Monday, May 20, 2019

More People

My neighborhood could use some more people. Perhaps not a million more people, but some more people. More people means more demand for neighborhood serving local shops which means more local shops exist which means there are more things within a 10 minute walk that I find nice and useful.

This is true of a lot of urban neighborhoods, as housing stocks haven't changed much (we haven't actually built skyscrapers everywhere) but household sizes have. Same amount of sq. feet of residential housing, fewer people per sq. foot.

The problem is that over time there were also more cars per person, and more people expecting parking to be free or cheap and always available. The car people value this parking more than pretty much everything and the rest of us do not.

It is a problem.