Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#51

Post by maxsilver » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 11:25 PM UTC

lacampbell wrote: post #46

maxsilver wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how it is in the USA too, for about the past 20ish years now. Wealthy people have largely eliminated poor/middle class people out of the core urban areas, and moved them mostly to the suburbs/exurbs. Then, wealthy people tear down the functional public transportation between the urban city and the rest of the metro (mostly roads and freeways), and replace them with pretty but function-less "public tra…

Then, wealthy people tear down the functional public transportation between the urban city and the rest of the metro (mostly roads and freeways), and replace them with pretty but function-less "public transit" (mostly buses in the midwest). I don't understand... you are saying they replace roads and freeways and replace them with buses? That's like replacing a glass with water. It makes no sense.

Yes. This is done either for public use (tearing out a lane of public travel, and replacing it with a lane for buses only) or privatizing the street altogether (tearing out a lane, and replacing it with front yards, or restaurant seating, or whatever).

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#52

Post by benrbray » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 11:27 PM UTC

Not just Europe! Tokyo, for example, is a remarkably pedestrian and bicycle-friendly city, despite also supporting quite heavy traffic in some areas. And of course, the extensive train network completely eliminates the need for a car in daily life.

If you pick a random place on the map (like [1]), you'll see that the high-speed traffic is very well-separated from residential areas, with infrequent intersections. There is also little incentive to take a "shortcut" through residential areas since neighborhood roads are so narrow. The result is that neighborhood are safe and quiet enough that parents feel safe letting their small children walk along the road. I even see wildlife!

See also [2] about mixed-use zoning in Japan.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@35.6405724,139.622306,14.42z

[2] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#53

Post by Barrin92 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 11:27 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #24

ArnoVW wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is pushback against car-impacting measures in Europe too, make no mistake. The yellow jackets in France started as a protest against increase in tax on petrol. The previous president in France, Hollande, had to roll back a toll system. It took Paris 2 years of legal battles to close the roads along the Seine. The major difference, compared witg the US, is that at least in an urban setting, in Europe you can ima…

I don't know how it is in the USA but in France (and I suspect most old European cities) the richer people who can afford to live in the city center are generally in favor of removing cars because they either don't have a car or can afford to pay for a private parking spot while people who live in the suburbs and take their cars to work every day have to suffer the consequences. So you end up with this "class warfare…

>So you end up with this "class warfare" type situation.

This is a weird framing because the very poorest segments of society in Europe also tend to live in urban areas and don't even own a car and rely on public transport, so it's more of a class sandwich.

The very car reliant demographic seems to be what in the United States is called the 'dream hoarder' class, which is to say the largely socio-economic isolated middle class that fled to the suburbs. The same is true for the yellow vests in France. The people participating where generally not poor, which was very obvious when one looked at the demographic makeup of the group, notably, immigrants and people of color were largely absent.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#54

Post by icanhasjonas » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 11:38 PM UTC

ArnoVW wrote: post #11

tmh79 wrote: post #3

Its amazing to me how cheap these changes are, and how much people love them after they are implemented. You go to a neighborhood meeting in the US and all you hear about is "loss of parking", "traffic", but when you remove the cars, everyone loves it.

There is pushback against car-impacting measures in Europe too, make no mistake. The yellow jackets in France started as a protest against increase in tax on petrol. The previous president in France, Hollande, had to roll back a toll system. It took Paris 2 years of legal battles to close the roads along the Seine. The major difference, compared witg the US, is that at least in an urban setting, in Europe you can ima…

I live in Chicago, and I sold my tesla and my lamborghini and replaced them with subway, a boosted board and a divvy membership. I’ve never been happier. For road trips I still pull out the lil porsche, but that rarely happens any more.

