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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

#381

Post by hfdgiutdryg »

djrogers wrote: post #266
hannasanarion wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of the geography. Southern California and Arizona especially were impossible to live in until after Air Conditioning became cheap and widespread in the 1950s. At that time, modernism in architecture and city planning was at its peak: build it big, build it simple, and build it for cars.

Southern California? There are tons of places in LA and San Diego where AC is entirely optional and often not installed. 72 and sunny is a stereotype for a reason...

Those places are limited to a strip running along the coastline.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#383

Post by wahern »

enriquto wrote: post #310
francisofascii wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Walking with young kids is so stressful. All that kids want to do is run ahead, and I keep having to yell at them to stop, wait. You can never be at ease.

A city with fast cars running around is the least human-friendly environment that we have built on purpose. People often complain about hostile or "anti-human" architecture [1], but those are silly details. The sad tragedy is building the whole city around the needs of cars. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture

I wonder what effect the increasing performance of cars has had on safety. Any modern car can accelerate to ridiculously unsafe speeds within the span of a single block, whereas cars from the 1970s and even 1980s were sluggish. Similarly, modern cars can make sharp turns where older cars risked skidding. Then factor in things like less noise and larger A-pillars reducing visibility[1], and modern cars seem more anti-pedestrian.

The gap between inattentiveness and recklessness has been closed. Even considering improved braking, there was simply more margin for error back when speeds were naturally lower.

I know cars have always been dangerous to pedestrians. But there were other factors at play, like drunk driving being nearly ubiquitous.

[1] The left A-pillar in my Honda CRV has just the right size and placement that it blocks the far left-hand corner of the intersection from view. A pedestrian about to cross the street is invisible to me unless I physically lean over or have already entered the intersection.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#384

Post by hfdgiutdryg »

strictnein wrote: post #250
Keyframe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the culture shocks from Europe to US (California) was that there are places where you can't do shit without a car. Like, no place place to walk along the street to get from point A to B.

California is the ultimate example of car dependency. There are many, many other places to live in the US that aren't like that.

California has the better "car culture", but Texas or Arizona has to take the cake for car dependency.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#386

Post by ghaff »

briandear wrote: post #322
revx wrote: post #260

Earlier 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?

Because parking is presumably cheaper on the periphery and the subway may actually be faster than driving all the way in. When I worked in Boston, that's how I sometimes did it. (Other times I took the commuter rail but that was more or less useless if I was doing anything in the evening.)

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#387

Post by [deleted] »

miketuritzin wrote: post #307
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…

You could also make the argument that opening city centers to cars should be considered carefully, and that is also true. It just happens to be the current default almost everywhere.

[deleted]

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#388

Post by mesofile »

abrowne wrote: post #104
Semaphor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even here in Germany many people ride their bikes all year around.

Even here in Minneapolis many people ride their bikes all year round, with fewer riding when it is extremely cold or snowy, but coming back out when it warms up just a little.

What’s interesting to me about Minneapolis and other northern cities where there are a lot of cyclists is that they very often have far more people riding to commute or do other practical tasks than any number of other cities with much milder climates. In the American south, where you never see snow, commuter cyclists are practically nonexistent. Obviously there is a climate challenge of a different sort, but not insurmountable ones and not all year round.

Citation needed, I know. There’s a relevant article about this phenomenon out there somewhere, if I can find it I’ll post a link.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#389

Post by gascan »

wahern wrote: post #344
Barjak wrote: post #287

>People don’t like being told they can’t drive wherever they want, but Lores says that while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges. This strikes me as the fundamental issue.

Modern discourse about "rights" has become twisted. Some day we need to realize that one person's right is another person's prohibition. A society needs to choose its rights wisely lest the unintended consequences result in less overall freedom. In a healthy civil society legally enshrined rights are less important because you can trust that everybody's freedom will be maximized, at least to a first-order approximati…

IMO as we accumulated more and more "rights", the concept became diluted. We went from the bedrock negative rights of freedom of speech, travel, etc, then to positive rights, and then people started applying the concept of "rights" to what I would consider "entitlements".

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#390

Post by randcraw »

enobrev wrote: post #278
revx wrote: post #260

Earlier 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.

I agree with this wholeheartedly, but also know it would be an incredibly difficult uphill battle, culturally, to make such a thing work. Chicago residents not only love their cars but also seem to feel absolutely entitled to the idea that the roads are _only_ for cars. I say this as a local who has gotten into countless arguments with friends and family on the subject. I probably believed it as well a few lifetimes…

Or we could prosecute drivers who run over bicyclists (and motorcyclists) the way many states now do to protect road construction workers -- huge fines and jail time.

But Americans care too much about comfort and convenience to do that. SUVs rule here.

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