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How do you fix a stroad?

strongtowns.org

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Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#311

Post by varjag »

throwawaygal7 wrote: post #302
varjag wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally the first time I heard Atlanta is a popular tourist destination, while pretty much anyone in the world is aware of cliche Paris and NYC skylines.

I think the appeal of NYC is the cost and luxury of vacationing there. Even the skyline views - they're nice but I don't think they hold up to mountains. However, I grew up extremely rural so I am biased towards what I know and people like what they like.

I think you have it backwards, NYC is expensive because everyone and their dog wants to vacation there.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#312

Post by Symbiote »

scrollaway wrote: post #263
Kiro wrote: post #260

It's funny. As someone who has never been to the US stroads are what define the American urban landscape for me and what I want to experience. They feel really exotic. It's like being in an American movie or TV show.

Are you thinking of actual stroads or rather simply the large american roads? US roads definitely have a cool factor to them but American stroads are awful and really not something you want to experience. I remember taking a two hour walk in Irvine a decade ago. Walking in a straight line, palm trees in the middle of the stroad to separate the ten lanes, walking, walking... Nothing changing around me other than the n…

It's actual stroads that stand out to Europeans. The excessively-wide, long, straight roads with an enormous lit-up business sign every 200-500m. "Motel 6", "Firestone", "Tire Center", then an American flag as big as a house[1].

In TV and films, they're not clogged with traffic, and they don't show it takes 10 minutes of driving to visit 3 shops.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3524597,-121.981251,3a,75y,2...

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#313

Post by mcv »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #306
mcv wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we'd only drive there, despite it being, again, directly across the street That is just bizarre. And it's important to understand how inefficient this is to need a car to cross the street; you need parking space on this side, parking space on the other side, you need to get on and off the stroad, causing wear, interfering with and slowing down the other traffic, which is mostly through traffic that's not interested…

>And it's important to understand how inefficient this is to need a car to cross the street; you need parking space on this side, parking space on the other side, you need to get on and off the stroad, causing wear, interfering with and slowing down the other traffic, which is mostly through traffic that's not interested at all in your house or that Korean market. It's unbelievably inefficient. But is this inefficien…

But is it actually more efficient for others to access that market? The market needs a massive parking lot to accommodate those cars, which means they need a lot of ground. That too is inefficient. I've seen a comparison of two commercial blocks close together; one was old, had a row of old shops along the street and hadn't really been changed much since the 1920s or so. The other was new, modern, had a parking lot serving a single fast-food restaurant. But that meant it had only a single restaurant, and that single restaurant just didn't make anywhere near as much money as that row of old shops.

Elsewhere in this discussion someone pointed out that shops owners often resist attempts to turn their street into a pedestrian-only area, because they fear it will drive away their customers, but every time it turns out to be a boost to those shops. Turns out the car isn't actually that important. You can save a lot of wasted space and money by making shops more accessible to other forms of traffic.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#314

Post by Symbiote »

chupchap wrote: post #100

I feel like almost all roads I see in a dense Indian city like Mumbai is a stroad. I don't think a distinct classification of a road and street as defined by strong towns can be made in a city that has heavy occupancy and pre-existing development. Then looking at a state like Kerala that is so urbanised and heavily populated I have seen a lot of houses with gates opening up into a national highway. How can anyone fix…

I don't know how it would be fixed, but in the west it would simply be forbidden to build a house driveway onto a highway.

If the road is being upgraded into a highway, they would alter the driveway so it no longer connects to the highway: a service/access/frontage road, or some other route.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#315

Post by JohnWhigham »

CanceledAccount wrote: post #285
paganel wrote: post #280

> Slow traffic; prioritize human movement over auto mobility; This will most probably bring extra gentrification plus damn the businesses that might need that extra road-traffic for recurring clients. Bicycle-ing in a downtown-ish area is mostly done by people like us (yuppies, more or less), the person who has to get tho his/her job at Walmart or at a logistics center at 5-6AM doesn't have time for this, and after h…

Redesigning infrastructure always produces winners and losers. Slowing down traffic will always make someone’s commute longer. Unfortunately, making these decisions is hard but necessary, because the trade offs are worth it. Gentrification is when a place becomes more desirable to live. It’s caused by people enjoying themselves. Gentrification is wealth creation. If housing prices rise too much, you can build more ho…

Redesigning always happens in little pockets though. And it often takes years due to how broken infrastructure planning is. So the first people to take advantage of it are the rich. And so shit without cars gets the stereotype of being only for the rich. And the cycle continues.

