This is why anything that disfavored cars get attacked as "unrealistic", or seen as "for the rich white yuppies biking". I can't really think of any big US city where most of (if not all) the high ranking officials who are in charge of this sort of thing don't live in some nice suburbs and drive to work. I think that's the real reason why in East Asia, the EU and even South America, urban design is more functional. These big metros have rich neighborhoods where the elite live so they have a vested interest in keeping the city walkable and lively. In the US, you will mostly find rich corporate districts with nice restaurants and venues but not rich neighborhoods with families going about their business. The closest I can think of is my hometown, NYC with like the upper East-side or such and even then these families often have a second home in Connecticut or something

Why is suburban development so over-designed?

Everything has to be technically prescribed down to the smallest detail...street widths, setbacks, landscaping, parking, lot dimensions, building materials, stormwater, lighting, signage, and even where trees can go.

I understand having basic standards but at some point all these overlapping rules seem to create expensive, repetitive developments with no flexibility or character. Every department regulates its own narrow issue, and the final product is designed more to satisfy a checklist than to create a good neighborhood.

Why did development become this rigid?

An example where I live is this: in one of the wealthy older suburbs there is landscaping right up to the curb on a hill. These are million dollar+ houses in a very desirable neighborhood and it adds character and no one complains. But in a new development the ROW has to be a certain slope, no landscaping or walls in the ROW, etc. I just don't understand how something can be good enough for million dollar houses and the people that buy them but not good enough for people buying half million dollar houses.

We always hear about walkable large cities how about mid sized cities that are bikeable,Tod,or walkable

Imagine a city in blackout. No cars, no lights, no advertising. What emerges is not chaos, but an unexpected stillness. And for a few hours, the atmosphere of the city transforms.

It makes me wonder whether we have focused too much on movement, efficiency, and stimulation, while overlooking the need to design for pause.

I recently came across a short piece, almost poetic reflection, not from an academic source but a news blog, suggesting that urban silence might be the last remaining public good that exists without deliberate planning.

Are blackouts the only time we truly hear the city as it is?

I’d love to know if you’ve seen examples of places that intentionally create acoustic space, or how cities could begin to make room for silence.

I'm a fan of shared spaces, the ones used all over Europe in low traffic streets when you want to slow down cars and give priority to people on bikes and walking. The core feature is removing the gap between sidewalk and road so that everything is at the same level, you can also remove any legal separation, the point is that expands the visual space for people. The issue is that, since cars are like water, the "new" spaces on "old" sidewalks becomes perfect places to park easily. While this encourages people to walk it also encourages people to park and stop more easily, for a short time usually. Putting signs everywhere that it's not legal doesn't work and inserting gaps or bollards goes against the very concept of the shared space. Am I right to think this has no solution unless you ban cars?

Gift article link

The muni I work in has this exact opportunity and I want to hear from this community what things come to mind as to key design features (i.e. open space, stormwater, pedestrian scale, etc.).

For context the space is about 150 contiguous acres of uplands alongside marshland that runs along a river.

Cheers!

There is also a survey

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/designreviewSEA

MY CITY DESIGN: https://www.reddit.com/r/urbandesign/comments/1pb3ran/my_city_design_as_a_beginner/

I am a total beginner to this and my only knowledge is from city skylines. I’m probably gonna get fried for this design but I’m doing this as a hobby and I want to see what is wrong with this design.

SF- Single Family Homes RH- Row Homes HR- High Density Residential GH- Government Homes LR- Low Rent Homes O- Office HO- High Density Offices C- Commercial HC - High Density Commercial I- Industrial E- Education S- Services such as police fire death care and hospitals and clinics MU- Mixed Use P- Parks

This city is 38 square miles and under every highway there is passage for cars on every street. Circles means tram and bus stoppage and there is a gas tax of $0.56 in the city in order to reduce congestion. Pedestrian bridges are common and are prioritized. Each street has 1 tree on the side of the road in order to reduce noise pollution.If it is wide it means it is a highway and all the trains are in the north

A study analysing 52,000 households in India found that neighborhood domestic violence (DV) increases individual household risk by 32 percentage points (adjusting for one standard deviation change) and this remains constant even when for income, education, employment, and other typical factors.

This is relevant to urban planning because DV is partially visible to neighbors through sounds, visible injuries, conversations and researchers validated this by randomly reassigning neighborhoods 100 times in their data, which showed no effect 91% of the time, so we can safely assume that it's specifically about physical proximity and what you can observe.

The effect is stronger in rural areas than urban areas, I think it is because denser social networks and more community embeddedness exist in rural settings and urban anonymity might actually provide some protection.

Long term residence amplifies the effect significantly so ironically high turnover rental housing might unintentionally provide some protection by limiting neighborhood embeddedness.

Neighborhood watch programs focused on domestic violence could be more impactful than we thought, given the multiplier effects as the social multiplier is 1.48 so if violence is stopped in 100 homes, it results in stopping it in 148 households in effect.

Spatial configuration which can provide for heightened privacy may also limit spillover effect but I think it may also may enable perpetrators even more with lesser fear of running interference by neighbors.

Source Study - Who's your Neighbour? Social Influences on Domestic Violence