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Cars Kill Cities

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Re: Cars Kill Cities

#111

Post by WildUtah »

jseliger wrote: post #34

If you're interested in this topic, Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking and Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City are both worth reading. The former explains how "free" parking isn't really free and how it distorts a lot of behavior, and the latter is about what cities are good for and how to build healthy cities in general. Personally, I wonder why people would want to own a car if they can avoid it: htt…

While I love Shoup's work, I'm not enthusiastic about Glaeser's work.

In particular, I observe that Tokyo, Paris, Barcelona, and Mexico City organize people at adequate density to obtain all Glaeser's benefits without much of his beloved skyscrapers. Because of the shadows, streets, elevator columns, and infrastructure that skyscrapers need, they don't add much to urban life. A comfortable 15k/km^2 density (like Tokyo or Mexico City, half the density of Paris) is plenty enough to promote transit and network effects and build diverse and concentrated arts and business districts without concentrating them in only one part of town. That density is comfortably achieved with median two and three story buildings and plenty of open space in Mexico City and mostly short free standing homes in Tokyo.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#112

Post by jseliger »

ctdonath wrote: post #109
jseliger wrote: post #34

If you're interested in this topic, Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking and Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City are both worth reading. The former explains how "free" parking isn't really free and how it distorts a lot of behavior, and the latter is about what cities are good for and how to build healthy cities in general. Personally, I wonder why people would want to own a car if they can avoid it: htt…

Why would you want to own a car if you could avoid it? (correction applied) Because I can go wherever I want, whenever I want, with my whole family (pets included), with a trunkful of cargo, as I see fit. I keep a bunch of gear in my car which makes me pretty much independent. No way I'd be hauling "go camping on a moment's notice" stuff and other equipment everywhere on the bus. Nor would I have the basic equipment…

(correction applied)

Thanks, fixed!

Because I can go wherever I want, whenever I want, with my whole family (pets included), with a trunkful of cargo, as I see fit.

But at very high cost, per The High Cost of Free Parking, and at high time costs: I'm struck by the way that, when I lived in Tucson, it took seemingly 30 or 40 minutes to get anywhere. Now I live in New York City and it takes about the same, but the default transportation mode is different!

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#113

Post by Xylakant »

sliverstorm wrote: post #82
GuiA wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Self-driving cars will still need to park at off-peak times. Unless they just keep driving in circles. "they can be parked at much greater distances (10+ miles) from where we spend time, in much denser structures than today" - Having your car park 10 miles away from you after every trip adds some forty miles of travel per commute. That's forty miles of fuel and forty miles of maintenance, every day. Only if we map…

Only if we map 1 car to 1 person Please read my parent. He said: If the model is that we own our self-driving cars it may be that they can be parked at much greater distances (10+ miles) That's what I was replying to. Some older European cities from pre-car eras are built like that, and it's wonderful. And a fair number of pre-automobile European cities are built with tiny streets. Hence, part of why micro-cars are s…

> And a fair number of pre-automobile European cities are built with tiny streets. Hence, part of why micro-cars are so popular in Europe.

Fuel in europe costs about as much in euro per liter as it costs in USD/gallon. Well, that's a bit exaggerated but last week I paid ~ 1,50 EUR per liter, so a fuel efficient micro car does not only help you navigate narrow streets but also saves quite some money.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#114

Post by JoeAltmaier »

WildUtah wrote: post #111
jseliger wrote: post #34

If you're interested in this topic, Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking and Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City are both worth reading. The former explains how "free" parking isn't really free and how it distorts a lot of behavior, and the latter is about what cities are good for and how to build healthy cities in general. Personally, I wonder why people would want to own a car if they can avoid it: htt…

While I love Shoup's work, I'm not enthusiastic about Glaeser's work. In particular, I observe that Tokyo, Paris, Barcelona, and Mexico City organize people at adequate density to obtain all Glaeser's benefits without much of his beloved skyscrapers. Because of the shadows, streets, elevator columns, and infrastructure that skyscrapers need, they don't add much to urban life. A comfortable 15k/km^2 density (like Toky…

Similarly when I lived in Silicon Valley (San Jose/Santa Clara/Sunnyvale anyway) it was all 3-storey buildings and some open space. They razed the last orchard while I lived there; immediately taller buildings started going up. I foresee skyscraper clusters in their future.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#115

Post by deegles »

was_hellbanned wrote: post #108

I walked around Tokyo marveling at the infrastructure. Fully enclosed (or perhaps 3/4 enclosed) freeways that explode out of the ground, split off to surface streets, and arch up through the sky and around corners. Well-engineered, rubberized mounting systems and the enclosure mean you only heard the faintest hint of cars rocketing by at speed. Highways branching to high-capacity, multi-lane surface streets, which fu…

I think the road infrastructure pales in comparison to the subway/rail system. The volume of people it moves is incredible. Also remember that it's all built in an earthquake-prone area!

