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

#301

Post by isostatic » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

bpyne wrote: post #277

isostatic wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they'll move out of the cities into suburbia in their 30s, as they always do. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47529562 Over the past decade, about 550,000 more Britons left London than moved to it. This trend is not unique to London; it is seen in many big US cities, including New York, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles. ... People arrive in their 20s looking for jobs, then retreat in their 30s. Although it seems more…

Another issue with living in urban areas, at least in the US, is education. Schools in urban areas deal with more issues around family and poverty. The school buildings themselves are often older and require more maintenance. For young parents who may love urban life, the quality of education becomes a big factor.

Schools cost far more in cities too -- higher salaries for teachers (as housing costs more), higher cost for the usage of the land, higher charges for everything from plumbers to school dinners.

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

#302

Post by dkural » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

Kaiyou wrote: post #254

dkural wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why would not wanting to share your life with them be racist? Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another. It has nothing to do with who you want and don't want to have in your neighborhood. And people should be allowed to choose whom to associate with.

Imagine not wanting to have someone in your neighborhood only because that person is black, without you needing to know anything else. That sole fact of their skin color makes up your mind that you don't want them in your neighborhood, without asking if they're a good person, an honest person, a friendly person.. they're simply disqualified without you asking any additional question.

You can imagine if someone doesn't want black people in their neighborhood how they might feel about their children marrying one.

I don't know how to read people's minds, so I tend to gravitate towards a functional definition of racism which measures it based on someone's action - i.e. if someone being treated in an unfair manner based on their skin color.

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

#303

Post by dkural » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

0xffff2 wrote: post #242

JDiculous wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subways are underground

Is this meant to contribute in some way? I honestly have no idea what this seemingly random phrase is supposed to convey.

Urban environments can often be less noisy than suburbs next to highways/freeways; due to extensive use of subway infrastructure - which moves the associated noise underground. Also, a suburban commuter spends a lot of time in a car commuting, being subjected to the very noise the parent poster is referring to.

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

#304

Post by philwelch » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

Kaiyou wrote: post #254

dkural wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why would not wanting to share your life with them be racist? Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another. It has nothing to do with who you want and don't want to have in your neighborhood. And people should be allowed to choose whom to associate with.

“Racism” is an overloaded term. The idea you’re describing (racial separatism) is definitely in the general category of racism.

In fact, most racism gets expressed as racial separatism. Segregation was literally racial separatism.

One problem is that this literally turns into a question of ethnic territorialism, and can easily be extended from neighborhoods to entire states (Oregon was founded as a whites-only state) to entire countries (eg the notion of sending freed slaves back to Africa, which is how Liberia was founded).

It’s also just not that hard to express even the worst racism in mere separatist terms. In fact, that’s where most racism starts.

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

#305

Post by nikomen » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

Xylakant wrote: post #206

educationdata wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you live in SF? Not every city always has good weather. Cargo bikes are useless for most cities because of weather (rain, snow, winter cold, summer hot). It's useful for fun when the weather is great, but not as a main way of transportation.

I live in Berlin. It’s been raining for a week and cold. Bikes both have a canopy, I have suitable clothing. Granted, it’s less comfortable than sitting in a car, but OTOH I don’t have to go jogging after returning from work. Worst case there’s still Bus and Subway. Cities like Oslo and Copenhagen aren’t exactly known for good weather either, but have substantial policies around clearing bikeways from snow first, bef…

I would love to be able to walk or ride my bike regularly. However, in the southeastern US it’s 80F+ (27C) with 70F+ (21C) dew point for 4 months of the year. If you travel by foot or bike, you need a shower at each destination to wash off the stench and sweat. It’s so hot here, often times your clothing becomes sweaty as soon as you step outside.

I would gladly live somewhere like Denver, Seattle, or San Francisco if money and family ties to the East coast weren’t an issue. Many of the cities with comfortable climates in the US are very expensive. The remaining, affordable cities have undesirable climates.

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

#306

Post by naravara » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #156

naravara wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids is actually a tough case, especially when they're infants. You actually need to haul around a bunch of stuff to take a kid out and transit is rarely design around the needs of parents. Strollers are a pain to get into a bus or train, and often worsen crowding because they're so big. And it's just not practical to have to get car seats in and out of car-shares or cabs. Even in places with well considered transit…

Yes and no. I’ve raised three kids in a highly urban area with good transit. It’s a lot easier to walk than deal with car seats or strollers - though it’s slow. It’also easier to hop on the bus than load up the car, and the kids think it’s a fun adventure (seriously). That said we do have a car and also use it a lot. I think it has a lot to do with the time sensitivity. If you want to go some place and it’s not a qui…

>I think, though, the idea is if you design a place such that you don’t HAVE to have a car, then cars would be driven vastly less. For us that’s true, combined my family of five drives about 7000 miles per year, much of that on road trips from the Bay Area to Tahoe or Yosemite etc.

