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How do you fix a stroad?

strongtowns.org

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Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#171

Post by seoulmetro »

scrollaway wrote: post #143
seoulmetro wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's its job. It's there to outrage you, but the reality is it doesn't teach you to do much else. The reality is, low density living in countries like the US rely on this structure. The same way most of South Korea, including low density zones is built using large apartment blocks... because that's just what works for the country and there's no such thing as being a jack of all trades. I've disliked the apples to o…

NJB is not an "outrage" channel, that is utterly absurd. It's an information channel that mostly shows you how things work in the Netherlands and makes the case that it's a better way than the idiotic car-centric north American way. If you're outraged after watching his videos, it's not his fault, it's the fault of your city planners.

It is an outrage channel.

>It's an information channel that mostly shows you how things work in the Netherlands and makes the case that it's a better way than the idiotic car-centric north American way.

Yes. Comparing apples to oranges. What an outrage! My apples have less vitamin C! How dare they.

>If you're outraged after watching his videos

I'm not. But the majority who do watch the video are. It's his fault. The same way people are outraged at many things unjustly after watching a video filled with bias.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#172

Post by w0mbat »

I have a house in Sunnyvale, California a few blocks from El Camino Real. It's the ultimate stroad, hundreds of miles long and lined with thriving businesses and I love it. It's getting really quite clean and quiet now a ridiculous proportion of traffic around here is Teslas.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#173

Post by Aloha »

takk309 wrote: post #65
beaconstudios wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the argument is that streets and roads serve fundamentally different purposes and thus have different design goals, and stroads do both and thus fail at both. Roads are for transit, getting cars a long distance between interest points, and streets are for navigating within a point of interest like a neighbourhood. Roads want to optimise for higher cruising speed and streets are to optimise for parking, mixed-use with…

Traffic engineer here. Generally there is a hierarchy of roads called functional class. It goes local street - collector - minor arterial - major arterial - freeway. From local to freeway the speeds increase and the land access decreases. Good urban design should connect only roads one "step" apart, that is local roads should only connect to collectors and so forth. Reality is clearly different. I would imagine every…

Thank you for the informative post!

I'll actually defend the stroad, they work fine so long as you don't allow parking, and you limit the driveways to 2-3 per "block" - anything more than that and they cease to function as an street or a road. Often the stroad is just a section with a bunch of businesses on an otherwise well designed arterial road.

The pictures they post of supposed stroads look like normal arterials to me.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#174

Post by seoulmetro »

zionic wrote: post #163
scrollaway wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NJB is not an "outrage" channel, that is utterly absurd. It's an information channel that mostly shows you how things work in the Netherlands and makes the case that it's a better way than the idiotic car-centric north American way. If you're outraged after watching his videos, it's not his fault, it's the fault of your city planners.

I’m mostly outraged that the YouTube algorithm keeps showing me his crap just because I like cities skylines. His content is trash and despite consistently disliking it YouTube just won’t learn.

I've come to understand that there are things that have three or so factors, and you will never get rid of them.

1. Views. Usually boosted by getting bandwagoned on a place like Reddit. High viewed videos pop up everywhere, irrelevant or not.

2. Feel good factor, which sprouts from feeling like you learnt something new or can change the world now.

3. Emotional mob mentality. People refuse to believe things are the way they are for anything other than "bad design" or "someone did it wrong". Capitalising on this, is factor three.

Some videos fill these 3 boxes and they just show up time and time again, EVERYWHERE. It's the algorithm of the internet, and YouTube loves to lead it.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#175

Post by zionic »

Scott_Sanderson wrote: post #166
zionic wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm suspicious of cars because I have literally gotten hit by them while cycling This is entirely the fault of bike culture in the US. Outside of inner city/25mph limit roads a bicycle has no place being on a normal road. 55mph+ 3 ton metal machines and tiny bikes with no bumpers or crumple zones don’t mix. It’s perfectly legal to do, and technically the person hitting you is in the wrong, but all your friends will…

Car culture apology bullshit. Why aren't there safe places for bikes and peds on those roads too? Why should cars have all the space to the point where it is practically suicidal to be outside a car?

They’re called sidewalks (for pedestrians). Bike paths are also a thing.

We’ve built our society around cars, and it’s enabled a much higher quality of life. Mass transit sucks. I’ve been to pretty much every tier-I city on the planet and the ones that really pushed transit (Hong Kong comes to mind) were by far the worst.

In the US roads and interstates were built for cars. We love being able to leave when we want, not worry about the weather, and have large homes far (in miles, not time… thanks again cars) from city centers.

Bikes do not belong on high speed automotive networks, it slows everyone else down and is extremely dangerous for the cyclist.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#176

Post by refurb »

adrianN wrote: post #154
refurb wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because people like their cars. You may not, but many people do. And I've traveled in many countries and it's not like cars are uniquely American.

People like their cars because the city design makes all alternatives comically impractical.

Nope. I live in a country with high quality transit and the first thing people buy when they can afford it is a car.

Why? Convenience, flexibility, ability to haul a family.

Cars certainly aren’t a requirement if you have good walkability and/transit, but given the choice many people prefer cars.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#177

Post by smcl »

zionic wrote: post #163
scrollaway wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NJB is not an "outrage" channel, that is utterly absurd. It's an information channel that mostly shows you how things work in the Netherlands and makes the case that it's a better way than the idiotic car-centric north American way. If you're outraged after watching his videos, it's not his fault, it's the fault of your city planners.

I’m mostly outraged that the YouTube algorithm keeps showing me his crap just because I like cities skylines. His content is trash and despite consistently disliking it YouTube just won’t learn.

You can click the three dots beside such videos then select "Don't recommend channel", you won't see these videos in your "Home" section of YouTube. There are a few gurning-in-the-thumbnail types that I've stopped seeing altogether after doing this.

If your issue is that you play a video then just keep watching whatever YT shows you next and it's sometimes this person, then I'm not sure if this solves that problem since I don't do this personally

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#178

Post by malermeister »

zionic wrote: post #158
alanbernstein wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that we're already in a dark age, brought about by transforming the environment to work for cars instead of humans.

Cars didn’t construct the roads, humans did. For cars. The arrogance in this thread is off the charts, it’s like so many of you can’t fathom that people like the way our towns are built.

People like all sorts of things. There's people that really like meth or heroin. Doesn't make those things good or sustainable.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#179

Post by zionic »

smcl wrote: post #177
zionic wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m mostly outraged that the YouTube algorithm keeps showing me his crap just because I like cities skylines. His content is trash and despite consistently disliking it YouTube just won’t learn.

You can click the three dots beside such videos then select "Don't recommend channel", you won't see these videos in your "Home" section of YouTube. There are a few gurning-in-the-thumbnail types that I've stopped seeing altogether after doing this. If your issue is that you play a video then just keep watching whatever YT shows you next and it's sometimes this person, then I'm not sure if this solves that problem si…

Thanks!

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#180

Post by kiba »

seoulmetro wrote: post #137
alanbernstein wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that we're already in a dark age, brought about by transforming the environment to work for cars instead of humans.

The idea that Earth being accessible to everyone at infinitely faster speeds is not a dark age. That is a golden age. It's sad that you've confused the two, but it's modern propaganda at work. The environment is damaged by humans. Not cars. If we banned cars, people would still ruin the environment, just in different ways. But that's cutting the nose off to spite the face. The truth is, cars are, for the most part, a…

Car only allows you freedom of movement because the infrastructure are developed for cars. You would be singing a different tune of freedom if it were trains and bikes instead.
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