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Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

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Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#261

Post by odiroot »

the__alchemist wrote: post #126
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…

Related: Most European cities are comparably beautiful compared to North American ones. Pick a random European city, and it's probably more aesthetically interesting than any in NA. I'm curious why this is the case (Older / less centrally-planned? A subjective difference in tastes?)

Maybe don't try this experiment with an ex-communist-state cities full of dreadful concrete blocks of flats.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#262

Post by jseban »

kharak wrote: post #227
jseban wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No because you only have to take the car once a week, and you have to walk 3 times per week. If you want to force physical exercise by inefficiency like that, what exactly are the machines that should be forbidden and which should be allowed? You can do a million things from scratch which gives you physical exercise, we all rely on using machines that saves us from this poor life, why put the walking/cycling on a ped…

Just no. It is more efficient for me. Really don't care that you don't want to accept that. So take your efficiency argument and scrap it. You want cars and want everything to be optimized for it. That is your actual point and we both know it.

No, I want as much free time and energy as possible, and don't want to waste my life carrying water in buckets when I can have a tap. Likewise I also don't want to waste any time carrying milk either

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#263

Post by KptMarchewa »

stavros wrote: post #177
FeepingCreature wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tap water plus SodaStream is the life for me.

Oh wow, that's a great idea! I don't much like carbonated water, but if you do, this'll make your life amazing.

Regular brita filter is great solution for drinkable tap water.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#264

Post by Kaibeezy »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #131
the__alchemist wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related: Most European cities are comparably beautiful compared to North American ones. Pick a random European city, and it's probably more aesthetically interesting than any in NA. I'm curious why this is the case (Older / less centrally-planned? A subjective difference in tastes?)

Well, the USA is only ~250 years old and most of its planning was done in the past ~150 years, whereas most European cities date back to the middle ages or even before that, growing much more organically, often around a castle, wall, church, or all of the above. It's only in the past 100 years or so that cars are a thing. But the other is just different approach to planning. I live in a relatively new, so-called "vin…

> the USA is only ~250 years old and most of its planning was done in the past ~150 years, whereas most European cities date back to the middle ages or even before that, growing much more organically

Agree. This is key. To be sure, Europeans are busy making plenty of wasteful American-style car-based future ghost towns around the edges and satellites of their beautiful (or at least walkable) dense old urban cores. Places tourists don't usually see, what I recall travel writer Rick Steves referred to as "Dullsdorf or Nothington".

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#265

Post by alexanderchr »

jseban wrote: post #208
Ma8ee wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not walkability that makes apartments in central Stockholm expensive. There's just not much more space there for more houses. For decades car traffic was what was prioritised. Just look at old Slussen which was just a couple of big traffic circles, with narrow tunnels for pedestrians. Or Sergel's torg, arguably the most central square in Sweden, which is dominated by a big traffic circle and with shops and p…

Car traffic is still prioritised, the new slussen is still an 8 lane highway right through the middle of the city, and the biggest reason it's downsized is that the ring road is now finished. And the biggest reason why Stockholm is managing to be so "car free" is because the highways are in tunnels underground.

Stockholm is not car free by any standards. On the opposite it’s very car friendly.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#266

Post by cageface »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #259
cageface wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just in Italy and it seemed like all the restaurants were packed every night. They're not cheap. How are people able to eat out so much in EU on these salaries?

>They're not cheap. They are. Pizza Margarita in Naples cost 4 Euro when I was there in 2019.

I was just in Italy the last few months and it's true that street food is cheap but normal restaurants are similar to US prices and those places were packed every night in every city I visited.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#267

Post by dvdkon »

nivenkos wrote: post #160
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that US viewpoint kinda irks me too. Of course Europe is cheap when you earn US tech salaries. Amsterdam is definitely not cheap on your average non-FAANG/IB local Dutch wages.

Even FAANG pays shit in Europe. I was paid 75k at Amazon. Europe is designed for the landed aristocracy, not working people.

I recall housing prices being mostly reasonable 15-20 years ago, I don't think our current woes are the result of any "design".

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#268

Post by throwamon »

sokoloff wrote: post #95
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #79

> Would you like to raise a family in those conditions? apparently hundreds of millions of people already do it... A provocative answer to your comment: would you like to raise your family where your kids can walk to school and play with other kids in a nearby park at walking distance and never be afraid of mass shootings? I get the impression that huge houses are a symptom of a bigger issue: people in US feel they n…

I would like to (and do) raise my family like that. We live in Cambridge, MA; our kids walk to school and to play with friends in the park, I’ve never feared a mass shooting*, we have reasonable accommodations for cars, bikes, and pedestrians. * - Do you live in fear of drowning, choking, or bicycling? All are significantly higher lifetime risks in America than mass shootings. Drowning is 10x more likely but few live…

Choking can happen anywhere you are; preventing accidents from drowning and bicycling is 100% under your control (just don't swim or ride a bike). Mass shootings don't and aren't.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#269

Post by MisterTea »

zachkatz wrote: post #234
MisterTea wrote: post #219

> Every advocate for making urban design more [pick one: walkable, bikeable, beautiful, lovable, inviting, human-scale] has at some point or another faced the charge of elitism. No. That's not how that works. You're not an elitist just because you want a nice neighborhood. You're faced with charges of elitism when you advocate for this type of stuff after you've moved into a space once inhabited by low income people…

> artificially beautified What's the difference between artificially beautifying and genuinely beautifying?

Genuine beautifying comes from the community.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#270

Post by nradov »

null_object wrote: post #232
sandos wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Västerås which is sometimes touted as one of the, at least, top 10 cycling cities in Sweden with 390 kilometers of cycle/walking paths. And still we have expansive shopping malls outside of town which is heavily in favor or cars. We still have the downtown shopping but it can barely hang by, and parking is very expensive. It would not really have been possible to build all this shopping in the city center,…

>It would not really have been possible to build all this shopping in the city center, so there is the physical limitations. I think this is the main problem, that the cities outgrow themselves, and it is just so much cheaper and economical to build mega-malls instead of smaller centres for shopping and amenities. But this is a matter of chosen-lifestyle . This was really brought home to me talking to my mother-in-la…

People prefer to buy all of their weekly groceries at a single store instead of chasing all over town, and they want to spend as little as possible. This is totally rational. You can't expect them to shop at nearby stores if the selection is poor, prices are high, and parking is limited.
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