What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by TulliusCicero » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #115

TulliusCicero wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American living in Munich now: even regular neighborhood streets are far friendlier to walking and biking (and thus children) in Germany compared to America. They're much narrower, lower speed limits, more nearby cut-throughs and trails and protected bike lanes. Your average US street prioritizes cars to the exclusion of anything else. Walking is pointless, it feels terrible and nothing is within walking distan…

And then ironically it's also worse to drive a car in the US. Where speed limits could be higher without risking anyone else they are still stupid low and many drivers don't know how to zip or even merge or even use their turn signals. It's really the worst for both drivers and pedestrians.

Haven't seen that very often. Occasionally a highway/freeway has an oddly low speed limit, but most of the times neighborhood streets and arterials are much too fast to be safe for people walking or biking. And whaddya know, there are hardly any people walking or biking around, almost as if...

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

#212

Post by electric_muse » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

I had a university professor in the transportation department (technically “Operations Research”) who used to joke that transportation policy was mainly receptive to emotional arguments about children. “We should increase investment in autonomous vehicles. But, oh! The children!” He would cry out in class, making all the students chuckle. I thought he was joking! Reading through the article and the comments, I think he may not have been joking, but merely wryly cynical after many years of trying to research and advocate.

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

#213

Post by hannasanarion » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

Toutou wrote: post #171

hannasanarion wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume the issue is binary: cars or no cars. Nobody is asking for no cars. We want less cars. Right now, cars are first class citizens in every American city. Motorists get what they want, and walkers, cyclists, and transport users get what's left over. It doesn't have to be that way. European cities get by fine without cars in city centers. Do you really need a car to get to work in midtown Manhattan? Why are th…

> European cities get by fine without cars in city centers. Where did you get that from? Some of them, sometimes, with exceptions, with mixed success. Certainly not Prague (which is where I live). The public transport system is absolutely fantastic, but as of now it's at 100 % capacity (locally) and the city center is still full of cars. People need to move stuff, plumbers, electricians can't haul their tools around…

> Don't forget that most European cities are hundreds of years old, built on river banks, rocks, hills, the complete opposite of most US cities.

What, do you think that North America is a minecraft flatworld? Plenty of American cities are built on variable terrain. The city I live in, Weehawken (Lenape for "rocks bigger than trees"), is bisected by a 300 foot sheer cliff called "The Palisade" because it looks like a castle wall. You have to take an elevator or a long staircase if you want to get uptown.

The only US cities designed from the ground up with cars in mind are in the western desert valleys where nobody could reasonably live until air conditioning was invented: Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles. Many German cities were being rebuilt almost from scratch at the same time. Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin all had to be almost completely replaced. Their maps were redrawn with cars in mind, and they managed to stay largely walkable.

Meanwhile, London has roughly the same transit woes as New York. Was London founded after the invention of the car? No! Unlike the planners of Munich and Dresden and Hamburg, London's rebuilders after the war prioritized automobiles over people, and it shows.

New York got its modern street layout in 1807, the same year Napoleon conquered Bohemia, and I'm pretty certain he didn't enter Prague in an open-top car.

Car-centric city planning isn't a natural phenomenon, it is an intentional choice, and it can be undone at any time.

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

#214

Post by electric_muse » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #174

thomasfl wrote: post #64

According to Richard Branson “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” The same goes for cities. Take care of the citizens, and the citizens will take care of business. Removing parking may be bad for local shops in the short run, but good for the citizens and the city in the long run.

That's only true in some instances for some combination of high margin, not easily reproducible, or low volume products that serve wealthy purchasers. The reason Walmart killed everyone was because purchasers valued saving a few dollars rather than being taken care of by employees. Similarly with airlines, which Branson wasn’t really able to expand beyond the wealthy NYC-LA-SF routes.

Another reason Walmart killed it was because they offered more convenience at a lower cost. That’s what people choose.

It’s also why people choose vehicles over public transit: point-to-point convenience for comparable prices to stringing together public transit and car services to get around.

