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Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

texasmonthly.com

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Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#491

Post by hadlock »

binarytox1n wrote: post #251
yason wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

supermarket has never been more than 2 miles away - certainly not a 20 minute drive and it's even within biking distance I'd consider that far, far away. My walk to the nearest train station is about one mile, takes about 15 minutes to get there on foot, and that's irritatingly far, too, considering the trip is two way and repeats every day. Something like a grocery shop should be accessible within decent walking dis…

American in Texas here - maybe this is a behavior encouraged by the very thing we're discussing, but going to the grocery store _every day_ is a big yikes to me. I go once a week and get everything I need for that week. Because I take my car, I can carry that amount of stuff.

I lived in Dallas for a long time, at my last house a Whole Foods, a "neighborhood" Walmart and a Trader Joes popped up pretty much equidistant (7 minute walk) from my house. It is quite pleasant, actually, to walk to the grocery store and get groceries for that night's dinner. Since then I've always lived within a 10 minute walk and generally get one to two (paper) sacks of groceries two or three times a week, sometimes more often. Temptation to snack is drastically reduced as we only have 2 days of food in the house.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#492

Post by runamok »

xg15 wrote: post #111

> But it wasn’t strictly an “everything is bigger in Texas” ethos that caused Houston to sprawl the way that it does. Rather, Cold War–era urban design philosophy in the U.S. prioritized sprawl because older cities that had urbanized pre–World War II—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit—were seen as being susceptible to nuclear strikes. Less-dense cities such as Los Angeles and Houston were less likely to be…

I do recall a population distribution map of the USSR vs. the US from a book I owned 30iah years ago and they were far more evenly distributed than the US.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#493

Post by piva00 »

austincheney wrote: post #479
ashtonkem wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protests aren’t supposed to be convenient for the uninvolved. They’re literally designed to force you to pay attention.

I read that as designed for angst and animosity not influence, because the intention completely disparages the audience.

So protests are ok while they don't inconvenience you?

I don't understand what is your point here, protests are supposed to be disruptive, disparaging the audience is not by design, if you feel that way then you don't really believe in the value of the protest, no?

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#494

Post by donjoe »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #487
donjoe wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yah, bcs all new structures built post WW2 were built for cars and not for people people move at 3mph, not 60mph. Rome could have invested in public transport instead of building highways. No one would be stuck in traffic. Instead, they used public space for cars. The old parts of the city though which are walkable work perfectly fine. Venice does have great ferry service and traffic in the city is almost non-existen…

so what's the alternative? build houses right on top of factories? pact stile mass transit with strict worker factory allocation? there's zero chance mass transit can accommodate people's needs, even if you somehow solve the shopping issue with local markets and fixed item prices, the job house graph will always look like a fractal set of overlapping stars. cars is one of the most important social equalizer of this a…

> so what's the alternative

I think it's quite odd we nowadays think cars are the only possible form of transportation. We are not born with 4 wheels underneath our butt. The alternative is to build structures build for foot or bicycle traffic. Everything within 10k can easily be reached by either bicycle or foot traffic. By building infrastructure for cars, you create distances which are for cars only. They would otherwise not exist.

> enabling them to find houses and jobs in the most economical and convenient places

That's only possible due to the external costs of cars not being accounted for. Burning dinosaurs and destruction of nature is nowhere to be found in cars. If you would price cars accordingly, we would start planning differently.

> once public transit become monopolistic

We already have the same monopolistic issue just right now with cars as the only means of transportation. Without cars, you're not able to move in large parts of the U.S. This excludes about 50%+ of the U.S. population (children > private cars win over public transit because it's a better product

Why are cars a better product? Commute and travel time are a huge economical factor destroying time. They take up loads of space and require infrastructure and maintenance paid by society.

> dependency on public transit times.

That's a political issue which could be solved. Most of the money spent nowadays is spent on parking spots and car roads. If you would spend the same amount on public transport, you could probably run a train every 5 minutes.

> too bad, transit only gives peak service at peak hours. That's also how we design our roads. They need to accomodate peak traffic at peak hours. Otherwise they're an unused piece of asphalt.

> the car has been a great economical equalizer and still is

Again, not taking into account external costs. Road traffic kills ~ 1.2M people each year insuring even more which do have a massive impact on the health system.

