[HN Gopher] People are happier in a walkable neighborhood: the U...
___________________________________________________________________
People are happier in a walkable neighborhood: the US community
that banned cars
Author : tomduncalf
Score : 121 points
Date : 2023-10-11 14:15 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I really don't see how this is necessary. I'm in what I would
| consider a walkable neighborhood right now. In fact, I walk all
| the time. The biggest reason I still have a car, that I almost
| never use, is going to medical appointments. Nothing can ever
| make that walkable when they're 20 miles away and I have to get
| there during business hours. Before working from home, it was
| needing to drive to the office, which you can do away with by
| having metroplex-wide public transit that spans an entire city
| and its major suburbs. There isn't shit you can do at the
| neighborhood level.
|
| Getting rid of cars is not necessary. New York City is probably
| the most walkable city in the United States and it's full of
| cars. But the sidewalks are enormous, consistently open,
| construction projects are required to provide routes for
| pedestrians. I grew up in a place in Southern California that was
| pretty walkable, but most of Southern California is definitely
| not. The biggest difference wasn't whether or not cars existed.
| Aside from the sidewalks, it's more that you need to limit the
| number of arterial roads, their size, and the blocks a vehicle
| can expect to traverse before hitting a stop. Aside from
| everything being so far away, the biggest factors preventing
| people from just going for leisurely strolls without a specific
| destination is the danger posed by roads that take a long time to
| get across and cars doing highway speeds on those roads. It
| worked out where I grew up, even though it was a suburb, because
| the roads were small, we weren't near any highways, plus I lived
| on an actual cul de sac, but the end of the road only blocked
| cars from going further, not pedestrians.
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| At 170M development cost for 1,000 residents, a break-even point
| of $170k per resident seems quite high for Phoenix. This
| unfortunately looks like a luxury product. Hopefully future costs
| come way down as they figure out the formula and can make this
| accessible to more people, as it's definitely a much more human-
| scale, healthy, and pleasant way to live.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Not particularly. Large apartment buildings would be ~1/4 that
| cost, and this consists of much more infrastructure that would
| need to be built. Seems like a reasonable cost for something
| that would have much better opportunities for extra value
| generation (shops, activities, etc) for the development itself.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's basically an apartment complex, smack-dab in the middle of
| the city. They just don't have parking (and I am suspicious
| that this will eventually cause an issue, but we'll see).
| jononomo wrote:
| Yeah, living without a car is definitely a luxury lifestyle.
| It's funny how the tables have turned and a relying on a car is
| now a sign of poverty.
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| There may be a cultural component. A few very poor 1st-
| generation immigrant Dominican and Cambodian communities near
| me are actually super walkable (e.g. grocery store and
| schools within 10-15 min walk). Same with the much richer
| historic downtown. It seems that the white and 2nd+
| generation Hispanic upwardly-mobile middle classes actually
| have the most car-bound lifestyle around here. Maybe being
| able to afford an isolated yet stroad-surrounded single-
| family home is kind of a trap in the long run.
| nostrebored wrote:
| It's a luxury product because, unlike car infrastructure, it's
| not funded extensively by the state.
| mym1990 wrote:
| With a McKinsey and startup background I would almost guarantee
| he is not shooting for the more affordable end of the stick.
| bfeynman wrote:
| truly dystopian to live in a VC backed neighborhood where you
| don't own anything... Maybe if you were recent graduate for a few
| years. The whole idea of not needing a car is also not even that
| exciting. You don't exist in a vacuum in your tiny neighborhood
| in a larger city, you still probably need to get to work, US does
| not build good enough public transportation especially in these
| less dense cities. If you want to get out anywhere else in city
| or leave you'd probably want or need a car. Most people who live
| in NYC live close to people and surprise also do not need cars.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| The idea of a 'car-free lifestyle' is not about never needing a
| car. It is about not going absolutely everywhere in a car.
|
| It's more a freedom from a car-dependance, than it is about
| being rid of a car altogether (although many do that).
| dingnuts wrote:
| It seriously depends on who you talk to. Places like
| r/fuckcars do not give the same impression as your comment.
| On that topic, I immediately discard the opinion of anyone
| who uses the word "stroad"
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| I don't know r/fuckcars but I can imagine the tiny fraction
| of people who frequent there don't like cars. And the tiny
| fraction of a fraction of those that post and comment there
| dislike cars even more.
|
| I don't think that view should become the basis for
| anyone's understanding of people's general view. It is sort
| of like browsing r/qanon and thinking that's conservatism.
|
| > On that topic, I immediately discard the opinion of
| anyone who uses the word "stroad"
|
| That's not a great way to approach conversation.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Keep an eye on Culdesac's career page - I expect positions to be
| posted in the near future with terms such as: spark, data
| warehouse, redshift, AI/ML, etc. This experiment will come with
| mass data mining and analysis to "better serve" its residents.
| HARD PASS on living in tech corporate controlled "neighborhoods".
| ipython wrote:
| I was curious to see what this looks like, so I clicked the link.
|
| All of the pictures in the article totally tell me a different
| story: it looks like a generic concrete wasteland. The hero
| picture has an ugly chain link fence and what looks like a
| parking lot in the foreground. The picture of the interior of the
| model apartment is nothing more than an arty shot of a door (?)
|
| I'll be honest, it looks like a post-apocalyptic brutalist
| concrete jungle to me. I wanted to like it, but there's no way I
| would live in this place.
| undersuit wrote:
| I think you just don't want to live in Phoenix, Arizona. This
| area looks lovely compared to the stroads and shopping malls.
| nologic01 wrote:
| > car-free neighborhood built from scratch
|
| I am not sure the "building from scratch" approach can really
| move the needle in terms of livable and sustainable urban
| environments. Like, how many centuries before natural replacement
| rates would achieve a transition?
|
| The key challenge much of the world is facing (certainly the most
| polluting part of the world) is to rehabilitate the vast numbers
| of existing housing stock, and reinvent better uses of the
| existing urban layouts as people are _stuck_ with them.
|
| An exception where such green-field ideas could have impact would
| be in the context of developing world urbanization (i.e., how not
| to do the same mistakes others did) but there other
| considerations (cost) enter the discussion.
| akamaka wrote:
| The transition to suburban living happened within only a few
| decades, so it's not unreasonable to think we could undo a lot
| of the mistakes within our own lifetimes.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| That happened when there was plenty of available space to
| build such suburban housing. They did not bulldoze vast
| swaths of urban to make room.
|
| If you wanted to do the reverse, that's what you'd need to do
| - unless you're making a new city from scratch.
| akamaka wrote:
| It's also possible to simply abandon undesirable
| neighbourhoods and leave for someplace better. In the most
| extreme example, in the second half of the 20th century,
| half of Detroit's population rapidly left the city, as
| quickly as they had arrived in the first half of the
| century.
|
| It's quite possible that some suburban areas will
| experience the same boom and bust, now that dense cities
| are no longer polluted industrial hell-holes.
| Kerrick wrote:
| > They did not bulldoze vast swaths of urban to make room
|
| They certainly did, depending on your definition of vast.
