[HN Gopher] If we want a shift to walking, we need to prioritize...
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If we want a shift to walking, we need to prioritize dignity
Author : philips
Score : 450 points
Date : 2024-07-30 03:59 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.strongtowns.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.strongtowns.org)
| gnabgib wrote:
| Discussion a year ago (608 points, 688 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36920622
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Pedestrians are after thoughts and hsve to constsntly pull on
| resources to get ahead. Could have cameras or learning systens
| that adapt to the flow of crowds. But the world is mot designed
| for pedestrian peasants.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| I wish I could pass a law that forbids politicians from driving
| or riding in personal automobiles as long as they're in office:
| they can walk, take public transit, ride a bicycle, or take an
| airplane (in coach class).
| sofixa wrote:
| > But the world is mot designed for pedestrian peasants.
|
| Fortunately, small parts of the world, mostly centralised
| around anglophone North America and a few other
| "developing/developed rapidly in an age where cars seemed like
| the best thing since sliced bread, so everyone else was left
| behind" countries. And for the latter category, countries like
| Sri Lanka or Taiwan, it's still usually not as egregious as in
| anglophone North America because sometimes there are leftovers
| from before when everyone used to have to walk; not everything
| was bulldozed like it was in US and Canada. (Probably just
| because they had less time at destroying everything to remake
| it for cars).
|
| But in a lot of the world, pedestrians are taken into account,
| and often even prioritised for.
| the_sleaze_ wrote:
| I believe that early on there was heavy influence to build
| highways and suburbs to support the burgeoning US auto
| industry. It really makes no sense otherwise, from a planning
| perspective.
|
| The infrastructure alone to support sewer, gas and electric
| makes absolutely no sense with such low density residential.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I'm not sure it's actually the rich and powerful necessarily
| drive much.
|
| Of course, there are car obsessed rich people who enjoy
| driving. I know some Swedish entrepreneurs who are like that,
| but I also know similarly successful people who never decided
| to get a driver's license and who lived in Gothenburg and take
| the tram everywhere.
|
| I think the car is a middle class thing, but then peasants were
| upper middle class, but I assume that's not what you meant.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > but then peasants were upper middle class
|
| Maybe in a modern context. In the terminology of the time
| peasants were lower class. The middle class was merchants,
| and "middle" referred to their social status, not their
| economic status - it would be unsurprising for members of the
| middle class to be much richer than members of the upper
| class.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| No.
|
| Farmers were respectable landowners who had employees
| themselves. They were seen as the foundation society stood
| on and contrasted with the landless and the rich.
| defrost wrote:
| The word used was "peasant", in English usage:
| A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a
| farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living
| in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax,
| fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes
| of peasants existed: non-free slaves, semi-free serfs,
| and free tenants.
|
| ~ wikipedia a poor smallholder or
| agricultural labourer of low social status (chiefly in
| historical use or with reference to subsistence farming
| in poorer countries).
|
| ~ Oxford Dictionary
|
| So .. _limited_ land ownership (if any) and almost always
| a rent paying tenant.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Ah.
|
| Here in Sweden the peasant class was rich and
| influential, but I they, since they weren't rent paying,
| were more properly a farmer class.
| defrost wrote:
| Fair enough & interesting to know :-)
|
| It's always worth checking for cultural differences in
| word usage when such things arise on internet forums.
| Gud wrote:
| That's because the other poster is using the word
| "peasant" wrong. Sweden was indeed organised differently
| than most countries in those days, with the king having
| his power base from the farmers(and not aristocrats as in
| most other European countries).
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think most apt comparison for peasant would be
| Backstugusittare or torpare. At least comparing to
| Finnish system.
| samatman wrote:
| The word you're looking for is "yeoman", btw. Peasantry
| is a larger concept which also includes serfs, but the
| yeoman farmer was exactly what you're describing. "Rich"
| might be pushing it in an Anglo context, but land owning
| and powerful, though not in comparison to the
| aristocracy.
| whatindaheck wrote:
| Tangentially related but I saw some similar comments in the
| original thread [0] so hopefully this is alright.
|
| How does one move to Europe? Or how does one begin the process?
| I'm an average engineer and only speak English. Clearly I'm not
| the type of immigrant counties would love to welcome in. Where
| does one start?
|
| For clarity, countries like Spain, Germany, The Netherlands,
| Sweden, and Estonia highly appeal to me.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36920622
| huimang wrote:
| Many places have digital nomad visas, like Estonia for example.
| https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/nomadvisa/
|
| right now you only speak english, but you can surely allocate
| some time to start learning the local language. it's long-term
| marathon, not a sprint.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| If you have no other idea (like reversing the EU->US
| immigration steps), just born there. It worked for me.
| mpreda wrote:
| While still abroad, interview and get a job in a big company in
| a developed country. Afterwards the company will help with
| relocation, visa, and other paperwork.
| dataflow wrote:
| Might help to clarify what you mean by "Europe", it includes
| everything from London to Moscow...
| usrnm wrote:
| And all of those places are very walkable compared to the US
| bloak wrote:
| I don't disagree but interestingly Europe may have one city
| that is less walkable that anywhere in the USA because I
| saw one list of the world's least walkable cities that
| started like this: Johannesburg, Patra (Greece), Dallas,
| Houston, ... and I think the next European city in the list
| was also in Greece. On the other hand I've heard it claimed
| that Britain has the least walkable cities in Europe so I
| don't know.
| dataflow wrote:
| Yes, and you think they wouldn't care which one they move
| to?
| lars512 wrote:
| The easiest way to move anywhere is to apply for a job there,
| and if successful, let them guide you through the visa process.
|
| That gives you a visa linked to your job. But keep unbroken
| employment in that country for 4-5 years and you will get
| permanent residence (pre citizenship), which frees you up
| immensely but requires you to not spent more than 1-2 years at
| a time outside that country.
|
| If you get that far, you've done the hard work and citizenship
| is yours if you want it just by settling there longer.
| TomK32 wrote:
| You will be very welcome as an engineer. We do have english
| speaking countries in the EU: Ireland and Malta have it as
| their official language but others like The Netherlands will
| give you not much problem and then there's plenty of cities to
| look at like Berlin, Vienna, ... Even in the rather small
| Austrian city of 200k pop where I live I know a South African
| woman who gets along just fine as English teacher. European
| cities are becoming the melting pots again they had been before
| the world wars. Just learn the local language and don't fall
| into English too often, the natives will do switch to English
| but I finally got into the habit of having bi-lingual
| conversations which is great fun.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| It's 10x harder to get a job in a foreign country.
|
| It's a ton of paperwork for employers. If you have EU
| citizenship I guess it's easy.
|
| I'd be open to taking a 50% pay cut to get a job in Europe. I
| really wanted to do this in my 20s.
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| Same as moving anywhere - apply to jobs that sponsor visas.
| It's easier if you can move within your current company too.
|
| > I'm an average engineer and only speak English. Clearly I'm
| not the type of immigrant counties would love to welcome in.
|
| This helps way less than one would hope. Bureaucracy trumps
| common sense unfortunately.
| duggan wrote:
| Europe has a lot of countries and cultures, might make sense to
| visit first, see if there's anywhere in particular you like?
|
| English is the primary language in Ireland, and I think as a
| developer you'd qualify for a "critical skills" visa. Can read
| more here https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving-
| country/working...
|
| I imagine most countries have similarly helpful "moving to x"
| websites.
|
| Amsterdam has way better infrastructure, more bike and
| pedestrian friendly (by a long, long way) and you can get by
| with just English to start.
|
| But first maybe visit some places!
| beardyw wrote:
| I found that in most of the Netherlands, certainly south of
| Amsterdam, you could get away with English. But it isn't the
| everyday business language.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I'm an American living in Amsterdam. I moved here last year on
| a highly skilled migrant visa as a software engineer. [1]
| Unlike the USA, immigrating to many countries is easier. The
| company's onboarding team handled all the immigration
| paperwork. Feel free to contact me if you have some questions.
| estebank wrote:
| I would add that the paperwork is easier in countries other
| than the US, but the cultural aspects of immigration are hard
| everywhere. Small things like the food, the sense of humor,
| the cultural expectations, having friends and family far
| away, all weigh down on one regardless of where you are. The
| first half a year you're in a honeymoon period where it won't
| be a problem, the second half is where nostalgia hits hard.
| After that you either have adapted to the situation/feeling,
| or you're gone back. I highly recommend people live in
| different countries, it's enriching and eye opening. But it's
| not what I'd call _easy_.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Fair enough. I was focusing more on the procedural aspects
| of immigrating as come with a special skill. I haven't
| really had a truly Dutch living experience yet. All of my
| coworkers are expats and the center of Amsterdam is largely
| English speaking. I've not yet been exposed to living in a
| Dutch community.
| rangestransform wrote:
| How big of a pay cut did you have to take?
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Please read up on the tax implications if you are a US citizen.
| Unless you move to some place in Europe with low taxes (e.g.
| certain cantons in Switzerland, but you'd be hard-pressed to
| find a more difficult country to get a work visa for outside of
| getting EU citizenship by ancestry), you likely won't end up
| owing the tax difference as income, but it can be difficult to
| navigate retirement savings, especially for mandatory systems
| that don't have a bilateral treaty with the US, wherein the US
| IRS recognizes the special tax-deferred status of a pension or
| IRA equivalent.
|
| You will likely be limited to working only with the largest
| banks, as they're the only ones that are usually willing to
| file the FinCEN reports back to the US.
|
| I still recommend doing it. Yes, you'll likely take a hit
| financially (lower salaries, certain consumer items being a lot
| pricier, a big PITA tax situation), but I think it's worth it
| to see how it is to live in a place that is much better
| designed. It's also great to be able to experience how it is to
| trade off the "grindset mentality" in the US for much better
| WLB. I literally had colleagues whose OOF messages that said
| "I'm bikepacking through Norway and will be offline for all of
| August" meanwhile back in the US, I've had colleagues join
| conference calls on their phone while recovering from surgery
| (not because of a lack of PTO, but because unfortunately
| industry research labs are highly competitive).
|
| Also, it's a good idea to make great efforts to learn the local
| language or you'll end up in an Anglo bubble and you'll end up
| feeling like an alien on a foreign planet.
| sersi wrote:
| As an alternative, I'd recommend trying to live in places in
| Asia like Hong Kong or Japan. Walkable cities, relatively low
| tax rate (but not sure how it works with US citizens tax
| system), higher salaries than Europe (in the case of Hong
| Kong, Japan really depends although CS salaries have
| increased quite a bit lately).
|
| You can also be a digital nomad while living in those places.
| Japan has a special visa IIRC, with HK you can just use the 3
| months tourist visa and do hops to other countries (I know
| quite a few people who have done that for years)
| lozenge wrote:
| I'm surprised nobody mentioned intra company transfer.
|
| You start on the foreign country's website and supplement with
| community groups eg on Facebook. Average engineer might be fine
| but you need above average drive to navigate the process.
| hashmush wrote:
| Only English is not a problem in Sweden (especially Stockholm),
| and we hire foreign engineers all the time. Some companies have
| a majority of foreign born engineers, with a wide range of
| backgrounds (Brazilian, Russian, Spanish, American, etc.)
|
| Ofc, salary comparisons are hard to make vs. the US, but you
| can live comfortably on an engineer's salary in Sweden.
|
| Some of the biggest "modern" companies include DICE, Klarna and
| Spotify. More traditional ones are Ericsson, Scania and Volvo.
|
| Hiring is a bit slow right now though, so that has to be kept
| in mind.
| ncarroll wrote:
| Germany offers an "Opportunity Card" which gives successful
| applicants a year to live here while looking for a job. This is
| a new program that just launched in June, 2024 and I have no
| personal experience with it but, for a country that needs
| qualified workers, I thought it was a good idea.
|
| https://www.simplegermany.com/opportunity-card-germany/
|
| Good luck!
| piva00 wrote:
| I'm a Brazilian living in Sweden for 10+ years.
|
| The easiest way is finding a job, moving here wasn't hard at
| all with a job, the bureaucracy was taken care by the company,
| when I moved you'd get a 2 years work visa attached to the job
| you got, the visa renewal after 2 years frees you to move jobs
| without the new company having to sponsor you. After 4 years I
| got a permanent residency and after 5 I got my citizenship.
| lawn wrote:
| > How does one move to Europe? Or how does one begin the
| process? I'm an average engineer and only speak English.
|
| In Sweden at least practically everyone speaks English and it
| should be common among engineers to mainly speak English (at
| least that's the case for software engineers).
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Engineer and English should be enough to start applying to jobs
| in countries you like except maybe southern-eastern ones where
| English is spoken less
| buildfocus wrote:
| A few countries now have remote work visas (Spain definitely,
| Portugal too I think). As long as you make good money (any
| software engineer salary is fine) and it comes from abroad,
| that'll work to get you in the door. Alternatively you can find
| an big international company (who will often work in English)
| with a local office.
|
| In Western Europe at least, English-only in day to day life
| will be a moderate challenge but not a critical one (many
| people speak at least basic English, you get good at pointing
| effectively, you learn essentials much faster than you think),
| you'll find people & services targeted at expats to solve
| exactly this problem, you meet many many other foreigners in
| the same situation, and with a little time you really can learn
| a language even if you've never done it before (and doing so is
| genuinely an interesting and meaningful project that many
| people enjoy).
|
| I moved to Spain with no Spanish. First year or so is tricky
| but manageable and definitely not boring, and then from there
| on it's relatively smooth sailing. Quite a few years later now,
| worked out great, best decision I ever made.
| hostein wrote:
| Agreed. But this is an easy fix. Except it isn't because it's a
| matter of character and manpower and only then is it about money.
| Cities would gladly implement ideas, just create websites with &
| for proposals, let the neighborhoods know, get volunteers, demand
| social and corporate social responsibility, plan and organize
| potential development projects, in some cases we'd have to wait a
| year or or two or three for some official approval and a
| construction company to find a free spot but this really isn't a
| problem to which the solution requires more than a naive
| beginners mind set and consistency.
| TomK32 wrote:
| GCN, a cycling channel, just released a video on the car-centric
| thinking that we all have been forced into over the past century
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_4GZnGl55c It took me years go
| get into a thinking that mobility should be the priority, not
| cars. Once you do this mental step you can think about who needs
| mobility but for whatever reason cannot use a car (too young, too
| old, drunk, etc) and how streets and cities need to be redesigned
| to slow down cars to make them safer for what many call an
| indicator for a good cycling infrastructure: women (with kids) on
| bicycles.
| globular-toast wrote:
| It's a great video and better than the article imo.
|
| Any talk about walking or cycling that doesn't talk about cars
| is completely missing the main reason people don't want to do
| those things. The video talks about "motonormativity", a
| phenomenon where even people who don't drive will defend and
| justify car usage.
|
| Cars need to get out of town centres. Roads need to be
| redesigned to put pedestrians first and motorists last.
| Unfortunately you can't just make big changes these days so any
| attempts use the boiling the frog approach. Tiny changes that
| will take decades to get anywhere. For example, in the UK now
| pedestrians have priority at T junctions. This is the law. Good
| luck exercising that priority, though. It would be much easier
| without the type of junction shown in that video.
| TomK32 wrote:
| It is a long process, it was in the Netherlands (where it
| started with campaigns about the number of children killed by
| drivers (others might say cars, but there's a person driving
| the car) but will be faster for every other city. I envy
| Paris for the massive change in a quick time, here in Austria
| is a fight street after street with cars still cutting
| through the old town.
| Hugsun wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to compare the article to the GCN
| video. Strongtowns has been advocating against all the issues
| mentioned in the GCN video for years.
|
| This article is just making one argument that aligns with the
| broader idea of urbanism. It's not meant as a general
| introduction to the movement like the video.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Once you do this mental step you can think about who needs
| mobility but for whatever reason cannot use a car (too young,
| too old, drunk, etc)
|
| Then you need to take the mental step of thinking about all the
| people who require a car for mobility. People with small
| babies, anyone with urgent medical needs, and the handicapped.
|
| > cities need to be redesigned to slow down cars
|
| A mode of accident that sometimes occurs is a car rolls down a
| hill then causes a fatality. We'll have to redesign cities to
| remove any elevation changes, and we should seriously consider
| just banning driving at night, as that's when the overwhelming
| majority of pedestrian fatalities occur.
|
| Meanwhile, instead of punishing cars for simply existing and
| providing good utility to the city, why not just build better
| pedestrian infrastructure that's actually separate and
| protected from the road?
| LeChuck wrote:
| A city designed for other modes of transport is also better
| for drivers because only those who need (or really want) to
| drive need to do so. Result, less congestion and more relaxed
| driving.
|
| If you have 15 minutes to spare, watch this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k
| piva00 wrote:
| > A mode of accident that sometimes occurs is a car rolls
| down a hill then causes a fatality. We'll have to redesign
| cities to remove any elevation changes, and we should
| seriously consider just banning driving at night, as that's
| when the overwhelming majority of pedestrian fatalities
| occur.
|
| That's a rather odd edge case, and seems to be much more
| prevalent in the USA than in other developed countries, and
| probably exactly because everyone depends on a car that you
| end up having old shitboxes barely functioning because
| someone is 100% dependent on that shitbox to live their
| lives. A car rolling down a hill is probably less than 1% of
| all car-related accidents in your country.
|
| > Meanwhile, instead of punishing cars for simply existing
| and providing good utility to the city, why not just build
| better pedestrian infrastructure that's actually separate and
| protected from the road?
|
| Why do cars need to have fast lanes _inside a city_? Separate
| that traffic, get the cars out of the way from pedestrian
| streets, design streets sharing different transport modals so
| cars slow down. It works everywhere else, why is the USA so
| special that it won 't work in American cities?
|
| No one is talking about removing cars altogether, the
| discussion centers around making streets in cities safer for
| everyone, no driver wants to kill people, no one on a bike or
| on foot wants to be killed.
|
| There's absolutely no need for cars to go over 30-40km/h in
| city streets, any need for higher speeds demand
| infrastructure separating transport modals.
|
| Please, spend some time in a nice walkable city (some time =
| weeks to months). The difference is absurd. I'm originally
| from Sao Paulo, a city that follows the exact playbook from
| American cities, it's fucking hell with traffic, moving to
| Europe and experiencing how nice cities can be made me a hard
| advocate for changing, I like cars but they shouldn't have
| priority over everyone else inside a city...
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| The post you're responding to talks about having "better
| pedestrian infrastructure that's actually separate and
| protected from the road", and your response is saying
| "Separate that traffic, get the cars out of the way from
| pedestrian streets" and "infrastructure separating
| transport modals". Both of those are making the same case.
|
| > Why do cars need to have fast lanes inside a city?
|
| To get from point A in a city to point B in a city in a
| timely fashion. That doesn't mean that needs to happen on
| streets shared with pedestrians, but it needs to _exist_ ,
| and it needs to have some way of _reaching the same
| destinations_.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| To get fast from point a to point b you need public
| transport not cars. With cars you'll get more traffic and
| the fast road will become slow. Also fast cars are a
| problem when you need to make a pedestrian crossing that
| will act promptly to the button press to switch to green
| for pedestrians.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Also fast cars are a problem when you need to make a
| pedestrian crossing
|
| The three things I quoted in the post you're replying to
| were "better pedestrian infrastructure that's actually
| separate and protected from the road", "Separate that
| traffic, get the cars out of the way from pedestrian
| streets", and "infrastructure separating transport
| modals".
|
| You don't need a pedestrian crossing if you have
| separated infrastructure. For instance, interstates don't
| have pedestrian crossings. (Some have raised paths where
| pedestrians can walk from one side to the other without
| intersecting with traffic.)
|
| > To get fast from point a to point b you need public
| transport
|
| That's a lot less fast when the path from A to B involves
| walking to C, taking transport to D, walking to E, taking
| transport to F, then walking to B, and taking twice as
| much time doing so. Even if transportation were
| _instantly_ available with no waiting when you arrive at
| each of those points, that 's still substantially more
| inconvenient. And it's a largely fundamental property of
| public transport that getting from an _arbitrary_ point
| to an _arbitrary_ point typically involves multiple
| transits plus walking. (And unfortunately, often the
| responses to that are some flavor of "we should make
| cars slower and less convenient" rather than "we should
| make public transport faster and more convenient and
| point-to-point".)
|
| It's hard to beat direct door-to-door transportation.
| It's _possible_ , and we can and _should_ get to a point
| of having that via public transport, but in the meantime
| let 's not pretend that it's always a win rather than a
| tradeoff.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Separated crosswalks aka raised paths inside cities are
| terrible for pedestrians, that's why many cities in eu
| are either closing them or doubling them with classic
| crosswalk and finding out that raised/under paths aren't
| used anymore since it's much more convenient to just
| directly cross the road
|
| Again, properly designed public transport is faster than
| cars. You are thinking about public transport in current
| car designed setting. Imagine each bus/tram has own lane
| and semaphore priority meaning it'll get close to max
| speed, imagine thereare lot's of pub transports, imagine
| the paths for pub transport are shorter compared to car
| paths again to make pub transport more efficient, imagine
| parking is limited since land is expensive and youll
| spend lot of time searching for a spot and it wouldn't be
| cheap since again land is expensive, imagine in either
| situation you'll end up spending time in traffic, imagine
| most of pub transport stations would have bike parking so
| that you could cover last mile on a bike really fast if
| you need it
|
| You can say that it'll cost a lot of money and time to
| implement this but in reality it's just a matter of
| political will. Separate bus lanes and priority
| semaphores and bike lanes and parking is relatively cheap
| and easy to implement, just like dynamic parking price.
| The most expensive part is buying more pub transport
| units.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Separated crosswalks aka raised paths inside cities are
| terrible for pedestrians
|
| I agree, which is why I personally prefer the solution of
| burying the roads and keeping the pedestrian walkways at
| what is currently "street" level. That's a major
| challenge for _existing_ infrastructure, but I 've seen
| more than a few public transportation proposals that have
| similar "much easier when one from scratch" problems, and
| I think it's worth designing the ideal before settling
| for something worse.
|
| > Again, properly designed public transport is faster
| than cars. You are thinking about public transport in
| current car designed setting.
|
| No, I'm thinking about ideal public transport versus
| ideal car transportation. It's not reasonable to compare
| the best case of public transport to deliberately
| worsened car transportation and declare public transport
| the victor. I would _love_ to have public transport that
| 's actually _better_ than the common case of car
| transportation, but proposals like what you 're
| describing don't go far enough to get there.
|
| I would _love_ to have a world where we have 300km /s
| trains between every city (major or minor), and automated
| _point-to-point_ _no-transfer_ underground transportation
| within cities. And I 'd love to see incremental steps in
| a direction like that.
|
| What I don't want to see is "if we make cars _much_
| worse, we can have public transit that sucks less but is
| still worse than cars used to be ".
