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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

#151

Post by GLjEI4YbnGD27LB »

manmal wrote: post #136
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…

In the place where I live (Austria, town with 30k residents), the Fußgängerzone in the center is currently dying. Shops close left and right, and migrate to the three big shopping centers. This town is a strange mix because almost everybody needs to own a car (bus system is underdeveloped) to take kids to school or shop groceries, but the town itself is not that big (a lot of places are reachable by bike). Most peopl…

Living in the Netherlands, the city center (practically no cars allowed) in 2 cities I've lived in over the past years, both have lots of shops going out of business. But I would identify this trend as people doing more online shopping, most of the major shopping centers are still in this city center, and it has parking garages near, but people are just doing less shopping in brick and mortar stores.

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

#152

Post by stewbrew »

manmal wrote: post #136
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…

In the place where I live (Austria, town with 30k residents), the Fußgängerzone in the center is currently dying. Shops close left and right, and migrate to the three big shopping centers. This town is a strange mix because almost everybody needs to own a car (bus system is underdeveloped) to take kids to school or shop groceries, but the town itself is not that big (a lot of places are reachable by bike). Most peopl…

Complain to the local politics who made this (the shopping centers at the town's outskirts) happen although it was already known what effects this would have on the town's center. This is a pretty common development in, e.g., Lower Austria where politicians in the 1990s (and in some towns even in the 2000s) thought this were a good idea. Fußgängerzones work where politicians don't ruin town centers.

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

#153

Post by stewbrew »

elliotec wrote: post #146
manmal wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the place where I live (Austria, town with 30k residents), the Fußgängerzone in the center is currently dying. Shops close left and right, and migrate to the three big shopping centers. This town is a strange mix because almost everybody needs to own a car (bus system is underdeveloped) to take kids to school or shop groceries, but the town itself is not that big (a lot of places are reachable by bike). Most peopl…

But in Vienna, it seems like the Fußgängerzonen are all over the middle of the city and have a mix of the fancy brands that would normally be in a shopping center, while also having smaller and more boutique shops.

There are also Fußgängerzonen in other districts like Mariahilf, Meidling, Favoriten etc. You're right that they are mainly for shopping but the shops were already there before the streets were turned into Fußgängerzonen. The Fußgängerzonen helped to keep the shops and thus the city alive. There are also plenty of restaurants, cafés etc.

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

#154

Post by asdff »

njarboe wrote: post #143

What I find funny is that the American mall that so many people disparage (like citylab) is a place where the streets are closed to cars. Cars are not really the problem and people should really stop focusing on this object as the reason of so many social problems that exist. The car is used by individual people and families to somewhat mitigate these large scale problems. Lots of cool main streets have cars going th…

At a given mall, quite a lot of property is devoted to surface lots which go unused from 10pm-10am, not great for a growing urban environment! The problem with cars is how inefficient they are just from the physics of them.

A given car is maybe 3000lbs. A person is maybe 150lbs. 95% of the gas you pump into your car goes to just moving around this hunk of metal wherever you go. And then you gotta have an empty 18'x9' spot available wherever you are going? How many 25lb bird scooters can you pile up in that spot? Even self-driving cars aren't going to solve the issues with wasting energy and space for the two tonnes-or-so hunk of metal that you require to deliver you door to door on demand. Try to have a horse pull you around town in a tesla, and it would die.

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

#155

Post by white-flame »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #71
thomasahle wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also massive parking structures. It's the interface between car-places and walking-places, necessary for the otherwise car-centric norm outside.

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

#156

Post by seer »

manmal wrote: post #136
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…

In the place where I live (Austria, town with 30k residents), the Fußgängerzone in the center is currently dying. Shops close left and right, and migrate to the three big shopping centers. This town is a strange mix because almost everybody needs to own a car (bus system is underdeveloped) to take kids to school or shop groceries, but the town itself is not that big (a lot of places are reachable by bike). Most peopl…

I’ve seen a similar thing happen in Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, but with a twist. When there were no malls, all the high end shops were located at the center in the pedestrian friendly zone.

