City living trends and predictions

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VacantLuxuries
Foshay Tower
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby VacantLuxuries » August 28th, 2017, 10:24 am

Does the article go into any sort of time frame or is it just a vague "This may happen eventually" sort of deal?

Because on a long enough speculative time frame we might not need them for a multitude of reasons.

NickP
Target Field
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby NickP » August 28th, 2017, 8:57 pm

I would also argue, if parking ramps are needed, on top of the freeway, with relatively easy access, is a pretty good place to have it :-)

mamundsen
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby mamundsen » August 28th, 2017, 9:49 pm

I still find it absolutely I nsane that carpool commuters entering from 394 or 94 can pay $20 per month. While the other carpool rate is $99. Non carpool is mid $100s or $7.25 a day. I felt ripped off everyday I parked there while coming from St Paul.

Anondson
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby Anondson » December 20th, 2017, 10:01 pm

Interesting story on how the skyrocketing prices in D.C. are getting people to look at underused areas for housing. This story mentions a burst of interest in living on alleys.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ar ... story.html

This got me thinking, in the inevitable future we are told is coming where people won’t own cars and can just order one on demand, what use will alleys in the Twin Cities serve?

I personally am not convinced there will be a massive drop in car ownership, but our cities probably need to start proactively planning for future uses of alleys in case there is a massive drop in car ownership.

Alleys are civic assets and the structures along alleys are civic assets that cities must plan the future for as thoroughly as single family homes. IMO, if car ownership plummets then cities should have in place a plan that considers redevelopment of garages into housing.

While D.C. housing costs are getting people to consider alley housing, a future of minimal car ownership should get Minneapolis to start planning today for making alley-garage-to-housing conversions easy and what it would mean for assessments.

amiller92
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby amiller92 » December 21st, 2017, 10:06 am

I was going to mention Naylor Court, but it looks like the article beat me too it. It's pretty cool. Quiet and quite appealing.

I'm not sure where we have comparable alleys, though. Seems like we mostly have multi-unit buildings more or less right up to the alley or detached single family homes where you could do an ADU if you could make the costs work. We don't really have row houses ringing interior blocks that had separate uses.

David Greene
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby David Greene » December 22nd, 2017, 10:28 am

Alleys are already almost-woonerfs. Make them officially woonerfs. And put high-capacity transit in some of them. We used to run streetcars in some alleys, though those were somewhat wider than the typical Minneapolis alley. One-way transit pairs should be feasible.
We could also designate some of them as bike boulevards or even make them bike-only in some (rare?) circumstances.

How often, if ever, does Minneapolis reconstruct alleys? Ours is concrete and while it has a few patches it's in reasonable shape. I don't know when it was last rebuilt. Biggest problem for bikes is the center groove. Also the rough nature of the concrete doesn't make it great for biking. An asphalt overlay could help with both. Drainage would have to be carefully managed.

RailBaronYarr
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby RailBaronYarr » December 22nd, 2017, 10:55 am

I think... I mean, man. We've got plenty of great ROW to allocate for better transit, and vehicle traffic could easily move to "side" streets (not even alleys.

Alleys have obvious potential. Here's a thing I wrote: https://streets.mn/2015/12/16/i-love-alleys/ Yes, they are almost-woonerfs; one could even make the case they already are. I see people walking right down the middle of mine all the time, and it's the only way we leave/enter by bike. Alleys in the outer parts of Minneapolis are pretty bleak, fronted by garage doors or the blank sides of them. But the areas north of ~38th St and south of ~26th Ave N/18th Ave NE are far more likely to be engaging. IMO, they're not too different from narrow Japanese streets - you lose a little of the aesthetic purity by walking/biking by some garbage cans and uncovered cars and blank walls, but you gain insanely calm streets people feel comfortable biking down and if the market supports the density, you get the positive feedback effects with more destinations (and transit viability) in your neighborhood. The city was right to require some window frontage % for our ADUs, but wrong to have such a hard cap on the potential density (whether sqft or even # of units) facing alleys. I have also written that I think alleys are a fine template for our streets in a broad sense - we overblow the need for snow storage on boulevards and provide way too much expensive pavement for free parking.

It would take a much stronger focus on maintaining alleys for accessibility, improving drainage, and keeping them plowed in the winter than we currently do. But there's real potential, especially if we allow more than just a unit of housing back there - Vancouver allowed laneway apartments in the West End, they allowed stratification of laneway homes (selling off the back part of a parcel rather than only being able to rent it out), and we could be more lenient in legalizing small commercial uses beyond what our SF zones allow back there too.

SurlyLHT
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby SurlyLHT » December 26th, 2017, 10:13 am

If ride-sharing apps, increased transit and computer-driven cars could reduce the number of vehicles on the road maybe we could make convert more of our streets to those proposals with Northside Greenway or etc. It'll be great to get back some of that acreage. (As you mention in your article.) I personally love to bike in them since they are more interesting than streets and have less traffic. Although crossing streets can be difficult.

mattaudio
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby mattaudio » December 26th, 2017, 12:07 pm

Isn't it strange that you always hear about autonomous vehicles as a reason not to invest in transit, but not as a reason to cut back on subsidized on- or off-street car storage? (Let alone a reason to stop building even more car storage!?!?)

