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Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

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Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#101

Post by null_object »

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…

Walkability isn't uniform across Europe, Scandinavia or even within a single country: other people have mentioned Stockholm - which is still a walkable town, even though car-traffic is prioritized over cycles and pedestrians[0] - but other towns in Sweden are definitely not modelled for pedestrians. Nyköping is a town I need to visit regularly, and there pretty much all of the grocery and larger stores have been placed in out-of-town complexes, which means that everyone takes the car for almost all activities: I was there at the weekend and sat in a car-queue myself (I was part of the problem) for about ten minutes just to get past one of the roundabouts that accesses one of these shopping areas (which are vast car-parks and ugly buildings effectively cut-off from the town and inaccessible to anyone without a car).

So any characterization of USA vs Europe positing Europe as some sort of walkable-heaven is really just idealized bullshit.

[0] I've received (Swedish?) downvotes for this contention before - Swedish-speaking readers can see https://www.cyklistbloggen.se for good documentation.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#102

Post by rekado »

jseban wrote: post #93
rekado wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you misunderstand. Involving a car would most definitely not make it a better solution. I have no interest whatsoever to involve cars in my life. Having to share the roads with them is bad enough. (The arrogance of space is ridiculous.) Deliveries: these cost little because people aren't paid properly. If I wanted to pay them properly, I wouldn't be able to use their services much. So instead of normalizing explo…

Yeah so you do it because of political reasons and virtue signalling, this is a core leftist value that efficiency and productivity should suffer in the name of "equality".

"virtue signalling"? Nobody even sees me doing this. Signalling to the squirrels?

Political reasons? You bet! Everything we do is political. We are /zoon politicon/. I do things the way I do them because I like it this way, and if by doing them this way I contribute to the mainstream leaning one lifestyle closer towards what I consider comfortable then: yes, this is all terribly political.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#103

Post by softcell »

jseban wrote: post #30
rekado wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never owned a car in my life, never got a drivers license. I live in a walkable city (Berlin, close to the border). When I need to haul things around the city I take the cargo bike. For decades I simply carried groceries in a big backpack and walked to the markets on foot (they are all within a 10 minute radius from where I live). I'd call the layout of my neighborhood functional and efficient. Adverse weather h…

Yeah and if you stopped doing that and instead used a car to buy your groceries or ordered them delivered to your doorstep, you would have more free time and more energy. People want free time and energy. Just because it "works" for you to walk in the cold rain carrying groceries in a backback, doesn't make it the best solution. If there are better solutions, why insist on doing it the worst possible way?

> Yeah and if you stopped doing that and instead used a car to buy your groceries or ordered them delivered to your doorstep, you would have more free time and more energy. People want free time and energy.

From my personal experience, I've found that doing physical exercise (paradoxically enough) seems to give me more energy. On those days where I've sat still all day I'm much more likely to feel like doing nothing after work, whereas when I've done my usual cycle commute I'm usually a lot more mentally alert. YMMV of course, but given the choice I'll personally rather do more than less physical exercise, even if it's small activities here and there like lugging some groceries.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#104

Post by bambax »

scandox wrote: post #72
bambax wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only reason I have a car is that it makes grocery shopping much, much easier How large is your family?? We are five (2 adults and 3 kids) and we do most grocery shopping by bike.

Think the double question mark is a tad disingenuous there. Everyone will have their own peculiar circumstances. We, for example, are a family of 4 and our shop for ten days is I would guess 30/40 kilograms. The grocery is 2.5 kilometers away and the journey includes one very dangerous roundabout. So I think a car is reasonable.

Ok, maybe the question should be: how often do you buy groceries. We buy most things fresh and do it every day. If we shopped once every ten days then yes, it wouldn't work.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#105

Post by executesorder66 »

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.

