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The Stroad

strongtowns.org

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Re: The Stroad

#71

Post by burlesona »

drivers99 wrote: post #8

Cool seeing strongtowns here. Not Just Bikes is a YouTube channel that has helped popularize them recently, and has a lot of other videos about what makes living in the Netherlands so great (i.e. it’s not just bikes, although that’s a big part of it). Here’s Not Just Bikes’ video about Stroads: https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM

The popularization is more likely the other way around: Strong Towns has been around 12 years, has a huge audience, and is a sponsor and promoter of Not Just Bikes.

I agree it’s an exceptional YouTube channel though. :)

Re: The Stroad

#72

Post by prawn »

hatchnyc wrote: post #14

Anytime I leave the city and spend a few days getting around by car I’m amazed at just how completely exhausting it is to go shopping or run errands in suburbia. I am not sure why exactly, after all I’m just sitting there, but I think all the stop-and-go and waiting 10 minutes at lights trying to get across a stroad intersection to a shop I can see the whole time is a big contributor.

I once had a serious learning experience driving from the suburbs into the CBD to meet friends. My attempt coincided with a Zombie Walk that bisected the city. It took me forever to reach where I was meeting friends, then another forever to find somewhere to park the car (all the paid parking was full) given I had to radiate out and cross the zombie parade again. Took 90 minutes to do what would've taken 5 minutes normally, or maybe 10 minutes on foot. All for one person in a car.

Re: The Stroad

#73

Post by closeparen »

SantalBlush wrote: post #44
dghlsakjg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cognitive dissonance is wild. The busiest and most economically vibrant areas in the US are the ones that deprioritize cars (main streets, downtowns, outdoor malls, bar districts). But if you try to change an existing area into a less car friendly area people absolutely lose their heads

I truly believe the reason has more to do with being antisocial than anyone cares to admit. It's not always the car's mobility that people enjoy so much as the barrier it creates from the outside world.

Socialization needs norms. It’s no accident that relatively urbanized civilizations have relatively strict codes of behavior. America’s wild and free frontier spirit, God bless it, is less fun in a crowded subway.

Re: The Stroad

#74

Post by eightysixfour »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #66

Uh. What? > The function of a street is to serve as a platform for building wealth > the function of a road is to connect productive places Is your house located on a street or a road? If it's on a street... how is wealth being built? And how is it not connecting productive places (your home to your office) ? And how is connecting productive places not building wealth? This concept just doesn't make sense. Roads and…

> If it's on a street... how is wealth being built?

It's tax revenue, aka wealth, for the city. That counts for homes and businesses.

> And how is it not connecting productive places (your home to your office)?

The main purpose of a street is access to the productive places which is different from a road. The main purpose of a road is connecting two areas with productive places, usually attached to streets. A street has businesses or homes lining it, a road should not.

> but separating their usage actually leads to more problems than solutions.

No it doesn't. You want transportation to be fast and efficient and you want streets to be safe and accessible.

> Roads and streets are synonyms.

No, they're similar but are designed for different things. My smartphone and my laptop are both computers but we call them different things because their uses are different.

Re: The Stroad

#75

Post by treis »

mcv wrote: post #3

I don't think this article is making the point veey clearly, but it is a very important point: roads are for long distance connections at speed, streets are for local traffic: reaching houses, shops, people. These stroads try to do both and fail at both because the goals are contradictory; you can't have high speed traffic with lots of side streets and crossing traffic, bikes and pedestrians. It will be too slow for…

But this isn't how the world works. It's not Simcity where you lay down neat grids of zones and the dutiful citizens follow your orders. People will want to take advantage of cheap(er) land alongside your "road" so that they can own a house while still having reasonable access to the "street". And boom now you have a stroad.

Attempting to use zoning to stop that runs into the problem that by and large people don't want to live in dense areas. Most of them want the cheap home in the burbs. And they'll vote for those that give it to them.

This is the root problem with Strongtowns and their ilk. They love to navel gaze and contemplate the platonic ideal of how a city should be laid out. But for the most part fail to provide a viable option that people can and will choose.

