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The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

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Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#271

Post by enaaem »

dahwolf wrote: post #228
throw0101a wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh the Urbanity recently visited the Netherlands and did a profile video, "The Fascinating Human-Scale Urbanism of Dutch Suburbia": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nImFJ7KKjAo > Cars are pretty popular ways of getting about in the suburbs and rural areas. But how much are cars needed on a day-to-day basis for day-to-day errands? I don't think any is saying that they are not useful (at times), but you can have them…

I'm Dutch and I want to push back against the glorification of our infrastructure. To comment on that video specifically: Yes, fully on board with the narrower streets, "hiding" parking, having some shared public space like playgrounds. These are all good things. But there's a flip side to this coin. This isn't necessarily a desired "way of life", it's what naturally evolved due to severe space constraints. I specifi…

I'm also dutch. Housing is indeed expensive here. There are many factors, but it's not because of walkable neighbourhoods, biking infrastructure and public transport (the things that are promoted). I'd argue that without these policies housing and transport will be 10x more expensive and inconvenient.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#272

Post by MichaelZuo »

chimeracoder wrote: post #155
everdrive wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loud bass carries through pretty much any material. You’re going to need a cultural change where people in dense environments don’t play loud music, and watch their behavior after 8pm.

> Loud bass carries through pretty much any material. You’re going to need a cultural change where people in dense environments don’t play loud music, and watch their behavior after 8pm. Not at all. New construction in NYC has excellent soundproofing. Even that is actually more a side-effect of changes to fire codes than a specific demand for soundproofing - buildings constructed with soundproofing as a specific goal…

It's physically impossible for practically any kind of 4 inches of soundproof to prevent a 50hz frequency from vibrating through the walls.

Maybe if it was 4 inches of solid lead and even then particularly sensitive people might still feel a normal sized subwoofer placed against the wall on the opposite side.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#273

Post by treis »

davidw wrote: post #195
sandworm101 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> infill development of existing parking lots to create mixed use neighborhoods is in reality very cheap for cities to do No. That is a radical change in needs and services. Cars don't need sewage treatment and fresh water delivery. Parking lots don't need school systems and health care. Just saying that a parking lot can be converted to houses ignores the radically different local and external needs of human reside…

Compared to the same amount of services further spread out, infill is far cheaper, and tends to generate a lot more tax revenue compared to the infrastructure needs. Here's a sort of simplified, but real-world example that uses snow clearing: https://bendyimby.com/2021/03/24/snow-and-financial-producti... Something like sewers are more complicated, but the basic equation is that you're adding things in an area that's…

Snow removal is cheap. The expensive things like schools, criminal justice, and health care are all more expensive per person in denser cities.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#274

Post by babyshake »

spencerchubb wrote: post #201
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not go all the way to the source of the problem to make it realistic? E.g., NIMBYism https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-st...

And the root cause of NIMBYism is the public goods dilemma. Everyone would benefit if more housing were built, but nobody wants more built near their land. The solution is not as simple as "Just stop electing NIMBYs!" because NIMBYism is a Nash equilibrium.

Perhaps the only solution then is to build in everybody's backyard. "Why don't we build over there instead of here" is more difficult to argue when the same construction is happening everywhere.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#275

Post by WorldMaker »

tshaddox wrote: post #245
nharada wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious how much bigger the real stadium parking was. SimCity: https://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/simcity/e/... Real Stadium: https://i.imgur.com/KwT1T53.png

That looks like a pretty far distance to walk from the furthest parking spots to the stadium. Do these stadiums have some sort of "mass transit" system to move the people from their cars to the stadium?

In my experience, some of them do have transport shuttles (golf carts, small vans, sometimes busses) that just do loops of the parking lot. Even some of the stadiums that don't provide that as an intentional house service find groups forming small shuttle companies to opportunistically make a few dollars on that service (and jam up parking traffic that little bit more because there aren't designed service routes, just these ad hoc third party providers trying to make a quick buck on a game day).

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#276

Post by throw0101a »

dahwolf wrote: post #228
throw0101a wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh the Urbanity recently visited the Netherlands and did a profile video, "The Fascinating Human-Scale Urbanism of Dutch Suburbia": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nImFJ7KKjAo > Cars are pretty popular ways of getting about in the suburbs and rural areas. But how much are cars needed on a day-to-day basis for day-to-day errands? I don't think any is saying that they are not useful (at times), but you can have them…

I'm Dutch and I want to push back against the glorification of our infrastructure. To comment on that video specifically: Yes, fully on board with the narrower streets, "hiding" parking, having some shared public space like playgrounds. These are all good things. But there's a flip side to this coin. This isn't necessarily a desired "way of life", it's what naturally evolved due to severe space constraints. I specifi…

> But there's a flip side to this coin. This isn't necessarily a desired "way of life", it's what naturally evolved due to severe space constraints.

