Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

strongtowns.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 564 posts

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#61

Post by detaro »

jseban wrote: post #45
crooked-v wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> inefficient and inconvenient Just the other day I was about to start cooking but realized I was out of butter, so I walked about 5 minutes to a nearby store, got some, and walked back. It would have literally taken me more time and effort to drive to a store nearby with parking than just walking. The same holds for most household basics (paper towels, garbage bags, etc), for which I have about a dozen options withi…

Yeah but now you are optimising for the minority case at the expense of making the most common case worse.

the most common case surely is groceries?

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#62

Post by matkoniecz »

jseban wrote: post #40
stavros wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, the supermarket is 3' away by foot and I've never even thought "oh man, I should take the car and go to the larger supermarket that's 15' away". It's just not inconvenient at all. I wonder if the difference in opinion is from a lack of exercise? I don't mind carrying 20kg of stuff back home in bags, I'm used to it and it's good to get at least some exercise.

Haha carrying 20kg of stuff back home in bags, that's ridiculous! Yeah do that after a long day of work, and also you can forget ever having any energy left for doing any sport because now your only sport ever is carrying groceries. What a poor life

20kg is quite on extreme side. Also, walking for 350m with 20kg of stuff is unlikely to be a problem unless you have massive health problems.

With something like https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wozek+na+zakupy&t=ffab&iar=images&... it is even simpler - my 80 years old grandmother is using it for shopping.

> your only sport ever is carrying groceries. What a poor life

Just how much stuff you buy? Maybe you live in awful city with shops more than 500m away from your home?

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#63

Post by stavros »

jseban wrote: post #60
stavros wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way I live, you think I've never shopped after work? If I couldn't carry 20kg for 200m, I'd have more of a problem with how I live than where.

Yes but it's an incredibly strenuous and unnecessarily hard way of life, if that's what you want, fine, but society at large has as a core value to eliminate unnecessary, hard, repetitive tasks so that's not going to be a good way to structure neighborhoods.

I don't think we'll ever agree, because there seems to be a fundamental difference here. You speak as if I'm toiling in the mines all day, whereas I don't even think of it as particularly hard or annoying.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#64

Post by matkoniecz »

stavros wrote: post #43
jseban wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha carrying 20kg of stuff back home in bags, that's ridiculous! Yeah do that after a long day of work, and also you can forget ever having any energy left for doing any sport because now your only sport ever is carrying groceries. What a poor life

This is the way I live, you think I've never shopped after work? If I couldn't carry 20kg for 200m, I'd have more of a problem with how I live than where.

If anyone seriously considers transporting 20kg for 200m "incredibly strenuous and unnecessarily hard way of life" then it is hard to treat them seriously.

Note that you can put it into backpack or use something like https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wozek+na+zakupy&t=ffab&iar=images&... (sorry, not sure how it is called in English).

PS Unless they have serious medical issues, far worse than typical. Or they are really old or really young. But in such cases they likely should not drive anyway.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#65

Post by jseban »

rekado wrote: post #58
jseban wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in such a properly built out environment, and I just think it's a complete waste of time and effort to insist on such inefficient and inconvenient modes of transportation, and I hate wasting time and effort on recurring daily chores, I just want it to be as efficient as possible. You rely on cars/trucks indirectly anyway, that bring the groceries to your closest store, and deliver your packages so what's th…

Hmm, I find it very hard to relate to this perspective. Perhaps this is a cultural difference: I don't value efficiency in my life nearly as much as you seem to do. I don't go out of my way to waste time, but I'm perfectly happy to walk through the quiet roads while carrying groceries, thinking about what I've recently read, wondering about things I happen to see on my walk ---such as the Jugendstil reliefs on facade…

Yeah, but my point is that the things everyone must do should be made as efficient as possible, so that everyone is free to choose how they want to waste their time. We shouldn't force anyone to spend their time and effort in a specific way by deliberately making something less efficient that's just stupid.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#66

