnstBadian 1d ago
Yes. This isn’t really about persuasion. As much as it is about who has power and is allowed to use it
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u/Mtfdurian cars are weapons 1d ago
One can also make an argument to why it should become the other way around eventually: having affordable housing in most of the city when transit is around the corner for all these people. Meanwhile if people really want to have a lot of space for which a lot of infrastructure is needed, then they better pay the premium for infrastructure maintenance.
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u/Dreadsin 1d ago
I totally agree. It’s so weird to me that a 600 sq ft condo in Boston is more expensive than a literal mansion in Texas
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u/chugtron 1d ago
I mean you’re paying for that literal mansion by being out in the outer burbs (if you’re lucky) or in the sticks, and, personally, having grown up in the latter of those two, I’d rather be in Boston no matter the cost.
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u/JJamericana 1d ago
Indeed. The HCOL locations have a lot of amenities that more affordable places lack. Personally for me, I’m willing to shell out the cash if I can have an all-around more enriching existence. I fundamentally do not like suburbs, so guess I’m stuck in the city 😅
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u/enter360 1d ago
I bring this up at all my city council meetings. The high demand areas and neighborhoods are the ones with the most walkability. I present it as a money problem. They are choosing to develop substandard neighborhoods that return below potential ROI while also carrying a hearty maintenance costs with them. I’ve won over many people by pointing out that if we are all in this for the money thru are not going for the highest money possible because that’s walkability.
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u/funky_galileo 1d ago
Have you seen Not Just Bikes about how suburbs are massively subsidized by high density areas because the high density areas generate so much more taxable activity? I don't have any references on hand but I believe he pointed out several cities specifically that are massively in debt because they only build suburbs.
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u/ZoidbergMaybee 1d ago
Infrastructure in general. It blows my mind when some moron is telling me I’m wrong for renting in the city when for $300 less each month I could rent out in the middle of fucking nowhere and have a bigger place. Like yeah no shit, because it’s in the middle of nowhere. So what you save in rent you have to spend on car payments and fuel and insurance just to get around. Not to mention hours of your life every day wasted in traffic. I’ll take the city rent thanks
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u/Franky_DD 1d ago
I agree. Generally speaking it's a supply and demand thing, i.e. there's not a lot of walkable communities with amenities in walking distance but a lot of ppl want it. But I wouldn't use city centres like Manhattan or downtown SF as the examples. These areas are desirable for more than their walkability. They are desirable for being close to work, sports, entertainment, shopping, best bars and restaurants, and generally just being the centre of the metropolitan area. Whereas I think less centered walkable communities or even newly developed walkable areas are desirable simply for their walkability and things that go with that (safer and calmer streets, a variety of business and services nearby, etc). You'll never convince the average person that we should build more places like Manhattan, but you'll be able to show them successful new urbanist communities and convince them that's the way to go
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u/milkfiend 1d ago
Aren't all those other things you say make them desirable a result of density, which goes hand in hand with walkable areas?
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u/Franky_DD 1d ago
No, it's more dynamic than that. And density doesn't automatically equal walkable.
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u/cucster 1d ago
In a way, yes. However, I think focusing solely on the cost of rent/real estate is a problem that scares many people away. People don't realize that they are often paying the same or more as these walkable areas when you factor in the cost of keeping/maintaining 1+ cars (particularly if you account for risk of needing an emergency repair). If the conversation shifted to talk about the cost of rent/transportation jointly as a fraction of one's income instead of just talking about rent, people's attitudes may change.
There are other great arguments for walkability as well, particularly safety.
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u/TheSupaBloopa 1d ago
Tons of American cities, especially sunbelt cities, have the worst of both worlds: car dependent apartment complexes with high rents. They’re not in a walkable area, there’s no viable transit options, and you’d be lucky if there was some limited bike infrastructure nearby. So you don’t get to trade a big house and a car for car-free walkability, you just have to have a car and high rent at the same time. A lot of infill development of larger apartment complexes get built directly on stroads or next to interstate off-ramps since there isn’t as much NMBY pushback in a place like that.
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u/rlskdnp 🚲 > 🚗 1d ago
Yup. If people hated walkability as much as carbrains claim, then it should be dirt cheap, regardless of how much supply of it there are. There's only 1 chernobyl zone in the world, yet nobody is willing to live in that, let alone pay to live there, because of how undesirable it is despite being the only place in the world like that.
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u/Purify5 1d ago
Brightline built their whole business model off this.
Get some cheap/subsidized city land. Build a train station on it. Run a rail line at a loss but that is desirable for people to use. Watch the real-estate values of the land you bought around the station skyrocket.
The problem however is that it's difficult to run a profitable passenger train in America. So, eventually these real-estate prices are going to peak, investors are going to want out and the rail line will implode.
