@allenstenhaus Understanding your own limitations, my broader point is that non-automobile-centric development patterns are required for a non-automobile-dependent lifestyle.

Transportation and sprawl are expensive in ways that are really hard to comprehend. Every additional mile or metre there is to travel everything has to cross, with costs in energy, vehicle capital and maintenance, and infrastructure. There are some activities which are inherently land-use dependent (e.g., agriculture, forestry, etc.) Much of everyday and urban life ... not so much. Even for small values of urbanities.

There's a large set of interests which have produced and sustained sprawl largely out of their own pecuniary interests. Countering that, locally and everywhere, at the political level, is key. And land use is tied to a huge set of other issues: general cost of living, inequality, housing access, global warming/climate change, amongst them. That's not going to happen overnight, but it can happen. Amsterdam and the Netherlands are an example of a place that made that choice in the 1970s and, yes, a half-century later, are reaping the rewards. (Those arrived in less than 50 years, but it's been a gradual process.)

Informational sources that help grow that awareness help. Some of those:

• StrongTowns (YT: https://yewtu.be/channel/UCTeYrzSQ3YCp3RovGH4y8Ew, blog: https://www.strongtowns.org/, podcast: https://www.strongtowns.org/podcast),

• Not Just Bikes (YT: https://yewtu.be/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A, blog: <>

• Shane Phillips (UCLA Lewis Center). His book The Affordable City is excellent https://islandpress.org/books/affordable-city. Also a Twitter feed: https://nitter.net/ShaneDPhillips

On the Fediverse, @Alon writes about transit and related issues.

@TheGibson

#StrongTowns #NotJustBikes #Transit #UrbanPlanning #CarFree #ShanePhillips #UCLALewisCenter

The death of single-family housing in Los Angeles! At this rate it'll be just 1,560 years before we have no more detached homes in the city!

-- Shane Phillips @ birbsite

https://nitter.kavin.rocks/shanedphillips/status/1466140422669963267

#housing #SingleFamilyHousing #ShanePhillips #LosAngeles #LA

@pluralistic On housing, Shane Phillips is doing some novel and powerful work at UCLA's Lewis Centre.

I ran across his proposal for "public ownership rentals" in The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/why-its-better-to-rent-than-to-own/618254/

That's actually one leg of a three-legged stool of Supply, Security, and Subsidy, which addressess the three main areas of housing market failure. His book is The Affordable City, a very affordable $5 download:
https://islandpress.org/books/affordable-city

Great Twitter feed as well:
https://twitter.com/ShaneDPhillips/

https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/

#Housing #HousingReform #LewisCenter #ShanePhillips #TheAffordableCity

Housing: The Three S’s: Supply, Stability, and Subsidy

[T]he solution to America’s housing crisis, both politically and technically, comes down to three coequal priorities that I call the Three S’s: Supply, Stability, and Subsidy....

[A]ll indispensable ingredients in the affordable city recipe book... One without the others will not bring true affordability and stability to a community—certainly not to all who need and deserve it. Nor can we simply enact the strongest possible intervention for one goal without considering its impacts on the others. Often, the most aggressive solution to one problem will undermine the best response to another.

https://www.planetizen.com/features/110948-affordable-city-offers-solutions-us-housing-affordability-crisis

Book: https://islandpress.org/books/affordable-city

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26854819

#housing #homelessness #property #PublicOwnership #ShanePhillips #TheAffordableCity #books #BookReivews #BigProblems