> Yes but it's an incredibly strenuous and unnecessarily hard way of life

What are you, a granny? It is not strenuous or difficult at all.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#106

Post by thow-58d4e8b »

hendiatris wrote: post #10

I read this and think “ah, well there are many more non-rich people so the density requirements make this sort of thing complicated” and then I look out the window over the European city I live in where it has been achieved. Then I think about the town an hour away with a vibrant community and pleasant human-scale environment. What makes it all possible? Good transit. Clean buses. The US simply doesn’t have that, and…

I'm afraid it's not simply about political will. To have affordable and safe public transport, one would need to completely revamp the fabric of American society

Why is there no public transport? Because it's losing money due to low ridership. Why is the ridership low? Because people are afraid of dangerous neighborhoods, wackos, homeless and other people of lower castes. Why all of these factors? Because of massive inequalities, rugged individualism, broken healthcare, missing social nets,... Unless that is fixed, the public transport won't be a decent option. Driving everywhere allows people to form a bubble that shields them from daily witnessing the ills of the system

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#107

Post by stephen_g »

matkoniecz wrote: post #62
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

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 cit…

Yeah, that’s a big part of it. If you have shops within walkable distance, you don’t need to carry huge amounts of groceries. You can just grab a few things to last you the next three days on your way past!

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#108

Post by makeitdouble »

akanet wrote: post #11
makeitdouble wrote: post #2

> Places like this are expensive because places like this are scarce, and scarce things almost always become expensive. > The answer to this isn't to lower our standards for design or to be dismissive of the things that are really lovable about these places. The answer is simply to allow a lot more Milwaukee Avenues to exist. And the same goes for the likes of all of today's beloved, "charming" historic districts. It…

The notion that increasing housing supply is similar to "trickle down" economics is common in discourses of housing policy in America, but it is misguided. Reagan's notion that increasing the margins of the wealthy would induce them to pass profits to workers was mistaken in that its proposed mechanism was entirely altruism. Price reductions in housing from an increase in supply do not occur because the rich voluntar…

My point is that increase in supply alone doesn't automatically lead to less domination.

For instance increasing the supply of high quality affordable housing by 2% in a place where there is high demand might not mean 2% more people will get the houses at a good price. It can mean instead that investors buy 2% more houses in that area to rent it at a price aligned with the market value.

Wouldn't it be ok then if the increase was 5 or 10 or 50% of high quality housing ? Sure...but have we ever seen this level of increase result in actual well designed and livable areas ? I've personally only seen mild ghettos and weird super structures, and not all by skimping on the budget, but also because it's just damn hard to create a flourishing living environment from nothing.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#109

Post by crooked-v »

sokoloff wrote: post #82
rekado wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For me, it’s not about carrying the groceries, but the mental and temporal overhead of thinking about what I needed, making a list, walking however many additional minutes, spending 15 minutes shopping/paying/packing, etc would strike me as a terrific waste if done daily. I used to do that when I interned in Germany. The market was near the bus stop and our dorm had limited fridge space, so I’d tend to buy and eat th…

With a folding rolling cart or a bike with good panniers one could easily do all of that for the family of four with minimum hassle with one or two shopping trips a week, plus irregular trips to stock up on bulk stuff like toilet paper.

I think part of the disconnect here, though, is that you're associating this process with extra mental overhead, but when there's no extra effort needed to just get stuff you don't need to think about it as much. Forget to get butter? Oh well, you can literally just get it the next day on your way back from the park or the movie theater—or if you really need it right now, you can get it at corner store just a few blocks away at a slightly higher price.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#110

Post by makeitdouble »

YmiYugy wrote: post #7
makeitdouble wrote: post #2

> Places like this are expensive because places like this are scarce, and scarce things almost always become expensive. > The answer to this isn't to lower our standards for design or to be dismissive of the things that are really lovable about these places. The answer is simply to allow a lot more Milwaukee Avenues to exist. And the same goes for the likes of all of today's beloved, "charming" historic districts. It…

The difference is that usually expensive properties are expensive to build. They are expensive because the houses and lots are huge, they are designed by expensive architects, use expensive materials, require custom and labor intensive techniques and have luxurious amenities. Walkable neighborhoods can be build cheaply. What makes them expensive is demand and land.

I am not sure to follow you.

> They are expensive because the houses and lots are huge[...] What makes them expensive is demand and land

So, cheaply built or not, as long as they are high quality either way they're expensive, no ?

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