Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy
Most of these threads tend to devolve into attacking assumptions about how people want to live (high density vs low density, parking vs no parking, cars for every trip vs walking&#x2F;transit most trips)<p>I&#x27;ll list out what I view as the two dominant views towards the development of a metropolitan region (I loosely define metropolitan region as a city and all the places around that city which can plausibly commute to a job inside the city. Or in other words, all land housing the people you may see every day). Let me know if you think I&#x27;ve got the two sides nailed down correctly.<p>The urban mindset to developing a metropolitan region:<p>* Cars are a luxury (and often a nuisance) and should not be required for essential, everyday travel.<p>* The region expands both outwards (by adding high speed transit to surrounding neighborhoods), and upwards (replacing existing development with higher density development)<p>* Key transportation infrastructure: public transit (bus, tram, train, subway), in addition to feet and bikes<p>* (some amount of) Density is a key pattern: Having enough people per square mile to bring workers and customers, sustaining local businesses, as well as maintainable a taxable base large enough to pay for transit and other infrastructure<p>* Multi use zoning is king: local storefronts and restaurants are considered beneficial for quality of life. Sufficiently dense streets thrive off the mixture of people and business.<p>* &quot;porous&quot; neighborhoods (e.g. grid street layout) are a pattern: porous neighborhoods are more efficient on a mile-per-mile basis, helping to enable low-speed travel (read: foot &amp; bike). This increases the amount of business-capable space within a neighborhood, which is beneficial to the local economy and quality of life of residents<p>* Suburban mindset seen as harmful: suburban mindset seeks to expand outwards. This adds people who consume local infrastructure (e.g. driving on local roads, creating noise and pollution) but who might not live in city jurisdiction (i.e. can&#x27;t be taxes in a straightforward manner), and aren&#x27;t interested in contributing to the well-being of the city. Suburban mindset seeks to limit legal expansion of density, mandate parking minimums, cut urban spending for necessary infrastructure like transit, reduce quality of life by widening roads, building highways, and increasing speed limits, and continue an outward suburban expansion that will just accentuate existing problems with traffic and with car noises<p>The suburban mindset to developing a metropolitan region:<p>* Cars are <i>the</i> key mode of travel for the vast majority of destinations, and as such are a necessity<p>* The region expands outwards by purchasing and developing surrounding farmland, and connecting this land to the city with high speed roads. This keeps land absurdly cheap.<p>* Key transportation infrastructure: roads (with sufficiently high speeds and capacity), parking lots<p>* Density is a key antipattern: More people per square mile brings congestion and noise, consume available parking, but offer little communal benefits as residents generally don&#x27;t need to work or shop locally (no need to sustain local businesses)<p>* Single use zoning is king: businesses want to locate on large roads with lots of traffic, people want to locate on small subdivisions with little traffic. Zoning enforces this to maintain everybody&#x27;s quality of life.<p>* &quot;porous&quot; neighborhoods are an antipattern: stores are not on local streets, so any porous neighborhoods mostly bring in through-traffic (which gives noise and pollution but no economic benefit). Thus a tiered freeway&#x2F;highway&#x2F;boulevard -&gt; neighborhood -&gt; subdivision pattern to residential space, in place of a city grid<p>* Mandatory parking minimums useful, as parking is a valuable public good<p>* Urban mindset seen as harmful: urban mindset seeks to build higher density housing in centralized places that already have bad traffic during rush hour, which will just make it worse. Urban mindset seeks to make more use of urban space with less parking, which offers a worse quality of life to suburbanites who wish to drive into the city. Urban mindset seeks to limit legal restrictions on density, which threatens to see multifamilies or apartment buildings in quiet neighborhoods that currently have low traffic and low noise (but won&#x27;t when population density goes up). Urban mindset looks to spend on public transit, which is not useful at all to all the many people who live in the suburbs (but suburbanites may face state taxes or consumption taxes to fund transit, as well as increases in traffic due to construction)