New Urbanism for the non-green

What's new urbanism? Basically it's a movement to build neighborhoods the way we used to:
1. Apartments
2. Condos and other shared wall structures
3. Small lots (you may have no yard)
4. Bad parking

Why would you ever want this? The medium (large actually) lot single family home with a two car garage is American right? It's like Apple pie and a cheeseburger. Well, yes, it is. It's bad for you.

Here's the one solid reason why you want this sort of neighborhood: America gave you 4 wheels and a freeway, then it charged you $5,000 a year to pay for it (actually more, but the extra costs - mostly parking - are hard to pin down). God gave you two legs. Then he built you to use them. Seriously, he built you to use them.

The main advantage of new urbanism is the ability to walk most places.

Now, there's one obvious problem: Work. Every other destination can be transplanted (even family, which moves for reasons outside your control). But your job if your life right? This is in a way the sacrifice of our intellectual working society: Your sort of stuck in your career path because you know so much about it and you can't just work anywhere.

Well, that's a problem that's up to you to solve. This isn't an argument that new urbanism can solve all of our travel woes or that everyone should live in these neighborhoods. This is an appeal to explain why you should desire to live in this style of neighborhood. An explanation of why it is attractive.
The solution part should fall into place as a majority of us stop taking up so much space in our large single family dwellings. How many houses do you pass on your way to work? Now, how many driveways? How many gigantic (mostly empty) free parking lots? People don't live in driveways, expensive ($5,000 or so annually) cars do.


The video is a bit more, um, eco-centered.
Video.

I'm thinking one major problem is a total lack of availability. There just aren't hardly any of these neighborhoods. And they're expensive. Not because of the cost of supply but because of the level of, largely ignored, demand. I'd love to live in one of these places if, well, Lincoln had much to offer. Mostly they just have crummy apartments near downtown and a few houses near downtown (on medium, actually large, lots).

It really should save you a fortune to live in this style of neighborhood. Maybe when it's done being a hoity toity fad it'll become a utilitarian feature again.