Folding In
I've been thinking about this strategy for a while now. It uses our existing systems to get rid of the wasteful suburbs. In short, build new inner city housing, bring people in from the suburbs, and keep moving that outwards and inwards until there are no more suburbs. To accomplish this, a system of development and residence incentives and disincentives would be put into place.
Welcome back to Futurism, a gemlog about solarpunk, anarchism, and building out hope for the future. I invite you to write in your thoughts and suggestions -- my email and XMPP addresses are linked at the bottom (it's me@blakes.dev).
This article is somewhat of a follow-up to my last one, where I wrote about my thoughts on life in the city, particularly ways it needs to improve. Go read that one first for a little more context.
See Also: From the mountains to the city, part 1
I first made Futurism with the intent of starting it with a "report" on how this might pan out for Raleigh and Wake County in North Carolina. That report would have included a map and a bunch of numbers. It was too complex and not very fun so I didn't end up doing that. But here's the idea anyway!
Step-by-step summary
TL;DR:
0. Prime the circumstances: implement good public transit, enable people to live in the city, and make them want to (pull factors).
1. Develop the inner city: primarily residences, but also businesses (corner stores!). MIXED USE ZONING.
2. Invite people from farther out suburbs to move to the city. Invite them again every so often; just infrequent enough that they notice their neighborhoods emptying.
3. Repeat 1 and 2 ad nauseam, bringing the outer fringes of the suburbs closer to the outer fringes of the city.
4. Profit.
Circumstances
I wrote in the last post a lot about the ways cities need to improve. All of them need to be addressed, in actual policy and in marketing, before any of this can actually work. Among the things that need to improve to attract people to the city are cost of living, culture and community (people like communities where they're familiar with their neighbors; let's foster that), and some way of de-congesting the people, because lots of people in one place is chaotic, loud, and claustrophobic.
For the "folding in" strategy to work, we're first going to need to build out improved public transportation, like better bus systems, trolleys/streetcars, and expanding subways and similar in-city train-like systems to smaller cities like Raleigh. Public transit reduces the need to drive a car, which in turn enables the city to sell large parking lots to developers.
Streets can then be reformed to be more pedestrian-oriented, and car-rental services and parking structures should be placed strategically next to highways and other busy roadways into and through the city to enable car users to enter the city and non car users to leave. At the same time, dividing the pedestrian and vehicle ways, such as by elevating one over another or installing hard bollards, improves flow for everyone and reduces car-induced death and destruction.
Sidebar: many cities and localities have installed soft bollards that can be easily ignored out of complaints from drivers. It's a load of bullshit that completely defeats the point of installing them to begin with. Protect your pedestrians and other road users; install hard bollards. (If you want to have remote-unlock knock-over or retractable ones for emergency use, that's fine. You probably should do that if bollards are protecting a pedestrian street.)
There should be some type of license, probably with more frequent testing, for infrequent drivers; people who do not own cars but might rent them. I'm not qualified to speak on what changes would need to be made to the insurance system to accomodate this but the insurance system is the big blocker here so it definitely needs to change.
Sidebar #2: the main reason I don't have a drivers' license now is insurance. It requires me to insure against a car; plus, it's super expensive and doesn't last long enough for me to afford the next payment. On top of that, I can't use my parents' cars for any regular usage because they need them for work or in case of emergencies (tornadoes, in particular, where we need to evacuate at a moment's notice).
I'm sure Charlotte is far better maintained than Raleigh is, but god damn Raleigh sucks as far as maintenance goes. Cary does it way, way better. But look at a Cary park and then look at a Raleigh park and there's a night and day difference. Raleigh in particular needs to work on its maintenance; parks and rec, infrastructure from roads to sidewalks...
Maybe Raleigh absorbing Cary (as part of the "folding in" process) would help solve that.
Also, in the United States, we don't really have mixed-use zoning. We should fix that; have the ground floor of apartment buildings be allowed to host businesses (particularly shops and things useful to the people living there; best if it's a small/local business), maybe even allow them to extend to the second floor for better headroom (and better separation, insulation, and soundproofing from the upper floors).
Incentive and disincentive
The real work begins by putting inner-city land up for real estate development. Ideally, it would be under the terms that it's affordable housing, which would have to be subsidized; maybe the city can see this as an investment, bringing more work and more money into the city. (Plus not having to feed and maintain the suburbs, particularly out past Garner and Fuquay where those places have Raleigh addresses.)
Something that the United States takes some flak for on the global stage is the way our houses and apartments are built, particularly around soundproofing and how brittle the walls are. We could probably just layer more drywall to make it thicker, but putting better insulation and soundproofing in the walls, especially between apartments, would help tremendously. I'd make sure this stuff is part of the new buildings, if I had anything to say about it.
Development of new residences in the inner city is not cheap. It's likely that the city will pay for it, potentially on a loan. Again, this'll be seen as an investment for the city to bring in more people and therefore more money, and save money on suburban maintenance.
Restoring nature
Households in the furthest suburbs of a city, which I'll be honest is hard to determine, will be given a tantalizing offer to move to the city. They'll be offered apartments (and maybe houses, condos, and some other types of housing) that are close to what they have, and it'll be no more than whatever they're paying upon offer (for utilities, property tax, etc). Some people will definitely refuse, but others will take up that offer. That house and land will then belong to the city (or maybe the state) and be sat on, cleaned up, and used as greenspace. Entire neighborhoods that have been moved out of will be cleared out and let nature take its course.
Renters will similarly be offered housing in the city, no more than what they're paying now, as similar to their current housing situation as possible. This'll probably be in collusion with the landlord, who will be offered a fat paycheck to sell the land -- once there's nobody left living on it (and/or partial paychecks to sell the land that people have already moved off of).
The offers will be repeated, as similar to the initial offer as possible, trying not to increase the price. As neighborhoods in the suburbs start becoming ghost towns, and as commercial properties close near them, more and more people will give in to the pressure and move to the city.
Rinse and repeat
To be effective, this process needs to be repeated a lot. As land in the inner suburbs is enveloped in the more densely populated city, land in the outer suburbs will fall into decay. Once this process starts, it starts to feed into itself.
It would also help to draw a line to know where outward growth should stop -- for Raleigh, that'll probably be the I-540/NC-540 beltway. At that point, we should be trying to build up (and maybe down), and not out.
As the city expands, suburban towns (like Cary, Apex, and especially Garner) will end up being enveloped in, and eventually becoming a part of, the city proper, as districts of their own or maybe even sets of districts, like boroughs.
General improvements
- As mentioned earlier: more mixed-use zoning! Shops at the ground floor of apartment buildings, parlors in place of garages in houses.
- Additional buffers at the edge of the city to mitigate natural disasters, like floods and tornadoes.
- Maybe more pedestrian overpasses between buildings (mostly at low elevations). If they're built higher up, they should be mostly covered so as to not trigger acrophobia.
- High speed rail so reaching other cities and some rural towns is faster and easier than ever. Let's do this plan for both Raleigh and Charlotte and put a high-speed rail line between them, maybe stopping in Asheboro along the way (where the zoo is).
- Got any more ideas? Tell me; let's list them all here!
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