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

Post by philwelch » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 8:18 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #202

philwelch wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I recommend reading Ta-Nehisi Coates on this subject. He's done terrific work on the history of redlining, and also talks about the impact of educated, successful families moving out of historically black neighborhoods.

Post by azeotropic » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

benj111 wrote: post #125

lazyjones wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in a society dominated by cars, there are going to be people without cars that can't easily get to work. You didn't have that problem pre car, "pre car" people would walk or ride horses/bicycles for hours to work. You can still do that now, or go faster by bus. > Cars create sprawl, Growing cities create sprawl. Necessary infrastructure for large cities (yes, you need fire trucks, garbage trucks, buses) as well as…

You'll find that commuting time has stayed fairly stable, we just travel further now. Poor policies and the car create sprawl, not growth. Visit a city that developed pre car, no sprawl. New York was designed with massively wide streets, space for all the things you cite and didn't suffer from sprawl. "parking space for convenient door-to-door transport slightly increases it." Slightly? I can't think of any shop with…

Post by jjoonathan » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #228

jjoonathan wrote: post #95

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Today's environmental causes suffer from a credibility problem imposed by the mountains of failed breathless malthusian doomsday predictions from yesterday's environmental causes. I've seen the science and believe it, but the boy who cried wolf was also correct, in the end. Please don't be a credibility problem for tomorrow's environmental causes.

A few decades ago there were hoards of people breathlessly demanding that something be done about the hole in the ozone layer or else we're all doomed. Then we banned CFCs and now the ozone hole is starting to heal itself. But if we hadn't banned CFCs we would have been doomed. The ozone layer actually is really important. Now the danger is climate change and what we need is to stop burning carbon. The lesson from pa…

Post by SupremeOverlord » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 12:36 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #308

Frondo wrote: post #177

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Downvoters, wouldn't you like to know who the avowed racist is? I for one wouldn't want them near by company -- we work with a lot of clients of color, and that's a bad look.

Would you please stop it with the flamebait on divisive topics? The account was an obvious troll. If you want to help combat that kind of thing, why not flag the comment? Other users did, which (a) killed it, and then (b) brought it to our attention so we could ban it. That's how to contribute positively in a case like this. Taking HN threads further into flamewar and political rhetoric is exactly what the guidelines…

Post by ip26 » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 12:51 AM UTC

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…