Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Exactly. Outside of rush hour, buses through Calgary suburbs only have a handful of passengers. Would doubling the frequency boost those numbers significantly? I doubt it. We can mandate higher density in new communities to make transit more efficient, but what do you do about existing low-density communities? You can’t just bulldoze them all down and rebuild. Home delivery of groceries, etc would move the needle a lot more. Though at the cost of even more automation and job losses in food and retail.
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One of the more radical ideas put forth by the author of
Strong Towns is letting certain far reaching neighbourhoods die off. The premise being that what we’ve built in basically all of North America is unsustainable, and inflexible, as it was built to a finished state that’s hard to iterate on, so our energies should be focused on salvaging and reinforcing neighbourhoods with flexibility of lifestyles, housing, and transportation.
I can’t remember the exact criteria he outlined for salvageable neighbourhoods, but one of the key elements for sustainability was a mix of public & private dollars, and offloading neighbourhood decisions to the neighbourhoods. Basically having the city front “mini-bets” to the neighbourhoods and allowing them on an individual basis to add value to things like community squares or bike infrastructure without heavy red tape from the city.
The neighbourhoods that prove their value over time would attract new residents and private investment, while pulling in from the neighbourhoods that don’t go an upward trajectory.
But of course the very idea of letting a neighbourhood die also leads to a litany of issues, first and foremost the folks who mortgaged their lives to be there, with no options to leave, effectively creating suburban ghettos.