but that isn't great either, because density itself isn't fun most of the time.
Density for walkability and transit-friendliness doesn't have to mean towering apartment blocks. Generally, it can mean a nice mix of townhouses, semis, duplexes, with a sprinkling of unattached houses that don't have ridiculous setbacks.
... IOW, the built form we see in all sorts of traditional, sought-after neighbourhoods.
Unless you can you make it better to start with, before market forces come in. Because I can't see how market forces would blindly reach the conclusion of walkable cities / or heavy but effective public transport as natural market goals.
(Sorry - gotta nerd out here a bit)
Two big factors:
- distance/density
- separation of land uses
Developers generally want to make as much money as they can on a development. This generally means density: maximizing residential units or leasable commercial square footage per acre.
Left to their own devices, developers will come up with designs that meet the needs of their customers. They'll also sell to anyone: if they have demand from a convenience store chain to drop a small store in the middle of a residential neighbourhood, they'll meet that demand.
... but then zoning gets in the way. The zoning for the residential neighbourhood might require a big minimum frontage or big side yard setbacks, so everything gets spread out. And the zoning may only allow residential, so that convenience store isn't allowed. Pile all these factors together and suddenly your neighbourhood has nowhere within walking distance where you can buy a loaf of bread.
On the commercial side, in the business park where you might work, there may also be giant setback requirements. There are likely also high minimum parking supply requirements: X spaces for every 1,000 feet of office (or whatever the land use is). A huge proportion of commercial properties gets used for parking these days, often more because of zoning requirements than actual demand from the tenants.
Parking ends up being a double whammg for density, since all that hard surface means more runoff, which means larger stormwater management ponds. This means that if you want to take the bus to work:
- you have to go a long distance (because everything is spread out so much)
- service kinda sucks (because the routes are so long that the number of buses the town can afford only allows for suckily long headways)
- once you walk from your bus stop to the driveway of your office, you still have another 5 minutes to walk to get past the SWM pond and giant parking lot before you actually get to the building front door
Get rid of some the restrictiveness in zoning bylaws/ordinances and walkability generally improves just by developers pursuing profit.