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Best case of car transport would be if few ppl use it
| which is achieved by giving priority to public transport
| and bike paths. If this (car) mode is prioritized, car
| transport by definition will be a worse experience than
| an ideal bus because you don't get traffic with the bus.
| Burying cars under is a good idea in theory but not that
| great in practice. It's extremely expensive to do it(and
| also build all the underground destination infra) and in
| the end you still will end up with traffic, the
| difference being that all the drivers will be trapped
| with their fumes/microplastic tire wear underground.
|
| You don't need to make cars much worse, just make pub
| transport and bike/pedestrian infra as good as possible
| and give what's left to cars
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Traffic calming makes it easier for ambulances etc to get
| around, not harder.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/07/ambulances-arent-
| slowed...
| lxgr wrote:
| > Meanwhile, instead of punishing cars for simply existing
| and providing good utility to the city, why not just build
| better pedestrian infrastructure that's actually separate and
| protected from the road?
|
| Cars and their supporting infrastructure often take up a vast
| amount of space, which makes walking less attractive as all
| distances are greater as a result.
| dublinben wrote:
| Another way of saying this is that because physical space
| in the city is a scarce resource, the allocation of
| infrastructure for cars and infrastructure for people is a
| zero sum game.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| yeah, the US solved this by expanding out to suburbia.
| Because we just have so much damn space and cars let us
| utilize more of that space.
|
| Of course, the other thing people in this community may
| look over is that suburbs are often a fallback when you
| can't afford a dense urban area. I'm in an LA suburb and
| renting in LA would be over twice as expensive if I moved
| down there. Even if downtown LA became walkable, most of
| the LA county wouldn't be able to afford that living.
| lxgr wrote:
| A zero sum in terms of space, but definitely not in terms
| of efficient utilization, capacity etc.
| TomK32 wrote:
| You probably wouldn't believe it: But we managed to raise our
| daughter without having a car. She's now a happy cyclist
| herself. And in regards to handicaps, a few years ago I broke
| my hip, nothing a few plates and screws couldn't fix but I
| wasn't allow to step on the right leg for months. But I was
| allowed to borrow a recumbent trike, moving the bad leg was
| fine. and I was able to ride it with just the good leg.
| Needless to say I didn't loose much musclemass in the bad leg
| as it was constantly in motion.
|
| It's not about punishing cars for their existence: It's about
| the massive amount of space they take up. Did you actually
| watch the GCN video? Have a look again at the bit about the
| corners that allow cars to go faster but take away space from
| pedestrians.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >It's not about punishing cars for their existence: It's
| about the massive amount of space they take up.
|
| I'm in California. We have a massive amount of space. If
| civilization collapsed, we could make a walkable state that
| can probably suit billions if need be. Being more compact
| isn't a huge priority here. On the contrary, we're trying
| to develop other suburbs out in the desertous regions.
| frabbit wrote:
| We also raised a child without a car -- in North America.
| It is much more possible than most people claim.
|
| I have some sympathy towards people that are arguing about
| different cost/benefit calculations applying to poorer
| people in the most motonormative parts of the USA. I don't
| buy all of it ( I have been poor in the USA and found that
| a bicycle was the key to freedom ), but I can believe there
| may be job situations where it just is more practical.
|
| The people whose testimony I completely write off are
| upper-middleclass who could live closer to work with a
| smaller living space (or other tradeoff) -- we are all
| going to be burning in their self-justifying moralistic
| hell in the near future.
|
| Get a bike losers -- and use it.
| TomK32 wrote:
| Awesome. On the bikes. There's plenty of variants, not
| just the regular city bikes or cargo bikes, but also push
| bikes for adults, here's one German pensioner who
| actually made a startup out of this and his bikes are
| also useful to people with certain disabilities
| https://www.laufrad-fuer-erwachsene.de/
| mjmsmith wrote:
| People who require a car for mobility should be in favor of
| less traffic on the roads. If more people use other forms of
| transport, that makes it easier for the pregnant soccer mom
| on crutches to drop off her 9 kids at practice before driving
| all of the elderly dementia patients in the neighborhood to
| the hospital.
| TomK32 wrote:
| One thing I like to tell car fans: Unless you LOVE traffic
| jams and searching for parking spaces (because they refuse
| to got straight for a parking garage of which we have
| plenty in my city) you should convince other motorists to
| give up their car and use a bicycle or public transport.
| The logic is sound yet a bit too much for most people ;-)
| lm28469 wrote:
| > People with small babies, anyone with urgent medical needs,
| and the handicapped
|
| 99% of cars I see are occupied by a single person. If you get
| them out of the road (or car sharing at least) you can easily
| accommodate for the rest with a much smaller footprint
| Moldoteck wrote:
| " People with small babies, anyone with urgent medical needs,
| and the handicapped."- yes, usually all of them will have a
| more comfortable life in a city that gives priority to
| pedestrian and bike infra. We are all pedestrians, but not
| all of us have cars. Disabled ppl in us are living worse than
| disabled ppl in nl again due to car oriented infra. Having a
| baby doesn't necessarily means you need to have a car, in a
| dense area like in NL ppl get by with a backfiets or cargo
| bike or just are using public transport or taking a taxi/day
| rental when really needed.
|
| Related to car speed- at some point you have intersections of
| pedestrian and car infra and if the priority is to have a
| safer area, cars must drive slower, that's why lots of cities
| are implementing 30km areas+traffic calming like curbs,
| bollards and bumps and it works and heavily reduces the
| accidenta while avg speed remains paradoxically almost
| unchanged because less accidens/dangerous driving means less
| road blocks. Also, not all areas are wide enough to have
| everything separated, that's why the shared road concept
| exists- cars drive super slow and pedestrians and bikes have
| priority there, ppl can walk in the middle just like cars and
| cars will need to wait
| frabbit wrote:
| > Disabled ppl in us are living worse
|
| > than disabled ppl in nl again due to
|
| > car oriented infra.
|
| Car-centered road and sidewalk design is hostile to
| wheelchair users, people with sight impairments, children,
| old people on so many fronts:
|
| - noise from vehicular traffic
|
| - the right to progess impeded at every block by having to
| wait until someone drives their horseless carriage
|
| - the danger of crossing because the licensing process for
| the self-propelled horseless buggies does not select only
| for the reasonable and sane
|
| Motonormativity is a loss for everyone except car
| manufacturers and oil companies.
|
| Even the suckers driving them are cheating themselves out
| of exercise and experiencing the world.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| It's much much more than that. For example in nl ppl in
| electric wheelchairs/microcars can use bike paths to
| drive slowly and safely to their destination. Also due to
| higher density they aren't far from either shops, cafes,
| other stuff they may need, everything is close-basically
| they can live relatively normal lives without relying too
| heavily on others
| Hugsun wrote:
| The Netherlands truly are the promised land of urban
| design.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Cars are not alive, let alone sentient, so it is no more
| possible to punish them than it is a rock or a pane of glass.
|
| Perhaps you do believe cars are sentient and capable of
| receiving punishment. But if not, you might have been using
| "cars" as a de-personifying shorthand for "drivers". In which
| case, yes, drivers should be punished -- not for merely
| existing, no, but for the harm they have caused to non-
| drivers. From traffic fatalities to car-only infrastructure,
| drivers and their insistence on cars have been to the
| detriment of the rest of us.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| you want to punish all drivers because some were dumb and
| reckless? Seems excessive.
|
| I'd start with making sure tests are actually tests and not
| formalities. Then I'd also expand that to needing to re-
| test every X years, so old people who can barely see or
| have poor motor control aren't still driving.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| That's the thing -- a driver doesn't have to be dumb or
| reckless to harm those around them. Merely insisting that
| society provide space for you to drive and park your car,
| not to mention all the harms that driving itself causes
| (CO2, particulate matter, other pollution, noise, ...),
| is a serious harm inflicted by _all_ drivers on those
| around them.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| This makes an assumption that everyone is strapped for
| space. It depends on the geography at the end of the day.
|
| >not to mention all the harms that driving itself causes
| (CO2, particulate matter, other pollution, noise, ...),
|
| I fail to see how humans don't do any of these harms on
| foot. The move towards electric cars should put each
| other on rough parity.
| TomK32 wrote:
| Electric cars are still cars that need a lot of space in
| our cities and run over pedestrians. It's rather sad that
| the move to electric cars wasn't taken as an opportunity
| towards smaller cars.
| TomK32 wrote:
| Did you know that of the car drivers & passengers killed
| each year, about 25% (and the difference between the US,
| UK or EU is pretty small here) didn't put on a seat-belt
| before their last drive? Of course this number will
| eventually go down, but it seems there's a lot of dumb
| drivers out there.
| stonogo wrote:
| "Anyone with urgent medical needs and the handicapped"
| probably already have access to paratransit, since municipal
| mass transit systems are required by ADA to provide it.
| kmarc wrote:
| While taking a walk near downtown Austin, TX, a police car
| stopped next to me and the officers started asking weird
| questions. Including if I know where I am at, where I go, or is
| there someone who could help me with these apparent struggles in
| my life.
|
| It took me a couple awkward minutes to realize that I'm the only
| one standing on my feet and not sitting in a car wherever I was
| looking. I apologized (???) and told them I was heading to a
| museum, bc I'm a visitor here and that's what we do right? I
| added a colleague's address and assured them that I'm not
| "confused", and will take an Uber now.
|
| This was simply unbelievable in my world; for the next week I
| observed my colleague, whenever they took me out, or went to
| somewhere: we never walked outside. From the building to the
| parking lot, from the destination parking lot to the resto and
| vice versa.
|
| Today, of course, I know that there are walkable cities too, I
| enjoy walking from my Chicago hotel to the office building :-)
| every single time I enjoy my US visits, but after a couple weeks
| I can't wait to get back to my 98% car free European life.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| This is not uniquely an American thing. Go to the Middle East
| in summer.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Portable wearable air conditioning and sun protection, that's
| what you'd need to make it comfortable. Maybe like a robotic
| exoskeleton, we can't be far from making that affordable.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| cars are just suburban power armor
| jpadkins wrote:
| we can also have wheels to make it energy efficient. We can
| call it "the mobile" or maybe the auto-mobile.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Wheels might make it energy efficient but engines powered
| by oil from deep under the Gulf of Mexico shipped to
| refineries, then shipped hundreds of miles to gas
| stations, then people driving a ton or two of steel and
| plastic and rubber to the gas station so they can
| "efficiently" get one person 4 miles to a shop isn't so
| efficient.
|
| A bicycle on flat asphalt is more efficient than a person
| despite person+bike moving more total mass; but still the
| cost of mining iron ore, making steel, making a bike for
| every customer, compared to just building the store and
| the homes close enough to walk and not doing any of
| that...
|
| Energy.gov says "In 2021, 52% of all trips, including all
| modes of transportation, were less than three miles, with
| 28% of trips less than one mile", it's daft either way
| that people want to use a car for such short distances or
| that urban spaces are designed so that things are
| relatively very close but juuuust too far for
| convenience.
| pshc wrote:
| Singapore has covered walkways everywhere to beat the heat.
|
| Also I would love to see more covered bikeways.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Air conditioned suits could be a thing for E-bikes.
| Onboard power source.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| That is why cultures in such climates tend to have a mid-day
| siesta when no one goes out, and a lively late night when the
| temperatures become bearable, the sun no longer tries to
| murder you with its rays, and people go outside to eat, shop
| and meet friends.
| TylerE wrote:
| Nah, as someone who lives somewhere with actual humidity
| "mid day" is basically "whenever the sun is up".
|
| 85 and humid here is worse than -00 and dry in Phoenix.
| It's so humid your sweat can't evaporate because the air is
| already saturated. It's beyond miserable, and actively
| unhealthy to many.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Yeah, hot and humid areas have never been particularly
| friendly to human civilization. Prior to the industrial
| era, they were mostly covered by rainforests.
| TylerE wrote:
| North Carolina is hardly rainforest, nor has it ever
| been.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I don't know much about NC, but the only parrot native to
| the US used to live there [0], which indicates that it
| must have been pretty heavily forested prior to the
| Colombian exchange.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_parakeet
| randomdata wrote:
| The map of US rainforests shows an active rainforest
| along the western side of North Carolina. It is not all
| that hard to believe said forest could have been much
| larger before the human touch.
| TylerE wrote:
| Western part of the state is farther from where I am than
| LA is from SF, just for the record.
| randomdata wrote:
| The easternly side of the forest to the easternmost
| points of NC is not further than LA from SF, though.
| Unless you live way out in the ocean, but still consider
| that to be North Carolina for some reason, you are closer
| than said distance to the forest.
| TylerE wrote:
| I do I. Fact live almost at the Coast. Just to get to
| Asheville, which is hardly the westernmost point in the
| state, is over 6 hours.
|
| Los Angeles to SF is 381 miles. My town to the Cherokee,
| which is about where the rainforest zone starts, is 383.
| North Carolina is a much bigger state than most people
| realize.
| randomdata wrote:
| You do live out in the Ocean? Fair enough.
|
| Nobody has ever thought North Carolina was small, though.
| Where did that idea come from? In fact, it is not clear
| why the record needed a distance in the first place.
| TylerE wrote:
| In the ocean, no, but about 30 miles inland.
|
| I assure you, as life long resident, I have blown the
| minds of many non-natives by stating I can drive for 8
| hours west and still not quite be in Tennessee. In most
| places east of the Mississippi that gets you through 3-4
| states.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| It's not a tropical rainforest though.
| Temperate/subtropical rainforests aren't as bad.
| zamadatix wrote:
| You might be thinking "tropical rainforest". Even today
| parts of North Carolina (and even Alaska) are classified
| as temperate rainforests: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wi
| kipedia/commons/f/fe/Temperat...
| TylerE wrote:
| Very small parts. We just have lots of water and
| swampland down where I am.
| cafard wrote:
| Sicily? Rome? Angkor Wat?
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| How close were you to downtown Austin? Were you walking on the
| side of a freeway?
|
| Except for the very hottest of summer days, I see a lot of
| pedestrians in downtown Austin.
| giaour wrote:
| > Except for the very hottest of summer days, I see a lot of
| pedestrians in downtown Austin.
|
| I don't know if this is true of Austin, but trying to
| convince people to get off the street in the afternoon can be
| part of the city's heat management plan in some parts of
| Texas.
| julienchastang wrote:
| Strange. I have been to Austin a number of times for work and I
| find the city to be very walkable. I also enjoy the riverfront
| parks and pay a visit to SRV (may he rest in peace). I stay in
| downtown or at UT so I don't really know what it is like beyond
| there. I've also used their b-cycle system with great success.
| In addition, I remember their public transport system to be
| decent for an American city. That's how I get to the airport
| for something like $1 from downtown.
| tialaramex wrote:
| I was in Austin for work in the 1990s and there was a mall,
| which I could see from my hotel so I figured I'll just walk
| to the mall. Nope.
|
| I think either an older colleague (I was not old enough to
| rent a car, this is a long time ago) ferried me across or
| maybe the hotel took pity and sent me in their minibus ?
| There was no practical way to walk that short distance, the
| infrastructure is designed only for cars.
|
| I mainly remember that mall because I found a (possibly
| mislabelled) copy of the version of Tori Amos' "Under The
| Pink" which is actually 2CDs, so "More Pink" is inside the
| case too but it was the same price as the regular album, and
| that was an amazing bargain for teenage me. But yeah, it was
| staggering to me that these Americans just expected to drive
| everywhere. I have grown up in an English village where I
| walked everywhere, to school, to the shops. to a friend's
| house, everywhere. I guess I was old enough to realise that
| _most_ English villages aren 't also served by the London
| Underground, but the choice to build only car infrastructure
| seemed very strange indeed.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| There are places in Austin where you can go for
| pleasure/scenic walks. (eg think the green belts). But it's
| hard to use walking for utility in Austin. Not to mention
| socially you'll consistently be invited to places >5 miles
| away and the presumption is you have a car and you'll all
| drive separate.
| shermozle wrote:
| The hire bikes are great but if you don't have a North
| American phone number you can't sign up in their app! (I
| relied on a friendly stranger who offered her phone number
| for the confirmation code.)
|
| Great city to ride around! Surprisingly good facilities.
| ysofunny wrote:
| if there was a dictionary of "american urbanism" they would
| define humans as having four wheels rather than two legs
|
| they really do act like it whenever the USA plans a city or a
| neighborhood. why wouldn't everybody have a car? except we
| actually have plenty of reasons now that we didn't before
| jncfhnb wrote:
| You're confusing yourself with suburbs. Most American cities
| are highly walkable. Safety is the limiting factor.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| Having cities arranged on grids with huge wide roads is
| generally a recipe for non-walkable environments. If you
| are having to wait ages for a light to change every time
| you go from one block to the next, you lose much of the
| efficiency of walking.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Having cities arranged on grids with huge wide roads is
| generally a recipe for non-walkable environments.
|
| There's no problem with grids or wide roads as long as
| there is infrastructure in place for pedestrians. Bridges
| can allow people to cross over wide streets/traffic
| without having to wait for a light for example. Tunnels
| can be an option as well. Grids can really help a city be
| more walkable since it becomes dead simple to navigate
| and you aren't wasting time on long winding roads or
| labyrinthine paths which increase the distance between
| two points and make it easier to get lost.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Grids are better than culdesac but worse than randomness
| for a human brain so that it would be interesting to walk
| there. Wide roads aren't good for walkability in any
| sense: even if we ignore huge noise and pollution created
| by lots of cars, wide roads are more dangerous to cross
| and since it's wide you as a pedestrian need to walk more
| on non pedestrian infra to get to points of interest.
| Walkability isn't just about being able to walk
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > There's no problem with grids or wide roads as long as
| there is infrastructure in place for pedestrians. Bridges
| can allow people to cross over wide streets/traffic
| without having to wait for a light for example.
|
| Infrastructure for pedestrians would be you cross as soon
| as you get there, cars wait. Bridges are not pedestrian
| infrastructure they're "cars are the priority"
| infrastructure, "cars mustn't be delayed or
| inconvenienced, pedestrians can be" infrastructure.
| autoexec wrote:
| I don't see a problem with bridges that allow people to
| access without slowing anyone down. something like
| https://i.redd.it/m62z7ovxkpg81.jpg or
| https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1230021650/photo/women-
| wear... works very well without inconveniencing
| pedestrians who often appreciate the view
| kettlecorn wrote:
| Those add substantial crossing time and are quite costly.
|
| None of the world's great walking cities heavily uses
| bridge crossings like that.
| watwut wrote:
| If you are in hurry, you will avoid those. They add more
| time to your trip then one would guess intuitively.
|
| What do work for pedestrians is a network of smaller
| roads that you can "just" cross safely without waiting or
| taking detours. Basically, a few big roads you cross once
| in a while and the rest being smaller roads where cars
| are forced to go slowly.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| " without slowing anyone down. " - but the very first
| image you provided will slow down pedestrians, it's
| harder to cross compared to a simple direct crosswalk and
| it's less friendly to ppl with mobility problems. Such
| bridges are relatively ok to implement outside cities
| where you have highways/roads with cars driving high
| speeds but these are bad solutions inside cities where
| the priority belongs to pedestrians and cars must drive
| slower
| jodrellblank wrote:
| It's inconvenient to climb a set of stairs every time
| cross a road. What about pushchairs, wheelchairs, the
| elderly, people with walking sticks, shopping trolleys,
| arthritis, gammy knees, people carrying heavy shopping or
| wheeled luggage? In general if you're going to slow down
| anyone then slow down drivers who have engines to
| accelerate them back up to speed with no effort. Making
| people climb stairs so drivers don't have to wait is not
| good pedestrian infrastructure, the view (of a road full
| of cars who have priority over you) is hardly a great
| trade off. Nor is paying the extra taxes for bridge
| maintenance so that car drivers can have a better life at
| your expense.
|
| When you consider that drivers are generally wealthier
| (because they own cars) and the pedestrians are breathing
| car exhaust and tyre dust while working their lungs
| harder climbing to give cars the priority, listening to
| car noise while drivers pass in low effort comfort, the
| mild unfairness of it is more starkly contrasted.
|
| Ideally good pedestrian design would tempt people out of
| their cars because walking is so quick, convenient,
| cheap, pleasant, interesting - with shade and shops and
| short distances and quiet clean surroundings. Big steel
| bridges don't contribute to that very much. [Have you
| seen how often Americans comment on the price of gas? Yet
| what people campaign for is the government to lower the
| price of gas, not for the government to make life without
| cars so pleasant that cars are not a necessity. What
| sense does that make? Most living Americans have never
| lived in a walkable place, and have no film, tv, or
| cultural reference for one to use for a basis for such a
| campaigh - maybe Disneyland (which visitors tend to
| love)? 120 years ago everywhere was walkable because
| there wasn't much other than walking. 70 years ago places
| were bulldozed for cars. Now multiple generations have
| grown up and lived their adult lives with car dependent
| urban design].
| noodlesUK wrote:
| Outside my university there was a fairly fast "A" road
| (two lanes, high speed limit, actually much narrower than
| a typical American street). Rather than stop traffic,
| there was a bridge that crossed the road. To use the
| bridge you needed to climb a set of stairs. Of course,
| people didn't use the bridge because it was inconvenient
| and tiring to have to take a longer route (including
| stairs) rather than just walk 8-10 meters across the
| road.
|
| There were severe injuries or deaths every single year
| when students would cross the road late at night and a
| car would be speeding at 60+ mph. They eventually
| installed a puffin-style crossing, which was much better.
|
| The solution, especially in built up areas, is to keep
| cars from causing problems for pedestrians rather than
| trying to stop pedestrians from causing problems for
| cars. Perhaps the cars should be relegated to a tunnel so
| people don't have to be near them instead.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| The fact safety is a limiting factor means those places
| don't have social control, meaning these are not places ppl
| tend to hang out in so probably not that walkable. P.s.
| walkable in this context doesn't mean it's just possible to
| walk, it means it's a nice experience to walk with nice
| environment/shops/othwr points of interest
| kettlecorn wrote:
| "Highly walkable" means many people would choose to walk
| even if able to take a car.
|
| To be walkable a city needs to be quick to walk between
| destinations and pleasant to do so.
|
| Most US cities are too spaced out, require waiting at each
| block, or are not all that pleasant for walking.
| philip1209 wrote:
| I own the domain AmericanUrbanism[.]org - I've been thinking
| of setting up some kind of advocacy group (501c4) or even
| political party there focused on changing this reality.
|
| Cars made more sense in the industrial age, when people
| needed to commute to a factory for work. But, in the age of
| knowledge work and especially remote work, we aren't
| commuting as much. So, walkable neighborhoods become far more
| important and impactful.
| weweweoo wrote:
| I think there should be just many types of neighborhoods.
| Those who need a car for longer distance travel should
| accept living further away from city center, where there's
| enough space for parking slots, while the rest can enjoy
| pedestrian-first neighbourhoods closer to services. Public
| transport should of course reach all areas, so that the car
| owners have no real need to use their car much to reach the
| denser areas.
| chiggsy wrote:
| >Those who need a car for longer distance travel should
| accept living further away from city center
|
| Strongly feel this acceptance will be difficult to
| actualize sans coercion.
| XMPPwocky wrote:
| How so? We've built huge amounts of infrastructure
| (parking being the obvious one) to explicitly enable
| people to have cars in city centers- stop doing that and
| my gut (scientific, I know!) says that'll get you most of
| the way there.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| The least coercive way to do it is probably by making
| areas closer to the city center worse for driving --
| narrow roads, no parking, etc -- and better for walking
| and biking. Then people will naturally sort themselves
| based on their preferences. The problem being that
| establishing the needed urban environment is itself a
| political struggle.
| philip1209 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_city
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| Had a somewhat similar experience in Houston (minus police),
| which seems to be a city whose infrastructure is comprised of
| one 9000-lane monstrosity of a freeway. I was staying in a
| hotel right across the street from the office I was working in,
| maybe a 3 minute walk. A coworker offered to give me a ride
| each morning, and when I mentioned I could just walk they said
| 'the only pedestrians around here are homeless people'. So I
| guess that's their general attitude about walking, which might
| explain the attention from police.
| hammock wrote:
| I had a similar experience in Mexico City, except it wasn't a
| cop who stopped me, it was a friendly civilian driving by,
| and they asked if I was confused because they had observed
| two men stalking me from 3 blocks back for a while who were
| likely to jump me.
|
| I don't think anyone stopping to genuinely help is a "bad"
| thing, or robs one of their dignity. If you do, maybe that is
| a comment on your internal worldview instead of on that of
| the person stopping.
|
| Dense cities where passersby ignore you wantonly are decried
| as impersonal, lacking community, etc and now we are saying
| we WANT MORE of that? That it brings DIGNITY?
| 6177c40f wrote:
| I don't understand what you're arguing. It seems like
| you're saying you'd rather have a city where cops and
| concerned citizens stop to ask if you're confused than a
| dense, walkable city? I also don't understand how you got
| that dense, walkable cities would be someplace "where
| passersby ignore you wantonly".
| hammock wrote:
| Cities used to be filled with tight knit communities in
| neighborhoods where everyone knew each other. Kids played
| outside and roamed around and no one cared.
|
| Then mass suburbanization happened in the 60s/70s.
| American cities became high crime places. Everyone became
| anonymous. No one knew their neighbor.
|
| Such is the paradox of modern urban life. Nowhere are you
| closer physically to your neighbor, but more distant
| socially. The 5 acre farms outside of town all know each
| other's grandkids by name. Does a city dweller even know
| the name of the resident across the hall?
| reaperman wrote:
| Yeah it's interesting. The kids in the upper peninsula
| know everyone else their age within a 150 mile radius by
| the time they graduate from high school (usually via
| sports). Many of them live on roads that share their last
| name. Very, extremely rural with small towns sprinkled
| around.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >Cities used to be filled with tight knit communities in
| neighborhoods where everyone knew each other. Kids played
| outside and roamed around and no one cared. >Then mass
| suburbanization happened in the 60s/70s. American cities
| became high crime places. Everyone became anonymous. No
| one knew their neighbor.
|
| Here in Tokyo, it's still like this: kids play outside
| and roam around, taking the subway by themselves, etc.
| But people don't know their neighbors here either, since
| it's a city with tens of millions of people; it's just
| safe because it's built into the culture, just like petty
| theft almost never happens here and when you drop your
| wallet, it's almost certain to be turned into the nearest
| police box, with all the cash still inside.
| danans wrote:
| > Cities used to be filled with tight knit communities in
| neighborhoods where everyone knew each other. Kids played
| outside and roamed around and no one cared
|
| There are many neighborhoods in cities and towns in the
| US where this is still true. I know because I live in
| one, and I've visited others. There are also a ton of US
| suburbs and exurbs where people barely know their
| neighbours.
|
| Having a friendly neighborhood has much to do with the
| strength of community institutions and the existence of
| "third places". Those can be present (or not) in a
| variety of community layouts and densities.
|
| My take is that it requires a sweet spot of economic
| security where people aren't struggling so much that they
| can't/don't trust in community, but also aren't so
| wealthy that they don't need/rely on their community.
| Beyond that, it also helps to have physical layouts that
| enable friendly unintentional encounters between
| residents.
|
| The problem is that none of these places will be cheap to
| live in, because all else equal, the existence of that
| lifestyle will drive up demand (and therefore housing
| prices).
