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What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

citylab.com

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Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#71

Post by TulliusCicero »

thomasahle wrote: post #70
ashton314 wrote: post #55

I lived in Germany for two years without a car. The public transportation there was amazing—I learned to appreciate how little I needed a car, provided the infrastructure was good enough/I had a bike. In many cities there's a "Fußgängerzone": pedestrian-only areas; these were mostly found in the city center where the streets and shops are too dense to allow much traffic. I remember specifically in Frankfurt am Main a…

This was tried some places in the US in the part. Unfortunately most times they failed. Unable to attract enough people, they felt even less alive than the streets and entered a cycle a of death. However there are some signs of a rebirth: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275887405_American_...

Right, you can't just shut down an area to cars and call it a day, if the overall area is still designed around cars.

To really make it work, the area has to be accessible to walking (and public transport). Which usually means higher population densities than most US cities -- even major cities -- have, and better public transit.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#72

Post by darkerside »

thomasahle wrote: post #70
ashton314 wrote: post #55

I lived in Germany for two years without a car. The public transportation there was amazing—I learned to appreciate how little I needed a car, provided the infrastructure was good enough/I had a bike. In many cities there's a "Fußgängerzone": pedestrian-only areas; these were mostly found in the city center where the streets and shops are too dense to allow much traffic. I remember specifically in Frankfurt am Main a…

This was tried some places in the US in the part. Unfortunately most times they failed. Unable to attract enough people, they felt even less alive than the streets and entered a cycle a of death. However there are some signs of a rebirth: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275887405_American_...

I haven't been to Times Square in a while, but I have to assume that's a good example of a busy pedestrian zone in America.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#73

Post by TulliusCicero »

robertAngst wrote: post #49
baxtr wrote: post #28

I don’t get why cities are built around cars. As much as I love to jump into my car right outside my house, I’d love it even more when there was no car sound in the streets and children could safely walk everywhere. In densely populated cities cars should be banned outside of major roads

This was brought up in Adam Ruins Everything, and his Automotive episode was so misleading that I don't trust anything he says. >I don’t get why cities are built around cars. Sure there is a fantasy that we could have cities that don't require roads. However our modern 5,000,000 population Metro areas wouldnt exist. Instead housing prices would skyrocket, and the lowest income people would be forced to live in rural…

How it is a fantasy when many cities around the world already do this to varying extents? Did the definition of the word 'fantasy' change while I wasn't looking?

Yes, US cities wouldn't be able to change to this overnight, but over the course of years and decades it's definitely possible.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#74

Post by whatshisface »

Touche wrote: post #69
whatshisface wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a city around cars means building it around people who live far away. The people who live out in the suburbs and commute in get a lot more out of the roads than the people who are a block away from every place they need to go.

Aka, the superwealthy.

I don't see how living in the suburbs makes you super-wealthy. In most American cities that I know of, the very poor live in the city, the middle class lives in the suburbs, and the very rich live in top-floor penthouses and wherever else they want. Roads, cars and long commutes are very much a middle-class thing, because the poor can't afford all the driving and the rich can buy a great house in the middle of the city where it would be the most expensive.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#75

Post by robertAngst »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #73
robertAngst wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was brought up in Adam Ruins Everything, and his Automotive episode was so misleading that I don't trust anything he says. >I don’t get why cities are built around cars. Sure there is a fantasy that we could have cities that don't require roads. However our modern 5,000,000 population Metro areas wouldnt exist. Instead housing prices would skyrocket, and the lowest income people would be forced to live in rural…

How it is a fantasy when many cities around the world already do this to varying extents? Did the definition of the word 'fantasy' change while I wasn't looking? Yes, US cities wouldn't be able to change to this overnight, but over the course of years and decades it's definitely possible.

Post a city please.

It would be helpful to see real world executions.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#76

Post by TulliusCicero »

justtopost wrote: post #59
Qwertystop wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large reason kids play Fortnite is because it provides a space to socialize - it's a lot harder for kids to get anywhere without a parent driving, these days, and the parents are a lot less likely to leave the kids unattended, which tends to put a damper on things. Even malls often try to discourage crowds of teens, if you can even get there without a drive.

