If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity • Hacker News Board

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

#681

Post by closeparen » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 4:05 PM UTC

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #86

gruez wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even a lot of the anti-cycling stance comes down to, “What am I, poor?” I agree with the overall point that people don't want to cycle because the experience sucks, but your description feels like an unnecessarily inflammatory way to say "people are willing to pay for a more pleasant experience". Nobody says "a lot of the anti-cheap laptop stance comes down to, "what am I, poor?".

There's an ad in rotation right now on a popular local radio station where the whole bit is that character A's car isn't working, and character B talks about the great deals at a specific car dealership. "Don't walk," he exclaims and he shares the gospel of car ownership. Literally, the whole framing is that walking sucks and is embarrassing :(

In the vast majority of American postwar development, walking does suck and is embarrassing. That’s why the article’s framing about dignity for pedestrians in street design is interesting.

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

#682

Post by sershe » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 4:35 PM UTC

wizofaus wrote: post #643

sershe wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or I could just drive. How is walking with all these inconveniences "objectively better"? :)

If all the externalities involved in having everyone use cars for every trip where they don't feel like walking are managed (including health impacts from pollution, sedentary lifestyles etc., time wasted sitting in rush hour traffic, dominance of cityscape by infrastructure dedicated to automobile traffic etc. etc.) then sure, driving is objectively better. I've yet to come across anywhere in the world that's true t…

I mean, this thread argues that the environment in Amsterdam/Tokyo/New York/... is "objectively better" than in LA to live in.

"sedentary lifestyles" is not a real externality and anyway is also easy to achieve with transit; "time wasted in traffic" is simply false (far more time is wasted on transit given how fast it is to drive for an average trip, and sometimes even in rush hour), "dominance of cityscape by infrastructure dedicated to automobile traffic" by itself is a subjective aesthetic preference.

Now as for the actual real externalities, I said elsewhere, it's one thing to say "most people reveal the preference to drive (and I disagree with them OR because driving is just better), however they cannot all have what they want because of pollution / global warming /...". That could be correct, although it would also imply this is a technological problem - they mostly solved pollution from cars, and if we e.g. had cheap fusion or solar energy and electric cars we could all go back to driving.

It's quite another to pretend that people need to switch to the inferior (by their own revealed preference around the world) lifestyle because it is "objectively better".

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

#683

Post by sershe » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 4:37 PM UTC

spost wrote: post #639

sershe wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You treat the walk as the default and car as something that needs to be justified. That's BS. I think you are too privileged to live in a safe neighborhood, in good climate, to be healthy enough to walk with load, and to own a good backpack :P To me car is the default solution, it's simply better in every way for most people. Making one's life better doesn't need to be "justified".

> You treat the walk as the default Is it unreasonable to treat “moving around with your body” as the default vs “moving around in a $x,000-x00,000 device”?

It is! Just like not having surgery, not using AC/heating, or not wearing glasses, etc. All those things are unnatural and some are expensive, but luckily we are not hunter-gatherers anymore ;)

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

#684

Post by sershe » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 4:45 PM UTC

doix wrote: post #550

sershe wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a great link: "Vehicle ownership starts to grow quickly when countries reach income of about 2,500 per capita in purchasing-power-parity (PPP) terms. Rapid growth continues until income per capita reaches about 10,000. Saturation level is at about 850 vehicles per 1,000 people." The limiting factor for having tons of cars is income. https://www.imf.org/-/media/Websites/IMF/imported-flagship-i... [pdf with per-…

But you're assuming that people want to own cars to make short journeys. When I lived in Edinburgh, I had a car but I would never use it within the city or anywhere that I could get to on a train/bus. This attitude was pretty common among my entire social circle. Reading all your comments in this thread felt surreal to me. I guess I'm in an anti-car bubble, because I've never met anyone with your opinion before.

How short is short? Edinburgh looks pretty small. I just plotted a route from a random point in the center to a place called Bonaly that looks like a residential area, 5 miles away. Two observations is that traffic is pretty bad (red), so it looks like people drive even though transit is available, probably confirming my prior observation that people will choose to drive until driving capacity is used up or over-used then switch to other modes. 2nd is that transit will take 43 minutes vs 25mins of driving (and that doesn't account for waiting time, nobody has exactly perfect timing), so driving is still faster :)

As for cars it's actually one of the biggest things I changed my mind on in my life. I used to be anti-car and always lived in walkable areas till my mid/late twenties. Then I actually tried driving and living in non walkable areas and I couldn't believe how wrong I was :) Especially when I go back to visit walkable areas and it's annoying and getting anywhere takes forever, something I never noticed when I lived there because it was the default.

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

#685

Post by slothtrop » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

akira2501 wrote: post #624

slothtrop wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what "15 min cities" is about. The YIMBYs also push for accessible amenities, through zoning changes, to make areas more walkable.

Yea.. I'm sure the "planned economy" will work this time.

