To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars • Hacker News Board

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#81

Post by amalcon » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

ptero wrote: post #19

mtberatwork wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US went to the other extreme and is only slowly turning around. US car manufacturers are doubling down on large trucks and SUVs and the current administration continues to thwart progress on tackling climate change and other societal concerns. I would say the US, at least on a macro level, is still on the "other extreme" path.

> US car manufacturers are doubling down on large trucks and SUVs Manufacturers are building lots of SUVs because this is what people in the US prefer to buy. If manufacturers build tons of subcompacts instead they would have to drop prices and probably sell those subcompacts at a loss. If you wanted to sell more small cars instead you should convince consumers to buy them (e.g., via end user incentives), which would…

Is this really surprising? The benefits of driving a large vehicle are all internal (comfort, safety of vehicle occupants, cargo capacity, range between fueling). The costs, however, are mostly external (road maintenance, emissions, safety of non occupants, space consumed for parking).

You'd need to substantially incentivize smaller vehicles to overcome these things, but we actually incentivize larger vehicles (through looser emissions standards).

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#82

Post by bpyne » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

rfrey wrote: post #64

bpyne wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious to see how it plays out with the 20-somethings in the US. They've been brought up on more civic-mindedness and their trend is back to urban areas for living. They'll be a better bellweather.

I’m not sure 20-somethings are more civic minded. They voted in the last election at participation rates consistent with the last 40 years for that age group. Participation rates will probably increase as they age. Unfortunately priorities tend to change as people age too.

The participation rate for the next election is where I hope to see a jump for that age group. The last presidential election hopefully scared them into understanding the importance of voting.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#83

Post by Retric » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

ptero wrote: post #19

mtberatwork wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US went to the other extreme and is only slowly turning around. US car manufacturers are doubling down on large trucks and SUVs and the current administration continues to thwart progress on tackling climate change and other societal concerns. I would say the US, at least on a macro level, is still on the "other extreme" path.

> US car manufacturers are doubling down on large trucks and SUVs Manufacturers are building lots of SUVs because this is what people in the US prefer to buy. If manufacturers build tons of subcompacts instead they would have to drop prices and probably sell those subcompacts at a loss. If you wanted to sell more small cars instead you should convince consumers to buy them (e.g., via end user incentives), which would…

SUVs are subsidized relative to cars which always causes inefficiency. People have complex preferences and cost is always going to be a significant component. Distort price and actions stop reflecting actual preferences.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#84

Post by khrbrt » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

ptero wrote: post #19

mtberatwork wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US went to the other extreme and is only slowly turning around. US car manufacturers are doubling down on large trucks and SUVs and the current administration continues to thwart progress on tackling climate change and other societal concerns. I would say the US, at least on a macro level, is still on the "other extreme" path.

> US car manufacturers are doubling down on large trucks and SUVs Manufacturers are building lots of SUVs because this is what people in the US prefer to buy. If manufacturers build tons of subcompacts instead they would have to drop prices and probably sell those subcompacts at a loss. If you wanted to sell more small cars instead you should convince consumers to buy them (e.g., via end user incentives), which would…

Advertising. People buy large SUVs because of advertising, and American car companies advertise SUVs because they turn more of a profit with larger vehicles than smaller vehicles.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#85

Post by crimsonalucard » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

Most cities don't need cars. It's already like this you don't need to go to the future.

Suburban layouts were actually the new thing that came after cities. The reason why we need cars is because of suburbia. For suburbia to function you have to live very far away from work and in very very low density neighborhoods where public transportation is virtually impossible to build. See Los Angeles.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#86

Post by dashundchen » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #68

adwww wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not happening though. My parents live in a beautiful part of the rural UK and have super-fast fibre to the premises internet, next day Amazon prime available, online food shopping from 4 or so supermarkets locally, etc. Basically everything you'd think you'd need to live away from the city, but still the area is depopulating rapidly. Younger people don't want a life of car dependancy and social isolation.

It seems to be happening in Canada. The latest official population figures are, unfortunately, from way back in 2016, however at that time the numbers showed that communities with more than 100,000 people were already losing share of population. If we can use home sales data (activity and price) as a proxy for where people are living more recently, there has been a sharp decline in Canada's cities in the last year. A…

I'm curious what statistics you are looking at.

I honestly would be shocked if rural regions were growing in Canada, and the stats you were looking at were more a story of urbanization taking over formerly exurban or rural small towns in a metro region. I guess the oil and gas regions might be an exception there.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271208/urbanization-in-c...

