Andres Duany Lecture. Suburban Sprawl.
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as a comprehensive, still-accurate and often funny account of how zoning and policy force suburban sprawl.
What it is
A recording of Andres Duany's 1991 'San Antonio By Design' seminar on suburban sprawl. He lays out how codes, zoning and policy produce sprawl and makes the case for new urbanism.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2017 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec trgn · 2017-02 · on “Let’s not demonize driving, just stop subsidizing it”
I basically just parroted Nathan Lewis, who has a great blog series on the topic: [LINK] . It's virtually the same message from Andres Duany. His talk from 30 years ago is still so eerily precise and comprehensive: [this video] . When I feel presumptuous, I email this to people (deaf ears, mostly). Leon Krier bangs the same drum, and adds a more sophisticated, architectural perspective: [LINK] .
Strong rec tmnvix · 2024-05 · on “Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city”
> I don’t know what the answer is but Parking Reform, Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes are my north stars on this stuff. Do you have any others? I think you might like this planning talk given in the 90s. One of my favourite videos on youtube and quite hilarious at times: [this video]
Recommends closeparen · 2018-10 · on “California Considers Placing a Mileage Tax on Drivers (2017)”
Suburban sprawl is exactly as required by law, from the mutually exclusive land uses right down to the paint on the strip-mall parking lots. Market forces would love to build walkable mixed-use districts. A proud tradition of highly effective grassroots activism makes sure that they don't. You may find this talk [0], or the speaker's book Suburban Nation, enlightening. It's not at all the case that market forces need to be adjusted here. It's public policy which is broken. [0] [this video]
Cites closeparen · 2022-02 · on “SF is latest city to consider tackling its housing crisis by taxing empty homes”
Suburban sprawl is the law. These subdivisions off the side of the highway full of large lot single family homes aren’t even what developers think people want. They are prescribed by the building and planning codes of nearly every jurisdiction. Developers do sometimes build new places in the urban style but every element of that is a hard-fought battle against the government for variances, zoning changes, special permits, etc. The New Urbanists have an interesting approach to this: “open source” planning codes that prescribe urbanism rather than sprawl, which they try to convince municipalities to adopt as their default. They don’t seem to have much uptake though. The postwar sprawl style is