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Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

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Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#251

Post by sofixa »

aix1 wrote: post #244
CapricornNoble wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan manages it pretty well. The mass transit system of Tokyo is well known. But the city is also zoned such that walking or biking from an apartment/house/hotel to a restaurant, supermarket, or even a major park or museum is easy and fairly safe. The roads are clean and well-maintained, and traffic really isn't that bad. Street parking is rarely allowed, but small parking lots are numerous albeit expensive. Biking…

> Biking and public transit moves most commuters off of the streets Help me understand this. Where do cyclists and ground-level public transportation go if they're not on the streets? > Then I quarantined in Tokyo for 2 weeks and everything was a convenient 5-minute walk away. Wait a minute, quarantined and walked around?

> Help me understand this. Where do cyclists and ground-level public transportation go if they're not on the streets?

Public transportation is much denser ( even a paltry bus can fit at least 30 people vs a car which occupies slightly less space, but usually has a single person in it), and bikes take much less space. You can fit 4 bikes in the space of a single standard sedan; and a small bus is what, 2-3 sedans but 30 times the capacity?

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#253

Post by aix1 »

sofixa wrote: post #251
aix1 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Biking and public transit moves most commuters off of the streets Help me understand this. Where do cyclists and ground-level public transportation go if they're not on the streets? > Then I quarantined in Tokyo for 2 weeks and everything was a convenient 5-minute walk away. Wait a minute, quarantined and walked around?

> Help me understand this. Where do cyclists and ground-level public transportation go if they're not on the streets? Public transportation is much denser ( even a paltry bus can fit at least 30 people vs a car which occupies slightly less space, but usually has a single person in it), and bikes take much less space. You can fit 4 bikes in the space of a single standard sedan; and a small bus is what, 2-3 sedans but…

Oh I see, they're still on the streets, just at a much higher density. (I read "commuters" to mean people not cars.)

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#254

Post by HPsquared »

jjoonathan wrote: post #188
titzer wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I moved to LA, I did the following calculation. Average number of cars per person, 2/3 x Number of people in greater LA area, 16M = 10M. 10M cars x average parking spot is 7ft x 15, 105 sq ft = 1 billion sq ft. 1 billion sq ft to square miles = 36 square miles. That's a square 6 miles on a side. Just to park the cars once . There is at least 3x that number of spots in the city. A hundred square miles of parking.…

Speaking of real estate, does anyone have data on the impact of personal range on the ability of land owners to extract rent? The feeling I get from sampling shopping experiences at various levels of density is that higher density means higher rent and higher prices. Cars are enormously wasteful in a physics sense, but in an economic sense they do wonders to commoditize our complements, and I fear that getting rid of…

Density and rent are definitely correlated, but I think the causation mostly works the other way: in areas with high value (high rent), people will build more densely to take advantage of the high-value location.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#255

Post by agent327 »

userbinator wrote: post #204
version_five wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

is somewhere it's easy to walk and drive This exhibit from 1940 might be interesting: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Street_i...

Hong Kong has that in some places. It makes it hard to navigate on foot, as pedestrian routes are no longer obvious lines but require entering building perpendicular to your direction, for example.

However, the idea is nearly perfect. All it really needs is to put the cars in tunnels. Underground there's plenty of room for driving, parking, etc.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#256

Post by voisin »

analog31 wrote: post #170
nomel wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, it does mean that parking will become harder In the city I'm near, using public parking lots means a 20 minute walk to your destination, with a $10 fee from all the time walking (or uber), with private parking costing around $15, and no meters in sight. This creates an isolated area that people never go to for a bite to eat, coffee, window shopping, or anything really, since it's a > $10 fee just to step o…

Your city may be similar to mine, insofar as the "residents" of the downtown area are mainly the people who work there and have already paid for parking. Not surprisingly, a lot of the restaurants do most of their business at lunch time. A city where you have to drive a car to a curated pedestrian zone is not walkable by my highfalutin sensibilities. ;-) I get around town by bike. This is not for the faint of heart i…

> Your city may be similar to mine, insofar as the "residents" of the downtown area are mainly the people who work there and have already paid for parking.

If massive parking requirements is the #1 urban planning disaster of the last century, the #2 surely has to be zoning regulations that prevented mixed use areas where people can live/work/play in close proximity. And this was only to… force people to buy cars to get from place to place! Look at any city area that was developed prior to the advent of cars and they are unanimously multi-use dense areas. Cars ruined everything.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#257

Post by voisin »

kumarsw wrote: post #138
nomel wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, it does mean that parking will become harder In the city I'm near, using public parking lots means a 20 minute walk to your destination, with a $10 fee from all the time walking (or uber), with private parking costing around $15, and no meters in sight. This creates an isolated area that people never go to for a bite to eat, coffee, window shopping, or anything really, since it's a > $10 fee just to step o…

The solution to this is plentiful, well-placed municipal parking garages priced cheaper than street parking. Santa Monica does this where they have about 6-7 city-run garages spaced throughout the city with easily visible electronic signage indicating the amount of available spaces. Street parking is much more spare and priced higher. It's an enlightened alternative to tearing down buildings for more single-level lot…

The solution is better rapid mass transit between and within cities!

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#258

Post by freeone3000 »

whalabi wrote: post #234
Rapzid wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drained out of the cities? Nearly all of Texas is what most people would consider "suburb". Even the "urban" areas are mostly sprawl. Very little of Texas is walkable by any stretch.

Out of curiosity, is Austin an exception?

Austin is a giant suburban sprawl that's better than most Texan cities because it has a reasonable bus line. It's all low density, all of it, with massive parking lots everywhere.

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#259

Post by beardyw »

On one of my relatively few visits to America, from my hotel room I could see the zoo less than half a mile away. In reception I asked the best route to walk there. There was a stunned silence and outright puzzlement, as if I had asked what trains I needed to catch to get to Patagonia[1]. No one was even certain it was possible.

In the end I worked it out OK, only having to wait at a level crossing for a seemingly infinitely long freight train to pass. The zoo had more food outlets than animals, but that's another story.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Patagonian_Express (recommended)

Re: Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities

#260

Post by Minor49er »

guyzero wrote: post #48

My belief is that Americans want walkable cities except they fundamentally hate other people. Not personally, just existentially. Other people take stuff that the average American wants - a parking spot next to the door, getting a coffee right away, being seated instantly in a restaurant. Or simply having to see people they dislike. So the drive, which means they have to see even fewer people.

What a bizarre take. I've experienced Americans doing the following for me as a stranger:

  - Waving hello as I walk past
  - Holding open doors as I approach, despite being able-bodied
  - Creating an opening for me in busy traffic when they don't have to
  - Picking stuff up for me that I've accidentally dropped
The list goes on.

The reason why Americans drive is that they have a large population living across a sprawling landmass. Trains used to be the norm as American cities were being developed in the 1800s through the early 1900s. But because the scale of cities grew, they became less efficient than cars for most people to get around

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