Yeah. A lot of people fear that a transit centered city means we're gonna take ALL the cars. Realistically I think most transit/urbanist advocates are aiming for a world with 1 practical car per family rather than 1 car per driving age member of the household.

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

#307

Post by 0xffff2 » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

dkural wrote: post #303

0xffff2 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this meant to contribute in some way? I honestly have no idea what this seemingly random phrase is supposed to convey.

Urban environments can often be less noisy than suburbs next to highways/freeways; due to extensive use of subway infrastructure - which moves the associated noise underground. Also, a suburban commuter spends a lot of time in a car commuting, being subjected to the very noise the parent poster is referring to.

I think that's the more minor part of the noise that the original comment was referring to. It's much easier to insulate one's detached house from suburban noise than it is to insulate one's apartment from noisy neighbors on the other side of a shared wall. It's also my experience that those noisy neighbors are a much bigger nuisance than the traffic noise in the first place.

On a tangential note, I'd be curious to know whether you have any links to back up the claim that urban environments are often less noisy. I don't disbelieve the claim outright, but it sure doesn't match my personal experience.

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

#308

Post by dang » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #177

Frondo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it unfortunate that you aren't behaving bravely enough to post your real identifying information. Such a move is neither supreme, nor representative of an overlord.

Downvoters, wouldn't you like to know who the avowed racist is? I for one wouldn't want them near by company -- we work with a lot of clients of color, and that's a bad look.

Would you please stop it with the flamebait on divisive topics? The account was an obvious troll. If you want to help combat that kind of thing, why not flag the comment? Other users did, which (a) killed it, and then (b) brought it to our attention so we could ban it. That's how to contribute positively in a case like this. Taking HN threads further into flamewar and political rhetoric is exactly what the guidelines ask you not to do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#309

Post by philipkglass » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

Tharkun wrote: post #212

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…

I thought the race to suburbia was a deliberate attempt to spread out the population in case of Soviet nukes? Though I guess there is likely more than one cause.

That's interesting. I hadn't heard of this before. The evidence is pretty well set out in Kathleen Tobin's "The Reduction of Urban Vulnerability: Revisiting 1950s American Suburbanization as Civil Defence."

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly10/Cold.War.Urban.Vulnera...

The vast majority of proposals are from before 1956 -- i.e. before the Soviets demonstrated their own high-yield thermonuclear weapons. The degree of decentralization required to mitigate against the multi-megaton bombs of the later 1950s would have been truly staggering.

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

#310

Post by philwelch » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 8:10 PM UTC

dkural wrote: post #302

Kaiyou wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would not wanting to share your life with them be racist? Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another. It has nothing to do with who you want and don't want to have in your neighborhood. And people should be allowed to choose whom to associate with.

Imagine not wanting to have someone in your neighborhood only because that person is black, without you needing to know anything else. That sole fact of their skin color makes up your mind that you don't want them in your neighborhood, without asking if they're a good person, an honest person, a friendly person.. they're simply disqualified without you asking any additional question. You can imagine if someone doesn'…

There's also a game-theoretic stalemate that you have to break with active policy change.

To the typical mid-century white homeowner, "a black family moved into the neighborhood" wasn't the beginning and end of it. There were only two equilibria: either you live in a segregated white neighborhood or you live in a predominantly black neighborhood. (I openly admit there's nothing wrong with living in a predominantly black neighborhood, but this was probably not the most common opinion among mid-century white homeowners.)

Why? Fundamentally because there was a structural shortage of good housing for black people. If most neighborhoods don't allow black residents, having a neighborhood that does allow them causes a surge of demand. Even if you're not racist enough to move out just because a single black family moved into your neighborhood, some of your neighbors are, and many of their homes will be bought by black families, which will trigger your slightly-less racist neighbors to move out, and so forth. This was deliberately encouraged by "blockbusters", who would buy homes from white families at a discount and then price-gouge the black families who ended up moving in for a massive profit. But blockbusting only works if you have the pre-existing shortage of unsegregated housing in the first place.

You end up in a feedback loop:

(a) Moderately racist white homeowners want to keep their neighborhoods segregated because otherwise they'll live in black neighborhoods. This causes:

(b) Most neighborhoods are segregated white neighborhoods, causing a housing shortage for black families. This causes:

(c) Overwhelming surges in black demand to move into any individual neighborhood that desegregates. This causes (a).

The "solution" was to immediately, globally, across-the-board, outlaw housing discrimination so the pent up housing demand can disperse. I put "solution" in quotes because most American metro areas are still extremely segregated. They might be statistically segregated by 90/10 ratios instead of the 100/0 ratios that existed before, but people have to go significantly out of their way to completely reverse it, unless there's some other economic incentive. For example, gentrification has "desegregated" lots of majority-nonwhite urban neighborhoods through the sheer force of white hipsters wanting to move into them.