SurlyLHT
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby SurlyLHT » December 27th, 2017, 9:35 am

Isn't it strange that you always hear about autonomous vehicles as a reason not to invest in transit, but not as a reason to cut back on subsidized on- or off-street car storage? (Let alone a reason to stop building even more car storage!?!?)
It is when you consider how many of the hours of our cars life it's sitting idle. It would especially be interesting if computerized cars or apps led to vanpooling/carpooling to take off. With that said it'll be really hard to get people to give up the convenience of walking out to their car anytime they want and turning the key.

It also occurs to me that the reduced congestion of the improved technology would encourage freeloaders to drive more and take advantage of the benefits in their normal cars.

mplsjaromir
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby mplsjaromir » December 27th, 2017, 9:46 am

Cars do spend many hours idle, but they are on average one's most utilized personal possession. During high demand times on-demand services automobile will be overwhelmed. Unless somehow ingenious algorithms make pooling better than transit, stick to transit investments.

RailBaronYarr
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby RailBaronYarr » December 27th, 2017, 10:11 am

Yeah I've always found the "cars sit idle" argument super unconvincing. As if people don't spend thousands of dollars on things like washers/dryers, dishwashers, stoves, televisions, video game consoles, clothes, power tools, spare rooms in the house, etc etc that individually may only get used a couple hours a week. IMO, part of the point of capitalism (more for worse than for better in this case) is to get goods and services produced as efficiently/cheaply as possible so people can use them as inefficiently as possible.

SurlyLHT
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby SurlyLHT » December 27th, 2017, 10:30 am

A good way to compare the purchases sitting idle would be to calculate the cost per idle hour. For a car it'll be higher than other item simply given their cost. Also, if people slowly use their cars less and less they begin to realize that they are idle too often and become a 1-car or no-car household. (In MN more likely to become 1-car.)

Developments like this are steps in that direction:

"Uber and Lyft Carpooling Services Could Replace 75% of Vehicles"

Still, there may be change afoot. In 2015, Lyft reported that 50% of its San Francisco rides and 25% of those in New York were covered by less expensive carpool options. And, both Uber and Lyft have tested discounted monthly passes for carpool customers."

[http://fortune.com/2017/01/03/uber-lyft-carpooling

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/tec ... -mile.html

mplsjaromir
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby mplsjaromir » December 27th, 2017, 10:57 am

Lyft and Uber need either self-driving cars or a massive increase in carpool rides, otherwise they have a not-for-profit business model. Self-driving cars are fantasy for near to mid future, so they need carpooling to be big. The links provided do not work, but I'm certain its PR flak aimed at assuaging bamboozled investors. From my understanding is that people do not enjoy the carpooling options, and the diminished convenience and comfort make it hardly more desirable than transit.

David Greene
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Re: RE: Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby David Greene » December 28th, 2017, 10:23 pm

Isn't it strange that you always hear about autonomous vehicles as a reason not to invest in transit, but not as a reason to cut back on subsidized on- or off-street car storage? (Let alone a reason to stop building even more car storage!?!?)
Not strange at all. Autonomous vehicles are today's PRT in that regard: a plausible-sounding reason not to do transit. Expect to hear a lot about it in upcoming legislative sessions.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk



John21
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby John21 » January 3rd, 2018, 4:41 pm


talindsay
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Re: RE: Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby talindsay » January 4th, 2018, 12:17 pm

Not strange at all. Autonomous vehicles are today's PRT in that regard: a plausible-sounding reason not to do transit. Expect to hear a lot about it in upcoming legislative sessions.
This.

Anondson
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby Anondson » January 22nd, 2018, 12:25 pm

Apartments adding lockers for deliveries due to the avalanche of packages.

http://finance-commerce.com/2018/01/apa ... -packages/

Anondson
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby Anondson » April 30th, 2018, 1:47 pm

The trend of grocery stores plus housing is picking up in the Twin Cities.

https://finance-commerce.com/2018/04/go ... use-model/

karen nelson
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Re: City living trends and predictions

Postby karen nelson » May 1st, 2018, 1:33 am

If ride-sharing apps, increased transit and computer-driven cars could reduce the number of vehicles on the road maybe we could make convert more of our streets to those proposals with Northside Greenway or etc. It'll be great to get back some of that acreage. (As you mention in your article.) I personally love to bike in them since they are more interesting than streets and have less traffic. Although crossing streets can be difficult.
Ride share automonous vehicles will reduce parking needs but increase congestion (cheap trips = more trips). Ride hail Uber and Lyft being cheaper than taxis have already increased congestion in NYC and already allowing people to ditch individually owned cars. When even cheaper because driverless, impact multiplied. The super cheap door-to-door chaffeur-like service is what will make people ditch owning a car - for less than cost of insur, gas, tabs and maintainance of a paid for car, you could get driven everywhere you want to go...what's not to like unless you have lots of gear you store in vehicle.

I suspect renting an autonomous electric vehicle micro.apartments will become a thing in expensive cities, they may even drive most of time (cheap fuel and car lanes are a free commons, for now) ... or have a series of further out, cheaper real estate hubs they can "dock" at night for common amenities, gyms, party rooms, storage etc. After alkll, street-parked vans are being rented in CA and the "land"lords move them around as city requires.

To deal with congestion, we will have to have lane use fees (gas taxes will be toast) , and preferably surge prices for peak time use and pricing that enocurages shared vehicles (shuttles, buses) in most congested areas, times.

All the freed up parking in developed places will be great unless you own real estate surrounded by parking.lots. or ramps.

But the autonomous vehicles will be like swarms of sharks on our roads, always moving, unless we charge them.


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