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

#215

Post by bunderbunder » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 6:55 PM UTC

GLjEI4YbnGD27LB wrote: post #151

manmal wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the place where I live (Austria, town with 30k residents), the Fußgängerzone in the center is currently dying. Shops close left and right, and migrate to the three big shopping centers. This town is a strange mix because almost everybody needs to own a car (bus system is underdeveloped) to take kids to school or shop groceries, but the town itself is not that big (a lot of places are reachable by bike). Most peopl…

Living in the Netherlands, the city center (practically no cars allowed) in 2 cities I've lived in over the past years, both have lots of shops going out of business. But I would identify this trend as people doing more online shopping, most of the major shopping centers are still in this city center, and it has parking garages near, but people are just doing less shopping in brick and mortar stores.

Madison, WI, USA has a section where cars are mostly not allowed. When I was a kid, it was a major retail destination, and people would make weekend trips from an hour or more away (by car) to go there.

There was recently a huge wave of shops closing. They've since been replaced by restaurants and cafes, and they seem to be doing well, but nobody's going to go into ten restaurants in a single afternoon, so the area still feels less alive than it used to.

To me, though, this particular phenomenon feels like an extension of the death of the American shopping mall, and not evidence that a city with an outdoor environment designed to accommodate its own residents (and not just their cars) wouldn't be nice. If it's just a business district that's designed for pedestrians, well, that's really nothing more than a public version of the outdoor shopping mall.

I'm most definitely not looking for a shopping mall. I'm looking for my kids (and me) to be able to go outside and ride a bike or kick a ball or organize a neighborhood game of tag, without being dependent on me to drive them by car to the nearest city park in order to do it. And I'm looking for a culture where neighbors collectively spend time outside, together, as a community, rather than being cooped up indoors or walled up inside their own back yards because the neighborhood's public space is a fundamentally uncomfortable place to be.

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

#216

Post by idontpost » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 7:48 PM UTC

dmichulke wrote: post #208

thaumasiotes wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English "foot" (and the equivalent Germanic words) are cognate with the Latin word "pes" (= foot), but do not descend from it. It's not a Latin root.

Not an etymologist, but I think they still have a common ancestor (proto Indo-European?). Lots of words in Latin with p have an equivalent with f in the Germanic languages: Pater - father Pes - foot Primus - first Note the English word is not necessarily the closest to the Latin one. P and f are also considered the same sound in a few word distance metrics such as Soundex for the very same reason.

Yes, but Latin still isn't the root. PIE would be.

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

#217

Post by idontpost » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

benc666 wrote: post #108

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'.

In Afrikaans - spoken in ZA (south africa) - that is pretty much the actual word :) "voetganger" "voet" - foot/feet "ganger" - someone who moves along using the former noun The Latin Root is what connects many European languages.

> The Latin Root is what connects many European languages.

Not in this case. Proto-Germanic before the Norse languages split off would be the root that connects English, Dutch, and German with Norwegian.

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

#218

Post by freedomben » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 8:34 PM UTC

williamdclt wrote: post #183

reitanqild wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's the first time I hear that parents take their children to school because they're afraid of wolves

In my town in Alaska a couple years ago we had a school child get mauled to death by a bear. In some parts of the world, man is still part of the natural eco-system and food chain.

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

#219

Post by Scarblac » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #86

wenderen wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're both Germanic languages! Learning Norwegian definitely helped me brush up on my German for free - at least, reading and to a lesser extent speaking.

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'.

But "gang" here doesn't mean passage, it's the noon of the verb to go. It's foot-goer.

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

#220

Post by Scarblac » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC

Vinnl wrote: post #185

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…

Heck, I've been allowed to get a driver's license for over a decade in the Netherlands, but neither I nor my partner has one. Granted, most of my friends to have one, but almost none of them have a car. It helps that we live in a large city, and one that actively discourages driving and encourages public transport and cycling (even by Dutch standards), but not only is it not necessary to drive, it's often the worst t…

I got the license at 35, with kids having a car around often saves a lot of trouble. But we still only use it twice a week or so.