There is nothing 'natural' about the evolution of NL cities as demonstrated by the fact that (e.g.) Amsterdam started to go down the car-centric route:

* https://inkspire.org/post/amsterdam-was-a-car-loving-city-in...

It was a policy choice to not go in that direction—or rather to stop and turn away—as opposed to some kind of physical law of the universe. Not Just Bikes uses Rotterdam as an example of how even in NL† policy can go in other directions:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ovt1EMULY

My dad used to work at the post office facility in this area:

* https://www.google.com/maps/place/4577+Eglinton+Ave+E,+Missi...

In the early 1990s there used to be strawberries fields across the street, and now the entire area is filled with generic suburb strip malls. Perhaps agriculture would have gone away eventually, but there's no reason why it had car-centric, low-density development that replaced it. How close is agriculture to some NL cities?

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6txCZpbsQ&t=9m28s

> Suburbia can be denser but than it must be cheap. Dense expensive suburbia is the worst of all worlds.

No: low-density expensive suburbia is the worst of all worlds because it necessitates cars, which has leads to all sorts of externality costs. The total OpEx is also much more expensive with low densities:

* https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...

And just because you have sprawl doesn't mean you have cheap housing:

* https://thetyee.ca/News/2018/03/23/Urban-Sprawl-Not-More-Aff...

See LA and even the Greater Toronto area (GTA) as examples:

* https://dailyhive.com/toronto/toronto-ranked-least-affordabl...

† I use "NL" in the international ccTLD sense, and not in my Canadian sense of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. :)

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#277

Post by Tommah »

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #30

There's an interesting interview with a designer of SimCity, where he discusses parking: Geoff Manaugh: While you were making those measurements of different real-world cities, did you discover any surprising patterns or spatial relationships Librande: Yes, definitely. I think the biggest one was the parking lots. When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don’t think of as being that big, I was bl…

I played a lot of SimCity 3000, and as I recall, a lot of commercially zoned cells will end up being small parking lots. The game assigns whimsical names to properties, and the parking lots were named "They Paved Paradise."

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#278

Post by andrewjl »

spencerchubb wrote: post #201
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not go all the way to the source of the problem to make it realistic? E.g., NIMBYism https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-st...

And the root cause of NIMBYism is the public goods dilemma. Everyone would benefit if more housing were built, but nobody wants more built near their land. The solution is not as simple as "Just stop electing NIMBYs!" because NIMBYism is a Nash equilibrium.

> Everyone would benefit if more housing were built, but nobody wants more built near their land.

Letting land owners build on land they already own with fewer restrictions solves this problem. If it's a matter of aesthetics or "neighborhood character" and not a matter of habitability as defined by the housing code, then why should the wants of whoever owns land that happens to be nearby factor in?

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#279

Post by daveliepmann »

josephcsible wrote: post #133
daveliepmann wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elevated pedestrian walkways are miserable for people walking. You seem pretty deeply carbrained.

How so? I've used them before and didn't see a problem with them.

How are they for a grandparents pushing a stroller?

Would you say they encourage a vibrant street culture of cafes and shops?

The ones I've seen, especially in Berlin and İzmir, are loud and a hassle to cross. That's because walkways and bikeways over multi-lane roads are car infrastructure. They are there to prioritize high-speed automobile traffic with few interruptions. I'm happy for the one going up at my gym, but I know it's there to ensure bike/ped political forces can't endanger the trunk road underneath. True pedestrian infrastructure there would involve a major speed and size downgrade to the road, which is unacceptable, thus the political defensive move to pay out the nose for something car advocates would never normally fund.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#280

Post by microtherion »

Sharlin wrote: post #216
jimbob21 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised that this was surprising to people. Cars are much bigger than people, of course you'd need bigger parking lots than seating space

> of course you'd need bigger parking lots than seating space There is a tacit assumption in your statement. Of course you don't need vast parking lots around stadiums, and there are plenty of real-world sports arenas that don't have those (some examples [1][2][3]). The parking that there is is structural, and most people simply use public transit to reach these places, which are often located in moderately densely b…

Or Letzigrund in Zurich, with a capacity of up to 50,000 people for concerts, and absolutely zero street parking available: https://goo.gl/maps/kPye3VdVB9ZLpPsx8
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