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These are all great, I love city life and would embrace every single item, but without addressing the dramatic decline in public safety in virtually all US cities, none of these will matter at all.
My dream is for my section of my town to ban cars. It’s already heavy pedestrian but if the cars went away (and everyone had to walk or e-bike or mobility scooter in the zone) it would be a utopia. Sure there’d be some issues to address and frustrations but we’d figure it out. The net would be amazingly positive.
These are all great, I love city life and would embrace every single item, but without addressing the dramatic decline in public safety in virtually all US cities, none of these will matter at all.
Interesting thing is that cars are never considered to be threat to public safety. People have simply accepted that cycling/walking is unsafe (because of cars), so parents have to drive their kids everywhere. During the 70s in the Netherlands there were massive protests called 'Stop the Child murder', because cars were killing too many children on bicycles. This was actually a conservative protest, because people wer…
One thing I've noticed that makes biking/walking in conjunction with cars much safer is the construction of road-sized sidewalks with clear delineators, where pedestrians and cyclists can safely pass. In Helsinki, biking was a joy, despite the busy streets nearby. I saw the same organization in many parts of Israel—big sidewalks with a section designated for bicycles, scooters, and e-mobility devices. In many of the small cities surrounding Stockholm, dedicated bike paths with their lighting were located adjacent to the main roads.
Around where I live, there is a three-lane main thoroughfare that has two lanes for travel and one lane for turning. There are sidewalks along this road, but they are functionally destroyed by the roots of trees growing near them.
This could become more bicycle-friendly if roundabouts were installed at major intersections and the sidewalks were expanded to accommodate pedestrian/bicycle use. Although if they did, I could hear the screams about how the roundabouts are impeding traffic flow for commuters and removing all the sidewalk-destroying trees.
I agree with the people who say it's not that we can't do it, it's that we won't do it.
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Chicago, friend. :) I'm reminded of being on an airplane sitting next to a cop who told me, "Did you know that Chicago is the murder capitol of the world?". It was fun to show her that Chicago isn't actually even in the top 10 of the US in terms of homicide. Where do you get your news from that makes you think crime is going up?
I moved out of Lincoln Park (Chicago) 2 years ago because my wife almost got hit by a teenager stealing a car. It wasn't the first or last car theft we witnessed. Chicago is safe 90% of the time. Statistically speaking, you won't be a victim of a crime. That doesn't mean the crime isn't happening and it doesn't mean it's getting properly reported either. Crime is here.
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Me too. Do you mean USA cities or worldwide? I'm told that some of the most walkable cities worldwide are: Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Vienna, and Barcelona. Which other ones should be on there and which ones from USA? Devon also made this list: https://airtable.com/appcoaCeTbl22Few2/shrWJYzc04FQZIkP5
I visited Amsterdam this summer. It's amazing, almost eerie how you get off the train at Cetraal station and you are greeted by a city that is nearly silent. Instead of the usual groan of the combustion engines you just hear the gentle sounds of bicycle chains all around you.
Combine the two and it feels like walking in the middle of a Covid lockdown.
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How would people be able to "express their personality" by removing their muffler or putting a two foot lift on their truck?
Walking around in platform shoes as a substitute for driving around in a lifted truck, maybe?
My dream is for my section of my town to ban cars. It’s already heavy pedestrian but if the cars went away (and everyone had to walk or e-bike or mobility scooter in the zone) it would be a utopia. Sure there’d be some issues to address and frustrations but we’d figure it out. The net would be amazingly positive.
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Sorry to focus on the greedy developers comment, but one thing I'd ask you to consider is that sometimes you need some greedy developers to balance things out a bit. The US has gotten so bad at building housing supply to meet the demand that prices have obviously gotten out of whack. The past several years in Austin, TX, though, as an example, have shown that unshackling some greedy developers to come in and build is…
Things are bad in the US for housing because we count on market forces to provide what's necessary. Market forces shut down development if housing prices drop. After all, why start a project if you have a chance of being underwater by the time you're done with it? see: https://clmarohn.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-housing-pr... If you want affordable housing, it will have to be government-funded, allowing develop…
Also, when you cite "market forces" it suggests that the real estate market in the US is driven mostly by market forces, but it's highly regulated (zoning, building codes, etc.). As other commenters have pointed out, even in a declining market, if you removed some of the regulation you'd offset some of the drop in market prices thereby preserving the incentive for developers to build.
Lastly, if you think we arrived where we are today because of market forces I think that's largely untrue. HCOL areas (seems like the entire country is turning into one of those!) have criminally under-built for decades and that hasn't been a market problem, but a regulatory problem. Now I'm not advocating for unlimited development so please don't read it that way, but the historical forces against building have been municipalities, on behalf of their politically-active residents, erecting countless impediments to development. If that were only true for a couple of years then we wouldn't have ended up where we are, but over decades the compounding effect of that reality is the single-biggest reason we're in the situation we're in. It is likewise going to take decades to address it so if the regulatory regime changes and stuff starts getting built and you still see rising prices that shouldn't be a surprise. Funny enough the more real estate developers going bankrupt the closer we'll be to affordable housing for all (ok, for "many" because all is likely never going to happen).
Btw everything above assumes you actually believe that increased supply of housing (eventually!) decreases prices. I know you, ricky, don't believe that atm. Tons of people point to places like NYC as evidence that supply/demand doesn't work in desirable places, but, as Flavor Flav once said so well: don't believe the hype; even places like NYC have under-built for decades.
Man I write long-winded comments on HN. This one is the worst by far, I think.
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Can you source that fact? I'm seeing both violent and property crime as statistically way down over the few decades.
I would love to live wherever you live so that I could even imagine that this was not obvious to anyone who goes out into public spaces.
The actual visible stuff (homeless people, trash, smell of public urination, people on drugs in public, people being mentally ill in public, shoplifting) is up. And both violent crime and rich people are more evenly distributed around the city so the “violent crime near a rich person” is up. And so people react to those.
My town has some people obsessed with "walkability" and the want to take the ONLY alternative to I 80/94/6/US 41 down to one lane each way... People will die if they get there way, as ambulance and fire vehicles become mired in congestion. Not to mention that the weather for walking is only present for about 20 days per year. Walking everywhere isn't a practical for most people in the Calumet Region of Indiana. There…