With home delivery of pretty much everything I need, I rely on Wholefoods and Peapod for what I used to have my car for. 5 Years ago that wasn’t an option.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#55

Post by panzagl » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 11:49 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #50

A thought in the back of my mind is fear of government oppression in a world without prevalent cars. If you have a car you can travel hundreds of miles with few limitations and it's particularly hard to quash this even in an oppressive state. If you only have your feet and public transit you are very limited to distance and location and tracking movements is an easy feature of the system. Things going wrong? The gove…

Yeah, everyone on this site seems really eager to move to Mega-City One.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#56

Post by pessimizer » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 11:49 PM UTC

asteli wrote: post #21

opportune wrote: post #9

It's going to be tough doing this in a lot of US cities, especially those which had most of their growth after WW2. So much was built with the assumption that all transportation would be via car (or bus as an afterthought, sometimes). You can probably do it in an old downtown area but good luck trying it in suburbia

The US is seeing a large move back toward cities. It makes a lot of sense -- it's where the capital, culture, resources are concentrated. I don't think we'll see a car-less suburbia in the foreseeable future, but we can certainly build and modify our cities to be walk/bike/transit-first going forward. There seems to be this ambient feeling that everything is as it will be, ah well, but it took decades of (bad) city p…

> The US is seeing a large move back toward cities.

Is it really, or are you using "US" to mean white middle class? I googled and can't find a reference for this - do you have one?

Edit: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.GROW?locations=U...

As far as I can tell from this graph, urban population growth in the US was lower in 2018 than it's ever been.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#57

Post by mc32 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 11:50 PM UTC

In many ways developing nations can and do have the option to skip auto-based transit and go directly into mass transit if only because many up and coming consumers don’t have the capital to invest into a depreciating asset.

India, Indonesia, much of LatAm, including Mexico, most of Africa, etc. They could make autos cost prohibitive (in many places they in essence are) and invest heavily in mass transit. Skip roadways and other infra for personal vehicles.

China is in the cusp. They could simply decide to ban cars nationwide after a vigorous campaign promoting transit values.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#58

Post by Scoundreller » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 11:53 PM UTC

taffer wrote: post #47

Scoundreller wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the narrowness of the streets: they're also short and not on a grid. They're not designed for throughput, which really amplifies the benefits of a subway/metro vs. buses/trams.

> It's not just the narrowness of the streets: they're also short and not on a grid. The US suburbs with their hierarchical residential < collector < highway system were designed for cars, however most networks in the US city centers were designed before the invention of the car.

I feel like it has more to do with degree of urban planning.

Even before the car, a horse and buggy can get through a city faster arranged in a grid withoug having to turn a lot.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#59

Post by northwest65 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 11:55 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #50

A thought in the back of my mind is fear of government oppression in a world without prevalent cars. If you have a car you can travel hundreds of miles with few limitations and it's particularly hard to quash this even in an oppressive state. If you only have your feet and public transit you are very limited to distance and location and tracking movements is an easy feature of the system. Things going wrong? The gove…

Not even necessarily without cars... imagine if you could sell the populous on a car with limited range that took ages to fill back up. If they were gullible enough, you could probably even sell it at a premium. What a wonderful stepping stone to the post freedom era.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#60

Post by softwaredoug » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 11:59 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #10

It's a lot easier for Europe to go carless than the USA. They have better intra-city public transit for one. Also, most (all?) of their major cities laid out their grids before the invention of the car. In the USA, even older cities had all but their city centers designed around cars, and if you look at the top 10 cities, 7 of the 10 saw >90% of their road construction after the invention of the car. That being said,…

Unfortunately “new cities” develop in places where everyone is used to driving, so it takes a lot to overcome a car centric culture.

I live in a college town in a rural area. The transition to public transportation happens when parking becomes expensive or impractical (such as at the university) so people park and ride on a bus.

But that still requires cars. Frankly cars have value that’s hard to replace when there’s a disperse population. Which maybe is the real problem in the US: there’s a culture around “I want my own land”. It pervades even in progressive circles...