| "According to estimates from the U.S. Department of
| Transportation, more than 475,000 households and more than
| a million people were displaced nationwide because of the
| federal roadway construction."
|
| https://www.history.com/news/interstate-highway-system-
| infra...
| epistasis wrote:
| The difference is that it won't take much space to replace
| the suburbs with low-car or no-car living. Doing infill
| housing in metropolises is many many times more efficient
| in terms of land use, infrastructure demands, etc.
|
| We don't need to make new cities from scratch at all, we
| simply need to allow gradual redevelopment of the urban
| cores.
| Muromec wrote:
| Why replace suburbs if you can put a tram line or urban
| train and upzone parts of it close to the stations.
| epistasis wrote:
| Exactly! Merely allowing a tiny fraction of already
| developed land to be redeveloped at what were natural
| rates 120 years ago would mean that the suburbs would be
| almost completely untouched while those who want
| something different can also get what they want out of
| life.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's waaaay easier for people to move into new land than it
| is to get them to move back and also change existing areas.
| davidw wrote:
| One idea that I love is the "Accessory Commercial Unit" or ACU,
| taking a page from the "granny flat" or ADU:
|
| https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/15/accessory-comm...
|
| In most places in most American cities and towns, you can't
| just go build a commercial extension to your house like that,
| you have to jump through a lot of hoops, and for a low margin
| business, it's probably not worth it.
|
| Making that kind of thing legal again (it used to be pretty
| much everywhere) will help transform more areas of more cities
| into something a bit more walkable.
| derefr wrote:
| > reinvent better uses of the existing urban layouts as people
| are _stuck_ with them.
|
| They are most certainly _not_.
|
| Many car-dependent cities, large and small, _are_ depopulating,
| quite rapidly. Not from their urban cores, usually; but rather
| specifically from the areas of these cities worst affected by
| car dependence -- the sparse fringes of suburbia, and the
| exurban developments. (The people living in these places have
| the most car-centric, non-urban-infrastructure-reliant
| lifestyles to begin with; so when they don 't like it where
| they are, they simply pack their things in their car and move.
| This makes these suburban fringes and exurbs much more
| _vulnerable_ during low-employment periods, housing-
| affordability crises, etc.)
|
| For many cities, these depopulated fringes and exurbs have
| nobody left in them at this point to _care_ what happens to the
| area; and so, in response, these cities have often been
| literally shrinking, _de-incorporating_ these exurbs from
| themselves, in order to avoid paying infrastructure costs
| indefinitely for roads and pipes and wires that nobody is
| using.
|
| And after 10-or-so years of this state of de-incorporation and
| abandonment, there is nothing of value left in these places to
| directly move into and reuse. A perhaps-surprisingly constant
| amount of maintenance is required, both of buildings and of
| infrastructure, to keep both urban buildings and urban
| infrastructure from falling apart.
|
| * Suburban SFH homes in North America -- usually stick-built,
| and usually in boreal-forest conditions -- that have gone un-
| lived-in for more than five years or so, are almost always a
| total write-off, not worth attempting to repair: they're
| inevitably mostly rotted, the rain having gotten in at one
| point and made a home for humidity and mold/fungus, destroying
| the structural integrity of the framing. (You might be able to
| save homes that have sat in desert climates like Arizona, but
| these have their own problems related to fast oxidation of
| metals, incl. electrical and plumbing. _Maybe_ concrete+plaster
| Mission-style architecture can be saved; but after 10 years of
| disuse, you 'd still need to gut the building to get it livable
| again.)
|
| * An exurban "low-CapEx high-OpEx" asphalt road grid, that
| hasn't been driven on in 10 years, is no longer drivable:
| asphalt does not survive 10 years without maintenance, even if
| nobody is driving on it. It's likely been _undermined_ over
| time with huge numbers of small sinkholes -- sinkholes that
| will become innumerable potholes when the first person brave
| enough to drive down the weathered road runs over them. The
| roads would need, at least, to be mulched up and spat back out
| by a road re-paving machine (with a refill and resurface of the
| undermined subbase + subgrade layers in between) to make them
| safe.
|
| If you're going to have to do both of those things to make
| conditions livable again in that area -- raze all the
| buildings, and recycle all the asphalt -- then you may as well
| do all the razing and asphalt-mulching all at once, first --
| and so end up with a fresh and empty terrain and a pile of
| materials, ready to be re-laid out in whatever (hopefully more
| compact!) fashion you choose.
| pchristensen wrote:
| This was on a 16 acre site in the middle of Tempe (a city with
| over 25,000 acres, for reference). That is any given cluster of
| 10-50 houses in suburban areas. The USA has ~30 million acres
| of suburbs.
|
| While the design and execution of the project look great, the
| key is that it's _legal_. If building like this was legal, by
| right, in more places, then the market would naturally
| transition to something like this if people desire it. Right
| now, any deviation from zoning has to be fought for with time
| and money, and as a rule of thumb, everything that gets built
| will stay that way forever. If successful, desirable, small
| scale projects like this lead to zoning being loosened, then
| hopefully the existing urban layouts will no longer be _stuck_.
| crabmusket wrote:
| I'm reading Jane Jacobs right now- she's excellent broadly, but
| one specific thing she argues for that I found really
| surprising is a diversity in the age of buildings. It's one way
| to make possible the diversity of uses and financial needs that
| are an aspect of vibrant neighbourhoods. In her analysis, older
| buildings tend to have paid off their capital costs.
| epistasis wrote:
| If you try to make this argument today as a reason we should
| build more housing now, it will be dismissed as "trickle down
| housing" ala Reagonomics.
|
| This has been one of my great frustrations when trying to get
| more affordable housing built.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is _across-the-board_ important - because you can rarely
| "build new" what poorer people need. For example, nobody can
| "build used cars" - you need a vibrant car market that has
| used cars available at price points that others can afford.
|
| Same thing applies to houses; you can't "build cheap housing"
| directly - you build _new_ housing and the older housing
| decreases in price.
|
| Which is why I have no problem with a brand new apartment
| building being built and having a luxury bent, even though it
| might be built on top of a walmart or something; the people
| living there free up space elsewhere.
| vel0city wrote:
| I see this comment all around me. The cheap apartments
| around me are the fancy apartments from the 80s. The
| midrange apartments are the fancy apartments from the 90s
| and 00s.
| xnx wrote:
| Seconding this. Affordable housing mandates are
| counterproductive. Let developers put property to "the
| highest and best use". Those who are rich/gullible enough
| to buy new "luxury" units will benefit by getting the
| luxury properties from 20 years ago.
| dtech wrote:
| If the mandate is to built 5 moderately sized
| appartements instead of 3 large units they increase
| supply.
| xnx wrote:
| That seems mathematically true, but doesn't tell the
| whole story. Imagine a common scenario in my city where
| the prospective buyer/renter of one of those new
| apartments is considering tearing down and older multi-
| unit structure to build a single-family home. In that
| situation, the availability of an larger unit could
| result in more total housing units. Because they have
| financial incentive, developers are often the ones in the
| position to best understand what the market wants.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> developers are often the ones in the position to best
| understand what the market wants.
