Second, what is a 'strong road'? Or a 'street road'? The intended definition says something about ideally moving cars as quickly as possible, and making roads and streets economically viable in terms of 'value capture'. I guess that's all well and good if you're a capitalist and primarily care about those things.
If, on the other hand, you care about making places where people actually want to live, and transport systems that allow human flourishing, you're not likely to gain an understanding of how that can be done by paying attention to only, or primarily, economics and what 'the market wants'.
Generally speaking, the last thing you should do if you want to fix roads and towns, America's in particular, but a lot of The West, is to make sure you never listen to anything a trained urban planner says. They literally helped destroy our world, and now they're trying to incrementalism away some of their crimes, but only if they control the 'value capture'.
I like stroads, there is a place for them. I like streets, and I like roads and highways too, I drive everywhere because my workplace is 10 miles from my house.
While a walkable neighborhood sounds great, I still gotta drive to work - and even with hub and spoke transit, it's a 15 min car ride or and hour and a half by transit. (I'm lucky, a transit line down a freeway could leave me as little as 45 min from the office)
We keep talking about these neighborhoods without considering that. They're for other people to live in.
I'd live closer to work, but then I'd spend an extra N dollars a month, and no residential neighborhood will have an office for 300 in it, and I'll still want a car.
I think we need dense place for those who like living there, and suburban ones for those who don't - plus stuff in between. I'm in the "those who don't" category. I hope to own a single family home on a quiet street someday.
> I think we need dense place for those who like living there, and suburban ones for those who don't - plus stuff in between.
We agree. And this is a key point made by Not Just Bikes / StrongTowns - when you have exclusively Stroad infrastructure and Single Family Homes, even those who prefer to drive and live in those homes are worse off.
You need single family homes. You need bike lanes. You need multi-family homes. You need mid-rises. You need mixed-development. You need transit. We need all kinds.
Nothing is stopping anyone from building denser infrastructure, I'm in favor of lifting the often absurd parking requirements seen. But I don't wanna see a world where density is required, because I don't want to live in a dense area.
>Nothing is stopping anyone from building denser infrastructure, I'm in favor of lifting the often absurd parking requirements seen.
That's the thing though - single-family zoning, parking minimums and highway-like standards for streets are very much stopping density from being built. What little density is attempted to be built gets killed by NIMBYism.
Japan's zoning system does a decent job of mediating between the two. Here's[0] a good summary of their system. For your case, category 1 would fit perfectly. When category 1 is 20% of the land, that's fine. When it's 80%, like it is in most of the USA and Canada, that's why we're seeing backlash from the likes of StrongTowns/NJB.
First, it sounds horrible to say.
Second, what is a 'strong road'? Or a 'street road'? The intended definition says something about ideally moving cars as quickly as possible, and making roads and streets economically viable in terms of 'value capture'. I guess that's all well and good if you're a capitalist and primarily care about those things.
If, on the other hand, you care about making places where people actually want to live, and transport systems that allow human flourishing, you're not likely to gain an understanding of how that can be done by paying attention to only, or primarily, economics and what 'the market wants'.
Generally speaking, the last thing you should do if you want to fix roads and towns, America's in particular, but a lot of The West, is to make sure you never listen to anything a trained urban planner says. They literally helped destroy our world, and now they're trying to incrementalism away some of their crimes, but only if they control the 'value capture'.