If walkable cities are so great, why did we ever invent cars?
We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)
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Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)
#32This is one of those scaling vs. switching cost problems. If you have a small town, then cars are a better option than transit. In a large metropolis, transit is better. The problem is that as a city scales up, each individual step results in continually adding infrastructure for cars without ever making the active decision to switch, and redesign the entire city. When a small town grows into a medium, it makes sense…
My wife is from a small town in Italy. It doesn't have transit, but it's quite possible to get around it on foot or by bike, because it's compact.
Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> someone with bad osteoporosis, and who doesn't have a $10K+ wheelchair and a $75K minivan to carry it, won't really gain much by theoretical ADA sidewalks if the distance is too far One solution to this is this person should move closer.
Closer to what if doctors, shopping and other places are spread over miles?
> what if doctors, shopping and other places are spread over miles?
The article imagines "building cities for people, not for cars." That implies re-imagining the suburban model of doctors, shops, et cetera being spread across miles. My Manhattan city block, for example, features an allergist, several restaurants, a grocery store, a book store, a daycare, a coffee shop and--in all likelihood--half a dozen other things I have yet to notice.
Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)
#34I agree, but "people" should mean all people, not just the able bodied. Cities keep on inexplicably designing these cool pedestrian only areas for the able bodied and young. There are people who can only travel limited distances, so if you set the beach front back half a mile, you've now cut it off from many older and disabled people. What I am saying is: For the physically young and able, vehicle-less areas as great…
On the other hand, not depending on cars helps a lot of disabled people. Busses and subways are generally made taking into account wheelchair use, plus visually impaired people can use transit systems where the stops are called out.
Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)
#35Rather than trying to force some particular vision of "the good life" on people, what if we tried to price transportation and other things appropriately? For example, get rid of the gas tax. Toll all state and federally funded roads. Scale the toll according to the amount of wear and tear the vehicle causes for the road. Price something in to account for emissions. Make sure the tolls are high enough to pay for the r…
If we actually billed those that actually caused road damage appropriately, then no it would not cost $5 to drive 30min to work. Semis are incredibly damaging to roads, they cause 1,400x more wear than cars! [1] — The very same semis city dwellers and anybody who buys anything relies on.
Cars currently subsidize other, much more damaging vehicles' road damage, seeing as they're not paying 1,400x more in fuel tax.
Anyway, the problem isn't transportation, it is the absurd zoning laws throughout the U.S. that force people to rely on personal cars to go anywhere.
Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)
#36This is one of those scaling vs. switching cost problems. If you have a small town, then cars are a better option than transit. In a large metropolis, transit is better. The problem is that as a city scales up, each individual step results in continually adding infrastructure for cars without ever making the active decision to switch, and redesign the entire city. When a small town grows into a medium, it makes sense…
My wife is from a small town in Italy. It doesn't have transit, but it's quite possible to get around it on foot or by bike, because it's compact.
I'd bet anything that your wife's small town in Italy was mostly settled and developed before cars, in a time when being able to get around town by foot (or by horse, at the fastest) was important.
Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)
#37This is one of those scaling vs. switching cost problems. If you have a small town, then cars are a better option than transit. In a large metropolis, transit is better. The problem is that as a city scales up, each individual step results in continually adding infrastructure for cars without ever making the active decision to switch, and redesign the entire city. When a small town grows into a medium, it makes sense…
This generally happens if the city grows too fast to get enough time to experiment with transit, reorganize and densify neighborhoods entirely over centuries like Paris or London. However if the city grows fast enough like some Chinese cities, it's much more economical to directly invest in mass transit, taller buildinngs, walkable areas...etc.
Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)
#38For anyone who wants to see a pragmatic way to build cities and communities, I'd highly recommend Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language. https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Language-Buildings-Constructi...
Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)
#39This is one of those scaling vs. switching cost problems. If you have a small town, then cars are a better option than transit. In a large metropolis, transit is better. The problem is that as a city scales up, each individual step results in continually adding infrastructure for cars without ever making the active decision to switch, and redesign the entire city. When a small town grows into a medium, it makes sense…
My wife is from a small town in Italy. It doesn't have transit, but it's quite possible to get around it on foot or by bike, because it's compact.
I think your point gets missed by many people.
Europeans tend to have cities that have been around much longer than cars have, and you can see it in the design - they were built back when horses were the fastest mode of transportation.
Many small American towns were built after the introduction of the automobile (or at least significant chucks of the towns were).
Trying to undo history, or even taking a new mode of design is extraordinarily difficult. The discussion threads on this post seems to highlight that difficulty, while many miss that root cause.
Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)
#40This is one of those scaling vs. switching cost problems. If you have a small town, then cars are a better option than transit. In a large metropolis, transit is better. The problem is that as a city scales up, each individual step results in continually adding infrastructure for cars without ever making the active decision to switch, and redesign the entire city. When a small town grows into a medium, it makes sense…
Small towns can be built with walkability in mind. In fact towns built before automobiles were invented were built this way: dense, narrow streets with doors opening onto the streets, multi-use buildings, blocks with mixed commerce/residential use. This is a sustainable and resilient way to build communities. Building around cars is not.