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Thats the narrative thats popular but I find it doesn't
| pencil out. I know plenty of neighbors living in an urban
| area. More than when I lived in a suburban area that's
| for sure. You have much higher chance of coming about
| someone on foot in earshot in the urban area. When your
| neighbor takes out the trash in the suburbs they are
| doing it 100 yards away from you.
| hammock wrote:
| What city do you live in? Which cities are you thinking
| of?
| Nicholas_C wrote:
| When I lived in Houston I would bike to work occasionally but
| it's not a pleasant thing to do 4-6 months out of the year.
| Even walking to the bus stop at 8am in the summer I would be
| sweating. People who harp on Houston for being designed
| around cars (notably the "Not Just Bikes" channel on YouTube)
| usually live somewhere like the Netherlands with moderate
| weather and never address just how uncomfortable it is to be
| outside in Houston half the year. It also rains heavily in
| Houston quite frequently (90 days of rain/year).
|
| I would love more walkable infra but I don't blame anyone for
| not wanting to walk in Houston.
| teetertater wrote:
| A substantial contributor to that heat is asphalt and
| concrete though (absorbs heat and releases it at night).
| And to make it worse there's no tree cover. Winter is also
| more manageable if you don't have to wait 20 mins for a bus
| in an uncleared snowbank just because non-car mobility is
| second-class
| Nicholas_C wrote:
| True. Another issue with all the concrete is that it
| doesn't absorb rain and has made the constant flooding
| worse. Zero tree cover is also a shame, there are
| hundreds of miles of concrete bike and walking paths
| along the bayous that would be great for commuting but
| most of it has zero tree cover so you're just baking in
| the sun.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| The older parts of Houston have massive oak trees that
| provide a lot of shade (and acorns the size of walnuts).
| But the older houses aren't large enough for modern
| Houstonians (roll your eyes here); when you tear it down
| to build a McMansion the trees also have to go.
|
| The elementary school near my friend's house had a
| playground that was 100% shaded by just two massive
| trees. They tore the school down for a modern
| replacement. The new playground has no shade at all, not
| even those stretched fabric triangles you see all over
| the southern US.
| vel0city wrote:
| As someone who grew up playing in the bayous out in the
| suburbs of Houston, even away from the concrete the
| humidity and heat are oppressive in the summertime.
| hammock wrote:
| Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Montevideo, San Juan (PR) are all
| tropical cities hotter than Houston, roughly the same size,
| and are very walkable
| Nicholas_C wrote:
| I don't know the distinct history of those cities but
| Houston's population didn't hit 1 million until the
| 1960s, nearly all of its growth has taken place in a car-
| centric world. At least 3/4 four of those cities have
| been around for a long time pre-car and I suspect weren't
| designed with cars in mind.
| hammock wrote:
| How about Miami, e.g Miami Beach and downtown Miami, both
| extremely walkable? Like Houston, Miami did not reach 1
| million pop until the 60s.
|
| Or Panama City, did not reach 1 mil until the 90s
|
| And "designed with cars in mind" is part of the problem,
| is it not? Using that as a filter is like saying "there
| are no parking garages with good canoeing routes"
| nostrademons wrote:
| More to the point, nearly all of that growth has taken
| place in an _air-conditioned_ world. Urbanization of the
| U.S. South really only took off once the air-conditioner
| became mainstream.
|
| Those other cities have a population that is adjusted to
| the heat - they grew up with it, their ancestors grew up
| with it, they're genetically and culturally adjusted to
| the climate. By contrast, the U.S. South includes a large
| number of immigrants who are _only there because air
| conditioning exists_. It 's a mystery why anyone would
| want to walk around in 100 degree heat with 90% humidity,
| because they certainly wouldn't.
| mikrotikker wrote:
| I can't even fathom how those people can survive the heat
| and humidity let alone walk in it.
| filoleg wrote:
| Agreed. No matter how good the biking infrastructure in
| major cities in Japan is (and apparently it was good
| enough for me to see someone biking at almost any given
| moment, so I assume it was pretty good), I cannot fathom
| how people did it. You open a door to the outside, and
| you feel like you got blasted with a human-sized heatgun.
| Just standing outside for more than a few minutes, and
| you pretty much gotta take a shower after. And no, I am
| not ultra-sensitive to it, as I managed to survive 90F
| summers in Seattle with no AC just fine before.
| hammock wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9281079/
|
| The simple answer is, you adapt (homeostasis)
| presentation wrote:
| Don't worry, Japanese people complain about it all
| summer. You're not alone!
| cinntaile wrote:
| Japan is also a very car-centric country. Most of the
| time you get to bike on the sidewalk, together with the
| people on foot.
| hammock wrote:
| Germany is the same way, the bike lane is often on the
| sidewalk, however it tends to be a very bike-friendly
| place
| filoleg wrote:
| In Japan it wasn't the case, it was straight up just
| people bicycling on the sidewalk in-between people
| walking. They just somehow figured out how to do it in a
| way that doesn't disrupt the pedestrians, and I am still
| not sure how.
| filoleg wrote:
| You are very correct about biking on the sidewalk, but I
| am not going to lie, I was madly impressed how it created
| pretty much zero disturbance for pedestrians ever.
| Totally despite the fact that it was happening all the
| time.
|
| Meanwhile, had plenty of occasional bicycle/scooter
| riders in Seattle basically destroying the flow of
| pedestrians on sidewalks.
| drekipus wrote:
| Heat and humidity comes after the decision to not walk
| and turn everything into roads and parking lots
| vel0city wrote:
| I can guarantee you Houston was hot and humid well before
| cars existed.
| GFischer wrote:
| Humidity is the worst part, when it's hot but not so
| humid it's OK.
|
| And at least here in Montevideo we're literally by the
| beach. I am two blocks away from being able to swim :)
|
| I do complain a lot about the heat+humidity combination
| and I use A/C a lot.
| GFischer wrote:
| I'm from Montevideo, I wouldn't call it "tropical" but
| yeah, compared to an US city it's absolutely a million
| times more walkable.
|
| We do have humidity and heat and I don't enjoy it and I
| use A/C several months a year.
|
| There's a big push for more cycling-centric and more
| cycling lanes, and the bus infrastructure is obviously a
| lot better than the US. I don't have a car by choice.
|
| I haven't been to Houston but I have been to Dallas and
| it was an extremely frustrating experience and it feels
| like an awful soulless city to me.
| Nicholas_C wrote:
| Dallas' big criticism from Texans (and especially
| Houstonians, there is a bit of a rivalry) is that it's
| soulless... so you nailed it.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| NotJustBikes went to Houston, tried to walk from the hotel
| to a suitcase shop 1-2km away, and found it too dangerous,
| not too hot. He doesn't say "everyone in Houston should
| walk everywhere all the time" he says "Houston is designed
| so you can't safely walk even if the distance is short and
| you want to".
|
| > "I would love more walkable infra but I don't blame
| anyone for not wanting to walk in Houston."
|
| But the relevant part is people who _do want to_ , but
| can't.
| mikrotikker wrote:
| Were they trying to stay that you will get stabbed by a
| homeless person but in a nicer way?
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I had something similar happen to me in Miami about a decade
| ago. As a New Yorker I'm just used to walking and taking public
| transit everywhere. I was down there for some data center work
| I needed to do out of the NAP of the Americas, and one night I
| decided to go to see a friend of a friend DJ at some bar in
| downtown Miami. So I took the free Miami elevated train to a
| stop near the club (The Vagabond) and started walking over. I
| get a block into the walk and someone pulls up on a bike and is
| like "wtf are you doing? are you lost? you should _not_ be
| walking right now, do you need help? ". It was a totally fine
| walk, maybe 5 minutes at NYC walking speeds, if maybe a bit
| desolate. The guy proceeded to slowly ride next to me while I
| walked to make sure I was ok. Ended up buying him a beer in the
| club and chatting for a while, he just thought it was dangerous
| to be walking.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Maybe it was a dangerous (i.e. high-crime) area? A lot of
| areas can look OK but are not someplace you want to be at
| night especially alone. And if you're from out of town you
| might not know.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Similar happened to me. I was at The Oaks Card Club on the
| border of Emeryville and West Oakland. I needed to get to
| BART, and it was just a few blocks on one street, so I
| thought I'd just walk. About half way down, a taxi driver
| actually pulled up without me hailing him and said "Man,
| what the fuck are you doing walking here? Get in and I'll
| drive you wherever you need to go!" It was either a great
| sales pitch or I was actually in danger and didn't know it.
| alephnerd wrote:
| If you were walking to the West Oakland station, he's
| absolutely right.
|
| You'd be crossing a couple highway on-ramps which aren't
| the most pedestrian friendly.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| My SF story: Chinatown, near the convention center. My
| wife wanted me to pick some stuff up while I was there. I
| had been there by day, seemed perfectly reasonable. I get
| done with the trade show, head over there near closing
| time to get what she wanted (perishable, so I left it to
| the last minute) and coming back I realized the character
| had changed considerably and it was a place I didn't want
| to be. I hadn't gotten a car because the hassles of
| parking made it a negative to me.
| alexawarrior3 wrote:
| We solved that problem for you by closing everything at
| 9pm now, or earlier.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I think this was a bit before 7pm. It surprised me
| because I didn't expect the character to change that much
| while the stores were still open. The undesirable
| elements usually only show up once the legitimate people
| leave.
| fred909 wrote:
| I only have one friend who's been mugged - and it was in
| Emeryville.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Yeah, that's what he was saying. I mean it didn't look the
| safest, but that's never something that has bothered me. A
| large part of my 20s were spent being places I probably
| shouldn't have been all around Brooklyn in the early 2000s.
| As soon as I got on the Miami metromover and noticed I was
| the only one not strung out I knew what I was getting
| myself into. The palm trees were maybe throwing me off --
| as a New Yorker palm trees meant vacation.
| rangestransform wrote:
| I dunno about metromover but I took metrorail in miami
| every day during ultra music festival and the clientele
| seemed about on par with the clientele on the nyc subway
| whymauri wrote:
| I'd say there's a selection bias during big international
| events. You feel it more than say, NYC or Chicago,
| because baseline ridership is low in Miami. So when Ultra
| comes to town there's a larger effect size, IMO.
| whymauri wrote:
| I know the area well since we had a family business
| around there. It's a few blocks away from a sketchy
| neighborhood; rapidly gentrifying today, though.
|
| At one point it was the intersection of 3 sketchy
| neighborhoods, but it's been a while.
| esotericsean wrote:
| Living in Southern California, I like to go on walks with my
| family in the evenings or mornings, but I couldn't imagine
| having to take public transportation or having to walk
| everywhere. It seems picturesque, but it also sounds terrible
| in the sense that you can't just get in your car, go some
| place, park in a parking lot, go shopping, and then head back
| home, all on your own terms.
|
| I visited London a long time ago and the public transportation
| is amazing and it I did want to walk to see the city, which I
| did. But I imagine even living there, I would want my own car
| to be in control of my life.
|
| So, visiting a place is good for walking. But living in a place
| is not. At least that's my experience.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| >But living in a place is not
|
| I'm 40+ years old now and have never needed or wanted to have
| a driving license. I simply hated America when I had to visit
| and use taxi or someone else's help to get anywhere. In
| Berlin even with a child the need of a car is so rare --
| sometimes it's even more pleasant to walk an hour to a museum
| or a club than use public transportation.
| blobbers wrote:
| That's strange coming from someone whose country has the
| famous autobahn. What if you want to get out into the
| countryside, where busses and trains don't go? Don't you
| need a license to rent a vehicle?
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| > What if you want to get out into the countryside, where
| busses and trains don't go?
|
| I don't have any business in such countryside. What would
| I find there? A good beach on Baltic sea is 15 min walk
| door-to-water plus 2 hours on express train. The list of
| tourist attractions and vacation destinations accessible
| by train, plane and/or taxi within half a day or so is so
| big here that I cannot imagine going to such inaccessible
| place. Worst case I will pay a few hundred euro for taxi
| if such improbable situation occurs.
| alexawarrior3 wrote:
| And what's going to happen long term with exploding Berlin
| rents? The only affordable rents will be out in the suburbs
| of Berlin, where you'll either have to drive in or spend
| 2-3x the time on a probably crowded train possibly standing
| room only. As in the example of Switzerland above, mass
| transit is a luxury for those able to pay high rents.
| Previously in Berlin this was subsidized by the rest of
| Germany and by price controls but the right-wing courts
| have pretty much gutted Berlin's price protections in favor
| of billion-euro property developers.
|
| I lived in Germany for years without driving as well,
| because I could afford to live by the city center. But over
| half my colleagues drove because that's all they could
| afford to do, and you should try stepping out of your
| bubble and understand the pressures that force Germans to
| drive. They're not all just wanting to spend more time in
| their Audis.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| First, I'm not representing all Germans here, just
| sharing my own experience which is a good counter-example
| to "life without a car is impossible". I'm of course not
| arguing that car is unnecessary for everyone.
|
| Second, don't tell me about my "bubble": you have no idea
| who I am and what I have experienced in my life. I'm very
| well aware of many sides of it, maybe more than you are.
|
| Third, do you seriously want to lecture a person who is
| both a landlord and a tenant in Berlin about local rent
| controls and price development? We do have some issues
| here, but it is nowhere close to neither London or NYC
| where prices are crazy nor Moscow where commuting can be
| truly exhausting.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >I'm of course not arguing that car is unnecessary for
| everyone.
|
| Sadly, many are. This topic often does turn into one of
| lifestyle judgement and it isn't very productive when
| arguments go from practical to personal. As if any one
| car-goer or bus-goer determines the fate of a city's
| urban planning.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Agree. Especially when you add bike-goers to the
| conversation it can get ugly very quickly. A parent with
| a stroller is the most neglected person in such talks.
|
| I myself believe that personal cars are mobility edge
| cases and the world will settle on vendor-managed rental
| fleets eventually, where most people will occasionally
| use rental cars with autopilot.
|
| Nevertheless this is not going to happen for the next
| 50-80 years, so we just need at least to stop promoting
| car-centric lifestyle and find a real compromise between
| cars, bikers and pedestrians.
| watwut wrote:
| In Switzerland, people in villages use trains to get to
| and from work. Quite literally, they bike to train, park
| bike, use train to go to work. Some ride car to train,
| ride train and then go to work.
|
| It is just not true that mass transit is only for those
| who pay high rents. It is other way round pretty much all
| round world and historically - rich people were buying
| cars more and poor used public transport.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > but I couldn't imagine having to take public transportation
| or having to walk everywhere
|
| Well yes, the US transportation system is utter trash, even
| in California
|
| > but it also sounds terrible in the sense that you can't
| just get in your car, go some place, park in a parking lot,
| go shopping, and then head back home, all on your own terms.
|
| In Europe I have three supermarkets in a 800m radius around
| my place, the closest shopping center/mall/whatever you call
| it is a 30min walk away (10min by public transport, 8min by
| bicycle). I can walk to the closest supermarket without even
| leaving the private ground of my block of buildings and its
| park, no street to cross, no cars in sight
|
| > I would want my own car to be in control of my life.
|
| Are you working for these fine gentlemen ?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_lobby
| didntcheck wrote:
| I'm European, spent the first 10 years of my independent
| adult life without a car, and have always lived in urban
| areas, within walking distance of supermarkets and other
| amenities, and with good public transport services. Yet I
| agree with him
|
| When I finally did get a car, it was a massive QoL upgrade.
| I can go anywhere, at any time, usually _considerably_
| faster than PT, and carry an order of magnitude more than
| before. I didn 't enjoy having to go to the supermarket
| multiple times a week, but I had to when I could only carry
| maybe 4 bags (fewer if heavy) in one trip. I still do use
| buses and trains where it makes sense, e.g. visiting other
| cities or the centre of mine
| lm28469 wrote:
| Cool, too bad it isn't sustainable. If life was about
| doing everything you want whenever you want and carry a
| lot of useless junk around without having to worry about
| side effects we'd have won the game by now
| didntcheck wrote:
| And the goalposts move again. We were talking about the
| convenience, not the sustainability. If you want to argue
| that the inconvenience is a necessary price for
| environmental sustainability, sure, that's a valid
| position, but don't pretend that there's no convenience
| cost
|
| It's interesting that I've been downvoted to -3 for
| factually detailing how cars are in fact useful. Shooting
| the messenger won't change the facts
| breuleux wrote:
| > I didn't enjoy having to go to the supermarket multiple
| times a week, but I had to when I could only carry maybe
| 4 bags (fewer if heavy) in one trip.
|
| I mean, if we're talking about convenience, I started
| ordering my groceries online during the pandemic and I'd
| argue that's an even bigger QoL upgrade. You can still go
| for produce (or not) and the occasional thing you need
| immediately, but getting stuff delivered to you is
| generally cheaper and more convenient than owning a car.
| The gratification is a bit less instant, but I value my
| time more than that.
|
| As for cars being faster than public transit, sure, but
| making cars fast often have the side effect of making
| other modes of transit slower, and vice versa. Buses need
| reserved lanes to be reliable, bikes need reserved lanes
| to be safe, which means less cars can go. As a
| pedestrian, I would get to places significantly faster if
| I could just jaywalk wherever I please, but naturally
| this would require very low speed limits. Cars also
| require parking lots, which make walking less efficient.
| Cars are only convenient for their own drivers, they are
| inconvenient for everybody else (including other
| drivers).
| didntcheck wrote:
| Agreed on supermarket delivery. I've started using it
| now, and probably should have done so sooner
|
| I also actually agree on prioritizing bus and cycle lanes
| over car lanes. Instead of being angry at them, which
| unfortunately many drivers are, I choose to appreciate
| them as intended - i.e. if I'm going into the town centre
| I usually go by bus. I'd also like to see more properly-
| separated bike lanes. I don't blame cyclists at all who
| choose to ignore the painted ones and take the lane as if
| they're a car
|
| However the main reason why public transport is slower
| isn't usually due to traffic or physical constraints, but
| the longer routes you have to take. Usually the planners
| have done their job well, and the route _is_ near-optimal
| in aggregate (and therefore often useful for myself if I
| 'm commuting or visiting the centre), but if I want to
| visit a friend in another part of town, I've very often
| got to go in to the centre and change out again. Even if
| there's a direct route, it can be slow due to how many
| stops occur (off-board ticketing/proper BRT could help
| with that in major areas). If I'm visiting a business in
| a business park/industrial estate further out, it's often
| a taxi or nothing
|
| The following doesn't change much, but just to nitpick:
|
| > As a pedestrian, I would get to places significantly
| faster if I could just jaywalk wherever I please, but
| naturally this would require very low speed limits
|
| That's legal where I currently live (UK). Motorways are
| essentially the only place you're not allowed to just
| cross, though drivers aren't generally required to break
| the traffic to give you passage if you're not at a zebra
| crossing (or a junction, as of recent code changes).
| Speed limits definitely do vary based on the likelihood
| of pedestrians in the area, but I don't think changing
| the law would change much there. I mean, they'd have to
| fairly compensate by adding more crossings anyway, and
| IME those are _more_ likely to slow down traffic due to
| their poorly-timed and long stops (even with sensor-
| assisted intelligence), whereas pedestrians making ad-hoc
| crossings are _usually_ sensible enough to wait for a
| natural gap instead of forcing one (and those who don 't
| would probably "jaywalk" anyway), essentially making
| their effect on flow near zero. Even if you do have to
| slow for a pedestrian, it usually is just a slight _slow_
| for under two seconds. Much quicker than a red light.
| Zebra crossings of course don 't have lights, but you do
| have a hard requirement to stop as soon as a pedestrian
| presents themselves at the side, and remain stopped until
| they've completely left the road, resulting in similar
| interruptions rather than turn-taking in existing gaps
| convolvatron wrote:
| this is the real lie, that cars give you agency and freedom.
| except that you have to find a place to park, and keep the
| fueled, deal with minor breakdowns like punctured tires that
| leave you to deal with them for hours. and insurance. and a
| drivers license. and a place to keep them at night. the
| threat that they will be broken into. the constant switching
| back and forth between inattention and attention while
| driving. getting delayed by traffic. spending quite a bit of
| time complaining about traffic even though it is you. the
| inevitable collision. the abysmal process of purchasing.
| knowing you're are getting screwed at the repair place.
| having to deal with rentals when you travel. the complete
| loss of function when you become old or injured and cannot
| drive for yourself.
|
| no thanks
| dwaite wrote:
| And mass transit you have to deal with line failures, the
| inability to transport more than you can reasonably carry,
| and the curfew created by the end-of-line time for the
| evening.
| abenga wrote:
| All issues you have listed solvable by improving
| bus/train service frequency and coverage, and
| trolleys/electric assist bikes for the last mile.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Which you can wait a lifetime to maybe be built in some
| diluted state given current pace of things, or resign and
| take the option the present environment favors. Hate the
| game, not the player.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Yes! At least a third of the population can't drive,
| because too young, too old, handicapped in some way, or too
| poor. And we have built an environment that requires
| driving. That's pretty messed up.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| Depends on where you live. In most of the US if you don't
| have a car you'll be spending hours a day on busses. You
| have no freedom - you are either sleeping or commuting or
| working. You can't sleep less, you can't work less. But you
| can commute fewer hours a day with a car.
|
| Walkable/bikeable places exist in some cities, but are
| reserved for the rich.
|
| As for the costs of owning a car - these are real, but the
| cost of not owning a car is much greater. As electric cars
| filter down to the used market cost of car ownership will
| also drop a fair amount.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| not much different from a human in the grand sceme of
| things. Need to maintain energy, treat minor and major
| injuries, deal with insurance, keep an ID on me (which
| costs money to renew), and either avoid or accept the risk
| of night walks. Fights can break out, routes can get
| deterred, and Just keeping up with living expenses is hell.
|
| Adding a 2nd mechanical maintenacnce isn't as bad as
| dealing with the flesh skin version.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| If you consider night walks a risk you really don't live
| in a good area. I walk everywhere here in Barcelona day
| or night. Same in Amsterdam, Dublin etc.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| For most people they don't think about these things at all,
| that's why they do it still.
| l1tany11 wrote:
| As it is, people love to complain about buying gas. If
| someone were to add up the costs associated with driving,
| I'm sure it would be insane. And I mean all costs.
| Driving is subsidized to a level that is
| incomprehensible, and obfuscated away more than just
| about anything else.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| People complain about gas and the weather and the
| baseball team and everything else and they still don't
| make any changes about that with their life, because its
| hardly significant. Gas could double people pay maybe $40
| extra a week on their fillup as a result. Meanwhile rent
| and housing take so much more out of your pocket its
| hardly relevant what the price of gas is.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| The best public transport in us is usually worse that bad
| public transport in most of eu so no wonder you felt that
| way. Let me tell you a counter point: in Switzerland public
| transport and trains are so frequent and fast due to own
| lanes that you don't even need to check the schedule, you
| just go to the station which is usually nearby and wait at
| max 5 mins to get into something, usually a tram, for
| intercity between biggest cities trains are usually coming
| about each 15 mins. In this regard you are more independent
| than with a car- you don't care about fuel, about parking,
| about being focused all the time on the road, you just get in
| and get out. Even for buying tickets they have an app where
| you just check-uncheck it and it calculates the fare based on
| gps. also in many dense eu cities you'd probably have enough
| shops in sub 5 mins nearby so you can either walk there or go
| with a bike or take a taxi that would cost pennies for such a
| small distance - again, no worrying about traffic, fuel,
| parking and so on
| supertrope wrote:
| Swiss trains are even more punctual than Dutch ones!
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Yeah and i think cheaper if you consider halbtax that
| swiss ppl get
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Well that's pretty easy, Dutch trains are unreliable.
|
| In fact all public transport there is pretty bad. Here in
| Barcelona the metros come every 3 minutes during the day
| on each line. In Amsterdam it's more like 15.
| secretsatan wrote:
| It's true for city life in Switzerland.
|
| I haven't owned a car for more than 15 years now. I have
| city year bus pass but I also frequently just walk to
| wherever I'm going, there's lots of paths and shortcuts for
| pedestrians, but if the weather is a bit rubbish, there's
| bus stop outside my flat that runs every 5-10 mins.
|
| I'm a member of the mobility car share for the rare times
| hen I do need a car, usually to pick up or move something
| heavy, or take a bunch of stuff to the decheterie.
|
| Maybe sometimes after a night on the town, I might grab a
| taxi home, but I do not miss having a car.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| In the US the issue is the car is just too damn convenient.
| There are parts of LA where the busses or trains are every
| 10 mins or so and they interline, so you get a train or a
| bus every 5 mins or less. People still prefer the car
| because it can go everywhere on your schedule faster than a
| bus making stops along the way. Plus cars are much cheaper
| for Americans than they are for europeans.
| rangestransform wrote:
| FWIW I found the critically acclaimed berlin ubahn to have
| significantly worse headways compared to most NYC subway
| lines, as well as not having air conditioning and becoming
| uncomfortably hot and humid
|
| I used lime scooters considerably more than ubahn when I
| was in berlin
| kmarc wrote:
| That's so funny, because in my mind it's the complete
| opposite: I feel free because I don't have the burden of
| keeping a vehicle-object. However, where I leave is car
| unfriendly. People who always late are the two friends of
| mine who try to use their car
|
| (Actually I tried both lives. I used to have a car in the
| past. Still prefer being car free)
| mtalantikite wrote:
| > So, visiting a place is good for walking. But living in a
| place is not. At least that's my experience.
|
| This is a common Internet meme -- the American tourist that
| goes to Europe and loves their experience of walking around
| nice, dense cities designed at a human scale and functioning
| public transit. Then they return to their life of highways
| and parking lots and strip malls, which, to me, is dystopia.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| No one is arguing that you would have to take public
| transportation or walk everywhere. They are just saying that
| it is good if where you live is walkable. I also live in
| Southern California and I would say that a lot of most
| expensive places to live are expensive because they are more
| walkable. You could live in downtown La Jolla or by the beach
| in Santa Monica and walk around. You could also own or rent a
| car and drive to Lake Tahoe. It's not either or.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| East hollywood probably sees the some of the most foot
| traffic in southern california and rents are relatively
| affordable by LA county standards. Chances are the working
| class areas in sd are similar I imagine where you see a lot
| of people walking, biking, or taking the bus to get to
| work. Of course this isn't "urbanism" in the way that upper
| class people consider it, but it exists.