|
| Correct. Developers build to what the market wants. But
| that doesn't mean they build to what _people_ want. If
| given total freedom, developers often chase the upscale
| market, rich people wanting high-priced units. That is
| where profit is to be made. That is what the _market_
| wants. But that is not necessarily what a city actually
| needs.
| hedora wrote:
| Ignoring what the market wants doesn't work. If you
| maximize the return on investment of building more
| housing, then more people will build houses.
|
| If you make housing construction unprofitable, then fewer
| people will build houses.
|
| Also, people act like a glut of luxury housing would be a
| problem. It absolutely wouldn't. It would displace and
| therefore depress prices for midrange units. If the
| developers end up losing money selling their new luxury
| housing at a loss, then they've effectively just
| subsidized the US housing supply.
|
| That's much less expensive for taxpayers than having the
| government subsidize + force people to build housing that
| sells for less than construction costs.
| epistasis wrote:
| Except such mandates never exist, the only mandates on
| unit sizes are minimums, not maximums.
|
| Though I do propose such changes as part of my "urban
| planning is 100% wrong, simply replace the direction of
| every single cap and you will get a better result plan",
| this has not caught on with anybody but me.
| xyzelement wrote:
| This is exactly right. Like most things, looking at topics
| as "supply and demand" enables the right understanding. New
| luxury construction takes demand (and thus dollars) from
| the next-best-thing so it becomes less expensive. That
| enables the people who previously could not afford it to
| seek it, which makes the next-next-best thing less
| expensive in turn.
|
| The flip side of this is when demand outstrips supply, so
| you have people paying several thousands per month for a
| studio in a walkup in Hell's Kitchen. But to be very clear,
| it would cost even more if not for the new high-rises
| within that square mile.
| AwaAwa wrote:
| Building from scratch, requires scratching out many 'unhappy'
| people. But that point is always glossed over, until it is just
| a statistic.
| angarg12 wrote:
| My hometown was founded by romans, and during the last 10 years
| the local government has made big efforts to make the city more
| walkable and pedestrian friendly.
|
| If a 2000+ years old city can do it, surely American towns can.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Didn't the Romans build walkable cities? What happened to
| make them less walkable?
| chongli wrote:
| A 2000 year old city has a much better chance of being
| walkable than an American city. Take a look at something like
| the Dallas/Fort Worth area. It's an enormous sprawling web of
| low density suburbs. To make it walkable would require a very
| large amount of effort and that effort would likely be wasted
| due to the climate. Even a five minute walk down the street
| is going to leave you exhausted and dripping with sweat on
| most summer days there.
| xnx wrote:
| Agree. Dreams of "starting from scratch" are directly analogous
| to programmers who don't care to learn the existing business
| situation or read someone else's code.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| The car free idea is great, but this looks like it's inevitably
| gonna turn into a dystopian nightmare since it's actually cut off
| from the rest of the city.
|
| The great thing about good cities is that they make it easy to
| meet people, but they're also decently large so there are enough
| sub communities that you aren't forced to conform entirely
| because you might otherwise get kicked out of the only community
| available to you. This is a village problem (although villages
| being far less dense make it easier to hide the non conformist
| stuff you might be up to).
|
| This development combines the worst of both worlds. It's too
| small and cut off from the rest of Phoenix to give residents
| access to a large set of sub communities, and it's too dense to
| keep your stuff to yourself.
| NeoTar wrote:
| Hopefully developments like this will encourage the provision
| of good public transport.
|
| Ideally they would be built around transport hubs. A lot of the
| outer London suburbs originated as basically railways stops in
| fields, where the suburb grew around the station.
| nightski wrote:
| Public transport is so inconvenient, even in the best cities.
| Your life revolves around transportation schedules. We walk
| several miles in our neighborhood every day. Yet we love the
| freedom a car gives us.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| In best cities you literally do not care since everything
| runs frequent enough you don't wait.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Because looking for a parking place is so much better...
|
| There are places where a car is nice, or even necessary
| (sports requiring large equipment for example, trips with
| the family), and then there is over using cars and building
| cities that require cars even if it can be done
| differently.
| nightski wrote:
| In our city of 500k (which is arguably small, but
| honestly I think it's the perfect size) we never have to
| look for a spot. There's always free parking available.
| cyrialize wrote:
| My city is less than half of that size. It's impossible
| to find a parking spot and parking is only free on
| Sundays.
|
| To make more parking, they'd have to tear down buildings
| or take away roads. Combined with a poor bus system, it
| ends up being a bad experience.
|
| I'd much rather have a better public transportation
| system in my city, it'd be much easier than having to
| tear things down. More people in the city are pushing for
| this, so hopefully it'll get better.
| nostrebored wrote:
| The parking isn't free. It's subsidized and comes at the
| expense of density, walkability, and the opportunity cost
| of what else could've been built.
| cyrialize wrote:
| A great example of this is the size of parking lots for
| sports stadiums.
|
| There's also several stories (I believe SimCity might be
| one?) of video game developers attempting to make
| representations of places in their game - and then
| removing all the parking lots as they realized it would
| make a boring experience.
| NeoTar wrote:
| Schedules are irrelevant when frequencies are high enough.
| If you look at the most successful public transport systems
| (e.g. in London, Paris and Berlin) trains frequencies are
| often at least every ten minutes off-peak and can be every
| two-three minutes in the peak times. At those frequencies
| you can literally just turn-up and travel.
| nightski wrote:
| This is not true in my experience, Seattle has a pretty
| solid bus system and we still felt like we were having to
| plan around them even though they generally would stop
| every 15 minutes. You could not count on them 100%
| either. Occasionally they just don't show up.
|
| For trains that is great but you still have to get
| to/from the trains. Heck even bus stops require a 5-10
| minute walk some times. So it's the walk to the bus stop,
| planning if the bus doesn't show up, the transit time
| which could include a lot of stops, and so forth. It
| really adds up to a lot of time lost.
| comte7092 wrote:
| Seattle has a pretty good bus system _for the US_ but a
| pretty mediocre one globally.
|
| When we talk about "frequent enough" 15 minutes is an
| eternity, honestly it is the bare minimum for what could
| be considered frequent.
|
| Frequent is every 5-6 minutes. I've had commutes where
| the headway was 2 minutes. It doesn't matter if the
| train/bus is late or doesn't show up at that point.
| kiba wrote:
| _This is not true in my experience, Seattle has a pretty
| solid bus system and we still felt like we were having to
| plan around them even though they generally would stop
| every 15 minutes. You could not count on them 100%
| either. Occasionally they just don 't show up._
|
| 15 minutes is not frequent enough.
| yibg wrote:
| That's not a good public transit. Personally I wouldn't
| consider any city in the US to have good public transit.
| Traveling around in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai for
| instance, I never even look at the train schedule unless
| it's very late at night (to make sure I can catch the
| last train).
| slashdev wrote:
| Buses typically aren't frequent enough except on the most
| popular routes to just turn up without planning. Subways
| / light rail systems usually are frequent enough.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Seattle's public transport is not on the level of London
| or Paris. The stops are not close enough and the service
| is not frequent enough.
