Eliminate cars.
Eliminate the options for people to be autonomous.
Pack everyone into major metropolitan cities by the millions.
Stop building houses.
Build Up.
Build condos and apartments.
Eliminate the option for people to buy land because it is unsustainable and the state knows better.
Sounds like a perfect dystopian society.
Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
371–380 of 699 posts
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems that the city in this article strikes a great balance - parking on the periphery for people who commute in, but the city center is car-free. The same could work for the US midwest. You drive to the edge of Chicago and then take an (improved) subway in, for example.
Why would a commuter want to drive only to connect to a subway?
To use an example from a German city: Because going from the park+ride spaces at the edge of the city to the center takes > 45min by car, but 4min with the train. And parking at the edge of the city is free, but downtown you pay 8,50€/h.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#373Raleigh 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…
The town I'm from, Eugene, Oregon, did this too.
They later reopened it, but put in roads that let cars through, but very slowly. Seems to be a good compromise.
Closing a road entirely is probably something you should do once you're at such a level of pedestrian traffic that the car lanes are impeding pedestrians, which isn't terribly common in US cities. However, making areas where people don't drive fast is absolutely a win.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#374Raleigh 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…
Same thing happened in Kalamazoo, MI back about 1978.
The city center closed part of the main street to cars when a four story enclosed mall of boutique stores was built. Within five years most of the mall and nearby stores were dying.
This was partly due to the growth of a pair of large enclosed malls 5 miles away which sucked business elsewhere. But I think most of the problem was that shoppers don't wants to walk outdoors in the long Michigan Winter. They needed to somehow enclose the pedestrian piazza to minimize peoples' exposure to the elements, but that wasn't in the budget.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
The healthcare argument isn't really that compelling, because most white-collar professionals in the USA have pretty good health insurance through their work. The extra time off is excellent, but you can put a dollar value on it and it doesn't come close to adding up to the paycut. You also pay higher taxes, and the cost for other goods and services (food for example) is often higher. Disposable income for a senior d…
It goes beyond these things. You get a quality of life enhancement by being in a more community centric environment. Less pressure overall. No one wonders if there is something wrong with you when you take 3 weeks off in a row. Being able to walk to the bakery, grocery store, and having better access to quality food. The fruit in the U.S. is quite bland compared to what you get in Europe. Having people out and about…
Also when I go to the U.S. it’s kind of shocking to see how many people could do with good healthcare but are obviously not able to get it. I want everyone around me to be healthy not just my immediate friends and family.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#376This 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…
> cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward Inside cities that is. One must remember that a lot of the people that move around in a city every day don't live in the city. And for many of them a car is a requirement anyway. For me the car is a sunk cost - I have it for the rare times I need it (I don't need it to go into the city), but buying/maintaining/insuring it is mostly a fixed…
Won't something like rental cars make more sense in such a case ?
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#377As a kid in the early '90s the corner market, grocery store, schools from elementary to high, both jobs I had, and park were all within a 10 minute walk -- and that was in the suburbs. Cars don't need to be a requirement for daily life even in the suburbs it just requires good planning or planning at all.
When people ask me why I like living in Mexico, this is one of the main reasons:
The other week I walked around my neighborhood in Guadalajara to do some errands. I got my knives sharpened, picked up my repaired shoes from the cobbler, some fried pumpkin seeds from the seed guy, some meat from the butcher, and then some tacos of course. All within two blocks.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean there were no sidewalks? That's the thing, often in the US I felt very boxed into a place, simply because I couldn't just do a Cartman and 'go home' (or someplace else).
You definitely have areas that are not designed for walking at all. I've been in a situation where I could see a shopping mall and restaurants from my hotel across a busy multi-lane road and there was literally no way to get there on foot. That said, it's not the US vs. everywhere else. For example, the UK has lots of charming little villages where you can walk to the pub and a few stores. Once you get out of the vil…
I could see a shopping mall and restaurants from my hotel across a busy multi-lane road and there was literally no way to get there on foot.
This is almost exactly the situation described by Bill Bryson in I'm a Stranger Here Myself. I believe he wanted to visit the shops across the street while his wife was at a mall and there was effectively no way to get there without a car.
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many suburbanites, however, have the entitled attitude that cities should accommodate their car trips to dense areas at the expense of people actually living there. Often their mindset is that cities are strictly where people go instead of where people live . In the US this mentality is exarcebated by the white flight and the decay of inner cities, but does also exist in Europe.
To live within reasonable walking / public transport distance of my workplace in SF, I'd be paying about a thousand dollars a month more in rent. If you don't want me to commute in from the suburb, build more housing in the city and bring down market rent there.
how about they just charge you really high tolls and congestion tax instead? ;)
Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, that's the problem with the tyranny of the majority. The fact that people want unsustainable living doesn't mean unsustainable living should be encouraged. See also Hume's guillotine [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
How exactly is it unsustainable? Are we running out of something? Are we running out of electricity? The idea that cars are unsustainable is ridiculous. Just because they may not fit into sonmeone’s desire for increased government control of mobility doesn’t make them unsustainable. Every generation seems to think their generation will be the last, unless we “do” something. They were likely debating horse carts in En…
We are running out of drinkable water, breathable air, ice in Antartica, corals at the Great Coral Reef, mineral oil.