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| Having the option to walk doesn't mean that you can't drive.
| One can have both. Nice weather to walk in? Maybe I'll walk
| the 10 minutes to the shopping center. Raining a lot? Take
| the car.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You may not imagine how it works but plenty of people do ride
| transit in southern california. LA metro ridership is like
| 800k people a day. A lot of neighborhoods have a lot of foot
| traffic in LA county at least.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| An old roommate moved from the Bay Area to Dallas years ago and
| on a nice day in the park he decided to lay down on the grass,
| as he would normally do in the Bay Area. Pretty soon cops
| arrived.
| alexawarrior3 wrote:
| They're just trying to save your from the fire ants.
| ted_dunning wrote:
| and the chiggers.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| "normally do in the Bay Area" i.e. he was naked as the day he
| was born. Yeah, that's not gonna fly in Texas.
| fudged71 wrote:
| It's pretty wild. I'm in a very car-centric city in Canada, and
| there have been days where I drive across the city and not seen
| a single pedestrian (across multiple types of areas). Usually
| in the winter, but still a very weird thing to not see people
| in a city.
| blobbers wrote:
| What city?
| fudged71 wrote:
| Calgary
| PsylentKnight wrote:
| FWIW, I live near downtown Austin, haven't owned a car in over
| a year, walk/bus everywhere, and have never been questioned by
| police. I typically see quite a few pedestrians out. As far as
| Texan cities go it's the most walkable, though it's still not
| very good.
| coyotespike wrote:
| Yes, I've lived here 17 years and see pedestrians most places
| I go - although to be fair there are many roads where
| pedestrians don't go (say, the service road alongside 71).
| Perhaps OP was in such a place.
|
| I also did not own a car for years, commuting only by
| bicycle, and never had a problem.
|
| Indeed, Austin's core is only about 5 square miles (the
| entirety of the East Side to the Greenbelt, Hyde Park down to
| far South Congress, say). Fairly compact.
|
| It is no New York or London but it is walkable and bikeable.
| supertrope wrote:
| 97% of Americans' daily trips are done via automobile. Walking,
| biking, and bus riding tend to be associated with low
| socioeconomic status. There is heavy policing of low SES
| populations. In Kaplan, Louisiana it is explicitly illegal to
| walk at night. https://www.klfy.com/local/vermilion-
| parish/kaplan-starts-pe...
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I am not a lawyer, but that does not seem like a law that
| could pass a constitutional test. You can say you have to be
| in a car to be on a freeway for safety reasons, but you can't
| ban people from being in a place because they are not in a
| car because you don't like the people who aren't in cars.
| From reading the article the intent seems to be that you
| suspect people who aren't in cars.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > I am not a lawyer, but that does not seem like a law that
| could pass a constitutional test.
|
| Nor am I, but a constitutional test used to cost about
| $250,000 or so over a decade ago (does inflation affect
| these things?). For someone who can't afford a car, that's
| a tough bill to eat.
| qingcharles wrote:
| As someone who has litigated a ton of constitutional
| challenges, you can definitely do it without
| representation if you want. I would think pretty much
| anyone on HN is educated enough to figure it out.
| (Attorney fees being your biggest cost; costs you'd have
| to swallow are deposition fees and filing fees if you're
| not indigent).
|
| [Usually you can make two separate attacks on these kinds
| of constitutional cases since most states have their own
| constitutions that are practically identical to the
| federal one, so you can sue in both state and federal
| court separately if you want two tries at it -- this is
| good if you screw it up the first time and want to use
| the arguments the defendant fired at you in the first
| case to bolster your retry]
|
| With representation though, I have a current case I
| finally settled today with the government and my legal
| counsel ran up a bill that was north of $500K for a very
| simple constitutional case. His firm swallowed it because
| it was part of their yearly pro bono requirements.
| TomK32 wrote:
| Right, and you couldn't carry dozens of illegal weapons or
| 1000 pounds of cocaine by foot. It's car drivers that
| should be the suspects here.
| OJFord wrote:
| Bus riding I can sort of understand, that tends to be the
| case everywhere outside of manor metros IME (and not without
| a certain amount of truth to it) - but to think of walking or
| cycling like that seems really sad, what a way to live,
| shielded from the natural environment, shuffling from one air
| conditioned box to the next.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'm not going to blame anyone in Houston for wanting to
| move from one air conditioned box to the next :p.
| OJFord wrote:
| Sure but if you decide that's not a way you want to live
| then you also don't want to live somewhere where it's
| uncomfortable for you otherwise.
|
| (And while I'm here 'manor' in GP was a typo for 'major',
| in case that's not clear to anyone.)
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > if you decide that's not a way you want to live then
| you also don't want to live somewhere where it's
| uncomfortable for you otherwise.
|
| well, our living choices aren't necessarily choices these
| days. Nor comfortable. More like compromises for suvival.
| Already had more than a few friends priced out of
| California and needing to move out of the state in its
| entirety.
| OJFord wrote:
| Of course; it's for that reason that I said 'you don't
| want to live' rather than 'you don't live'.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| Walking / using public transportation is associated with low
| status when it is done for cost savings reasons. When it's
| done for convenience it doesn't convey much.
|
| Using a bus in a ski resort is higher status than a car in a
| large city.
| azemetre wrote:
| Yeah I live in the Boston area. All the neighborhoods that
| have easy access to public transit or are walkable
| neighborhoods are very desirable and expensive.
| eweise wrote:
| That law sounds illegal.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| People living in Austin will drive > 10 miles to go for a 3
| mile run.
| cafard wrote:
| I have known people in Washington, DC, who lived with a
| quarter mile of a hiker/biker path in Rock Creek Park, and
| would drive ~7 miles to Fletcher's Boathouse (or 10 to
| Carderock) to run on the C&O Canal towpath.
|
| I confess that I have been one of those people (I didn't live
| quite there)--but when meeting with friends for a run. My
| preference was always to lace on the sneakers, walk to the
| end of the block, and run.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I guess my own biases excuse the idea of driving a good
| distance for a hike or trail run that are "one offs"
| (though in aggregate are regular), but the idea of going
| for a weekly (or multiple times a week) social run seems to
| be wasteful. In terms of the atmosphere they're equivalent.
| mikrotikker wrote:
| I heard the same from a Scot who visited Texas and decided to
| go for a 45 minute stroll to his destination. In summer. He
| regretted it 15mins in and luckily a local stopped and gave him
| a ride, saying that he could die in this heat (not sure if that
| was a joke)
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Probably not a joke. Heatstroke is very real. Many
| underestimate hot weather and don't drink nearly enough
| water.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| For a Scot it would be a bit of an extreme change. For a
| Spaniard it wouldn't.
|
| It's important to pace and hydrate oneself and people from
| hot climates know that because they deal with it all the
| time.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Texas is ground zero for the car centric mass psychology.
|
| South Florida and the north suburbs of Detroit are #2 and #3 in
| my direct experience.
|
| The south is very well suited to the e-bike. It will probably
| take the total die off of the boomers before anything really
| changed though
| mdnahas wrote:
| I'm a transportation activist in Austin. Where did this happen?
| kmarc wrote:
| I think it was around Waterloo park and capitol; I was on my
| way to the Texas State History Museum.
|
| I looked around now on Google Street View, but can't
| recognize the slight hill I was walking on (it happened
| around 10y ago). Funnily enough, also street view shows
| streets with no pedestrians anywhere :-)
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah this is so weird for us. I'm so glad i didn't need to own
| a car in the last 7 years and I haven't even driven any car in
| the last 6.
|
| It's perfect that way. I hate driving.
|
| I wouldn't let the cops bully me into taking an Uber though.
| Afaik it's still legal to walk in the US?
| imd wrote:
| Almost this exact situation happened to author Ray Bradbury in
| Los Angeles, where he lived without a car. He wrote several
| short stories memorializing the incident, including a scene in
| Fahrenheit 451.
| splwjs wrote:
| What month was it? Because if it's summer in austin and you're
| standing around downtown then you probably are struggling in
| one way or another.
|
| Also downtown austin is disgusting; maybe they were just
| stunned someone would be there on purpose before the sun goes
| down.
|
| Hope you enjoyed the museum/trip though
| piliponful wrote:
| US is strange
| Terr_ wrote:
| At the risk of stirring a pot... Where's the boundary between
| "nicer for walking" versus "can't pay for it unless
| population/income gentrifies"?
|
| There are certainly low-cost ways of changing things and not-
| doing-dumb-stuff, but the list does contain some things like
| extra-streetlamps and maintained sidewalk trees and buildings
| with natural stone exteriors etc., which adds up.
| fmobus wrote:
| Well, if you want to analyze _that_, you need to take the huge
| infrastructure costs of suburban sprawl too.
|
| Every new cookie cutter suburban subdivision requires tons of
| asphalt, miles of pipes for water and sewage, and the cost in
| most cases gets [subsided by the denser parts of the
| city]<https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/6/stop-
| subsidizin...>.
|
| Suburbia is not only unhealthy, it's also insolvent.
| Terr_ wrote:
| The article asserts that the "dignity" design elements are a
| "bigger factor" than density.
|
| So it sounds like the author believes those measures are
| practical/possible in existing areas.
| fmobus wrote:
| Sure, but your argument is "building those things will add
| up in cost" ignores the already huge cost of maintaining
| all the asphalt and car infrastructure. Planting trees is
| relatively cheap.
| ars wrote:
| "Have you ever had a friend return from a vacation and gush about
| how great it was to walk in the place they'd visited? "You can
| walk everywhere! To a cafe, to the store. It was amazing!""
|
| What is amazing about walking I have no idea. That sounds utterly
| horrible - to be in a place where everything is so close together
| that you can walk to everything?
|
| Space, humans need space.
|
| Ugh, I'm getting nauseated just thinking about it. And yes, I've
| been in places like that, I've tried them out, and they were as
| unpleasant as I expected.
|
| I tested it, I went to NY using only public transportation, and
| it was the most horrible time I've ever had being away from home.
| Never again! Never!
|
| My feet hurt, my back hurt, without a car I had nowhere to leave
| my stuff, so I had to carry everything with me, or make the long
| trek to my hotel (NY banned AirBNB, so hotels are far away from
| where I wanted to be).
|
| It was truly an absolutely miserable experience, and sitting in
| traffic, or hunting for a parking space is a billion times
| better.
|
| I've tried NY with a car before then, but I was told you don't
| need a car in NY - so I tried it! And they are wrong. Public
| transport is ALWAYS worse than a car, it's slower, much slower,
| it's less convenient because they only run during popular hours,
| it's more expensive than renting a car because you have to
| supplement with Uber.
|
| I don't know why I keep trying this no-car stuff, but I did, I
| tried Washington DC with and without a car. (I went for 2 days,
| one without a car, the second day with.) A car is better. MUCH
| MUCH better, and cheaper too, even paying for parking.
| guitarlimeo wrote:
| Interesting! I have the exact opposite view, hunting for a
| parking space or sitting in traffic is billion times worse than
| walking or sitting in public transport. When you are driving,
| you must be alert, you can't just phase out to some youtube
| video the same way you can do while riding public transport.
|
| Also walking is the most natural thing to us humans, it
| shouldn't hurt and it won't if you do it regularly. I don't
| mean no offense, but have you considered that you drive too
| much or don't get exercise otherwise if walking hurts so bad?
| sagarm wrote:
| If walking makes you hurt that much, you might want to talk to
| your doctor.
| dh2022 wrote:
| Run, do not walk , to your doctor!!! Ooops, that did not come
| out right.... Let me fix it.... Drive, do not walk to your
| doctor!!!
| EliRivers wrote:
| _Public transport is ALWAYS worse than a car, it 's slower,
| much slower_
|
| Well here's something odd. Just yesterday I was in a city
| crossing it from one side to the other, and it was so much
| faster by underground train than it would have been in a car.
| Yet your statement suggests that that real experience couldn't
| be true.
|
| Perhaps it's more accurate to say that public transport is
| SOMETIMES worse than a car. What do you think? Might that be
| more accurate?
| wnolens wrote:
| > Space, humans need space.
|
| Humans need to move, more than they need space.
|
| > My feet hurt, my back hurt
|
| see above
|
| > I was told you don't need a car in NY - so I tried it! And
| they are wrong. Public transport is ALWAYS worse than a car,
| it's slower, much slower, it's less convenient because they
| only run during popular hours, it's more expensive than renting
| a car because you have to supplement with Uber.
|
| Some town in NY state designed for cars? of course? In NYC
| everything about this sentence is provably false.
| senkora wrote:
| > I don't know why I keep trying this no-car stuff, but I did
|
| It might just not be for you, and that's okay. Your actual
| experience is more useful to you than anything I say below.
|
| My personal point-of-view is that I live in lower Manhattan,
| commute by electric bike, and regularly take the subway, buses,
| ferries, and commuter rail. I very rarely rent a car for trips
| outside the city.
|
| > I had nowhere to leave my stuff, so I had to carry everything
| with me
|
| There's definitely a learning curve there. It's usually
| possible too get by with less then you think if you plan in
| advance, but I don't know your situation. I have a little mini
| backpack where I carry my water bottle, charger bank,
| sunglasses, hat, and a reusable grocery bag.
|
| > or make the long trek to my hotel
|
| If you don't mind me asking, which neighborhood did you stay
| in? Was this in Manhattan? I would expect an average of a 5
| minute walk to the subway, plus a 5 minute wait time for the
| train to arrive, and you shouldn't need to return to the hotel
| during the day.
|
| > I've tried NY with a car before then
|
| I think a lot of people don't realize how well a car works in
| NYC, even in Manhattan. In the outer boroughs it's probably the
| most convenient option. The main issues are 1) parking, which
| you don't seem to mind, and 2) rush hour traffic. Cars work
| very well here late at night and early in the morning, and
| pretty well during the day. Robert Moses built quite a lot of
| highways here.
|
| > Public transport is ... slower
|
| This is often true even in NYC, unless there is traffic. My
| rule of thumb is that the subway has a higher average time but
| a much lower variance. An electric bike is faster than both
| options, which is why delivery drivers here use electric bikes.
|
| In the tourist areas, there's usually traffic, so the subway is
| usually the better choice for visitors.
|
| The subway is also usually the better choice for commuters,
| because they commute during rush hour.
|
| > Public transport is ... less convenient because they only run
| during popular hours
|
| The NYC subway and buses are 24 hours and work well even in the
| middle of the night, although I would not recommend taking them
| to the outer boroughs in the middle of the night for safety
| reasons.
|
| > Public transport is ... more expensive than renting a car
| because you have to supplement with Uber
|
| This may be true depending on your personal tolerance for
| walking and the kinds of trips that you make. You really have
| to be okay walking up to 10 minutes on each end for public
| transit to make sense. This is also why New Yorkers walk so
| quickly!
| primis wrote:
| I used to work in Manhattan, you 100% don't need a car there. A
| backpack for your stuff. Subways are a bit faster than walking
| for short/medium distances, faster if you're going
| interborough. But cars are so so much slower. Trying to drive
| in Manhattan traffic is torture. Maybe you need better walking
| shoes? Manhattan isn't flat but I wouldn't call it super hilly
| either. It's mostly level grade, and the sidewalks are for the
| most part well maintained.
| oblio wrote:
| LOL.
|
| Isn't America the land of the free? Free market, land of
| opportunity, options galore?
|
| Just remove enforced single family zoning for 70%+ of your
| built up areas and let the free market decide, right?
|
| In most of the US right now you can decide to:
|
| 1. live in a single family home
|
| 2. live in a single family home
|
| 3. live in a single family home
|
| ...
|
| 98. live in a single family home
|
| 99. rent/buy a condo (if there are any in the area and you can
| afford it, because those areas are super expensive)
|
| 100. rent/buy a townhouse (if there are any in the area and you
| can afford it, because those areas are super expensive)
| pchristensen wrote:
| Lol I always say I'm fine with people advocating for zoning
| restrictions, as long as they also acknowledge that land use
| planning is the most communist and regulated industry in
| America, in a way that would make the healthcare industry
| blush.
| EliRivers wrote:
| Land use planning is the most communist? Doesn't really
| seem to be run under priciples of common ownership of the
| means of production, distribution and exchange. How would
| one even have common ownership of land use planning?
|
| As for making the healthcare industry blush; the healthcare
| industry in the US is brutally uncommunist.
|
| Did you really mean communist? If so, in what way is land
| planning in the US operated under principles of common
| ownership of the means of production, distribution and
| exchange.
| oblio wrote:
| I think he meant communist in the everyday perception,
| more like authoritarian (so not communist in the
| dictionary sense).
|
| Super regulated, super indoctrinated, no freedom,
| basically.
| pchristensen wrote:
| Exactly.
| EliRivers wrote:
| So if it's not actually communist, but just
| authoritarian, what's the problem? And where's the
| authoritarianism with healthcare? In healthcare in the
| US, you can just go out and buy pretty much any legal
| healthcare you like - surely that's not at all
| authoritarian.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Pub transport is slower if you design it this way. In NL bus
| and trams have own lanes, priority on semaphores and the paths
| to dest are usually shorter compared to car paths. Combine with
| needing to find the parking and in 90%+ you'll get faster with
| pub transport there than with a car. And pub transport can
| transport much more ppl than a bunch of cars since cars aren't
| shared and aren't space efficient even if you drive them full.
| A single tram with 7 sections in Basel can transport up to 1k
| ppl. Do you imagine the traffic you'd get with 800-1k cars
| instead of that tram? Public transport convenience is made by
| design, just like bike infra, just like pedestrian infra. The
| difference is what you prioritize
| sensanaty wrote:
| Your feet and back hurt because you don't walk anywhere and are
| over-reliant on cars. They shouldn't hurt for small distances,
| our bodies are quite literally built for walking literally all
| day if need be.
|
| Also, walking doesn't need to be the only alternative. For
| medium distances, a bike is better in every single way, both
| health-wise and otherwise. It's fast, cheap, good exercise, you
| can store it literally anywhere and even bring it onto the
| trains for the long-distance travels.
| countWSS wrote:
| The Elephant in the Room that author ignores: Streets smell, and
| smelling them by walking a few km, cars and various chemicals are
| far more annoying than in a closed window car. If they were
| serious about walkable cities, the streets should be pleasant to
| walk. Evidently this isn't the case even in Europe and even less
| likely elsewhere, where smelly diesel engines, motorcycles and
| garbage have a significant odor problem.
| fleg wrote:
| It's not streets that smell, it's the cars. And you're right -
| nobody enjoys having a walk near a street with heavy car
| traffic. That's why in Europe a lot of streets in the city
| centers are designed in a way to discourage driving, providing
| ring roads and public transport options instead.
| port19 wrote:
| I have no idea where you've been in europe, but speaking for
| southern germany specifically this is bullshit
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Today, I drove a stretch of interstate that runs next to a
| sewage treatment plant. Yes, it smelled as bad as you'd
| imagine even inside the car.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Only times I really remember smells is driving in
| countryside when farmers have used more natural
| fertilizers... Rest of the time have not really noticed
| issues.
|
| But then again I suppose being pedestrian or cyclist in
| those areas would not help that one...
| mort96 wrote:
| Your streets may smell, but not most of the streets I've been
| around in most of the countries I've visited... if your streets
| smell, that's a solvable problem.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| Please do us all a favor and write a Very Stern Letter to the
| mayor of Philadelphia.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Thoughts and votes.
| piva00 wrote:
| > Evidently this isn't the case even in Europe and even less
| likely elsewhere, where smelly diesel engines, motorcycles and
| garbage have a significant odor problem.
|
| I haven't experienced almost any problem with smelly streets
| while walking or biking in Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen,
| Helsinki, Munich, Cologne, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Barcelona,
| Lisbon, Prague, and the list goes on. The worst I can think of
| is some smelly alley or higher traffic road in Berlin, or when
| I was in Milan when garbage collectors were on strike.
|
| The worst cities I've ever smelled were Sao Paulo, Los Angeles,
| NYC, and San Francisco. Guess what these cities have lots and
| lots of? Cars.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Try Chicago. Streets smell like shit. It's not the cars, or
| trash (Chicago is pretty clean for a big city) it's the
| sewers.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Why would I want a shift to walking? Cars give me fast
| transportation on my own schedule and let me have far more access
| to things than just walking or walking plus public transit.
| cbeach wrote:
| Exactly. And cars are essential for many journeys, and for
| normal family life in many out-of-town regions.
|
| Yet so many people on forums like this live in metropolitan
| bubbles and have no idea why cars might be necessary. There's a
| lot of ideological opposition to motorists at the moment and it
| needs to stop, because the proposed "solutions" to motoring are
| zero-sum and in some cases downright hostile
| sagarm wrote:
| Cities have a limited amount of space, and a disproportionate
| amount of it is allocated to drivers. It's fine to choose to
| live in a car dependent suburbs; but don't be surprised when
| urbanites want to prevent fast through traffic just like
| suburbanites do. They're not obligated to design their
| neighborhood for your convenience.
| trgn wrote:
| This is my biggest gripe in the US. it's not the cars per
| se. it's that sub/ex-urbanites want to change the city to
| conform to their values. keep your car, i don't care, drive
| everywhere, but don't trash up the city just for your
| convenience. Let a thousand flowers bloom. cars for the fur
| trappers, but beautiful, calm pedestrian environments for
| the urbanites.
| tech_ken wrote:
| > it's that sub/ex-urbanites want to change the city to
| conform to their values. keep your car, i don't care,
| drive everywhere, but don't trash up the city just for
| your convenience.
|
| Agree with the sentiment but IMO suburbs and car-centric
| cities are basically mutually defining. Suburbanites
| didn't change the city to suit their preferences, the
| city changing is what enables the existance of the
| suburbs.
|
| Suburbs can't sustain themselves alone, they lack the
| density and zoning to allow their citizens to
| productively work. The whole design concept is to give
| you place to live outside the city (away from the poor or
| minorities) while simultaneously making it as convenient
| as possible for you to commute into it with your personal
| vehicle. The end result is a system which generates
| wealth in a diverse urban area, and then exports much of
| it to the wealthy and exclusive suburbs. To make a city
| difficult to commute into by car breaks the whole system,
| since it deprives the outer suburbs of their revenue
| source; the people who live there (which typically
| includes the elite political class in charge of planning)
| will fight tooth and nail to prevent that.
| trgn wrote:
| thx, good way of summarizing it, and I think I understand
| this state of affairs the same way you do.
|
| > To make a city difficult to commute into by car breaks
| ...
|
| I think 90% of this is a mental fear. What we are really
| talking about in most US cities is just measures to
| overall calm car traffic; bike lanes, bump outs, some
| bollards, ... Small fiddly things which make city life
| meaningfully more agreeable for pedestrians, but the
| effect on drivers is all in all pretty marginal. Some
| slower top-speeds in the core, maybe parking a little
| further, ... It's incredibly frustrating to me that these
| small changes cannot even happen because suburbanites -
| at least, where I am - will not tolerate even the
| smallest material intervention. It's all gut feel. If
| miraculously one of these traffic calming measures does
| go through, it barely registers as a nuisance.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Why does it need to stop exactly? To me America skews to
| heavily to being car centric, and simply needs to be more
| pedestrian friendly, especially in cities. But it doesn't
| have to ban cars everywhere. More balance is needed.
| striking wrote:
| I lived where cars are essential. I don't think those places
| need to immediately get rid of cars.
|
| I do think that that same infrastructure doesn't need to be
| mirrored inside my high density "metropolitan bubble".
| oblio wrote:
| That's super funny.
|
| Do you realize that the current car infrastructure is zero-
| sum and not "downright hostile" but "literally hostile" to
| walking and biking?
|
| We need a BALANCE.
|
| This should be seared on the forehead of every driver,
| especially SUV and truck drivers.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Cars offer maximum versatility at the cost of low
| accessibility, high inconvenience, and high unit cost.
|
| Plenty of people can't drive for medical reasons. My wife, for
| example. If she needs to be driven somewhere, I have to do it.
| That's a pain in the ass for both of us.
|
| It might take longer to get somewhere by bus/train/etc in the
| absolute sense, but you know what I'm _not_ doing while riding
| the bus? Driving! I can read a book, take a nap, daydream,
| catch up on work or social matters, watch a movie, or countless
| other things that you simply can 't do while driving.
