Exurbians, with SB 375, you can see the future, and its not in the suburbs or exurbs.

I live in Fairfax County outside of DC. A developer wanted to build 20,000 condos in an abanded rail yard about 3-4 miles from DC. It was disapproved. It would cause too much congestion. I don’t see anyone living on the streets so I suspect the 20,000 homes were built — on average 25-30 miles from DC.

Another developer wanted to build over 10,000 condos near Dulles Airport. The county only approved less than a thousand — to avoid congestion. So I guess there’s over 15,000 people comuting on average over 15 miles to get to work in the Dulles area.

County planning should allow high density homes near employment centers.

I work for a large company, by the way, and they try to allow folks to work from home, but most of the staff in the office can’t work that way because of the nature of their jobs. Telecommuting is a great way to solve congestion for certain people, but it is only a viable solution for a small minority of folks out there. There are no cities, states or countries that have solved the sprawl/congestion problem single-handedly by allowing folks to work from home. There are many cities/countries that have solved or reduced their sprawl problems by planning cities appropriately.

I live in southern NH. It finally looks like commuter rail will be extended 15 miles north form it’s current terminus in Lowell to go to Nashua NH in the next few years. However, that only does me good if I’m working in Boston.

Here’s a list of the cities and towns I’ve worked in, going backwards from today: Lexington MA, Londonderry NH, Danvers MA, Watertown MA, Andover MA, Boston MA, Boston MA, North Andover MA, Framingham MA, Tewksbury MA, Lowell MA, Merrimack NH, Woburn MA.

That list goes back to 1978. As you can see, very little of my career was in a place where mass transit was even an option. Like it or not, suburb-to-suburb planning has to be included in the mix.

Ludicrous houses on ½-1 acre lots that are surrounded by barren half dead grass punctuated by bad landscaping. There is absolutely no way those places are going to maintain property value, they are completely soulless. I can’t believe people are going into debt to live in such places. Local government and local home owners need to stop bending over backwards for developers, who just want to take the money and run. Unfortunately, it is a catch-22. If they make demands, the developer will just move over the next township and find a place were they can do whatever they want. Local governments are desperate to increase tax revenue by 1 percent so they are willing to sacrifice the long term character of their communities. The American way: sacrificing moderate long term prosperity for a quick buck.

Now I live in New England. New England town governments have plenty of power, they actually make businesses and developers meet their demands. Are the house prices cheap? No, but the community integrity and access to rail is a valuable asset. I think the “I own my own home” American dream needs to get its priorities straight and demand better standards.

Ok a few cities had trollies and most of those cities have replaced them with buses and some with electric buses. But that still does not obviate my argument that most European cities got big before the invention of the automobile and had no other choice than trains or horses and that was a very messy problem indeed. Since, most, not all, American cities became larger after the invention of the automobile. America is still very rural by European standards. Thus we had an alternative to trains which in the short term cost less to introduce than new rail lines everywhere. Hence, sprawl became and still is, at least in America, more cost effective than building up.

You obviously have never worked for a big corporation. They do not do the kind of planning necessary to move people around to optimize commute time. Why? It generally costs money to have a plan and to implement it by moving people from one store or branch to another. Also, since it , theoretically, it does not effect the bottom line corporations, generally, don’t care how much time their employees spend on the road.

The corporation I currently work for recently took a step backward and said telecommuting can only be done for very rare circumstances, even though for my job I could probably work from home 2 or 3 days a week without missing any meetings. I can sit at a desk in Instanbul and do my job as long as I have a computer and a decent internet connection. Force employers to allow people to work from home without penalty and there is instant gas savings. If everyone who worked in a big office building telecommuted one day a week. That’s a 20% reduction in the number of people commuting on the regular work schedule. That’s a big savings if you ask me.

Many small towns don’t have the tax revenue or legislative tools to control fast urbanization. So a comprehensive plan is needed by State and Federal agencies to help communities across the nation deal with fast expansion. As for the East coast love the train service especially around DC. Alternative forms of transportation like trains don’t get much funding compared to our highway system. Love to see more train service around big urban areas in the U.S. with suburbs that utilize this service.

TD,
Your history is a bit in error. LA had one of the largest networks of trolley lines in the US at the end of WWII. It was dismantled in the 50s and 60s because we all got cheap gas, big cars, and cheap land. Large cities all over this country had infrastructure like Boston and New York, they just dismantled it.

Your solution of manipulating the entire human resources models of all of the companies in the US is kind of simplistic. I’m sure that companies are relocating anyone they can, just as good business practices since the employees will leave otherwise due to gas costs. But simply saying, “optimize Human Resources practices and allow telecommuting” isn’t going to be more than a drop in the bucket. We need a bigger plan, a comprehensive plan, which doesn’t allow people to run away from it. (And besides gas prices will keep people from going further out. That is what got us here in the first place.) If we just let market forces do their thing, I fear that the folks that suffer will be the suburbs, not the urban areas, since as gas goes up everyone will want to move back towards town.

Anyways looking at the posts everyone has some truths in thier arguments. One magic plan either say my CAFE or the California Plan can not curve all behaviors or choices. One option I feel that many need to look at is mixed zoning of business and residental components all in one unit. Will be interesting to see the outcomes of this plan.