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Come to the Netherlands. Sell your car. Buy a bike. A car is not really a status symbol here. Its more like a liability.
Come to the Netherlands. Sell your car. Buy a bike. A car is not really a status symbol here. Its more like a liability.
This is only true if you live in an inner city bubble. Cars are pretty popular ways of getting about in the suburbs and rural areas.
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For what percentage of people in rural or suburban America do you think "move to the Netherlands" is a realistic suggestion?
Just out of curiosity - how big of an issue is parking in rural US?
(This is intended as humor)
I think you need to go one level deeper: People needing to move non-trivial distances for periodic tasks shapes everything. Cars, and thus car parking, come about because of this need. Even before cars existed, roads and parking (such as hitching posts and stables) still existed because people needed to move. And even bicycles (electric or not) need parking too. There are startups dedicated to creating automated bike…
Looking back in time, most people would actually walk for most of their daily life. That reflected in how cities and villages were built. This layout has only changed after we started adopting cars as default mean of transportation (mostly 1930s and later, with some exceptions).
I visited metro Detroit for the first time on Saturday and the parking situation was abysmal but this is perhaps understandable in a large city. I thought my small city in Canada was bad! We couldn’t even park downtown since it appears you need to book it in advance and the trip was somewhat spontaneous. I just ended up pulling over (by a no stopping sign ha) on a quiet side street and setting the GPS back to Windsor…
Detroit, as the capital of the auto industry, has far more parking than just about any other city I've ever been to. There are huge, multi-story garages right on the main thoroughfare downtown. https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/parking-lots-eat-american-... > Detroit was, or is, Motor City. Its center can pull off another automotive-related nickname: Parking Central. Fully one-third of downtown Detroit is dedicated t…
Next trip will be more planned for sure. I was impressed with the highways though. Definitely a motorists’ dream to get around the various suburbs.
Seems like parking is a side effect for people's preference for larger houses and yards. Convince people to live in smaller houses and share walls with their neighbors, and the parking situation would change dramatically.
> live in smaller houses and share walls with their neighbors Doing either of those things makes your standard of living worse.
I live in a city, share walls, and am less than a 10 minute walk from my office. My coworkers come in early and leave work late to avoid traffic. I'm home before they can get their car out of the parking garage and I can easily go home for lunch. I think my standard of living is therefore higher than someone who must drive to work.
Seems like parking is a side effect for people's preference for larger houses and yards. Convince people to live in smaller houses and share walls with their neighbors, and the parking situation would change dramatically.
> share walls with their neighbors I honestly don't know why anyone would ever want to do that. To me, it's only done out of necessity, and is a driving force in motivating people to get the hell out of that situation asap. But the cool thing is, some people can choose that, if that's what they desire, even though I can't understand why.
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You're describing urban environments. A lot of people live in those places already. But a lot of people prefer to live elsewhere. Differences in preference is fine. What doesn't make sense though is driving in urban environments, especially single-occupant vehicles that make up the vast majority of motor traffic in major cities. Keep the suburbs. But I think it'd be good to make cities painful to drive in for all but…
> it'd be good to make cities painful to drive in This is the wrong approach. Don't intentionally make driving worse for anyone, anywhere, ever. If you want people to use transit instead, then improve it until it's a better option than driving is today.
They recently added a pedestrian island in the road near where I live. It is not unnoticeable. With paint lines, high reflective markings, and literally a concrete wall.
Literally on day 1, a car made an illegal left turn and hit the clearly marked island at 20mph faster than the speed limit. It jumped the 3 foot high barrier, but the pedestrian on that island was saved.
Make car life in cities miserable.
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You're describing urban environments. A lot of people live in those places already. But a lot of people prefer to live elsewhere. Differences in preference is fine. What doesn't make sense though is driving in urban environments, especially single-occupant vehicles that make up the vast majority of motor traffic in major cities. Keep the suburbs. But I think it'd be good to make cities painful to drive in for all but…
> it'd be good to make cities painful to drive in This is the wrong approach. Don't intentionally make driving worse for anyone, anywhere, ever. If you want people to use transit instead, then improve it until it's a better option than driving is today.
Why not?
>You could imagine a world in which streets were pedestrianized and where we planted trees and gardens and in what is currently space reserved for parking, and closed streets, outside schools, so kids can have places to play. I would love to see a LOT more of this in urban centers. I live in a college town that is about the same size as Iowa City. Iowa City has taken the step of closing off their downtown and making…