What does loosening zoning restriction shave to do with "planned economy"? One of the strongest proponents of this, the Strong Towns guy, is a libertarian.

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

#686

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

4iuvosvjf23 wrote: post #678

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a similar discontent growing. For me it's this feeling that I'm working for the machine when I should be working against it. The anti-human tendencies of that machine aren't so directly unlivable for me, they're just evidence that I'm on the wrong side. I have a slow transition plan for getting to something more meaningful: 1. Take classes part time (doing this) 2. Pay off house, switch to fill time focus on…

Thanks for the suggestion! I've started looking a little into the global remote thing and it sounds amazing. Would probably take me a while to get into such a position because I'm very junior still but it's something to aim for.

My current position is like that. We have this app, "donut" which is sort of like blind dating for work, it will pair people up at random and look at their calendars and schedule them with 30 minutes for chitchat.

Sounds cheesy, and it kind of is, but you get to know your coworkers. Last week's donut was with someone from Kenya, currently in Malta for the month. She works during the week and travels during the weekends.

Myself, I haven't really taken advantage of the location flexibility. But I'm just saying the positions are out there. If you're competing on the global scale you probably want to specialize a bit more than you otherwise would. X years of experience might not be enough.

I worked for a startup whose product was a workflow orchestrator. They failed, so I emailed their biggest competitor (who clearly wasn't making the same mistakes), and said: "If you can't beat 'em, join em?" And now I'm working on a different workflow orchestrator. I picked workflow orchestrators because I like working with graph structures, and I think that familiarity with them might be relevant to future topics I want to work on.

I'm not trying to pitch workflow orchestrators to you, I'm just saying it's handy to have a thing that you're into which makes you stand out when applying for positions that are adjacent to that thing.

It's worth thinking about early on because you might be able to slant your work towards more exposure to that thing.

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

#687

Post by QuercusMax » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #572

esoterica wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your feelings are wrong. There were 2000 pedestrians killed by cars in NYC from 2018 to 2021 and only 12 killed by bicycles. https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nycdot-pedestrian...

1) I certainly don’t want to die. I also simply don’t want to get hit. 2) Bicycle/pedestrian are under reported. 3) I am specifically referring to my experience in Manhattan. In large portions of Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx I think my attitude would be different. (Also thanks for the link - poking around the DOT site they have some great information. Surprised to see how many pedestrian fatalities involved alcohol…

Are you saying bicycle/pedestrian deaths are under-reported? I find that very hard to believe.

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

#688

Post by QuercusMax » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 8:10 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #104

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.

Then try walking in a new neighbourhood with barely any shade. It is awful. Love how south-centric this statement is. In Northern countries, that's true for a month typically, otherwise "oh god please I hope the sun will shine on me". In December, I see 4 hours of sun, where the light gets above tree tops. And that's in Southern Canada! Not a hatred of trees, but a dislike of shade trees. edit: until I visited Texas,…

Unless all your shade trees are evergreens (unlikely) there's this thing called "autumn" when the leaves fall off the trees and they don't provide shade any more.

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

#689

Post by QuercusMax » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 8:10 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #388

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.

One of the fundamental axioms of traffic engineering is you can't have trees too close to the edge of the road, because drunk/speeding drivers might get hurt. It is not just that the neighborhoods are mature enough for trees to have grown in, it's that they predate this science. https://highways.dot.gov/safety/rwd/provide-safe-recovery/cl...

Then those traffic engineers are idiots, because they should be designing the roads so that people don't feel like they can safely drive at speeds that will endanger themself and others.

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

#690

Post by wizofaus » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 9:00 PM UTC

sershe wrote: post #682

wizofaus wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all the externalities involved in having everyone use cars for every trip where they don't feel like walking are managed (including health impacts from pollution, sedentary lifestyles etc., time wasted sitting in rush hour traffic, dominance of cityscape by infrastructure dedicated to automobile traffic etc. etc.) then sure, driving is objectively better. I've yet to come across anywhere in the world that's true t…

I mean, this thread argues that the environment in Amsterdam/Tokyo/New York/... is "objectively better" than in LA to live in. "sedentary lifestyles" is not a real externality and anyway is also easy to achieve with transit; "time wasted in traffic" is simply false (far more time is wasted on transit given how fast it is to drive for an average trip, and sometimes even in rush hour), "dominance of cityscape by infras…

I basically waste no time at all travelling - I do it mostly by bike which is obviously beneficial health wise, and if I do take a train or bus I use the time to read etc. (plus walking to/fro stations/stops is, again, a positive use of time). The objective downsides in the amount of infrastructure dedicated to allowing everyone to drive everywhere is surely seen in the cost of maintaining it, and the impacts it has on housing affordability etc. Not to mention the environmental damage caused.

I certainly don't want people feeling like they're being forced into making inferior choices - just that we make an effort to design our towns and cities so that the choice to walk/bike/use transit is a realistic one that compares favourably with driving.