[HN Gopher] Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees
___________________________________________________________________
Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees
Author : jbrins1
Score : 149 points
Date : 2024-01-30 19:13 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (danrodricks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (danrodricks.com)
| gfs wrote:
| The book mentioned in this article (Paved Paradise) is eye-
| opening. I'm nearly done reading it and have a whole new
| perspective on the matter.
| falcolas wrote:
| I'd rather they put in an indigenous meadow. Trees are awesome,
| but so are open green spaces that maintain themselves.
| Spivak wrote:
| Why not both? Trees in the manner they're describing where it's
| just helping the forested area expand back out doesn't require
| human involvement either.
|
| The selfish human reason to want trees as a natural heat
| regulator is I think alone worth the benefit in areas with lots
| of asphalt where people will be near.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Cities are hot. Cities with lots of mature trees providing
| shade on the sidewalks make it a lot more bearable.
| falcolas wrote:
| Merely eliminating a lot of the black heat sinks (i.e.
| parking lots) and replacing them with native grasses would
| do a lot to help keep city temperatures a touch more
| reasonable.
|
| Asphalt both absorbs and radiates heat like mad.
| falcolas wrote:
| If the trees are native to the area, sure. But a tree
| monoculture doesn't seem to do a lot of good.
| smallerfish wrote:
| What herbivores are you going to deploy to allow the meadow to
| maintain itself? Going to fence them in or let them run wild in
| town?
|
| In 99%+ of east coast US environments, grassland will become
| forest naturally (over time), even with the deer population as
| it is.
| ghaff wrote:
| I had big meadows in front and back of my house when I moved
| in 25 years ago. I let about the 50-100 feet out by the road
| naturalize over time; the rest is cut by a tractor about once
| a year. The section out by the road is forest, albeit
| immature, at this point.
|
| There's far more forest in New England than there was 150
| years or so ago.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| Why not do controlled burns? That's historically how most
| grasslands and meadows that didn't support large grazing
| populations stayed that way.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Meadows or trees would be nice, but I've noticed that underused
| parking lots tend to be common places to build restaurants and
| other retail. Not as great as trees or meadows but on the other
| hand I'd rather the new retail goes on parking lots rather than
| replacing currently existing trees & meadows.
| UtopiaPunk wrote:
| A lot of places would benefit from more housing, too, or new
| business, or almost anything really. A parking lot is about the
| worst option possible.
|
| We look at a large section of a land and decide that we will
| destroy all life on it, pave over it with asphalt (so that even
| the rain cannot drain into the soil), all so that large
| vehicles can sit there unused. It really is the lowest opinion
| one can have on a piece of Earth.
| brewdad wrote:
| Most surface lots you see in a city are placeholders until
| the owner finds a project that pencils out. Why not charge
| people to park there until you are ready to build that new
| highrise?
| wtp1saac wrote:
| Strong Towns has called a good amount of attention to the
| mandatory parking requirements in many cities (and shockingly,
| many downtowns). Thankfully, it seems a fair number of cities are
| removing such restrictions, but hopefully it becomes more
| widespread.
|
| In general I hope the US can urbanize, the older I get the more I
| realize it's not really enjoyable living in this country. I don't
| think I want hyper dense, but having more places to walk, bike,
| and explore that aren't just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque
| suburbs and freeways would be really nice. More places to meet
| people too, there's so few third places. And not needing to drive
| would be a really big convenience.
|
| (To be clear, I doubt most of the US will urbanize given the
| rural nature of a lot of it, but I hope at least bigger cities
| can move in that direction)
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Fayetteville Arkansas was one of the first towns to remove the
| mandatory parking restrictions and a ton of abandoned downtown
| buildings quickly became restaurants. They were absolutely
| right.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| My jaw hit the floor when I learned that some cities actually
| apply parking minimums to _redevelopment_ of downtown
| properties and not just stuff like new surburban strip malls,
| to the point that some projects have bought adjacent
| buildings and demolished them in favor of parking lots. Maybe
| it 's true that the r/fuckcars crowd likes to throw the term
| "carbrain" around a little too freely, but this kind of ass-
| backward policy makes me think we really do suffer from a
| self-destructive mind virus.
| travoc wrote:
| Parking minimums are required by cities because underparked
| development projects dump their parking problems on the
| surrounding neighborhoods. These types of externalities
| shouldn't just be hand-waved away in the name of
| "urbanization." The lack of parking creates real problems for
| residents, police and businesses in growing cities every day.
| xnx wrote:
| The market is better at solving this problem than central
| planning.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Not when it comes to ADA requirements...
| yardie wrote:
| Oddly enough, the ADA laws were written in a way to use
| the free market. The government can't force you to be ADA
| compliant. Instead, it relies on lawyers and their
| disabled clients to sue you into compliance. An entire
| cottage industry of law firms who specialize in ADA
| compliance have sprung up since the law's inception.
| epistasis wrote:
| ADA requirements are outside of the planning sphere
| though.
|
| In fact, that ADA requirements came from laws from the
| federal government rather than from urban planning is
| pretty good evidence that the market (ie democratic
| legislation) is better at this than centralized planners
| of urban areas.
| _dain_ wrote:
| This is the stated justification but it doesn't really
| correspond with reality. The specific values chosen for
| parking requirements are based on nothing at all, literally
| just copypasted from other cities or made up out of thin air.
| They are overestimates in almost all cases.
|
| Besides, even if you mandate parking, it's an absurdity to
| mandate _free_ parking.
| Comma2976 wrote:
| I doubt that.
| an_ko wrote:
| Major European cities with no such minimum parking
| requirements do fine. They have public transport and bike
| infrastructure, so many people in dense urban areas don't
| need cars.
