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"River Turnpike or townhomes or apartments near it (all of which are served by overhead lines), but I am willing to acknowledge some portions of Annandale are relatively dense and provide ammenities to the point that they reflect urban life more than suburban life. Likewise, buses run on Little River Turnpike regularly."

local buses running EW on the pike run once an hour. Annandale is denser than some suburbs, but due to its still lowish density, its poor layout, the poor quality of its streets and sidewalks for walkers (and cyclists, but at 103 F that wasn't so relevant for most of us), its a very unpleasant place to accomplish daily errands without a car. Especially when 90% of the businesses are without power, sold out of key items, etc, so its effectively one tenth as dense as usual.

I am not clear what Jazzys point really was. That there are personal disadvantages for some to living in a hirise are well known. As there for living in a SFH, a TH, whatever. This blog does not as a general rule address (though some commentors do) the personal advantages of living in one type of house or another - do we get discussions of how to arrange furniture in a TH? The costs of lawn mowing? This is a policy blog. If, as SEEMED likely (based on who she cited) Jazzy wants to encourage rurual living as a policy, thats well and good. but its irrelevant to the focus of this blog, which is about how to shape metro areas, not the role of rural areas - and to the extent what we discuss here is relevant, urban growth tends to go hand in hand with rural preservation - the flip side of the urban smart growth movement is the rural preservation/urban growth boundary movement.

I am not advocating for a lifestyle for everyone. We all have different, personal needs (which is why discussing lifestyle questions is NOT appropriate on a blog). I am interested in POLICY, and in removing those policies which have led us to supply less urban walkable housing than the market demands, despite significant positive externalities to urban walkable - externalities that include lower GHG emissions, the culprit in the warming that will lead to more heat waves and power outages. And, in parts of the less developed world, to consequences far worse and far more deadly.

by AWalkerInTheCity on Jul 10, 2012 9:33 am • link • report