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Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

economist.com

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Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#161

Post by jcranmer »

vonmoltke wrote: post #134
ArnoVW wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is pushback against car-impacting measures in Europe too, make no mistake. The yellow jackets in France started as a protest against increase in tax on petrol. The previous president in France, Hollande, had to roll back a toll system. It took Paris 2 years of legal battles to close the roads along the Seine. The major difference, compared witg the US, is that at least in an urban setting, in Europe you can ima…

> ...at least in an urban setting, in Europe... > The problem of the US is that outside of major cities... What urban setting does the US have outside its major cities? Arguably, that is one of the major problems.

I'm assuming that "major cities" here is code for "Boston-to-Washington corridor, Chicago, and San Francisco"--the US cities that are the most similar to European cities and generally have strong downtowns, coherent transit systems, and generally dissuade car access to their city centers. This would be in contrast to the urban centers of places like LA or Dallas, where the downtowns are filled with surface parking lots instead of buildings.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#162

Post by adrianN »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #2

Living car-free in Berlin is ridiculously easy. I have my own bicycle, but still grab a Jump bike when I've walked somewhere and need to get home faster/easier. But this is the summer. I haven't done the winter here yet. That'll be the test.

I'm cycling year round in Berlin. It's really no big deal. Get some good gloves and something to protect your ears and you'll be fine. It hardly snows anyway and the roads are cleared fairly quickly when it does.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#163

Post by rayiner »

jacobolus wrote: post #110
kakwa_ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it depends. Paris is a bit special, it's not a city which kept a lot of its medieval layout heritage thanks to Napoleon III and Hausmann. You have a lot of Boulevard which are quite large and decently arranged. As for commuting, it depends also. Basically, the subway is exceptionally dense within Paris (keep in mind that Paris, as an administrative entity is actually very small and dense, roughly 10km in diamet…

It seems like it should theoretically be viable to add some commuter rail lines following the same rings as the current peripherical roads, and improve the suburb-to-suburb transit experience.

Commuter rail rings through the suburbs don’t really work, because you need a car at both ends.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#164

Post by fulafel »

hannasanarion wrote: post #150
softwaredoug wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately “new cities” develop in places where everyone is used to driving, so it takes a lot to overcome a car centric culture. I live in a college town in a rural area. The transition to public transportation happens when parking becomes expensive or impractical (such as at the university) so people park and ride on a bus. But that still requires cars. Frankly cars have value that’s hard to replace when there’s…

How many such "new cities" are there really? Car culture wasn't a thing until the 1950s and I can't think of a single metropolitan city that was founded after that.

I think one of the problems in discussing cities is the hazy meaning of "city" that different people have in mind. Many (most?) people who live in cities aren't in the biggest ones, and the dynamics are different eg when bikeable-distance suburban housing is affordable, and distances inside the urban area are walkable.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#165

Post by adrianN »

ghaff wrote: post #144
asteli wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a lot of America is white and middle class. The push to move to suburbs was fueled by the white middle class, who fled the cities during and after desegregation, and was termed the White Flight. There's a very real displacement problem that's linked to the urban population growth that you seem skeptical of; marginalized communities are being priced out of their long-time homes, being pushed out of urban centers…

Mind you, "urban" by census definitions is very broad. I live in the middle of about 100 acres with a couple of neighbors 40 miles outside of a major city and I'm considered urban. A lot or urbanization isn't Brooklyn. It's smaller cities with minimal transit systems.

The smaller the city the less transit system does it need. Local errands can be done by bike, travel to the next city just needs a train station.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#167

Post by 13of40 »

JDiculous wrote: post #123

Spent the last 6 months in Seoul and the surrounding cities in Korea. Never needed a car. You can literally do everything without a car, everything is a short walk. I truly believe it makes a huge positive impact on happiness when you can just walk anywhere instead of having to drive. Also you'll notice that in Korea/Japan there are way more small businesses and things to do (eg. karaoke, cafes, etc) because people o…

I went fishing today and had to drive some very sketchy, not-on-google-maps dirt roads to get to the first spot I tried. What happens to that sort of thing once we're all living in walkable condos and depending on driverless Uber for exceptions?

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#168

Post by Scoundreller »

nesadi wrote: post #138
Scoundreller wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But are they the same stores? It's probably fine for the landlords, but if you're leasing storespace and selling bulk/heavy goods, or something so specialized that people from afar drive to you, you're going to have trouble. If you're running a restaurant or cafe, you're in a great situation. It's a solvable issue, but it may be ignored.

This is effectively a solved issue though, isn't it? Even the given example of the Mariahilfer Str. still has road access and as per the wikipedia page "Für den Lieferverkehr ist die Zufahrt und das Halten bis 13 Uhr zulässig." (Access and halting for delivery of goods is allowed until 1pm). Any city off the top of my head with pedestrian-only inner city areas still allow delivery trucks until certain times. Since th…

I get that, but now that the mix of customer traffic has changed, the optimal usage of those spaces has changed.

People that want to fill their car with goods in one trip will continue to do so, but it won’t be in the city centre.

Perhaps all along they shouldn’t have, but it was possible/practical before.

Now they will go to the city outskirts to buy larger/bulkier/more good. The sellers thereof will suffer and/or be replaced by car-free friendly businesses (restaurants, cafes, light-weight goods).

That’s all fine long-term, but I’m shedding tears for the businesses that did exist and may not when the environment suddenly changes around them.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#169

Post by Proven »

That is an absolutely ridiculous claim - I don’t know if any cases where people abandoned using cars because other methods were better. In all cases it’s because the government made cars or fuel prohibitively expensive or inconvenient.

It’s not post-car, it’s post-freedom.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#170

Post by rayiner »

I’m personally not a huge fan of driving everywhere. But I wonder whether HN’s view on this isn’t out of touch with the average middle class American’s. The average American commute is 48 minutes round trip, significantly shorter than France (71 minutes), Italy (65 minutes), or Spain (61 minutes): https://www.oecd.org/els/family/LMF2_6_Time_spent_travelling...

That’s mainly because Europe has higher public transit use, and public transit is slow. Parisians who work and commute by public transit spend an average of 116 minutes a day on public transit: https://www.thelocal.fr/20160418/parisians-spend-23-days-a-y....

Viewed from a different perspective, a country where most people can spend 48 minutes a day commuting, because it’s rich enough for everyone to afford a car,[1] might be considered better than one where many people have to endure two-hour public transit commutes. Maybe utopia isn’t Paris, with rich people living in beautiful walkable downtowns, but rather Houston, where middle class people can afford big houses with a pool and a short, direct commute.

[1] The median disposable income per US household is a staggering 50% higher than for a French household.

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