To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars • Hacker News Board

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#221

Post by bluGill » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 4:04 PM UTC

dkural wrote: post #194

philwelch wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not entirely clear that racial animus was the primary motivating factor. Once civil rights legislation was passed to stop housing discrimination, for instance, there was also black flight, when middle-class black families also moved to the suburbs. It’s also not clear how one is supposed to reverse the effects of white flight; when middle-class whites move into a majority-nonwhite urban area, this is usually con…

My issue is the article doesn't once mention this as factor at all . I also object that one needs racial animus to have racist policies. "I've got no animus towards blacks, I just don't want to share large chunks of civic life with them" is racist. Blacks wanted to move to the suburbs due to lack of city & civic infrastructure in black neighborhoods - as the whites fled; so did polling stations, hospitals, banks, sto…

You are partially correct. Only partially because it only takes a small number of actual racist to make a difference. Even if 90% of a suburb doesn't care about race, that 10% can still make a difference by making the unwanted feel unwelcome.

I don't know how to solve this.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#222

Post by scriptkiddy » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 4:04 PM UTC

I live in Los Angeles; The Mecca for the automobile. Back in the early 20th century, the city was trying really hard to invest in public transportation through the use of electric street cars. Unfortunately, car manufacturers were able to weasel their way into the pockets of the city planners and put a stop to that.

We have a problem in Los Angeles. And that problem is that it's almost impossible to live close to where you work. Most white collar jobs here require an hour or longer of commuting time. Sure, it's possible to find jobs closer to your home, but when you are a professional in a specific field, your choices are restricted.

I live in North Hollywood, which is just West of Burbank in the San Fernando Valley. It's actually miles from Hollywood despite what the name may suggest.

I work in El Segundo. Before that, I worked in Culver city.

It would take me 4 or more hours and several metro -> bus -> metro transfers to get to work without driving.

The city is working on several new Metro lines and Bus only lanes, but it doesn't solve the problem of everyone being so spread out.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#223

Post by bryanlarsen » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #174

at-fates-hands wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually its a cycle. The cost of gas goes up, and people scramble to get more fuel efficient cars. Gas does down and they want larger utility vehicles. Toyota made out like crazy when gas prices went through the roof in the early 2000's. They were already manufacturing the Prius and once gas prices went over $3-$4/gallon, people suddenly started buying motorcycles, started biking more and started buying Prius' in dr…

Yep, and in a democratic nation, anyone who tries to add high taxes causing their large cars to be much more expensive to own and operate will be voted out, so the only thing that can really stop them is when the price of fuel is forced up by sheer lack of supply.

Lack of supply is not sufficient to raise the price enough. To keep climate change below a 2 degree rise, we must leave 4/5ths of our current oil reserves in the ground. And not only that, once oil reaches ~$80 / bbl, vast amounts of tar sands become viable, increasing our oil reserves massively.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#224

Post by TheCoelacanth » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

educationdata wrote: post #98

betandr wrote: post #71

We really do have to radically re-think our cities but the biggest issues aren't going to be practical but emotional. In London parents drive their children around in 4x4s, knowing that their vehicle causes the pollution that is affecting their own children's health. I'm not sure how you even start to get around that but to some extent you will never persuade everybody to reduce their damaging behaviour. You need to…

No. Car is not just the "culture", car serves our need. If you are young without kids, it may not make much difference for you to ride a car, or take a bus, or a train, subway, etc. But if you have a family, it makes a huge pain without your own vehicle. If the city of future requires families to abandon their own vehicle, it is not the correct city of future. Just design a better one.

The US currently has about 50 million households with children under 18 and over 250 million cars. There is room for an 80% drop in the number of cars without families with children going car-free.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#225

Post by icsllaf » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #195

dkural wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is an extreme precisely due to these social and emotional reasons. It's shocking to me how this article fails to mention even once that a lot of post WWII suburbanization was due to white flight. The article states: "Millions of soldiers had come home from World War II to overcrowded, run-down cities; their new families needed a place to live." "Overcrowded, run-down": who all of a sudden "overcrowded" these c…

> It's shocking to me how this article fails to mention even once that a lot of post WWII suburbanization was due to white flight. I've never really understood this explanation of suburbanization. Suppose you're a bunch of racist white folk wanting not to live near black folk. How do suburbs get you that any better than cities? What can you do to keep a black person from moving to your neighborhood in the suburbs tha…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_New_York#Discrimina...