| jillornot wrote:
| I have found the opposite. Tokyo, Kyoto, Singapore, Hong
| Kong, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, all of them public
| transportation was way way WAY more convenient than a car.
| Lived with a car the first 16 years of my adult life
| followed by 16 years no car. The no car years were better.
| Now I live in SF with car. SF might be considered to have
| good public transportation by many in the USA but it's shit
| compared to those other cites and it's not convenient. It's
| really only useful if you live really close to one of the
| tram lines.
|
| Further, in those other cities, public transportation is
| clean and something everyone uses. In USA cities outside of
| NYC, public transportation is largely considered a service
| provided to those too poor to own a car. As such it's
| always shit.
| ZekeSulastin wrote:
| That's why you ideally have a city with a good public
| transportation schedule - it's not like having a car makes
| your transit planning immune to external factors anyways.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's cutoff from what now? It's smack downtown and has a light
| rail station.
| JTbane wrote:
| >The car free idea is great, but this looks like it's
| inevitably gonna turn into a dystopian nightmare since it's
| actually cut off from the rest of the city.
|
| This kind of thinking makes no sense, you can have public
| transit (or even private taxis and bus lines) that fully solves
| this issue. Heck, many NJ beach towns have private "Jitney"
| lines that do well.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Yeah considering that we know it's possible to have walkable
| neighborhoods and cities without being outright hostile to
| vehicles (see: Japan), I don't see much value added.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Japan facilitates that with the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car , which is the exact
| opposite of the US tax incentives to make bigger cars so they
| can be labelled "trucks".
| slothtrop wrote:
| That's true, to say nothing of zoning
| ProcNetDev wrote:
| Owning a personal car and mobility are different things. You
| can meet people and hang out with them, without owning a car.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Many of the proposals I've seen for car-free neighborhoods in
| the US have parking at the edges. You can't drive to your
| house, but you can drive to a parking structure 1000 feet from
| your house.
| dingnuts wrote:
| Let me just tell my disabled wife that she has to walk a
| fifth of a mile to the house after she parks, she'll love
| that on the days when the fatigue is bad or her feet feel
| like pins and needles.
|
| God forbid we have the absolute luxury of parking by the
| door.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| That's definitely a concern. Considering that 60% of all
| car trips in the US are less than six miles, the goal would
| be to provide alternatives so she doesn't have to drive.
|
| Unrelatedly this is actually the irony of the 15 minute
| cities fracas in my mind: america is already full of
| fifteen minute towns. 15 minutes from leaving the door to
| your destination in a car. That kind of thing can feel
| freeing, but it is really a prison that ties you to making
| money if you want mobility. In contrast I see older folks
| and disabled folks moving around all the time in my
| walkable city with ok transit. Their mobility still
| requires money, but much less money.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| Culdesac seems like just an apartment complex. Of course i'm
| happy too being able to walk from my bedroom to the kitchen
| instead of taking the car.
|
| What happens when someone needs to go get groceries at a walmart?
| Or go to a la fitness? (i'm using brand names on purpose instead
| of grocery or gym since a "local bodega" that could be able to
| fit in the complex would unlikely have what i need). Merely
| having a checkbox saying that thing exists within the 15 min
| radius isn't enough.
|
| tbh i just don't see high quality of life coupled with car-free
| happening in the USA due to how big it is.
| bombcar wrote:
| High QoL car-free or car-reduced is perfectly possible in the
| USA, but it usually involves living in a more semi-rural area
| (a small town of 8-15k) - because by definition those are small
| enough to walk across.
| runnr_az wrote:
| Worth noting - we just survived the hottest summer on record in
| PHX. Even by our standards, insanely brutal. No fun waiting for
| the bus in 115
| irrational wrote:
| Are the people that live in walkable neighborhoods wealthier than
| the average US citizen? Maybe it's not the neighborhood but the
| freedom from financial stress.
| cbeach wrote:
| I wish all anti-motorist activists could go live in this utopian
| city and be happy, as opposed to lobbying for measures that make
| my family life more difficult.
|
| * My parents live 50 miles away, impossible to reach to on public
| transport with kids and related paraphernalia
|
| * My young kids are in different school/childcare settings
| requiring us to drive
|
| * We do regular large supermarket/DIY shops that cannot be taken
| on public transport
|
| * We explore different rural and coastal areas with our kids that
| aren't practically reachable by public transport.
|
| In the UK, anti-motorist lobbyists have been successful in
| pushing for punitive measures (e.g. roadblocks AKA "LTN", road
| narrowing, modal filters, road closures, mass-surveillance-based
| road charging AKA "ULEZ", absurd blanket 20mph speed limits on
| inappropriate roads) and we need to push back.
|
| Reject propaganda pushed by The Guardian and similar metro-leftie
| publications. It's deeply unrepresentative and manipulative.
| convolvatron wrote:
| I live off a street that put up barriers during covid to
| radically slow down car traffic, and its stayed that way. People
| still can get cars in and out to park, and delivery vans,
| contractors and trash pickup all still work fine. But no one uses
| that street as a throughway because it just takes too long.
|
| Because that street is filled with people jogging, taking sunset
| walks, and children playing. People sitting on chairs in the
| shade talking.
|
| We're supposed to reject this because we need to support the
| freedom for people to barrel down residential roads.
| platz wrote:
| How do Emergency Services operate in such a city?
|
| How do you make it to the hospital if you can't ride a bike in
| your current state?
| angio wrote:
| Roads still exists, but they're only used in emergencies or by
| people with special permits (e.g. disabled). Walkable
| communities are more dense and with less traffic, so emergency
| vehicles can reach destination faster in most cases.
| numbers_guy wrote:
| Culture and attitude are a billion times more important than city
| planning when it comes to happy communities. Anyone who has
| traveled can tell you this. According to all these stupid blog
| articles from Americans, I have lived in 7 different heavens, but
| the reality I experienced was markedly different.
|
| Just because people live densely packed together does not mean
| that they will decide to strike up a conversation and get to know
| each other. It does not mean that there will be five people
| lending a hand when you need help. Quite the opposite. Americans
| take for granted their culture, which in these aspects is better
| than what you will find in many European cities.
|
| Actually thinking about it, packing people densely together might
| even foster a culture that is more insular, cold and hostile than
| what the typical American is accustomed to.
| purpleblue wrote:
| I spent a month in downtown major city this summer and I loved
| it. I could walk to work, walk my kids to summer camp, we all
| took the subway and walked sometimes back home. They loved it,
| and I loved it, despite being on a crowded subway or street car.
| Just the sheer human interaction and people watching made it so
| much more enjoyable than spending our time in a car isolated from
| the rest of the world. Yes, I wasn't accustomed to the noise and
| the ambulance and police sirens, but overall it was amazing and
| will try to do it next summer as well.
| iteria wrote:
| I was car-less until I was 27. I lived in cities with crappy
| public transit and great. I even lived in France for a summer.
| I continue to say that I like towns that are "bikable". I hated
| being in the heat, the rain, and the snow without a car. It's
| infinitely more comfortable, but I don't want to _forced_ to
| drive everywhere. I honestly hated the kind of mixed use that
| true urban mandates.