|
| As a result, I actually have _more_ time in the day to go about
| my life because I opt out of driving when possible. And I live
| in a mid-sized midwestern city with the middling public transit
| options you 'd expect of such a place.
|
| Then there's money. Insurance, gas, tires, brakes, oil, and
| routine maintenance add up to several thousands of dollars in
| yearly expenses if you drive regularly. Public transit is flat-
| out cheaper, even if you don't have a monthly car payment.
|
| The point of all of this is that car ownership should be
| thought of as _optional_. The versatility is nice, and that 's
| why I own a car. But, I don't use it much, because it's cheaper
| and more pleasant to walk or use public transit.
| crummy wrote:
| I'm visiting Berlin at the moment, and one thing that's really
| nice is never having to figure out how to get home after a few
| drinks (or planning who will drive or how to pick up the car in
| the morning etc).
| betaby wrote:
| Interestingly enough that km traveled by car per person in
| Germany isn't that different from Canada. Of course Berlin is
| nice, doesn't show the whole picture though.
| LeChuck wrote:
| Because walking is good for you and good for the environment.
| Additionally, if everyone walked/biked when possible the roads
| would be more pleasant for you to drive on.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPUlgSRn6e0
| bradboimler wrote:
| You get exercise living your life
|
| Something I've realized after moving to a walkable neighborhood
| is that you interact with your neighbors more because you run
| into them as you go about. Cars are isolating. Walking about
| builds community.
|
| No car maintenance. No insurance. No gas.
|
| You don't have to deal with traffic or parking
|
| I still keep a car because it's the status quo but if I had to
| replace it I wouldn't
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| > Cars are isolating.
|
| That's what I want when I am trying to go somewhere.
|
| > Walking about builds community.
|
| I sure hope not. I walk my dog once or twice a day and avoid
| anyone who tries to talk to me. I've got enough community in
| other aspects of my life.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Because with proper city design you'd get even faster where you
| want, also on your own schedule and in very rare occasions this
| doesn't work out you'd get a taxi or rent a car several hours.
| Or maybe an ebike
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Maybe this sounds idiotic, but I've started playing chicken with
| drivers. If it's a crosswalk with no pedestrian signals, as long
| as they've made eye contact with me, I just go.
|
| Hit me. You won't.
| vehemenz wrote:
| This is standard protocol in most cities. It's not that novel.
| roughly wrote:
| Note that this works everywhere but Boston. I visit every
| once in a while for family or work and every time it takes me
| a day and a couple close calls to adjust.
| recursive wrote:
| I wonder if it would help if you had a wagon full of cinder
| blocks with you.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| When I told my wife-to-be this, she told me I'm insane! And
| she grew up in one of the biggest cities in the US. There's a
| couple other commenters expressing the same sentiment.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| That is idiotic because you're vastly increasing your risk of
| injury. And for what? To make some point? I don't see how you
| benefit from that increased risk you are taking on.
| recursive wrote:
| > And for what? To make some point?
|
| For me, it's more about the cumulative mental energy required
| to get somewhere. If I walked maximally defensively, that
| would put me in a certain state of mind. It would expend some
| of the limited focus that I have in a day. Much in the same
| way that I don't always read all of the EULA before clicking
| "I Agree". It's easy to blame someone for skipping through
| after it goes bad. But the amount of energy and discipline it
| takes to maintain that when the environment is stacked
| against you is impractical.
|
| So whatever. Just hit me if you have to. I have no illusion
| that I'm making a noble point. I just don't have the energy.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Another commenter replied that this is standard practice.
| Funny.
|
| Because I actually make it to where I'm going in a reasonable
| amount of time.
|
| Because it's the law. I have the right of way in the
| crosswalk [1].
|
| Because I'm in the middle of a pleasant morning stroll and
| I'd rather not have it interrupted by some jackass whose day
| will somehow be ruined if they arrive at work 4 seconds later
| than they expected.
|
| [1]: https://www.drivinglaws.org/resources/when-do-
| pedestrians-ha...
| alexpetralia wrote:
| You should Google "the risk of ruin".
| pvaldes wrote:
| As long as there aren't drivers on alcohol or coke in your
| city, they will not try to pass faster than you by that place.
| If somebody does and kills you, they will be fined, so is a...
| "you win". Maybe. Sort of.
| rangestransform wrote:
| I think this works better if you keep your head aimed at the
| goal position and only observe the vehicle by turning your
| eyes, it makes drivers think you're unaware and therefore they
| behave more cautiously
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Most big cities these days have cops who basically quiet quit,
| and often the shit drivers don't even have plates. Many won't
| care about "accidentally" hitting and running you, and some
| might even enjoy it.
|
| You might think this is a joke, but simply giving some idiots a
| middle finger is enough to lead to them shooting you (or your
| kid - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-man-
| killed-6...). Trying to be mr.tough guy with idiot drivers is a
| quick way to make yourself road kill.
| kkfx wrote:
| The issue is not about walking vs using some transport tool, but
| what's needed to support people only walking.
|
| There are many who state dense 15'-cities are eco-friendly
| because people move without polluting, but no considerations
| seems to exists about how many others pollute much to supply
| anything needed by the eco-friendly pedestrians and IMVHO and
| experience (as a former big city resident now living on
| mountains) the answer is WAY TOO MUCH, meaning the "eco friendly
| walkable cities" are not eco friendly AT ALL and they are also
| unsustainable since they can't evolve without rebuild witch
| consume much more and demand much big effort than spread areas of
| small buildings who can be re-built and evolved one at a time
| issueless for all the others.
|
| Strong Towns should start to consider that their model is not
| those of the modern cities but the one of the older villages,
| witch due to tech changes is now the model of spread areas. There
| is no strong-walkable-town possible in the modern world, only
| polluting monsters, modern Fordlandias doomed to fails like the
| original, take Neom, Arkadag, Innopolis, Prospera, Telosa, ... as
| good examples.
|
| Than start to ask who profit from them, and you'll see the big
| financial capitalism behind the (dollar/stereotypical toxic waste
| leaking from rusty barrels) green fog.
| kdmccormick wrote:
| > the answer is WAY TOO MUCH, meaning the "eco friendly
| walkable cities" are not eco friendly AT ALL and they are also
| unsustainable since they can't evolve without rebuild witch
| consume much more and demand much big effort than spread areas
| of small buildings who can be re-built and evolved one at a
| time issueless for all the others.
|
| This is absolutely inane. Destroying and rebuilding is the
| opposite of eco-friendly. Building to last is eco-friendly.
|
| Those tightly-packed brick and stone buildings in dense
| walkable cities last longer and also tend to have less need for
| AC, since they were designed before that existed. And their use
| does evolve, from meeting places, to storefronts, to family
| housing, to condos... old buildings can do it all.
|
| Cookie-cutter suburban homes are the exact opposite.
| Expendable, inefficient, and inflexible.
| dweinus wrote:
| Citation very much needed. For each person living rurally or
| suburbanly, the per-capita footprint is bigger in terms of
| land, roads, building materials, facilities, shipping, HVAC,
| and transportation. The supply problem you mention gets worse
| in rural environments, not better, because you need to
| distribute goods across large areas. Here's some data too:
| https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-ca...
| vehemenz wrote:
| The headline is a bit misleading compared to the article.
| Everybody already cares about dignity but only at the expense of
| everyone else. We need to prioritize dignity for pedestrians at
| the expense of drivers.
|
| Everyone in Yukons and F150s are already using, at least in their
| minds, what they think is a dignified mode of transportation.
| Excluding cities for the wealthy (there's no dignity for the poor
| anyway), most cities in the US are not livable without a car.
| Affording a car, particularly a new one, earns one some degree of
| dignity. Furthermore, drivers living in poorly planned-cities
| spend lots of time in their cars and have chosen larger cars
| where they feel comfortable and safe.
| Always42 wrote:
| As someone who has biked in Minnesota winters as part of a
| commute, it sucks. I don't want cars taken away. I run to get my
| exercise. My commute to work is short. I don't sit in traffic
| most days.
| oblio wrote:
| Isn't that a strawman? Nobody wants to take cars away, not even
| in the most extreme countries. What they generally do is they
| want people to have comparable options until some folks just
| give up their cars and pocket the savings, accepting the
| discomfort caused by the constant lack of a car.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Nobody wants to take cars away
|
| In a lot of these discussions, people do often comment
| denigrating people who drive and acting as if they _must_
| walk /bike/etc and there's something wrong with them if they
| don't want to, without considering whether the tradeoffs make
| sense for them or not. Those kinds of comments alienate
| people.
|
| Giving people options would be great. Making a balance would
| be great. Separating car and pedestrian infrastructure would
| be great. Massively reducing pedestrian fatalities is
| _incredibly_ important. All of those things would be much
| easier to advocate for and enact without those kinds of
| comments.
| oblio wrote:
| > In a lot of these discussions, people do often comment
| denigrating people who drive and acting as if they must
| walk/bike/etc and there's something wrong with them if they
| don't want to, without considering whether the tradeoffs
| make sense for them or not. Those kinds of comments
| alienate people.
|
| The amount of in-real life hostility from the car driver
| community is 1000x but car drivers don't realize it.
| Hostility on the roads themselves, hostility to ANY
| proposal that would reduce the number of lanes (to dedicate
| to buses, cycling, sidewalks, etc).
|
| So it's kind of understandable why there's so much pent-up
| anger.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Absolutely. I've seen the same hostility you're talking
| about.
|
| These kinds of policy discussions would go far better
| with a lot more empathy across the board for perspectives
| other than ones' own.
| its_ethan wrote:
| These posts always feel like people are fetishizing some "utopia"
| where everyone should _want_ to live in an imaginary fully
| walkable, meticulously maintained, pristine city. The comparisons
| of like a 2 square mile section of the nicest parts of a European
| city to areas of the rural US that have land areas larger than
| many European countries feels... at best, idealism run afoul.
| oblio wrote:
| The examples in the article are from the Minneapolis metro
| area...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopkins,_Minnesota
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northfield,_Minnesota
|
| None of those are rural, they're suburban.
|
| And frankly, even your rural non-homestead areas could use some
| redesigning. Now you make it unsafe walk in what are basically
| villages, the quintessential walkable settlements that we've
| invented back in prehistory.
| its_ethan wrote:
| I'm quite familiar with Minneapolis, and you're right it is
| fairly suburban - but suburbs are a phenomenon of the world
| after the invention of the car. Car ownership rates in
| suburbs are incredibly high, like 90%+ in most suburban areas
| (https://newgeography.com/files/job-access_03.png).
| Minneapolis has a ~98% rate of car ownership, and places like
| Hopkins and Northfield were designed knowing that _most_ of
| their citizens live far enough away from places like schools
| /grocery stores/movie theaters/offices/etc that they will
| need a car anyway.
|
| And this isn't like a chicken or egg thing where people
| aren't walking because it's not nice to walk. The car came
| first, and then the suburb (as we know them) came second.
| These places were _designed_ for cars. We 're talking about
| 20-30+ min walks each way to get from most homes to the
| nearest "commercial area". Even if it was the walkable
| utopian dream of tree lined sidewalks and pedestrian-centric
| intersections, it won't change the fact that the vast
| majority of people would not choose to walk, and so it makes
| sense that these places are optimized for the way people
| _actually_ get around.
| hibikir wrote:
| There are many parts of the world where suburbs are shapes
| very differently, and while they support cars, they don't
| need them. The 0.3 acre plot, the street with no commercial
| activity... those aren't requirements for suburbs. Madrid
| has many a suburb that is far denser, grows upwards, and is
| centered around a train station.
| its_ethan wrote:
| And that's great for those places. But why do people feel
| compelled to make relatively new US suburbs more similar
| to old suburbs in Madrid? No one is trying to make
| suburbs in Madrid more like suburbs in Iowa - I'm voicing
| frustration that the reciprocal is not true.
|
| This is part of a larger frustration where it feels like
| a very common thing that people in cities want to enforce
| their expectations and cultures onto rural places that
| already have their own way of being.
| pchristensen wrote:
| Forcing places to be a certain way by law is like writing
| an essay without the letters 'D' and 'O'. Possible, but
| it's really tying your hands behind your back.
| oblio wrote:
| "Their own of being" = putting a fist in everyone's mouth
| by <<forcing>> housing to be exactly the same type
| (single family detached house) and <<banning>> any other
| type of activity, even compatible ones like light
| commercial.
|
| A sign of confidence, you know, the typical American
| fashion, would be to allow mixed zoning for compatible
| uses and see what happens, "invisible hand" and all.
| dixie_land wrote:
| I'm a car person but 20/30 mins of walk to get some coffee
| with my dogs sounds very pleasant (iff the pedestrian
| crossings are safer as the article proposed)
|
| Just because the majority are fat doesn't mean it's healthy
| its_ethan wrote:
| Sure, and you can do that 20/30 minute walk if you want,
| there are many parts of minnesotan suburbs that are, in
| fact, very walkable already. On a weekend, that is a nice
| thing to do - but the day-to-day life that the majority
| of people live shouldn't be optimized for that.
|
| I'm not sure why you're shoe horning body weight into
| this - that's a whole separate can of worms that
| tenuously related, but not relevant to the fact that
| these places are so spread out in such a way that walking
| isn't feasible for a myriad of other very practical and
| immediately relevant reasons (weather, ability to
| organize child care/education, ability to run errands
| before/after work, time spent "commuting", etc.)
| oblio wrote:
| You don't get it, it's not "optimizing" anything.
|
| In a lot of places it's close to impossible to do what
| you're saying. There are no side walks. Many suburban
| streets and especially those bigger roads (stroads) are
| horrible. No shade because no trees because HUGE ADS
| SHALL BE VISIBLE FROM CARS, lots of dangerous driveway
| exists every 5 minutes that you can't even walk in peace
| lest you are run over by a huge truck, etc.
|
| Streets are dangerous for cyclists (and I mean the
| regular cyclists, commuter/grocery shopping style, not
| the lycra-clad racers).
|
| There are modern ways to design infrastructure, it isn't
| even a lot more expensive than the old fashioned way, and
| it makes for a lot more pleasant environment for
| everyone. Even drivers get to enjoy it because... people
| start walking (under 1km) and cycling (under about
| 5-7km), so a lot of car traffic just vanishes. So the
| remaining car drivers get to vroom-vroom a lot more :-)
| alkonaut wrote:
| What does car ownership rate have to do with anything? Even
| in a suburb with 100% car ownership, I want to walk - not
| drive - to buy milk, when possible. Walking the dog should
| ideally be possible from every single home without even
| having to walk or cross a road. Walkability is as important
| in a suburb where everyone can drive as it is anywhere
| else.
| pchristensen wrote:
| Suburbs (especially newer ones) were indeed designed for
| cars, but it is also illegal to change them, because of
| road requirements, parking minimums, zoning restrictions,
| separation of uses, etc. The qualities of a good suburb are
| desirable, but let's not pretend like they're a natural
| outcome of choices.
| abeppu wrote:
| And the examples given here can make the walking experience
| better, for a similar amount of total expenditure, without
| meaningfully changing the situation for drivers. Some
| things the author never suggests in this post:
|
| - removing lanes of traffic to make more space for
| pedestrians
|
| - reducing speed limits
|
| - increasing gas taxes
|
| You're reacting like advocating for a better pedestrian
| experience is somehow an attack on drivers, but that's
| totally not what this post is. Instead, the author points
| out places where they're already creating affordances for
| pedestrians (sidewalks, crossings with refuge medians, new
| curb ramps) but are doing it in a way that is not
| impactful.
|
| You can make it a more comfortable for people to walk on
| the sidewalks that they're actually paying for, so the
| option of walking 20 min to the grocery store is more
| feasible, normal, appealing, without expecting that people
| in car-dependent neighborhoods are going to give up on car
| ownership.
|
| > so it makes sense that these places are optimized for the
| way people actually get around
|
| This is a misleading framing for two reasons:
|
| - high car ownership does not imply that people don't want
| to also feel comfortable walking in their own
| neighborhoods. You can own a car, but walking your dog or
| walking with your family to a park or walking to the
| nearest store can still be a welcome option. People can get
| around in multiple ways, choosing different options at
| different times for different purposes.
|
| - to the extent that a high proportion of _trips_ are in a
| car, part of that is because the other options are crappy
| _because of the argument you 're making_
|
| We can have pleasant walkable neighborhoods _and_ cars, and
| your kids can walk home from school and you can drive them
| to costco on the weekends. End this nonsensical pretend
| conflict between the two.
| rsync wrote:
| Northfield is not, by any definition, a Minneapolis suburb.
|
| Further, much of Northfield is very rural, big corn fields,
| etc.
|
| Could there be improvements in transit and workability?
| Certainly... especially between the historic downtown and the
| two colleges...
|
| ... but Northfield is actually a good example of a town where
| car (truck ?) oriented transit and stroads, etc., are well
| suited.
| amw-zero wrote:
| I also don't understand the obsession
| bradboimler wrote:
| Personally, I only appreciated the value of a walkable
| neighborhood after I moved to one. Now I _never_ want to go
| back.
|
| Cars and driving are awful
| hibikir wrote:
| Should we look at rural areas in Europe? I spent 3 weeks this
| summer in a small town in Spain. I could smell manure if the
| wind came from the right direction. And yet, I didn't need to
| get into a car, because the town center of this rural town,
| population 5 thousand, lives next to each other. The farmers go
| to the fields further away by car if they need to, but the kids
| walk 5 minutes to the high school.
|
| The total land area is also irrelevant: Spain has a pretty low
| total population density, but that's because most of it is
| empty. The people live close to each other anyway. You can have
| a house 20 minutes by car anyway, and thus live 20 minutes away
| from the hospital instead of 3 minutes if you really like yards
| that much, but barely anyone does, because the car life is
| expensive and a hassle
| silvestrov wrote:
| Example of small town from "flyover state" in Denmark: i.e.
| area with very few jobs, very low house prices, everybody
| moving away, houses on the market forever. We call this for
| "the rotten banana" as the area is shaped as a banana and the
| economy is rotten.
|
| Still very walkable and nice for kids.
|
| Price for these houses is ca. $100_000 (some little over,
| some little less).
|
| http://maps.google.com/maps?q=&layer=c&cbll=55.7224384,8.533.
| ..
| marcusverus wrote:
| Is this a matter of preference or necessity? Median household
| net income in Spain is ~17K[0] and is probably much lower in
| rural areas.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_pe
| r_c...
| buildfocus wrote:
| Barcelona is also a very walkable city (across the entire
| area of 2 million people, not just the very center) and is
| definitely the upper end of Spanish income.
|
| A big part of this is long term cultural: medieval towns
| (and even much older) were all clustered very tightly into
| blocks with city walls against attacks, those slowly
| evolved into the vast majority of the towns & villages in
| Spain today, and have left a culture where flats and dense
| city centers are the expected norm and the primary model,
| even for towns surrounded by empty space. You can easily
| find small towns of apartment blocks and tight wall to wall
| houses in windy city centers, of just 1000 people,
| surrounded by fields for miles.
|
| The Spanish would argue that surburanism is generally less
| enjoyable (walkability, community, socialability) and less
| secure (houses are easier to rob than non-ground floor
| flats) while dense apartment/etc living is better value
| (less land cost, shared maintainence in apartment blocks)
| and provides better airflow/heat management & opportunity
| for balcony views (attic flats etc).
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| my rural area had twice the population but probably 10x the
| size. There was nowhere to "walk" to. We are talking about a
| 2-3 mile drive to the only "supermarket" in the town center,
| which was probably smaller than many modern corner stores.
| everything of interest was 2-3 miles away: the schools, the
| church, the liquor store, and that's really all there is
| (they did build a 99 cent store there, so that's neat).
|
| It's not like the land was wasted with parking lots. It's
| just as generic a desert setting as you can expect. Hot,
| tumbleweeds everywhere, Sand as far as the eye can see in any
| direction, etc. It's all single home housing so it could be
| denser, but that's pretty much the only benefit of living
| there; I grew up with a half acre yard (full of sand and an
| awkward tree in the middle, but actual land) and it gave my
| grandparents some piece of mind when we went out to play.
| TomK32 wrote:
| Don't overdo with by adding "meticulously maintained, pristine
| city", I mean okay this might be a side-effect once people
| start walking more and have the time to look at their
| environment close up and maybe even thrown their single-use
| coffee cup into a bin instead of out the car window. European
| cities were in most of their cores built before the car or
| didn't allow highways to cut them up, followed by more
| demolishment for parking space. Add zoning laws that only allow
| single homes with no business in their center and you get
| suburbian where you can only escape with a car.
| igammarays wrote:
| Curious, have you ever lived for an extensive amount of time in
| a walkable European city? As a person who was born and raised
| in suburban East Coast car-hell and then moved to Europe, I
| would never want to go back. I still want a luxury car for rare
| drives to the countryside, but I hate it every time I have to
| go back to North American car-dependent cities, except for the
| nicer walkable downtowns.
| betaby wrote:
| Are you living alone or with wife/kids? That changes a lot.
| Larger apartments are getting pricy very quickly.
| its_ethan wrote:
| I've given up on "arguing" with people on this thread, but
| FWIW, I have lived in Berlin and Frankfurt both for extended
| periods of time (2.5years total). I'll leave it up to you to
| decide if those are walkable cities or not. I also currently
| live in NYC, which is, if not walkable, anti-car.
| acuozzo wrote:
| How is the soundproofing where you live?
|
| My boys (one with ASD and the other with ADHD) are often
| extremely loud. When they are, you can hear them clearly from
| a surprising distance away from my suburban USA home even
| when they're still in the house.
| alkonaut wrote:
| The US is not large and not sparse compared to the rest of the
| world in general or compared to Europe in particular. This
| argument pops up every time but it just has no basis in
| reality. There are sparse (rural) and dense (city) areas
| everywhere. The ratio between this type of area is different in
| Finland compared to the UK, just as it differs between Alaska
| and New Jersey. The density of the US is roughly the same as
| Europe. (Around 100/sq km)
|
| But walkable cities can be both 1M population or 10k
| population. What applies to a footpath in a city of 1M applies
| to a footpath in a city of 10k too.
|
| Truly rural areas usually aren't the topic of these discussions
| nor sites like strongtowns. For obvious reasons.
| keybored wrote:
| > The density of the US is roughly the same as Europe.
| (Around 100/sq km)
|
| The population density of America is 33.6/square km according
| to Wikipedia. For comparison: Sweden up to the north is
| 25/square km.
|
| There is a large difference in this regard.
|
| EDIT: I added the part I was replying to out of concern of
| the downvoter's who didn't manage to catch that.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Oh sorry Google fooled me, when asking for US pop density
| it answered per sq. mi (96) and for EU it answered per sq
| km (106). The numbers are less similar with the same units
| then.... Some sparse countries like Ukraine aren't counted
| in EU however.
|
| But I think the point you make about Sweden also applies to
| anywhere. How much land a country has that _isn't_ a city
| isn't very relevant to how its cities look. If the US had
| 10 more alaskas or the EU had 10 more Swedens wouldn't
| matter for how _cities_ are built.
|
| In the debate about Covid there was a trope about Sweden
| being so sparsely populated that no lessons could be drawn
| from there. Yet looking more closely it's obvious that this
| is merely because most areas of Sweden have almost no
| people, and it's rather Urbanized. I.e it's actually
| locally dense but mostly empty.
|
| "Mean distance between humans" is a much better measure of
| population density, both for city design and epedemics.
| Australia is a prime example where on average, 3ppl per
| square kilometer live. A figure that says nothing about
| actual population density.
| keybored wrote:
| The fact check nerd snipe besides I agree with your
| argument. :)
| jltsiren wrote:
| It's not about everyone. It's just about building enough nice
| walkable cities for people who want to live in them.
|
| It's not a utopia. It's about prioritizing people over traffic.
| Prioritizing the experience of being in the city over the
| convenience of getting there or driving through.
|
| And it doesn't even have to be a city. The same idea also
| applies to suburbs. You can have good transit connections to
| the city, apartment buildings and local services in the core,
| single-family homes a bit further away, and large parks and
| forests within walking distance. Suburbs like this are
| typically more sparsely built but more densely populated than
| American suburbs. They also tend to be nicer once you leave
| your home.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| *For people who can afford to live in them. I imagine most
| people (like me) aren't out in the boonies due to
| claustrophobia. We could use more walk able cities, but those
| we do have in the US tend to be the most expensive
| neighborhoods.
| betaby wrote:
| I want to live in an imaginary fully walkable city. Now I live
| in Montreal, for the context see video
| https://youtu.be/_yDtLv-7xZ4 It's very good overview of what is
| wrong with the best* city in North America. Not covered in this
| video: high rent/cost of owning compared to the local
| relatively low salaries (most of Montrealers agree) and in
| general low quality of hosing (many Montrealers got very
| irritated if I bring that).
|
| So yeah, I understand your argument.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| There's no reason that small towns and rural areas can't have
| bicycle paths, shade trees, and safe crosswalks. Example:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg
| abeppu wrote:
| ... but what are "these posts"? Because this post compares good
| and bad examples within the Minneapolis-St Paul metro area.