Then they started building them like crazy, all the shops moved there, and the center started dying.

But something interesting happened, since it was still valuable real estate, those people didn’t go down easy - all those former shops turned into restaurants, cafes and bars. And the center became much more inviting, and markedly more “alive” than when it was in effect an outdoor mall.

So now people go to the malls to buy stuff, and go to the center to hangout, and I think everyone is happy.

Though among those restaurants new shops have started opening as you know, they go where the people are at, but the malls are still going strong.

Maybe once the online shopping thing hits Bulgaria properly the malls would close/transform, but people would still flock to the center for all the recreational places.

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

#157

Post by wingerlang »

codetrotter wrote: post #63
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…

> Fußgängerzone We have these in Norway as well. Here they are called “gågate” (“walking street”), but what I actually wanted to say was that I think it’s interesting how similar some words are. The German word for pedestrian, “fußgänger”, is very similar to what it’s called in Norwegian, which is “fotgjenger”. You’ll hear how similar they are if you know how to pronounce these words in both German and Norwegian. If…

Did you only now realize this similarity?

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

#158

Post by ezequiel-garzon »

njarboe wrote: post #143

What I find funny is that the American mall that so many people disparage (like citylab) is a place where the streets are closed to cars. Cars are not really the problem and people should really stop focusing on this object as the reason of so many social problems that exist. The car is used by individual people and families to somewhat mitigate these large scale problems. Lots of cool main streets have cars going th…

What I find funny is that the American mall that so many people disparage (like citylab) is a place where the streets are closed to cars.

First off, there are no streets in a mall. It may be a carless place, with some merits, but clearly that’s where the similarities between malls and downtown Pontevedra end. Malls arose as a natural consequence of a heavy reliance on cars, just as carless downtowns arise when there is no such reliance.

Corporations are alive and well in Spain too.

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

#159

Post by jniedrauer »

dba7dba wrote: post #109

Few years ago I visited a large apartment complex about 30 minutes south of Seoul in South Korea. The complex has Dozens of 30+ stories high apartment buildings. Assuming 30 stories high, 8 units per floor, and 25 buildings, we are talking about 6000 units. The unit I visited had 4 bedrooms. Despite such a high concentration of population, the complex itself felt like it was in the country side. The key factor was un…

A few weeks ago, I looked at a large number of cities and their surrounding suburbs using google earth in VR. It was extremely interesting to see the different styles of building cities.

Soviet bloc countries really built their infrastructure with brutal efficiency in mind. Huge populations in tall, mathematical buildings with lots of open space between them. Almost like someone copy-pasted a few buildings into the middle of the wilderness.

To me it looks like the new infrastructure in countries like South Korea or Japan is an evolution of that, although the buildings look a lot less foreboding than Soviet buildings do. In between them you still get the sense that you're out in the country. It's deceptive because once you fly up (in VR), you can see a sea of buildings going all the way to the horizon.

Compared to the population centers of American cities, which look like irregularly shaped sand dunes made out of shingles as far as the eye can see.

Suburbs in the UK are similar to the American ones, except that the houses are all very neatly aligned on a grid with less space between them and the streets are often one way streets with parking on the curb.

Suburbs in Nordic countries are made of small, taller houses. Each floor looks only big enough for 1 or 2 rooms, but the houses are 2-4 stories tall. It looks really cozy.

If you have the hardware and a few hours to kill, I strongly recommend trying this. Tokyo is just jaw dropping. It's on an unimaginable scale compared to other cities around the world.

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

#160

Post by MetallicCloud »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #123
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Times square is basically just a tourist trap and not representative of a commercial zone that serves the local residential population. Locals are only there because of the transit access.

Native NYC'er here, I absolutely go to Times Square. For starters, it's where most of the largest broadway shows are! In terms of shopping, the stores are all chains, so nothing is "unique" per se. However, getting to Times Square is super convenient because it's a transit hub.

Really? I only lived in NYC for 2.5 years, and even I avoided Times Square like the plague. The only time I ever went there was to show it to out of town friends, and even then it was begrudgingly.
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