Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 345 posts

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#91

Post by gedy »

epolanski wrote: post #9
asdajksah2123 wrote: post #3

People'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…

> they built huge 8/10 story buildings. The buildings were surrounded by parks, benches, places for kids to play.

This is exactly what they did for "the projects" in big American cities and these were almost universally viewed as failures.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#92

Post by JKCalhoun »

bko wrote: post #84
CharlieDigital wrote: post #8

I was back in Taiwan last year after an extended absence. It's pretty amazing how easy it is to get around with a combination of the mass rapid transit (MRT) system and high speed rail (HSR). When I was last there, you still needed to take a bus or taxi from TPE to the city center. Now right from TPE airport, you can be in either Taipei city center in 30 minutes (MRT) or on the other end of the island in short order…

Do you have any children? I can't imagine car free city is good when you have two or more young children. For one, groceries are a problem as you likely need to stock more food to cook. Sure you can go to the store every other day but that takes a lot of time and is more expensive. Plus you are on a lot tighter schedule. Most people with kids race home to pick up children and don't want to stop by the store and schle…

Japan seemed to have invented the mamachari [1] for that sort of thing.

[1] https://www.nippon.com/en/features/jg00091/

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#94

Post by CharlieDigital »

safety1st wrote: post #70
CharlieDigital wrote: post #8

I was back in Taiwan last year after an extended absence. It's pretty amazing how easy it is to get around with a combination of the mass rapid transit (MRT) system and high speed rail (HSR). When I was last there, you still needed to take a bus or taxi from TPE to the city center. Now right from TPE airport, you can be in either Taipei city center in 30 minutes (MRT) or on the other end of the island in short order…

I've lived in a number of cities across three continents and I tend to think that the idea of a "car-free" city is a quintessentially North American overreaction to a quintessentially North American problem. Like yes Wired we know that the suburb and the American commute have some serious downsides and the US leaned way too much into this model during a period of high population growth. However it's not like other ap…

    > But this is a huge reorganization of people's lives and existing property development that there's going to be a lot of pushback against and it's not all going to be nimbyism
If anything, I feel like Taiwan's model should prove that you can do it anywhere precisely because it was already so dense and built up on top of being in an area with very high seismic activity. It's not like they could find a lot of room to build massive stations on the surface. You barely notice the underground MRT stations at all aside from stair arches that pop out of the ground[0]. If they can make it work in a city as dense and populated as Taipei, it feels like it ought to be possible anywhere.

And on the contrary, being close to an MRT line tends to drive up the price of housing in the area given it seems a strong selling point for the folks that live and work in the city. I think the real root cause is that US society is not egalitarian enough to make this work.

[0] Examples: https://maps.app.goo.gl/JS8WEKhKmiVMGWCF6, https://maps.app.goo.gl/mXFjKiAQ8Vf47SAG8

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#95

Post by kijin »

ecshafer wrote: post #22
CharlieDigital wrote: post #8

I was back in Taiwan last year after an extended absence. It's pretty amazing how easy it is to get around with a combination of the mass rapid transit (MRT) system and high speed rail (HSR). When I was last there, you still needed to take a bus or taxi from TPE to the city center. Now right from TPE airport, you can be in either Taipei city center in 30 minutes (MRT) or on the other end of the island in short order…

The way Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea fund trains is a big difference with the US (though ironically is similar to how the US used to fund trains in the 1800s). The companies (usually in some kind of private-public partnership from my understanding) who build and run the trains in East Asia typically get land around the train stop to develop into malls, shops, apartments, etc. These sales and rents then f…

A strange thing about South Korea is that even the most expensive condos in Gangnam derive a significant part of their value from being close to a subway station (yeoksekwon). The millionaires who live there are riding the subway right beside the pleebs! No wonder they want to keep the trains nice and clean.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#97

Post by eddieroger »

ryandrake wrote: post #72
eddieroger wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that scenario isn't universal, and while you can't think of a reason, others can. Perhaps someone would rather shop at Costco because they've got a big family and need to buy items in higher quantities. You can't get a Costco in a small city setting, so you need to drive there, and even if you could, shared transit isn't amenable to getting home the types of things you buy at Costco. Or perhaps you wish to ha…

> Because that scenario isn't universal, and while you can't think of a reason, others can. Thank you very much for this island of sanity inside this topic’s sea of bewilderment. These comment sections always seem to end with someone up asking: “How could anyone like things I don’t like??” and then a bunch of commenters just shake their heads and conclude “Those poor souls, they don’t know how they are suffering.” I’…

I appreciate your comment as well! I feel like I'm off on Preference Island sometimes, so it's good to know I'm not.

I particularly appreciate the point you make about prioritization. When I left school and started working, I lived in an apartment downtown, walked to work, hung out afterward at bars and stuff, and loved it. At that point in my life, I didn't need a car, and was fine. I'm older now. I've lived in an apartment, a townhouse with shared walls, and now a single family home. I've loved every place I've lived because, at the time, it was the right place for me. I want a yard for my dog to run in and my kid to play in, and like you, I wish to prioritize my living structure above all else. Unlike you, I do like my car. The beauty is we're both adults who know how to prioritize our lives and make choices that let us do what we want, and similarly let others live their lives.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#98

Post by Mashimo »

Kindling7257 wrote: post #79

This whole idea is fucking terrifying. Normalizing not having cars i.e. making people dependent on the government from birth. If you didn't understand what Americans were complaining about with gun laws you will soon.

> making people dependent on the government from birth.

Roads are also mostly build by the Government.

A lot of people around the world are born in government build/run hospitals.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#99

Post by Angostura »

Kindling7257 wrote: post #79

This whole idea is fucking terrifying. Normalizing not having cars i.e. making people dependent on the government from birth. If you didn't understand what Americans were complaining about with gun laws you will soon.

Weird take. Do all, busses and train systems have to be government owned? And who builds and pays for those roads the cars travel on?

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#100

Post by alkonaut »

Having a car free city center sounds like a good idea. It's not a car free city though (that sounds horrible, not to mention impossible). A city needs less dense areas and at some point outside the city center density will be low enough to a) not have public transit at the required frequency and b) be home for the type of places you need a car for (Lumberyard, car wash, ...).
Post reply on HN