311–320 of 994 posts
cars are just people that move from A to B.
if there is no sensible way to move where you need to go it is not a city made for humans but just hostile to people and their requirements.
i need exactly 63 downvotes please, don't be cheap.
I think the thing that really struck a chord with me about car-centric development, as someone who lives in a city with fairly poor public transport (by certain standards, it would actually be quite good if it were in the US) and where driving is the norm for getting around - Prioritising cars actually makes things worse for drivers. We spend many tens of billions of dollars a year on roads in my state and traffic in…
This is level one understanding of public transport systems. “We should build metros and then everything will be better” There’s cities that are not setup for efficient public transportation or walkable living. Redesign it from ground up and put a metro smack bang through the middle. Until then, it’s just not going to work. People, and especially people who like the idea of walkable cities that reside in council chai…
Yes it does. It will take 20 years, but if you don't start now you will never get there. Are you willing to invest in a better future or just accept the status quo?
I think the thing that really struck a chord with me about car-centric development, as someone who lives in a city with fairly poor public transport (by certain standards, it would actually be quite good if it were in the US) and where driving is the norm for getting around - Prioritising cars actually makes things worse for drivers. We spend many tens of billions of dollars a year on roads in my state and traffic in…
Extremely off-topic, but do you have ADHD?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have kids? I don't think so (correct me if I'm wrong). Car is absolutely essential for driving around small kids no matter the urban density. I'm more dependent on my car(s) when I got the first newborn than I ever was.
I have a 4 year old and an 18 month old, and I don't own a car (nor does my partner). We rent a car ~10-20 times a year, but that's usually for vacations or trips out of the city to visit family. Regular weekly family life we use buses, the underground (metro), trains, or sometimes taxis. We are considering eventually getting a car, but we've managed for 4 years with children to not need one and it's not been an issu…
The context actually get far more granular than it. I lived without a car for 25 years of my life, buses and trains were enough. But all it takes to require a car is having a home 3-4 km from the city center bus stops (which probably covers >50% of population). Unless someone likes walking 1h one way in -10 deg in winter to get to work each day.
North Americans visiting Europe often grapple with why they enjoy European cities more than North American ones. It's often perceived as an architecture issue ("Europe has historical buildings that we don't have") but very few notice that the main difference is the urban scale and the resulting walkability. The Netherlands has plenty of modernist and even brutalist architecture yet every city there is a pretty nice p…
Important to note is how most cities have two (or more) zones; the old inner city for leisure, tourism, shopping and going out, the suburban areas around it where most people live, and industrial / office building estates where most people work. Amsterdam is a great example [0] and well-known for a lot of tourists, with the city center being the tourism hub, the zones around it for living, west/northwest for industry…
Even European subburbs are generally better, smaller roads, more mixed use, more trees, more dynamics, more commercial and building times mixed in. The extreme separation between building types that became the standard in US zoning-codes simple never happened to the same extent in Europe.
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From an efficiency point of view public transportation makes a lot of sense. From a quality of life point of view, I have never been comfortable being crammed into a sardine can with that many other people. I've done it. I've never enjoyed it. I do look forward to travelling to the Netherlands one day and I will enthusiastically use public transit there just as a personal experiment to see if my experience differs en…
I don’t enjoy the 15 minutes I spend packed in the NY subway when I have to take it during rush hour, but I do enjoy hopping on the subway off-peak when the cars are half empty and I get a seat and open my subway book. Similarly I hated being stuck in 30 minutes of bumper-to-bumper traffic during my old commute in a past life. But I do really enjoy driving on new routes when the road is half empty. My two observation…
At the extremes, a bus (or worse, a train) with one driver and one passenger is obviously worse than one person in a car.
But transportation is not Car vs the World™ no matter how many people (online) want it to be. It's a question of "how do you get people where they want/need to be". And that is a multi-faceted question with complex solutions - and the car will be part of it except in extreme/absurd situations that are so rare as to be ignored (like the "islands with no cars" (they have cars) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car-free_islands).
One of the best ways to discuss transportation is to NOT do "r/fuckcars" which makes everyone defensive and hate you, but instead talk about how the benefits are for everyone - grade separation of rail is nice, but it's also self enforcing (trains will crush cars). But grade separation for bikes and pedestrians is a win for everyone! Cars don't like bikes next to them, and bikes don't like being next to cars. Cars don't mind driving a few miles out of their way, but pedestrians just don't want to deviate from the crow-flight line unless rabidly enforced.
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I love my personal car bubble as much or more than most people (though maybe not as much as you), but at some point we have to get over ourselves. We're all so spoiled. Why the hell do we deserve to all have our own giant speed machines careening through cities where people (including us drivers!) are trying to live? It doesn't make any sense and it's a shame that we've let it go so far, especially in the US. It shou…
Do you have kids? I don't think so (correct me if I'm wrong). Car is absolutely essential for driving around small kids no matter the urban density. I'm more dependent on my car(s) when I got the first newborn than I ever was.
I prefer that cities are walkable and have good inter and intra public transport. So I'm with the anti-car crowd on that.
However, I do not prefer cities in general. So I'm with the pro-car people on this one. I enjoy the trend of spacious car-friendly suburbs and rural areas. I value the space and freedom over the conveniences of the city.
The fact that you park your private car in a public space is crazy: if you don’t have room for your freezer, do you put it on the sidewalk?
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> it's a design choice Yes. Americans chose big houses and yards.
They by and large don’t though. Instead, big houses and yards are the only options on the table for most Americans because of zoning regulation and developers just copy/pasting designs to save money. There isn’t an option for new brick house in neighborhood built before cars were a thing. You either have the existing housing stock, which is astronomically more valuable, or you don’t. There’s no developer building tho…
Worse, they're not an option for more americans specifically because of zoning and regulation. If not for government micro management there'd be more density, more cheap housing and you wouldn't need to drive 4hr out of the city to find a single family that's affordable.
>There isn’t an option for new brick house in neighborhood built before cars were a thing.
There would perhaps be if not for all the regulation. Maybe not brick, probably something with brick veneer, but someone would be shoehorning them into small lots.