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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)

#201

Post by zumu »

njarboe wrote: post #74
Zaskoda wrote: post #62

I'm one of those folks who would love to drop everything I have going to wander off into the desert/forest/underwater/whatever with the intention of bootstrapping a new city from scratch. The more I talk about it, I've found that there are a lot of people who would love such an adventure - if we could all just find some effort worth getting behind. It's sort of like starting a hippy commune, only with high-tech inten…

Need a kickstarter like system. Get 10,000 people to deposit $10,000 and you have got $100,000,000 to acquire a nice plot of land, set up planning and governance, and incorporate a new town. I'd be interested in seeing plans for such towns and would be interested in living in one. Or one billionaire with similar ambitions.

> Or one billionaire with similar ambitions.

I was with you until this part. I'd rather not live in a city with an 'owner'.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#202

Post by abdullahkhalids »

Zaskoda wrote: post #62

I'm one of those folks who would love to drop everything I have going to wander off into the desert/forest/underwater/whatever with the intention of bootstrapping a new city from scratch. The more I talk about it, I've found that there are a lot of people who would love such an adventure - if we could all just find some effort worth getting behind. It's sort of like starting a hippy commune, only with high-tech inten…

I would love to do that too. The problem is that you have to comply with the laws of whatever state/province/country on whose land you build the city, so you are often restricted in many ways - not least in understanding the regulations and working with the government to demonstrate compliance.

These guys https://www.seasteading.org/ are working towards building floating cities. In the short term, they want to figure out the technology part of it, but in the long term, they want to build cities in international waters and declare independence. Then you can do whatever you wanted to.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#203

Post by chrisdhoover »

ingsoc79 wrote: post #184
pm90 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no, no. The amount of misinformation in this post is staggering. I'm assuming good faith on your part but its hard to do so. > The reason the streetcars went away in the US was because of competition from cars, which, not coincidentally, were beginning their rise to dominance ~100 years ago. GM and Ford were in the process of killing streetcars the moment the Model T went on sale. They killed it because they knew…

Mass transit is a viable solution to people only when it's more convenient than cars. When the hassle of driving and finding parking is less than the extra walk/transfers/etc of taking transit, most people will drive. If you have mobility issues or have cargo you need to haul back, you're even more likely to drive. Here in Seattle our roads are at capacity and the city is actively working to increase density, creatin…

It is important to split mass transit from public transit. I ride mass transit everyday but am vilified for it since it is private.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#204

Post by baddox »

peterwwillis wrote: post #166
btingle wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do I look like, mother Theresa? It's not my job to solve the city's homelessness problem. Do you mean to say that politicians/public officials/etc should be dealing with the problem?

No, I'm saying citizens should solve the problem. And I know it's not your job. It's nobody's job. That's why nothing has been done. I mean, the stupidest thing about this is this isn't that hard a problem to solve. Homeless people are just regular people with a problem and no resources to fix it. You provide them resources and help and they are no longer homeless and no longer a nuisance. Instead, people see them li…

It seems a bit bizarre to imply that individual citizens have the responsibility or even capability of meaningfully solving major public welfare or health issues. Surely no one would imply the same for, say, crime or disease epidemics.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#205

Post by s2g »

peterwwillis wrote: post #166
btingle wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do I look like, mother Theresa? It's not my job to solve the city's homelessness problem. Do you mean to say that politicians/public officials/etc should be dealing with the problem?

No, I'm saying citizens should solve the problem. And I know it's not your job. It's nobody's job. That's why nothing has been done. I mean, the stupidest thing about this is this isn't that hard a problem to solve. Homeless people are just regular people with a problem and no resources to fix it. You provide them resources and help and they are no longer homeless and no longer a nuisance. Instead, people see them li…

> It's nobody's job

It's the job of the people we elect to govern our society.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#206

Post by s2g »

drb91 wrote: post #171
AcerbicZero wrote: post #130

It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". On the surface that kind of makes sense, using a large stick to strongly encourage change, but I think at its core it misses a huge portion of the problem, which is that bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bi…

> bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bit of traffic, or dropping a few bucks on an Uber/Lyft. How can this be true? Public transit allows your attention to wander and typically is much, much faster than traffic. Adding uber/lyft will get two of the worst attributes: traffic and high cost, although you’ll be able to do something else simultaneously. Furthermore, it’s not clear how parking fees affe…

> How can this be true?

