Plus car travel is dead time since you’re forced to pay attention to the road at least somewhat.
I’d rather have a longer journey that is hands free
People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
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Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#12Not even sure how you'd start off hating the idea. Less noise, less pollution, shorter commute, cheaper infrastructure, more green, more walking, improved health...I mean...just off the top of my head I'm thinking of tons of advantages. I can't think of a single disadvantage. The only reason I need a car is because the city / neighbourhood is configured around the expectation that everyone has a car.
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#13I have to live in a bubble then. I never heard people express hate of care free cities, but I hear the opposite all the time, people complaining how horrible car-centric cities are.
But I’m a Western European who lived in cities all my life, don’t have a driving license, and has zero interest in cars ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#14I would have expected the article to give some clear pool/metric/statistics about "people hate the idea ... ". There are indeed loud people and big interest groups that oppose car free cities, but I am not sure about "people" in general.
Sure, you need means of transport and to be able to live, and you can't change things over night, but if you would ask people "would you prefer to have a supermarket 5 minutes away or one 20 kilometers away" I doubt anybody would say "no I want only things far to be forced to use a car".
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#15Car free cities are great but you have to have a lot of problems solved for them to work . You need high density, lots of public services from libraries to pools all these need to be close. Public transport has to be safe so you have to actually enforce laws and arrest vagrants. Car free needs a lot of things to go right where car full cities can be pretty disfunctional
"Do you like car free cities?"
"Oh yes!"
"Cool, Get out then."
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#16The open paragraph regarding London is very much 'of now'. Air pollution in London in the 2000s has been the lowest it has been in over a century. The Great Smog of 1952 killed perhaps 10,000 people over a very short period. And the article doesn't make clear the ONS-estimated 36,000 a year deaths is across the entire UK not just London.
It just feels like the modern journalism's trend for hyperbole and over exaggeration. That's not to say that pollution shouldn't be reduced as much as possible. It's not so bad that you don't see tens of thousands of runners and cyclists in and around London every single day.
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#17The title is a bit hyperbolic. It's mostly about reducing the number of cars in the urban core, improving public transit, and making the infrastructure more pedestrian and bike-friendly. Which, while easier said than done, is a lot more achievable than being literally car-free--especially in more than a fairly small area.
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#18People's aversion to change, even when the change is for something that is objectively better in every way, is really really annoying.
People mock the soviet way of building neighborhoods but it was miles better. Instead of extensive pointless suburbs where everybody has his house, they built huge 8/10 story buildings. The buildings were surrounded by parks, benches, places for kids to play. People aggregated a lot and everything was relatively close (building taller means you can build a lot closer to downtown). I have lived 6 months in Ohio, Colum…
Why did people buy cars if they didn't need them?
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#19I have to live in a bubble then. I never heard people express hate of care free cities, but I hear the opposite all the time, people complaining how horrible car-centric cities are. But I’m a Western European who lived in cities all my life, don’t have a driving license, and has zero interest in cars ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
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