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What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

citylab.com

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Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#191

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

ashton314 wrote: post #55

I lived in Germany for two years without a car. The public transportation there was amazing—I learned to appreciate how little I needed a car, provided the infrastructure was good enough/I had a bike. In many cities there's a "Fußgängerzone": pedestrian-only areas; these were mostly found in the city center where the streets and shops are too dense to allow much traffic. I remember specifically in Frankfurt am Main a…

> "The public transportation there was amazing"

My view is that public transportation in a lot of European cities are great because the cities were built for pedestrians, not cars. It is not the public transportation that makes cities practical without a car. Rather it is cities accessible without a car that makes public transportation practical.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#192

Post by smcl »

MisterOctober wrote: post #91
smallnamespace wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course 'footganger' almost makes sense in English — 'gang' in the sense of a passage is preserved in 'gangplank', and modern 'gang' has the related sense of 'group of people who go together'.

Yep! It also shows up in loan vocabulary like "doppelganger" [double-goer] and old-timey quotes like "gang aft agley" [go often awry, via Robert Burns' "To A Mouse"]

In the case of Burns it’s not a loan word from German in English, but an actual Scots word: http://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/gang

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#193

Post by unclesams-uncle »

b3b0p wrote: post #50

I live downtown Minneapolis and live near Nicollet Mall [0]. Which only allows pedestrians and busses. It's quite nice. They put out chairs for people to sit on and at times have things like a connect four and corn hole games. There is a regular farmers market that happens also. I love how safe it feels. It's almost like a giant side walk. I'm always surprised that the chairs don't get stolen. I walk down it multiple…

In Amsterdam, the corn hole games are limited to a few car-free streets directly outside of the main train station.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#194

Post by unclesams-uncle »

Barcelona is an interesting case study. The city is currently re-doing some of the city's grid neighborhoods into superblocks. The concept is that for every 9 blocks, the interior roads get shut to traffic save for emergency and service vehicles.

Inside, the previously 3-lane streets get transformed into pedestrian avenues with vegetation, play equipment and benches/tables for the residents.

The contrast between traffic-filled streets and urban tranquility couldn't be starker.

Then there are neighborhoods like Gracia that largely closed off its streets to traffic. Going there is like escaping to a village within the city.

Finally, the city puts a huge effort into building dedicated bike lanes, usually at the expense of a car lane. They're also rolling out a new shared biking system, which will combine electric and traditional bikes in the same system.

It helps that the city has mild winters and 300+ days of sunshine a year, but in any case, they're definitely leading the way for large urban areas to give the city back the people.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#195

Post by TulliusCicero »

white-flame wrote: post #155
TulliusCicero wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, you can't just shut down an area to cars and call it a day, if the overall area is still designed around cars. To really make it work, the area has to be accessible to walking (and public transport). Which usually means higher population densities than most US cities -- even major cities -- have, and better public transit.

Also massive parking structures. It's the interface between car-places and walking-places, necessary for the otherwise car-centric norm outside.

You need some parking yes, although it doesn't have to be right outside the pedestrian zone (and in fact that would almost certainly be a terrible idea for a variety of reasons).

In Munich, for example, the city center is largely car-free as far as I can tell, but parking nearby is still limited and expensive. That's okay, because transit is good enough to where you can park more on the outskirts of the city and take the S-Bahn in.

I haven't really seen many "massive parking structures" here that match your description, but then again I don't have a car so I'm not really looking for them.

But really in Munich, even if you're living in a suburb of Munich surrounded by farmland, they're compact enough to where almost everybody can walk or bike to the train station that goes to the city center. Check out Groebenzell if you don't believe me: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gr%C3%B6benzell/data=!4m2!...

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#196

Post by TulliusCicero »

tudelo wrote: post #130
TulliusCicero wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People in the US don't really go the speed limit even in a 25mph zone so I don't know how well that will work. If you just change the signs, obviously it would fail miserably. You need to change the actual design of the street to match the ideal. There are lots of ways to do this, just google "road diet".

The only way I could see this happening is with really damaging speed bumps every car length.

Nah, there's lots of other ways to get people to slow down. I mean, speed bumps/humps are one way, and they have their uses, but you can also add trees (yes, it's a psychological thing), narrow the road (e.g. add bike lanes or extend sidewalks), make the road less straight, add roundabouts that people can't blow through, add chicanes at some points (I've seen this in the bay area), add diverters that discourage car through-traffic, etc. Lots of options.

The most obvious difference I see between Germany and the US is that the roads are just way wider in the US. That makes drivers feel like they can go faster, so they do go faster, thus making them less safe. You don't really need to enforce tight speed limits in neighborhood streets where I live in Munich, they're so narrow that it's very obvious that you cannot go fast.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#197

Post by oracle2025 »

reitanqild wrote: post #180
oska wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do parents feel the need to take children to school in a small town in a very safe country? Why can't they ride a bike or walk?

In the winter it is too slippery for bikes and it sometimes gets biting cold - or worse IMO: cold, wet and windy. We pay for bus for our 3 oldest kids in the winter. Also wolves are returningnin some parts of Europe and while people say wolves are so shy and afraid of humans I understand extremely well why parents don't risk their kids in an experiment to see if the predator that lives off moose actually is afraid of…

Probably way more people are dying from car accidents, yet people are starting a major hysteria about a few wolves returning.

Millions of cars running through european towns at speeds high enough to kill a pedestrian, yet a wolve roaming through some far off forrest is considered more dangerous and newsworthy.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#198

Post by TulliusCicero »

romwell wrote: post #111
TulliusCicero wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say so. It felt more accidental to me than anything else. Like they just took a place designed for cars, shut the cars out, and yeah it's busy because it's in NYC and there's plenty of density and shops, but the actual urban design itself still felt largely bad and dumb. Maybe it's changed since I've been, though.

> Like they just took a place designed for cars NYC was developed in its current form, with high-rises and all, well before cars were commonplace[1]. So no, they didn't take a place designed for cars, and yes, that's why it actually works when you take the cars out of the equation again . [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_N...

> NYC was developed in its current form, with high-rises and all, well before cars were commonplace[1].

Ha, no it was not. Oh, it was originally developed sans cars, that's true. But that's not the same thing as its current form. Cities are continually being redeveloped after all. You think Amsterdam was always so bike-friendly? Try googling for what it was like in the early 70's, before the "Stop De Kindermoord" campaign.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#199

Post by twodave »

I wish my city was more livable without a car, but we have more land area than London with 1/4 the population density. The only way to get anywhere is by taking the interstate highways that pass through the middle or else circle around the outside highway. This is Jacksonville, FL.

There are some pockets that are walkable and safe, but nothing at scale.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#200

Post by geebee »

Over here in San Francisco, I find the problem isn't so much cars as curb cuts. "Curb cuts" are those little sections of the curb that are cut out so that cars can drive over the cross walk to get to driveways and garages.

https://ggwash.org/view/673/the-san-francisco-way-curb-cuts

https://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2008-06-0...

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