People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by maxsilver » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 1:56 PM UTC

safety1st wrote: post #159

eropple wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but that model of suburban development still tends to push necessities out of walking or even biking distance. I visited my folks in the Des Moines suburbs while they were out there and it was an hour's walk to almost anything bigger than a corner store. Of which I found, I think, one that was closer than that.

If we go by your parent's photos, my main beef with these neighborhoods is there's no commercial development. There should be (light) commercial development. I am a big fan of the Asian shophouse. You can open a restaurant or a convenience store or a small clinic or whatever class of local service business isn't going to be too disruptive on the bottom floor of your residential property. You need to own and operate i…

> There should be (light) commercial development.

There is. (both example pictures above have a commercial development less than 10 minutes walk away).

The problem is that there isn't enough commercial need for every single development to have it's own commercial block -- we already have a large overabundance of commercial space in the US as it is, adding even more of it inside each residential development doesn't magically spring forth a business to fill it.

(this is true even at city-level densities -- as lots of urban 5-over-1 developments are struggling to keep their ground-level commercial/retail units sustainably filled)

And since we do need more housing, pressure builds to just convert the commercial back into residential anyway...

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

#202

Post by astura » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 1:56 PM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #132

bko wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 sch…

I grew up in the US in a small city. My parents owned a car periodically, but only one, and the vast majority of my peers were in car-less families.

We all did most of everything day-to-day just fine between walking, bikes, and busses. The kids over say 6 mostly transported themselves to wherever they were going without their parents. Of course, we also NEVER took our toys, clothes, or books outside of the house (wtf???) nor snacks (we ate and drank at meals) and only brought clothes somewhere if we were planning on staying the night there. If I needed clothes I'd carry them myself. I literally couldn't imagine my parents carrying around my clothes at a point that I was physically able to carry them myself. The thought makes me laugh. For babies there are diaper bags, my parents never needed more than a single diaper bag even though they had multiple kids in diapers at the same time.

Not having a car only was a problem for day trips, like the amusement park 60 miles away. We'd always make sure to bring friends and family who didn't have a car whenever we went to those sorts of places.

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

#203

Post by CharlieDigital » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 1:57 PM UTC

gadders wrote: post #184

dijit wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you must also ask the question why you want to make a huge shopping trip. If you lived in a world where accessing the shop was easy and convenient, and they stocked everything you need, and you didn't have oodles of storage at home to store it all: why would you even make such a huge shopping trip?

So your plan is for people to have a longer commute to work, work 8 hours at the job, have a longer commute home, and then have to trudge to a shop in the evening most nights of the week (in all weathers)? Sounds idyllic. Food shopping every night can replace going to the gym or playing with your kids. And if you're elderly and would rather drive - tough luck. >>If you lived in a world where accessing the shop was ea…

The MRTs in Taiwan run very tight schedules with high frequency. Commutes are relatively short. Most folks go out with their kids and get food together (Taiwan being known for their night markets).

    > However, the groceries will also be far more expensive

It's counterintuitive, but groceries and food are actually very cheap in Taiwan.

Seeing is believing.

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

#204

Post by lucumo » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 1:58 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #133

lucumo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". For most people it's not about the supermarket. Those are a dime a dozen and all the same. It's easy to provide those in sufficient amounts everywhere. Now try it with jobs. Not any job, but your job. Is it possible to have you…

> Between the trade-off bad job, no time, and car/public transport, the car quickly becomes the best solution If you beat public transport by using a car then there just isn't enough public transit or the city isn't dense enough (likely the former, due to the latter). If you live 3km from your job in London or NYC then at least during rush hour it's likely to be faster to use public transport than a car. > Life becom…

IF you live in a city with enough density that public transport beats the car most of the time, and IF your job is in that same area too, then yes, going car-free can save time. But you need several hundreds of thousands people in the same-ish spot for both those assumptions to hold true for most people. And probably also some badly designed roads.

I live in a town of 125k people, where I can reach any spot by bike or public transport in about 30 minutes. Perfectly commutable. It has a few jobs for people like me, but not enough for a decent amount of variety.

