Of course, the flip side of infill clusters at 4x to 8x suburban sprawl density is is reversion of 3/4 to 7/8 of land from housing to truck gardening and other resource extraction (including local energy resources).
And its not necessarily the case that any of this has to actually be planned. Assume a series of waves of fuel price shocks, and fierce political fights for establishment of electric rail transport. The locations around the stations on the corridors that get finished, or near enough, will be in very high demand, and first floor / basement "garden townhouses with second/third floor "patio" townhouses stacked on top are a fairly obvious way of selling the vicinity to the transport stop to more households.
Outside the walkable zone is a "mini-suburb" of detached homes with living victory gardens ... and eventually you get to the suburban terrain that lost the fight and ended up too far from the corridor when the tipping to infill clusters hit and the market price for residence "to far away" drops below its replacement cost.
When suburban housing unsupported by transit has a market value less than its replacement cost, it becomes slum ... as when housing anywhere drops below its replacement cost ... to be converted into multiple unit housing until it falls apart and becomes a vacant. However, built as they have been in the past few decades in the US, they won't spend nearly as long in the "slumlord rent extraction" phase, since they simply aren't as sturdy as the old brownstone townhouses. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
....so the nearer the station, the more you pay. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Actually, another important policy tool for making it legal in more places would be to make the Federal capital gains tax property sale roll-over provisions apply on a value per-acre basis. This would shift the current tax bias in favour of greenfield development into a bias in favour of infill development. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Since zoning power are part of the residual powers that vest at the state level, a state could provide for a blanket easement within a certain radius of a dedicated transport corridor stop that receives state funding for multi-use development with a height envelope no lower than three stories.
There are also owner compacts in some suburbs that provide restrictions on owners over and above the legal restrictions. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
nd finally, a series of laws that helps explain the lack of mass transit in edge cities and why this will never change. Note that "FAR" stands for "Floor-to-Area Ratio," the ratio of the total floorspace of a building to the area of the land the building is on. It's basically a measure of population density. The level of density at which automobile congestion starts becoming noticeable in edge city: 0.25 FAR. The level of density at which it is necessary to construct parking garages instead of parking lots because you have run out of land: 0.4 FAR. The level of density at which traffic jams become a major political issue in edge city: 1.0 FAR. The level of density beyond which few edge cities ever get: 1.5 FAR. The level of density at which light rail transit starts making economic sense: 2.0 FAR. The level of density of a typical old downtown: 5.0 FAR. The density-gap corollary to the laws of density: Edge cities always develop to the point where they become dense enough to make people crazy with the traffic, but rarely, if ever, do they get dense enough to support the rail alternative to automobile traffic.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
With the exceptions of places that manage to elect more far-sighted politicians, the definition of "economic sense" is the one we don't like but have to live with. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
This also comes with a long-term decline in the market value of auto-only suburban housing. When that declines to the point that auto-only suburban housing is valued below replacement cost, and transport-supplemented suburban housing is valued above replacement cost, that is a setting that is similar to the suburban transformation itself, when the market value of the urban density brownstone townhouses dropped below replacement cost and the processes of slum development and white flight to the suburbs began.
When developer profits hinge upon provision of a transport line, and when mixed used multiple lot occupancy is the most cost-effective way to leverage that access to a transport line, then zoning regulations in large numbers of suburban areas in the US will change. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
There's still a lot of truck grdening in the first ring of suburbs (which is almost as dense as central Paris), but I'm not sure this is really required. The logistics (food and other good supply) of a dense big city with lots of local smallish supermarkets and retailers are actually the most efficient you can have - remember that the hardest bit is always the wholesale-to-retail bit; with local supermarkets that can be supplied by medium sized trucks and that people can walk to, you solve the biggest issue. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
The less energy intensive system for providing the produce that is sold in city groceries that preceded the current oil-fed agricultural system involved a range of cities, towns, and hamlets ... and one thing that you found in the hamlets that had efficient transport access to cities and towns was a ring of truck gardening.
Europe also lives beyond its biocapacity ... indeed, in the rough estimates of the Global Footprint Network, the US, Germany and Japan each live beyond our biocapacity by similar acreages. France roughly breaks even on its biocapacity, but unless nations like the US and France with above-average biocapacity per capita are able to live within our means, that is not a technological regime that is a candidate for global sustainability. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
However, the point of my previous comment is that my comment before that was not saying that big cities would necessarily be unsustainable.
However, that food does have to come from somewhere, and we can not just wave a magic wand and exempt agriculture from the need to be sustainable, so that we can just feed the cities with massive factory farms employing some minute share of the population.
The most energy efficient source of fresh produce for the cities on a whole life cycle analysis will be truck gardens with very little trucking involved, shipped in from surrounding ex-suburbs along the same transport corridors that provide the energy efficient passenger transport. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
The point that you don't need high-rises for density still stands, of course.
Paris Region GDP: $731bn.
I'm a bit surprised by how low London in. Only about $669bn. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
