Why do Canadians prefer huge houses squeezed together in the middle of nowhere?

[regexcellent]

Are you serious?

He's actually kind of right. Sprawl is only a big problem if you do it wrong.

There's no need to artificially jack up the population density. In places like Calgary or Edmonton, where it's a whole ****load of flat land, you can pretty much build for miles and miles as long as you build enough freeway to support it. Phoenix has below-grade interstate highways that allow it to support a large amount of traffic. For its population, Denver has huge sprawl but not major traffic issues. It's geographically very similar to Calgary in terms of terrain features. On the other hand, there's Los Angeles which didn't build enough highways and infrastructure to support its population and is now totally ****ed.

[The Mad Monk]

What about the house next to it? Does a Cdn own it?

No idea. Why?

[MRT144]

Canada has a ****-ton of land. Why is urban sprawl a problem?

Low density, auto dependent travel is not really a long term good idea.

[MRT144]

He's actually kind of right. Sprawl is only a big problem if you do it wrong.

There's no need to artificially jack up the population density. In places like Calgary or Edmonton, where it's a whole ****load of flat land, you can pretty much build for miles and miles as long as you build enough freeway to support it. Phoenix has below-grade interstate highways that allow it to support a large amount of traffic. For its population, Denver has huge sprawl but not major traffic issues. It's geographically very similar to Calgary in terms of terrain features. On the other hand, there's Los Angeles which didn't build enough highways and infrastructure to support its population and is now totally ****ed.

"If you build enough freeway to support it" which is like a snake eating its own tail.

[snoopy369]

The problem with building for low density in 2012 is that the exact low-density areas you build now are in 2052 going to be high density... Denver is a good example of this, the outer areas are fine but some areas are really starting to show their problems already, and it takes forever to get to some places. You don't have to have NYC density, but having houses reasonably close to each other rather than having a random neighborhood a mile and a half down from the next one is a good thing.

[regexcellent]

It can actually be done. Cities that built up around the automobile in the southwest succeeded, largely due to a plethora of undeveloped and very very flat land. Alberta has plenty of the latter, and I suspect prices are cheap enough that the former is not an issue.

Asher: Is Calgary's traffic bad?

There is probably an upper limit to the size of a city before you need things like rapid transit. I am personally not convinced of the efficacy of land use techniques and "smart growth" at improving traffic congestion, commute times, and quality of life. In particular I am highly skeptical of light rail, which appears to be the result of a major lobbying effort by Siemens and subsidization by the federal government.

Of all the various transit options though, streetcars are by far the dumbest because they are buses that are stuck on rails and 19th century technology.

xpost

edit (response to snoopy):

As long as the roads are designed so that you can fill in the missing neighborhoods, I don't think that's a problem. Proximity to the city usually drives up land values as it shortens commute times. Even if you have large lot sizes, as prices go up, that encourages people to sell their lots and subdivide them. If you have farm-type lots, with relatively small houses on 5-20 acres or so, that's especially true. It's less true for 1-acre lots with large five or six bedroom houses.

What I find most noxious about smart growth, though is the "walkability" aspect. Personally, I like the fact that my neighborhood isn't walkable; I'm pretty confided the low through traffic means less crime. That is something that is a problem in Rochester. Up here I generally don't have to deal with traffic, though; regional population decline means we have crumbling infrastructure that is nonetheless more than sufficient for our needs.

Also I think segments of the left have always hated suburbs, and smart growth is just the new name for trying to **** them over and force people to conform to the city dweller lifestyle of liberal urbanites. The excuses have changed over the years; right now the big one is the environment.

[MRT144]

LA had a ton of flat land until it all filled up. And the problem of "building enough freeways" is that it just encourages further and more marginal building to save that 5 minutes and provide the psychological benefit of safety and freedom to buyers.

[snoopy369]

Urban sprawl means people have to drive twenty minutes to the nearest shopping center. Why is that a good thing for _anyone_? I'm all for privacy/etc., but there's no reason to live that far away from other people unless you're a libertarian and would rather live near nobody at all.

[regexcellent]

Building more freeways doesn't induce demand any more than building rapid transit does, except to the extent that it is way more convenient to drive on a highway than it is to take a train.

Traffic engineers have models for how much highway acreage you need to build in order to get traffic across town. LA doesn't have enough. It would have been possible for LA to have enough.

[Dinner]

I noticed it in Asher's house thread, and now I'm seeing it here:

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2012/09/27/li-katz-house.jpg[/img]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2012/09/26/mb-katz-shindleman-house-arizona.html

What's up with that?

I imagine the developer originally wanted to build a whole subdivision but then the bottom fell out of the market so he was left with just his original model homes or something with nothing else getting built.

[snoopy369]

Suburbs aren't necessarily examples of urban sprawl. As long as the suburb is big enough it has the same general benefits, and a mass transit link from the suburb to the city provides sufficient link to the jobs source. Chicago is a great example of this; we have a lot of very strong suburbs with well developed city centers and commercial areas, and pretty much however much space you need, all linked to the city center via a fairly quick rail system.

[regexcellent]

Urban sprawl means people have to drive twenty minutes to the nearest shopping center. Why is that a good thing for _anyone_? I'm all for privacy/etc., but there's no reason to live that far away from other people unless you're a libertarian and would rather live near nobody at all.

That's not really true. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_roads

At the intersections of collector and distributor roads, and along arterials, you have shopping centers. In my area of the Rochester suburbs, we have a bunch of neighborhoods on your typical fractal-looking roads, connected in a grid pattern by arterials. I can drive for about 3 minutes to get to the nearest shopping center. NY 252, which runs across Henrietta (the town I'm in), is basically a giant strip mall with every kind of store imaginable. On the highway exits we have shopping malls.

[Ben Kenobi]

Low density, auto dependent travel is not really a long term good idea.

Canada is the definition of low density. Plus, it's Alberta. It's not like it has space constraints due to geography.

[Wezil]

No idea. Why?

Maybe the Cdn isn't the only one who likes living packed in side by side...?

[loinburger]

Maybe Canadians cluster together for defense - if a gang of rabid Quebecois is attacking then it's better if you have several armed neighbors in earshot.