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The Decline of the City Grid

economist.com

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Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#191

Post by msla »

ericmay wrote: post #164
msla wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They just do. On roads where motor vehicles aren't allowed? On roads blockaded so motor vehicles can't access? That's what "stopped up for cars" means.

It’s just not a problem. And even if it were a problem it pales in comparison to the deaths and societal cost to driving. You’re thinking about 99.99999% problems and sacrificing common problems (kids being run over etc.).

> It’s just not a problem.

From the other comments in the thread, it's a huge problem, and it's one that kills.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#192

Post by ericmay »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #179
ericmay wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s just not a problem. And even if it were a problem it pales in comparison to the deaths and societal cost to driving. You’re thinking about 99.99999% problems and sacrificing common problems (kids being run over etc.).

> You’re thinking about 99.99999% problems and sacrificing common problems (kids being run over etc.). Kids being run over is not a common problem, by any standard. You'd struggle to argue that it even qualified as "rare". It's more along the lines of "unheard of". The 2016 census reports the population of 0-19 year olds as 81,880,000. According to this article in US News ( https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/art…

If you were focusing on the numeric aspect of "kids getting run over" you largely missed the point. That you missed the point is reinforced by you focusing on the exact number of kids ran over versus general death of kids in car crashes, for example.

> Every year, one in every 20,000 kids in America dies in a car crash.

And I bet that 770 kids dying each year from being directly run over occurs 70x more often than someone dying because a doctor can't make it to the hospital in time. Really optimizing for an unimportant detail at the expense of the entire system.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#193

Post by msla »

rayiner wrote: post #101
twelvechairs wrote: post #8

The big recent exemplar of street layout for a new place is Houten in the netherlands [0] which is basically focussed on a train station and walkable town square at the centre with a ring road at the edge. Roads are a 'soft grid' for pedestrians and cyclists but stopped up for cars making the car network more of a tree with dead ends rather than a grid. And making road speeds slow at the centre and fast at the edges.…

Look at how human scale everything is, even the pedestrian underpass under the road. By contrast in the US, even public transit has to be built at massive, oppressive scales, with pedestrian walkways soaring multiple stories above the road: https://wtop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/354851.jpg . Awful.

And, judging by the comments I've gotten, it would kill anyone who needed emergency medical care.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#194

Post by ericmay »

msla wrote: post #190
humanistbot wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have roads where motor vehicles aren't allowed, but have exceptions for ambulances in emergencies. They turn the sirens and lights on and everyone pulls over to make way.

> You can have roads where motor vehicles aren't allowed, but have exceptions for ambulances in emergencies. So doctors won't be allowed to drive to the hospital in emergencies. That kind of thing kills people.

Cars kill people. You're focusing on minor, insignificant details and creating an environment where more people die than otherwise would. How many people die at the hospital waiting for a doctor? You know they have attending physicians and emergency room staff who work there right?

> So doctors won't be allowed to drive to the hospital in emergencies.

You might as well say "so doctors will be stuck in traffic jams on the way to the hospital, these things kill people".

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#195

Post by ahtihn »

Armisael16 wrote: post #188
ahtihn wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Un cul-de-sac" is simply a road that just stops instead of going somewhere. It usually has a specific road sign to signal it. It's definitely used in (Swiss) French. Does it mean something different in the US? And what would be the French equivalent then?

The traditional US cul-de-sac is rounded at the end, and usually has a house at the end (the road was never intended to continue) Here’s a fairly representative picture of the geometry: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS8zguy...

Yeah, that's what I imagined. I'd call that a cul-de-sac in French too, but there may be regional differences so I'm curious what GP means when he says the French don't use that word to describe this.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#196

Post by SyzygistSix »

thinking4real wrote: post #175
SyzygistSix wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a progressive/liberal town that has good roads and weather for cycling. Very few people seem interested, even young people without kids. I just don't understand why it is so unpopular and undesirable.

Let’s see… I can use a form of transit that takes longer. Likely for the majority of people, so much longer that it’s impractical for majority use cases (20 min car ride becomes 40+ min bike ride). I have to physically myself, so I’ll be prepared to be sweaty and live in that all day. If there’s inclement weather I have to wait it out for some unknown length of time or endure the elements (and again be disgusting for…

That is not the case in many cities though. Bicycles aren't a good solution for many people. But for many others, they can be. There are obvious examples of both. My city is a great example of a great place to bicycle. I know because I've done it for almost 20 years and I'm not superman.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#197

Post by davidw »

strken wrote: post #136
davidw wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a good grid, you could always close off some of the side streets to cars and let bikes and pedestrians through. With the big up front design... you better hope you got it right the first time because you are going to have more trouble changing it later. I think that's what I like about a grid. It doesn't have to be 100% right. You can change and shape and adapt it as needs be.

With a big up-front layout you can still leave big enough gaps to put a road in and create a grid if you need, too: it goes both ways. Keep government ownership of pedestrian and bike paths with some nice trees on either side, and if you really need to you can put a road there later.

That's still a grid you're describing, in terms of the right-of-ways that have been reserved for the public. Just without roads built out on all of them. And yeah, that makes sense in some places.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#198

Post by closeparen »

kqr wrote: post #185
closeparen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the more humane subdivisions are built with walking trails e.g. behind the backyards. A developer may or may not feel that they need to spend the extra money for that to sell the houses. Customers for these very deeply nested cul de sac homes tend to value privacy a lot. They don’t want people they don’t know passing through, and may be even more suspicious of pedestrians than drivers.

> Customers for these very deeply nested cul de sac homes tend to value privacy a lot. They don’t want people they don’t know passing through, and may be even more suspicious of pedestrians than drivers. In which direction does the causation go? If I ended up on a partially closed road I would also become suspicious of people and start to value "privacy".

I suspect it goes the other way, stroads polarizing people against ever wanting to live near active corridors.

But either way, that’s how the vast majority of American housing development has been since the 40s, and it’s the only way people have ever lived in the cities that got their growth in the postwar period. So either way they have the preference.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#199

Post by dghlsakjg »

msla wrote: post #162
dghlsakjg wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just went to Houten on google maps. In that area I couldn't come up with a route between two points that took longer than 10 minutes by car. And that was by trying to find the two most inconvenient points in the town. I don't know if Houten has this feature but there are often movable bollards that allow emergency vehicles to take shortcuts. From their centrally located public health center, I couldn't find a locat…

> I don't know if Houten has this feature but there are often movable bollards that allow emergency vehicles to take shortcuts. Doctors don't drive emergency vehicles, they drive their own cars.

Which is why the 6 minute drive time invited is how long it takes to get to the hospital by regular routing.

Emergency doctors also don’t hang out at home when they are on call. They hang out at hospitals.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#200

Post by dghlsakjg »

msla wrote: post #189
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(In my experience) Doctors also don't get called out to a specific accident site; that's what Ambulances (and emergency vehicles) are for.

That isn't what I'm talking about. When doctors get called in to hospitals for emergencies, they travel in their own cars. Is that really unknown around here? If it is, none of you are competent to decide who needs a car and how cities should be designed.

You think that emergency room doctors go home to wait between patients?

On call docs (the ones that would be coming to the hospital) are the specialists that other doctors call to assist after the emergent issue is handled. A 6 minute worst case scenario drive time is perfectly acceptable.

There are hospitals in the states where it will take you longer than 6 minutes to walk to the ED from another location in the hospital after getting paged.

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