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#116

Post by WildUtah »

zalew wrote: post #105
WildUtah wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try the lead essay from Cato Unbound and see what you think. [0] There are a few more good short Shoup pieces linked at the bottom of that page. I have some personal experience here. I have done training and volunteered as a community organizer and worked with my city council and planning department. I have organized neighborhood groups involved in planning. I have studied urban planning and urban form. Nothing helpe…

Thanks, I'll check that. While I got interested in urban design recently, TBH I fail to grasp all of the anti-automotive concepts that seem to get in fashion recently. Especially when I live in a place where I witness how it may go wrong. On a related note, tomorrow I'm going to "Brasilia, a day in February" as part of a doc festival we have going on around here, if you've studied urban planning you've probably heard…

Most of the anti-automotive concepts are rooted in the incompatibility of traditional cities and walkable urbanism with accommodating comfortable motoring. Unless you have infinite resources to build highways and parking deep underground, one or the other has to go.

Brasilia is famous for being extensively and carefully planned according to a mistaken theory that favored motor navigation over pedestrians and uniformity over creativity. I'd be fascinated someday to see what the benefits and drawbacks of that combination would be on the ground. I hope you enjoy it.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#117

Post by jseliger »

booyaa00 wrote: post #110
jseliger wrote: post #34

If you're interested in this topic, Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking and Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City are both worth reading. The former explains how "free" parking isn't really free and how it distorts a lot of behavior, and the latter is about what cities are good for and how to build healthy cities in general. Personally, I wonder why people would want to own a car if they can avoid it: htt…

Lots of people don't want to live in a city. For me, living in a city is a horrible existence. So living in the unspoilt countryside a car is pretty useful to get around. A car is freedom. Do you really want to be completely dependent and beholden to some public transport system?

A car is freedom. Do you really want to be completely dependent and beholden to some public transport system?

Per the link, I view a car as slavery, and, per The High Cost of Free Parking, car infrastructure is much more expensive than is commonly realized. Owning a car is being a slave to car payments, to saving for the car, to the insurance company, to the repair shop, to the driveway or parking lot, to paying around $10,000 a year in TCO.

Lots of people don't want to live in a city.

Which is good! They shouldn't. The challenges come from the way we've structured an entire society to subsidize parking.

To some extent that's changing, with people like Glaeser, Shoup, and Yglesias in the intellectual vanguard. The issue is also getting more prominent in part because the startling cost of living in many cities and inner-ring suburbs is causing intellectually curious people to ask both why this is happening and how it can be alleviated. Both questions go back to politics.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#118

Post by jseliger »

tedsanders wrote: post #54
jseliger wrote: post #34

If you're interested in this topic, Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking and Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City are both worth reading. The former explains how "free" parking isn't really free and how it distorts a lot of behavior, and the latter is about what cities are good for and how to build healthy cities in general. Personally, I wonder why people would want to own a car if they can avoid it: htt…

*Donald Shoup

Thanks, fixed!

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#119

Post by droob »

dionidium wrote: post #51
gress wrote: post #7

The post is right, and even more so for developing world cities that emerged before cars were around. However the post is also naive. Cars are usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather, and are much less tiring than trying to lug bags from one place to another on buses or other public transport. They also place far fewer constraints on when you can travel. Of course it's possible to structure…

Everybody knows this is true, of course. I live three miles from work. To get here this morning I could have walked 3 blocks to the light rail station near my apartment, then another 4 or so blocks from the destination station to my office. This is pretty convenient, especially in St. Louis, where the vast, vast majority of residents don't have options nearly that good. But I didn't do it. It was 16F degrees when I l…

Ha! I was going to write almost this exact post -- I can travel from Maplewood to Washington Ave every day by bus in about an hour, or by car in about half an hour.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#120

Post by vacri »

jseliger wrote: post #112
ctdonath wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to own a car if you could avoid it? (correction applied) Because I can go wherever I want, whenever I want, with my whole family (pets included), with a trunkful of cargo, as I see fit. I keep a bunch of gear in my car which makes me pretty much independent. No way I'd be hauling "go camping on a moment's notice" stuff and other equipment everywhere on the bus. Nor would I have the basic equipment…

(correction applied) Thanks, fixed! Because I can go wherever I want, whenever I want, with my whole family (pets included), with a trunkful of cargo, as I see fit. But at very high cost, per The High Cost of Free Parking , and at high time costs: I'm struck by the way that, when I lived in Tucson, it took seemingly 30 or 40 minutes to get anywhere. Now I live in New York City and it takes about the same, but the def…

In my own experience, if you're working outside peak commuting hours, public transport is horrible. Take a cold winter, services 20 minutes apart. One service is missed, cancelled, whatever, you're now there for 40 minutes waiting for your bus. Of course, you don't know that the service is missed, you're just waiting at a pole. And in my case, it was a connecting service, so repeat the process for the second leg of the journey. Sometimes it would have been just as fast to walk the 75 minutes home - though of course, there's no way of knowing from the outset.

My housemates were dyed-in-the-wool public transport users, the 'everything we need' variety, and then I went overseas for three months in which they had use of my car. On return, "we're getting our own car". Driving crosstown for a commute is faster than the 15-minute walk to the bus, the two-leg bus/train commute, and the 10-minute walk from the station.

Carrying your groceries on public transport sucks. Apart from a handful of cities, post-midnight travel sucks. Cancelled services suck. Being squished into someone else's armpit during peak commute sucks. Having to commute (walk) to your commute (bus) then commute again (walk) sucks when the weather is bad. Public transport with more than one leg in the trip sucks. Public transport that doesn't go where you want to go sucks.

Public transport is awesome and there should be much more investment in it, but there are a ton of reasons why personal cars are fantastic.

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