We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#131

Post by lgregg » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #121

lgregg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or, just let people build what they want. Uh, no. I wouldn't want something seedy or some industrial manufacturing plant next to my kid's school. There is a purpose behind codes and zoning that is good. It's just as you mentioned when they are used to push an agenda that hurts everyone.

I meant that in the sense of, make sure that there's enough of the type of living space that people actually want. Right now people have to pay absolutely MASSIVE premiums, both in terms of absolute space and in $/sqft, in order to live in dense walkable neighborhoods. And there's one reason: zoning has been bad and prevented many people from having the life they want. For health reasons, sure, separate industrial zo…

> But as far as general office/retail and housing, we need far more places where growth is allowed to happen at least a little bit organically. Maybe have some small nudges here and there for central planning, but overall city planners build for what they want, not for what the populace wants.

I'm with you mostly, I'm for a bit more planning with buildings and land because they are long-term impacts. I'd be down for an approach like yours if there was a better process to run ideas and concepts by planners.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#132

Post by rhinoceraptor » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #50

reaperducer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small towns can be built with walkability in mind This is true. Look at the bedroom communities surrounding Chicago. There are plenty of them where people take commuter rail into the city, then get around their home towns largely by foot. Cars are only used to go to the outlying malls and neighboring small towns. Chicago is also doing something interesting with the whole notion of "streets." Essentially, the notion i…

>Parking spaces are being turned into miniature parks, or the parking lanes eliminated entirely in what are called "traffic calming" schemes to make streets more pedestrian-friendly. What? Why? It seems like it would be better to add additional lanes (shared left turn lane + 2 bike lanes or some similar configuration) to increase overall efficiency and throughput. When you have raised sidewalks traffic speeds don't r…

It improves efficiency for cars, while dramatically reducing efficiency for pedestrians. If a road is two lanes, drivers are more likely to avoid it. And pedestrians can cross anywhere instead of finding an intersection, hitting the crosswalk button, waiting 1-2 minutes, crossing, and then walking back to their destination.

Why should we give cars such privilege when they are so wasteful of space and fuel?

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#133

Post by spraak » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:26 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #112

spraak wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first analogy (50lb computer) is nonsense because that's exactly the point I'm saying: computers that fit on your pocket and are just a few grams can easily render a webpage. Who thinks that a 50lb computer is nice unless it's sophisticated hardware that can't be condensed? Cars are nice yes but there are plenty of other smaller and more nimble transportation devices. So weren't not throwing away nice things her…

The desktop computer will likely be a lot more responsive, let you do a lot more, have a higher resolution and screen size, let you have more tabs running at once, etc. Using nothing but a smartphone for all my home computer usage would be a major setback.

> Using nothing but a smartphone for all my home computer usage would be a major setback.

But that's not the analogy here. This is for the "last mile". Perhaps a more appropriate analogy is using a lightweight laptop (rather than a phone)

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#134

Post by reaperducer » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

madhadron wrote: post #88

isostatic wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about all those amazon deliveries? I'm all for banning garaging on roads, and I don't see why private cars need to be driven in the centre of major cities at all, especially during the day. Things like the London congestion charge for all cars from say 7AM to 9PM (depending on when transit is running well) are great, although should really scale with the value of the car. But when the supermarket drops the weekly…

A number of large cities had extensive networks of pneumatic tubes and underground rail runnels for delivery. They fell out of use with the rise of cars, but the idea that deliveries go via vehicles on streets is far from a given.

Coincidentally, Chicago has a disused network of underground delivery rail tunnels.

They were widely forgotten until a pile was driven into one beneath the Chicago River and the river flooded many of the buildings in the downtown's Loop district.†

Today a few are still used, though not for deliveries. Mostly for running fiber optic networks, and the Palmer House Hotel uses its section to raise mushrooms for its restaurant.‡

† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_flood

‡ https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140618/loop/palmer-house-h...