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| I bet no one in major European cities requires to bike like
| ten miles each way. The point is the size of American
| cities is vastly different to European ones, so what works
| that side of Atlantic rarely translates "as-is" here.
|
| (I am disappointed about this oft thrown around comparison,
| since my city reduced one lane on several major roads and
| created bike paths. Sadly, we now have major traffic jams
| and hardly any utilization of the bike path. Turns out
| someone on the city council wanted to turn it into Denmark)
| nerdbert wrote:
| > I bet no one in major European cities requires to bike
| like ten miles each way.
|
| I am in Amsterdam, and lots of people bike 15km each way,
| including many students at the high schools my children
| attend.
| ses1984 wrote:
| Part of the problem is in america if you want to bike
| that far, you probably have to take some route designed
| for cars. It's very stressful and in many cases very
| risky.
|
| Local climate is a problem, too. It's not fun to bike to
| work some days when it's very hot and humid, and then in
| the other half of the year, deal with freezing rain.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| You're talking about city owned and maintained on-street
| parking.
|
| I think we can agree that the sane thing to do is charge for
| it and let the market set the price. If home owners or
| developers want to build their own on-site parking, they're
| welcome to. Personally, I'm sick of having four parking spots
| in my garage tacked to my rent despite being a one car
| household.
|
| Or did I misunderstand, and you feel on-street free parking
| should be paid for by tax payers? I have to disagree. I pay
| for my own parking. And people like me generate more tax
| revenue for the city because it costs less to service
| density, so I'm also funding on-street parking. I don't think
| that's fair. We should not be subsidizing car dependency. If
| you want to drive, pay for it yourself.
| bagels wrote:
| If your neighborhood or development is the one with no
| parking and you are not in a walk-able city, you are
| trading dollars for the stressful situation of trying to
| figure out where to park, getting in to conflicts with
| neighbors over parking, and getting your car crashed in to
| or vandalized. I tried it, I didn't like it.
| coldpie wrote:
| So how do you get from a non-walkable city to a walkable
| city? We can't remove parking minimums because everyone
| needs a car because it's not walkable. But we can't take
| out the parking lots, because no one walks, because
| there's too many parking lots between the places people
| want to go. And we can't put in dedicated bus lanes,
| because that would reduce parking, which we need because
| buses are too slow. How do we break the cycle?
| teejays wrote:
| Pretty much sums up the problem imho.
| Steltek wrote:
| Vastly outweighed by the problems of parking minimums:
|
| * Increased housing costs
|
| * Decreased housing supply
|
| * Increased air pollution
|
| * Increased traffic
|
| * Increased noise pollution
|
| * Increased water pollution, stormwater usage
|
| * Decrease in community and neighborhood cohesion
|
| If a person feels they need parking, they can pay for it.
| They don't need society to force parking to be made available
| to everyone, whether they want it or not.
| apendleton wrote:
| This is solvable with parking permit programs. Make street
| parking in those surrounding neighborhoods resident-only. And
| then people considering living in the "underparked"
| neighborhood who need parking will have no alternative but to
| select units that include parking, or live in another
| neighborhood (and if enough people opt not to live there,
| developers will include more parking to satisfy demand). This
| is a problem regular markets can fix: governments don't need
| to require developers to meet (or often, exceed!) what people
| actually want.
| nradov wrote:
| Where do guests park when they come to visit?
| alexanderchr wrote:
| Where I've lived it's usually been solved by letting
| anyone park there for a higher fee. Residents get to park
| at a big discount or for free.
|
| Or you can hand out guest passes to residents.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| It should decrease housing costs as well. The rules in my area
| are two spots per bedroom - mandatory. But my building is in
| uptown Dallas and the main draw to the area is that people work
| in the area and walk to work. So many people don't own cars or
| are only a one home house hold.
|
| And because it's a highrise parking spots are expensive. Like
| $50k+ each. And that goes directly to the price of housing in
| rents.
|
| Meanwhile, even at the busiest our garage is more than half
| empty. What a waste.
|
| D magazine even used a picture of my garage in their article:
| https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2021/12/the-city-of-da...
| Swizec wrote:
| > The rules in my area are two spots per bedroom - mandatory
|
| Wait am I reading this right that a 3-bedroom family home
| would come with space for _six cars_? How many families have
| 6 cars that 's insane O.O
|
| Sounds like a regulation someone long ago thought would for
| sure prevent anyone from building anything. No way they
| actually wanted that much residential parking ...
| jrockway wrote:
| I don't think there's a good one-size-fits-all rule. A 3
| bedroom unit could be 3 couples living together and
| splitting the rent, or it could be 1 family, or it could
| just be 1 person who wants an office and a gym. The rule
| should probably be "1 space for car owned", like when you
| go to buy a car, you have to prove that you have a place to
| park it.
| apendleton wrote:
| Just restrict who can park on the street. Then if people
| want to park a car, they'll need a residence with a
| space, and if there's demand for residences with parking
| spaces, developers will build them, minimums or not. The
| issue with minimums is that they require building spaces
| above and beyond demand, but markets should do just fine
| at making sure demand is met, as long as there are
| barriers to externalizing it.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| In Japan you have to vouch that you have a parking space
| for your car. I think a similar rule would work for the
| states. However, it will cause a huge tension between the
| parking spot haves and parking spot have nots, without
| adequate equality will be seen (rightfully so) as a move
| to limit cars among those who can't afford parking spots
| for them.
|
| For better or worse, the USA has basically made a
| contract with its people that "you have the right to a
| car, and because of that, we will provide really sucky
| public transit." That contract has to change before we
| start aggressively taking cars out of the system.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| Mandatory parking minimums in American _are_ insane.
|
| The rules for them are a joke and just made up at random
| with little justification for them other than _trust us
| bro_.
|
| Climatetown has a good, if long, video on it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNXFHpUhu8
| stronglikedan wrote:
| The US is urbanized...if you want it. There are plenty of
| places where people that enjoy living in urban areas can do so.
| However, to me, that sounds like an unenjoyable hellscape. Been
| there, done that. The beauty of the US is that people have
| choices, and aren't pigeonholed into someone else's idea of
| "enjoyable".
| erikaww wrote:
| I think you got it backwards. Cities now only build these
| subury sfh highway parking lot hellscapes and ban anything
| remotely dense
|
| So everyone is pigeonholed into something you want
| marssaxman wrote:
| There really _are not_ plenty of places in the US where you
| can live a good, urban, non-car-oriented life, and you can
| tell that is true because the ones which do exist tend to be
| very expensive, showing that they are in high demand. You
| clearly do not desire an urban lifestyle, and I won 't try to
| change your mind about that, but those of us who _do_ want
| urban living generally don 't find that our choices are
| either plentiful or affordable.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| I think it's because urbanites keep getting suckered into
| letting builders do "condensed affordable housing" under
| the false premise that more housing means cheaper housing.