|
| I like where I live now. A proper town that got eaten by a
| major city so it's a "suburb". Because it was always meant to
| be a functional stand alone city, it has everything you'd need
| within a reasonable walk or bike. You can bike the whole town.
| I can walk to 3 grocery stores and the basics, but there's a
| proper (in my opinion) segregation of concerns. I think the
| town could use a basic bus system for the kids in town and then
| it would be perfect, but NIMBYs alas.
|
| I'd honestly prefer something like this. Which i guess when why
| I live in a small town. I really prefer driving everywhere. I
| like space, but I don't like the idea that lacking a car means
| you starve to death.
| angarg12 wrote:
| I'm from a Spanish city that for the last few years has invested
| heavily in infrastructure. One of the most controversial
| decisions was to pedestrianize big chunks of the old town.
| Despite concerns about traffic, I have yet to meet a single
| person who doesn't love the idea. What used to be mazes of roads
| and cars are now public spaces, filled with parks, art
| installations or events. People can walk or cycle safely, and
| bars and cafes have large terraces for people to sit. More cities
| should give this a try.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| This seems extremely premature.
|
| According to the article so far 36 people live there. out of the
| expected 1.000 people who will reside there when the development
| is finished in 2025
|
| I think you should wait till everyone has moved in, and then give
| it a year or two, and then write an article about how people are
| much happier there.
|
| I have confidence that results probably would not change that
| much since the development is custom built and hyped as a car-
| free place to live.
|
| It will attract people who are looking for that and you would
| think they would be happy.
|
| However, you cannot use this as an argument that people in
| general would be happier with such changes, since you start out
| with a highly biased sample.
|
| I have nothing against walkable neighborhoods. It is nice
| Personally, I have zero desire to live Phoenix Arizona without a
| car. I have lived there, and it gets insanely hot during the
| summer.
|
| (a side note: Arizona already has major trouble getting enough
| water for everyone who lives there already. I dont think
| expanding the population is sustainable idea)
| pchristensen wrote:
| [delayed]
| hprotagonist wrote:
| this is hardly the first.
|
| i know of a cohousing nonprofit that did this in central MA in
| 2007: big parking lot down at the end of the drive, then it's
| about 35 houses with footpaths and green space and common areas
| and whatnot all built together; motor vehicles are not permitted.
|
| it's a nice place! the biggest thing i notice is that there are a
| few packs of kids running around all the time, and nobody has to
| worry about anyone getting hit by a car.
| lasermike026 wrote:
| I agree 1000%. The sooner we ditch cars the better. We can do it.
| Most Americans don't want to do but they don't know what is good
| for them.
| dark-star wrote:
| I wonder what you are supposed to do when you have bigger
| errands to run. Buying groceries for a family for whole week,
| get new furniture, going on vacation trip, etc.
|
| I mean, yeah, it's great that you have everything necessary
| within walking distance, but sometimes you simply need to make
| larger trips...
|
| I feel like there should be some kind of middle-ground...
| ZekeSulastin wrote:
| Part of the implication is that your habits would change with
| different transportation - for example a fairly common
| response about groceries is buying them in smaller quantities
| every few days at the (likely smaller and/or more
| specialized) grocer convenient to your home or transit stop;
| renting a truck or cargo van to self move furniture as needed
| if you can't get it professionally moved (which probably
| isn't a bad idea even if you do primarily use a car!);
| renting a car for a road trip or being able to use transit to
| get there instead; that kind of thing.
| jetrink wrote:
| > Buying groceries for a family for whole week
|
| That's the thing: when your grocery store is a short walk
| away, you don't buy groceries for the whole week. You just
| duck into the store on the walk home or you walk over at
| lunch. You buy things for that evening or a few days at most.
| Having to plan for a whole week of meals seems normal to us,
| but it's an adaptation to the fact that we live too far from
| grocery stores. With our large fridges, cabinets, pantries,
| and chest freezers, we basically turn part of our homes into
| well-stocked convenience stores so that we can go out as
| little as possible.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Having a grocery store a short distance away is not
| contingent on eliminating cars. However, modern grocery
| stores are massive. An increase in clusters that service
| smaller areas would necessitate smaller stock. We have
| convenience stores of course, but what do people buy there?
| Junk. If they're all specialized, then it means more stops
| and consequently more time invested in daily grocery runs.
|
| I don't think this is a common setup for any developed
| country with 2 income households. Likely the daily-run for
| groceries occurs in areas where women are homemakers. Is
| that part of the pitch? There's no way we're going back to
| that, or daily grocery runs.
| alistairSH wrote:
| You buy groceries more frequently as it's more convenient to
| stop in on your evening walk or bike ride.
|
| Bulky purchases are relatively rare and can be accomplished
| by delivery service, renting a van, or using a cargo bike
| (one of which makes groceries and transporting small children
| easier as well).
|
| Vacations - rent a car, take the train, etc.
|
| Anyways, few people want to outright ban cars. Look at the
| Netherlands - most families still have a car, it just doesn't
| get used daily. It's a convenience instead of a necessity.
| Maybe they use it to commute, but not to take kids to school
| or run small errands.
|
| The average cost of owning a car in the US is around
| $10,000/year. Even the ability to cut from 2 cars to 1 car
| (for a typical family with two working adults) is a MASSIVE
| economic benefit.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| A lot of your lifestyle changes.
|
| You buy groceries more often, but less of them. Or you bring
| a wagon or those metal carts.
|
| Furniture etc. gets delivered. Because everyone gets
| deliveries, the cost is lower because they have stable
| demand.
|
| With good transit, you take it to the station or rental car
| if you're doing a road trip.
| JSavageOne wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of walkable cities (generally the norm outside the
| U.S) but the article doesn't actually any good pictures of the
| neighborhood, and the few pictures look terrible.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Also the data in the article that supports the headline that
| "People are happier" is a quote from the developer.
| mym1990 wrote:
| This seems plausible to me, but the principle holds here that
| correlation is not causation.
|
| "People are happier and healthier, and even wealthier when
| they're living in a walkable neighborhood."
|
| From my experience(so sample size 1), walkable neighborhoods in
| the US are usually not the affordable ones.
|
| Banning cars seems like a bad design...just design cities where
| cars are de-incentivized(small lanes, less parking, high fees,
| special permits, whatever) and provide _some_ infrastructure for
| those that really need them.
| bombcar wrote:
| Wealthier people are happier, build thing that can only be used
| by wealthy people - voila! A happiness machine!
|
| Public transit takes _decades_ to take hold - because you have
| to build the lines and _then_ wait for the density to increase
| around them. If you try to go the other way, the people have to
| use cars _first_ and then the car is perpetual.
|
| But if you are willing to work those decades, you can finally
| get something pretty impressive - the San Diego Trolley runs
| 7.5 min separation on its main line:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BDMmgpvIDk
| mym1990 wrote:
| Public transit in the US takes decades because it already
| starts at a disadvantage vs European/Asian countries due to
| public perception. It takes decades because the procurement
| process is mired in red tape.