Re: The Stroad

#76

Post by refurb »

quadrangle wrote: post #62
refurb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is there isn't that much demand for high density housing and walkable neighborhoods. They are mostly attractive to young childless adults. Some of them stick around once they have kids, but it's rare and usually reserved for the well-off who can afford private schools and family-sized homes. In SF you've got the parents who are happy to put their kids and groceries on the back of their bike, but most look t…

It's mostly a case of people not knowing what they really want. Demand-driven economy has a place, but it's definitely not something to accept simplistically. Famous examples: people wanted better horse-carriages and didn't anticipate cars. People wanted better keyboards on their blackberry-style phones, not an iPhone. Etc etc. Nobody who experiences life in the Netherlands where biking and walking is actually safe e…

I'm not convinced. It's not like your "better horse-carriage" example because the option already exists and people reject it. My colleagues in the Bay Area all lived in SF, then quickly moved to the subrurbs when they got older. Sure, there is no pedestrian/biking utopia in the US, but there are places where you can pretty much get by without a car. And many people don't choose to live there.

I also spent some time in Singapore and it seems much closer to the Strongtowns ideal than the US - dense housing, top-notch transit (most don't have cars), carefully planned development with first-floor shops on every block, lots of greenspace and public areas.

And when I talked to my colleagues you know what their desired was? Make enough money to buy a car and get the equivalent of a single family home. They lived in dense housing and got by without a car not out of choice but out of affordability. Again, not all of them (many who could afford cars choose not to buy one), but it was a pretty common theme.

Re: The Stroad

#77

Post by kblev »

gibolt wrote: post #57

For anyone interested in this topic, I highly recommend this channel's series. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN... 'Not Just Bikes' has a ton of other great videos on the channel about what infrastructure makes a good city and what makes one hostile to residents.

Great channel, have been following it for some time, a few takeaways from there:

- It's the cars that make the cities undesirable

- I was shocked how the historical center of London, ON was demolished to the ground and replaced with shacks

- Kids should be able to walk to school alone in safety

- I live in Europe and I was baffled to learn that multi-purpose developments are disallowed in most of North America. This alone makes me reconsider my plans to move to the States. I love how I can just jump on a bike here and be at a large supermarket in 5 minutes

Re: The Stroad

#78

Post by woah »

treis wrote: post #75
mcv wrote: post #3

I don't think this article is making the point veey clearly, but it is a very important point: roads are for long distance connections at speed, streets are for local traffic: reaching houses, shops, people. These stroads try to do both and fail at both because the goals are contradictory; you can't have high speed traffic with lots of side streets and crossing traffic, bikes and pedestrians. It will be too slow for…

But this isn't how the world works. It's not Simcity where you lay down neat grids of zones and the dutiful citizens follow your orders. People will want to take advantage of cheap(er) land alongside your "road" so that they can own a house while still having reasonable access to the "street". And boom now you have a stroad. Attempting to use zoning to stop that runs into the problem that by and large people don't wa…

You're wrong. People want to live in walkable cities. Property prices prove this.

Re: The Stroad

#79

Post by cozzyd »

woah wrote: post #78
treis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this isn't how the world works. It's not Simcity where you lay down neat grids of zones and the dutiful citizens follow your orders. People will want to take advantage of cheap(er) land alongside your "road" so that they can own a house while still having reasonable access to the "street". And boom now you have a stroad. Attempting to use zoning to stop that runs into the problem that by and large people don't wa…

You're wrong. People want to live in walkable cities. Property prices prove this.

And the reason people often move out with kids is that it's too expensive to own a large-enough property for most people due to the high demand for walkable places.

Re: The Stroad

#80

Post by cscurmudgeon »

_robbywashere wrote: post #21

I couldn’t agree more with the article. Unfortunately as for America I think people wouldn’t be very happy with turning their stroads into streets. There is a very toxic self centered car culture here; any impediment to it real or imaginary will make people very angry.

> There is a very toxic self centered car culture here; any impediment to it real or imaginary will make people very angry.

I have seen more comments and people talking about this toxic car culture than seen it in real life.

Not everyone is young, healthy and rich enough to bike. There is a historic racial divide. White folks live in more bike friendly places.

https://theconversation.com/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-cycl...

https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...

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