| Obviously that would only be true if the units were owned
| by competitors. Where one contractor owns all the units
| they set the prices, and they have no reason to make them
| "affordable." Just condensed.
| jamil7 wrote:
| > The beauty of the US is that people have choices
|
| This is backwards, you've got no choices in a lot of US
| cities other than to drive.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| Do you have experience living in any variety of urban areas
| in first world countries outside of the US? Have you been to
| many cities in the US? I don't think you can possibly have
| done either of these and still think the US has any urbanism.
| And literally all most moderate urbanists ask for is "please
| lower regulations so that the free market can build what some
| of us want and I can actually have a choice."
| bertil wrote:
| The most common criticism I hear against cities is that they
| are loud. Cities aren't loud; _cars_ are loud.
|
| You experienced a bad compromise of having high density of a
| city and the high car ownership of suburbia. Like a "stroad,"
| a road that is trying to be a street, it doesn't work.
|
| Try to spend a week in a place with walkable density and no
| cars: Amsterdam, Oslo, or closer to US, Disney Land.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Cars aren't that loud. Trucks, buses, and trains are loud,
| and that is what you have a lot of in urban areas.
| UtopiaPunk wrote:
| I think urbanizing core metro areas is actually key to
| protecting rural areas.
|
| I was sitting in a coffee shop in a small town and I overheard
| a conversation next to me. Two elderly men were talking, and
| one of them made a comment to the effect of, "I like a rural
| town, so I try to vote to keep it that way." Two or three
| decades ago, this town really was a small farming town, but the
| population is growing and the town is changing. It's not
| becoming a city, though, not by any means! As the city
| (somewhat) nearby is becoming more expensive, the suburban
| sprawl is, well sprawling. The small rural town is transforming
| into a suburb of the city.
|
| I would agree that this is a negative change for the small
| town, and I would argue that the solution is to urbanize the
| nearby city. There should be much more housing, and it should
| be much more affordable to live in the city. As it stands, many
| people _want_ to live in that city, but find the housing prices
| unaffordable. So these people make a compromise between how
| much they are willing to pay on housing vs how long they are
| willing to travel (almost always by car) into the city. I count
| myself in this group.
|
| Urban areas and rural areas complement one another, and there's
| pros and cons to living in either kind of place. However, post-
| WWII styled suburbs are, in my opinion, a net negative.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| > I think urbanizing core metro areas is actually key to
| protecting rural areas.
|
| It really is. Some subruban and rual places are starting to
| get this as well. A common theme among the ones that get it
| is to provide density bonuses (i.e. if you allocate large
| blocks of conservation space, you can build more densely).
| The result is that you get the same overall density in an
| area but the people are living much closer together and not
| sprawling out and building over the natural environment.
|
| I personally think most of them are too conservative with
| their approaches (often setting upper limits on density even
| with the bonuses) but the general approach of "build dense to
| limit the impact on rural spaces" is progress.
| UtopiaPunk wrote:
| There are some silly culture-war politics which makes
| reasonable discussions difficult. But also some of the
| politics problem is that a lot of these decisions are being
| made at the local town/city level. Small rural towns may
| try to dig in their heels and and resist urbanization (and
| the specific tactics involved are usually kind of bad,
| imo). Meanwhile, big cities often don't have strong
| incentives to not sprawl, at least in the US. Sprawl moves
| the costs of housing and transporation onto someone else
| (either the surrounding towns or the individuals), while
| the city maintains some portion of a tax base (sales tax
| and local businesses). Some cities have some political will
| to fight for these anyway, but even at the best of times,
| these policies have to make some harmful compromises.
|
| I think the most promising solutions to this problem are
| policies from state-level governments.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Absolutely. The enemy of rural is _suburbia,_ not urban
| development. Build moderate density city centers, ideally in
| the form of several small self-contained villages that happen
| to abut each other, and leave the surrounding area as
| legitimately rural as possible.
| coldpie wrote:
| > having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren't
| just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would
| be really nice.
|
| We're at a critical juncture here in the Twin Cities. The state
| DOT needs to re-build the interstate that cuts right through
| the entire metro area (I-94) for the first time since it was
| first built 50 years ago. There is a serious proposal to remove
| the interstate entirely and replace it with a street. This
| would be amazing, the area around I-94 is, as you'd expect,
| quite unpleasant to be in. It's noisy, dirty, and dangerous.
| The interstate is infamous for being one of those roads that
| was planned to run through and destroy working class and Black
| neighborhoods in the 50s and 60s[1], and removing it would go
| some way to regaining what had been room for people to live. I
| think it's a bit of a longshot, but dang, I would love to see
| the cities recover that space for the people who actually live
| here, not just those who are driving through it. It's a once-
| in-a-lifetime opportunity and I'm really hoping we don't blow
| it by just rebuilding the stupid thing.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_94_in_Minnesota#His...
| hobs wrote:
| I live in the twin cities and I had no idea that was even on
| anyone's mind, I love the idea.
| coldpie wrote:
| Please, please (please) contact everyone you can think of
| to support the idea. MnDOT has contact info on the
| Rethinking I-94 page[1], tell your city council rep, your
| county commissioner, your mayor, your state legislators,
| the governor. Tell your friends and neighbors. It's so easy
| to just fall back and do the same thing we've always done;
| making a change is really hard and we need to show that
| there is support for it.
|
| [1] https://talk.dot.state.mn.us/rethinking-i94 The
| official term for the proposal to remove the freeway is
| "at-grade alternatives".
| hobs wrote:
| I will do this thing you say.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate
| entirely and replace it with a street.
|
| I'm afraid that this would wind up like Vancouver, which
| lacks freeways through the city and has pretty bad traffic as
| a result. Better maybe to tunnel it under if possible? That
| works well for Seattle, although we still have I5 to contend
| with that divides the downtown from Capitol Hill (there is
| talk of lidding the entire freeway through downtown).
