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How do you fix a stroad?

strongtowns.org

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Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#201

Post by seer »

geoffcline wrote: post #73
pcmoney wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it walking or biking? Or is it only healthy if you’re in a couple thousand pound armored living room on wheels?

the nice thing about southern Texas is that we don't have to worry about walking/biking, not gonna happen in 105 degrees. I'm so much more comfortable in here compared to Seattle. Car AC is great for my allergies, and I'm no longer a sweaty mess.

To be honest 40C is quite doable, as long as you have shade (trees) water features (lakes/rivers) and a distance of a couple of km - I’ve cycled like that for fun, not just to get to a destination.

Now I would never do that on such an asphalt desert of course, a car is way more comfortable, the question remains why would you turn a lush greenery (as I’d imagine a texan climate could be) into something you’re only comfortable crossing in heavy and expensive survival gear. Especially if living in that gear leads to all the allergies you’ve mentioned.

Where I live if I wanted to cycle the worst would be snow followed by cycles of thawing and freezing, which leaves the routes a miserable mess, so I have to fire up my trusty corolla, but apart from that (20% of the time) I prefer biking for sure.

And I live in the shithole of the european union, the poorest of the member states, and am constantly amazed how much better the city planning is here, even with all of its flaws.

For example a UK colleague when visiting sent a picture how he got lost in a wilderness forest, on his way on foot from the downtown hotel to the office, since the capital itself is littered with small pockets of lush (and I mean really lush) greenery.

I can’t imagine what great things could be accomplished if you had the resources of a place like texas… You could make your city be so great, people go there as a tourist just to enjoy being there, and not for the novelty.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#202

Post by andbberger »

zionic wrote: post #170
detaro wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of straw men you've been building in this thread is quite impressive. please try to do better.

No, you do better. They’re all over this thread, claiming that Americans simply “don’t know” about the glorious bicycle waiting to save them from cars. It’s pretty ridiculous, and honestly rather insulting.

literally no one is doing that

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#203

Post by josephcsible »

scrollaway wrote: post #181
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.

Dislikes have little effect on whether a channel is recommended, only individual videos and the related videos to that specific one. Also to dislike a video you need to click it in the first place, which tells YouTube you potentially like content of this sort but the individual videos aren't up to your expectations so it's going to keep trying. As another poster said there is a way to get YouTube to stop recommending…

> Loving cars immediately must mean that his high quality, well researched content is "trash".

Why is it surprising that people who love cars don't like a channel that basically says you're a bad person if you don't think cars should be abolished?

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#204

Post by lmm »

arsome wrote: post #115
dougmwne wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The itty-bitty bits of America that have any kind of walkable community are incredibly expensive. It’s basically the equivalent of avoiding mediocre American factory food by doing all your shopping at Whole Foods. Why does it have to be a rare luxury to taste what the Europeans have in overflowing abundance?

Because what they have flowing in abundance is a loss in many other ways. Public transit is a generally a worse experience in all but the most urban of places, and even then there's often enough problems that make it significantly less desirable. Biking in the winter? Doable, but also pretty miserable in much of the world. People like personal transportation and big detached houses with yards. Car-centric cities are…

> People like personal transportation and big detached houses with yards.

Then why are even small houses in walkable neighbourhoods so expensive? Maybe not everyone wants to live like that, but there's clearly demand for that kind of living too. Let's build some for people who want it.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#205

Post by josephcsible »

athrun wrote: post #113
josephcsible wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But those suburbs already exist. What should we do for all of the people who already live in them? (And keep in mind that there's usually a good reason that people chose to not just live in an inner city in the first place.)

Strong Town's argument is that some of these suburbs will be successful in encouraging mixed-use development and in doing so will expand their tax bases. But most of the others will fail and decline. ST are quite explicit that they mostly don't think that retrofitting suburbs should be a focus, because they believe that most of these will go bankrupt anyway, given a sufficient amount of time (because of too much infr…

But that's just it. If someone likes suburban living, and your family home is in a suburb, how do you think they'd feel about something like "suburbs are probably all going to fail anyway, so let's do a bunch of things that will definitely and quickly make them fail, and then await the glorious day when your house gets torn down and replaced by apartments, and your neighborhood becomes a replica of the inner city"?

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#206

Post by dont__panic »

xxxtentachyon wrote: post #149
yarnton99 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just trying to find some positive examples of American small towns. As a European, if I were to relocate to the US, where would I find strong town communities? I know for example Ithaca, NY, might qualify. Other examples in the South, Midwest, etc? Also stroads are not just an American problem. I have found horrible stroads in places where you would never expect them such as Oxford or Copenhagen.

As you say, there are plenty in the Northeastern United States. I think the primary historical factors that separates cohesive, walkable towns in the US from more stereotypical American development are the city having been established and built out prior to the 20th century (so there was some initial plan or development that predates cars), and the community either being wealthy enough or remote enough to avoid the p…

As someone who grew up in the Northeast, I feel like there aren't very many walkable towns unless you're essentially in the Boston or NYC suburbs. So many towns in upstate NY, MA, and PA had their main streets turned into major thoroughfares for cars... which made them completely unwalkable and miserable to live near, eventually killing the town. Most of my relatives who live near "cute" downtown strips can't even walk to them because their towns haven't bothered to build sidewalks even in the moderately dense parts of town.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#207

Post by bllguo »

refurb wrote: post #130
trinovantes wrote: post #75

The Not Just Bikes youtube channel was quite the rabbit hole. It has convinced me that I really hate North American car-centric cities. It's a shame there's basically no country in the anglosphere designed for pedestrians like most European countries.

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.

of course they do, that's the whole issue. in many situations it is better for the whole if people don't get everything they want. that's where regulation should come in. "people like it" is shortsighted thinking, prone to local optima, and should not be the sole criterion for policy decisions

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#208

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

trinovantes wrote: post #75

The Not Just Bikes youtube channel was quite the rabbit hole. It has convinced me that I really hate North American car-centric cities. It's a shame there's basically no country in the anglosphere designed for pedestrians like most European countries.

Britain is in the anglosphere. We’re not exactly the Netherlands but we’re a whole heap ahead of the US, and getting (very slowly) better. Same goes for New Zealand.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#209

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

Aloha wrote: post #173
takk309 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem with 3 driveways per block is you've just made a really low density set of stores. This means that you massively increase the average distance someone has to travel to get to the store they want. One of the main reasons to separate streets and roads is that it encourages tightly packed small shops which (especially when combined with mixed zoning) create low average travel distances. Lower travel distances mean fewer cars on the road (cause more stuff is in walking/biking distance) and therefore lower traffic.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#210

Post by dont__panic »

refurb wrote: post #176
adrianN wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have a car, and was excited to get one when I moved out of NYC a couple years back.

But I hate using it for day-to-day tasks. For me, it's a machine that lets me take fun trips on the weekend, or go see family in their car-dependent towns and cities. If I want to go to a brewery, or stop by the post office, or shop for a few small items, or just go to a park, I would literally always rather do it on my bike or on foot. Driving around cities is miserable.

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