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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

#321

Post by ip26 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #287
ngngngng wrote: post #119

I'm not sure these articles are good for my mental health. I live in Utah Valley, which has the worst air quality in the United States. I'm on the train right now as I type this, it takes twice as long for me to get to work this way but i'm trying to increase train usage. People here are just so invested in making their hour long commutes with their gigantic trucks. Trucks are ridiculously expensive even before you f…

Utah Valley (and Salt Lake Valley) trap pollution. There's no getting away from that. But the worst air quality in the US? After Geneva Steel closed? Worse than, say, San Bernardino, where the wind tends to trap LA's smog? I'm kind of skeptical. (Or do you have hard data, which I admit that I don't?)

It's been in the news many times. I'm not sure if they have the highest average levels or the most #1 days, but they top the chart periodically through winter.

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

#322

Post by ip26 »

ngngngng wrote: post #119

I'm not sure these articles are good for my mental health. I live in Utah Valley, which has the worst air quality in the United States. I'm on the train right now as I type this, it takes twice as long for me to get to work this way but i'm trying to increase train usage. People here are just so invested in making their hour long commutes with their gigantic trucks. Trucks are ridiculously expensive even before you f…

I am far from you but follow some of UT news and it seems like there is some appetite. It is a conservative stronghold that loves it's trucks, but people also love their children, and having the #1 worst air quality is an attention grabber. Not to mention on the bad days it is enough for parents to witness it affecting their children.

I don't know how to make it happen, and my local region has its own struggles with AQI we haven't yet solved, but it seems to me like you have reason to hope.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2019/02/27/lawmakers...

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900057070/guest-opinion-...

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

#323

Post by bbradley406 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #287
ngngngng wrote: post #119

I'm not sure these articles are good for my mental health. I live in Utah Valley, which has the worst air quality in the United States. I'm on the train right now as I type this, it takes twice as long for me to get to work this way but i'm trying to increase train usage. People here are just so invested in making their hour long commutes with their gigantic trucks. Trucks are ridiculously expensive even before you f…

Utah Valley (and Salt Lake Valley) trap pollution. There's no getting away from that. But the worst air quality in the US? After Geneva Steel closed? Worse than, say, San Bernardino, where the wind tends to trap LA's smog? I'm kind of skeptical. (Or do you have hard data, which I admit that I don't?)

It can change depending on the season and weather, but it is seriously bad and hit #1 for a day in 2017. [1]

The geography does trap the pollution, but having refineries and mining operations just north of the city doesn't help. There are also loads of 18 wheel trucks coming through, since SLC is a bit of a hub area in terms of highways.

Despite the city being pretty walk-able with decent (by US standards) transit, lots of people have at least one large 4x4 vehicle to get up into the canyons. It hurts to see since I understand the appeal of outdoors activities, but this way of approaching them will degrade and ruin the outdoors long term.

[1] https://kutv.com/news/local/salt-lake-city-has-the-worst-air...

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

#324

Post by jcims »

matthewwiese wrote: post #38
bluGill wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is about trade offs though. I moved from a 10 acre lot to a small city recently. I love that my son and I went for an hour walk to a park (we passed a different park on the way because we played in that one yesterday) and back. I love that my work is only a few minutes drive away (now that the weather is warmer I need to get my bike working). I miss other things about my rural lot though. There is no space to driv…

> There is no space to drive my tractor collection around. I am glad to see a comment like this on HN, despite the impression that everyone here is an SV-focused tech bro. Sometimes it feels good to read about somebody's tractors whilst I gaze out at the soybean field in my backyard. :)

I understand the sentiment but in my experience there are a lot more of us out there than you might think. It's probably the very tendency that makes a humble spread in the sticks appealing that also has us mostly laying low in the comments.

This was my front porch in Ohio this morning: https://i.imgur.com/B7KSFP6.jpg

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

#325

Post by Ericson2314 »

What gets me about these densification of suburban center proposals is that they don't come with racing the sprawl. If you just create more "central", well assuming some x-far-from-center contour lines distribution you might be creating more sprawl too.

We need to demolish our mistakes not just build new non-mistakes. We need fractal density so everyone gets both green space and high density very close, and reclaimed nature and super density not far away either.

Go to inwood Manhattan to feel what reclaimed natue is like.

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

#326

Post by adrianN »

ngrilly wrote: post #241
adrianN wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many families in European cities live just fine without a car. My family never had a car and it wasn't "a huge pain".

In which country and city have you been living as a family with children?

I was a child to a single mother of two in Berlin without a car.

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

#327

Post by sershe »

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.

That is demonstrably not true. All over the world, people raise families just fine without cars. As a matter of fact, I saw a truly dystopian scene of a group of children, on some school outing I assume, crossing a road at a crosswalk, all holding on to a long ribbon with two flag-waving adults (teachers?) on both end. When I was the age of these children I was walking around and crossing the streets on my own because the city I grew up didn't have such patently idiotic things as unregulated cross-walks with 30mph speed limit. But no, we'd rather risk running over children and make them walk in a chain gang, than inconvenience the metal murder/fume box people.

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

#328

Post by sershe »

asdff wrote: post #289
michaelt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In cites like Los Angeles, cars are part of a feedback loop which makes them both symptom and cause. Los Angeles is low-density partly because it spends lots of land on roads and parking lots. It needs lots of roads and parking lots because everyone drives. And everyone drives because the city is low density.

The solution is to bite the bullet and build the rails. They didn't build highways to already existing suburbs in the valley or where wildfires have been roasting for 100s of years; those things popped up because the land was empty and the highway made building possible. If you build the rails and zone the area by the rail for density, a developer looking to drop a 15 story apartment is going to want to put it by the…

The solution to bite the bullet though is economic incentive - tax driving more, eliminate parking, etc. The pain should come first; otherwise, why would anyone (in sufficient numbers) bite the bullet?

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

#329

Post by ngrilly »

adrianN wrote: post #326
ngrilly wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which country and city have you been living as a family with children?

I was a child to a single mother of two in Berlin without a car.

I asked because the ability to live without a car depends on where you live. In Berlin, which is one of the biggest european cities, it's definitely doable.

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

#330

Post by isostatic »

michaelt wrote: post #238
isostatic wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they'll move out of the cities into suburbia in their 30s, as they always do. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47529562 Over the past decade, about 550,000 more Britons left London than moved to it. This trend is not unique to London; it is seen in many big US cities, including New York, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles. ... People arrive in their 20s looking for jobs, then retreat in their 30s. Although it seems more…

People arrive in their 20s looking for jobs, then retreat in their 30s. Terraced house in London: £675,216 [1] Terraced house in Hertfordshire: £380,897 [2] The only surprising thing here is people are having to save until their 30s before buying a house. [1] https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices-in-London.html [2] https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices-in-Hertfordshire.ht...

Both are unaffordable to normal people, especially with £1500 a month rent.

But fundamentally you can't have a high density city and houses - the land value is just too high - and people don't want to bring kids up in tower blocks.

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