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u/Dreadsin 1d ago
That sounds like a place I used to live, assembly row in Somerville ma. It is a mall on the ground floor + condos + they added a train stop there. I loved living there, it was exactly what I wanted
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u/Puzzled_Pop_6845 1d ago
Not for big capital because If you don't waste your money in gas then they can't squeeze richness from you
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u/marshall2389 1d ago
I am no expert on this stuff but I was recently exposed to the idea of taxes being proportional to land value, not what’s built on that land. It seems to me that our current way of taxing heavily taxed those that live in dense, built-up areas while barely taxing those that live in less built-up areas. This is the opposite to how it should be. It costs municipalities much more to service less dense places on a per-head basis.
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u/Pretend_Safety 22h ago
You’re trying to link an economic argument to what has become a culture war POV. There is no coherent argument against walkability. It’s all feels and fear fueled by petrodollar provocation and incineration.
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u/Iwaku_Real HSR🏷️$1e+308 per mile 1d ago
Boston has many highly dense developments, including lots of missing middle housing. But because they, along with walkable areas in general, are so scarce in most of the US, they have astronomically high value resulting from extreme demand. If more cities and towns built denser housing, supply would drastically increase leading to a drop in prices. (I'd hope Trump delivers on his plans so everything can be even cheaper /j)
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u/Its0nlyRocketScience 21h ago
Some people will never understand how the world works. I've been told that cities being expensive proves that they're worse places to live.
This is the exact opposite of economics, where obviously cities are more desirable than everywhere else because it's so easy to charge higher prices and still get tenants.
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u/Cultural_Narwhal_299 1d ago
I don't think the other side cares what the studies say, they love their way of life and anyone who opposes that can ...
Its a symptom of a broader issue. It's not about cars.
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u/Tokyo-MontanaExpress 1d ago
Houston looks more affordable on paper, but once you factor in the cost of needing a car every time you need to do any errand and engaging in the high risk behavior of driving at dangerous speeds on a daily basis (35+ MPH) which will probably require a hospital visit, the savings dwindle significantly.
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u/MidorriMeltdown 23h ago
I'm pretty sure that the inner Sydney $2mill+ town houses with no parking space say a lot about what people really want.
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u/Sammys_Zombie 22h ago
Desirable is relative. San Francisco and Manhattan are about top of the list of the least desirable places to live for me. Lived in a walkable area of Atlanta too and didn’t care for it one bit. Too many people around, all of the time, for it to be enjoyable.
Rural mountain areas away from everyone can get pretty expensive too.
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u/Dreadsin 22h ago
Pretty much every city is fairly expensive, only a small subsection of rural areas are very expensive
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u/pulsatingcrocs 21h ago
Cities are expensive because that's where the highest paying jobs are, and people are willing to pay a premium to live close to their work. That being said, many of the most desirable neighborhoods are also walkable and human scale.
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u/ybetaepsilon 18h ago
This is what i say when my suburbanite boomer family scoffs at the city
"Who would pay a million dollars for a shoebox in the sky?"
Clearly a lot of people
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u/spoop-dogg 16h ago
not necessarily. you have to know that walking is the most space efficient form of transit, which requires you to view walking as a valid and desirable form of transit, which conflicts with one of the core beliefs of motor-normative thinking. Carbrain is the root of many urbanism issues in the west.
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u/Dont_touch_my_spunk 3h ago
The fact that increasing walkable cities and public infrastructure has been proven without a doubt to make a city wealthier should be enough to justify it.
Add on the fact that suburbia is being subsidized by the city to pay for its infrastructure and it should be clear as day that a city should be moving towards reducing car dependency. It benefits everyone, including those who are dependent on their vehicle.
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u/Hoonsoot 1d ago
I'd make one important adjustment to this: SOME people want walkability.
That "some" is in the minority. According to HUD and the US census 52% of people live in places they identify as being a suburb (link below). Some of those suburban folks may want walkability but clearly not enough to act on it in terms of where they chose to live.
I am all for walkability, but we shouldn't be deluded and think that everyone agrees with us. An obvious counter to the argument that people want walkability is "ok, well if that is the case then why do suburbs and rural areas still exist?" If everybody wanted walkability then they would almost all live in cities. That is not what we see though.
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u/Dreadsin 1d ago
Yeah but my point is that the supply and the demand are mismatched. More people want walkability than there is available. I’m not saying everyone wants it
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u/Hoonsoot 21h ago
I am not so sure. If they really wanted it they would vote and act accordingly. We have what we do mostly because it is what people want.
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u/Dreadsin 18h ago
We don’t live in a democracy as much as you think we do. Also many people are skeptical of the idea cause they’ll literally haven’t experienced it before so they don’t think it can be done
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u/TheSupaBloopa 1d ago
This is a fantasy to pretend that consumer choice reveals everyone’s preferences. Zoning legally prevents denser, walkable mixed use neighborhoods from existing at all in most places. All that’s left is older prewar neighborhoods, streetcar suburbs and such, and those are wildly expensive due to the demand and their scarcity. Many cities are over 70% zoned for single family housing and that clearly isn’t due to consumer preferences.
You can’t say people prefer suburban living when in most of America the choice is between renting a ridiculously expensive two bedroom apartment or owning a four bedroom single family home an hour from downtown. If there’s zero comparable option in the urban neighborhoods, if middle housing is missing, how is that even a choice?