|
| "The best time to start something was yesterday, the 2nd best
| time is today" can be applied here. If something taking a
| long time is a deterrent, it will never get done(or take 20
| years to get it done).
| alistairSH wrote:
| The average cost of car ownership is somewhere around $10k/year
| (from AAA). That buys a lot of extra _stuff_ in a higher COL
| area (but no, it 's won't close the entire gap between a rural
| town and SV or NYC).
|
| In addition to cutting car ownerships costs borne by residents,
| there are savings at the community level. Less road
| maintenance, less real estate used for parking (and put to
| better economic use), etc.
|
| Very few people want to literally ban cars at neighbrhood/town
| scale. Most just want them de-emphasized, with certain roads
| closed/redeveloped for foot/bike/transit.
| mym1990 wrote:
| I'm totally onboard with you, not sure if you're re-affirming
| what I said or interpreted it differently, but in this case
| the developer _literally_ wants to ban cars.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Reaffirming, plus adding the cost to own a car, which I
| think gets overlooked by many people.
| ProcNetDev wrote:
| The framing of this story is so weird (and I think meant to
| trigger conspiracy nuts.)
|
| The story of culdesac is about parking not about banning
| mobility!
|
| Parking is insanely expensive to build. The only way the city
| would let them not build parking was for residents to agree to
| not own cars. (I think this is a clear 14th amendment violation
| but thats just me.)
|
| Read Henry Garbar's new book for the full story on parking:
| https://www.npr.org/2023/05/09/1174962751/paved-paradise-exa...
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > I think this is a clear 14th amendment violation but thats
| just me.
|
| Care to expand a little? What exactly is a clear violation?
| ProcNetDev wrote:
| Allowing access to city services (street parking) based on
| land ownership (or lack there of) seems (to me, a software
| engineer, not a lawyer) like a violation of the equal
| protection clause.
|
| I think the relevant case is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A
| rlington_County_Board_v._Rich...
|
| Where the SCOTUS said yeah this is bad but it's okay because
| we want to encourage non-homeowners to take the bus. This was
| decided before there was lots of clear research on
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
|
| Allowing homeowners free and easily accessible on street
| parking encourages more car ownership.
| gedy wrote:
| Yeah while I applaud new ideas, and them actually designing for
| the site, this is basically an apartment complex with no
| parking. It's not a neighborhood, it's in an existing
| neighborhood. The addition of some commerce is nice, but this
| is not some self contained destination.
|
| Tempe, Arizona is not a practical place I'd want to be without
| a car, due to the high heat.
| ProcNetDev wrote:
| Not owning a car is different from never riding in a car.
| That money not spent on parking every month can buy a lot of
| ride shares.
| dingnuts wrote:
| I can afford about four trips to downtown in an Uber for
| the annual cost of my car insurance, registration, and
| parking, but sure
| alistairSH wrote:
| You're well below average if that's true. AAA reports the
| average annual cost to own a car is around $10,000 -
| that's all inclusive - purchase, financing, insurance,
| maintenance, parking, etc.
|
| In my area, an Uber trip from my house to the grocer, my
| office, or the local school is $10-$15.
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| Wouldn't this self select people who are willing to ditch
| vehicles.
|
| Shocking that folks selectively willing to live in an area with
| specific rules are happier living in the area with specific
| rules they self selected into.
|
| I am all for people being allowed to self select into
| communities that fit their lifestyles.
| ProcNetDev wrote:
| They ditched personal vehicles. Not owning a car is different
| than not having mobility. They aren't hermits.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Well, yes. It's a sort of inhabitable theme park. "It's
| positively European, somewhere between Mykonos and Ibiza,",
| per article - it does indeed look like all those holiday
| photos of Mykonos or Corfu.
|
| To be clear: this is a compliment. I think it's good that
| people are allowed to have a variety of living environments
| and try things every now and again.
| xnx wrote:
| Ironically, self-driving cars are probably the most realistic
| route to walkable neighborhoods. Self-driving cars are much
| better road citizens (obeying traffic laws and driving
| courteously) and don't require any of the parking that human-
| driving cars do. If the self-driving cars become widespread for
| human transportation and deliveries, we will be shocked at the
| amount of free space have that can be put to better use.
| BariumBlue wrote:
| self-driving cars are also much worse at handling the ambiguity
| of mixed vehicle-human spaces. They work best when the
| infrastructure is specifically dedicated to them - a place
| designed for cars.
| xnx wrote:
| This is definitely a huge challenge, but the progress that
| Waymo is making (stark contrast to Tesla or Cruise) is very
| encouraging. An attentive driver can definitely handle the
| most confusing situations better than the current self-
| driving vehicles currently, but attentive and courteous
| drivers are rare in the US.
| latortuga wrote:
| Questionable take. The best road "citizens" are trams, trains,
| and subways. They all obey traffic laws and are reliable. Self-
| driving cars don't exist in any meaningful way. The most
| realistic route to walkable neighborhoods is good public
| transit, bike infrastructure, and repealing of restrictive
| zoning. Walkable neighborhoods already exists all over Europe
| and work _today_ unlike the pipe dream of self-driving cars.
| xnx wrote:
| There are definitely situations where legacy public transit
| makes sense, but at up to $1 billion/mile for urban railway
| that doesn't seem a practical future for the US. I'd love to
| snap my fingers and make more cities in the US to be like
| Amsterdam, but there are hundreds of historical, political,
| and climactic reasons why that is not a feasible path for US
| cities at this point. The consistent and deliberately boring
| progress of Waymo has me very optimistic that there is a
| better way. For tech crowds, the best analogy I have is the
| switch from dedicated copper to packet-switched networks.
| We're on the verge of unleashing dramatically more efficient
| utilization of existing pipes (road infrastructure).
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| How do they not require parking? What do you do with them when
| people aren't using them? They're either parked or circulating
| idle. If they're circulating you can only have a more walkable
| neighborhood by excluding them, which means they are elsewhere
| and making those neighorhoods _less_ walkable.
|
| In some ways rideshare has given a preview of this model and it
| simply is not the future. Cars can't save us from cars.
| xnx wrote:
| A self-driving car that sits idle is a wasted resource, so
| the owner will always want to put it to some profitable use
| by moving people or goods. Contrast that to human-owned
| vehicles that spend 95% their life parked:
| https://www.reinventingparking.org/2013/02/cars-are-
| parked-9... That's a tremendous amount of the earths mineral
| resources that were mined, processed, and transported (at
| great carbon expense) to sit around doing nothing.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| > A self-driving car that sits idle is a wasted resource
|
| This is also true of _non_ -self driving cars, yet we
| structure our resources around this case. Car use has
| extreme & predictable peaks with long down periods between
| them. If we couldn't prevent it the first time what are we
| doing differently to prevent it the second time?
|
| And again rideshare has given us a slight preview of this.
| The taxi constraints incentivize having cars near their
| predicted users. We'll either need to build and maintain
| waiting-car storage in central areas (eg parking), or
| accept idle circulation in down times.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > and don't require any of the parking that human-driving cars
| do
|
| Could you unpack that? It doesn't make much sense to me. We
| don't want them driving around all day, we don't want them to
| drive home, and if it's a communal usage type thing they need
| to be stored outside of peak hours.