It's hot, noisy, uncomfortable, nausea inducing, and I have to put up with people falling asleep on me or homeless people harassing me.

The light rail (in Seattle) is fine, but the coverage isn't good enough.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#207

Post by s2g »

robbrown451 wrote: post #199
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> As the GP said, there are people who are drunk, high, smelling of bodily fluids, etc. There are people who are rude, loud, etc. Excuse me, but- where does that happen? I mention in another comment that I live in a town in England, where I've never had any problems with homeless people in public transport. I also work in London, travel by rail across Europe and often use public transport in three different European…

San Francisco, for one.

Seattle too.

Even if they people on the bus are okay, they are still uncomfortable.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#208

Post by toomanybeersies »

ManFromUranus wrote: post #139
AcerbicZero wrote: post #130

It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". On the surface that kind of makes sense, using a large stick to strongly encourage change, but I think at its core it misses a huge portion of the problem, which is that bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bi…

Homeless people using transit as a shelter is a huge problem, it makes transit undesirable. Also politicians are so milquetoast they won't address the problem for fear of looking like a 'bad guy' when in reality transit was never designed to be a homeless shelter, so homeless need to be forcibly removed from the vehicle and excluded from the transit system where possible. Eventually homeless ruin everything they touc…

> Eventually homeless ruin everything they touch and society needs to find a way to deal with them

Although your rhetoric is terrible, you're not entirely wrong there.

But using jackbooted thugs to kick homeless people off public transport is not the solution though, and doesn't achieve anything. It simply pushes the problem somewhere else. You need to actually solve the causes of the problem, rather than trying to cover up the symptoms. That's not even starting on how you determine if someone is homeless or not. I saw a hipster the other day who I genuinely thought was homeless, until I saw that he had a bottle of craft beer under his arm, rather than a $2 bottle of wine.

If anything, banning homeless from public transport is just going to make the problem worse, because you've just pushed them somewhere else. Now they have no means to move anywhere (or they'll just steal bikes), and they're just going to shelter anywhere else that they can, including breaking into buildings.

Society does need to find a way to "deal" with homeless people, but you can't just make being homeless illegal. Just like you can't "deal" with heroin addicts by banning needles.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#209

Post by calohorn »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #192
epicureanideal wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the GP said, there are people who are drunk, high, smelling of bodily fluids, etc. There are people who are rude, loud, etc. If this were stopped, then it might be better than being in a car.

>> As the GP said, there are people who are drunk, high, smelling of bodily fluids, etc. There are people who are rude, loud, etc. Excuse me, but- where does that happen? I mention in another comment that I live in a town in England, where I've never had any problems with homeless people in public transport. I also work in London, travel by rail across Europe and often use public transport in three different European…

Happens in Portland also

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#210

Post by saltcured »

wrycoder wrote: post #150
paulryanrogers wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still the time loss. Private vehicles usually save time and have maximum schedule flexibility. Bicycles a scooters could help with the last mile, if they can be managed well. Of course everyone has different thresholds. But I'd guess most people work hard to earn enough for their own time saving luxuries, even if the external costs will hurt their children later in life.

In addition, if you are doing shopping which involves any significant volume of goods or groceries, carrying it on public transit is a real problem. The tendency is to buy small amounts frequently at higher prices. If there are two or more in a small car, it's also usually less expensive. If the parking problem were forthrightly addressed, this, along with the increasing use of efficient Uber/Lyft/taxi, would greatly…

When we were living in Asia for a few years, one thing we really liked was that larger supermarkets had free delivery service once you reached a minimum total at the checkout. We'd take a taxi to a mall, take care of any small shop purchases, perhaps have dinner at a restaurant, then finish with a tour of the supermarket in the basement.

We'd fill a shopping cart with all the heavy items we needed for one or more weeks, sorting a few fragile or temperature-sensitive items. We would fill one or two bags to carry home with us immediately by taxi. The rest went back to the cart and got a delivery ticket attached at a service counter. Within an hour or so of us getting home, friendly supermarket staff would be delivering the remainder to our condo doorstep.

Meanwhile, we had walkable, outdoor markets where we could grab produce or even some short-order carryout stirfry. So, we'd often grab just a few items at a time, lived with a much smaller refrigerator than we do in the US, and only did the supermarket run for heavy bottled/canned goods or the odd import item that helped with culture shock or homesickness.

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