| stefan_ wrote:
| All cities will forever have "bad traffic". Car transport
| capacity is plain abysmal.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| I love that Vancouver doesn't have a freeway through the
| city - but they've also got a relatively good transit
| system. IIRC it's the equivalent of 26 lanes for cars.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Vancouver has some horrible stroads to make up for its
| lack of freeways. I wouldn't call it very nice, more like
| dystopian.
| sfpotter wrote:
| Creating I-5 was really contentious at the time. It
| destroyed neighborhoods. My family has lived in the area
| for several generations and my parents can attest to this.
|
| Lidding it would be great, but removing it would be better.
| There are loads of people who live in the suburbs north and
| south of Seattle and expect to be able to drive 20-30 miles
| each way day-in-day-out to commute. If the city continues
| to grow, this simply isn't tenable in the long run, because
| you can't grow highway capacity forever; they would no
| longer be able to do this, which would be good. Just rip
| the band-aid off.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The only thing worse than having I5 is not having I5.
| There really isn't enough north-south corridors to
| replace it (15th, 99, east/west lake...really that's it),
| given that I5 is close to the water and a huge hill as it
| comes in across from UW. It is already non-viable to
| expect a 20-30 minute commute into the city.
|
| We saw what happened when the Palestine supporters
| blocked off I5 a few weeks ago...on a weekend without a
| rush hour, people were stuck in traffic for hours.
| uoaei wrote:
| Can you articulate a cogent reason why people need to
| cross the city on such a thoroughfare just to live their
| lives?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| You are located in the north of the city and need to get
| somewhere south of the city, or vice versa.
|
| You only have a few roads to do that east or west of Lake
| Washington. In most cases, people aren't going to
| downtown Seattle, downtown Seattle is just in the way.
| uoaei wrote:
| Why are those services not available in the north of the
| city? This is as much a planning issue as traffic is.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I think it has to do with the way the city grew out north
| and south, with the city itself as a chokepoint (since it
| is surrounded by water otherwise). Common reasons people
| need to go from north seattle to south seattle: IKEA,
| Southcenter, Seatac. I'm sure there are reasons for
| people to go north as well, but I have a harder time
| thinking of them (other than that they went south and now
| have to come back north).
| com2kid wrote:
| There is some really great African food up north just
| outside the city. :-D Likewise along the northern parts
| of Aurora you can get some really great Korean food.
| (Also not strictly in the city limits).
|
| Parks, lots of parks.
|
| The only decent real "spas" I've found are all up north
| (Again, Shoreline, just outside of the city)
|
| Ballard and Fremont are both big draws.
|
| UW, kind of a biggie.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Federal Way has good Korean food also (well, along with
| lots of Koreans). Frankly, you'll find Asian communities
| south, east and north, with the high end in the east, the
| middle end in the north, and lots of value in the south.
|
| Schools are better in the north, which is why we chose
| Ballard rather than Beacon Hill. The reason I don't think
| about North Seattle so much is because I live here, I
| guess (and getting places isn't so hard if I'm not
| crossing Seattle).
| com2kid wrote:
| Seattle is a narrow city bordered by water on the west
| and the east, so a lot of its expansion has happened
| along the north/south axis.
|
| If I want to buy furniture, I need to go either to the
| far north or far south of the city to a suburb just
| outside the city limits (cheaper land).
|
| Culturally, lots of food can only be found in certain
| areas of the city, which means north/south traveling.
|
| In regards to services overall, obscene land prices means
| that not much _new_ is being built that isn 't owned by
| large corporations, so we are pretty much stuck with what
| we have, and what we have is rather quickly disappearing.
| resonantjacket5 wrote:
| > I think it has to do with the way the city grew out
| north and south, with the city itself as a chokepoint
| (since it is surrounded by water otherwise). Common
| reasons people need to go from north seattle to south
| seattle: IKEA, Southcenter, Seatac.
|
| > I'm sure there are reasons for people to go north as
| well, but I have a harder time thinking of them (other
| than that they went south and now have to come back
| north).
|
| @sean To reach UW, northgate (well it's demolished just
| ice skating for now lol), ballard and fremont; granted
| this is a bit optional, uvillage is nice to visit as
| well.
|
| Also I find it a bit interesting you have a harder time
| thinking of interesting stuff in north seattle, I am
| actually sometimes annoyed having to drive north past
| downtown seattle to reach north seattle. I didn't really
| think about it but yeah ikea/southcenter are relatively
| easy for me to reach. :)
|
| @uoaei Anyways regarding planning itself. Seattle is
| actually actively planning their next community plan, one
| of the items called out is whether to allow more 'urban
| villages' which have shops and other amenities.
|
| For malls, Northgate should have been the north seattle
| mall but it's currently being redeveloped. There's U
| village but it's a bit high end. The other alternative of
| Alderwood mall isn't too bad to get to by driving but
| during peak traffic can be quite slow.
|
| https://www.seattle.gov/opcd/one-seattle-plan
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I live in Ballard, so maybe I just got used to everything
| up here. We don't usually need to drive unless we go
| somewhere far away (if anything downtown, just take the D
| line).
| sfpotter wrote:
| There are no major highways through Manhattan. The city
| is better for it.
|
| Drive around the lake if you need to get past the city.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I used to commute from westchester county into midtown,
| and there were definitely parkways in, although I never
| needed to go all the way down to Manhattan itself. I
| would usually try to take the train though (often not
| possible given how westchester county is poorly connected
| to train stations).
| resonantjacket5 wrote:
| It's actually a bit interesting to see WSDOT's plan for
| i-5.
|
| For capacity they aren't expanding I-5 directly, but
| expanding i-405 and sr167 instead for people trying to go
| past Seattle.
|
| For i-5 within Seattle area, there are some 2030s plans
| to convert the hov lanes to toll lanes and reconfiguring
| the reversible express lane system. * I-5 Managed Lanes:
| SR 16 to Pierce/ King County Line * I-5 Managed Lanes:
| Pierce/ King County Line to I-405 * I-5 Managed Lanes:
| I-405 to US 2
|
| https://www.psrc.org/media/4840
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I don't see that working out. I405 is often worse than
| I5, it is just as bottlenecked as I5 is, and there isn't
| much room to expand it especially when it runs right up
| next to the water.
