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Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

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Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#321

Post by bluGill »

nerb wrote: post #294
JoshTriplett wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a walkable city you go by a store every time you go outside I'm all for designing for walkability, but this is a case study in failing to understand audiences. If you make this not just a possibility but a requirement of walkable cities, many people won't want to live in your "walkable" cities at all . There are much better arguments possible here. For instance, you could promote CSAs for regularly delivered far…

> don't involve spending an appreciable fraction of your day shopping. if you're concerned about how your time is spent, i think you're missing a fundamental piece of the puzzle: how much time you spend driving. you could end up saving an enormous amount of time while still going out to shop more if you cut out driving and reduce the scope of your trips.

Not really. People tend to have tolerance levels for commute type activities, so while cars enable going farther in the same amount of time, the time budget doesn't change. If they have a walkable city they are likely to find reason to go to a farther away store if it is still in the time budget.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#322

Post by bluGill »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #266
imgabe wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you're getting shelf stable milk instead of fresh milk? Milk is not supposed to last for a month.

Isn't modern technology grand? See also pasteurization, canning, pickling, and many many other technologies that help food last longer. Why should people care what something is "supposed to" do? Many kinds of food are "supposed to" spoil quickly, but we've gone to great lengths to overcome that. (For clarity in case there is a nomenclature difference here, UHT milk is shelf-stable liquid milk that's entirely equivale…

UHT milk does not taste like fresh milk. Sure it is safe for months, but it isn't good for months.

I once was at a farmers place - when they were done milking the cows in the morning they brought milk in from the tank for breakfast - ever since then I can't drink store bought milk as fresh milk tastes so much better. (the milk was also unpasteurized, I believe fresh was the key to taste but I'm not sure)

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#323

Post by marssaxman »

trimethylpurine wrote: post #243
trimethylpurine wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because urbanites keep getting suckered into letting builders do "condensed affordable housing" under the false premise that more housing means cheaper housing. Obviously that would only be true if the units were owned by competitors. Where one contractor owns all the units they set the prices, and they have no reason to make them "affordable." Just condensed.

For the downvoters, nice of you to hope I'm wrong but unfortunately: https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-and-w... Honestly who is downvoting this anyway? Do you work for big contractors or just like unaffordable housing as long as it's condensed? Evil much?

I did not downvote your comment but I certainly thought about it; between your contemptuous attitude toward people whose preferences differ from your own, and the way your ire over the scandal you're alluding to has blinded you to basic principles of economics, your remark added more noise than signal to the discussion.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#324

Post by ndriscoll »

bluGill wrote: post #309
ndriscoll wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it doesn't make sense to have duplicated services for the city. I grew up in Tucson. There's a zoo, but it wouldn't really make sense to have 2 zoos. Likewise with the Sonoran Desert Museum. There are also unique locations to visit. There's 1 Titan Missile Museum. There's 1 Old Tucson Studios. There's 1 Biosphere 2. They are spread out on opposite ends of the city. There are a bunch of hiking spots that are all…

Why does it have to be a 30 minute drive? Why not a 30 minute transit ride? (if transit cannot provide a 30 minute ride that is a fixable problem)

Generally cars are going to be faster (it's point-to-point with no stops to let people on/off), or equivalently, they have greater range for the same time. If your goal is to physically remove yourself from downtown, they let you go a bit further. Also you don't have to deal with someone leaving their mac-and-cheese meal to stink up the bus. Getting away from such unpleasantries is kind of the point.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#325

Post by trimethylpurine »

marssaxman wrote: post #323
trimethylpurine wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the downvoters, nice of you to hope I'm wrong but unfortunately: https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-and-w... Honestly who is downvoting this anyway? Do you work for big contractors or just like unaffordable housing as long as it's condensed? Evil much?

I did not downvote your comment but I certainly thought about it; between your contemptuous attitude toward people whose preferences differ from your own, and the way your ire over the scandal you're alluding to has blinded you to basic principles of economics, your remark added more noise than signal to the discussion.

Which part of my commentary is contemptuous? I pointed out why I think housing is expensive in the city, based on my experience voting against it.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#326

Post by silexia »

What a dumb idea. The massive amount of fuel it would take to build and run the huge machines necessary to tear up a parking lot, then just move it to another lot of land far outstrips the benefits of a few trees. Simply let plants and trees grow up through the lot and go back to a natural state over time.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#327

Post by MichaelZuo »

jbrins1 wrote: post #308
MichaelZuo wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are at least four parking spaces for every car What's the original source for that statistic?

https://www.accessmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/20...

Thanks, but the linked source seems very sketchy, it never actually cites or even specifies where it got the information.

e.g. >In addition, using data from a nationwide inventory, we reach a figure of 105 million metered spaces.

It never mentions what the source of this 'nationwide inventory' is, who made it, when, etc...

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#328

Post by maxglute »

Moldoteck wrote: post #315
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I could, but I don't want to. Go to store, walk around, wait in line, for what.. 1eur worth of milk? Plus you buy a bunch of other stuff that you don't need, because "it's there". I just make a list, go to the store once, fill up on 100, 150eur of stuff, and I'm done for a week or two. Stores are horrible, people are slow, they 'park' their carts in the middle of the aisle, so you have to bump into them to pass,…

in this case maybe amsterdam style will suit better your usecase? you take a 5-10 min electric bike(maybe even cargo type) trip to a discount store, you put everything in bags/cargo space and return home. Or Swiss style: discount stores usually are placed close to trams, you buy your stuff and just take a tram to your home(and since usually those have ded lanes, it's damn fast). You may be concerned about capacity(ma…

IMO modifying life style for chronic car owners is nonstarter. Simple / fair incentivize is to make it justifiably expensive. Reduce street parking / op lots. If stores want car customers, they need to build parking infra onsite, either above or below grade. Expensive car elevators if they have to. Charge premium for parking costs. If they try to pass on cost to all customers instead of just drivers, then their prices will be less competitive with stores without onsite parking. Car owners have right to car, but they should pay for all of externalities, and if that works out to be expensive parking bill everytime they bulk shop then so be it.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#329

Post by nonameiguess »

tomcar288 wrote: post #103

I think he really hit the nail on head here: "Part of this is a result of poor planning and ordinance-making that long ago overcompensated for the wide use of automobiles. Henry Grabar, a staff writer at Slate, mentions this in a book published last year, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. ”On a national level, certainly, there’s far more parking than we need,” Grabar said in an interview. “There are at…

I'd also question how realistically anyone can estimate the number of parking spots that exist nationally, but regardless, parking space isn't exactly an elastic resource. To be able to meet peak demand, you have to overprovision, and peak demand isn't evenly spread out, so it's not like any particular neighborhood or business can just compute what percentage of land area they take up in a city and multiply that by the number of cars registered in that city. Roads are the same way for the same reason. There is far more available road area than could be taken up by all cars in the world even if they were all driving at the same time.

Even in residential areas, the rise of AirBNB is causing an accordion effect in parking availability, at least in my neighborhood. I live downtown in a place that doesn't have much in the way of garage space or driveways so the streets are heavily used for parking and there is enough space generally speaking for everyone who lives here, but come weekends and event times now that so many condos have become temporary party houses people rent so they can trash, this floods the streets with cars from out of the area and suddenly the people who actually live here have nowhere to park.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#330

Post by SoftTalker »

bluGill wrote: post #317
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they're made badly, trains are very quiet! They sneak up on you. Cars, trucks, motorbikes, and construction sites are loud.

Diesel trains are loud and shake the ground. electric trains are quiet and can sneak up on you.

Have you ever lived near the "el" in Chicago?
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