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#135

Post by the_gastropod » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

thereisnospork wrote: post #71

the_gastropod wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are not the only solution here. Transporting a single disabled person does not require a 100+ horsepower 2-ton vehicle.

But doing it fast, cheap, and flexibly does. Cars cost 50 cents a mile, go anywhere at as fast as anything that doesn't fly, and require negligible physical exertion or special skills to operate. When there is adequate infrastructure that's pretty optimal.

Car infrastructure is anything but cheap. Our suburbs are going broke, in a large part, because maintaining roads, bridges, parking lots, and solving drainage problems caused by these things is very expensive. Add to these the external costs of pollution and car crashes, and it gets even more absurd.

Most electric wheelchairs have 10+ mile ranges,can be fully recharged for pennies, require even less physical exertion and special skills than cars. And they don't put other residents at serious risk.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#136

Post by sk0g » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

joshuaheard wrote: post #55

Visiting the Leonardo Da Vinci museum, I saw an exhibit where Leonardo did an urban design plan. In it, he made the street level pedestrian only. Under the street was another level for horses and wagons (cars and busses today), where each building had an underground entrance to this level through an underground garage. This seems like an elegant solution in an urban area from the man who invented the helicopter, para…

Would the more practical version of this not be base level being cars on roads, parkings etc in buildings, and a 'floating' mesh of streets for pedestrians, bicycles etc?

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#137

Post by jimmaswell » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

cup-of-tea wrote: post #125

jimmaswell wrote: post #109

I wonder if all these sour grapes about cars will simmer down if a generation comes along that can more easily afford them again. The area I live in is pretty dense (a mixed commercial-suburbanish area in the most densely-populated state) and also very car-enabled, and it works out fine. The stores I go to are within minutes of driving for me, and work is 10-15 minutes away. I don't know the official term for such a…

> I wonder if all these sour grapes about cars will simmer down if a generation comes along that can more easily afford them again. In the UK you could afford a car on minimum wage. I have a car. I still don't think cities should be designed for cars. How can anyone look at one of those pictures of American five-lane highways of bumper-to-bumper traffic and think that is in any way sane?

I'm saying there are probably unexplored good solutions to that kind of congestion. Another I just thought of is the city motivating companies to make shifts not so centered around 9-5. Spread the rush with shifts of 8-4, 10-6, etc.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#138

Post by billsmithaustin » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:33 PM UTC

A more transparent slogan would be, "Let's build cities for walking and bicycles rather than cars." Or maybe "Let's build cities for walking and subways and electric scooters." Or whatever. But whatever means of transportation you optimize for today may be inappropriate a century from now. It was horses in the not-too-distant past, and as much as I like bicycles, I can imagine a figure in which bicycles and bike lanes are obsolete too.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#139

Post by ManFromUranus » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

AcerbicZero wrote: post #130

It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". On the surface that kind of makes sense, using a large stick to strongly encourage change, but I think at its core it misses a huge portion of the problem, which is that bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bi…

Homeless people using transit as a shelter is a huge problem, it makes transit undesirable. Also politicians are so milquetoast they won't address the problem for fear of looking like a 'bad guy' when in reality transit was never designed to be a homeless shelter, so homeless need to be forcibly removed from the vehicle and excluded from the transit system where possible. Eventually homeless ruin everything they touch and society needs to find a way to deal with them.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#140

Post by farnsworth » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #109

I wonder if all these sour grapes about cars will simmer down if a generation comes along that can more easily afford them again. The area I live in is pretty dense (a mixed commercial-suburbanish area in the most densely-populated state) and also very car-enabled, and it works out fine. The stores I go to are within minutes of driving for me, and work is 10-15 minutes away. I don't know the official term for such a…

I and many of my peers grew up in suburbs but ended up in cities after college, without owning cars. I always assumed I'd buy a car, move to the suburbs, and live the same lifestyle that I was used to, but once I got accustomed to walking to the grocery store, taking the bus to work, biking anywhere I can, etc, I realized that I actually really prefer this lifestyle and I will live in walkable neighborhoods as long as I can, even if I have kids.