If you think fortnite is healthy socializing, i cant argue. I do not agree in the slightest.

That's very obviously not what they were saying. You sound like you're stuck on a point you want to make about "damn kids playing Fortnite" and not bothering to listen.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#77

Post by TulliusCicero »

tudelo wrote: post #9
krylon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany, we have "Verkehrsberuhigte Zonen"[0] (Wikipedia says the english term is "living street"), where the speed limit is very low, and drivers are expected to look out for playing children. It works relatively well, at least in residential areas. Usually such streets are built in such a way you cannot go very fast any way. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsberuhigter_Bereich / https://en.wikipedia.org/…

6 mph... yeah. About that. People in the US don't really go the speed limit even in a 25mph zone so I don't know how well that will work. The only time I see people generally going the speed limit is in areas with speed tracking cameras.

> People in the US don't really go the speed limit even in a 25mph zone so I don't know how well that will work.

If you just change the signs, obviously it would fail miserably. You need to change the actual design of the street to match the ideal. There are lots of ways to do this, just google "road diet".

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#78

Post by stefan_ »

alistairSH wrote: post #5
krylon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany, we have "Verkehrsberuhigte Zonen"[0] (Wikipedia says the english term is "living street"), where the speed limit is very low, and drivers are expected to look out for playing children. It works relatively well, at least in residential areas. Usually such streets are built in such a way you cannot go very fast any way. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsberuhigter_Bereich / https://en.wikipedia.org/…

The US doesn’t have anything similar, at least not normally. Roads are almost always wider than needed, I assume because it feels safer, but really just makes people drive faster. Any redesign that deprioritizes cars in any way (even if it just appears to do so) is ridiculed and fought against.

In a lot of cases, US roads are wider than needed because the fire department wants to continue riding the 30s style fire engines you know from the kids books to their missions, 99.9% of which do not involve fire. And the tradeoff is that a lot more people die from vehicular crashes than ever would to fires.

It's stupidity at work, and government committees are the environment that fosters it.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#79

Post by TulliusCicero »

krylon wrote: post #4
closeparen wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the kids wanted to, letting them play in the street would be unthinkable to contemporary parents. Trusting drivers to pay attention would be foolish.

In Germany, we have "Verkehrsberuhigte Zonen"[0] (Wikipedia says the english term is "living street"), where the speed limit is very low, and drivers are expected to look out for playing children. It works relatively well, at least in residential areas. Usually such streets are built in such a way you cannot go very fast any way. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsberuhigter_Bereich / https://en.wikipedia.org/…

As an American living in Munich now: even regular neighborhood streets are far friendlier to walking and biking (and thus children) in Germany compared to America. They're much narrower, lower speed limits, more nearby cut-throughs and trails and protected bike lanes.

Your average US street prioritizes cars to the exclusion of anything else. Walking is pointless, it feels terrible and nothing is within walking distance except maybe a neighborhood park or elementary school. Biking is uncomfortable and unsafe, especially for kids with dubious levels of focus/traffic awareness; the city will slap a strip of paint on the ground and brag about how bike-friendly it is. It'd be funny if it weren't so sad.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#80

Post by maccard »

gnulinux wrote: post #18
alistairSH wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US doesn’t have anything similar, at least not normally. Roads are almost always wider than needed, I assume because it feels safer, but really just makes people drive faster. Any redesign that deprioritizes cars in any way (even if it just appears to do so) is ridiculed and fought against.

> Roads are almost always wider than needed Wait until you see Boston. I live in this street in Cambridge, its not quite wide enough for buses so occasionally they cross the lane of the opposite direction, especially if some asshole parked a little off. If this wasn't unsafe enough, there is also an elementary school near this street! In general. Boston streets are very narrow and it makes it hard to drive since (1)…

> Wait until you see Boston. I live in this street in Cambridge, its not quite wide enough for buses so occasionally they cross the lane of the opposite direction, especially if some asshole parked a little off

Have you been to a European city? This is the norm in any city I've driven in. Meanwhile, driving in the US, even in a city normally involved roads which are wide enough for multiple Lanes of traffic each way. It's perfectly safe, it just required drivers to pay attention.

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