Levittown was a quintessential model of the suburbs, one of the first examples of the suburbs we have now. Towns like this openly segregated against blacks and minorities, a dream away from the crowded city into your all white, picket fence house.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#226

Post by wozniacki » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

ak217 wrote: post #191

educationdata wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Car is not just the "culture", car serves our need. If you are young without kids, it may not make much difference for you to ride a car, or take a bus, or a train, subway, etc. But if you have a family, it makes a huge pain without your own vehicle. If the city of future requires families to abandon their own vehicle, it is not the correct city of future. Just design a better one.

Millions of people around America get their kids around the neighborhood just fine without a car. If you continue to insist that cities be designed around your limited vision, then you should be forced to pay for the full externalities of your car-centric lifestyle. The rest of us are tired of paying so you can waste our resources.

You need to cite a source for that.

Infact if anything, despite the very very recent free-range kids movement to liberate kids from the dependence on parents, its the opposite - kids get ferried everywhere, from high school sports practice sessions to neighborhood store visits.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#227

Post by 0xffff2 » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 4:09 PM UTC

scriptkiddy wrote: post #222

I live in Los Angeles; The Mecca for the automobile. Back in the early 20th century, the city was trying really hard to invest in public transportation through the use of electric street cars. Unfortunately, car manufacturers were able to weasel their way into the pockets of the city planners and put a stop to that. We have a problem in Los Angeles. And that problem is that it's almost impossible to live close to whe…

Do you own your house? I'm curious because you speak as if "where you live" is an immutable fact, whereas my solution would to be to move closer to work.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#228

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 4:09 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #95

czechdeveloper wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get easily insulted for proper choices. Homophobic comments on cycling and veganism are common. I rather believe that we are doomed - that we will destroy nature sufficiently for it to stop producing enough food to sustain us as species - than that we will change.

Today's environmental causes suffer from a credibility problem imposed by the mountains of failed breathless malthusian doomsday predictions from yesterday's environmental causes. I've seen the science and believe it, but the boy who cried wolf was also correct, in the end. Please don't be a credibility problem for tomorrow's environmental causes.

A few decades ago there were hoards of people breathlessly demanding that something be done about the hole in the ozone layer or else we're all doomed. Then we banned CFCs and now the ozone hole is starting to heal itself.

But if we hadn't banned CFCs we would have been doomed. The ozone layer actually is really important.

Now the danger is climate change and what we need is to stop burning carbon. The lesson from past experience is not that everything will be fine if we don't do anything, it's that everything will be fine if we do what is necessary. Everything will not be fine if we don't do what is necessary.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#229

Post by wozniacki » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 4:12 PM UTC

jniedrauer wrote: post #200

danielecook wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having recently moved to London I am a bit shocked at how poor the cycling infrastructure is. Granted, the city was never exactly planned out, but it seems to me it wouldn’t be hard to add dedicated bike paths given the fair amount of green space. Consider richmond Park as a prime location where dedicated bike-only lanes would be a great improvement. Instead you must bike along side diesel fumes on the roads that sho…

After spending a lot of time in clean mountain air, it's gotten to the point where I can taste the fumes in the air in the United States. It's noxious. I run very early in the morning before anyone starts driving to avoid it.

  After spending a lot of time in 
  clean mountain air

May I ask where this mountain air was and why you had to relocate to a fume-ridden place in United States?

Is it for economic mobility? If that's the case shouldn't you consider taking a hit in that lone aspect, for a better quality of living? I'm sure you will be gainfully employed breathing clean, crisp mountain air provided your skills are in demand. You'll just make a little less.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#230

Post by ak217 » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #54

ahoy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, "you could move to Greece." Practical suggestion for improving the life of the average Atlanta resident!

More practical than changing Atlanta to some imaginary car-free utopia. But perhaps the advantages of living in a car-free city aren't that great after all?

Atlanta is already changing to a "car-free utopia" that you're dismissing. Many neighborhoods around Midtown, Inman Park, and several MARTA stations are both more walkable and in enormously higher demand than 20 years ago.