Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US • Hacker News Board

Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US

#381

Post by frabbit » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

raffraffraff wrote: post #311

stemlord wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ive seen several attempts at master planned neighborhoods with little town center type things with the idea that youd rarely have to leave, around South Florida growing up, and even lived in one for a few years. They all failed miserably. I feel like ones that succeed are just lucky. These communities can have basic predetermined guidelines to how growth can happen but the actual growth needs to happen organically. Y…

Better than no planning. I live in a part of Dublin (Ireland) that was rapidly developed back in the 1950s to house families that were being rehomed from condemned tenement buildings in the city. The design came from "garden cities", a design from England in the early 1900s. It wasn't very "organic". Entire housing estates were built. These were modest family homes with gardens, and the estates included ample green s…

The Irish political/building establishment thrives on crisis and desparation: it's a sort of small time disaster capitalism in which the electorate continually collude with their betters in order to further their immiseration.

Seeing the greenspaces of my childhood filled-in with shoddy-looking, expensive housing was shocking. Fingal County Council planning department seem to be giving the go-ahead to build any and every piece of rubbish using the excuse of "housing crisis" that you mention.

I just returned from visiting Dublin (mainly the Northside) after several years away and was irritated by: ridiculous levels of private vehicle usage; broken in-carriage electronic stop announcements on the DART (light electric rail); difficulty in planning trips connecting dublin bus/iarnrod eireann/dart; bus stops without proper shelters; drivers parking on the pavement(sidewalk); lack of courtesy from drivers at non-signalized intersection. On a positive note I will say that all (especially Dublin Bus drivers) personnel interacted with on an individual level were wonderful.

Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US

#382

Post by dasKrokodil » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 8:00 AM UTC

GavinMcG wrote: post #42

_huayra_ wrote: post #27

These efforts seem well-intentioned but doomed to fail because it requires government action to make the rest of the area work , i.e. be more walkable / bikeable. It's great you can bike from your pricey apartment to your friend's, but try getting passed by a bunch of distracted drivers going 50mph faster than you on the arterial stroad when getting to the nearest reasonably-sized grocery store that is 10 miles away…

Having lived down the street from this site, I'm also skeptical. Tempe has some bike infrastructure, but the high temperatures four months of the year and the spread-out nature of the larger Phoenix metro makes a car a priority for most people, and cities (including Tempe and neighboring Mesa) design around that. There's a bike path to the west of this site that runs north-south but terminates after only a couple mil…

> ...but it's two miles east, which is a long way to walk in May and September, at least.

Two miles is a long way to walk?

Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US

#383

Post by yodelshady » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 11:05 AM UTC

czottmann wrote: post #322

yodelshady wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> will say though, the US is poorly equipped for bicycle commuting. Even our neighborhood doesn't have many dedicated bike paths, opting instead to share the road with cars. Most diehard cyclists I know will tell you it's a matter of "when" not "if" you have a scary encounter with a driver. My country is far from perfect, but the US simply culturally hates cyclists. I see outright dehumanisation - comparison to insec…

> The sort of sentiment you get from Europe when you mention Roma. To me, a European, that generalization is quite insulting.

It did seem strong, I edited it out. Generalising isn't my intention, but honestly, I don't know how to avoid it entirely without losing points worth making, and I'm not sure anybody does.

The point I was trying to make, in this case, is that in every culture you'll find some unpleasant sentiment condoned not just in the spaces you expect, but in the sort of cosy middle class spaces that are perceived (if they don't actively market themselves) as being inclusive and enlightened.

Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US

#384

Post by mikem170 » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

cmurf wrote: post #95

mikem170 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all the hedge funds are swooping in with dark money, dark legal and dark politics I'm concerned about this also. I wonder if this is something that can be mitigated somehow via referendum? It seems wrong if the will of the people in a democracy has to take a back seat to hedge fund profits, especially when it comes to a place to live. it's tough though, current homeowners don't want there to be more houses... Or ma…

It's more of a polyarchy. The U.S. system is unique (originally but unremarkable today) in two respects: written constitution, and not a monarchy. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. Madison The argument against the first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, is that the federal government had essentially no power.…

Thanks for that thoughtful reply.

Recently I've been throwing around the word democracy as a way of calling out decidedly undemocratic political activity, because of the positive connotations the word has, given the narrative we're taught in this country that democracy is good, we are a shining beacon of democracy, spreading democracy to those who don't have it, etc. Perhaps trying to use the veneer were taught against those in power playing lip service to the will of the people? It's not as easy for people to shout down the idea of democracy as it is to argue with typical partisan positions.

I've been interested in Switzerland lately, where the people seem to have retained power over their representatives, being able to petition for referendums to add or remove any law they don't like, and with much smaller political structures, having cantons the size of U.S. counties that enjoy more independence than U.S. states.