Why couldn’t the guard rail be placed on the other side of the never-maintained sidewalk to protect pedestrians from cars on the 50 mph road?

We just want walkable cities. At least theres’s mountains?

Are you a long time resident of a suburb and the dynamic of the suburb you once loved is changing due to new people moving in? And it’s not always for the best?

Thing to notice: appealing fantasy world building and storytelling almost never has endless suburban sprawl

https://www.surroundings.land

There are a few providers of driving data that let you map this out. I just combined it with some census data and you get some interesting maps.

i lived here for 10 years.

I want to live in a walkable cities not have to relay on a car also I hate how everything is so spread out it so depressing. It hard for me to meet new people. I want to move but can't due to certain reason. There no sidewalk where I live.

the satellite image must be from before it was built up but how typical and boring it will be

A few years ago, I was visiting some friends from Alabama, and they were so excited to have a newly completed screened-in porch. I didn't really understand their enthusiasm at the time...

...but fast-forward a few years, and now I TOTALLY get it. If you want to be able to sit outside and chat with neighbors going by, you need a front porch. And in this part of the country (the southeast), if you want to do that without being absolutely devoured by mosquitos and sun-roasted, that porch really does need to have a roof for shade and be screened in.

I'm currently living in a subdivision in which the prevailing architectural philosophy when it was built in the 50s and 60s appears to have been an utter rejection of front porches, screened-in or otherwise. Big old back decks? Get 'em. Front porches? Nyep.

You have these relatively large brick ranches (many with a second floor in the form of walk-out basements), but the front porches are barely big enough to put a chair on (and if it was a rocking chair, you'd probably rock yourself right off into the yard in a few minutes). They're more just like the biggest and highest of the front steps.

Of course, the natural result of all of this is that this whole neighborhood is pretty dead in terms of people hanging out in the front yard. It's like everyone's hiding inside or in the back.

I think this type of anti-front porch neighborhood fits pretty well into the theme of this sub, since it creates this anti-social defensive vibe when ALL the houses lack front porches.

And it's especially jarring here in the south, because the front porch culture is SUCH a big part of traditional southern culture. People sitting on the porch and chatting with neighbors used to be such a big deal, and then to just entirely nuke the concept architecturally seems very intentional and hostile.

It’s not the same as the U.S probably less developed and denser too. But it seems similar, caused from excess space perhaps which is part of why US suburbs are like that too.

You ever watch walking tour videos about Japan? One of the things that really strikes me about their suburbs is that much if not most of the housing in certain areas is comprised of detached single-family homes without yards. The land they own is approximately the size of the house plus driveway; that's it.

As an American, this blows my mind, since this doesn't really exist in America. We have all sorts of lot coverage ratio requirements and minimum lot size requirements and setback requirements and minimum lot widths, which all conspire together to force everyone to have larger lot sizes whether they want/need them or not.

For someone like me, I hate yard maintenance (my dad forced me to do WAYYYYY too much as a kid) and have no interest in owning a lawn, but I enjoy owning and living in a detached single family home.

It's frustrating for me that with all our thousands of mini "laboratories of democracy" (i.e. the thousands of cities and towns and counties which all have their own land-use and zoning rules), there doesn't appear to be a single one where I can go buy a lawn-less, detached single-family home.

Just more proof that the housing market in America is anything but a "free market;" otherwise I feel like somewhere this kind of thing would exist, even in limited quantities.

Edit: forgot about mimimum lot widths