| This _isn 't_ a comparison of some cherry-picked European city
| with the rural US. It's a comparison of good and bad points
| within a mid-sized US city.
|
| Further, a bunch of these examples seem like cases where the
| resources for the better design would not have been out of
| reach. The case where there are only crosswalks on 3 sides of
| an intersection so pedestrians need to walk the long way around
| (and wait for the light to change multiple times) would be
| straight-forward to have done right. The example in the
| "convenience" section where the path forces pedestrians to take
| a longer path, would have taken only a modest amount of
| additional concrete to address. Examples where there's too
| little demarcation between the sidewalk and street often have a
| green strip on the _other_ side of the sidewalk. The same
| amount of space could have been used with the sidewalk shifted
| over and a green strip with trees placed between the street and
| sidewalk. None of these are "idealism run afoul".
| Tade0 wrote:
| As an outsider (as in: not American) I notice that _a lot_ of
| the details, especially downsides, are left out.
|
| I grew up in a commie block in a region of Europe where cities
| are fairly sparsely populated (approximately half the density
| of Amsterdam and close to 1/8th that of Paris proper).
|
| I see it as a good middle ground that while still walkable,
| doesn't have the aforementioned downsides of dense city living,
| like:
|
| -Noise, or actually the contortions you have to go through to
| keep it at acceptable levels. The inverse square law really
| does a number on people who live in a densely populated area
| with a night life or renovations going on (there's always
| renovations going on).
|
| -Garbage disposal. I remember spending a mostly sleepless night
| in Bilbao because guess when is the only time a garbage truck
| can actually pass and collect refuse in a timely manner? Modern
| humans produce way more garbage than their 19th century
| counterparts.
|
| -General tidyness. I want to see Tokyo one day because it
| appears to be the only large, densely populated area in the
| world which isn't filthy. I'm not even talking about trash.
| It's the puddles of animal (and human) urine scattered here and
| there.
|
| -Lack of green spaces. Land is precious in densely populated
| cities, so you can't have this sort of stuff. Meanwhile when a
| dog has to go, they have to go, hence the previously mentioned
| puddles.
|
| -Cost. Did I mention land is precious? The other day my friend
| showed me the sort of _palace_ he can buy by selling his two
| bedroom in a commie block. Especially in recent years cost
| alone has pushed many people out of cities.
|
| -Cost (of living). My car-oriented hellhole of a suburban mall
| where I sometimes do shopping has more stuff and at prices 30%
| lower than all those neat corner shops. The reason is that
| everything, from rent to logistics is expensive in a densely-
| populated area.
|
| I could go on, but this is the gist. You couldn't pay me to
| live in a place with more than 5000 inhabitants per square
| kilometre.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Moved to Amsterdam for the luxury of not having a car. After the
| 4th kid, my wife wanted a car for road trips. We never need it.
| dh2022 wrote:
| Am I the only one who thinks this title is a bit click-baity?
| What does shade, engagement, and separation from car traffic have
| to do with dignity?
| 8organicbits wrote:
| When the environment a walker needs to travel is hostile,
| unsafe, or uncomfortable for them it lacks dignity. A more
| respectfully planned urban environment gives walkers safety,
| comfort, and enjoyment.
| dh2022 wrote:
| With this logic anything impacts dignity. Making everything a
| micro-aggression is en-vogue these days, so go it makes sense
| to have click-bait titles.
| supertrope wrote:
| In high status areas the local government and landlords are
| much more likely to plant street trees to ensure dismounted
| people can comfortably walk. In neglected areas there are less
| trees and the sidewalk is crumbling or abruptly ends.
|
| If SUVs are speeding along at 54 MPH right next to the
| sidewalk, their wind hits you, their noise hits you, and some
| asshole drivers intentionally drive over puddles in an attempt
| to splash pedestrians.
| dh2022 wrote:
| The wind and the noise are afront to your dignity? Thanks for
| the laugh!!!
| CollinEMac wrote:
| This is a real problem that's hard to describe. Walking around
| the US (excluding large cities) just makes you feel like a
| jackass.
|
| It _shouldn 't_ matter but it does.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that I've seen this before. Maybe not the same
| exact post, but one similar enough to be a match.
|
| It's spot-on.
|
| However, I submit that, as software/hardware/tech engineers, it
| behooves us to add User Dignity as a fairly important axis; just
| as important as Security and Usability. Lot more difficult to
| define, though.
|
| For me, and the software that I write, it's absolutely _crucial_
| , and I will spend many hours, refining what appears to be
| perfectly functional UI, to enhance the Dignity of those using
| it; especially technophobes.
|
| In my case, I write software for my Community, and I deal with
| the users of my software on a daily basis. Very few of them have
| the slightest inkling of what I do. It's "Some stuff with
| iPhones. I dunno."
|
| To be fair, they often don't offer me, or my work, too much
| Dignity, but that's not their job. It is mine.
|
| A perfect example is error handling.
|
| Microsoft Windows is notorious for its obscure, jargonistic error
| messages. Many users quake in fear at triggering one of them.
|
| I have found that the best way to give the users some Dignity,
| when an error occurs, is to make sure that the error doesn't
| occur, in the first place.
|
| That can be a tough ask, but good affordance design, doing things
| like disabling UI paths that won't result in success, smoothly
| failing (as opposed to crashing, or triggering an error alert
| that isn't actually necessary to anyone but the IT HelpDesk
| person), and avoiding the use of jargon, in our displays, are a
| good way to get this.
|
| I just went through a year and a half of wrestling with a
| designer, on an app that has been shipping since January. A lot
| of the stuff that I wanted, wrt to usability, affordances, etc.,
| didn't make the cut.
|
| Some of my concerns were probably overblown, but a number were
| not. The users are having difficulty in exactly the places I
| thought they would. They are also surprising me.
|
| Help screens and whatnot, are pretty much worthless. I have a
| feature in the app, where, if you long-press on any element, a
| popover appears, with the accessibility label as the title, and
| the accessibility hint, as the text. You basically get focused,
| directly-relevant help, for any element of the screen, and it
| also helps us to make sure that vision-impaired accessibility is
| handled.
|
| No one uses it.
|
| Ah, well...
|
| I actually have a great deal of love and Respect for the users of
| my software. I do my best to make sure that the software I write
| helps them to solve their problems, achieve their goals, and not
| impact their self-respect and Dignity.
| gspencley wrote:
| > Have you ever had a friend return from a vacation and gush
| about how great it was to walk in the place they'd visited? "You
| can walk everywhere! To a cafe, to the store. It was amazing!"
|
| Honestly, no.
|
| I live in a medium sized city in southern Ontario, about a 3 1/2
| - 4 hour drive from Toronto. I just came back from spending a
| week in Toronto and although everything was walking distance, and
| we did walk everywhere, the week-long stay was not at all
| enjoyable.
|
| There are people who love big cities. They love being able to
| walk everywhere, they love the "excitement" and the ability to
| experience a wide and diverse range of activities and food etc.
|
| And then there are us introverts who find it extremely
| uncomfortable to be in places that are so crowded.
|
| I enjoy walking as a solitary activity. I'm not lazy, I'm not
| averse to doing physical activity. But I really really really
| dislike walking anywhere that has a sizeable population density.
| I've heard that in the USA / Canada, the average "personal space
| bubble" that people find comfortable is around 1.5 feet. For me
| it's closer to 6 feet. I find that trying to navigate busy
| sidewalks is overwhelming and anxiety-inducing.
|
| I've heard a lot of city-loving younger people talk about the
| pains of owning a vehicle. I didn't get my driver's license until
| my early to mid 20s. At the time I had a young family of 4 (my
| wife and I plus two small children) and, although I might be
| biased because I live in a built-for-cars North American city,
| getting our first vehicle gave us so much freedom and
| independence that it was life-changing in a positive way. I
| realize that if all amenities had been within walking distance
| then maybe not having a car wouldn't have been such a hindrance,
| but when I think back to being in downtown Toronto recently, I
| couldn't imagine navigating that population density nightmare
| while also pushing a double-stroller.
|
| To me, and maybe this is more psychological / emotional than
| logical ... but a car is my personal isolation bubble that gives
| me much needed personal space while travelling. Though I also
| must admit that leaving the house is a special occasion for me.
| So yeah, I'm not typical and city-life is just not for me.
| wakamoleguy wrote:
| Walkability isn't just important in big cities; you can have it
| in smaller towns, too. I live in the suburbs of a large city,
| but my town has a small "main street" area with shops and
| restaurants that I love to walk to. I also have the anxiety
| around crowds (especially post-pandemic), and my town is the
| perfect balance of freedom to walk places and space to breathe.
|
| When I think about walkable vacation spots, I don't only think
| of cities either. I think of small beach towns where even
| though it isn't populous, things are close enough together to
| explore on foot.
|
| So I guess one question I'd pose is: if you could have that
| personal space without the car, would you still prefer the car
| and why? And given the negative externalities of the car, are
| there other ways those needs could be solved?
| gspencley wrote:
| > So I guess one question I'd pose is: if you could have that
| personal space without the car, would you still prefer the
| car and why?
|
| That depends on context. I would say that I would prefer to
| always have the ability to drive a car even if I were to
| choose to walk more often than not. Reasons for this: bad
| weather, needing to get somewhere while ill, feeling anti-
| social and not wanting to risk running into anyone, needing
| to get around with a minor injury, needing to transport a
| large or heavy items.
|
| I know that we're talking about walking vs driving, but
| public transportation will inevitably enter the picture when
| it comes to physical or mobility issues. I would like to
| travel to Europe one day because what I hear from Europeans
| is that their cities are night and day compared to North
| American cities when it comes to not only walkability but
| public transport. Here in North America, I would rather walk
| on a crowded sidewalk than use public transportation for no
| other reason than being in what feels like a "tin can" full
| of strangers is nightmare fuel for me. At least on a crowded
| sidewalk I am outdoors.
|
| > And given the negative externalities of the car, are there
| other ways those needs could be solved?
|
| Sure. To the extent that "negative externalities" are
| something that we need to care about, let's use technology to
| reduce those negative externalities without having to give up
| the things that make our lives better.
| lm28469 wrote:
| There are plenty of small walkable cities in Europe, I just
| came back from a trip to a 300 inhabitants town, everything was
| walkable, albeit you had to walk 20min to the next city to get
| to the bigger things like banks and big stores but that was
| easily doable as you could use a clean hiking path through the
| woods or a very nicely maintained sidewalk. Get yourself a
| bicycle and the 20min walk becomes a 5min ride
|
| And rest assured, you won't see much action or social
| interactions on the way
| gspencley wrote:
| That's really cool. Usually when discussions come up about
| "walkable cities" the discussion is around major urban areas
| and city planning.
|
| Though you mentioned banks as something that is still pretty
| far away. A few years ago I was self-employed, collecting
| old-fashioned checks (it was slow moving to digital) and I
| had to frequent a bank once every week, two weeks at most
| since I had to deposit checks that were in USD and my bank in
| here Canada couldn't yet do that via an ATM. My nearest
| branch was walking distance but I still chose to drive
| because it was a 20m walk, 5 - 10m bike ride or 1 - 2m drive.
| Since it was such a big chore to have to go there in person,
| I opted for a car more often than walking or biking.
|
| I think that at least some of what drives these discussions
| is congestion and parking in major cities. I can't stand
| driving in downtown Toronto. But in my mid-sized city I
| really don't mind driving 5 - 10 minutes vs having to double
| or triple that to walk or bike there. Add the benefit of
| personal space and a trunk to carry groceries in and I can't
| see any benefit (beyond maybe environmental impact) to a "15
| minute" city in a medium-sized city where traffic congestion
| is not really a thing and a short car ride will halve your 20
| - 30m round trip.
|
| City advocates claim that North American suburb existence
| requires you to plan your grocery trips and buy lots at a
| time, vs the "benefit" of city life where you can run to the
| store to grab milk if you're out of it. The idea of going to
| a crowded grocery store is such a chore that I welcome any
| strategy that gets me going there once a month or even less
| if at all possible. The idea of running to a grocery store,
| even if it were a block away, for a single item or two is
| nightmare fuel given that the trip could be avoided all
| together with the smallest bit of planning, whether walking
| or driving. So how do I accomplish buying a month's worth of
| groceries if I have to walk there? Whereas, if I have the
| choice to drive or walk, I can decide how much to buy at a
| time and how often I want to go. Big win for cars.
|
| Another drawback to the "15 minute city", from an extreme
| introvert's perspective, is that the closer things are to
| your home, the closer PEOPLE are to your home. It actually
| bothers me if I'm sitting on my couch reading a book and I
| can hear people walking by on the sidewalk. When everything
| is close by, so are people. I really like living as far away
| from people as I reasonably can. A vehicle becomes a
| necessity with remote living.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Places are crowded because only small parts of the city are
| walkable and most ppl go there. When it's dense evenly, youll
| get hot spots in the center but the other parts would still be
| nice and walkable just not crowded
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >I've heard that in the USA / Canada, the average "personal
| space bubble" that people find comfortable is around 1.5 feet
|
| "comfortable" is a stretch. But yes, I won't think much of an
| unassuming person 2 feet away from me. School desks are about
| that much spaced out when reaching behind or in front of you
| (close enough to tap the back of the person in front of you),
| so I suppose that's how we form our bubbles.
| gspencley wrote:
| > "comfortable" is a stretch. But yes, I won't think much of
| an unassuming person 2 feet away from me
|
| I envy you. Unless there is an obvious reason that more space
| is impractical / impossible, my thought in such a situation
| is "Why do you need to stand so close? Please get away from
| me."
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Unfortunately, dignity for the citizen is fundamentally at odds
| with the way the United States is structured.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I think one of the key points that is often not understood widely
| is that car-centric infrastructure causes things to be spaced so
| much farther apart (with unpleasant empty tarmac) than necessary.
| If every building is surrounded by a border of 15 meters of
| roads, that significantly expands the distances that a person
| needs to travel to get anywhere. This further prioritises cars
| and drives demand and cultural norms.
|
| I don't think we should be trying to get away from cars
| altogether by any means, but I think we should seriously consider
| banning them almost entirely from city centres. There's still a
| need for emergency vehicles and goods to be transported within
| the city, so we would still need some roads, but we could
| eliminate a considerable number of lanes.
| eweise wrote:
| More people live in the suburbs than city centers. That's where
| the real problem is. I don't have any problem walking around
| the streets of SF.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| If people live their lives in the suburbs and that's what
| appeals to them, I am not going to say they shouldn't (so
| long as their suburban town is economically viable), but as a
| city dweller, I think they should have to pay (not just
| parking) for coming into the city with their cars.
| alexawarrior3 wrote:
| You're essentially just raising taxes on the poor. Why?
| Let's take SF above as an example. The median salary in SF
| according to Gusto is $104,000 annually, which at the 30%
| maximum federal recommended housing payment would be $2,600
| monthly all-inclusive. Using Zillow to see what I could
| afford with zero down at this monthly payment (VA loan), I
| find nothing in SF, and virtually nothing in the Bay Area,
| except some shacks which are essentially land in Richmond:
|
| https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1964-Van-Ness-Ave-San-
| Pab...
|
| Perhaps I could erect a tent and live homeless on my own
| land, but with Newsom's new alt-right homeless policy,
| probably not. The closest I could find which was (barely)
| habitable in Concord, a true fixer-upper but something
| anyone can do with enough time and effort and watching home
| repair tutorials:
|
| https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/168-Norman-Ave-Concord-
| CA...
|
| This is about one to one and a half hours each way,
| depending on traffic, to my old office in downtown SF
| (before I was offshored). Currently, the house above is
| what I could afford and what I would most likely buy if I
| received a job again and had to go into the office a few
| days a week (or six days a week as some startups want now).
| Driving, although long, is the only viable option. Even
| when mass transit routes can be found, they add 1-2 hours
| to the already long commute (each way).
|
| People in this thread within the technobubble generally
| miss what driving is for most Americans: a necessity. It's
| not an option because we prefer SUVs and huge houses,
| that's true for some people, but most people don't have
| many options of where to live or how to live, they are wage
| and price takers, and we go where we can afford. And that's
| somewhere we need to drive, nice walkable areas served well
| by mass transit are luxury items in the USA only for the
| rich. The rest of us must drive, and hindering that only
| makes those of us already struggling on the edge of middle
| class even poorer.
| adrianN wrote:
| The usual counter argument is that you can take the money
| raised by making cars expensive and give it to the poor.
| That's fairer than subsidizing cars, since rich people
| tend to have more cars and use them more than poor
| people.
| Daishiman wrote:
| The only reason everything you mention is a problem is
| because SF's zoning policy is a disaster that doesn't
| actually reflect true demand for housing.
|
| A properly zoned SF would look like New York, with 5x
| more transit options than it currently has.
| eweise wrote:
| Not sure what this has to to with the article. Kind of
| wondering why there are so many off-topic comments attached
| to mine. Maybe the word suburbia sets people off?
| novok wrote:
| There are parts of SF that have another "dignity" problem
| unfortunately. I know too many who refuse to walk in many
| areas there due to feeling unsafe and the smell issues. I
| know another one who refuses public transit now due to
| similar issues. They tend to be small women and it's super
| sad and it really limits a lot of their transport options in
| life.
| j-wags wrote:
| I agree this is the current situation, but I think the
| concentration of homelessness in urban areas is largely a
| consequence of policies that favor suburbia:
|
| - Requiring a car for daily life drives up cost of living,
| pricing the bottom tier of earners into the streets
|
| - Restricting housing unit supply by mandating single
| family zoning makes whole regions unaffordable
|
| - Blocking effective public transit into the suburbs
| effectively geofences homelessness into urban centers
|
| - Concentrating the overwhelming majority of homeless
| services downtown is a policy choice, not a natural outcome
|
| I think a lot of people look at urban areas in the US and
| think "that looks awful, my area should make the opposite
| of those policy choices", and it leads us to subconsciously
| hold some weird beliefs. Tall buildings and public transit
| don't make people homeless. They do the opposite. But
| something about the American lifestyle (my own upbringing
| included) plants these negative associations with urban
| centers, and it wasn't until I saw other cities around the
| world that I realized it didn't make any sense at all.
| eweise wrote:
| Yes, that's a different problem than the article is
| referring to.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| A lot of times it isn't by choice, but as a consequence of
| zoning and parking minimums that are affecting housing stock
| and it's prices (both in the city and in suburbs). You may
| not have problems walking in sf(debatable but doesn't
| matter), but could you say the same about detroit/huston?
| tocs3 wrote:
| When I am driving through suburbs in central Texas I think it
| is interesting to note that there are rarely people outside
| the houses. Mostly the the people I see are mowing.
| eweise wrote:
| I think the article points out one of the reasons.
| eweise wrote:
| Weird. Many downvotes to my comment and then a bunch of
| random complaints having nothing to do with the article.
| hn_user82179 wrote:
| > car-centric infrastructure causes things to be spaced so much
| farther apart (with unpleasant empty tarmac)
|
| Good example here is Salt Lake City - the streets were designed
| intentionally to be very wide everywhere.
| treis wrote:
| But not for cars. They were made wide enough for an ox wagon
| to turn around.
| recursive wrote:
| Ok, let's reduce ox wagons too then.
| randomdata wrote:
| Are you sure that's a good example of car centricity? The
| streets in my town are wide enough for a six lane highway,
| yet the streets were built before the car was even a glimmer
| in someone's imagination.
| recursive wrote:
| If it wasn't car-centric then, it sure is now.
| randomdata wrote:
| Nah. If it were car-centric it would be much more
| friendly to cars. It has come to try to be _everything_
| -centric, which results in it being awful for everyone.
| silvestrov wrote:
| A good example is looking at Apple's old campus:
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3321579,-122.0298439,567m/da...
|
| I get the total area to be 131351 m2 and the area inside the
| "Infinite loop" road to be 58029 m2, i.e. only 44% of the total
| area.
|
| So cars waste half of the area.
| https://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-area-calculat...
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Forget the Apple campus
|
| Just look at Houston: https://www.google.com/maps/@29.7561945
| ,-95.3646105,681m/dat...
|
| Half the city is parking
| konschubert wrote:
| What I absolutely don't understand: Why are there no
| parking garages, why only surface parking lots? Isn't that
| prime real estate?
|
| Why is there no incentive to stack the cars can stack in 10
| layers on one lot instead of taking up 10 lots with surface
| parking?
| rd wrote:
| Can't say for certain but intuitive guess is it's dirt
| (literally dirt in some cases) cheap to do a ground level
| parking slot?
|
| Slap some paint on the ground, put up a booth and a sign,
| and you're good?
|
| Whereas an elevated garage is probably a years-long
| project?
|
| I also think most of these parking lots are probably
| owned by small time chumps, not consolidated mega parking
| companies.
| konschubert wrote:
| How come no investors are buying that real estate and
| building skyscrapers or parking garages?
|
| Is there really no demand for new downtown developments?
| throwway120385 wrote:
| They've already done so. They're just waiting for the
| economics to make sense before they convert the land. The
| parking lot is just how they're paying taxes and the
| mortgage on the land.
| konschubert wrote:
| Land Value Tax would fix this.
|
| But even without, it's crazy that you can afford the
| mortgage with the parking fees.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| I'm definitely on board with a land-value tax. It would
| be a significant boon to productivity, economic mobility
| and even growth.
| vel0city wrote:
| Say you've got a lot with like 420 spaces a few blocks
| away from Minute Maid Field in Houston. You charge $25
| for parking during the event and you're guaranteed to
| fill it up every game. 81 home baseball games a season.
| That's $850k in revenue a year, practically _guaranteed_
| , and just for the baseball games. How many other events
| will they host there?
|
| Let's say on an average workday your lot is like 60%
| full. You charge like $8/day for normal workdays or
| something. 252 spaces * 8/day ~$10k/wk. Lets say 50 of
| these normal weeks in a year, that's $504k in parking for
| the normal workdays.
|
| Normal workday and baseball games gives you ~$1.35M in
| revenue for something you need to repave every decade and
| paint every couple of years.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Yeah people I know in the parking industry have a saying
| that if you want to print money build a parking lot or
| garage. They're stupidly easy and result in tons of
| recurring revenue if they're in a good location. Even the
| little lots can produce thousands per month of revenue.
| stonogo wrote:
| This is why: https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRe
| gs/docs_pdfs/par...
|
| Developers effectively can't 'outsource' parking. If you
| want to build anything, you get to build parking. For a
| long time, building a parking garage cost more than just
| buying a bigger plot to develop. Now that's not the case,
| but the rules haven't changed, so it would take a
| developer with deep pockets to build a parking garage,
| and it would have to be associated with a massive
| development project.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Why are there no parking garages
|
| As someone who lived in Houston for a long time, there
| are _lots_ of parking garages.
|
| https://downtownhouston.org/navigate/parking/garages
|
| But there are still lots of incentives to have a surface
| level parking lot. $$ per spot, it is stupid cheap for a
| surface lot in construction costs. Why pay $25 to park in
| a garage for the day when the surface lot around the
| corner costs $5?
| btgeekboy wrote:
| Another way to think about it is cars allow people who live
| further from the campus along routes not served by transit
| (either at all or in a timely and convenient manner) to still
| work for the company. A multi-story parking structure would
| also have reduced the amount of surface area dedicated to
| vehicles.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Given that Apple is the most successful company in the world
| perhaps it's not a waste and there's something in your model
| that doesn't capture reality.
|
| Along a similar vein, I'd be interested in the correlation
| between car use and economic growth is between similarly
| developed territories is. I know that the US and EU were
| roughly equal in economic size when I was in school and now
| it's more like a 3:2 ratio. China has also aggressively
| adopted cars over the past 3 decades while passing many other
| countries in per capita GDP.
| jessekv wrote:
| What portion of the GDP does the vehicle manufacturing
| industry account for?
