^There you have it. The outsider perspective is always the same: Portage and Main is stupid and should be open.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bsenka
It's not a matter of my ignorance, rather an amusement at the emptiness of your position.
•Economics:
Density does not create access. ACCESS creates access. Roads that can quickly and easily get you from one place to the next is what allows people to get the most out of their city. St. Vital, and Transcona, and Pembina, and Kenaston, and Polo Park are ALL local to you if you can get between them easily. Downtown is the least accessible because the roads are congested with too many choke points, and parking is a premium.
The economics of the lack of density allows for wide open spaces that would be prohibitive in dense areas. You can build an Ikea or a Costco (and provide all the parking for it) in the burbs, but that would be totally cost prohibitive downtown. You can have a huge lawn, a pool, and a double garage in the burbs, but that would be totally cost prohibitive downtown.
•Health:
A lack of density gives you wide open spaces with multi-use paths, parks, rec centres, golf courses, ski trails, hockey rinks, etc. Recreation and physical activity are what suburban life is all about. The more space you have, the more space you've got to be active.
Low density also has better access to healthcare. More suburban clinics and hospitals, and a good network of roads to get between them if one is busier than another.
•Social:
Interaction goes down as density goes up. People in lower density areas talk to their neighbours more and get involved in social-hobby clubs more often. They get involved in their community centres, they see all those people at all those recreational places over and over again, they really get to know all the parents of all those kids they are taking to all those activities.
Suburbs are like satellite small towns. People KNOW who their neighbours are. They have people over for backyard barbeques, partly because they actually have backyards to barbeque in, but also because they actually know who those people are to have them over.
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Everything you've written is demonstrably wrong. Like GarryEllice said, if anything you just wrote were right, the world would be exactly the opposite of what it is: New York would be poor, Americans would be thin, and Europe would have a higher crime rate than the US.
But that's the kind of poor analytical ability I'd expect from someone who thinks other cities are irrelevant. Thanks for confirming my first belief that you're just a wilful ignoramous and not worth engaging.