If you're interested in "walking" around yourself, here's the streetview: https://goo.gl/maps/gxHkcvg4LWB2
Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
21–30 of 699 posts
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can it be that private property - the bicycle/the scooter - occupies the public space?
How can it be that private property - my own body - occupies the public space?
It only occupies a small ephemeral spot in spacetime. Try lying in a single space for hours or days on end in a city and see how far your clever countering gets you. I'm sure there's many a vagrant who would rebut your thesis.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#23>“The city is the perfect size for pedestrianisation,” says local architect Rogelio Carballo Soler. “You can cross the entire city in 25 minutes. This seems to be the key point why it works.
25 minutes on foot? It's more of a village than a city.
It's the old town area only, of a city of 80,000 people.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
25 minutes on foot? It's more of a village than a city.
> 25 minutes on foot? It's more of a village than a city. you can walk from side to side of Paris in a tad more than one hour with a good rhythm, and two hours if you take it normally.
Paris is ~10km across. The metropole region around it is much larger.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#25Pedestrianisation works well in European cities, especially small ones. It's quite common here in the UK, often there are strict time limits on when delivieries can be made, e.g. 6-8am when barriers are open to let vehicles in and out. However this model just does not work in the US, outside of very few places. US cities are designed for cars, and without major redevelopment everything's just too far apart - even wit…
It took major redevelopment for many US cities to become car-centric, so I am not seeing why we could not do another redevelopment to create pedestrian-friendly cities.
>so I am not seeing why we could not do another redevelopment to create pedestrian-friendly cities.
We have 2 local cities that made themselves bike friendly. Property values are going up in that area.
However, the people living there were already 10%ers.
Its cool to see lots of bike lanes and walkers, but they also managed to price the people that cant afford cars out.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#26This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward. Cities get bigger and denser, and wasting a big % of land on parking spaces, roads, intersections and accepting a horrible air quality (that reduces citizen life spans and health quality) and noise pollution just does not make any sense anymore. Carse are effective in less dense…
In at least one smaller city I lived in the US, there weren't even sidewalks. The town was built for cars only. Even in bigger cities like NY where there are bike lanes at least in some places, there is some level of looking down on cyclists from drivers and cab drivers. It is going to take a massive mindset change to reduce dependence on cars.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can it be that private property - the bicycle/the scooter - occupies the public space?
How can it be that private property - my own body - occupies the public space?
I wouldn't think of my body as private property. Leaving that aside, the answer to your question is that everybody has a body, so we're not talking about the same kind of privilege that car owners have. Nor do bodies occupy the same amount of space. Last but not least, they don't easily kill other people as they cross their way.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#28This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward. Cities get bigger and denser, and wasting a big % of land on parking spaces, roads, intersections and accepting a horrible air quality (that reduces citizen life spans and health quality) and noise pollution just does not make any sense anymore. Carse are effective in less dense…
On top of other issues, most of Europe also enjoys a 4-season year - meaning that a bike or scooter is safely and comfortably usable around half of a year, definitely not more.
When i lived in Uppsala, Sweden i biked all year around.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#29This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward. Cities get bigger and denser, and wasting a big % of land on parking spaces, roads, intersections and accepting a horrible air quality (that reduces citizen life spans and health quality) and noise pollution just does not make any sense anymore. Carse are effective in less dense…
I lived for a while in Berlin. Coming back to the U.S. the first thing I noticed were too many billboards and ugly parking lots. Each store has its own parking lot. Largely underused. No nice paths to traverse the bleak endless parking lot landscape. It’s ugly and wasteful. It’s hostile to pedestrians and discourages people from going outside to just wander. Even in relatively walkable communities like the one I live in have far fewer people out and about. An endless stream of cars going from one ugly parking lot to the another. I wish I could move to Europe permanently.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#30This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward. Cities get bigger and denser, and wasting a big % of land on parking spaces, roads, intersections and accepting a horrible air quality (that reduces citizen life spans and health quality) and noise pollution just does not make any sense anymore. Carse are effective in less dense…
On top of other issues, most of Europe also enjoys a 4-season year - meaning that a bike or scooter is safely and comfortably usable around half of a year, definitely not more.
I live in an European city 60 degrees northern latitude, and the bicycle season is more like 9 months out of the year. That can be extended to 10-11 months with a bit of clothing/gear and bicycling the whole year is not impossible either (but most people who do have a separate winter bike).
I used to do 15+15 km bike ride to work and back almost every day for 9 months out of the year. Sadly I can't do that any more as I moved farther away from work.
There might be days of bad weather where other means of transportation is more convenient, but that's the case all year around.
For motorcycles/scooters the season is shorter because you can't get (affordable) insurance.