What is American City Planning?
American city planning is some of the most unique in the world. The story of our city planning started in Levittown, NY. It was planned in a way to give it's residents large yards and lots of extra room.
The development of Levittown's Suburbs ended up being so popular it would spread across the county, including places such as Los Angeles.
How is this a problem?
Residential Zoning
It shows residential zoning in the Town of Hempstead, NY (TOH). Levittown is located in TOH today, so it follow the TOH Zoning Ordinance. The Zoning Ordinance only allows new construction in residential districts to use 25% of their lot. In this case, it's just 24.73% of the lot is used for the house.
Commercial Zoning
Commercial zones in the Town of Hempstead require 1 parking space for every 300SqFt of store space. 1 Parking space is about 180SqFt. The building above uses the minimum amount of required parking. The parking lot never fills up, and only 34.7% of the land purchased is used for the store
Why is too much space bad?
Spreading out our cities reduces the amount of tax that can be collected to maintain infrastructure. Here's an example from Town of Hempstead, NY.
Red Zone Tax: $0.52 per square foot
Yellow Zone Tax: $0.87 per square foot
The yellow zone is just 1 unit in a larger building. The size of the yellow store is about the same size as the red store, but pays far less in taxes. It also generates more tax income for the city, as it uses less space. The cost in utilities for the entire building that the yellow zone is in (3 store spaces) is the same for the 1 store in the red zone.
How do we solve this
the best way to solve this problem is via updating zoning ordinance, but that won't work unless we change how we build infrastructure.
Bike Lanes
Bike lanes create a safe way for people to get around short distances. It encourages buildings to be build more densely.
Support of Virginia Tech Students:
Percentage of students who said 4/5 or above supported bike lanes in Blacksburg, VA
Road Diet
A road diet is when you decrease the amount of lanes in a road that has unneeded capacity.
Support of Virginia Tech Students:
Percentage of students who said 4/5 or above supported road diets on Main Street North and Prices Forks Road in Blacksburg, VA
Made by Alec Berenshteyn
Email me at: [email protected]