|
| I feel sorry for anyone who has to actually do that
| commute. It was horrible when I was living in Bothell and
| attending UW 30 years ago.
| mb7733 wrote:
| Honestly, having lived in Vancouver as well as many cities
| that _do_ have highways running right through town, I
| didn't miss that in Vancouver at all. Traffic will suck
| both ways, and at least Vancouver avoids having ugly, loud
| highways along its waterfront and through most of its
| downtown.
|
| Definitely, the best case for cars is to have fast highways
| that bypass the city, but there isn't a lot of room with
| that given Vancouver's geography, so it's a lesser-of-two-
| evils. Beyond cars, public transit and cycling provide a
| better solution in my opinion anyway.
|
| Regardless... the biggest traffic pain point in downtown
| Vancouver is the 3-lane (total) Lions Gate bridge.
| coldpie wrote:
| Gotcha covered here in the twin cities -- we already have
| north and south bypasses in I-494 and I-694. Now we have
| an opportunity to get I-94 out of the middle of the
| metro.
| avianlyric wrote:
| How does a freeway through a city improve traffic in a city
| vs building a freeway around a city (no need to bother with
| the expense of tunnelling under).
|
| Cars on a freeway are either headed to your city as a
| destination, in which case the speed at which you deliver
| them into the city doesn't make much difference, they're
| always going to cause traffic when they leave the freeway.
| Or the cars are headed through the city, in which I would
| assume most of them would be just as happy to go around the
| city as go through it.
|
| So if you get to pick between through and around, why would
| any sane city choose to put the freeway through your city?
| You're just bringing noise and pollution into your city,
| putting a huge great impassable scar through your city, and
| forcing the people who live to drive everywhere because the
| freeway slice up the city into segments that you move
| between in a car.
| eropple wrote:
| The highway _under_ Boston has turned out to be one of
| the better solutions that the area could 've had, I
| think. It doesn't mean that the highway that goes around
| (I-95) is unused, or even underused, but I-93/the former
| Central Artery going underground has allowed some really
| important revitalization of parts of the city while also
| giving pretty direct and (outside of the worst part of
| rush hour) quick access to most of Boston and Cambridge
| by car.
|
| As forward-looking as much of the area is, we weren't
| getting away with "less car", and I don't think most
| places will today either.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| You can't build a freeway around Seattle unless you plan
| to make it float. Well, there is 405, but that is way
| around (and is its own chokepoint on the east side).
| Vancouver has much of the same problem with hills and
| water making it act as a choke point. I'm not sure how
| the Twin Cities compares.
| uoaei wrote:
| Bad traffic is a good catalyst for spurring local
| commercial development, assuming zoning and other
| bureaucratic measures don't hamper the situation entirely.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| I was just driving around in Seattle and couldn't help but
| notice everywhere I went was just a few miles away but it
| took 20-30 minutes because there was no highway in between.
| I have to wonder if that reduces or increases emissions. I
| suspect it's the latter since you have more cars running
| longer and stop/starting more often.
| avisser wrote:
| I-81 through Syracuse NY is being torn down. There is already
| a bypass, I-481 that loops around the city to the East to
| connect with I-90.
|
| Very similar story - the highway divides Syracuse University
| from the poor Black neighborhoods. It's a scar through the
| middle of town.
|
| I'm very excited to see how the city heals around it.
| coldpie wrote:
| Congrats, that's huge!
| fasthands9 wrote:
| The problem I have with the thinking in this article most of
| the parking lots are privately owned so saying 'tear them up
| and plant trees' is not something that can be implemented by
| the government.
|
| If mandatory parking requirements did go down, and zoning was
| increased, then the people who own it would willingly put forth
| the effort to make the space more useful. It would also help
| sort out what is considered "unused" - which right now is a
| nebulous concept.
| juujian wrote:
| It's easy, just charge all property owners for sales surface
| area. It messes with lots of things, water table, flooding,
| generates heat. All things that create cost for a community.
| That's how Berlin decided to tackle the issue.
| fasthands9 wrote:
| I also assume Berlin does not have high parking
| requirements.
|
| For instance, this ordinance in NC says you need one
| parking space for every 300 sq feet of a store. So the
| average 30,000 sq foot grocery store would need 100 spots,
| at least.
|
| Without getting rid of requirements like these the stores
| will not be able to remove spaces if they wanted. I very
| much like land value tax (which sounds similar in effect to
| what you are proposing) but you need the zoning flexibility
| first.
|
| https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/swansboro/latest/swan
| s...
| tomcar288 wrote:
| you don't necessarily need to urbanize. just make things more
| walkable. Instead of having 1 large library or grocery store
| the size of a theme park, have 10 smaller ones in walking
| distance instead.
| bluGill wrote:
| I prefer the metric is an 8 year old should be able to get to
| the library alone. I don't are if they take the bus, walk, or
| ride a bike - but they need to be able to get there alone.
| This is a proxy for safety of various transport modes,
| available routes, and community attitude toward kids being
| out alone.
| marssaxman wrote:
| That's what functional urbanization looks like! From where I
| live in central Seattle, there are four grocery stores within
| ten minutes' walk. They all have parking lots, but I rarely
| use them; instead of buying a lot of groceries at once, it's
| easier to pop on by every day or two and just carry a bag
| home. There are no skyscrapers here, it's all townhouses and
| low-rise apartment buildings, but that's all we need - if we
| could fill the city limits with neighborhoods like this,
| there'd be no need for any more sprawl.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Without sufficient density, these things don't make money (or
| the municipality doesn't have the tax revenue to keep them
| open). You can't "just" make things more walkable. You also
| need enough people to raise money to maintain sidewalks, buy
| stuff at stores, work in the area, etc.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| I've long suspected that this model is meant for cities to make
| money on DUIs. They close the public transit before the bars in
| almost every city across the country, and they ensure the bars
| are far enough away and restrictive enough that you have to
| drive. Then they tax the hell out of taxi services to ensure
| that there aren't enough cabs to take you home and rides can
| exceed $100 (which is a lot in most of the country by area, not
| population). It's zoned this way where bars and restaurants
| aren't near houses, in summary.
