I often hear that mixed-use zoning (i.e. Euro-style walkable urban planning) is illegal in the US. Zoning laws will always prioritize auto-centric and oil-friendly infrastructure. But which laws specifically prohibit human scale development and how can we get them repealed? What laws can we enact in their place?

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[–] 1 point 7 months ago*

So that's an urban density test, with added cartwheel fun.

When selecting a place to live last time I moved, I set up a balanced scorecard (as one does). One of the highly-weighted criteria was "how many places can I sit down and have a beer within a 20-minute walk of my house?" The answer for the place I moved to was 34. Other places I considered scored even higher than that, but lost out on other criteria. For the previous place I'd lived: 3, though if you expanded to 30 minutes, it was 8. Still not bad if you have a bicycle. English (and many other European) cities are far more concentrated than those in the US. In the US, the closest you'd get are San Francisco, New York, Boston and a few other eastern cities.

The ironic thing is that I quit drinking beer a couple years ago. Luckily, other services like cafes, restaurants and coffee houses follow a similar pattern.

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