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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

#461

Post by wool_gather »

electricslpnsld wrote: post #446
sunshinelackof wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Portland and Eugene love to boast how bicycle friendly they are, but neither are really commutable by anything besides a car for most people. Which is why most cyclists are so prolific -- it's hard to be a cyclist by circumstance. Riding your bike inherently comes with crossing a dozen intersections beaming with cars that treat you like you don't belong on the road. A solution is to level the planes of separatio…

> Even Portland and Eugene love to boast how bicycle friendly they are, but neither are really commutable by anything besides a car for most people. Which is why most cyclists are so prolific -- it's hard to be a cyclist by circumstance. Riding your bike inherently comes with crossing a dozen intersections beaming with cars that treat you like you don't belong on the road. I commuted by bike for two years or so in Po…

Sometimes they're a bit overly quote courteous unquote -- stopping unexpectedly to let you cross, holding up traffic behind them, or waiting too long to turn onto the road you're on so that they end up behind you when they could have easily gone in front and been on their merry way, etc.

Not that I want to complain -- I'll take this any, any day over the drivers in certain other northern cities named after 70s rock bands. Just a bemused observation.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#462

Post by renlo »

skh wrote: post #331
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #297

Earlier 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…

The US is huge. Just to add a slight counterpoint, where I live I too can get great produce and visit natural areas that aren’t fenced off (California). Walkability depends on the city as well. The other points you make are valid though.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#463

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

breatheoften wrote: post #419

Its insane to me how large space-wise small towns in the us (Oregon in mind as I write this) are — with a huge percentage of the real estate devoted to parking lots. Even setting aside the traffic, it’s silly to walk across these towns because businesses are separated from each other by massive parking lots. The traffic is often amazingly inhumane. Many of the small towns in Oregon are formed on either side of the ma…

What really amazes me is the creation of new "Shopping Centres" - miles and miles of independent stores and nothing between them but parking lots. They took the mall and scaled it up so everyone gets a store, and now if I want to go to two places I have to actually drive from one to the other because it's nothing but parking lots and pedestrian hostile roads separating them - sometimes it's a two minute drive, but that's so much easier to do than try and navigate on foot it's ridiculous. You want to go to the next store over, but it's 3 lanes each way of homicidal traffic between you and it, or a 5 minute walk to get to the closest cross-walk.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#464

Post by jimmaswell »

elcapitan wrote: post #126

One of the most interesting experiences in my life was visiting Tel Aviv on Yom Kippur. On that day all car traffic is prohibited (also TV stations are offline etc). It was absolutely amazing. Tel Aviv is a city with large roads and usually extremely busy. On that day, cyclists ride over the highway, kids play on the streets. I never felt that directly before how invasive the normal car situation is. Here's a photo h…

Kids can play anywhere else when cars are on the road. What's so attractive about playing on a big patch of hard material that gets so hot in the summer you can't touch it without burning yourself? What's wrong with parks and people's yards? I never understood the pining for the days of playing on streets.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#465

Post by bogomipz »

Razengan wrote: post #295
skh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I wish I could move to Europe permanently. This is the "Vote with your wallet" at the international civic level. It may not have been very convenient or practical in the past but it seems to be becoming an increasingly accessible option, at least for first-world people. Move to the places whose ideals align with yours, and help them develop those, if you can't convince your current home to adopt them.

Can you elaborate? You are still beholden to visa requirements to relocate permanently. How do you exercise your vote given that?

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#466

Post by corndoge »

sunshinelackof wrote: post #431
breatheoften wrote: post #419

Its insane to me how large space-wise small towns in the us (Oregon in mind as I write this) are — with a huge percentage of the real estate devoted to parking lots. Even setting aside the traffic, it’s silly to walk across these towns because businesses are separated from each other by massive parking lots. The traffic is often amazingly inhumane. Many of the small towns in Oregon are formed on either side of the ma…

Even Portland and Eugene love to boast how bicycle friendly they are, but neither are really commutable by anything besides a car for most people. Which is why most cyclists are so prolific -- it's hard to be a cyclist by circumstance. Riding your bike inherently comes with crossing a dozen intersections beaming with cars that treat you like you don't belong on the road. A solution is to level the planes of separatio…

Cyclists really don't belong on the road. It's such an odd collective viewpoint that a vehicle which virtually always travels far below the speed limit should be allowed alongside vehicles that travel at the speed limit. I think this is because we conflate the benefits of cycling and the value of making our public infrastructure amenable to cycling with the opinion that cyclists should share highways with cars. It's simply not safe and no amount of "Share the road" stickers and driver education will compensate for that. Cyclists need their own infrastructure, bike lanes on the highways at a minimum. They don't belong mixed in with cars.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#467

Post by wool_gather »

towelr34dy wrote: post #460
electricslpnsld wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even Portland and Eugene love to boast how bicycle friendly they are, but neither are really commutable by anything besides a car for most people. Which is why most cyclists are so prolific -- it's hard to be a cyclist by circumstance. Riding your bike inherently comes with crossing a dozen intersections beaming with cars that treat you like you don't belong on the road. I commuted by bike for two years or so in Po…

I would argue this is more to do with Portland culture of nice than anything. I love riding, but I have been run over. No thank you. I will bike for transportation the day we implement Dutch style separated bike lanes (i.e. by an actual physical barrier, even if only a slightly raised bike lane) Other than that, I drive my mountain bike to areas where there are no cars. Edit: in the city I'm in now, we just 'created'…

> we just 'created' a bunch of bike lanes. Which means putting paint on a continuous stretch of asphalt

Yeah, this kind of thing is really disappointing, but unfortunately predictable. There's a real chicken/egg situation. Few people will bike until there's safe support for it; until lots of people are biking, all the infrastructure just takes space away from the people using cars.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#468

Post by mywittyname »

CalRobert wrote: post #421
dvdhnt wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Unfortunately, this only works for relatively recent migrants. Any documents before 1900 or so are hit-or-miss. I have a very, very unique last name (in the US) and the documents on the country of origin for my ancestors vary between Russia, Prussia, Germania, and Poland depending on who filled out the forms. Then there's the issue of misspellings.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#469

Post by jimmaswell »

elcapitan wrote: post #324
chadash wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify, there is no law that I know of prohibiting car traffic on yom kippur in Tel Aviv. However, since this is the most important holiday of the year, even many Israelis who don't celebrate other holidays will celebrate this one. I believe that virtually all businesses are closed that day, even those that don't close on other Jewish holidays (again, not illegal to operate, but customary). So in practice, f…

Thanks for the clarification! Strong moral code though, I haven't seen one non-official car that day.

Moral code or just social pressure - the discomfort of the thought of disobeying the tradition and everyone glaring at you as you drive down the road outweighs the benefits of doing so even if you don't believe in the tradition.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#470

Post by Notorious_BLT »

vxNsr wrote: post #283
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.

To use the Chicago example, The profiled city has a population of under 100,000. The Chicago-land area has nearly 10 million, if you look at just Chicago it's still nearly 3 million. The mayor mentions that you can walk from one end of the city to the other in under half an hour. In Chicago you could make a multi-day hike out of it.

In my head, Chicago seems like it could work if you subdivided it into smaller regions of no-car zones, and marked out specific high-volume streets to connect them on a grid with designated parking per-zone.
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