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Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

citylab.com

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Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#81

Post by throwawaysea »

anigbrowl wrote: post #48

San Francisco and Oakland have implemented a 'slow streets' initiative, gradually closing off some streets to through traffic (residential/emergency vehicles only) to allow more room for exercise. Predictably people have begun to deploy street furniture of their own (flower planters and so on) to make it more permanent. Nobody wants all the traffic and associated pollution back. Hard to predict how this will pan out…

That’s obnoxious. Cars and vehicles are necessary for many people and many purposes and cities should not use this crisis as a Trojan horse to force changes hastily. Deploying furniture to make it permanent sounds like the doing of a renegade cycle club and not everyday people, however.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#82

Post by DoreenMichele »

throwawaysea wrote: post #81
anigbrowl wrote: post #48

San Francisco and Oakland have implemented a 'slow streets' initiative, gradually closing off some streets to through traffic (residential/emergency vehicles only) to allow more room for exercise. Predictably people have begun to deploy street furniture of their own (flower planters and so on) to make it more permanent. Nobody wants all the traffic and associated pollution back. Hard to predict how this will pan out…

That’s obnoxious. Cars and vehicles are necessary for many people and many purposes and cities should not use this crisis as a Trojan horse to force changes hastily. Deploying furniture to make it permanent sounds like the doing of a renegade cycle club and not everyday people, however.

That street runs both ways. Car culture is already amazingly pushy and obnoxious in the degree to which it makes life difficult for pedestrians, cyclists, etc.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#83

Post by throwawaysea »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #82
throwawaysea wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s obnoxious. Cars and vehicles are necessary for many people and many purposes and cities should not use this crisis as a Trojan horse to force changes hastily. Deploying furniture to make it permanent sounds like the doing of a renegade cycle club and not everyday people, however.

That street runs both ways. Car culture is already amazingly pushy and obnoxious in the degree to which it makes life difficult for pedestrians, cyclists, etc.

I find this type of anti car narrative to be disingenuous, because it doesn’t pass a sanity check of the common sense reality around us.

Pedestrians are not impeded in getting around as long as sidewalks or enough roadside space is available. And cyclists are an exceedingly small minority in most places compared to car drivers. That’s because cars are the fastest and most convenient way to travel from point a to point b. They are faster than bicycles, lack the wait time of public transit, are protected from the elements, and let you move goods and family around. Almost nobody who has a family would want to lug their children around in bicycles - spare me the cherry picked example of Amsterdam.

As for which culture is pushy and obnoxious: the roads were funded by taxpayers’ money for the purpose of vehicular traffic. Commandeering it for a thin minority with the luxury of time to burn is pushy and obnoxious. Not the other way.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#84

Post by dzhiurgis »

CydeWeys wrote: post #33
dzhiurgis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not have both!? Surely you can have city centres (especially old towns) without cars and people living in suburbs, with special needs or whatever to own a car. I'd love to drive to a city centre and then have a walk without the traffic noise! I'd hate taking 90 minutes of bus instead of 20 minute drive.

> I'd love to drive to a city centre and then have a walk without the traffic noise There's a huge inherent contradiction here though: You are creating the very problem you want to escape from for everyone along your path of travel. land tends to be quite expensive in the city center, and parking is not a good use of it. Are you willing to spend $50 to park your car there to drive to the city center?

Kinda agree but thats a model that works for many places that switched to car free centre. In many cases parking lots already exist in outskirts of the centre.

Completely car free city is a pipe dream. Diversity is good.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#85

Post by DoreenMichele »

throwawaysea wrote: post #83
DoreenMichele wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That street runs both ways. Car culture is already amazingly pushy and obnoxious in the degree to which it makes life difficult for pedestrians, cyclists, etc.

I find this type of anti car narrative to be disingenuous, because it doesn’t pass a sanity check of the common sense reality around us. Pedestrians are not impeded in getting around as long as sidewalks or enough roadside space is available. And cyclists are an exceedingly small minority in most places compared to car drivers. That’s because cars are the fastest and most convenient way to travel from point a to poin…

First, there is a lot of development that falls under what I call "Fuck you pedestrian" development. It's not uncommon for intersections in big cities to require a pedestrian to cross all three ways to get to the other side or walk a block to cross at all. I've been to strip malls where fencing forced pedestrians to walk the long way around, following the same route and going through the same entrance as a car, instead of providing a small gap in the fence to save them many steps.

