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Great Divide in How Americans Commute to Work

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Re: Great Divide in How Americans Commute to Work

#131

Post by aswanson »

chrisseaton wrote: post #106
uxp100 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably should specify the city you're talking about. Those seem like pretty specific complaints. I think the main thing that can be generalized across most of the US that you mentioned is the grid system, with parking lot islands in second place, but they're not common in the center of many cities. They are quite common on the edges. For example, many readers here may be familiar with San Jose, and itis not a g…

> grab a donut Funny question, but in the US does 'grabbing' something not have a bad connotation? When I hear 'grab a donut' my English mind sees you smashing your fist through the glass of the counter, taking a doughnut, and running off.

There is however, a "smash-and-grab" phrase in the US which fits your imagery perfectly.

Re: Great Divide in How Americans Commute to Work

#132

Post by alanbernstein »

bloomca wrote: post #27

I don't think there is such a great divide. The greater divide is between people who own a car (or cars) and who do not, however, seems for USA it is a divide between New York City and the rest of the country. Also, I can comment on one thing I personally enjoy a lot – walking. I lived in many European cities, and recently moved to USA, so I can comment on it. To be able to walk, you need to live close enough to your…

In my experience, grid systems actually facilitate walkability, at least in contrast with curvy subdivision streets that are common in any US neighborhoods built in the last 60 years. US subdivisions tend to be anti-mixed-use. Grids encourage mixed use, for example by zoning one big commercial street for every three smaller residential streets.

Re: Great Divide in How Americans Commute to Work

#133

Post by gautamdivgi »

influnza wrote: post #114
jstanley wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> moreover, you can bump into unsafe places! Can you elaborate on this? Are there places that are unsafe because they're full of knife-wielding maniacs? Or unsafe because they're full of un-signposted holes in the ground? Or some other kind of unsafe?

Unsafe, when side walk suddenly ends, but you see that it continues after the next block and you have a choice: turn around or walk on the road and get hit by a car potentially. I live in such a neighborhood now. I can walk to work, but sidewalk ends a block from my house and there are no street lights, so it is MUCH safer to take a 2 minute drive.

It’s also that motorists are often times hostile to pedestrians. Case in point - the elementary school my daughter goes to is a quarter mile away. So I’m trying to get the second grade kid to come back home on her own. She needs to cross streets in a subdivision. There is a crossing guard to help. But still - people honk at my 8 yr old when crossing. Ultimately I’ve decided to drop and pick her up myself.

Re: Great Divide in How Americans Commute to Work

#134

Post by clairity »

chrisseaton wrote: post #107
clairity wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you live in LA and know this firsthand or are you repeating a cliché? i live in LA and walk often. it's great. the weather is awesome (60's and sunny today, in the middle of winter), i have dozens of good restaurants and cafes within walking distance, as is most of my shopping needs. parks, theaters, museums, bars, and other entertainment can be easily reached by walking. LA is a big city so not everything is righ…

> i live in LA and walk often. it's great. Doesn't LA have literally the most polluted air in the country? Doesn't sound great for walking.

nearly - 4th according to the american lung association annual study (via cbs): https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/air-pollution-worst-us-citi... (fairbanks is #1)

but it's the worst for ozone, where it's 80's reputation for smog comes from. to be fair, LA's air quality is far better than the 74 major cities in chinaa: https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-la-smog-stats...

which is where a significant portion of the air polution comes from (enough to go from good to bad): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_the_United_St...

Re: Great Divide in How Americans Commute to Work

#135

Post by dima55 »

joey-bob wrote: post #86
dima55 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your interpretation is based on a slice that's 80 miles long, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you don't have a good sense of even that slice. LA is fantastic. There's plenty of suburbia to be sure, but living there is a choice some people make. Others make a different choice.

I suppose you are correct. Similar to the original comment, who was shocked coming from a European perspective to US, I was a bit shocked coming from an East Coast perspective, and have made too broad a generalization. What areas would you suggest I visit in the future?

Depends on what you want to see; the city is incredibly diverse. The denser, more urban areas are the ones developed before the car was the dominant form of transportation. Downtown, Macarthur park, koreatown, hollywood, etc are very dense. Some parts of the westside are too. The trains generally go through the denser areas. Much of it is gritty, but the architecture is cool, there's lots of fantastic food everywhere, and it's generally interesting. Go explore :)

Re: Great Divide in How Americans Commute to Work

#137

Post by rayiner »

the_gastropod wrote: post #60
briandear wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walking, public transport and biking are orders of magnitude more inefficient if you have kids or have to transport anything bigger than a backpack.

Millions of New Yorkers (and billions worldwide) have kids, no car, and get along just fine. Subway trains are quite capable of carrying virtually anything you can carry. And bicycle trailers are pretty impressive specimens. And when you need to haul anything truly massive, sure, rent a Uhaul. But to pretend you need a 2-ton vehicle because you've got a couple little kids and a load of groceries for the week... c'mon…

There is no way you can fit a week's groceries for a family of four in a bicycle trailer.

Re: Great Divide in How Americans Commute to Work

#138

Post by zjaffee »

briandear wrote: post #55
the_gastropod wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring all the other problems, like car crashes, urban land-use, infrastructure spending to support them, etc, their emissions alone should be a clear moral issue when talking about cars. When the alternatives (walking, public transit, and bicycling) are orders of magnitude more efficient, it's absolutely a moral issue.

Walking, public transport and biking are orders of magnitude more inefficient if you have kids or have to transport anything bigger than a backpack.

Those 600 dollar strollers tend to work pretty well for dragging kids around, also at least in manhattan, you can get virtually anything delivered.

Re: Great Divide in How Americans Commute to Work

#139

Post by biztos »

kaybe wrote: post #81
ChuckMcM wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too enjoy walking around European cites much more than US cities. On a Brussels trip I commented on how interesting and winding the streets were to a family friend, she pointed out that it made it harder for tanks to drive through a city. That matter of fact response brought into sharp focus the disparity between cites that had been rebuilt several times and those which haven't. There was also the adaptation from c…

There are more reasons: - For pre-tank times, makes it a lot harder for strangers (e.g. intruding enemies) to get oriented. - For more modern neighborhoods, make the roads confusing so cars won't take a shortcut through and bypass the main road. (--> keep unnecessary cars out of living areas since they are dangerous to kids on the street and the noise and air pollution is bad)

> For more modern neighborhoods, make the roads confusing so cars won't take a shortcut through and bypass the main road.

Alas Waze and its ilk are breaking that system in a lot of European cities. It's now quite common to have quiet residential streets suddenly turn gridlock when some algorithm has correctly-but-malevolently decided it's a good shortcut for everyone getting from the office to the freeway.

When I think of a future powered by AI, I think of that kind of logic casually extinguishing all life on the planet.

Re: Great Divide in How Americans Commute to Work

#140

Post by bobthepanda »

Finnucane wrote: post #117
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our country is only 243 years old, we didn't have hundreds of years of master craftsmen making stone buildings. We fast forwarded from log cabins to awful steel buildings and strip malls made as cheaply as possible. You'd have those same ugly steel buildings if there were no stone cathedrals etc. standing there already.

In the 19th century many American urban centers become quite densely built up with all manners of buildings. These urban centers were also prone to fire. A number of cities experienced major fires that wiped out large swaths of what had been built. So they got rebuilt with more modern structures.

Most of the terrible modernism comes from the postwar era, when city planners would drive concrete highways through minority neighborhoods and bulldoze "slums" for modernist housing projects that were supposed to cure society's ills.
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