Definition of the word cosmpolitan, from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
1 : having wide international sophistication : worldly Greater cultural diversity has led to a more cosmopolitan attitude among the town's younger generations. 2 : composed of persons, constituents, or elements from all or many parts of the world a city with a cosmopolitan population.
Will sends us a link to this Vice News article, "Walking Places Is Part of the Culture Wars Now." From the article:
According to a recent Pew Research Center poll that studied the issue of whether people prefer to live in places where "schools, stores, and restaurants are within walking distance" versus where they are "several miles away," the biggest divide in opinion is not young versus old, urban versus rural, or education level. It is political preference.
Just 22 percent of Conservatives want to live in walkable neighborhoods, while 77 percent prefer driving everywhere. A slightly higher percentage of Republicans or people who lean Republican as a whole, 26 percent, want walkable neighborhoods. Meanwhile, 44 percent of moderate Democrats and 57 percent of liberals want walkable neighborhoods, resulting in a 50/50 split among Democrats as a whole.
...But one of the most striking findings is that the gap in walkable neighborhood preference according to extreme political views is even wider than the gap between urban and rural respondents, where 50 percent of urban residents polled want walkable neighborhoods and 25 percent of rural ones do. In other words, whether or not you actually live in an urban or rural area is less of a predictor of whether you want walkable neighborhoods than the political beliefs one holds regardless of where they live.
I am not surprised, although seemingly "small town values" would include a recognition of the importance of access, proximity, and walkability.
I remember when I worked as a Main Street program manager in the Brookland neighborhood in DC, while the leader of the program promoted the tagline "Brookland, small town, in town" making the point that the community was village-like, but still in the city, another member made the point that to her, "small town" meant parochial.
I used to joke when I was doing telecom lobbying that our purpose was to prevent as issue from going 'partisan". Allocating 24 GHz spectrum shouldn't be an issue for the D or R point of view.
ReplyDeleteIf you accept this poll, this cities are fucked. Once something becomes part of the forever culture/politics war nothing gets done.
I'd say the larger element to be drawn from this is
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/26/more-americans-now-say-they-prefer-a-community-with-big-houses-even-if-local-amenities-are-farther-away/ft_2021-08-26_bighouses_02/
That urban living has taken a big hit, and we've got to find ways to make it more attractive.
Public transportation and more storage.
As I keep on saying, COVID-19 is like the flu. The problem is people have no idea how deadly the flu is without vaccines. Now that we have a vaccine it can fade away and go endemic. But there is very long (200+) history of respiratory viruses coming out of China and COVID. Once every 5 years it is bad. Once every 20 years it is like this. Once every 100 years you get a real deadly one.
How are cities going be after the next virus shows up in 3 years? Imagine the panic.
also this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/01/covid-toxic-divides-could-shape-europe-years-study
Obviously, I expected to be back and forth in DC for a couple years after the move, and that didn't happen.
ReplyDeleteSLC is not a real city the way that DC is or NYC etc., in terms of the walkable urban design, a deep transit system, etc.
I understand that transit is screwed and I don't know how it will end up. I have some ideas, but as long as you don't have to work in an office, in an agglomeration, a goodly part of the market for transit is dissipated.
Obviously, I believe in agglomeration economics, but as the Wall Street firms figured out in the 1980s, not all the jobs (accounting other back office etc.) didn't need to be based in the Financial District. First they moved 'em to LIC and Jersey City. Now I don't know where.
DC's office strength is based on the federal government (obviously, sorry) so what will happen, depends.
But like hygiene theater, maybe people won't want to use transit at all, even though the research doesn't show a big spread link.
You said once very succinctly that transit's killer app is "faster, cheaper" (if you include cost of parking, car maintenance, opportunity cost, etc., which a lot of people don't).
But if you don't have to go to the office, the "base load" of transit disappears. And without that base load, the marginal trips which are easil
I hope that we can keep investing in cities to make them better, the killer app being "quality of life" not needing to be automobile dependent, etc.
And then that this will shake itself out.
SLC is pretty much classic sprawl. The city has urban design and potential walkability, but it isn't very dense, residential land was developed pretty wastefully + because Brigham Young platted 10 acre lots, it can be sprawling even so (although like how in DC they created intervening blocks to better use land, instead of interior alleys, a lot of the core was developed similarly).
WRT becoming "partisan" and the Guardian article both. Yes. But at the same time, I think that the demographic trends favor city and suburban choice, and more of those places are addressable car wise (face it, do you really want to spend an hour in a car?).
But it could be a pipe dream.
It's almost impossible for transit to work well at the metropolitan scale in the US, because we don't integrate transportation and land use in ways to optimize non car dependent mobility.
London, Hamburg (I presume Paris and similar cities) are amazing where transit is integrated, although even they have some areas where transit service is inadequate.
Only the biggest US cities can create such a system. But the financial and political support isn't there at the state and regional levels, let alone the national scale.
The difference between Hamburg, which does cross state boundaries, and NYC, DC, Chicago, etc. is considerable.
Yahoo News: Highways become a culture war battlefield.
ReplyDeletehttps://news.yahoo.com/highways-become-a-culture-war-battlefield-163756498.html
The 15 minute city is another battle site in the culture wars.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/opinion/city-walkability-culture-wars-conspiracy-theories.html