I've accepted it's just never going to change in the US. There's too many opposing forces all at odds with each other. Really makes you fucking mad how much the "Greatest Generation", in addition to their cancer boomer children, really fucked this country.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#316

Post by mcv »

rocqua wrote: post #282
mcv wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Note sure I agree. I can think of a quite a few places that are essentially a stroad. Most feel like they were build between the 60s and the 90s.

Could be. Do you have a good example?

I do know a few places that aren't entirely clear about whether they're a road or a street. None of them anywhere near as extreme as those American stroads, but Amsterdam definitely has a couple of important connecting roads (especially around the centrum ring; Stadhouderskade etc) that's explicitly intended as a main thoroughfare for cars to reach different parts of the city, but in some places still has bikes on the road, houses and shops, etc.

It's not pretending to be a highway or anything like that, and certainly in the more complex parts, it's just a single lane in each direction, but it's definitely intended to be one of the primary connector roads in the city center, and a valid route if you want to go from the west side of the city to the east side.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#317

Post by periphrasis »

paganel wrote: post #280

> Slow traffic; prioritize human movement over auto mobility; This will most probably bring extra gentrification plus damn the businesses that might need that extra road-traffic for recurring clients. Bicycle-ing in a downtown-ish area is mostly done by people like us (yuppies, more or less), the person who has to get tho his/her job at Walmart or at a logistics center at 5-6AM doesn't have time for this, and after h…

Idk man, how do you think people survived prior to 1945? We do not have to go far back into human history to see the alternative to car centric development. Were pre war cities and towns gentrified and devoid of commerce? Did everyone have no time for anything but walking? It’s always striking to me the extent to which people will take a 75 year old radical experiment (car centric suburban development) as the normal and the natural mode of civilization, and consider any deviation from that mode completely impractical. I guess people were entirely impractical for 8000 years or so?

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#318

Post by zip1234 »

throwawaysea wrote: post #270
TulliusCicero wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this comment is the mindset I'm talking about. Protecting "neighborhood character" by prioritizing cars over people, increasing property values at the expense of affordability, keeping out the poors, etc. They put a lot of nice words on a lot of very bad results. Meanwhile, very-dense-by-US-standards cities like Vienna and Munich often top the charts for quality of life. And I can attest to that myself: Munich…

Why are those bad results? Neighborhood character matters - what's wrong with people having a preference for low density, open air, fast access, uncrowded parks, and so forth? You are engaging in the same dishonest recasting of people's personal preferences by summoning a caricature about increasing property values or "keeping out the poors". No one I know who favors low density cares about those things - it is first…

> I would argue that neighborhood character is prioritizing people. It's prioritizing the ones who live there already, who have built their town into a desirable location, and want to protect what they have.

No. It is prioritizing the loud ones over everyone else. Also, most people don't understand what makes a good city and have hardly seen anywhere else. They just want other people to pay for their unchanging city.

> There is no rational basis for living in fear of getting hit by a car.

This is so completely wrong. In the US, you have lifetime odds of death in a crash of 1 in 106. That is just for death--the odds of getting struck by a driver are MUCH MUCH higher. That could include permanent injury.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#319

Post by gladinovax »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #226
vdqtp3 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> overweight, white trash, lower back tattoo is elitism. Even if it's right, it's elitism.

You're on an elitist forum, you get what you pay for. Just because half the commenters here fancy themselves sharing the struggle of the working class does not mean they actually respect or care about the "trash".

Elite? Half the people on here couldnt change their own tire. that isnt elite. Being dependent on strong skilled men is not elite.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#320

Post by efficax »

yarnton99 wrote: post #128
pcmoney wrote: post #79

Has 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.

Check out Savannah Georgia
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