Life in the Spanish city that banned cars • Hacker News Board

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#421

Post by CalRobert » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

dvdhnt wrote: post #271

CalRobert wrote: post #178

Not sure what your situation is but there are a fair number of options for people who are decent programmers to move to Europe permanently..

My wife and I want to move to Europe from the U.S., however, while I do have 5+ years of experience, I haven't finished my degree...

Some things to check out:

* Dutch American Friendship Treaty (self employ in the Netherlands)

* Working Holiday visa Irealnd (one year and have to be within a year of school or in school, but if you get a job that sponsors you can stay)

* Germany. Germany is just supposed to be a relatively easy place to get a visa, comparatively. Be sure to look up blue cards.

* Ancestry. Got any history in a European country? Start looking at grandparents' birth certs

Also, a lot of people have mentioned pay. It's true, pay is lower in Europe - in tech. OTOH in other fields there's less of a disparity, or it's higher here. My wife does not work in tech and makes more here (or did before she decided to stay home with our kid).

In Ireland, at least, a normal dev would make very roughly 60(ish), someone versed in ML, etc. closer to 90, and to get to six figures you'd need te be fairly senior. Jobs posted on http://irishtechcommunity.slack.com/ recently have been everything from 40k (junior) to 150k (senior at FB). It's more common to include ranges in job postings here.

Europe is big though and salaries are MUCH different in Portugal than in, say, Finland.

In some places (Norway), you can just look them up - https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239

I would have recommended Ireland in the past but now, if you're interested, you'd be wise to steer clear of Dublin. Housing has gotten really scarce, but worse than just being expensive it's just really hard to actually _get_ (no surprise given that rent control is bad policy).

If I were looking myself right now the top of my list would be Utrecht, because I love cities where my kid can cycle to school and not die.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#422

Post by maxsilver » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

the_gastropod wrote: post #313

rimliu wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about speed it is about freedom.

Marketers for cigarettes [1], gogurt, lunchables, cell service, guns, etc. make similar claims. It doesn't make it true. Cars bring convenience, sure. But freedom ? Not owning a car, I've never lost sleep worrying that someone was breaking into my car, I pay no car insurance, no gas, no car maintenance, never pay for toll roads, never get road rage, never sit in traffic. I feel significantly more free today than I ev…

> I feel significantly more free today than I ever did owning a car.

That works both ways though. I feel significantly more free today owning an EV hybrid car, then I did without a car.

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I have lost sleep worrying I would miss the only bus, or that it would be late, or that it would be full, or that it would never show, or that they could change the route without telling me, or that if the weather is bad I'll arrive soaked / freezing / dripping in sweat. Or if the other passengers are bad, I could arrived smelling bad or covered in bedbugs.

I have commuted by bus. It was a huge impact on personal freedom -- even if all conditions are ideal every trip still had to be delicately and precisely pre-planned, with exact arrival and departures, (that all stacked up, because even the shortest bus trips require one or more transfers) and they allowed travel only to specific places deemed worthy of it by other people. And of course, every trip required at least 2x to 3x longer trip times than driving.

Buses are like 70% of the stress of flying, with only 10% of the benefit.

---

A car isn't limitless freedom, it comes with plenty of responsibilities and costs of it's own. But it certainly can be a form of freedom of mobility. One that currently isn't easily reproducible in any other way.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#423

Post by adrianN » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

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.

If you were to distribute all people in the US uniformly, everybody would have about four soccer fields of space. If you distributed them over the forest area of the US everybody would have about one soccer field of space. In either case if you account for yards and access roads you wouldn't have what I'd call pristine woods anymore.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+%2F+population+densi...

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#424

Post by timonoko » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 4:28 PM UTC

European cities were very much pedestrian and bike town in the 1950's. In Helsinki they proposed banning bikes from city center, because they caused traffic congestion and gave poorish image of Finland. Bike paths were kept open all year manually. I biked some 10 km to school and every single day dozens of guys had woken at 5 o'clock and shoveled and sanded narrow but adequate bike path just for me.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#425

Post by jaysonelliot » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

The one question I have, that I haven't seen answered in the article or elsewhere, is how deliveries are handled. Presumably shops and businesses in a car-free city need to get truckloads of goods or equipment moved in and out on a regular basis. How is it done?

