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

nationalgeographic.com

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

#191

Post by ak217 »

educationdata wrote: post #98
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…

No. Car is not just the "culture", car serves our need. If you are young without kids, it may not make much difference for you to ride a car, or take a bus, or a train, subway, etc. But if you have a family, it makes a huge pain without your own vehicle. If the city of future requires families to abandon their own vehicle, it is not the correct city of future. Just design a better one.

Millions of people around America get their kids around the neighborhood just fine without a car. If you continue to insist that cities be designed around your limited vision, then you should be forced to pay for the full externalities of your car-centric lifestyle. The rest of us are tired of paying so you can waste our resources.

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

#192

Post by JTbane »

RickJWagner wrote: post #11
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.

I don't believe there is a nefarious scheme in play. People who live in cities don't need cars. People who live outside cities still need cars. The manufacturers try to fill that need. The manufacturers, sellers, etc. make the economy go 'round. It will all change if/when economic forces bring it about. Directly forcing it through politics probably isn't the right approach.

>People who live outside cities still need cars. The manufacturers try to fill that need. The manufacturers, sellers, etc. make the economy go 'round.

Sometimes I wonder if it has to be that way- how much more does a light rail or bus line cost than a highway does to connect smaller towns?

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

#193

Post by educationdata »

Xylakant wrote: post #183
educationdata wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Car is not just the "culture", car serves our need. If you are young without kids, it may not make much difference for you to ride a car, or take a bus, or a train, subway, etc. But if you have a family, it makes a huge pain without your own vehicle. If the city of future requires families to abandon their own vehicle, it is not the correct city of future. Just design a better one.

> If you are young without kids, it may not make much difference for you to ride a car, or take a bus, or a train, subway, etc. We have a toddler and a large dog. We own two electric cargo bikes and get around perfectly well without owning a car. There's car/truck sharing and rental if I really need to transport something large and heavy (> 100kg). > Just design a better one. I'd very much prefer if all that parking…

Maybe you live in SF? Not every city always has good weather. Cargo bikes are useless for most cities because of weather (rain, snow, winter cold, summer hot). It's useful for fun when the weather is great, but not as a main way of transportation.

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

#194

Post by dkural »

philwelch wrote: post #160
dkural wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

It’s not entirely clear that racial animus was the primary motivating factor. Once civil rights legislation was passed to stop housing discrimination, for instance, there was also black flight, when middle-class black families also moved to the suburbs. It’s also not clear how one is supposed to reverse the effects of white flight; when middle-class whites move into a majority-nonwhite urban area, this is usually con…

My issue is the article doesn't once mention this as factor at all. I also object that one needs racial animus to have racist policies. "I've got no animus towards blacks, I just don't want to share large chunks of civic life with them" is racist. Blacks wanted to move to the suburbs due to lack of city & civic infrastructure in black neighborhoods - as the whites fled; so did polling stations, hospitals, banks, stores, and good quality drinking water. Lending policies for mortgages were explicitly racist; and many neighborhoods tried (successfully!) to prevent black people from moving in and "ruining the suburbs too!".

Also, rewinding only a couple of decades from civil rights legislation; denying blacks the vote, school entrance and outright lynchings in the hundreds qualifies as pretty strong racial animus. It's naive to argue that the same society & people "had no racial animus in mind" when choosing where and how to live.

I've always thought of gentrification as more of an economic class issue (which so often corresponds to minority status). In Boston, a lot of poor and middle class white neighborhoods get gentrified as well - nonetheless I take your wider point that gentrification is often a positive force for urban renewal; and I agree. One counter-example: Hudson Yards is the 1% being gentrified with the 0.1%, hard to argue helps the urban fabric with its non-human scale.

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

#195

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dkural wrote: post #89
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 c…

> 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.

I've never really understood this explanation of suburbanization.

Suppose you're a bunch of racist white folk wanting not to live near black folk. How do suburbs get you that any better than cities? What can you do to keep a black person from moving to your neighborhood in the suburbs that you can't do to keep them from moving to your neighborhood in the city?

It seems more like two phenomena that happened to occur at the same time rather than one causing the other.

Especially when at the same time the government had an explicit policy of encouraging people to move out of the cities, to reduce the damage that would be caused by a nuclear weapon.

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

#197

Post by isostatic »

makerofspoons wrote: post #60

If our species is to survive this century we have to get out of our cars. There is no way to sustainably build billions of electric cars- we need to consider that our existing ICE fleet needs to simply be retired and not replaced. Cars are one of the ultimate symbols of the consumption that needs to end if we are to address climate change. Between the asphalt and concrete needed to build infrastructure for them to th…

I'd love to have a shared car pool situation with an automatic driver booked via an app that takes me door to door with say 5 minutes notice for a short trip (say upto 5 miles), and half hour notice for a longer trip (say upto 50 miles), and maybe 5 hours notice for a 500 mile trip. One that's clean, reliable, has appropiate child seats.

That's not happening in the next 20 years. My country is still going down the protectionism route when it comes to the taxi industry.

The child seats is the problem though -- as an adult in a city I can easily hail an uber or whatever to get me where I want to go. With kids in tow I'm limited to mass transit, as I can't rely on getting a cab with 2 car seats that will fit. This itself limits the amount of stuff I can take and places I can go.

Perhaps if I had no need for local trips (like yesterday when we went to a canal-side pub 4 miles away for dinner) I could live with simply renting a car for the larger trips -- but to rent a car it involves a walk to the station, an hourly train into the large town, then walk to the car rental place -- all between 8AM and 6PM, then do the reverse on monday morning to drop it off.

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

#198

Post by organsnyder »

myself248 wrote: post #123

Funny how the loudest voices in these sorts of articles are always from places with temperate weather.

I commuted by bus to downtown Grand Rapids, MI for a few years without much difficulty. Acclimation to the cold and acquisition of appropriate gear made it fairly painless. My asthma makes winter biking difficult, but I know people that do it. I've been working from home for the past eight months, and I find myself missing the commute.

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

#200

Post by jniedrauer »

danielecook wrote: post #112
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…

Having recently moved to London I am a bit shocked at how poor the cycling infrastructure is. Granted, the city was never exactly planned out, but it seems to me it wouldn’t be hard to add dedicated bike paths given the fair amount of green space. Consider richmond Park as a prime location where dedicated bike-only lanes would be a great improvement. Instead you must bike along side diesel fumes on the roads that sho…

After spending a lot of time in clean mountain air, it's gotten to the point where I can taste the fumes in the air in the United States. It's noxious. I run very early in the morning before anyone starts driving to avoid it.
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