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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

#471

Post by Keyframe »

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.

Of course, that's why I've mentioned California explicitly. Mentioned Texas is similar, and is also notable for my only time when I saw a car tire explode due to the heat.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#472

Post by darkstar999 »

dmix wrote: post #290
pouetpouet wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of the problem with cars is a geometric one, they take up too much space. They give rise to sprawl and thus increase the demand for cars in a vicious cycle. Them being electric or self driving will not solve that.

Still, noise is a major factor. Just take the mayor's comments from the article and the opening sentence: > In Pontevedra, the usual soundtrack of a Spanish city has been replaced by the tweeting of birds and the chatter of humans > “Listen,” says the mayor, opening the windows of his office. From the street below rises the sound of human voices. Noise is the #1 problem with cars. Walkability and space issues via par…

A lot of the sound of cars are them moving over the road, not the engine noise. Electric wouldn't help.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#473

Post by autokad »

corndoge wrote: post #466
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…

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…

definitely agree. in fact, one of the biggest dangers of accidents is difference in speed on the roads. Its my understanding that this is one of the primary reasons for a speed limit (note if you drive too slow you also get a ticket), which is to limit the variance of speed.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#474

Post by rootusrootus »

randcraw wrote: post #374
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…

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…

Heh, enclose the pedestrian piazza to minimize exposure to the weather, thereby creating what we usually call a 'shopping mall.' Ah the irony that would be.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#475

Post by kyleblarson »

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…

"But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society." I live in a remote mountain town in the North Cascades mountains and am approximately 80 miles from the closest stoplight. Obviously we rely on cars and trucks. It is wonderful place, and an additional benefit is that sanctimonious city dwellers who make comments like this are nowhere to be found.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#476

Post by 7dare »

jimmaswell wrote: post #464
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.

It's about reclaiming the space -- playing near a road is noisy, smelly and dangerous for kids.

"Outside" has become synonymous with car traffic, which is why children playing on the road feels so refreshing

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#477

Post by honkycat »

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…

It's the same everywhere, I can vouch for rural Illinois.

Check out strongtowns.org, a non-profit that explores this EXACT phenomena and how it happened.

Basically, infrastructure == progress to a LOT of poorly informed communities who don't bother factoring in maintenance costs or look at the actual economics of building huge roads through their main street.

Throw in a dash of pork-barrel spending and lobbying to secure funding to build more roads for the hell of it and you have the US's current mad-max roads-to-fucking-nowhere infrastructure nightmare. It was all a big experiment where everyone but the guys getting paid to build the roads lost.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#478

Post by bogomipz »

amyjess wrote: post #366
InitialLastName wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazingly, non white people feel this way too... Part of the reason the trend is called "white flight" is that for a long time and in many places non-white people were prevented by bank, municipal, real estate office and HOA policy from purchasing houses or even getting mortgages in the suburbs. Calling it white flight isn't always an accusation of racism against the people who were fleeing, more against the people…

That's not what "white flight" refers to. While the 1940s-1950s move to the suburbs consisted almost entirely of white people due to systematic racial discrimination preventing POC from moving, that is not "white flight". The phrase "white flight" refers to a 1970s phenomenon where white people repeatedly moved from one suburb to another (often in circular patterns) in order to avoid POC after desegregation and civil…

No, the OP is actually correct. The origin of the term "white flight" was a phenomenon that that followed the "great migration" of people from the rural south during the war and immediate post war years in the US.[1][2]

>"The phrase "white flight" refers to a 1970s phenomenon ..."

No, the 1970s may have seen a recirculation of the original phrase but it is commonly understood that "white flight" refers to phenomenon around the war years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

[2] https://priceonomics.com/the-great-migration-the-african-ame...

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#479

Post by rootusrootus »

timc3 wrote: post #367
chomp wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but I get 6+ weeks paid time off, plus 6 weeks paternity leave, and triple the pay of a comparable position in the EU, at the cost of worse healthcare. At this point in my life I'm mostly healthy, so the risk of staying in the US outweighs the benefits of moving to the EU.

6 weeks paternity is not very much. 6 months is better but we get 480 days in Sweden. Our children don’t need metal detectors or security fences at school, it’s a given that you take time off if your kids are sick and that the state finances it. University education is affordable for everyone. If you are raising kids 3x the pay sounds awesome until you factor everything in, then to me it doesn’t sound enough.

You really think metal detectors and security fences are a common thing at schools in the U.S.? Maybe in some really sketchy areas of inner cities, I guess
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