Single family homes and walkable neighborhoods

[Cvz (C. Zimmer)]

This really needs a category of its own. It overlaps with several other categories as well. I live in a rural town in a blue state. All around me, I watch as major developers destroy towns like mine by buying up perfectly good single family homes and letting them fall into disrepair until they “need to be torn down.” Then they put up huge apartment complexes where they cram in as many units as possible so they can rake in insane rent money. In the process, they push families who can’t raise a family in a studio apartment for 3k/month out of town where they are required to drive everywhere. Our walkable cities are turning into mile long strip malls. I’m no legislator, but I do know about the ins and outs of architecture, urban planning, zoning, and planning laws. There’s corruption at every level. A huge part of making America healthy needs to be recreating micro economies in every town across the country. I should be able to walk a mile radius with a stroller and get everything I need to live and also get to work. I can currently do that amazingly enough, but I’m the exception and not the norm. It’s nearly impossible for most people. And now it’s becoming impossible for me too because businesses are going out all around me. The influx of homeless drug addicts have made it unsafe to even walk down to the library in broad daylight with children. Something has got to be done to go back to wholistic city designs. It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes infrastructure to build a village.