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| A relatively low portion in the US the past 25 years and
| almost none in China until this decade.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Ban in the center is not enough, at least for us. Zoning and
| parking minimums should be ditched too. This would gradually
| densify the area
| fsckboy wrote:
| if you want densification and you're willing to using zoning
| changes to achieve it, adopt the solution favored by truly
| dense cities: force more skyscrapers
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Densification is good up until a point. Ideally you would
| want mixed use and mixed style development
| Hugsun wrote:
| I was under the impression that skyscrapers weren't good
| for dense walkable areas. 4-7 story tall mixed use
| buildings are supposed to be the best.
|
| I'm afraid I don't have a source for this. The Youtube
| channel Not Just Bikes might have said this.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| it's a mixed bag. Some argue that sporadic skyscrapers
| might be a good thing since those would act as a point of
| easier orientation in space + providing housing/work area
| for ppl that want to live/work high. The problem appears
| when there are too many of them or public transport infra
| is not adapted to handle such an inflow of people towards
| a single point
| presentation wrote:
| Tokyo is truly dense and is not skyscraper heavy. They just
| have tiny roads and tightly packed buildings, mostly low-
| rise and single family homes.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Another thing I've noticed is that people drive even when there
| are nearby options. I live in a suburb of DC, right where a
| residential area meets a commercial area. There is a large
| Korean grocery store less than a block away, fully accessible
| by shaded sidewalks. My neighbors always drive 10-20 minutes to
| different stores. I go to the nearby one because it has cheaper
| and fresher produce, although I still make bulk purchases by
| car.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I mean, I sort of get it. There was a time when I stopped
| driving to the grocery store all together but it was only
| because there was a great independent grocer right on my walk
| home from public transit. The fact that I couldn't really
| make big bulk purchases didn't matter because I could just
| stop in each evening on my way home to get what we needed,
| and I wasn't even going out of my way to do so. It was
| fantastic, I loved it. Maybe once a month we drove somewhere
| to get anything we needed that they didn't carry, or for a
| big pantry restock.
|
| If I had a grocery store I could walk to now, I don't know
| that I would because it would be an extra trip all on its
| own. So unless I'm making that walk each day on principle,
| it's inconvenient and I don't know I would.
|
| And yes, that is absolutely because of the car-centric suburb
| I now live in. When circumstances allow it, I look forward to
| moving back to some walkable, urban neighborhood again.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > The fact that I couldn't really make big bulk purchases
| didn't matter because I could just stop in each evening on
| my way home to get what
|
| Once someone's gone full r/fuckcars it's sort of difficult
| to talk sense to them, but have you maybe considered that
| some people don't want to make the tradeoff of free-time-
| for-transportation-storage-capacity? Like, for another 2
| hours time per week, I'd be willing to buy an SUV so large
| that statistically 3 kindergarteners would die of smog-
| related early deaths, with a curb weight of 1.9 million
| pounds.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Supermarkets in dense cities with most people walking
| tend to be much smaller (no clothes etc) so it's easy to
| go round in a few minutes -- less if you know exactly
| what you want.
| pandaman wrote:
| There is a fixed time in every supermarket trip no matter
| how big or small it is. Multiple trips accrue these
| costs. For example, I live next to a supermarket, a big
| one. It's a 3 minute walk door to door, 6 min round trip.
| Inside it takes about 5 min to find what I am looking for
| and another 2-10 minutes to checkout depending on the
| size of the line. So, at the very best I am spending 13
| minutes per trip. If I shopped for groceries there every
| day I would be spending at least 1.5 hours per week
| shopping. Instead, I drive my car to Costco every two
| weeks and spend less than 1.5 hours on that (20 min drive
| x2, 30 min picking groceries and checking out, 5 min
| parking, 5 min loading and unloading), saving more than
| 1.5 hours of my life every other week.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| I also use Costco for bulk purchases too, but buying in
| advance requires careful planning. Unless you have a
| repetitive diet, supplement with a quick grocery run mid-
| week, only purchase frozen/shelf stable food, or throw
| out a bunch of expired food each week it's hard to
| predict what you need two weeks in advance.
| pandaman wrote:
| I usually eat out so my diet is quite varied, which is
| another problem for walking advocates because they are
| limited only to the restaurants in their walking
| distance, or cold soggy deliveries, or, ultimately, have
| to spend a lot of time cooking themselves (or making
| large batches and eating the same leftovers for days in a
| row). This is besides the point, which was the time spent
| with daily shopping by foot. It's incredible waste of
| time and I know that because I used to do just that.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > so it's easy to go round in a few minutes
|
| x7 days a week. But it's not just the time in the store,
| it's also whatever detour there is to get to it. At
| walking speed. Whatever the wait time is at checkout.
|
| > less if you know exactly what you want.
|
| So now, I also increase my mental load because I need to
| know what I'm cooking tonight an hour or even two hours
| before I do so? I have to have my meal planned out hours
| in advance.
|
| And if there is another pandemic like event, I'm also
| constrained to the one day's supply of food that I have
| in my house at any given moment (maybe less than that,
| realistically). And it's still a fucking pain if I'm
| anything other than single. There was a point in my life
| not so many years ago, when we were going through about 4
| gallons of milk per week. Hell, some of the things that
| we like to eat, that we should be eating for health
| reasons... you can't even buy those in single meal sizes.
| We'll probably have 3 (plastic) bags of vegetables home
| for salad.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > So now, I also increase my mental load because I need
| to know what I'm cooking tonight an hour or even two
| hours before I do so? I have to have my meal planned out
| hours in advance.
|
| Oh, the horror. Usually I would just go in an see what
| looks good and decide then what I wanted for dinner.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The detour is small. I think it's also more common to go
| every second or third day, rather than every day.
|
| Search "supermarket" in Copenhagen -- not the city centre
| -- and see how many results there are: https://www.google
| .com/maps/search/supermarket/@55.703748,12... . You may
| well need to zoom in and refresh the search to see
| everything.
|
| > I need to know what I'm cooking tonight an hour or even
| two hours before I do so?
|
| Rather than knowing a week in advance? Come on.
|
| > Pandemic
|
| You can easily build up some reserves.
|
| > Milk
|
| You clearly have a large family, so you might consider
| that your situation is not universal. I think many Danes
| with a large family would mix the two options -- shopping
| by car (or online for delivery) every week or two, and
| supplementing it with additional trips for fresh food.
|
| Two adults is also two people to share the shopping.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > The detour is small.
|
| For you. That one time. Honestly, I always seem to be on
| the wrong end of the curve when it comes to salaries...
| betcha I end up in the ghetto apartment in the food
| desert.
|
| > Rather than knowing a week in advance? Come on.
|
| Nah. You just get the things you usually get, and you
| make whatever of that you feel like that evening. No need
| to plan, you figure it out when you open the fridge.
|
| > You clearly have a large family, s
|
| Just the two children. Even with just two children, this
| quickly becomes absurdly impossible. For any more than
| that, the walkable city people just sound like stooges.
| Well, they sound like that long before we start talking
| about large families.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Carrying capacity is a challenge, but I'm still surprised a
| 5 minute walk always loses to a 40 minute round trip by
| car. I struggle to get enough exercise as it is.
| vel0city wrote:
| Because for a lot of people it isn't a 40-minute round
| trip by car. It is a five minute each way trip by car for
| _multiple_ grocery stores for me personally.
| nkrisc wrote:
| In my case, reverse those times.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| There is also a lot of times when you could walk to a place
| but you may be motivated to drive because other drivers are
| more accommodating to a car. It may sound crazy, but in Los
| Angeles (my home) drives are often more patient and behave in
| a safer manner toward cars then they do bicyclists or
| pedestrians.
|
| A nice thing about electric bikes is that it seems to be
| making bikes more common. It really needs to be normalized
| that a person doesn't have to be in a car to use or cross the
| road.
| kettlecorn wrote:
| I have a very loose mental framework for thinking about cars
| that I think is helpful:
|
| If you look at space taken up length-wise in a lane the length
| of the average car in the US is 14.7 ft. For a person standing
| on a sidewalk the average person's foot size is ~10 inches.
| Let's hand wave the math and say cars are 10x longer.
|
| Very loosely our built environment scales 10x to match that new
| scale. Roads need to be 10x bigger, parking lots take up even
| more space.
|
| The ultimate result is not that there are far more unique
| destinations available to the average person, but that they are
| further away, bigger, and costs are far higher.
|
| Before car usage approached 100% it would have been a
| tremendous gain to be one of the early car owners. The
| environment would have been built for a smaller scale and you
| would have been able to traverse it rapidly. For day to day
| life in well-populated areas that advantage has substantially
| eroded.
|
| It's a clear example of the tragedy of the commons.
| ajuc wrote:
| It's even worse if you don't limit the velocity to sth like
| 30km/h - because then you need more space for turning and
| acceleration/breaking; and also noise increases with speed -
| which tends to make people put their houses further away from
| the streets - which makes everything even less dense, which
| requires people to speed up and use cars more.
|
| So in practice it's worse than 10x.
| alexawarrior3 wrote:
| "Before car usage approached 100% it would have been a
| tremendous gain to be one of the early car owners. The
| environment would have been built for a smaller scale and you
| would have been able to traverse it rapidly. For day to day
| life in well-populated areas that advantage has substantially
| eroded."
|
| Actually, no. The early car owners had it terrible, not only
| were they expensive and broke down often, the roads were
| often little more than mud-drenched dirt tracks, with
| impassable bridges and cities choked with animal and
| pedestrian traffic. No stoplights or traffic laws, extreme
| chaos and very slow going. You can read some of the early
| coast-to-coast stories for how challenging it was.
|
| The excellent vehicular infrastructure we have in the USA
| today is due precisely to the car usage being 80%+. With the
| mass adoption came freeways, stoplights, graded roads,
| drainage, bridges, all of it.
| kettlecorn wrote:
| The problem with your argument is why would people buy cars
| if they were so terrible? While the infrastructure was
| obviously worse than today clearly they afforded tremendous
| advantages which motivated their adoption!
|
| In the early days that advantage was the ability to rapidly
| traverse relatively developed areas with more convenience.
| Over time infrastructure and adoption chased each other,
| but now the most populated parts of the US are developed to
| the point that there's little way to ease congestion with
| more road infrastructure. The only way to grow is to sprawl
| into new cities.
|
| For a long time in population centers the pattern was new
| car infra. -> more driving convenience -> more cars ->
| repeat. In cities that's running into bottlenecks.
|
| Today people primarily buy cars out of necessity, but in
| areas where most people live congestion and a more
| sprawling environment has diminished much of the time
| saving advantage.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It was terrible. People bought cars anyway because it was
| _still better than walking_.
|
| In 1919, the US Army ran a truck convoy from Washington
| DC to San Francisco. It took them 56 (!) travel days,
| driving 10 1/4 hours per day. The roads were lousy in
| 1919. But even then, it was better than a mule train.
| kettlecorn wrote:
| People bought into cars early because they could get
| around quickly to more destinations, not because walking
| was uniquely awful.
|
| In Philadelphia's paper in the early 1900s there was a
| daily column about "pleasure drive" routes and constant
| advertisements appealing to new drivers with destinations
| near the city.
|
| That advantage of being able to "get out of the city" is
| still there, but it's further and further away. For day
| to day life the experience of walking / transit / biking
| in a pre-car US city or a modern US city is somewhat
| comparable in terms of time and enjoyment.
|
| However US cities and suburbs, due to car-centric scale,
| allow more people to live on larger plots of land.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Walking was uniquely awful _in many situations_ as soon
| as the alternative of cars were available. Peoples '
| options were "get a car", "suffer what you now realize is
| awful", or "don't do those things". Unsurprisingly, many
| people chose the first option.
|
| You think they - we - chose wrong. To put it charitably,
| we who disagree with you do not feel the need of your
| opinion on what we should want and should choose.
|
| If you have a better way, show us the better way, and
| make us want it. Don't tell us the advantages we
| experience from having cars don't exist. We live them.
| Don't tell us the parts we enjoy don't exist. We
| experience them. Don't lecture us, entice us with
| something we perceive as more valuable.
| rglullis wrote:
| Cars were better than _horses_ , not walking, and you
| conveniently forgot the "use the streetcar/bus" option.
| Why is that?
|
| I lived in the suburbs from West Mass, I lived in
| downtown Boston, I lived in Manhattan. Guess where I was
| the most miserable?
|
| > Don't tell us the advantages we experience from having
| cars don't exist.
|
| The point is less about "cars vs no cars", but _car-
| centric suburbia development_ vs _higher density urban
| planning_. Do you live in the suburbs? Have you ever
| considered how much your lifestyle is subsidized by those
| who live downtown? Would you be willing to keep your car
| if it meant having to pay for all its externalities and
| extra infrastructure costs?
|
| > entice us with something we perceive as more valuable.
|
| Ask anyone in Amsterdam (which was in the 70s on its way
| to become as car centric as most North American cities)
| if they would like to go back to their ways.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| > Would you be willing to keep your car if it meant
| having to pay for all its externalities and extra
| infrastructure costs?
|
| This is such a weird line of inquiry.
|
| Yes! It is the largest single QoL improvement I have
| after my house.
|
| Almost everyone who can afford it buys a car as soon as
| they can. Yes, even in the UK, even in Europe. It is such
| a huge boon.
|
| If cars were made more expensive I would sooner work
| harder to keep the car than give it up.
|
| I don't know what sort of answer you're expecting? Why
| would I possibly not want a car? The only reason I can
| think of is if it became so expensive that just paying a
| personal driver was cheaper.
| rglullis wrote:
| First, kind of weird of you to associate the idea of
| having no car to losing your penis. I'd joke about it,
| but I learned to avoid making jokes about potential
| psychological issues.
|
| Second, I don't think you are aware of how much of
| cities' financial troubles in North America are related
| to the budget imbalance between suburbs and downtowns.
|
| Third, I'm talking about _all_ the externalities. It 's
| not just gas or street parking. It's also the cost of all
| those parking lots doing nothing productive. It's the
| health cost of having an overweight and sedentary
| population who can't even walk to get groceries. It's the
| cost of increased air pollution that brings hundreds of
| thousands of people to the hospital with respiratory
| issues. It's the cost to a city's economy that wastes a
| sizeable portion of its GDP to car traffic. Car owners
| pay only a tiny fraction of that.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| It's not weird at all. Both vastly improve my quality of
| life. I could get by without either, but I'd rather not.
| I'll edit it out of my reply since you seem averse to
| analogy.
|
| Cars are everywhere. American choices to have huge multi
| lane streets everywhere and parking lots the size of
| cities are optional.
|
| It's a false dichotomy. Across Europe we have cars, even
| in London, a public transport mecca with tiny roads, >50%
| of households have cars.
|
| They are great. Properly super useful. I think that
| people who deny that utility are ideological zealots to
| be honest.
| rglullis wrote:
| No one is denying the utility of cars. The argument is
| against (a) car dependency and (b) the fact that its
| total cost is not fully born by their owners.
|
| Also, you can re-read my original comment. Notice the
| "the point is less about cars vs no cars, but car-centric
| suburbia development vs higher density urban planning"
| part, and please realize that talking about London has
| nothing to do with the original point.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Sure.
|
| I simply gave my 2c on your question.
|
| > Would you be willing to keep your car if it meant
| having to pay for all its externalities and extra
| infrastructure costs?
|
| Yes. I would. And honestly there really isn't much in it.
| In the US, basically everyone drives. In the UK, pretty
| much everyone who pays taxes drives.
|
| At least in my situation, I think that if the costs were
| moved from general taxation to directly falling on car
| owners, I'd end up net positive!
| rglullis wrote:
| Holy shit, talk about reading things out of context.
|
| You, dear sir, have absolutely nothing in common with the
| average North American who lives in the suburbs. The
| question was not directed at you.
|
| If you want to at least try to understand the context
| before jumping to give your opinion and share with us
| your psycho issues, try watching
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVUeqxXwCA0
| breuleux wrote:
| _Your_ car improves _your_ quality of life. Every other
| car reduces your quality of life by a small delta: they
| reduce walkability and bikability, they are deadly, they
| cause traffic and slow down public transit, they reduce
| visibility, they are noisy, smelly and hot, they occupy
| space that is ugly, radiates heat and could be used for
| other purposes, and so on.
|
| Let me put it this way: if I decide to walk to a
| restaurant, I would get there faster if there were no
| cars, and I would enjoy the terrace more if it wasn't for
| their noise or the ugliness of the parking lot. You can
| have your convenience, or I can have mine, but it isn't
| really possible to have both, at least not to the fullest
| extent.
|
| And that's the problem we have to come to grips with: all
| the cars you _don 't_ drive make your life less pleasant.
| What is the balance? If the balance is that global
| quality of life is optimal when 10% of the population of
| a city has cars, who gets to be in that 10%?
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| I don't really agree with your premise because you are
| not incorporating the positive contributions of
| additional users.
|
| Take the metro as an example. Each additional user is
| another person in my personal space, they could be
| smelly, they might mean that I have to stand or scrunch
| me up in a narrow seat. They make it slower for me to
| exit the station when there are queues. They could give
| me airborne diseases like COVID or whatever.
|
| Those are the negatives.
|
| But without that scale the metro isn't viable, you can't
| have a train system that only one person uses, so the
| additional people are useful. They fund it, they campaign
| to have it put in, etc etc.
|
| The same is true of the road network. Yes, cars being
| parked on my road affect my quality of life, but the fact
| that other people drive increases my quality of life
| because we collectively pay for the road network, petrol
| stations, R&D into new car designs, we agree that street
| parking is collectively useful even if that blue car
| across the road is in the way for me personally, etc.
|
| There is a critical point for both systems at which there
| are just too many people. I would argue that most humans
| don't actually enjoy huge population density and are just
| forced into it by economic factors (e.g. all of the best
| jobs in the UK are in London).
| kettlecorn wrote:
| I am making the case that the advantages once enjoyed by
| cars have been substantially reduced, for day to day life
| where most people live, as most people need a car.
|
| The irony of your argument is that very few people who
| want more car-light or car-free cities are "forcing"
| anything on anyone, but the inverse is absolutely not the
| case.
|
| A tremendous amount of taxes are allocated only for
| highways or car-centric revenue. Federal and state
| politics prevents cities from putting that money
| elsewhere. Highways were plowed through US cities and are
| maintained there over the objection of city residents.
| States intervene to prevent cities from running bus
| priority lanes. Cars purchases are subsidized where bikes
| and transit passes are not. Federal road standards, which
| are applied in cities, are designed for cars and not
| pedestrians / bikes.
|
| A prominent example is NYC being forced by NY State to
| cancel congestion pricing.
|
| The list of ways car-centric decision making is forced on
| dense cities is very long. Very few people are trying to
| "ban cars" but are instead trying to let cities too dense
| for cars guide their fate.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The biggest advantage for cars is that they lack any
| fixed schedule, route, or stops.
| mlavrent wrote:
| Other common modes of transport that lack fixed schedule,
| route, or stops: - biking - micromobility (scooter-share,
| etc.) - walking - dial-a-ride transit options
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| But they have other cons as well. You need to have good
| bike lane infrastructure or to be confident taking the
| entire lane, whereas most everything is already created
| around the car or increasingly being created around the
| car (in the case of the developing world beginning its
| nascent highway networks). You have to have fair weather
| or be able to pack around gear like rainpants wherever
| you are going. You probably make use of the cargo
| capacity of your car once a week when you buy groceries
| and goods from stores that tend to size their products
| around that sort of interval of a trip. I ride my bike
| plenty but honestly when I go to the grocery store three
| blocks a way I am usually taking the car, because its
| easier when I realize oh crap I need milk, I need a
| gallon of vinegar, I need paper towels, I need toilet
| paper, I need olive oil, and that alone will overload the
| panniers and be nigh impossible to get on the bike,
| especially the paper products and their awkward bulk. I
| haven't used my panniers for groceries personally since I
| broke three eggs in a carton with them once. I either
| walk and grab a small handful of things or just take the
| car most times.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > In 1919, the US Army ran a truck convoy from Washington
| DC to San Francisco. It took them 56 (!) travel days,
| driving 10 1/4 hours per day.
|
| They used the Lincoln Highway, which wasn't fully paved
| until the 1930s. In 1919, it was a (bad) dirt road except
| in cities. In 1919 there was an awful lot of space
| between cities, especially once you got west of Chicago
| (that not too far from the truth today, except you might
| say Omaha instead of Chicago). You can't really compare
| the convoy experience to walking-vs-driving in cities :)
| ndileas wrote:
| On first read, I was wondering why on earth did they not
| use a train? I looked it up and found this from a primary
| source:
|
| > The principal objectives of the expedition were to
| servicetest the special-purpose vehicles developed for
| use in the first World War, not all gf which were
| available in time for SSuch USSe; and to determine by
| actual experience the possibility and the problems
| involved in moving an army across the continent, assuming
| that railroad facilities, bridges, tunnels, etc. had been
| damaged or destroyed by agents of an Asiatic enemy.
|
| which makes a lot of sense. great reading: https://www.ei
| senhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/resear...
| ajb wrote:
| I always found it amusing how, in Bertha Benz's first trip
| in the prototype car, she had to go to a pharmacy for
| petrol.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Many early cars were large terrifying beasts. Huge wheels,
| engines and very noisy. Extremely expensive too. I totally
| understand with mud roads and low power densities of the
| time that is a logical design.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mL4jA59ibU
| acchow wrote:
| The implication is that car ownership rose slowly from 0%
| to 80% despite the experience being terrible.
|
| How can this be true?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I don't think your logic works. Cars are 10x longer, but (for
| example) my house is not 10x longer in all 3 dimensions.
|
| The streets in downtown Salt Lake City were famously designed
| to be able to turn a horse-drawn wagon around. That width
| turned out to be pretty good for cars when they came - no
| additional scaling needed.
| kettlecorn wrote:
| Salt Lake City has a huge volume of parking lots, highways,
| and many roads.
|
| While individual streets may not have scaled up there were
| other parts of the built environment that did to
| accommodate cars.
| pandaman wrote:
| Before the very first car has been made people in the West
| and Asia had been using horse-drawn carriages for centuries
| and built cities to accommodate those. If your logic is sound
| then adoption of cars has shrunk the cities as a horse-drawn
| carriage had been longer than a motor-driven car.
| kettlecorn wrote:
| Horse-drawn carriages were typically used for moving goods
| or for shared transit, not for most individuals in single
| horse drawn carriages going to all sorts of day-to-day
| trips.
|
| The point is that the default mode of transportation
| requires vastly more space than it used to.
| pandaman wrote:
| How does it matter how they were used? It's not like they
| shrunk when used for "noble" causes from your PoV and
| required narrower roads (and from my reading of classics,
| horse-drawn carriages were used by city dwellers for
| individual transportation just like cars nowadays).
| kettlecorn wrote:
| It matters because there are far fewer delivery of goods
| than people getting around for day to day trips.
|
| If you look at the average amount of space taken up by a
| person traveling around if they walk, or take transit,
| for most trips then they'll on average take significantly
| less space than using a car.
| pandaman wrote:
| And a car takes significantly less space than a carriage
| with a horse so I don't see what are you trying to say
| here. You compared length of a car to the length of a
| foot and made far reaching conclusions but when offered
| to compare a horse carriage with a car and make the same
| conclusions you seem to compare cars and feet again.
| kettlecorn wrote:
| My point is about the _average space_ taken up on a trip.
|
| In the far past some trips were taken via horse +
| carriage but tons more were taken via walking and
| transit. Our built world has scaled to account for that
| increase in space used on trips.
| pandaman wrote:
| I am sorry, you are still making little sense. The space
| taken by a car is the same no matter how many people
| walk, crawl or stay at home and don't go anywhere. It's
| more than a man but less than a horse carriage. And since
| you still refuse to compare the space taken by the horse
| carriage to the space take by a car, I figure you
| understand now that your logic is not sound, which is
| good enough result of this thread.
| kettlecorn wrote:
| A horse carriage takes up similar space to a car, yes.
|
| But if 80% of day-to-day trips are walked and 20% are
| horse-carriages that's much more efficient in terms of
| space than a world where 80% of trips are via car and 20%
| are walked.
|
| That additional space manifests in more wider roads to
| reduce bottlenecks and more large parking lots to store
| cars at different destinations.
|
| I've phrased this multiple different ways. The concept
| isn't complex: a car (or horse carriage!) is much bigger
| than a person walking so if we design a world that
| encourages more travel via car (or horse carriage!) that
| world will be less spatially efficient.
|
| But, as I've pointed out repeatedly, in the past far more
| people walked to take trips than take a horse carriage.
| pandaman wrote:
| > that's much more efficient in terms of space than a
| world where 80% of trips are via car and 20% are walked.
|
| I feel like you are trying to say that it will require
| less space? Like roads can be made narrower or shorter?
| Why though? The road width is defined by the vehicle size
| and the number of lanes, and you don't want to cut the
| number of lanes below 1 but realistically you want 2 so a
| broken vehicle won't block traffic for everyone. And
| there are already not many 3 lanes in each direction
| roads so you are not saving much. Also most 3+ lanes
| roads I see are arterials and interstates, people driving
| those routes usually cannot walk them physically as they
| are tens if not hundreds of miles.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| In the low traffic volume world of carriages, one lane in
| each direction is ample or even excessive for most roads.
| Many pre-car roads aren't wide enough to even accommodate
| one carriage in each direction at the same time.
| pandaman wrote:
| The pre-car Europe and the US were not low traffic. E.g.
| the main street (Nevsky Avenue) in St. Petersburg, Russia
| is 200 feet wide since 1760s (and it was expanded from
| the original 65 feet because that was not enough for
| traffic).
| kettlecorn wrote:
| I'm talking about parking lots and roads.
|
| If every destination needs parking for nearly its peak
| capacity then that creates substantial sprawl.
|
| Similarly if an area gets a high volume of peak car
| traffic then over time it will tend to get more arterials
| and interstates connected to it.
|
| As sprawl and road networks increase it becomes more
| difficult to get around without a car, incentivizing more
| cars, which requires more large parking lots / roads.
| pandaman wrote:
| I don't know where you live but in every city in the US I
| had been there are minimum lot sizes and setbacks to
| prevent fires and flooding and those leave plenty of room
| for parking so I don't see how walking could change that
| (it's not like fire propagation and water absorption
| cares about your mode of transportation).
| lmm wrote:
| Carriages were extremely rare and cities were not built to
| accommodate them until the rise of the coach in the 16th
| century.
|
| Carriages are not much longer than cars, and they're
| significantly narrower and articulated in the middle. The
| simplistic model of "length" breaks down when you want to
| compare two things of similar size, but it's good enough
| when we're comparing two things where one is 10x the size
| of the other.