I've always loved the idea of being able to live in a car-free city, but never quite understood how certain things would work, including garbage collection, deliveries, and emergency services, without vehicular traffic.

Or do they make exceptions for all of those? Does anyone know?

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#426

Post by lloydde » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

GauntletWizard wrote: post #416

wahern wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I like theme parks.[1] It's sad because in America we've largely relegated what should be a normal living environment to fascimiles of imaginary places. Actually, I live in San Francisco and the "downtowns" of each neighborhood do allow kids some freedom away from their parents (e.g. to dart in and out of stores and restaurants without waiting for the parent), but it's limited to a single block unless you…

The area your talking about, where there's little places where kids can play: it's called the Suburbs. Growing up in the suburbs, cars went slow enough that we could play in the street. The neighborhood grocery was about two miles away and we could walk or ride our bikes, and we had plenty of friends houses along the route should we need to stop. There's not the density of little shops that you might find in SF, but…

> Suburbs, much reviled here, are the answer to all of the density problems that people are complaining about.

urban sprawl? What does that commute time look like, particularly for the poor?

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#427

Post by tim333 » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

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…

You could make quite a lot of money by building mixed use retail/residential where the car parks are now.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#428

Post by JepZ » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 4:33 PM UTC

In Germany we have a similar paradise: the island Helgoland [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heligoland#Road_restrictions

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#429

Post by mywittyname » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

wahern wrote: post #383

enriquto wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

> modern cars seem more anti-pedestrian.

Pedestrian safety is a big consideration with modern cars, as it's a legal requirement in most countries. Most of the homogeneity in modern car design is due to these regulations -- low hoodlines are rare because there needs to be a buffer between the engine and the hood; the hood can't extend all the way to the grill because the edge causes excessive injuries; and the front ends of cars have a weird bulge because pedestrians struck should be tossed to the side of the car to prevent them from being run over.

That's not even getting into automatic braking systems or backup cameras.

In contrast, a 65 Toronado looks designed to cause the maximum amount of damage to any person you run over.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#430

Post by wahern » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

GauntletWizard wrote: post #416

wahern wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I like theme parks.[1] It's sad because in America we've largely relegated what should be a normal living environment to fascimiles of imaginary places. Actually, I live in San Francisco and the "downtowns" of each neighborhood do allow kids some freedom away from their parents (e.g. to dart in and out of stores and restaurants without waiting for the parent), but it's limited to a single block unless you…

The area your talking about, where there's little places where kids can play: it's called the Suburbs. Growing up in the suburbs, cars went slow enough that we could play in the street. The neighborhood grocery was about two miles away and we could walk or ride our bikes, and we had plenty of friends houses along the route should we need to stop. There's not the density of little shops that you might find in SF, but…

I also grew up in the suburbs in the 1980s, both in Florida (more rural northwest) and Illinois (Chicago suburbs). The suburbs of my youth don't exist anymore; certainly not the ones I actually lived in. The streets are far more dangerous because cars drive faster and they seem to be more reckless (e.g. idiot kids or grumpy adults racing down the block in cars that outperform sport cars from 20 years prior). I used to regularly walk 2 miles to high school (when I slept late and missed the bus), a portion of which required walking on the side of a main thoroughfare without a sidewalk. Cars today drive 50mph or 60mph on that road whereas they once drove 30mph. I wouldn't walk that route as an adult today, and sure as heck wouldn't let a kid walk it regularly.

They do exist in some places. I've seen them and have visited friends living there. Cul de sacs in subdivisions still on the city periphery, predominately Mormon neighborhoods in Utah where people expect kids to dart into the street, or tony gated communities. But they're just not as common. And in any event, even when they can, kids these days don't spend much time outdoors. In places where I did (and kids still can) spend all day roaming around in the woods or riding their bikes across town, today's kids spend all day playing video games or chatting online. Even if I my kid chose to hang outside, he'd be playing alone much of the time.

As someone else mentioned on HN a couple of years ago, you can optimize for a kids ability to play in the streets when he's Times are different. I don't dislike the suburbs, I just don't think they're sustainable. Most often suburbs deteriorate quickly within a decade or two. The qualities that make them livable disappear once they're subsumed by a new ring of suburbs, bringing increased cross traffic and a new generation of childless homeowners.