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If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

streets.mn

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Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#251

Post by elric »

thex10 wrote: post #136
jeffrallen wrote: post #80

I liked lots of this, but I really disagree with the night shot. What about the dignity of the people living along the bright (overly) lighted sidewalk, who lose their dark skies and dark bedrooms? Street lights suck, and should be absolutely minimized, and turned off at 22h. If you feel intimidated by the dark, you can solve that for yourself: don't shine your fears into my windows.

excuse me, what? No, if I need to walk through late at night, I want to be safe. You have some options: - put the bedrooms away from the street - invest in some curtains - live somewhere more pastoral???

The light won't make you safer. It might make you feel safer, which is a different thing entirely.

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#252

Post by fnimick »

pdonis wrote: post #210
lozenge wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mean water, sewage, roads, pavements, street lighting. See link.

I pay for those with property taxes. Plus a portion of the purchase price of a house is the developer recovering these infrastructure costs when a neighborhood is built.

If you read the link you would realize that property taxes don't even cover 25% of the ongoing maintenance cost. The rest comes out of the general tax pool at everyone else's expense, regardless of whether we live there or not.

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#253

Post by fnimick »

standyro wrote: post #187
justajot wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and the highway system was originally intended as defense infrastructure to more easily move equipment across the country. A great idea, but a design that was not originally intended to plow right through cities. This has been a big contributor to the mess that we are in when it comes to urban / suburban design and the extreme lack of walkability.

Not true. They were definitely intended to plow right through cities. That’s why they built highways/freeways right through urban cores, or planned entire metro regions around them.

Specifically, right through minority neighborhoods in cities. You can't ignore the explicitly racist history of urban "renewal" when discussing freeway planning.

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#254

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

barney54 wrote: post #179
goda90 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have literally seen people scoff at biking or riding the bus as something for poor people. It is a common sentiment.

One problem in the United States is that transportation planners apparently think that buses are for the poor and people won’t ride them. Instead they want to build expensive light rail or subway when a good bus system would be much better, flexible, and affordable.

There is another reason for building rail systems. The routes are fixed. It is easy to change a bus route by moving the stops around and issuing a new map. It is, as you say, expensive to change a rail route.

Because rail routes are fixed, that means that developers can count on their longevity, and therefore they develop real estate to match it. A rail line can greatly gentrify the neighborhoods it runs through, given a decade or two to get started. This is a big reason why many neighborhoods will protest and block and vote against any rail lines being built near them, because they know it will start the timer on rising property values, rising rents, new neighbors, and the destruction of low-income and affordable housing.

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#255

Post by fnimick »

pdonis wrote: post #101
bluGill wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people in the US live in an urban area, where urban solutions work. Only a small minority live in a rural area, though many living in suburbs like to pretend they are in a rural area.

> many living in suburbs like to pretend they are in a rural area Suburbs are not rural, but they're not urban either. The population density in most suburbs is too low to support the kind of walk-everywhere infrastructure that a true high density urban area can (and should) provide. The real issue is that many people fail to realize that there is no problem with that . Having different areas for people to live with…

How does mandatory single family zoning and parking minimums factor into your "feature?" When people want to live somewhere dense, and that's illegal to build, they're forced into suburban living even though that is not their preference.

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#256

Post by 7speter »

whimsicalism wrote: post #183
kccqzy wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some way it makes sense. The poor are driven by high property prices to live far away. The more affluent can choose to buy property in the heart of the city and use bikes in the city.

I think a lot of people are overgeneralizing the dynamics of urban poverty from what they have observed in the last decade of home ownership trends, but affluent white flight from cities only really ended in the mid-00s-2010s (for some cities) and there are plenty of significant poor populations near urban cores able to remain because it's either where section 8 housing was built or by rent control. They just take pu…

You know how long the waitlist is for section 8 is, in say, New York? All poor people don’t just go out and ask for section 8 or rent stabilized apartments and instantly get them.

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#257

Post by fnimick »

paulcole wrote: post #225
TulliusCicero wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People can still do things that suck if they want to do those things enough. Yes, but why would they when a thing is painful and unpleasant? There's other ways to get around or get exercise, people will default to things that are nice and convenient. > If you want to walk and have two legs that work, don’t whine about wishing walking didn’t suck. Get out and walk. Incredibly nonsensical dismissal. Let's see how sil…

I don’t think I called anyone a loser. It’s fine for people to say they want to do something and then not do it. I’m just saying that it can be done. Either do it or don’t. > Yes, but why would they when a thing is painful and unpleasant? Because sometimes things that are painful and unpleasant have benefits that outweigh the pain and unpleasantness?

Perhaps when those things have a benefit to society, we should invest in infrastructure to make them more pleasant, rather than browbeating people as lazy if they don't brave urban arterial roads to walk to a grocery store?

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#258

Post by tvaughan »

degrews wrote: post #106

I moved from Spain to the US, and I often find myself trying to explain to people back home just how miserable and even humiliating the pedestrian experience is here. Here are some other examples of things that I think contribute to the hostile walking experience in the US: * Cars parked in short driveways often extend all the way across the sidewalk. Even if you can easily step off onto the road to walk around them…

> I often find myself trying to explain to people back home just how miserable and even humiliating the pedestrian experience is here.

Same. I’ve lived in Los Ángeles and Amsterdam, and it is impossible to explain to my friends and family just how awful the quality of life is in LA precisely because of the difference in attitudes and priorities over cars. Perhaps some have “nicer” (aka bigger) houses in LA than they would have in Ámsterdam, but once they leave their front door everything is objectively worse

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#259

Post by tmnvix »

voisin wrote: post #9

If we want a shift to walking, we need cities to plant around 100x the number of trees they have. Ever walk through an old, mature neighbourhood? Usually there are tons of people on the sidewalks, and a primary reason is that there are mature trees providing plenty of shade. Then try walking in a new neighbourhood with barely any shade. It is awful.

Unfortunately trees are often seen as a danger to car drivers on roads over a certain speed limit so traffic engineers dislike them.

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#260

Post by whimsicalism »

fnimick wrote: post #249
whimsicalism wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You absolutely don't know what you're talking about. There are poor people living in urban Boston and NYC and every city on the eastern seaboard.

The poor people living in Boston live in Roxbury and Dorchester. Coincidentally, these are the areas with by far the worst car dependency and worst public transit in the city.

I've worked with impoverished Cape Verdean populations in specifically those neighborhoods and lots if not most do not have a car.
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