|
| If you visit old cities in Europe and the Middle East
| you'll definitely see a difference in size and layout
| between cities that were built for horses (not even
| necessarily for carriages, just pack-horses) and cities
| that weren't. And then you'll see another big shift if you
| go to e.g. South Africa where all the cities were built in
| the post-coach era.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| This isn't really true outside of some very tarmaccy American
| cities.
|
| I live in London, UK. I can use my car to get to places, it
| just costs more, through congestion charges, parking, and
| time.
|
| The car hugely, hugely increases my exploration radius vs.
| walking and public transport.
|
| There is also a value in things being bigger. I remember
| going to a random grungy arcade bar in LA that had fifty
| pinball machines. We don't have the space for that, at least,
| not unless it's an Experience(tm) with a corporate backer .
| kettlecorn wrote:
| Those very "tarmaccy" US cities are what you get when you
| "stretch" cities to accommodate the scale of cars.
|
| Other US cities are gradually moving towards that design by
| adding incrementally more parking and highways, but it's a
| slow process.
|
| I have no opposition to cars, but designing cities where
| nearly all trips require a car is an extreme that most
| people in the US live in. If you own a car you use here and
| there that's absolutely fine, but if there's nowhere for
| someone to live where they can comfortably get by without a
| car that's a bad place to be.
|
| And as I argued in my initial point when _everyone_ needs
| to drive the congestion and distance between things
| substantially reduces the advantage of driving in the first
| place.
| ajuc wrote:
| Detached houses and tenament houses also space things out
| compared to commie blocks which is why I have unpopular
| opionion that low-height (+- 4-story) commieblock
| neighbourhoods designed before cars were widespread are the
| best form of walkable cities.
|
| When they are well designed and well-maintained they allow for
| more green spaces than any alternative AND everything is closer
| together AND they aren't dehumanising like the 10+ story
| commieblock districts. All that without causing "concrete
| canyons" like medieval parts of cities or UK-style rows of
| detached houses with token lawns.
|
| I mean sth like this - from before commie blocks were adapted
| to cars: https://maps.app.goo.gl/uGFKGntsHU85qwpu8
| underlipton wrote:
| Even in suburbs, it does seem that the potential of in-fill
| development and mixed-use repurposing is undervalued. For
| example, I've lived in many low-rise apartment complexes; they
| always had one or two ground-floor units that were unpopular
| and frequently vacant because of their proximity to a road or
| something, and it never made any sense to me that they couldn't
| be converted into a small commercial space for the
| neighborhood. Something like a small cafe or corner store. With
| a higher commercial rent, residential rents in the area could
| be lower, and car trips to similar spaces would be reduced.
|
| These complexes also were always roughly 50% parking by land-
| area. Converting some amount of it to new units would be so
| helpful. Or even something as simple as converting a one or two
| reserved parking spaces to one of these (https://i.pinimg.com/7
| 36x/56/42/1b/56421b53bcffe6b0c92369c44...) so that cyclists
| wouldn't have to lug their bicycles up 2 or 3 flights of stairs
| after every ride.
|
| The "logic" of anti-pedestrian thinking is just a desire not to
| see anything at all change.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| exactly, especially in the suburbs. My closest places to talk
| to
|
| - ~half a mile to a local taco stand. Could be closer but
| railroads are in the way and they run on the hour (and a big
| ditch also discourages that). kinda bad, but still on the verge
| of "walkable".
|
| - now, the other direction about a mile away is a wal mart.
| But, half a mile of this walk is a vertical 200 foot climb.
| You'll be exhausted at worst and sweaty at best before you even
| get halfway there. But if you make the walk you got a plaza of
| whatever you need.
|
| - And that's really all the "walkable" areas. The next closest
| plaza is 3 miles from the taco shack, a bit outside of
| "walkable" if you just need to grab some tools from Home Depot
| or wait for an order at In n Out (inside isn't much better than
| the drive-through). Buses do run here, but only every hour (and
| is next to the taco shack. so half a mile walk)
|
| Those in EU places can find it hard to understand. But there's
| just so much dang land between everything if you're not
| downtown.
|
| >I don't think we should be trying to get away from cars
| altogether by any means, but I think we should seriously
| consider banning them almost entirely from city centres.
|
| If we had a better bus schedule, I wouldn't mind that. even if
| we just have to drive to a bus stop, it could be the start of
| this walkable city concept in downtown areas. But there's a lot
| of powers opposing that.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| It honestly isn't _that_ different in the UK.
|
| Outskirts of a smaller city, you are 0.5-1 mile from
| everything. A corner shop, a takeaway, anything.
|
| Some Americans think that everywhere is like central London
| or Berlin or whatever. Most of it is like an American suburb
| but with poorer condition smaller houses.
|
| About the only difference is that if you are poor and in a
| suburb you can probably take a slow bus that is infrequent.
| But no-one actually wants to do that if they can afford
| otherwise.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I sure hope y'all don't have to climb 200 ft hills in those
| areas. If it wasn't for that I'd say it's a walkable enough
| area for my needs.
|
| I understand that not everything will be packed in all of
| EU, but better public transportation makes up for that. The
| other annoying aspect of non-urban us cities tends to be
| geography. It's very hilly in the western US with little
| fertile land, and blazing hot and humid and the deep south.
| We'd absolutely need better bussing to overcome that.
| mrcartmeneses wrote:
| It's worth remembering that a lot of car centric design has
| political roots. For example many of Berlin's wide roads were
| built so that Nazi tanks could traverse them. Likewise Paris's
| wide streets were built so that cavalry army's could pass. And
| a big part of America's single family home suburb design (which
| necessitates cars) is born out of a desire keeping white and
| black people separate (as well as regulatory capture by the
| auto industry).
|
| My favourite places in the world tend to be much older and
| basically built at random by the people who lived there, like
| London's Soho and Clerkenwell or Barcelona's old town.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Very subjective question I know, but how significant do you
| think racist intentions are compared to the many other
| factors? I wasn't under the impression it was one of the top
| two factors that pushed us towards a car centered built
| environment.
| presentation wrote:
| I always think when walking around the USA that one could
| literally insert a narrow block into the middle of even a
| 2-lane-each-way road and end up with similar spacing as a
| typical Tokyo neighborhood. Imagine how much density that would
| create.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| When I traveled for the first time to the US ca. 1997 (from
| France) I decided to go for a walk.
|
| A police car stopped to ask me what was going on. They were
| surprised I went for a walk (despite the fact that there was a
| sidewalk, although empty).
|
| It was a semi industrial (company buildings), semi hotel, semi
| mall, semi houses kind of place.
|
| And, suddenly, the pavement stopped without any reason.
| honkycat wrote:
| We can talk about this forever, but it's a waste of time. Nobody
| is listening and nobody is making any real effort to combat car
| culture. And the right wing, always eager to lap up whatever slop
| corporate american serves them, has chosen this as a culture war
| issue. "15 minute cities... but where will I park muh truck??"
|
| The dumb-fucks with their emotional support trucks have won.
| We've paved over the whole fucking country and all of the road
| construction and automobile businesses are laughing their way to
| the bank.
|
| Every time we try to fix something, the chuds start crying about
| "but muh traffic" and it gets canned. They don't want to actually
| pay their own fucking way, through tolls or gas taxes or taxes on
| their asinine vehicles. They want to take our money and use it on
| roads.
|
| It's dead. The middle class is dead. The country is dead.
| Progress is dead. Try to enjoy yourself for the next 30 years
| before the Great American Desert reaches Chicago.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| People need to spend less time crying about it, and more time
| making what they want to happen, happen. I've said for a long
| time that Millenials and genz should give the middle finger to
| previous generations and refuse to buy their realestate for the
| going rate. Instead we need to build communities and cities in
| the middle of nowhere that embody our values (and economics).
| Or we can wait another 30 or so years for them to die and leave
| it to the next generation(s)
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| > I've said for a long time that Millenials and genz should
| give the middle finger to previous generations and refuse to
| buy their realestate
|
| Unfortunately there aren't generational meetings where your
| plan can be voted on. Also, plenty of millennials and Gen z
| own property and would gladly buy more once prices drop from
| you refusing to buy.
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| Well when you are hostile towards the other side telling them
| how what they like needs to be "fixed" then what do you expect?
| anovikov wrote:
| I think it's not happening because it's a chicken and egg
| problem. To have where to realistically walk, to have some stuff
| you want reachable on foot, you need to have a high population
| density. When everyone drives, people want, and get, lower
| population density because it gives them more personal space,
| lowers crime, makes kids safer, and cost of living lower. Sure it
| destroys the sense of community and makes everyone obese, but
| that comes slowly and so it's not what people consciously
| prioritise. Thus building good pedestrian infra in a low-density
| community built for driving won't give much benefit: most places
| people need to go to will be too far for walking anyway. And
| pushing people to higher density will mean pushing them to
| ghettos because everyone who can afford, lives in those car-
| centric, low-density, safer places.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| First steps would be ditching zoning, parking minimums and
| maybe favourable tax for businesses set at first floors of
| multistory buildings. This way you give space for development
| and gradually density will improve
| anovikov wrote:
| But you also need to find people willing to live like that vs
| suburbs where they feel safer and have larger plots of land.
|
| In Europe they had no choice basically.
| stonogo wrote:
| People are willing to live like that everywhere. Even in
| tiny towns with one main street, that main street will have
| mixed-use commercial under residential.
|
| Suburbs with large plots are the most profitable possible
| mode for a land developer -- construction costs are cheap,
| all they have to worry about is drainage. Suburbs will
| never go away; they happen by default. That's why the
| parent comment mentioned tax benefits for mixed-use
| development.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| You got it wrong, suburbs are the most unprofitable for
| both the city and land developer. I mean no, for land
| developer it's still profitable but the profit from
| building a high mixed use building would be much greater.
| Tax benefits would apply to businesses that are
| subletting the areas from already built houses to just
| jumpstart it
| stonogo wrote:
| Suburbs are expensive as hell for cities to govern.
| Population density is low, there's no commercial taxation
| opportunities, utilities and services have to cover more
| ground, and so forth. Developers love suburbs because
| they have a low startup cost: you buy a few acres of
| land, throw a few thousand bucks to a civil engineering
| PE to plat it, and start selling to builders. Mixed-use
| development requires ages of collaboration with city
| planners, permit denial rates are much higher, and then
| once you can break ground you have to invest hundreds of
| thousands or millions of dollars and hope you make it
| back with rent.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Mixed-use development requires ages of collaboration with
| city planners, permit denial rates are much higher, and
| then once you can break ground you have to invest
| hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and hope you
| make it back with rent.- didn't know it's this way in us.
| Here in EU developers are happy to build as high as
| possible with first floor reserved for businesses to a
| point where cities are thinking auch a high density may
| affect negatively the life of the other ppl since the
| infra/schools nr etc aren't designed for it. And ppl are
| buying this stuff like hot pancakes
| anovikov wrote:
| Then why is the amount of new housing built in EU so low,
| compared to US?
| Moldoteck wrote:
| That's not zoning. It's bureaucracy and corruption.
| Basically politicians are bribed to give authorisations
| to specific companies. On the other hand, in Germany for
| example they just give fewer authorisations to protect
| the revenues from their investments in pension system.
| The other reason is just lost knowledge and huge effort
| needed to design new areas. New housing needs proper
| infra like schools, public transport and ao on, all of
| which should be planned, takes time and costs money. Some
| cities learned to deal with it, others didn't
| Moldoteck wrote:
| You got it wrong. In us, because of zoning and parking mins
| density got wrecked and housing supply small and prices
| increased a lot and many ppl moved to suburbs. In us ppl
| had no choice because the law was designed in this way.
| Make no mistake, a lot of ppl want to live closer to the
| city if the housing supply/zoning would allow it and if
| prices will drop due to higher supply, basic market rules
|
| In (most of) EU on the other hand zoning is much more
| relaxed and you can live either in a big dense city or a
| village, it's up to you
|
| Also, safety is usually conditioned by public/social
| monitoring which happens in well developed areas (neighbors
| watching, ppl hanging out and as result ppl tend to commit
| less crimes since they are watched). If it doesn't exist,
| that area is designed poorly.
| DoubleDerper wrote:
| Fire and EMS demands have more impact on our built environment
| than I see in these comments.
|
| Some of this is direct from land use regulations. Some of this is
| from political influence of Fire depts.
|
| It's only recently that people are waking up to how the
| regulatory requirements of staircase design in multi-family
| buildings for the ostensible purpose of evacuation impact the
| look and feel of US cities.
|
| Same for street widths. You will rarely find support from fire
| depts. for compact and connected streets.
| rangestransform wrote:
| AFAIK for US cities, street and intersection size are
| restricted by the turning circle of American fire trucks, and
| large cities can't buy European/Asian firetrucks due to buy
| america
|
| I will always take any opportunity to shit on buy america and
| how it hamstrings infrastructure projects for the sake of
| running a jobs program for flyover towns
| nyc111 wrote:
| Does this happen a lot? This was on front page one year ago today
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36920622
| weweweoo wrote:
| City centres should be built so that people naturally prefer
| walking/cycling/public transport over driving there. That's how
| many European cities are, and it works just fine. It doesn't mean
| anyone has to give up their car, instead people can learn to use
| it only where it makes sense.
|
| I would never give up my car, but I use it only for stuff where
| walking is not practical (visiting countryside, buying lots of
| groceries from a big market located in less dense area). Suburbs
| that have apartments with enough parking slots AND adequate
| public transport / cycling roads to city centre work perfectly
| for me.
| oooyay wrote:
| Portland is designed in this way. Unforunately, busses,
| cycling, walking, and trains are also at competition with each
| other in such a way that they can encourage car travel. Safety
| of all of those is also another relevant subject.
| blobbers wrote:
| Does self driving cars affect how we might think of arteries and
| driving? I haven't seen a downtown area that only allows self
| drive yet. Could be narrower etc.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Y'all walk all you want it's a free country. And stop interfering
| with my driving.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Instead of trying to jam squishy humans along side aluminum
| vehicles, why not build elevated walkways above traffic?
|
| In a city, the space between buildings can be auctioned, and the
| owner of that space is responsible for cleaning and policing a
| section of elevated plaza. The second story of each building can
| then be used as a storefront and events can be held in between
| buildings.
|
| If even a few blocks in the center of a city can be walkable
| above the traffic, I think it could create a popular tourist hub
| where people can explore the city, see events and spend money.
|
| Who foots the bill for construction, maintenance, and inspections
| which ought to be thorough and frequent, that's another question
| I hope somebody who knows politics can answer.
| adamwong246 wrote:
| Everything about our world is designed for us to spend money.
| Walkers don't buy cars. People on bikes don't buy gas. Why would
| the overlords ever promote such anti-capitalism? That's not in
| their interest. More to that point, dignity is for the rich.
| Comfort is for the already comfortable. So, shut up, buy the
| landcruiser on credit and don't you dare consider otherwise.
| Optimal_Persona wrote:
| As an SF Bay Area resident who walks/BARTs as much as possible,
| IME bicyclists are at least as big a threat to my safety as
| motorists, who at least have a license and insurance on the line
| if they screw up. I can't tell you how many times I've been hit
| or very nearly hit by entitled cyclists who don't think that
| traffic laws or common courtesy apply to them. Even worse since
| motorized bikes/scooters hit the streets...er, sidewalks in
| recent years.
| kredd wrote:
| One thing I really don't get, is what do people under the age of
| 16 (can't drive yet) and over the age of 75 (get a bit too old to
| drive) do when they wanna just hang out? Ok, well, I know what
| they do, but how are people ok with being trapped within a small
| local zone and be depended on others? I grew up in a walkable
| city, would take the walk, bus, or subway home since I was 10,
| met up with my friends at a mall or downtown to just hang out.
|
| Now I live in a very walkable neighbourhood in Vancouver, and
| constantly see older people going throughout their days. And I
| would want the same for myself when I reach their age, rather
| than live in a suburban zone with no ability to see life outside
| of my 500m radius.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Have you ever had a friend return from a vacation and gush
| about how great it was to walk in the place they'd visited?_
|
| In my adult life I have always lived in dense urban centers
| (precisely because I like to walk for coffee, quart of milk,
| etc., and have a choice of restaurants)
|
| When I return from travel after renting a car, I gush about how
| cool it was that I got to shop at a mall and stop at two other
| strip malls on my way home and load the car up with bags of
| supplies I never could have carried :)
|
| if people on holiday bought mayo and all they need to go with it
| at Costco, they might have a different memory of their walking
| tour. grass. greener.
| kazinator wrote:
| If you want a shift to walking, you need to ensure that
|
| - everyone lives close to their ideal, well-paid job.
|
| - everyone lives close to an excellent school for their kids.
|
| - everyone lives close to inexpensive, well-stocked organic
| produce store.
|
| - everyone lives close to acres of green park space.
|
| - everyone lives close to amenities for all imaginable interests.
|
| Otherwise, some people are just gonna hop in their cars and
| collect their pieces of the puzzle from here and there.
| npteljes wrote:
| This is kind of on the right track, but not really. The right
| part is that people really do respond to incentives. In fact,
| this is what they are doing with cars too. Cars often seem like
| an obvious choice, but that's because the environment is set up
| in a way that cars make the most sense. In South-East Asia, for
| example, the incentives are such that small motorbikes make a
| lot of sense. They are a cheap and versatile option, and
| navigate the chaotic traffic well.
|
| So yes, if we want a shift, we need to reorganize the
| environment. And the traffic options will follow. Returning to
| the article, this would mean to bring back walking, biking and
| mass transit as priority options. Because it's clear from the
| infrastructure design that everything else besides cars are an
| afterthought.
| kazinator wrote:
| The environment is set up the way it is because not only of
| the culture, not because of the politics but also mega
| corporations.
|
| People will agree to reorganizing the environment only if
| they are not the ones you have to do anything or are
| negatively impacted in any way.
|
| Also, massive reorganization of the living environment is
| really only an option for a totalitarian communist
| government, which decides where people going to live and
| everything else and they just have to take it.
|
| Ghost communities in China showed that even that doesn't
| always work.
| npteljes wrote:
| Yes, I see how this all reinforces itself. Maybe this is
| why initiatives like Strong Towns begin the change with
| people's hearts. "If there's a will, there's a way", so
| they say, so if they manage to create enough "will", there
| ought to be ways as well.
| kderbyma wrote:
| Garden Cities.... concept is about 100 years old, maybe stop
| electing people who haven't even walked their constituency....
| ireland352 wrote:
| I'm in Vegas. I see bike lanes. I see transit lanes. I see
| sidewalks.
|
| I also see six lane roads through residential neighbourhoods.
|
| As much as transportation experts talk about dignity, EDI,
| engineering safe environments, if we build it they will come. I
| think what's missing is land use planning.
|
| We can provide the safest space, build the best sidewalks, bike
| lanes, or whatever, but if it faster to drive, and it's more
| comfortable. That's exactly what people are going to do.
|
| I use to be naive, judging people, for not cycling or walking
| more. Heck I use to bike through industrial parks against
| transport trucks, rain, wind, and snow thinking I was doing the
| world good. And I'm doing my part to show people this way of
| moving around is possible. You know what I missed, I was time
| rich during that period in my life. Those others weren't and
| they want to be comfortable.
|
| If you want people to walk, bike, or not take a car, make the
| travel time on parity with taking the car, and you'll probably
| get a better result. Dignity - EDI, ugh.
| rangestransform wrote:
| There's no place I want door-to-door air conditioning more
| than Las Vegas in the summer
| mjevans wrote:
| Disney World is the example that comes to mind as an environment
| where pedestrian movement is maximized. When it works it's still
| better than driving, but it's extremely tiring to walk _all day_
| (at least if you're not used to it, like I'm not).
|
| Lets handwave that concern away though; if everyone walked around
| that much normally it wouldn't be an issue right?
|
| There are still roads, but they're mostly divided from pedestrian
| movement ways. Mass transit systems connect between the
| pedestrian optimized blocks. In at least that respect I think
| Disney World DID become the 'city of the future' example. That's
| the logical direction to move things.
|
| Oh can we also ban all the noisy cars to underground passages
| except between 10am and 10pm and emergency use?
| neilv wrote:
| Most of the things the article mentions would be lovely, but I'm
| more concerned with much more basic aspects of walking.
|
| For example, a neighborhood in which most sidewalks are simply
| impassable for a wheelchair, even though it gets a high
| "walkability" score for Realtors to claim.
|
| (And that tree cover "dignity" the article mentions? Someone
| tries to do that by taking a sidewalk just wide enough for two
| wheelchairs to pass each other, and puts in a tree well that
| won't even let one wheelchair scrape by. And often the roots
| eventually tip up the sidewalk into a tripping hazard. And
| extremely frequent parking-related sign posts along that stretch
| as additional obstacles. With overgrown landscaping on the other
| side, jutting into the sidewalk already too narrow. Occasionally
| with surprise poison ivy/oak, scraping across your hand, arm,
| leg, or face. And on the bigger streets, some street work gets
| done, and there's briefly enough space, then, bam, bike-sharing
| station, with garish advertising. Then winter comes, and if you
| walk heavily, even with traction aids and diligence, eventually
| you're going to get injured by a hazard that someone else managed
| to create beyond normal snow and ice.)
|
| Suggestions:
|
| 1. Make the sidewalks passable. Including by wheelchairs.
|
| 2. Make traffic signals greatly increase the priority given to
| pedestrians. (Even consider a near-immediate Walk signal from
| button/sensor, with half-minute cooldown so cars can't be
| entirely DoS'd. If that will make traffic worse, then let traffic
| be worse.)
|
| 3. Eliminate dangerous noise pollution. (Like the "loud pipes
| save lives" modified motorcycles, one of which surprise blasted
| my eardrum a couple hours ago. Or a subset of the ambulance
| sirens, some of which I'm pretty sure are well into hearing
| damage decibel territory for people on the sidewalk, when the
| siren tries a little too hard to be heard by people sealed into
| cars and blasting music from their infotainment systems half a
| block away.)
|
| 4. Improve snow/ice management. (Don't plow streets up onto the
| sidewalk. If punting to property owners, actually enforce that.
| Also educate and enforce about not actively making surprise ice
| slicks on the sidewalk. Maybe, a bit like the city plows streets,
| also have city units go clear the numerous sidewalk stretches
| that property owners neglected, protecting pedestrians from
| crippling injury, and then later figure out the delicate politics
| of whether to fine/bill property owners.)
|
| 5. And only then -- after those basics of being able to move
| around, and not be maimed casually -- think about dignity like
| pleasing views, and sidewalk feng shui.
| chiggsy wrote:
| I live in Vancouver, and I find this discussion utterly
| fascinating. Thank you all for sharing.
| nickfromseattle wrote:
| I moved to Barcelona and living in a walkable city is such a life
| upgrade. My whole life is within the distance of a walk. The
| grocery store, gym, doctor, friends, restaurants, beach, movie
| theatre, shopping, everything. I can walk across the entire city
| in about an hour.
|
| Barcelona takes it a step further than just being high density
| with wide pedestrian streets lined with trees and outdoor seating
| at the expense of roads used for cars/trucks. At the end of every
| block on a rambla is a roundabout where people sit and hang out,
| with more trees. It really feels like cars are 2nd class citizens
| here.
|
| The mental tax of having to get into a car, navigate bad traffic
| and other drivers, finding parking, etc is hugely underrated.
| When I describe the above to people, it's easy to brush off as
| "not that big of a deal", but it is a big deal on general mood
| and wellbeing compared to what it could be if you remove those
| 'micro' stresses from your life.
|
| And finally, if you need to get somewhere quick, there are taxis
| everywhere, and the underground metro is pretty decent.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I randomly moved from Houston to Guadalajara in my 20s and
| until then I didn't realize that all of my disillusion with
| life was because I had to drive everywhere and could walk
| nowhere.
|
| It changed my life to realize how much better life is when you
| can accomplish everything within walking distance. It impacts
| absolutely everything.
|
| You even lose weight when you can walk to the store to buy a
| can of beans and one avocado for lunch instead of having to
| drive to the grocer once a week and store tens of thousands of
| calories in your house at all times for you to graze on.
|
| It also impacted my social life because I would run into
| friends while walking around. Or I'd see friends in a bar while
| walking home and go join them.
|
| I refuse to settle down somewhere where I can't walk to live.
| Unfortunately this rules out almost all of the US.
| travisporter wrote:
| Meanwhile in Nashville where they literally don't have sidewalks,
| this is an actual bus stop:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/yRoV8TzuKHVHjaMj9?g_st=ic
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > The layers are compliance, safety, and dignity.
|
| I just went back for a week to the city in which I was born (in
| the EU) and I was shocked to see that, in many neighborhoods,
| there was nobody walking on the streets anymore. The reason is
| not that they're taking the car more: the reason is safety.
|
| But not safety as in _" I fear for my life due to the risk of a
| car hitting me"_ (btw speed has been lowered to 30 km/h aka 18
| mph in the city). No. Safety as in: _" My city has become a
| hellhole and I feel I risk getting robbed or raped if I get out
| at night"_.
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