Roads without public transport are a nightmare - nowhere to park. Those stroads at least allow to park.
How do you fix a stroad?
241–250 of 411 posts
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. People like these houses so much we have to pass laws banning other types of homes on most of our residential land. Gotta make sure they don't accidentally demand the wrong type of housing!
That is rather suspicious. If people are so fond of this, then why the laws prohibiting the other.
It sounds like there’s a pressure group distorting the market and preventing people from expressing their preferences.
Fairly convincing actually.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That or just let car people (majority) have these areas that are good for cars and The idea is that a well planned city/suburb will turn car people into people that also enjoy safely not using a car some of the time. > let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere. Bleh. Such an us vs them mentality. I'm suspicious of cars because I have literally gotten hit by them while cycli…
> Bleh. Such an us vs them mentality. Doesn't the "us vs. them" mentality come from the fact that most of Strong Towns' ideas will make life worse for everyone who needs to drive, without giving most of them an alternative to driving?
Most of strong towns's ideas come down to making it legal to build with anything except stroads. Give people options instead of forcing it on everyone except the most wealthy who can afford a house in the pre-car cities.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tokyo is not a small town by any measure, and neither is the most of Europe.
I'm so confused by the idea that Tokyo is somehow bike-centric. Perhaps there's another Tokyo somewhere in Japan that is not a subway-and-taxi centric metropolitan area where bikes are rarely seen. It's a pedestrian-friendly city, though, I'll give you that.
Tokyo has a far higher bike rate than any major American city: https://cityclock.org/blogs/cycling-mode-share-data-700-citi...
Keep in mind that "Tokyo" isn't just the super dense, most central area of the metro. Tokyo technically covers a huge swathe of land, including towns that are basically suburbs. And while Japanese cities don't usually include much bike-specific infrastructure, in practice many of the narrow roads are pretty bike friendly anyway, just due to their very narrowness.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People like personal transportation and big detached houses with yards. People like these houses so much we have to pass laws banning other types of homes on most of our residential land. Gotta make sure they don't accidentally demand the wrong type of housing!
That is rather suspicious. If people are so fond of this, then why the laws prohibiting the other. It sounds like there’s a pressure group distorting the market and preventing people from expressing their preferences. Fairly convincing actually.
It's NIMBYism and zoning. People individually may want/demand apartments or townhomes or duplexes, but for various reasons it's common to outlaw all those things via local zoning regulations on most of the residential land in a city or town. Even in major cities, this is usually true (though of course there's some exceptions), that most of the land is reserved exclusively for detached single family homes on large lots.
In contrast, some countries like Germany or Japan don't have that type of zoning anywhere in the entire country. Of course, they still have many single family homes, you're just not required to live in one if you want to live on a particular street.
I don't want to get into the justifications for mandatory SFH zoning, but the results are pretty clear: it makes walking, biking and transit worse (and thus makes people less healthy and fatter); it results in economic segregation, as a working class family can't move to an affluent area by moving into a smaller home there, because smaller homes there are illegal; lastly, it means higher housing costs, because you can't put as much housing in a given area to meet demand (this also tends to increase commute times, as people go further out from the job center area to reduce costs).
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People like personal transportation and big detached houses with yards. People like these houses so much we have to pass laws banning other types of homes on most of our residential land. Gotta make sure they don't accidentally demand the wrong type of housing!
That is rather suspicious. If people are so fond of this, then why the laws prohibiting the other. It sounds like there’s a pressure group distorting the market and preventing people from expressing their preferences. Fairly convincing actually.
It's not that suspicious. People who like their quality of life in their city and neighborhood don't want to lose that. This is perfectly normal and legitimate. Those who want higher density are usually either outsiders who want to live there but can't, or developers (or departing residents) who seek to make money by flipping a property for cheaply-built denser properties. If you increase density, you end up changing people's quality of life, and often for the worse. Density introduces other problems - different neighborhood feel, less intimacy, more traffic, more people crowding up parks, changing local politics, worse public safety, etc. It is because people are fond of a high quality life they enjoy that they're against such change. The other comment here using pejoratives like NIMBY to denigrate those who care about protecting their way of living is just drawing a convenient caricature.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#247The 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.
The question is not whether people have cars (they do) or whether they like them or not (some do and some don't). The question is whether the infrastructure forces people to use a car for every single errand. Much less road space is needed if cars are not required for everything. And if one actually likes cars one is more likely to enjoy driving through the mountains than going grocery shopping by car.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#248Earlier 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.
Seriously. Wtf?
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#249Has anyone ever put a picture of a stroad up as art/instagram etc like you see with downtown NYC, Paris, small european villages, shanghai, rural mountain towns, old downtowns in America etc? Of course not. It is the McDonald’s of city planning. Cheap, ugly, bad for you but also shockingly expensive once the medical/infrastructure maintenance bill comes due. Its the overweight, white trash, lower back tattoo of aesth…
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.
This stroad seems completely alien to Dutch traffic, though. For a couple of decades now, Dutch traffic design has revolved around designating every street or road as one of three categories, two of which are two different types of Strong Town-style roads, and the third is a classic street, with slow traffic and all.
Not all Dutch streets fit this pattern perfectly, but even a century before Netherland came up with this explicit definition, we already had a good solution for a main thoroughfare with shops or homes: ventwegen. The main road still has as few access points as possible, but on both sides of it is a slow street for bikes and car-access to houses and shops. At main intersections you can switch from the main road to the ventweg, and this solution might actually be a good fit if you quickly want to fix these stroads without waiting for them to die a natural death.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#250Earlier 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…
Which goes to prove that those stroads weren't built by some evil conspiracy, but ordered and enjoyed by a (sizeable?) part of the population. Which is why they are meant to stay in the States, and reviled outside.