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How do you fix a stroad?

strongtowns.org

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Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#301

Post by throwaway0a5e »

adrianN wrote: post #219
refurb wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. I live in a country with high quality transit and the first thing people buy when they can afford it is a car. Why? Convenience, flexibility, ability to haul a family. Cars certainly aren’t a requirement if you have good walkability and/transit, but given the choice many people prefer cars.

There is a big difference between buying a car and doing literally every trip in a car because the only connection from the place you sleep to anywhere is six lane road with speeds exceeding 40mph. Of course cars are convenient for some things. I live in a city where the majority of households has access to a car, but only a quarter of the trips (accounting for 40% of the traveled distance) are made by car. I still c…

>There is a big difference between buying a car and doing literally every trip in a car because the only connection from the place you sleep to anywhere is six lane road with speeds exceeding 40mph.

This is a massive over-generalization that pretty much only applies to the suburbs that were built out in the 1950s and 1960s mostly in the southern half of the country. As those suburbs have densified over the decades (where allowed by law, so not the southwest) some of them have become pretty darn walk-able.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#302

Post by throwawaygal7 »

varjag wrote: post #228
zionic wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok? People fly into atlanta and go to the varsity, and it’s some of the worst food around. Tourism isn’t always rational.

It's literally the first time I heard Atlanta is a popular tourist destination, while pretty much anyone in the world is aware of cliche Paris and NYC skylines.

I think the appeal of NYC is the cost and luxury of vacationing there. Even the skyline views - they're nice but I don't think they hold up to mountains. However, I grew up extremely rural so I am biased towards what I know and people like what they like.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#303

Post by throwaway0a5e »

cycomanic wrote: post #188

It's interesting how more city planning articles are making their way to HN. I've just been to the Nobel week dialogues yesterday discussing the city of the future ( https://www.nobelprize.org/events/nobel-week-dialogue/Gothen... ). For those who have not heard of them, the Nobel week dialogues are discussions, talks with some of the leading experts on a given topic together with Nobel prize winners who have often wo…

Municipal planning has broad mass market appeal and is easy to bikeshed. It's not hard to see why HN loves it.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#304

Post by throwawaygal7 »

To me, a generation that is too busy to buy groceries in the store or buy goods at a physical store in general does not strike me as one to push for walkable cities.

Half the urbanites I know get gassed just walking for a coffee.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#305

Post by akyoan »

pcmoney wrote: post #79

Has anyone ever put a picture of a stroad up as art/instagram etc like you see with downtown NYC, Paris, small european villages, shanghai, rural mountain towns, old downtowns in America etc? Of course not. It is the McDonald’s of city planning. Cheap, ugly, bad for you but also shockingly expensive once the medical/infrastructure maintenance bill comes due. Its the overweight, white trash, lower back tattoo of aesth…

European here: While I don't advocate for stroads, they do certainly look cool to "America lovers" all around the world.

> Has anyone ever put a picture of a stroad up as art

Nobody puts up little ugly streets of Milan as art either, but stroads in Vegas and LA are certainly photographed quite a bit.

Edit: My comment is confirmed by a few comments just below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29507951

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#306

Post by throwaway0a5e »

mcv wrote: post #268
TulliusCicero wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take it from someone who grew up in Santa Clara: El Camino Real fucking sucks. Now, many businesses along El Camino Real are great, don't get me wrong. But the road itself is miserable. When we lived in Sunnyvale there was a bigass Korean market literally across the street from us; we'd only drive there, despite it being, again, directly across the street , because that's how painful and dangerous-feeling it was to c…

> we'd only drive there, despite it being, again, directly across the street That is just bizarre. And it's important to understand how inefficient this is to need a car to cross the street; you need parking space on this side, parking space on the other side, you need to get on and off the stroad, causing wear, interfering with and slowing down the other traffic, which is mostly through traffic that's not interested…

>And it's important to understand how inefficient this is to need a car to cross the street; you need parking space on this side, parking space on the other side, you need to get on and off the stroad, causing wear, interfering with and slowing down the other traffic, which is mostly through traffic that's not interested at all in your house or that Korean market. It's unbelievably inefficient.

But is this inefficiency and resultant drag on prosperity balanced out by making the market more efficient to access for people up and down the road?

If he had to cross the tracks to get to the market you could basically come up with the same list of gripes. Naive analysis like that is not useful.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#307

Post by villasv »

throwawaygal7 wrote: post #304

To me, a generation that is too busy to buy groceries in the store or buy goods at a physical store in general does not strike me as one to push for walkable cities. Half the urbanites I know get gassed just walking for a coffee.

This has always been the drama of urbanism. Only a minority is pushing for it, while the rest furiously resist thanks to years of car-centric propaganda (and vested interests).

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#308

Post by throwaway0a5e »

robbedpeter wrote: post #112
dghughes wrote: post #105

My city just installed three roundabouts each about 500m from each. Three in a row on a four land (two each way) road. I'm all for roundabouts but it looks a mess. Some of the outer lanes end too without any sign to indicate that it ends. Stroads are designed by busybodies who are given too much money. I used to be able to go over a small bridge that's over a small stream and turn left to get to my aunt's house. The…

Drive over the meridian, gouge the greenway, and leave tire streaks repeatedly. Then have a friend take pictures and start bugging your local politicians about the lack of consistent access. Have them make the point that paying to continually clean up after people will cost more than putting in a comfortable number of access openings. They'll be able to fix it and look like they're saving the city money at the same t…

The problem with that is that the bad changes were likely made in part because "people are stupid and we need to save them from themselves" and giving them the bird like you suggest may make them double down.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#309

Post by occz »

refurb wrote: post #129
pcmoney wrote: post #79

Has anyone ever put a picture of a stroad up as art/instagram etc like you see with downtown NYC, Paris, small european villages, shanghai, rural mountain towns, old downtowns in America etc? Of course not. It is the McDonald’s of city planning. Cheap, ugly, bad for you but also shockingly expensive once the medical/infrastructure maintenance bill comes due. Its the overweight, white trash, lower back tattoo of aesth…

This is so out of touch it's kind of offensive. Unlike you, most people struggle to make ends meet, are happy they have a job and can provide for their family. The upper-class "let's build architecture that inspires" screams "I have more money and time than I know what to do with". It's like looking down at people who eat at McDonald's (I got your reference!) with comments like "these folks wouldn't know good food if…

Stroads are more expensive to build than the alternative, and hence this entire argument can be dismissed outright.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#310

Post by occz »

throwawaygal7 wrote: post #302
varjag wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally the first time I heard Atlanta is a popular tourist destination, while pretty much anyone in the world is aware of cliche Paris and NYC skylines.

I think the appeal of NYC is the cost and luxury of vacationing there. Even the skyline views - they're nice but I don't think they hold up to mountains. However, I grew up extremely rural so I am biased towards what I know and people like what they like.

I don't think anyone goes on vacation in cities explicitly because they are more expensive - the appeal is that there's a lot of fun things you can do in cities.
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