New Cities • Hacker News Board

Re: New Cities

#221

Post by MajorLOL » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 6:12 PM UTC

chris_7 wrote: post #85

jsprogrammer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have single lane streets, what does an emergency vehicle do when the lane is blocked by vehicles, people, or debris? Wouldn't wider streets be better in every case?

If you have a narrow street, less people drive, and thus there is no issue getting an ambulance through. I see ambulances stuck in traffic on Manhattan avenues all the time (we should put grade-separated bus lanes on all of them, IMO, partially so that ambulances can always get through).

>If you have a narrow street, less people drive, and thus there is no issue getting an ambulance through.

Huh? If you limit supply, demand goes down?

Your logic would say that the solution to Los Angles traffic problems is to close half the lanes and wait for people to sell off their cars?

Re: New Cities

#222

Post by davidw » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 6:12 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #218

davidw wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have lived carless and had to make many independent trips per week to buy food. We mostly walked or biked to the local grocery store in Italy. It led to more fresh food, as you buy stuff in smaller quantities and eat it right away. A large backpack is fine for moving stuff. It worked for our family of 4.

So... You can't eat when you're hungry, because you don't keep food at home. A huge portion of your week is suddenly devoted to shuttling back and forth between home and the grocery store. And you think that's not a massive inconvenience?

We had food at home, and went to the store 2/3 times a week. It was 5 minutes away by bike, so popping over was no problem, and it meant more fresh fruit and vegetables in our diet, too, which was nice. It was not an inconvenience, nor a "huge portion of my week". It was a small store that was quick to go through and get what I needed, not something like Costco. We did bulk buying elsewhere for other stuff, too, and took the car. It's nice to have the choice.

Re: New Cities

#223

Post by Nav_Panel » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

ploxiln wrote: post #136

16bytes wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individually owned cars--and the infrastructure needed to support them--are a very inefficient mode of transportation, even in the use-cases that you mention. Plenty of people with children and elderly live in New York city which has among the lowest levels of car ownership in the nation. Every other method of high-density transportation is also a "human amplifier" and vastly more efficient. "Built for people" means…

I live in NYC. I enjoy being able to take the subway to many world-class establishments in under 45 minutes. If/when I have children, I'm getting the fuck out of here. Many (most?) people do the same. There are huge numbers of people here, so of course there are lots of children here. They're either super wealthy, or really not living up to my standards for quality of life. (I was not raised in a big city.) If you se…

I feel like this comment applies to Manhattan but not greater NYC. I also live in NYC and many of my coworkers have children. They all live out in Queens, though. Areas like Forest Hills have a cute suburban feel and are car-friendly but also afford solid public transit options. Sure, it might cost more than a comparable house in the suburbs, but you can find a full house for under $1mm.

Re: New Cities

#224

Post by mmalone » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

jkaunisv1 wrote: post #206

Make internet a basic utility, paid through taxes, that requires no activation. I've never had to explicitly pay for water or have it turned on/off when I switch apartments, it would be amazing for internet to be the same. See Pattern Language/Christopher Alexander for ideas on how to design the physical spaces to work for the people who will be using them, including random passersby. Put cars lowest on the priority…

Interesting that you mentioned pattern language. My brother is an architecht, I'm into tech. I remember asking him about Alexander / pattern language after reading GoF, et. al. and he hadn't heard of him. He looked into it and was kind of like shrug. Seems Alexander isnt't super mainstream in the architecture community, and his ideas weren't that revolutionary. My read is that he's better know to software engineers than actual architects?

Re: New Cities

#225

Post by ginko » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #189

ars wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> built for people, rather than cars I wish people would stop with this drivel. There are PEOPLE in the cars. The cities are built for people. A car is a human amplifier - it takes human transportation and carrying ability and amplifies it. A lot of people find this amplification very very useful (parents with children, elderly, people who buy in bulk, etc, etc). Taking it away would be like removing computers becaus…

Indeed. With a car, in a place designed for cars, I can go from ideation to grocery store or department and back inside of half an hour. In a place "designed for people" where neither homes nor stores have parking, such an errand consumes an entire afternoon. (Walk to bus stop, wait for bus, take bus to train, wait for train, ride train, walk, etc. Though I suppose it's easier if you can afford to live a short walk f…

As someone living in a place "designed for people", my trip to the grocery stores means putting on my shoes, walking down the stairs and across the street. The next department store is about 200m down the street.

