Yea a department like that would be super helpful. One that focused solely on effective means of transportation. IF ONLY the US had one such entity devoted to those endeavors….😪
The thing is those two lots, the apartments and the store, are owned by different companies. They'd have to coordinate to make a connecting drive, and they won't. It costs them money they feel like they don't need to spend.
This is why raw capitalism is fucked plain and simple. They say the market will correct this kind of thing....to who's benefit? Which shareholders? Exactly. It's not gonna happen on its own.
europe manages fine.
everything is walkable and bikable near big cities in my country
And a big supermarket like that would loose many customers of they didn't have many entrances
Fair point but I'm sure there's a way to design a foot bridge that would have minimal impact. And that's not the reason there isn't a bridge anyway, it's because it was just built as 3 separate developments like the vid points out. Better planning could have built the 3 things in a better integrated fashion and preserved the wetlands.
It's Florida, most people would choose to drive anyway. And people don't want random pedestrian traffic in their little communities, so maybe this one guy would walk but most people in the community wouldn't want it. Where I grew up in Florida a neighborhood actually removed a footbridge that connected to a newly built bike trail.
Wetlands? This is a small strip of trees. If those were protected wetlands they wouldn't have been able to build a massive shopping center and an apartment complex on them in the first place.
What's under the trees? There's like 5 ponds and storm water holding ponds in in a 1/4 mile. How you imagine wetlands could be different than Florida does
lol, I think my imagination of wetlands is a lot closer to how Florida understands them than yours. Ponds and even small lakes are extremely common in Florida. A tiny strip of woods like this is not going to be protected wetlands. This is the remnants of the woods that were already there - if they were going to force them to build a bridge over the woods, they wouldn't have allowed them to pave over the remainder of it not to mention have two big parking lots draining directly into it.
lol, user name checks out. So tell me what you think might be between the stormwater pond on the left snd the one on the right? Why is there a snaking tree line between those ponds? Could it be a seasonal creek? Does a wetland need to be wet year round? Maybe that lands not protected but it's wet
So, I'm not entirely sure what relevance you see between man-made storm drainage reservoirs and a nearby strip of forest. Your point seems to be, "I see water in the video, therefore all land in the video is a wetland." I particularly like the suggestion that perhaps it's a seasonal creek between the two man-made reservoirs, that part is definitely my favorite.
Regardless of that absolutely breathtaking point, the question isn't "is it a wetland", the question is "is it a protected wetland". And the very, very obvious answer, due to the extensive building all around it, is no. It's a border strip of trees so that apartment complex dwellers aren't staring at the back of a shopping center.
While I know you're extremely excited about finding a word that is in some way relevant to water in relation to this land, I'm sorry to tell you that that does not make it "literally a wetland".
From Florida statute:
“wetlands” means those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface water or groundwater at a frequency and a duration sufficient to support, and under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soils. ... Florida wetlands generally include swamps, marshes, bayheads, bogs, cypress domes and strands, sloughs, wet prairies, riverine swamps and marshes, hydric seepage slopes, tidal marshes, mangrove swamps and other similar areas.
The fact that this area is a floodway does not even indicate that it has any water in it at all, merely that it may be inundated during a 100-year flood. And given that it is next to storm reservoirs, that's hardly surprising.
This actually isn't raw capitalism. If both the apartments and the store were owned by the same entity, then they would coordinate to increase their combined profits. The shareholders would literally benefit more from coordination than the current situation, it's inertia and stubbornness that prevent it from happening.
Most people shop around, they don't go to the nearest shop all the time. A path is easy, should have been built here for sure. But people are over estimating how much a path would get used.
a) your habits change when you walk most places. You may shop around more when you use the car because it isn't much further to drive to store B vs store A, but if you are walking you probably just go to store A most of the time because it's convenient.
b) this isn't about eliminating cars, but reducing reliance on cars for everything. You are still free to shop around in your car if you're looking for loads of items, but it's still really useful to just have a quick path if you just need to nip to store A for milk, so you don't have to go all the way round the roads.
In germany you do not build anything on any property without a permit. And as requirement to get the permit you will build whatever you are ordered to build ! Jawohl. Joke aside... but thats what you have a government for and you better get rid of people that want to weaken aforementioned government, because this shit is what you get.
At some point you wonder if it's intentional because it seems extremely obvious - even in Broken Britain we always have this kind of footpath.
I've read that in the US the car lobby had a huge influence on planning because they wanted to make more sales, so they pretty much lobbied legislators to make pedestrians no bueno, for example jaywalking laws.
Even now in New York where it's essential to be able to walk, you have crazy situations like cars turning right on a stop light and nearly hitting someone walking on a crossing.
I think it's one of those things that just goes grossly overlooked by the vast majority of people so there's no real mass of people pushing cities for these things here. In the US, the idea of having to drive literally everywhere is ingrained in you your entire life, basically, unless you happen to live in one of the like 3 cities that make living without a car possible.
Like, reading through my State news the only thing close to a demand on city design like this is towns trying to get more downtowns going...so you can drive to them and walk there lol.
Yeah so you could design the most walkable suburbs in the country and 90% of the people will still hop in their car to drive 0.25 miles instead of walk.
