141–150 of 370 posts
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But... talking about the rural areas is enough to destroy the "if you build walkable areas, folks will live there." Right?
People wanted to live in rural areas before the car existed, I'm pretty sure.
I like my car and I like driving. That said, I don't like driving _everywhere_. When I moved to university, it was incredibly freeing to just be able to walk somewhere I wanted to go rather than getting in my car and driving miles to get anywhere. I grew up in a suburb in Texas so walking anywhere except _maybe_ a friend's house was entirely out of the question. I visited Portland recently and it was lovely to be abl…
You like pollution? You like polluting waterways with micro plastics from your tires? You don't care about the 40k killed every year in the USA? You don't care about the destruction of countryside with roads???
Someone can say “I like driving” without us assuming that they’re totally ignorant of the negative externalities.
I can say “I like ice cream” without you having to say “you like saturated fat??? you like increasing your risk of diabetes????”
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I think it's hard to find because those two preferences are in direct, irresolvable conflict.
It sounds like the Netherlands has it figure out? Split out streets and roads. Roads are for driving fast, and streets are for destinations, slow driving, and walking.
I think all these decisions are why the Netherlands are so lovely and most of America is seemingly highways, strip malls, and suburbs.
One of the most popular Dutch vacations is biking around the country and camping instead of staying at hotels. It’s quite far from American car culture in that regard.
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Amsterdam has big parking lots outside the city center. If you park there you get a free transit pass into the city I believe. Makes a lot of sense really
Montreal is similar. Parking downtown: horrible. Parking out in the 'burbs and then riding the metro into town? easy, and lovely. For a lot of things, anyway.
It’s a pretty good solution for medium-sized cities, but it breaks down as population increases. Toronto has largely stopped building these garages because they’ve run out of room for them after immense population and ridership growth.
Toronto is a pretty big though, so it’s still a solution worth exploring for medium-sized cities that can still reasonably build these facilities.
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What's hardest to find, and what I prefer, is somewhere it's easy to walk and drive. I've lived in walkable places where if you do have to drive, traffic is a nightmare. And then of course there are places where you can drive without traffic but there is nowhere to walk to. I think I prefer the latter with my lifestyle, though it becomes more frustrating for meeting friends, going our for dinner + drinks, etc. For sp…
I've never run into a walkable city center where there was one super-obvious and convenient place to park--maybe a gigantic underground garage--and then you walk everywhere from there. Feels like that might work. The attractive city centers have nice stuff, but too few people who live within walking distance to keep them in business and in good shape. They need a way to bring in suburbanites and visitors to supplemen…
No, they don’t. This is a classic example of listening to what people say vs observing what they do. And it’s a good lesson in product development. Ask your users “do you want X?” And the answer is inevitably “yes”. Ask them “do you want A or B?” And you’ll start to get a better approximation of user behavior. Better yet is observing actual behavior. In this case Americans have chosen the suburbs in droves. Americans…
No, they don’t. This is a classic example of listening to what people say vs observing what they do. And it’s a good lesson in product development. Ask your users “do you want X?” And the answer is inevitably “yes”. Ask them “do you want A or B?” And you’ll start to get a better approximation of user behavior. Better yet is observing actual behavior. In this case Americans have chosen the suburbs in droves. Americans…
> In this case Americans have chosen the [car-centric] suburbs in droves. What alternative do they have if that is all that is being built?
But there's an awful lot of copium in these kinds of threads that shallowly blame the lack of choice as to why American life is so car-dependent. Housing markets are extremely good at responding to consumer demand.
Here's a good quantitative data point of people expressing their preferences [1]:
> In 1973, the median new single-family house was just 1,525 square feet, according to the US Census Bureau. By 2010, it had grown to 2,169 square feet. And, by 2018, it had bloated to 2,435 square feet. Who in 1973 would have believed that a newly built typical American home would be 60% bigger than theirs in 45 years?
> There's another even more startling factor to take into account. Statista.com claims the average household in 1973 comprised 3.01 people, meaning the home offered 507 square feet per person. But by 2018, that household had shrunk to 2.53 people. And each had 962 square feet to stretch out.
Houses have gotten 60% larger while households have gotten 15% smaller in the last 50 years. That didn't happen in spite of consumer demand.
[1]: https://www.hsh.com/homeowner/average-american-home.html
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You can kind of have it if you mean walkable to just the general store, a cafe and a few other things but you can never have everything because many kinds of stores can only exist with a certain population close enough. What I love about living in the city is literally _everything_ I need is within walking distance. I have not used a car or any form of public transport in months and have felt no need to, I can buy an…
I just disagree. I live in the very environment you claim doesn't exist
No, they don’t. This is a classic example of listening to what people say vs observing what they do. And it’s a good lesson in product development. Ask your users “do you want X?” And the answer is inevitably “yes”. Ask them “do you want A or B?” And you’ll start to get a better approximation of user behavior. Better yet is observing actual behavior. In this case Americans have chosen the suburbs in droves. Americans…
> "In this case Americans have chosen the suburbs in droves." "chosen the suburbs" implies that there was a choice. The limited walkable cities that have been built since 1950 (like Seaside, FL) are some of the most coveted real estate in the United States. The plain fact is that walkable cities are illegal to build now because of zoning laws and building codes.
I want to live in a walkable streetcar suburb: * Reasonably sized (2-3k soft) lots * Homes built with a variety of beautiful architecture * Area is not overbuilt to the point where all greenery and sunlight are gone and replaced by large buildings * alleys behind the lot, with garages hidden, to keep a single car (which is still really necessary in modern life) * small, thin, tree-lined streets * within walking dista…