Post by matkoniecz »

jseban wrote: post #12
fsloth wrote: post #8

Fantastic cultural divide. This is one of the reasons why I read HN. Most of Europe is more or less walkable - one reason is that the largest urban centers predate cars, but intentional design AF (anno ford) is also a factor. I can bike or walk everywhere, and the only reason I have a car is that it makes grocery shopping much, much easier. I am not very green or anything, I just like to keep things simple. You can c…

> I can bike or walk everywhere, and the only reason I have a car is that it makes grocery shopping much, much easier. Yes, you still want a car for such things, sure it's quaint and nice to have a "walkable" neighborhood, if you're a tourist, but if you live there and have to schlep around by foot with your groceries every day, in all weathers, it's just annoying. I want my neighborhood to be functional and efficien…

> Also in urban environments, making a lot of "inviting" public spaces for people to hang around and loiter is not always a great idea.. this also attracts a lot of crime, drugs etc

Maybe in some third-world crime infested countries? At least in Poland it is not a real problem at all. Some parks are locked for night and that is all.

If making nice park is instantly resulting in crime/drugs/etc then something went really wrong.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#67

Post by jseban »

sammorrowdrums wrote: post #50
jseban wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can bike or walk everywhere, and the only reason I have a car is that it makes grocery shopping much, much easier. Yes, you still want a car for such things, sure it's quaint and nice to have a "walkable" neighborhood, if you're a tourist, but if you live there and have to schlep around by foot with your groceries every day, in all weathers, it's just annoying. I want my neighborhood to be functional and efficien…

I live in the Netherlands. We bike rather than just walk everywhere, and generally people do more frequent small shops rather than big weekly shop. It takes some imagination and a lot of urban planning work, but quality of life improves dramatically, it’s life-changing. Much Urban planning was involved in making it better for cycling though, and it wasn’t always great for it. Off-road cycle paths being a mainstay for…

> We bike rather than just walk everywhere, and generally people do more frequent small shops rather than big weekly shop. It takes some imagination and a lot of urban planning work, but quality of life improves dramatically, it’s life-changing.

Yeah which means that you spend a lot more time and energy on grocery shopping. That is for me directly inverse to quality of life. The more time I spend in traffic (cycling is also sitting in traffic) and queueing in crowded grocery stores, the lower my quality of life is. Who are you to decide that cycling and grocery shopping is automatically the best quality of life for everyone? Some people prefer to play tennis, or paint, or read books or whatever. No freedom, only inefficient transportation.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#68

Post by matkoniecz »

jseban wrote: post #34
toto444 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get delivered in most cities now.

Yeah this is what I do, and I think it's great! But it relies on there being a driveable street outside of the house, and not a stupid walk path.

Road/driveway next to a residential buildings is standard and not contradictory to having a walkable access.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#69

Post by simonebrunozzi »

fsloth wrote: post #8

Fantastic cultural divide. This is one of the reasons why I read HN. Most of Europe is more or less walkable - one reason is that the largest urban centers predate cars, but intentional design AF (anno ford) is also a factor. I can bike or walk everywhere, and the only reason I have a car is that it makes grocery shopping much, much easier. I am not very green or anything, I just like to keep things simple. You can c…

> AF (anno ford)

Nice reference to Brave New World, I suppose?

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#70

Post by Kaibeezy »

FriedrichN wrote: post #51
CalRobert wrote: post #21

The planet boils because Americans are afraid of living in places as beautiful as the ones they vacation in. If you're an American who'd like to escape, check out the Dutch American Friendship Treaty, or Portugal's new visa for remote work. PT's NHR tax program makes it very popular for FIRE too. It's not Amsterdam but moving to Dublin from LA did wonders for my happiness. The next goal is living somewhere my kid can…

Not to burst your Amsterdam bubble, but you basically have to be a millionaire to be able to buy a house there right now. House prices have been rising like crazy in the Netherlands and Amsterdam in particular. Amsterdam is now for the elite, basically the point the article is complaining about.

OK, but every single other town of any size in the Netherlands has an area comparable in walkability to Amsterdam. Maybe there’s no famous museum and not the same energy level, but you can hop on the train and go get it.

It’s called the “bid rent curve”, and almost every satellite town of a big European city can be a local spike where there’s urban density around the train station. Americans don’t really have trains, thus screwed.

Post reply on HN