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

#205

Post by ZaoLahma » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 1:58 PM UTC

gadders wrote: post #184

dijit wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you must also ask the question why you want to make a huge shopping trip. If you lived in a world where accessing the shop was easy and convenient, and they stocked everything you need, and you didn't have oodles of storage at home to store it all: why would you even make such a huge shopping trip?

So your plan is for people to have a longer commute to work, work 8 hours at the job, have a longer commute home, and then have to trudge to a shop in the evening most nights of the week (in all weathers)? Sounds idyllic. Food shopping every night can replace going to the gym or playing with your kids. And if you're elderly and would rather drive - tough luck. >>If you lived in a world where accessing the shop was ea…

Here, "somewhere in Europe", you can order groceries online and get them delivered to your door for cheap. This kind of service really took off during COVID and then stuck. I guess people found it convenient.

We usually still go to the store, but use this service when we have a large amount of shopping to do as it just is... convenient. Instead of driving to and running around in the store looking for all the stuff we need and then carry it out to the car and into the home, we just gather around the iPad in the comfort of our living room and order what we want. The day after it shows up at the door. It's fantastic.

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

#206

Post by wakawaka28 » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 2:00 PM UTC

tejohnso wrote: post #12

Not 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.

Single disadvantage? There are a few. Cities are more expensive to live in than anywhere else, have higher crime and more restrictive laws, and almost literally no privacy. Having to own a car is an expense but it is far cheaper than the difference in housing costs alone. Big city life is best for the rich or people with high-paying jobs and no kids.

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

#207

Post by jddj » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 2:01 PM UTC

lucumo wrote: post #87

jddj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N of 1 here, but I've lived extensively in both environments. Love cars, got my licence on my birthday the first day I could apply. That said, I'm noticeably happier and healthier whenever I don't need to own one. My quality of life is higher when living somewhere everything is accessible by walking and by efficient public transport.

Well, I'm an N of 1 too :-) I'm lucky to live in a place that gives me plenty of options. And I have a tech workers idea of tenure, in that I change jobs every few years. So I've done them all. Cycling to work is the best. When the sun shines and birds are singing. It's a miserable experience when it's pouring rain and the headwind is strong. Public transport is kind of nice for reading, or catching up on a bit of sl…

Yeah, there's definitely a sparsity cutoff where it stops working so well.

Possibly a climate one too although Londoners and Parisians manage fine.

I get the impression our experiences of car free living were at different densities. Public transport is a slower, more difficult compromise at one end and car travel/ownership is a burden at the other.

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

#208

Post by scotty79 » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 2:02 PM UTC

mantas wrote: post #78

epolanski wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a fellow (ex-)soviet from up north... Soviet way of building sucked. You guys had it a tad easier, but in USSR-proper the standardisation sucked big time. It's damn fantastic now that building a custom private house in a legal way is doable, even without being a party elite. And soviet style of building wouldn't have happened without totalitarian control. People aggregating and community is ripped away by interweb…

> And soviet style of building wouldn't have happened without totalitarian control.

Todays new developments are done in roughly the soviet style. Blocks of flats. With minor adjustments like parking (also underground), lifts that go to ground level for accesibility and border fences to increase the sense of security, top level huge flats with huge terraces for the rich, thicker walls for acustic and thermal comfort.

I think at least 90% of newly created housing in post-commie city in central Europe is built this way. It just makes sense.

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

#209

Post by mrshadowgoose » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 2:04 PM UTC

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.

"Objectively better" according to my personal subjective values and beliefs.

"Aversion to change" that I would like to force onto others.

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

#210

Post by nick_ » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 2:06 PM UTC

gadders wrote: post #190

underdeserver wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what a cargo bike is for.

It's mad that you can't see that strapping two kids and 8 bags of shopping into a cargo bike and cycling 10 minutes is far worse than doing the same errand by car.

Worse how? Worse because we're all used to ignoring the negative externalities of driving everywhere? Worse because our kids are used to acting however they want in the back seat of a car? Worse because we built these horribly isolating daily transport systems where people tint their car windows so we can't even see each other and then yell at each other's driving abilities?

The point is that of course it's true that driving is "easier", but it'd be obviously worse in a lot of ways if we didn't build cities the way we did.