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Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

theguardian.com

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Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#161

Post by dsfyu404ed »

nrjames wrote: post #100

Raleigh converted Fayetteville Street to pedestrian only back in 1977. It ended up killing all of the businesses there. https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/163829/ The city reopened it to traffic, however, and "revitalized" the area, resulting in a booming downtown economy: https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning-... I love pedestrian districts in cities. Copenhagen comes to mind. However, pedes…

My city did this with bike lanes. Most of the housing isn't within easily walk able distance from downtown and the city is where a lot of people from surrounding towns go to buy things. All the downtown businesses that weathered the recession got rewarded with all their customers decided to spend their money at the businesses a mile away that had readily available parking. Grade A city planning right there. /s

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#162

Post by aembleton »

tetromino_ wrote: post #137
fredley wrote: post #2

Pedestrianisation 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…

> 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. That is nuts. That means a plumber, electrician, home appliance deliveryman, mover, etc. can only handle one job requiring a vehicle per day. He will have to charge 3-4 times more for his services than someone working in an area where it's feasible to finish 3-4 jobs in a workday. The costs ar…

I don't know of any residential areas that have these sorts of restrictions. Its generally in shopping areas. Businesses have to schedule deliveries for these time slots.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#163

Post by Grangar »

thales_m wrote: post #82

What about people who live inside city limits but work elsewhere? For example, I currently reside in Washington, DC but work about 30 min away. There is no public transportation to my work. At night, I park in a garage but there are others who park on the street and commute out of the city every morning.

Demand better public transportation?

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#165

Post by brightball »

montenegrohugo wrote: post #3

This 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 don't think cars are going anywhere for a while, but I'm very interested to see all of the alternative fuel options that show up eventually (CNG, Hydrogen and Electric so far).

I currently drive a Volt...and it's wonderful. Chevy is really missing out on a lot of potential free press by not putting a bigger emphasis on it. I went from spending over $400 / month on gas to about $20 / month. You get the ability to cut such a huge amount of gas usage without the need for any additional infrastructure to support them like pure-electrics that are out there.

My guess is that when clean energy is used to produce fuel cells, a lot of the conversations around the negative impact of cars in general will dry up.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#166

Post by ghaff »

iainmerrick wrote: post #145
twoodfin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re underestimating the total acreage of “pristine” wilderness in the United States. Any realistic demand for a lifestyle like koolba‘s would find ample supply.

I’m not so sure. How much land would you need to be completely isolated, no other houses in sight? A square mile? More if you live high on a hill (which many people would like to do). Wikipedia says the area of the USA is only 3,794,100 square miles, so there aren’t very many square-mile patches to hand out compared to the size of the population.

Pristine woods is probably a bit of a high bar but you can get plenty of separation from neighbors with a lot less land, especially if some of the land is shared conservation space such as near where I live. A square mile is 640 acres which is a lot of land. Between myself and a couple neighbors we're on about 75 acres much of which is orchard, a Christmas tree farm, and adjacent woodland. We can see each other but we're pretty separated.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#167

Post by adrianN »

xienze wrote: post #136
maaaats wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point would be to get rid of the reasons people need cars. By rethinking urban planning, infrastructure, public transportation etc.

Yes, just wave a wand and instantly transform thousands of existing low-density cities and suburban neighborhoods into little European villages. I’m convinced, cars will be useless in short order.

I don't think anybody honestly suggests to get rid of cars in short order. As you noted changing cities is a multi-decade operation. So it's best to start sooner rather than later.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#168

Post by jeromegv »

claydavisss wrote: post #133
dagw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there are always going to be people like us who want an 'archaic' life style which require an archaic mode of transportation, but the world shouldn't be optimizing for these people, and I see nothing wrong with making these people pay extra for the externalizes their lifestyles impose.

But in the US, it is the (vast) minority who wants to live a pedestrian lifestyle. If you look around the US you will see that even today, investment in suburbia far outpaces investment in "urbanism". Trucks and SUVs are slowly cannibalizing sedan sales in the US. So not only do people like driving, the vehicles they tend to purchase are increasing in size. If you are suggesting that society somehow prioritizes the 0…

Society built around cars isn't too optimal for the elderly, quite the opposite. I think the issue is that people don't know what they are missing until they get it. If your city is built around car, no proper public transport exists, why on earth wouldn't you want a car? For me the mind shift switched when I moved from a car city to a higher-density city (Toronto) for work reason. That's when I realized that I actually didn't want to use my car every day.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#169

Post by S4M »

pcmonk wrote: post #154
montenegrohugo wrote: post #3

This 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…

How do you do this with kids? Suppose you're taking three kids to an event or a climbing gym or whatever and it's further than walking distance. Can biking be made safe enough, or if it's further, is it reasonable for them to bring them on the metro? What if it's three kids ages 5 and under? This is an honest question. I live in a city with public transport now and I much prefer it for myself, but when I think of how…

I have two kids (now 8 and 4 years old). I don't own a car. We never had any issue bringing them with us in public transport (bus, metro or train). We live in Barcelona.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#170

Post by noelwelsh »

pcmonk wrote: post #154
montenegrohugo wrote: post #3

This 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…

How do you do this with kids? Suppose you're taking three kids to an event or a climbing gym or whatever and it's further than walking distance. Can biking be made safe enough, or if it's further, is it reasonable for them to bring them on the metro? What if it's three kids ages 5 and under? This is an honest question. I live in a city with public transport now and I much prefer it for myself, but when I think of how…

I took my kids around in a bike trailer for the first seven or so years of their life. I didn't do this exclusively---we had a car and often used it, but the majority of places I wanted to get to I could reach by bike and bike journeys were 100% to 5% depending on the location. Now they are old enough to ride their own bikes. This was in the fairly bike unfriendly city of Birmingham, UK. (Birmingham bought into car culture in 1960s and is slowly recovering.)

Better to look at cities that are better adopters of bikes, such as Copenhagen. There just about everyone is on or in a bike, including many children. They love their cargo bikes over there. See https://triobike.com/ and http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle-culture/copenhagen...

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