|
| If they did it like Spain, for example, where you can just walk
| out of your home, sit on the street at any restaurant, and
| drink wine with your friends, we'd have exactly what you're
| describing.
|
| But then they wouldn't be able to rake in DUI profits.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| A city does _not_ want drunk people crashing their cars into
| infrastructure or murdering its inhabitants. They don 't want
| to support injured people who unable to work. They don't want
| these types of cases taking up the court's time. All this
| stuff costs a city money & they aren't inviting people to do
| it just in case they get caught.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _I don't think I want hyper dense, but having more places to
| walk, bike, and explore that aren't just cookie-cutter
| boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice.
| More places to meet people too, there's so few third places.
| And not needing to drive would be a really big convenience._
|
| What does hyper dense mean? And how is that detrimental? Tokyo
| meets all of your requirements, for example, but you would call
| that hyper dense for sure, right? The article is "about"
| Baltimore, MD. Does that city meet your threshold of hyper
| dense?
|
| As with most things, a lot of this comes down to money. The
| more dense an area, the more use the things you want are used,
| and the more money they make, they more likely they are to
| thrive. The more dense an area, the bigger the tax base, the
| more money there is for nice things that maybe don't make money
| on their own.
| uudecoded wrote:
| How long does it take to break even on the carbon output of
| asphalt demolition and haul-away vs carbon input of optimal
| density trees planted in the same space?
| 2024throwaway wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to look at carbon output in isolation
| here. This would greatly help with a variety of issues such as
| mitigating urban heat islands, providing wildlife habitat,
| aiding pollinators, and just generally making the world we live
| in less hellish.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's probably a pretty favorable comparison anyway. Asphalt
| is almost 100% recyclable. The demolition often just involves
| a single bobcat and a dump truck that hauls it to the
| recycling plant. A commonly used number is 10kg/tree/year for
| the first 20 years of a tree's growth so a plot with 25 trees
| would remove ~250kg/year. A gallon of gas releases about 10kg
| of CO2, so in that 20 year period, the little plot would
| capture about 5,000kg of CO2 or ~500 gallons equivalent.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| They (ought to) unpave the parking lot and put up a paradise!
|
| More green spaces are good for cities.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not really. Some parks/green areas are good. However it is easy
| to put in more than are needed and make the city less dense
| which is not good for the city or your ability to do some of
| the things that make a city great.
| kova12 wrote:
| No P&L, no cost/reward analysis, no numbers at all. Just
| emotional "omg need more green". Have the author ever torn down a
| single parking lot? Doesn't look like that to me. Why is this
| article even on HN at all?
| irusensei wrote:
| If it's public properties then yes please. If private then
| hippity hoppity...
| fjoireoipe wrote:
| use eminent domain to turn it into public property?
|
| hoppity heft property is theft
| osigurdson wrote:
| You could always put together a group and purchase the land from
| the current owners. Once you take possession, put the land in
| trust, tear it up and plant trees. You could potentially recover
| some costs by donating to the city but there is always a chance
| that they would decide to change the zoning in the future.
| ericcumbee wrote:
| unless they have a purpose in mind for said property, a lot of
| cities are hesitant to do that. because it takes the property
| off the tax roll when the city accepts it.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Yes but property values near greenery and parks are
| theoretically higher, right? At least in some places. It
| could also be beneficial for water runoff management and
| flood resistance to have more trees
| lgleason wrote:
| I like cars and spend a decent amount of time keeping my cars
| looking pristine. I personally prefer having more than enough
| parking rather than just enough. Most of the efforts to improve
| walkability makes it impossible to find parking when you are
| driving in and forces you to park in dense areas where you either
| have to pay a fortune to park or park in dense areas where your
| car is likely to get dinged by some jerk who opens their door
| into your car.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| > Most of the efforts to improve walkability makes it
| impossible to find parking when you are driving
|
| Most of the efforts to improve driveability make it impossible
| to walk anywhere.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Exactly. There isn't a place that's simultaneously nice for
| drivers and nice for everyone else. A space for cars
| necessarily reduces value, safety, and comfort for humans
| outside cars.
| epistasis wrote:
| 99% of development over the past half century has been focused
| on making it optimal for driving, at the expense of the ~20% of
| people that can not even drive. And this wasn't because the
| market decided to do that, it's all been mandated by law.
|
| I think it's good to have a diversity of types of development.
| Just as people who don't want to drive shouldn't expect access
| to car-dependent environments to be easy, people in cars
| shouldn't expect the very few pockets of hard-won walkable
| environments to be optimal for driving into.
| cassepipe wrote:
| I get that you like your way of life (and that you are probably
| not given credible alternatives in your city) but please do
| consider the environmental and social costs of such a way of
| life: A car centric life is not sustainable for the planet.
|
| You've probably seen that propaganda around here but in case
| you missed it, here is some documentation :
| https://www.strongtowns.org/
| verve_rat wrote:
| >A car centric life is not sustainable for the planet.
|
| How so? If we waved a magic wand and all cars became EVs
| powered by renewable energy, what would be unsustainable?
| matsemann wrote:
| We have mostly EVs sold in Norway the last few years. It's
| not been so great: https://www.vox.com/future-
| perfect/23939076/norway-electric-...
| yCombLinks wrote:
| The problems in this article seem to all stem from
| excessive subsidies for EVs causing cars to become more
| widespread. That's far different than in the US where
| cars already dominate all infrastructure. Here, a
| transition from ICE to EVs would be way better and more
| realistic.
| jamil7 wrote:
| The fact that they're still vastly less efficient than mass
| public transport, bikes or just walking.
| underlipton wrote:
| Good. America has over-invested in cars and car infrastructure,
| to the detriment of many other more deserving investments.
| We're upside down on our priorities when it costs a few bucks
| to park on land worth a few million dollars and when skilled
| laborers are living off of insurance payouts to fix superficial
| dings and dents (instead of, say, fixing failing bridges).