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u/Hoonsoot 21h ago
Who voted for the people that implemented the zoning rules? On some level the majority of the public wants the current situation. If they didn't they would have voted differently and/or made different choices.
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u/masq_yimby 1d ago
Yes but cities are dominated by NIMBY Democrats and progressive types who both have a different set of interests for blocking housing — the average NIMBY democrat is concerned about their property values while the progressive democrat is concerned about markets being vindicated so they block up zoning and by right development proposals.
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u/TheSupaBloopa 1d ago
I’m not at all convinced that progressive NIMBYs exist in significant numbers and are at these city council meetings alongside boomer liberals and shouting “no” with them. It’s almost exclusively centrists who sometimes make empty gestures towards progressive ideas in order to argue for preserving their property values and the status quo they benefit from.
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u/masq_yimby 6h ago
I agree that the moderates/centrists also block housing. But a lot of Progressives also block housing — specifically in SF and NYC.
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u/RobertMcCheese 1d ago
The median housing price is $1.4mil in San Francisco.
The median housing price is also $1.4mil in San Jose.
Palo Alto is $3.6mil.
I don't think your thesis holds up to even mild scrutiny.
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u/jiggajawn Bollard gang 1d ago
But if you look at the cost per sqft, you might find that people are willing to pay more for smaller spaces in walkable areas.
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u/Brilliant-Hunt-6892 1d ago
And your analysis does?
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u/RobertMcCheese 1d ago
I didn't bring up San Francisco. OP did. So I just went with it.
Comparing it to the rest of the Bay Area doesn't support their point in the least.
And yes, my analysis supports quite a lot that the point hasn't even been close to having been made.
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u/Brilliant-Hunt-6892 1d ago
Illuminating the existence of affluent suburbs and Silicon Valley enclaves does not negate the OPs thesis. But thank you
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u/barfbat 1d ago
median housing price on the upper east side is $1.7M. soho, $2M. tribeca, $4.5M.
median housing price in sheepshead bay bk is $500k. rockaway qns, $589k. throgs neck bx, $600k.
we can all play these games
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u/No_cash69420 17h ago
That's insane, I bought a 2600 sq ft house on 6.8 acres, bordering a national park for 200k in southern Ohio. I can't believe people would pay millions to live on top of each other. Insanity
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u/barfbat 17h ago
well, those are houses and condos. more outrageous to me is $7-8k rent for a 3br, which is how i was priced out of the neighborhood i grew up in :/ but i think just about all housing here is overpriced.
i’m sure your house is lovely with beautiful surroundings! and that price is amazing to me, considering if you look on zillow, twice the amount you paid gets you a beater flophouse “fixer upper” in some distant corner of queens. but i could not live out in your neck of the woods bc i don’t drive and don’t even know how to drive lol. so i pay “to live on top of other people” but also to have constant access to public transit, among many, many other benefits. i love my home despite the shitty pricing
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u/No_cash69420 17h ago
That's another way to look at it, my mortgage, property tax and insurance is only 1320 a month. I couldnt even fathom spending 5k or more to rent something. The system is definitely broken. Fortunately my job is only a 30 minute drive so it's not horrible for living in the woods.
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u/barfbat 17h ago
now imagine that as a walk!
also god lmao you pay only a little more than my half of the rent for my RENT STABILIZED 900sq ft apartment in a far off corner of nyc. the system is broken you are so right
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u/No_cash69420 17h ago
I wouldnt walk that, I enjoy the comforts of heat and air conditioning too much lol. But also I have hundreds of acres of forest land that I walk almost daily with my dogs so walking to and from work would be more of a chore since I walk regularly regardless. And that's so crazy that it costs that much just to live in a city. Your rent would pay off my house in 10 years probably.
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u/barfbat 17h ago
well, i say imagine it as a walk because if that was me out there it’d be my only choice. i tried to learn how to ride a bike and all that happened was that i flipped clean over the handlebars TWICE. and it doesn’t sound like you have public transit out there
and my rent probably would pay off your mortgage much faster! i want to own someday but, well… you see the housing prices i’m contending with lol
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u/No_cash69420 17h ago
That's rough, you definitely should try and learn to ride a bike again. Much more efficient than walking and it's a damn fun time. That's wild the huge difference in house pricing just even 2 states away. Granted I'm in the woods but even Columbus or Cleveland is significantly more affordable. By thousands it sounds like
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u/barfbat 16h ago
legitimately i do not know where i would store a bike in my apartment lol. but it’s fine, i live a short walk away from one train station and an even shorter walk from another, plus access to multiple buses (although i’ve only ever had cause to take one of them). i’ve never really had a problem getting to where i want or need to go so long as i’m in nyc!
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u/Dreadsin 1d ago
Im sure if you averaged it out across all cities, walkable areas would (on average) come out to more
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u/cadnights 1d ago
Yes and it's also proof there's not enough of it. The supply and demand curve would suggest these places are only expensive because the demand is high and supply is low. Build more walkable cities!