Second, streets that prioritize cars are generally wider and push development farther apart. This makes errands on foot longer than they have to be.

Third, I've lived without a car for more than a decade. Cars are faster on the open road over long distances. They aren't necessarily faster for running errands in town, assuming you can shop reasonably close to home. I have many times experienced this.

I leave on foot and someone else goes in their car and we get there about the same time because they have to stop at traffic lights, etc.

Fourth, Amsterdam isn't "cherry picked." It was intentionally designed to be bicycle friendly by people who chose to make that a priority, which is why it is. The US has chosen other design priorities. Unsurprisingly, we've gotten different results.

I'm not being disingenuous. I've lived without a car for more than a decade and I wanted to be an urban planner at one time, so I've read plenty of stuff pertinent to the subject.

People who love cars in the US saying that car culture is the norm and is proper and the right thing and other people need to quit their whining is not unlike white Americans acting like people of color are just whiny crybabies and racism isn't real.

The fact that you like cars and car culture works for you doesn't on the face of it prove that other people with other lifestyles don't find it amazingly inconvenient and obnoxiously so. It's just usually not worth saying because most people don't want to hear it and won't really listen. They will just double down on their existing prejudice, which is, itself, an obnoxious thing to deal with.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#86

Post by covidSurvivor19 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #68

The current city doesn't work anyway. A lot of our development patterns were born of seeds planted in the 1950s during an era when the nuclear family -- with a male breadwinner, female homemaker and 2.5 kids -- was the assumed standard basic "economic unit" and one male breadwinner provided adequate money, healthcare benefits, etc for multiple other people. Suburbs grew out of the idea of a separation of the public a…

Don't know why you are downvoted, your ideas are very good and insightful.

Thanks for bringing up the idea of the separation of public and private spheres, it was something I couldn't articulate for a long time as to why somehow the suburbs always felt better and healthier for me. I still don't understand my peers obsession with living in downtowns (you can always drive downtown if you want to go there).

I do find issue with your need to re-envision our social fabric. This stream of thought is very old, beginning with Plato, the gnostics of early Christianity, the enlightenment and going through some pretty unsavory moments of the past two centuries. Underlying the tension this kind of ideas always have is the nature vs nurture debate; and certain disatisfaction/disapproval of human nature. The way society evolves is much more a consequence of how human nature is realized and expressed in modernity. I would say as I grow older that I've come to realize that accepting our humanity rather than trying to change it (speaking of certain artificious ways in which we try to "correct" our nature), would save the world a lot of pain.

When you mention the example of both parents working, though it is as much a consequence of both parents in many families working (leading to higher income, which means families where only one works get squeezed), as it is of women seeking to work and be more independent than they previously were. Even then, many women I've met, still have this natural longing for living in this nuclear family.

I do see that further increases in population density will only aggravate this situation. As the economy becomes increasingly centralized in cities, people need to work there to get a good income ---> however rents and prices just keep rising benefiting the people who already have significant assets in the city. If families were willing to forgo some degree of comfort/convenience/modernity, maybe a return to rural living could restore some of this fabric. However such a reversal in urbanification, seems unlikely given the current materialistic obsession practically everyone lives in. For a long time now, possibly earlier than the industrial revolution, the main focus of individuals is not who they are, but what do they have. To this last bit in some perspective, what would people think of Socrates if his death happened today, someone willing to die for his convictions? To a very big percent of people (and I myself recognize the bias to think this way. Something of how I was raised in this world?) it would seem meaningless, why couldn't he just compromise and keep on living? What was important for him was in some sense his soul/beliefs, for us it seems to have a comfortable life. C'est la vie moderne

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#87

Post by petre »

hk__2 wrote: post #19
patrickaljord wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better in what way? I've in Paris for decades, people are jammed together all the time. Horrible conditions during a pandemic. Let's face it, cars are better in this case. Biking in Paris where it rains all the time and gets really cold, good luck with that (I'm a biker myself and use it all the time, just not feeling good about this knowing Parisians).

