The Suburban Experiment

[Massive Bell]

This series examines how to and how not to build cities.

The car-centric suburban growth is simply unsustainable

"The Netherlands may have the best city designs in the world"

"The American system of growth and development is fundamentally broken and it has guranteed the decline of American cities"

Freedom on Wheels

"For centuries cities were designed so that everyone had what they needed within walking distance"

Public spaces were designed like rooms

"These are the kind of places Americans go to on vacation and return home to their despressingly soul-crushingly dystopian car dependent suburbs"

"Car-centric suburbia is not just sucking the soul out of its inhabitants - it's making them poorer as well"

The Growth Ponzi Scheme

"American cities do not need to sprawl and before WW2 they weren't"

"American pattern of development builds places that do not financially support themselves"

"American style suburbia is dependent on growth to stay financially solvent - the moment these cities stop growing because of a financial crisis, a radical change in the job market or any one of a number of other factors - everything starts to fall apart"

"Car-centric sprawl is horrendeously expensive"

"Debt, lots and lots and lots of debt"

The suburban experiment became so central to the American Psychology

 

[Massive Bell]

Why is the Ponzi scheme ongoing?

"American cities prior to WW2 weren't designed for cars. The cities ended up bulldozed for cars"

Post WW2 sprawl saw a new way to build, unlike the prior growth which were built upon accumulated wealth - the new way used government bonds, to borrow from future revenue.

"This creates an Illusion of Wealth - these cities and suburbs look wealthy because of their new infrastructure, but in the long term, thy're financially insolvent"

The problem with the American mentality around car-dependent sprawl: everybody expects urban services with near-rural densities!

"America is financing its insolvent car-dependent sprawl by heavily indebting its citizens to fund that growth!"

You cannot tax a persons entire annual income!

The Stroad to hell is paved with good intentions

"US has the most dangerous roads in any developed country"

"A Stroad is a street that is designed like a road and in doing so it fails at being good at either one"

"Freedom on Wheels"

"Stroad is low revenue and high maintenance - a net negative for cities"

"Dutch adopted the concept Sustainable Traffic Safety - you will not find stroads in the Netherlands"

The Wrong Speed Limit: 85 Percentile Rule

Driving is subconscious!!!! (for some)

"Like most things wrong with American traffic engineering - it's a 1960s mentric designed for use on rural roads that was applied to everything!"

Traffic faces less conflict when everyone travels at the same speed.
"We can take this subconscious driving and use it to our advantage by designing streets and roads for the speed we want"

The problem is that streets are a destination and roads are the ways we get there.

"In fact, the very best streets are those with almost no motor vehicles at all"