Re: New Cities

#226

Post by epistasis » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

wrsh07 wrote: post #220

sama wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars have a place in cities but maybe they should be in tunnels underground or something. I view money locked up in real estate as money in a very suboptimal place. We pay too much 'rent' in general; it'd be far better to try to make housing/office space cheap and have people invest the extra money in productive assets.

Cars or bikes are great because vehicle + roads = a fairly robust network [if done well, no single points of failure]. That's not usually the case for public transit. [Agreed about real estate. Although dense cities are very eco-friendly, it might be hard to motivate dense cities when real estate isn't super expensive. Manhattan grows upward because it's expensive to grow any other direction]

Bikes may be great but cars are terrible for cities. They take a ton of space and require massive amounts of restrictions on non-car traffic. Space is the biggest premium in a city.

If a fraction of the space that was devoted to car traffic was instead devoted to public transit, public transit would be far more efficient and robust than cars.

Re: New Cities

#227

Post by st3v3r » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #200

curryst wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing the way cars function inside the city is only part of what would need to change. Near me things just aren't laid out well for pedestrians. It would take me about an hour to walk to the nearest grocery store (not counting corner stores, because all they sell is junk food). Biking should be much shorter, though I can't say I've ever tried. We would need to stop the trend of having a small number of large store…

> We would need to stop the trend of having a small number of large stores and move back towards having a large number of smaller stores. That comes with it's own trade offs in planning an efficient city. Markets are a great way of finding 'the best' solution to problems like this, but they aren't allowed to function any more in most cities in the US because of the amount of rules and regulations about what can be bu…

No, markets are a great way of finding what makes the most money for those who build the stores. That may be "the best" solution that is also aligned with the interests of the people who live there, but it might not be.

Re: New Cities

#228

Post by zephjc » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 6:14 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #182

curryst wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing the way cars function inside the city is only part of what would need to change. Near me things just aren't laid out well for pedestrians. It would take me about an hour to walk to the nearest grocery store (not counting corner stores, because all they sell is junk food). Biking should be much shorter, though I can't say I've ever tried. We would need to stop the trend of having a small number of large store…

> It would take me about an hour to walk to the nearest grocery store (not counting corner stores, because all they sell is junk food). There's a bigger issue here. Suppose the grocery store was 10 minutes away. You'd still need to drive there, because how are you going to get the food back to your house? I have lived carless and had to make many independent trips per week to buy food. Being able to do it all at once…

I think that depends on what your trip from home to the store is. Is it a pleasant 10 minute trip on down a country road or in an exciting, bustling city, or is it a 10 minute trip along a despotic road with nothing going on and which screams "cars only! no humans allowed!"? I prefer getting smaller grocery loads more frequently when the store is nearby, but when the trip is an ordeal, you go fewer big trips to avoid that as much as possible. A pleasant 15-20 minute walk to a store is much nicer than a 10 minute drive through an oppressive roadscape.

Re: New Cities

#229

Post by jacobolus » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 6:14 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #215

windust wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://cdn.slowrobot.com/524201613515576555.gif :)

It's a lovely picture, and it makes a great point. If 200 people want to get to the same place, it's far more efficient to pack them into the same vehicle going to that place. Now what happens when those 177 cars are going to 100 different places?

Then it’s much more efficient to cluster those 100 different places into a few compact areas, so that most of the people can walk or bike, or take the subway.

The problem is when those 200 people want to go to 100 different places spread throughout hundreds of square miles of evenly low density suburban sprawl like a modern US metropolis.

Re: New Cities

#230

Post by sandworm101 » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 6:14 PM UTC

Every time I see someone planning for a greater/better city they always forgot to include room for poor, or at least the not-wealthy people. There is never enough room, resulting in the majority of the population having to live outside the planing bubble and commute in (brasilia). Housing is like chopping firewood in winter: Make however much you think you need, then do that again... twice.