> Biking in Paris where it rains all the time and gets really cold, good luck with that (I'm a biker myself and use it all the time, just not feeling good about this knowing Parisians). Is it really worse than other big cities? Does it have a proven impact on bike usage? As some anecdata, it rains twice more in New York than in Paris 1,200mm vs. 600mm/year) and on more days (121 vs. 111/yr). Amsterdam, the well known…

Parisians using scooters (gas powered) seem not to be bothered by rain or cold that much. Otherwise scooter usage wouldn't be so high. Not as high as Naples though.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#88

Post by DoreenMichele »

covidSurvivor19 wrote: post #86
DoreenMichele wrote: post #68

The current city doesn't work anyway. A lot of our development patterns were born of seeds planted in the 1950s during an era when the nuclear family -- with a male breadwinner, female homemaker and 2.5 kids -- was the assumed standard basic "economic unit" and one male breadwinner provided adequate money, healthcare benefits, etc for multiple other people. Suburbs grew out of the idea of a separation of the public a…

Don't know why you are downvoted, your ideas are very good and insightful. Thanks for bringing up the idea of the separation of public and private spheres, it was something I couldn't articulate for a long time as to why somehow the suburbs always felt better and healthier for me. I still don't understand my peers obsession with living in downtowns (you can always drive downtown if you want to go there). I do find is…

I do find issue with your need to re-envision our social fabric.

My feeling is that there is a failure to communicate somewhere here. At the risk of just digging my grave deeper, if only because I'm horrendously short of sleep, let me try a second time to explain what I mean.

Our demographics have simply changed a great deal. It's not unlike saying "We can't weave what you want us to weave. We don't have the right material for it. That's why attempts to recreate the fabric you love have big holes in it."

When I was growing up, there were lots of kids out and about to play with in my neighborhood because most families had more than one child. You mostly don't see that anymore. The suburbs are ghost towns, with no children playing in the streets. Now, one child is quite common and parents have no choice but to join clubs or similar to intentionally create social connections for their child when that would have happened organically a few decades ago.

I was a homemaker for many years. I'm not against the nuclear family. It's just reality that our demographics have diversified, yet our architecture hasn't kept up and it's creating problems.

What I'm saying is the single family detached house was designed for a certain type of lifestyle and it's a lifestyle that relatively few people can arrange anymore. It's a cog in a machine and it no longer works for current demographic realities and we aren't changing it out for something that does work.

I'm sorry that I don't know how to say that more clearly. These are not really points I see made very often, so I'm not aware of well-developed language and standard protocols or mental models for conveying what I'm trying to say.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#89

Post by petre »

stereo wrote: post #25
patrickaljord wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amsterdam is flat, not the case for Paris.

Paris is a lot flatter than Aarhus, which has much higher bicycle usage. And if you need to go to Montmartre, any Decathlon in Paris sells perfectly decent e-bikes for a few hundred Euros. It's infrastructure, not culture or hills or weather.

Yup, it is infrastructure. All those quaint cubic rock paved hilly streets in Montmartre with obstacles tobprevwnt cars parking and and cars parked on the side are a cycling hazard, especially when it rains.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#90

Post by gorgoiler »

A bunch of climate change protesters shut down a major city interchange during the last half term. Three main routes were closed for a whole week.

It was wonderful — who knows if there’s any unbiased truth to it but it certainly felt like there was a huge reduction in stress cycling around. Even where it’s perfectly safe to interact with cars — bike and pedestrian route in the park quickly crossing a road into another park on the other side — it was just such a relief not to have to eye roll at the traffic jumping the lights as they turn red or be glared at by angry van drivers who had to stop for the hippy on his push bike!

It feels a bit like that now. Even more so really with the grater number of cyclists I see at all different times of the day (I’m out on the bike more than most, doing PPE deliveries.)

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