To sprawl or not to sprawl

An interesting discussion/debate. This round was begun by a Kevin Drum comment on a Matt Yglesias post, but delving into his comments section shows a lot of experience with different areas making walkability work.

I particularly liked the following comment about Irvine from a city planner. It’s a good point about the limits of luring with amenities like walking trails and how much of walkability comes about because driving is difficult.

I speak as a former citizen planner for Irvine, and one the people who insisted that Irvine build the existing network of bicycle and walking trails. Even with cul-de-sacs, we insisted that the cul-de-sacs be connected so people could walk between the cu-de-sacs where they could not drive. In many places, walking or bicycling to retail is a shorter path than driving. And most residents do live within a 15 minute walk of general retail (neighborhood commercial), higher density apartments buildings are generally located immediately adajcent to retail commercial and parks, to further encourage walking and bicycling.

While the trail network in Irvine is a Class I ammenity, it is used primarily for recreation. While some people do walk or bicycle to retail, most do not – simply because they have the option of driving, even when driving requires a longer path. After Irvine, I lived in San Francisco, where people walked a lot more. It’s not that San Francisco is walkable (Irvine is probably more walkable and certainly safer to walk and bike in), but San Francisco is NON-DRIVEABLE. Like most older cities, San Francisco was designed before the car became the dominant form of transportation, and driving anywhere in San Francisco is usually a giant hastle. The same is true for most other older walkable cities designed before the automobile era.

While there are many good examples of modern walkable communities, my experience is that people with opt for driving more often than not, if you give them the choice of walking or driving. If you want to build a modern community that both walkable and where people actually do walk (other than for recreation), then you need to make it non-drivable, by limiting parking, imposing parking fees, congestion fees (or congestion itself). But that is truly a politcal non-starter in most modern places, since discouraging driving in most places places a burden on the existing residents who need to drive, and, quite naturally, most folks will not vote for politicians who promise to increase the burdens they face in their daily lives.