| wirrbel wrote:
| That investment was done to a degree that upkeep is to
| expensive nowadays.
| pengaru wrote:
| IME there's usually a paid option where demand for parking
| exists where there are no/few free options.
|
| Your complaint is usually implicitly about a lack of _free_
| parking. Folks who insist on bringing their cars to town for
| dinner can foot the storage bill at a lot /garage down the
| street IMHO.
| matsemann wrote:
| > _where you either have to pay a fortune to park_
|
| That's a good thing. Cheap or free parking is just a subsidy on
| car usage.
| yardie wrote:
| > have to pay a fortune to park
|
| The free market is telling you something.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I'd like to see more solar covered parking lots. Bonus points for
| integrated EV charging stations. They would be great in the
| hotter parts of the country. How much fuel/energy is spent
| cooling cars back down after they have sat in the sun for an
| hour?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Why isn't this actually happening? Parking lots are really 2D
| spaces, so leveraging the unused 3rd dimension is very smart
| and profitable.
| xnx wrote:
| Much easier to let farmland go wild than tear up parking lots and
| destroy any chance of recouping the embodied energy of asphalt
| for something useful. Most farmland is in support of animal
| agriculture (boooo) and wouldn't make economic sense if farms had
| to pay municipal rates for the water they use.
| burkaman wrote:
| I understand what you're saying, but it sounds like a kind of
| sunk cost fallacy. If a parking lot has been sitting empty for
| years and nobody has any plan to do anything with it, maybe
| it's time to tear it up. The bad decision to build it in the
| first place has already been made, we can't undo it by waiting
| and hoping. You can at least recycle the asphalt to get a bit
| of use out of it.
|
| Rewilding unnecessary farmland is also a good idea. As usual in
| these conversations, there's no reason we can't do both.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Can we do the same with golf courses?
|
| I think it was George Carlin that said put affordable housing on
| golf courses?
|
| More seriously, if you have a brownfield ex industrial site, will
| trees etc grow ok there? Does converting brownfield sites to
| meadows or forests pose any risks to nearby humans?
| adregan wrote:
| Speaking of brownfield, you may (more likely not) be surprised
| to know that golf courses are pretty nasty places themselves.
| You can find soils contaminated with arsenic, mercury, and
| cadmium from fungicides.
|
| So those rolling green links might not be the cheapest places
| to establish new housing when you include the remediation.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Oof, that's pretty bad. I did not know that. Do you happen to
| know if forests would help clean that soil?
|
| Feels kind of appropriate if you could grow forest on a site
| for 50 to 100 years or more. Then harvest the wood with all
| the nasty stuff in it. Then bury all that contaminated wood
| somewhere deep. Then build houses on the newly clean earth.
| adregan wrote:
| You can build new soil on top of contaminated soil to bury
| it. Here's a permaculture site in an old rail bed in nyc
| that has nasty stuff lurking beneath many layers of new
| soil[0].
|
| Not really sure if trees uptake heavy metals.
|
| 0: https://youtu.be/UqyK_9iybD8?si=rx7iCjsTu1Zn6YbO
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Trees are great to provide shade in parking lots.
|
| I have been to parking lots covered in mature Aleppo Pines (which
| smell great in the heat) and from far away you couldn't really
| tell there was a parking lot there.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| I'd even go a step further and set a maximum amount of parking in
| a given area to disincentivize driving. As an extreme example, if
| a mall is only allowed to have 5 parking spaces then they'll need
| to design around supporting public transit. So many places in the
| US are almost impossible to live in without owning a car - you
| might have bike paths if you're lucky, and in many places there
| aren't even sidewalks
| rtkwe wrote:
| That's an ideal state but is a real chicken and egg problem,
| the same problem that's soft locked US cities as car centric as
| they are, you can't mandate away car reliance without the
| public transit to back it up and transit will have low
| ridership if it's even slightly less convenient than driving.
| mkaic wrote:
| I think underground metros, while expensive to build, solve
| this, because they are _always_ more convenient compared to
| any traffic-ridden area. A bus can get stuck in the same
| traffic as the cars, and bikes taking over any significant
| portion of American commuting in the near-term feels
| laughable to me -- we are quite culturally different from the
| Dutch :P
| bluGill wrote:
| Don't forget that metros can also go on elevate viaducts
| for much less money. Underground is the best solution for
| dense areas, but the elevated is enough cheaper that you
| can afford to run a metro a long way out into the suburbs -
| then those become prime real estate to rebuild to mid rises
| making the entire city denser (assuming zoning allows this)
| bluGill wrote:
| The problem is either you cannot get the number perfect and so
| you must make it too large thus doing nothing over not setting
| a limit at all. If the number is too low you will discover next
| election people who think they need to park (they may or may
| not be right) are mad enough to vote you out and undo things.
| By just not setting a limit you let every property owner decide
| for themselves what is right - and if they discover they are
| too low they can hire someone to build more parking (at their
| expense), while if they decide they have too many they can
| replace parking with something else - like another building.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Shopping centers are a bad example for this, because if you buy
| stuff, you somehow have to take it home, and carrying a carton
| of 12 literes of milk, 2 10-packs of toilet paper, a bag of
| frozen stuff and shower curtain rod, all of that in your hands
| on a bus, is well.. a pain.
|
| Also, at least over here, most shopping centers have
| underground parking.
|
| The "historic city center" and all that crap... that I
| understand... noone goes there for weekly shopping, but instead
| people go there to hang out, drink coffee, eat, etc.... public
| transport works great for that. Malls, shopping centers or even
| larger stores? Nope.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > The "historic city center" and all that crap... that I
| understand... noone goes there for weekly shopping, but
| instead people go there to hang out, drink coffee, eat,
| etc.... public transport works great for that. Malls,
| shopping centers or even larger stores? Nope.
|
| When there's a lot of housing there, people sure do do their
| weekly shopping downtown - but it's mostly the people who
| live in the area. I lived in central Philadelphia for 7 years
| or so and when I needed groceries, I walked to one of the
| grocery stores in the neighborhood. I mostly wasn't carrying
| a ton of stuff on the train, but that's because there were
| shops close enough to walk to instead anyway.