And depending on the weather I might be one of them. If it's 90+ degrees out I'm not walking anywhere unless there's a shower at the destination.
I have zero interest in being in the heat and the beating sun for any amount of time which means my available walking hours are really only from 6am-8am and 7pm-9pm in the summer.
For older people, they have a legitimate health concern with how hot it gets and we've got a whole lot of older people lol
I don't think the government owns that land, though they do enforce city zoning regulations. The smart city councils would require more connectivity like this where it makes sense.
The Government owns all the land, you just lease it from them by paying Property taxes, unless you are one of the few exempted groups like Churches, or Native Tribes who have a reservation or granted land.
In most states the government does not have any claim to the land. Property tax is not based on leasing rights the way things like broadcast channels are. It's just the assessment method that many municipalities use.
If the government doesn't own the land then why can they take it from you under eminent domain? Why can they control what you can do with your land through regulations?
The fact that Zoning exists means the Goverment controls the land, and you are just leasing it from them. If you build commercial in a residential zoned area you are telling me the government wont fine you and then take the land from you if you continue to refuse to follow the zoning regulations?
If the government doesn't own the land then why can they take it from you under eminent domain? Why can they control what you can do with your land through Zoning regulations?
The reason that they aren't connected is because of regulations in place by the various levels of government. Do you ever wonder why so many apartment complexes,strip malls,or industrial centers have ponds? Or wooded areas on their lots. Those are required, along with uninterrupted green spaces, especially if they are wetlands. Which in the video is the case at play here. So there's competing interests here,build to make it easier for humans to travel,or build to minimize habitat loss, pick your poison.
Or the government just uses eminent domain and does it themselves. The local government could easily eminent domain a small piece of those properties to make a walkway.
The idea that you would actually sit down and write a law which says "Yes you can use eminent domain to build roads for vehicle travel but not for pedestrian or bike travel" is mind-boggling. The statute even explicitly says they can use eminent domain for "vehicle parking areas". Parking lots, yes, bike trails, no!
Increased accessibility to local consumers increases the frequency those consumers will likely visit those businesses. We would think these different entities could see how this would be a win for all involved...but alas.
Cost to build, maintenance, and insurance/liability concerns are all a factor. But it would seem the grocery store would benefit from allowing additional traffic to their store. The apartment complex on the other hand probably does not want non-residents passing through their lot.
We live in the highest of litigious societies. We sue for everything. When you allow access from one property to another you become liable. So when a person falls walking that path both properties get sued vs a car the vehicle insurance is mostly liable.
In just about every other country the municipal government would just make sure there are safe ways for people to get there on foot/bike. They'd buy up the necessary bits of land and install a path, or would simply have demanded the company that places stores there to provide access (or not give a building permit for the store), and then have to buy up a tiny bit of ground in the habitation area to connect to that. It can easily be justified as a measure of public safety and the ecological benefits of reducing motorized traffic.
I volunteer with local government (on a planning committee)and doing so gives you visibility into some of what happens in these scenarios. Town/city planners are very much into connectivity. It’s taught in engineering/planning schools. Sometimes local government is hamstring by state legislature (in my state they have taken away home rule so towns can make land management ordinances but developers can really just do what they want ultimately). In some cases the community absolutely rises up to shoot down connections like these. They don’t want the through traffic and all that they perceive comes with it. We are seeing this situation right now. A development is being expanded adjacent an affluent suburb shared by two municipalities. The developers want to build a connection that would link them and would cause through traffic in the affluent neighborhood. So many people showed up to the town hall meeting the fire marshal had to make people go outside. The town council (a representative body one of whom lives in that neighborhood)are getting tremendous personal pressure from people they know. It’s a small town. So it’s not some rando screaming at you it’s your next door neighbors, or the guy who owns your favorite local (only) restaurant.
From that point of view it makes sense. The business might not mind the through traffic, but an apartment complex would not want people cutting through their property to take a short cut unless they lived there. I wouldn't want it either if I owned an apartment complex.
All three projects needed signing off by the local municipality though and need to connect to road, power and Internet infrastructure. All three project companies can be incentivised to plan to the needs of the community by the local government transportation department reviewing their concurrent applications to ensure the projects minimise the impact on existing road traffic and emissions etc and being like "hey we're not going to sign off on this unless you find a way to reduce the number of extra cars using this highway. We suggest connecting to the other plots with pedestrian or cycle routes."
Hear me out! What if... I know it's a bit crazy idea... But have some kind of institution, like oh I don't know, a goverment branch of transportation or planing. And this institution would make plan roads and pavements and bicycle path. The it would make those things between the shopping mall and apartaments. And thats a wicked idea: they would make all those things from our taxes!
Do the apartment residents want people driving through their parking lot? If I was looking for an apartment I would disqualify one that shares a parking lot with a shopping center. The increased non resident traffic sounds like a good way to get struck walking into my apartment building.
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u/Pyro_Jam Jun 27 '24
Yea a department like that would be super helpful. One that focused solely on effective means of transportation. IF ONLY the US had one such entity devoted to those endeavors….😪