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What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars
201–210 of 241 posts
Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars
#202Earlier 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…
Why do parents feel the need to take children to school in a small town in a very safe country? Why can't they ride a bike or walk?
Paranoia.
Good friends of mine live 1/4 mile from the elementary school. There is one semi-busy street crossing, BUT there is a pedestrian tunnel. So, no there are actually no streets to cross.
Yet, the kids are bussed to school. They can't be allowed to walk 1/4 mile with ZERO street crossings! It's completely ridiculous.
Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars
#203Earlier 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.
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.
My home town (Reston, VA - outside DC) is a good example of this. The subway is in the process of being expanded to reach Dulles Airport, with several stops in Reston. The area was designated a transit hub, with zoning changes to allow more density.
But, the developers and county officials continue to build campus-style offices surrounded by massive parking areas. The streets are wide, fast, and not pedestrian- or bicycle-friendly.
It's as if they expect to throw up some 15-20 story apartment buildings, a few office towers, and magically have a lovely "downtown".
Without changes to parking allowances (fewer spaces per unit), allowing smaller setbacks to property lines (maybe?), narrower roads to slow traffic, and other similar changes, we're going to end up with a massive, gridlocked mess.
Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the winter it is too slippery for bikes and it sometimes gets biting cold - or worse IMO: cold, wet and windy. We pay for bus for our 3 oldest kids in the winter. Also wolves are returningnin some parts of Europe and while people say wolves are so shy and afraid of humans I understand extremely well why parents don't risk their kids in an experiment to see if the predator that lives off moose actually is afraid of…
Then you know little of wolves: they would only hunt a moose in a large pack. And yes, they are very shy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YybY5sEeZUU
They're not as shy as some people argue it seems:
They've gone into people's garden and killed the dog there.
Also I recently saw recordings of one or two wolves attacking a moose with calf so the part about only attacking in packs seems to be proven wrong.
Kids are often peoples biggest investment. I understand if they play it safe.
(I also argue that we should keep the wolves. I just disagree with people who claim wolves aren't dangerous to people.)
Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the winter it is too slippery for bikes and it sometimes gets biting cold - or worse IMO: cold, wet and windy. We pay for bus for our 3 oldest kids in the winter. Also wolves are returningnin some parts of Europe and while people say wolves are so shy and afraid of humans I understand extremely well why parents don't risk their kids in an experiment to see if the predator that lives off moose actually is afraid of…
Probably way more people are dying from car accidents, yet people are starting a major hysteria about a few wolves returning. Millions of cars running through european towns at speeds high enough to kill a pedestrian, yet a wolve roaming through some far off forrest is considered more dangerous and newsworthy.
> Probably way more people are dying from car accidents, yet people are starting a major hysteria about a few wolves returning.
Hehe, agree to a certain degree.
I see this on a number of issues.
That said we have somewhat effective countermeasures against kids getting hit by cars: we lower speed limits around schools and elsewhere where children walk, and we built sidewalks and put up fences.
> a wolve roaming through some far off forrest is considered more dangerous and newsworthy.
As for why the wolves are more newsworthy that is easy to explain: the cars aren't news at all anymore. Wolves returning are news.
Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars
#206Earlier 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…
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.
Same in Eastern Germany, there were no malls prior to '89 and after that they had to do something.
Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars
#207Meanwhile, whenever the subject comes up in San Francisco, everyone trots out the excuse that "families with children need the city to be car-friendly".
(I've never met a kid who didn't love riding buses and trains.)
Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Afrikaans - spoken in ZA (south africa) - that is pretty much the actual word :) "voetganger" "voet" - foot/feet "ganger" - someone who moves along using the former noun The Latin Root is what connects many European languages.
English "foot" (and the equivalent Germanic words) are cognate with the Latin word "pes" (= foot), but do not descend from it. It's not a Latin root.
Not an etymologist, but I think they still have a common ancestor (proto Indo-European?). Lots of words in Latin with p have an equivalent with f in the Germanic languages:
Pater - father
Pes - foot
Primus - first
Note the English word is not necessarily the closest to the Latin one.
P and f are also considered the same sound in a few word distance metrics such as Soundex for the very same reason.
Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aka, the superwealthy.
The situation is reversed in the USA. In the US, the wealthy and middle class live in suburbs. The poor live in the "inner city" which essentially is a euphemism for ghetto.
That situation reversed again in the USA about twenty years ago.
The typical American situation today in 2018, is the poor live in inner-ring "old" suburbs, or the edge of the inner city. The middle class live in outer-ring "new" suburbs. The wealthy live in the heart of city, or in any part of the city dense enough to feel urban-ish (any 'gentrified' neighborhood).
Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars
#210I 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…
Heck, I've been allowed to get a driver's license for over a decade in the Netherlands, but neither I nor my partner has one. Granted, most of my friends to have one, but almost none of them have a car. It helps that we live in a large city, and one that actively discourages driving and encourages public transport and cycling (even by Dutch standards), but not only is it not necessary to drive, it's often the worst t…
Fellow Dutch person, mid thirties and no driver's license here either. With the exception of moving between apartments I have never really felt like I missed it