r/Urbanism

This is maybe a silly question, but I’ve never really been to a very large city. How many people can live in a large apartment building? How do you calculate something like that? People per square foot?

Cities are heating up faster than the rural areas surrounding them, intensifying health risks and environmental inequities, especially for more vulnerable residents. The impact of urban heat islands strains public health systems, increasing the demand for data-driven solutions. For future public health leaders, like the students in Texas A&M University's online Master of Public Health in Environmental Health, understanding heat through epidemiology is essential. 

Hi, I only make this account to make a vent post about this, because I don't really sign up for an account while browsing Reddit, and I don't browse Reddit often due to my perceptions on that site.

Recently, I saw a Reddit post about a user sharing on another social media site about the behaviour of passengers on a bus in Hong Kong, on the r/HongKong subreddit. It makes me extremely uncomfortable and ruins my mood because I think the post might be trying to make people hate buses, which is an issue in this social media site to me.

In addition, the r/bus subreddit has much less members compared to other subreddits about other vehicles, except for r/bitchimabus . The cities subreddits tend to have a negative view towards buses as well, with posts complaining about bus services in their city.

I am also a softcore bus fan, because I grew up relying on buses. During that time, I was trying my efforts to let people know the wonders of the bus world. Any hate comments directing at buses will make my blood boil, because I think buses don't deserve much disrespect.

https://redf.in/MghKRf

very surprised to see this as I haven't seen these things unless it was built in like...1930. this is a very suburban neighborhood of the greater Seattle area (and VERY cheap for a new detached "sfh").

on one hand it's not the most walkable area scoring a 62/100 but it is on the street of the light rail station so it's very quick and easy access without a car north or south.

in the suburbs of light rail stops north of seattle you usually see higher density 10+ story mixed use developments with underground parking. this stop in particular is known for low daily ridership, so I figured we'd see more of this here. I guess it's nice to give more opportunities for low(er) cost ownership and ownership near light rail stops but also seems a bit of a waste in terms of potential density.

would you value a small detached house like this? or would you prefer townhouses and increase sqft per unit? (does this even count as "missing middle"?)

I recently realized that some of the best cities aren’t always the ones people talk about the most. Have you visited or lived in a city that surprised you with its neighborhoods, public spaces, food, transit, or overall atmosphere? I’d love to hear what made it stand out

Basically, the Housing Shortage is a scam and building more is "BONK"!!!

Wanted to add this additional link about RealPage, Greystar, Bozzuto etc.'s price fixing since no one probably wants to sit there and read through the DOJ press release with the court documents I posted earlier.

I’ve been thinking about how walkable a city actually is in 95°F heat. Google Maps will route you for distance, sometimes elevation. It won’t route you to the shaded side of the street — even when that’s the difference between a tolerable walk and a miserable one.

Building heights are open data in most major cities. Sun position is solved math. You can cast shadows onto the sidewalk network at any timestamp and prefer the shaded segments within a reasonable time budget. The implementation isn’t trivial but the physics is straightforward.

Some questions I keep hitting:

1. How would you weight shade vs distance? My current default is a 12% time budget — if the shaded route is more than 12% longer, fall back to fastest. Curious where planners would land on that ratio.

2. Should the directions tell you to cross the street when the shaded side switches mid-block? I do. It feels right. Curious if planners think it’s antisocial — the analog of “jaywalking on the recommendation line.”

3. What’s the right baseline for comparison? Are we measuring against shortest path, fastest path, or some idealized accessibility metric? The shade-as-equity argument feels like it lives somewhere between heat-island maps and ADA distance limits, and I haven’t found a clean framework yet.

4. Heat equity question that’s been bothering me: shade routing presumes the shade exists. In neighborhoods with low canopy and few tall buildings (often the same neighborhoods that score worst on heat-island indices), the tool offers less. Is “the shaded route” an equity-positive product if its value distribution mirrors existing disparities?

I’ve built a working prototype across 50+ cities — modeled every building footprint and height, cast shadows against the sun’s live azimuth, baked the sidewalk network at the borough or district level for the dense ones. Happy to share if folks are interested, but mostly curious what people who think about this stuff professionally would prioritize differently.

What am I missing?

Basically suburban sprawl is a net drain on cities if you go by tax revenue per acre, chiefly because utilities and roads and consumed municipal services cost the same, but serve drastically less people.

opening example is a suburb that can’t even afford to pave their own roads, because they don’t have a government they can coerce the payment from.

edit: sorry for messing up the post title I’m terrible at typing