veen, this is your kinda thing. I'm not sure which tag you guys use for these urban development/city planning links.
My father emailed me this, and it's worth writing down here the response I sent: bill bryson frames this well around a linguistics discussion in "made in america," and it really drives home the point. department stores used to be main street stalwarts and now they lie heavy in the corners of shopping malls. and inevitably the best jobs moved back into or never left the city centers (service economy evolved), so now we have the modern commute and people wanting to return to the city, but they can't because we sacrificed all urban engineering and forethought to build suburbs. it's also too expensive, which is a related problem. austin desperately needs to overhaul its highway system but it simply can't. i'm sure the city council is praying nightly for el trains and hell i think i even saw a true subway proposal the other month. deus ex machina.yes, it's a bizarre world in which the title of that article is true, though florence and atlanta grew over time in different ways. the mid-century exodus from the american city was detrimental and obliterated our culture and led to incredibly massive socioeconomic problems -- yet it was individually rational. standards of living skyrocketed because of those subdivisions and two-car driveways and post-war industry. a chicken in every pot but also a microwave, tv, music player, fridge, at least one car, and a yard. for next to nothing. the rest, interchanges the size of italian cities, strip centers, a lot of jobs, etc, just followed the money
I recall seeing this on /r/urbanplanning some time ago! The only problem I have with it is that the kind of neighbourhoods that Florence consists of just aren't built anymore like that. I've been there, the streets are microscopic, often less than 10ft wide. I'm all for pedestrian-friendly (or pedestrian-only) zones, but to hold any American city to the standard of medieval Europe seems a bit unfair to me. I think it's a better comparison when you look at two neighbourhoods built at the same time, because then you can really see the difference in design and not the difference in era. So I've picked two neighbourhoods real quick here, one in Atlanta and one in Amsterdam, both built in the sixties / seventies:
It isn't fair, because cities evolve to fit the types of transportation available. But putting fairness aside, which one is better? I've been to Florence and I've been to Atlanta... And once you've come to the conclusion that, well, maybe you'd really prefer to live/work/vacation in a city "designed" like Florence rather than one engineered like Atlanta, I think it's time to figure out how to make the latter more like the former. Desuburbanization is a bit of a trend. I don't know how practical. But I can hope. As far as looking at old/new world city planning, your image works way better.
Florence might be the better urban form. The question is not just which one is better, but also for whom it is better. For a social twenty something urban dweller it probably is, but for the average household family? I doubt it. While I detest the single-zone suburban form because of the (negative) effects it has on the city and its society, its demand is undeniable. Most families will want their private, spacious property. Getting rid of suburbia will not rid us of that demand. Rather, I think there's a lot to be gained by scaling down suburbia to reasonable property sizes. Reduce the footprint of properties and focus more on walkable medium density mixed-use developments for families. Expecting the general population to somehow go from suburbia to something remotely like Florence is unreasonable, I think. Even in the lively and dense urban core that I live in there's hardly any families living here. Different people have different needs, and it is those needs that are used to to change the urban form.
I don't think the demand for suburbia is still so strong, but then I've never had a family. Personally I'd rather my children grew up in a center of culture, learning their way around a city, becoming independent, than in sheltered, dull suburbia. Neighborhood park substitutes for front yard, hopefully crime isn't a factor. American suburbia exploded postwar, and the needs of the populace now are different than they were then -- but we're locked in, because of shortterm profit-maximizing infrastructure decisions. I think if we could get a fresh start, maybe the preference for space over community might fade. Mixed-use hybridized communities are a more practical step -- you might check out that thing I just posted about an Austin neighborhood that got featured on NPR's Cities Project. It's half and half.
Just two days ago, I took the ramp from North I-5 onto North I-705 in Tacoma. I'd never taken the ramp before and it offered a sweeping view of the entire underside of the interchange. I was struck by just how much empty space there was! And nearly all of it completely useless for any purpose other than to sit empty beneath the ribbons of concrete and asphalt 100 feet above.
Do you live in Tacoma or were you just passing through? I'm looking into moving there later this year.