| xnx wrote:
| Like a taxi, an autonomous car that's parked or not carrying
| a passenger is wasting money, so owners will want them to be
| productively utilized for paying trips as much as possible.
| Other than for charging, there's no reason for a self-driving
| car to sit in one place car to wear it self out driving
| around empty. This means that roadside parking and parking
| lots will be dramatically less useful for their original
| purpose.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| So we would have all of a rush hour's worth of cars on the
| road all the time?
| xnx wrote:
| If freedom to move about freely is a desirable thing
| (think: making more jobs accessible to people without
| their own car without an hour-long multi-stage commute),
| this is a great outcome! A self-driving rush hour would
| also be very different from the ones we know today. No
| irritated, distracted, or road-raging drivers. Immediate
| and safe yielding to any pedestrian who used the road. As
| a regular urban cyclist during rush-hour, I would
| instantly trade a road full of distracted commuters
| juggling a cup of coffee and looking at their phone with
| self-driving cars. Further, surge pricing would
| discourage people from traveling at peak times. I know of
| no public transit system that has anything like surge
| pricing, which therefore means that the systems must be
| overbuilt for peak capacity.
| ianburrell wrote:
| So instead of using parking, they will use road space while
| cruising around. That is worse, parking space is valuable,
| but road lanes are even more valuable. Unless you are
| suggesting taking parking for road, which is worse for
| pedestrians. Self-driving cars don't help if everybody is
| stuck in traffic caused by empty cars.
| slily wrote:
| Living in New York City, the most walkable city in the US I
| believe, was the unhappiest I've been in my life, and I know
| plenty of others who feel the same way. So, there's that.
| mym1990 wrote:
| I think the fact that it is NYC might have a more outsized
| effect than it being walkable. Tokyo felt like a very walkable
| city, whilst still being so densely populated...in conjunction
| with its amazing public transport it was a wonderful
| experience.
| slily wrote:
| Of course, I prefer walkable environments as well in the
| right conditions, but the headline implies that they are
| strictly superior, which isn't true when your society is low-
| trust and anti-social, and most walkable US city
| neighborhoods, or at least the ones that are affordable to
| people who are not very well off, are that. Today I live in a
| suburban area, and the calm and safety more than make up for
| the low walkability.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Absolutely. Anecdote but yesterday I was at a light on an
| off-ramp from a highway and a guy got out of the car next
| to me, and my first reaction was that he might have
| malicious intent(turned out he was just checking the front
| of his car because he may have hit something). That was
| definitely a low-trust moment! Walking around NYC is
| similar, I am trying to make sure not to get pickpocketed
| or worse.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Were you in Manhattan or one of the other boroughs?
|
| I suspect Manhattan (and the densest parts of the other
| boroughs) have enough density, business, noise to offset the
| benefits of being walkable.
|
| But, I'd guess there are plenty of residential neighborhoods in
| NYC that are close to being "15 min cities" on their own.
| brk wrote:
| In a weird way I've never considered NYC to rank highly on the
| "walkable" scale. There are too many other people out walking,
| and too many cross streets where you are constantly waiting to
| cross.
|
| IMO, "walkable city" means not just that you can technically
| walk to a large number of places, but that you can do so
| relatively unimpeded.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > his enthusiasm for car-free living was born, he said, from
| living and traveling in countries such as Hungary, Japan and
| South Africa
|
| I don't know about Hungary or Japan, but South Africa has
| extremely high car usage. Unless he lived in a very expensive
| area where you can also work (e.g. Melrose Arch or Parkhurst).
| nostrebored wrote:
| I lived without a car in the Western Cape for years. I had a
| shopping center, day care, and office all within ten minutes of
| where I stayed.
|
| Yes it was expensive, but car free living is going to be
| expensive until cities actually prioritize it. We've already
| funded car infrastructure for so long, and urban cores directly
| subsidize the rest of the area, even in areas where the urban
| core is poor. It's not absurd to expect a redistribution of
| funding.
| pjc50 wrote:
| South Africa has fairly low car ownership:
| https://mg.co.za/motoring/2023-01-31-are-the-days-of-car-own...
|
| 12 million cars for 60 million people, about 1/5. By
| comparison, the US has nine cars for every ten people.
|
| I suspect there are a _lot_ of South Africans who are too poor
| to own a car.
| newsclues wrote:
| I don't drive but I don't want to live in a city that just bans
| cars.
|
| I want to live in a city built that people choose not to drive
| because the other options are better, faster and more convenient.
|
| Walkable cities need to outcompete the status quo!
| anonyfox wrote:
| from a european perspective: thats so blatantly obvious, I am
| kinda baffled that this is even news :-(
|
| isn't the "third place" concept not widely known/accepted? (1st
| place: work, 2nd place: home, 3rd place: communal spaces) The
| availability/quality of these 3rd places _directly_ correlates
| with QoL/happiness of people. I would get severe depression when
| I only swap between home/work/car, thats not a life, thats
| surviving, in isolation.
| Kalium wrote:
| The issue with third spaces in the US is making and keeping
| them fit for purpose. When they tend to be commercialized,
| squatted on, or otherwise put to exclusive use they are often
| no longer useful third spaces.
|
| What we tend to have is third spaces that are policed in some
| manner. Often by commerce, as that does a pretty good job of
| keeping away those considered undesirable without literally
| calling police. Some call this privatization, which is accurate
| but overlooks that the money-based gating of access is a key
| feature.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Commerce doesn't do away with the undesirables. Target sees
| theft get higher they respond by putting the deodorant under
| lock and key and keep the same staffing level.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I think a lot of people in the US see the communal spaces as a
| lost cause.
| panzagl wrote:
| Mostly because we can't drink there.
| acabal wrote:
| I think most people in the suburban US have no idea what a
| public, car-free, communal space where people can casually
| gather without buying something even _is_.
|
| At this point, entire generations have grown up in unwalkable
| suburban life, using cars as the only mode of getting from
| point A to point B from the day they were born, with a strip
| mall as the only place to go - and even then only if you have
| to run an errand or get the occasional meal out.
|
| Having been been isolated from a real third space like public
| plazas since probably the 60s or 70s, it's no surprise that
| today's suburban generation views them with suspicion,
| confusion, and disdain. They like their strip malls just fine
| thank you very much, and anyway, how would they park their
| car?