|
| (Though also, you can fit a _lot_ of stuff in a cargo bike.)
| housebear wrote:
| Does anyone have an idea of what it would roughly cost to
| purchase an unused parking lot, tear it up, dispose of the
| asphalt waste, re-soil, and plant 30 or so trees? Is this
| something some enterprising person could start a kickstarter for
| just as a public experiment? Is it even possible with zoning
| requirements or the like?
| eikenberry wrote:
| Why tear up the asphalt? Wouldn't perforating it with bigger
| holes cut for the trees be a lot cheaper. Tree roots grow
| perfectly fine under asphalt and perforation will allow for air
| and water to reach the soil in a more distributed manner for
| better growth. Seems like it would be a much cheaper option.
| jackfrodo wrote:
| Trees themselves are useful because they support biodiversity
| such as small mammals, insects, all the useful things along a
| forest floor. can't do that with asphalt.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| In time or money? You can cancel your gym membership and work
| on it an hour a day
| tamimio wrote:
| Before attacking the parking lots, fix the return to office
| mandates, the public transportation, downtown concepts, and
| physically collocated XY (shops or other) and the parking lot
| issue will solve itself, going after the symptoms without fixing
| the root cause is just moronic nonsense that will lead to at
| least "other" parking lots increasing their prices.
| jackfrodo wrote:
| Removing parking lots will increase public support for all of
| the other things you mentioned. It's easier to start with
| tearing out parking lots and if necessary, cap parking prices,
| in addition to the other decades long projects
| notacoward wrote:
| "I don't know that anyone besides Grabar is even thinking about
| this"
|
| A great many people are. Urbanist Xitter (Mastodon, Threads,
| whatever) is very much alive and well. The closest thing to a
| consensus about what to do with the reclaimed space is _some_
| trees, but primarily medium-density affordable housing, ideally
| with retail on the bottom. Sometimes the space can be used to
| make room for transit, too. By making these places denser and
| more livable, it prevents _even more_ trees, meadows, etc. from
| being cleared for more exurbs.
|
| I'd start with _Suburban Nation_ , move on to StrongTowns and
| MissingMiddle, then take it from there.
| tomcar288 wrote:
| I think he really hit the nail on head here:
|
| "Part of this is a result of poor planning and ordinance-making
| that long ago overcompensated for the wide use of automobiles.
| Henry Grabar, a staff writer at Slate, mentions this in a book
| published last year, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the
| World. "On a national level, certainly, there's far more parking
| than we need," Grabar said in an interview. "There are at least
| four parking spaces for every car, meaning that the parking stock
| is no more than 25 percent full at any given time. And some of
| those cars are moving at any given time, so parking may be a good
| deal emptier than that."
| ayberk wrote:
| I'm still reading this book, but so far it's been one of the
| few books I'd recommend to anyone. I try to be as stoic as
| possible, but contents of this book has managed to actually
| anger me. It makes it so clear that how much corruption and bad
| policies impact our lives.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| I find this sort of logic absurd. "There are at least four
| parking spaces for every car, meaning that the parking stock is
| no more than 25 percent full at any given time. And some of those
| cars are moving at any given time"
|
| So, if I have a two car garage in my house, a parking spot at
| work, and a parking spot at the local shopping district, how else
| is this going to work? I can't bring my parking spot with me. The
| idea that we should look at per existing car utilization as any
| kind of indicator is ridiculous. Now, if any of those spots is
| never used, that may be a good indicator- but it might be because
| a building isn't fully leased at the moment as well.
| bluGill wrote:
| You don't have a parking spot at the local parking district.
| You share your spot with everyone else there. Sure you have one
| at home and one at work, but everything else is shared with
| people who use your spot when you are not there.
| bluGill wrote:
| The problem I have is most cities have plenty of green parks
| already. In a few places they could use a new park, but in
| general there are far more parking lots (often 50% of a city is
| parking lot!) than there is need for green space. Much better is
| tear up a parking lot and replace it with a building that lets
| people do something in the city other than pretend they are in a
| rural area. Nothing wrong with rural areas and parks, but there
| is more to life than those. Put in more apartments, offices,
| restaurants, opera houses - all those other things that make a
| city great.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Take all the trees, put em in a tree museum.
|
| Charge the people, a dollar and half just to see em.
| jiggliemon wrote:
| I live on the border of an urban forest.
|
| I've come to realize that urban forests double as homeless camps.
| My homeless camp has is rife with crime, drug over doses,
| violence and fire. Last month I've had a leaf blower stolen, my
| car window broken, and an explosion due to them throwing a
| propane tank into a camp fire.
|
| Since they're tucked into a forest - the city won't take any
| action. The city does take action on homeless camps that are more
| visible. I don't mean to conflate urban forests with
| homelessness. However that's very much the case here in Austin,
| Tx.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| If only 75% of spaces are empty, while sad, that seems shockingly
| efficient. If you have a car you need at least one place to park
| for each location you will ever visit with it. That means most
| people are only driving their cars to 4 places. Home, work,
| school and the grocery store. Hopefully for store owners, not all
| at the same time. I would have expected a lot more unused spaces
| in parking lots. If we have cars we should be expecting a hell of
| a lot of empty parking lots. Maybe cities should just require
| some minimum amount of plant life in the lots themselves. I'm
| sure customers would approve.
|
| Also any expectation of "the demise of malls and the decline of
| brick-and-mortar retail" is hasty. Globally, during the pandemic,
| 80%+ of retail was brick and mortar [1], and it actually
| increased in 2021, though it appears to be correcting. Research
| shows consumers don't trust stores with an online only presence.
| [2] I think banking on that will be too little too late. We need
| better solutions sooner.
|
| [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECOMPCTSA/
|
| [2] https://www.kbbreview.com/6657/news/consumers-lack-trust-
| onl...
| kusuriya wrote:
| heck even if we just did more trees and shade cover of parking
| lots it would be better for the environment all the way around,
| and make drivers happier so they don't have to crawl into a
| complete oven of a car.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-30 23:00 UTC)