From my perspective, the Golden Horseshoe from Toronto to the Niagara region has been intensifying non-stop for decades and is unrecognizable from 30 years ago. Skyscrapers and condos in former low density suburbs inside the greenbelt, and townhouses and plazas in former farm communities outside it. It's now almost continuously developed down to Niagara Falls. You might have called them rural two decades ago but at this point they're solidly in the GTA.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#87

Post by ocdtrekkie » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #69

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #63

This is one of the reasons the self-driving craze in tech is so silly: We have vehicles you can commute in and not drive called public transit. Self-driving cars is desire for public transit that doesn't have your rich self sitting next to a poor person on the way to work.

Or you know people that value their time... For me to use Public Transport here would increase my commute time to work by order of magnitude, not to mention all the places I go weekly that is not on a public transit stop or would require multiple line hops and be many times more time consuming than if I just drove directly their in my own personal vehicle Public transport only works in area with High Population Densi…

There is probably a ton of room for improvement and disruptive innovation in public transit, in terms of improving speed, available endpoints, etc.

It's true public transit will never really be valuable for extremely rural areas, but we should be working to ensure that in anywhere there's a significant quantity of people, that public transit is the cheapest and most convenient way to travel. Public transit isn't going to win by banning cars, it's going to need to win by improving lives.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#88

Post by kortilla » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

benj111 wrote: post #26

lsniddy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the logic that produced the green new deal.

Could you expand? I'm not sure if you agree with the parent, or against the new deal.

The green new deal comes from a place completely detached from reality rather than anything remotely feasible.

Remember, the green new deal not only included destruction of all fossil fuel industries (aviation, non electric cars, trucks, trains, etc) but it also included provisions for people who weren’t willing to work (used to be in the FAQ).

It started as a plan to completely restructure the US into the most socialist country on the planet with an energy economy based on technology that doesn’t exist all in the next ten years.

Politics is not about foisting your vision onto everyone else, despite the current rhetoric in the US.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#89

Post by dkural » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

betandr wrote: post #71

We really do have to radically re-think our cities but the biggest issues aren't going to be practical but emotional. In London parents drive their children around in 4x4s, knowing that their vehicle causes the pollution that is affecting their own children's health. I'm not sure how you even start to get around that but to some extent you will never persuade everybody to reduce their damaging behaviour. You need to…

The US is an extreme precisely due to these social and emotional reasons. It's shocking to me how this article fails to mention even once that a lot of post WWII suburbanization was due to white flight. The article states:

"Millions of soldiers had come home from World War II to overcrowded, run-down cities; their new families needed a place to live."

"Overcrowded, run-down": who all of a sudden "overcrowded" these cities? What's a "run-down" area? We can win WWII but not fix a broken roof? The issue was not so much lack of affordability or too many people, what meant was cities / neighborhoods with more black people. Those highways were not built immediately post WWII, but later, to separate black neighborhoods from wealthier areas of the city, in the post-civil rights era.

Suburbanization accelerated not directly after WWII but with government-mandated busing of school-children. If you didn't want your daughter to go to school with black boys, you went to the suburbs.

Architects & urban planners played handmaiden to white flight, destroying the fabric of cities, and generally harming the environment in the process. Precisely due to their active participation in this cluster- they tend to whitewash the history, move the timelines a bit etc. hoping no one will notice.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#90

Post by wefarrell » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 2:17 PM UTC

bitxbit wrote: post #70

wefarrell wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the same thing when the internet was emerging but the opposite happened. The problem with your prediction is that it will also become easier to live in cities. AV's will reduce the need in cities for land allocated to parking. I can see this first hand in my neighborhood in Queens. It's becoming far easier to live without a car and population density is increasing at a rapid rate.

All valid points. I understand because I lived in NYC for most of my life but it’s become really congested in the past decade. Sure, there are still conveniences of living in Manhattan but some of that can now be experienced in smaller cities. My main argument is that it’s physically impossible to solve the extreme density problem. People still need to go to work during the day and eat around the same time, etc.

In NYC the extreme density is currently spreading out to Jersey, Williamsburg and Long Island city. high rises are going up in all of these areas at a rapid rate.

> People still need to go to work during the day and eat around the same time, etc.

Off the top of my head I can think of a few ways this problem is currently being solved:

1. Many restaurants are changing their business model to cater for entire companies.

2. Seamless and Square have enabled restaurants to operate with smaller storefronts or no storefronts at all. They prepare as much as possible in warehouses outside of manhattan and use their storefronts for the final assembly.

3. I recently signed up for a startup, Mealpal, which allows you to buy a preset number of meals per month and pick them up at any number of restaurants. No lines, no waiting, just walk into the restaurant and pick up your meal.

Startups have been addressing urban needs faster than rural and I don't see why that is likely to change anytime soon.