The Lively & Liveable Neighbourhoods that are Illegal in Most of North America

Just gonna also say the current US zoning laws are batty when it comes to sustainability. You shouldn’t segment commercial and residential zones and suburbia in general is a massive disaster. You want sustainable cities, you need high dense walkable cities with commercial spaces embedded. Sure move the giant factories somewhere else, but we shouldn’t oppose small scale sustainable businesses being embedded in residential zones. ▶ this video

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Annnnnd why is it that cities aren't building denser housing? (it's because it's illegal. Because of parking minimums, density maximums, and level of service rules. Which exist because of cars. Which you need to go 10 miles because everything is so far apart. Because of those rules. Because of cars.) ▶ this video

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AirBnB sux but zoning has arguably been a net negative on most societies in many ways ▶ this video [link] for me what I noticed lately is that in California it's impossible to have a quiet modern apartment because nearly 100% of modern apartment buildings are only allowed to be built on busy noisy high traffic streets. If you want a quiet street you're forced to buy/rent a house

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Many of those codes have been designed to protect incombents from competition and various other forms of encouraging one form of living (car dependent) over others. Plenty of people in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, etc live happy lives in much much smaller living areas. This makes them more affordable. But building codes in many places in the USA disallow making places that small. Other examples of questionable codes are codes that require parking spaces, codes that require front yards, codes that require backyards, etc.... [link] ▶ this video

in “San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash” · View on HN

> regulations or policies that push development away from suburbs and into cities. I misspoke. By "getting rid of suburbia", I mean getting rid of American-style, car-centric suburban development. You'll absolutely want to have development in the suburbs. And to do that, you don't need a lot of changes in regulations. Surely, you'll have to fight with NIMBYs, but these changes do not require massive regulations: - Upzoning all R1 zones, and abolish Euclidian Zone. Just by getting rid of exclusive single-family zones that are so prevalent in the US, and start allowing multi-family townhouses, mixed-use areas, you could recover basically every city that is not part of coastal metro area: ▶ this video - Transit-oriented development. City Beautiful has a great video about it: [link]

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To back up what you said: The Lively & Liveable Neighbourhoods that are Illegal in Most of North America (Not Just Bikes channel) ▶ this video

in “Vancouver Zoning Map” · View on HN

Not Just Bikes talks about zoning in the US vs Dutch cities in this video: ▶ this video . My impression was that the US has more restrictive regulations on what can be built.

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Urban Design and police has become a kafkaesque mess. It has become near impossible to summon the political will to actually build something livable. Developments generally lean towards familiar and easy, instead of building anything interesting. Tragically, in many parts of the world, one of 3 types of plans fall in the easy+familiar domain. You have the grossly inefficient suburbs of the US, lifeless concrete planned cities of communist fame and wild-best of haphazard urban densification as seen in Indian cities like Bangalore. What's even worse, is that the average consumer is woefully under-equipped to recognize problems with this system until it is too late. It isn't until their kids start growing up that they realize how dead the suburb feels, and how the car dependence relegates one of the parents to a soccer mom nanny. Why it takes 2 hours to get to anywhere in Bangalore or why the incredibly dense concrete jungle feels spiritually dead despite how hard you try to fix it. Years of brainwashing towards the American dream and a tall condo with a view, really do not help consumers make informed decisions either. Not like contractors do user-studies anyways, but still. Funny thing is, these problems are already solved in some capacity. City has been studied to death for millennia. It is no wonder that people in modern 1st world countries, pay good money to spend 1 week in European cities that have been "preserved" as they were. I am not even advocating for some replica of

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