Comments by "" (@josephfisher426) on "Can we fix the suburbs?" video.

This was a common thing in the US until (I would guess) WW2.
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I'd guess that even with all the nasty new development, at least half the single family housing in the US is on "natural" layouts. Like town grids. It should also be considered that making housing denser almost invariably makes it more standardized. Behind me is a post-WW2-era rancher/small Cape Cod farm, on lots much smaller than those in my subdivision, which is a mix of Arts and Crafts, bungalows, and the 1930s version of colonials.
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With whose money, though? The most egregious suburbs are also often on the margin of needing that infrastructure... it was certainly a selling point to have the infrastructure, but if you have half an acre, that's enough room for a well and a septic system. There are a lot of ways for air to move around in the balloon.
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@heidirabenau511 But not the crime, which is kind of an enormous practical issue.
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@coolioso808 These are typically alleys that were created with subdivisions, either for walking access only or for rear driveways. They are coming back in some instances---although most often to make parking courts in the back of lots.
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Those kinds of places can sit around for years as a tax writeoff. The somewhat contradictory thing is that zoning is blamed for how uses are separated---but aggressive zoning is the only realistic way of getting a property like that to be re-used in a timely manner. It will only be in sufficient demand if less centrally located commercial area is downzoned. Also you need a growing population for changes to take real effect, and many urban areas don't have that. Realistically there's about 20% redundant commercial space even in the suburbs.
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@mohammedsarker5756 I wouldn't say that it has absolutely nothing to do with density. If there is a methhead in a trailer down the road from a rural property, that doesn't affect the livability too much... you know the methhead is hundreds of feet away from you. Put that methhead in an apartment and lots more people are going be unhappy. I agree that it can be greatly ameliorated by policing. But the policing has to happen and at present we are seeing lots of examples of it not happening.
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@coolioso808 The old sort of alley for cars is probably the most effective way of getting walking paths (other than along streets) because individual paths are going to be hard to match up and maintain. It may not be a big deal to keep a path open when a development is new, but over time there will be fences and vegetation.
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@coolioso808 Garage townhouse and "two-over-two" developments are using alleys rather often. The examples of walking paths I can think of are where cross streets ended and continued on as paths. Two of them are to school properties and were probably created or kept open for that reason. I walked home from school more often than not, along one of two main roads (one of them with a guardrail between the psychos and the sidewalk, the other with a wide parking lane). But the only "paths" were the short cuts into the park that we weren't really supposed to take. Can't say that it was quicker for me to walk, but it only has to be half as fast as driving for it to be the correct choice, otherwise the parent is wasting time.
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@coolioso808 Even more important than the bike lanes is somewhere to safely park the bike at every business. I would find it pretty rough to bike for groceries for more than one person, but I could get to the nearest grocery pretty easily (even though a closer-in store has closed) by back streets. And I would do the same thing for work, if there were a job in that range... there are plenty of back routes. But there's a hassle on the other end.
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@mohammedsarker5756 Yes, that should help with stuff that is straight up vacant. Commercial zoning usually has a pretty high assessment, though... a while ago I looked up an end-of-life-cycle strip mall with a fourth-rate grocery chain in a city neighborhood that is just barely not terrible enough to have a lot of vacants... it was still assessed for eight figures!
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