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| > most people in the suburban US have no idea what a
| public, car-free, communal space where people can casually
| gather without buying something even is.
|
| They all know what a park/playground is
| acabal wrote:
| Playgrounds require you to have children with you - for
| example I don't think it would be socially acceptable for
| a group of unaccompanied adults to show up to a
| playground and sip some beers while they chat quietly
| amongst themselves, like you might do in a public plaza
| in Europe.
|
| Municipal parks are nice third spaces, like the kind you
| can find in Savannah. But I think there are very few such
| parks in suburban America that are not also mostly
| playgrounds. I would not count nature reserves as real
| third spaces.
| et-al wrote:
| [delayed]
| oldpersonintx wrote:
| ?
|
| we have public open spaces as large as some EU nations
|
| feel free to tally up parkland in North America by acreage vs
| the EU...
| mcpackieh wrote:
| I think he means communal spaces in densely populated urban
| areas, not national parks and forests that are remote
| enough to keep most of the antisocial scum away.
|
| Take for instance, Pioneer Square in Seattle. If you look
| at the structure of the parks, buildings, sidewalks and
| streets it should be very nice. Lots of nice trees, wide
| sidewalks and it's pretty flat and easy to walk around. But
| in reality it's filled with awful people which ruins it.
| bombcar wrote:
| I think a lot of people in the US refuse to see as "communal
| spaces" what lots of _other_ people in the US use as their
| communal spaces.
| the_biot wrote:
| [flagged]
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| Thing is there are enough people who lived at several places
| and have real experiences and funded opinions.. some say
| there exist even people who do this kind of objective
| studies, etc. Crazy world! No need to stick and believe in
| bubbles, it seems.
| lm28469 wrote:
| [flagged]
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > Or you know, we had different lives and it made us have
| different opinions.
|
| They said "from a European perspective".
|
| A Minnesotan would probably get upset if a Floridian said
| that living in a humid, tropical climate was _the_ American
| experience (directly or indirectly).
| JWLong wrote:
| Okay. Here is similar propaganda from an American source
| https://youtu.be/tI3kkk2JdoI?si=HP0eaph7OnWPPFXB
| pjc50 wrote:
| Classic internet-culture comment, telling someone their own
| lived experience is propaganda.
| throwawa14223 wrote:
| 3rd places have been politically co-oped. The best we can do is
| defund them.
| pjc50 wrote:
| What does this even mean?
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Third place is just where they pour out the beer or vodka.
| You can't "defund" them - what an American perspective tho.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Not coopted, privatized. There are surprisingly few places
| one can go in the US without the expectation of spending
| money
| huytersd wrote:
| That's not what the GP is talking about. It's some right
| wing talking point about how libraries have books about
| minorities.
| throwawa14223 wrote:
| In my area it is usually the right being disruptive but
| it isn't wholly unique to the right.
| mwerd wrote:
| I spent a week touring Rome and didn't see a single public
| bathroom.
|
| Every society makes its choices and some of those seem
| weird when you look on the other side of the fence. The US
| is unique, sure, but so are other countries.
| throwawa14223 wrote:
| People have a strong preference for privatized spaces
| because truly public spaces are unfit for purpose. A coffee
| shop has a right to kick out protesters that a town square
| is lacking, as one of many examples. People value that lack
| of disruption in a very noticeable way.
| standardUser wrote:
| In most of the world, most of the time, people peacefully
| coexist in public places with little or no disruption.
|
| If a person insists on zero disruption, they likely will
| avoid shared spaces all together, since even shared
| private spaces can't provide protection from all
| disruption all of the time.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I live in an admittedly more rural part of the USA but one of
| the things I love doing is hopping in my Jeep and going out
| into the many thousands of miles of off-road wilderness to
| camp, go shooting, or go for a hike, where more often than not
| I never have to interact with another human being.
|
| My "quality of life" is 1000% better than if I required a
| crowded train to take me to an urban "communal space" in order
| to enjoy nature.
| conjecTech wrote:
| That is not the alternative being discussed here. 80% of the
| US population is urban. We could not undo that without a huge
| degradation is quality of life. Cities are incredible engines
| for wealth creation. The alternative more or less imposed by
| law is suburbs that don't have access to communal space or
| nature.
| xyzelement wrote:
| // The alternative more or less imposed by law
|
| What do you mean _imposed by law_?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Move to Ottawa Canada to get the best of both works. Gatineau
| Park, which contains hundreds of kilometers of wilderness
| trails is 3 miles from the Parliament buildings in downtown
| Ottawa, population 1 million. You'll meet people at the trail
| head but it's easy to hike 20 km without seeing another.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=gatineau+park&tbm=isch
| stetrain wrote:
| To me the hell is in the middle.
|
| Your own single-family home but so close to the neighbors
| that it's basically "I'm not touching you!" with enough space
| for the HOA-paid lawn service to squeak their mowers through
| twice a week.
|
| Perfectly manicured grass, and no trees except a few
| sproutlings along the road because they were all cut down to
| raise the fill for the new roads and houses.
|
| Your friend could live half a mile away as the crow flies,
| but they live in a different gated HOA community than you do,
| and you'd have to trespass through yards to walk directly
| there, so the route by road is more like 5 miles.
|
| Every task you may want to do requires getting in your car
| and sitting at three traffic lights minimum.
|
| The car pickup line at the elementary school overflows onto
| the main road everyday at 3pm with hundreds of Chevy Tahoes
| each picking up one child. These children may live within a
| few miles of the school but sending them out to walk or bike
| along the 50mph six-lane road that connects all of the gated
| communities is of course outright dangerous.
|
| Shops and restaurants are dominated by chains because there's
| so little spontaneity of finding a new place, and not enough
| concentration of population or foot traffic for cool local
| businesses to find a niche.
|
| ...
|
| I'm totally cool with living out in the woods, in a true
| rural lifestyle. I also like being places where maybe my
| personal living space is a bit more closed in but I get
| something in return for that. Walkable amenities. A sense of
| neighborhood or town community. Walking and biking trails.
| Cool local restaurants and shops and breweries that couldn't
| survive in the low-density rural environment or in the
| suburban hellscape.
|
| It's that weird in-between that the US loved to build for the
| last 50 years, and is still building in a lot of places, that
| just seems dystopian to me.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| If you work a "normal" job eg one that requires proximity to
| people this is basically a role play lifestyle. Subsidized by
| the cheap gas and roads that make personal vehicle use
| affordable. We'd all love to cut out to nature at will, and
| we should build infrastructure that _does_ allow us all to.
| juliend2 wrote:
| Thanks for mentionning it. I just found this interesting
| wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
|
| This is not common concept to me neither.
| jononomo wrote:
| This is why I prefer the East Coast of the US to the West Coast
| -- many cities on the East Coast matured before the dominance of
| the automobile, which makes them slightly more walkable. The West
| Coast is just car culture down to it's bones.
|
| Even on the East Coast, however, people will drive 50 MPH down
| tree-lined residential streets, such as the one I currently live
| on in Lancaster, PA, and there are plenty of people here who
| drive massive pickup trucks that never seem to be picking up
| anything.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| It's a time honored tradition here in Lancaster. One must have
| speed to vault over the potholes.
|
| Though I will say that while Lancaster city itself and a lot of
| the surrounding townships are themselves walkable, they're like
| little islands of an archipelago. It's not easy to get between
| one or the other without using a vehicle because of the stroads
| and highways.
| jononomo wrote:
| Yes, I completely agree --- tiny islands of walkability.
|
| Lancaster does have an Amtrak station, though, so you can get
| to NYC without a car and then walk around there.
| slothtrop wrote:
| It's ironic to me because it flies in the face of their
| politics.
| cafard wrote:
| Whose politics, or which politics? According to Wikipedia,
| Trump took 57% of the vote in Lancaster County in 2020.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I meant the West Coast. User edited their comment
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