> pollution is something to be solved

By solving pollution but still focusing on urban sprawl and keeping traffic as-is, we will do the wrong thing better. That's an achievement but not solving the issue.

Feel free to watch the interview mentioned before. It does clarify some of the points I just mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_x5Hor2MP8

[edit: formatting]

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#495

Post by donjoe »

cyberdrunk wrote: post #490
LoSboccacc wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> still works perfectly fine nowadays. Rome is all but working perfectly fine, with commuter traffic locked almost daily by the tiniest fender bender happening on the highway around it Venice is likewise a mess, situation was so bas they built an highway to go around the existing highway that corrected it to the nearby areas, and the lack of easy mobility in the city center is fuelling a severe living cost inflation

Many/most flats in those cute old European cities have windows directly over a street. You can have cars making noise and pollution literally within 5-10 meters of your window. This is bad for physical and mental health. Soviet-style housing planning is a good middle ground. There, most flats can enjoy silence (you only hear cars that belong to your neighbors and no passer-bys) and still the districts are planned for…

This is not a problem of houses built that way since the were built pre-car times to allow max light into apartments. The streets back then were also a social aspect of life where we met people and could interact with each other.

Then came a time we handed over streets to parking spots and some folks driving at 50km/h and faster. Social aspects have been gone.

We should not build our apts for cars and align to them. If cars are loud and noisy and destroy our social life, we should focus on solving the car problem and not trying to build around cars.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#496

Post by austincheney »

piva00 wrote: post #493
austincheney wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that as designed for angst and animosity not influence, because the intention completely disparages the audience.

So protests are ok while they don't inconvenience you? I don't understand what is your point here, protests are supposed to be disruptive, disparaging the audience is not by design, if you feel that way then you don't really believe in the value of the protest, no?

Its like yelling at a customer and slashing their tires only to be confused why that customer doesn't wish to continue being your customer. Then blaming the customer for their lack of commitment and being somehow dumbfounded by their change of opinion.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#497

Post by arethuza »

mr_toad wrote: post #444
an_opabinia wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, nowadays, designing a city around defense would seem ridiculous.

It’s funny that the innermost areas of many European cities have designs that go back to the days when everyone lived behind walls.

Also at least famous example in North America:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street#Early_years

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#498

Post by ric2b »

kmlx wrote: post #347
abraxas wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. There are very walkable and affordable cities with pleasant neighborhoods that don't break the bank in all parts of the world (sans North America). Off the top of my head and from first hand experience: - Warsaw - Glasgow - Porto - Lisbon - Athens (Greece) - Berlin - Budapest - Barcelona (OK, this one gets pricey but is superbly laid out)

two issues with that list: most of those cities are poor, or at least not as affluent as others. and except glasgow, none accept english speakers. and since we're doing lists, these are the most expensive cities i lived in (coincidentally some of them are the best cities in the world to live in, bar none): - sydney - tokyo - singapore - hong kong - london all top notch, all extremely expensive. moral of the story is:…

> and except glasgow, none accept english speakers.

What do you mean by don't accept?

Porto and Lisbon are quite easy to get around as an English speaker, most young people are very decent at speaking English.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#499

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

ghaff wrote: post #286
mcguire wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Reasonable" by San Francisco standards, or normal human beings'?

The Bay Area is mostly an outlier compared to most other places. (And the Bay Area is a bit unusual in that, if you're commuting, it's hard to reasonably commute out of expensive housing because the South Bay, Marin, Berkeley, are also hugely expensive not just the city. In the East Bay you can start to approach reasonable but if you're working in the South Bay, your commute won't be reasonable and access to the city…

Have they finished Warm Springs station already?

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#500

Post by ric2b »

souprock wrote: post #486
stbtrax wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like some paranoid parenting that seems to be in style right now. In Tokyo kids take the subway by themselves as young as age 9. In denser cities the density helps in that other people help socialize/watch your kids and they can bike around to their friends place when they are older. As someone who grew up in a denser area, then moved to a sprawly suburb where you were dependent on your parents for getting you…

Kids aren't born at that age. It takes 9 years. How are the little ones supposed to travel? At one time, mine were these ages: 8, 6, 4, 2, 2, 0 Doing that on the subway would be nuts. I actually know somebody who, as a kid, got off the subway at the wrong stop. That really happens. The crowd seems to be leaving, the kid goes, and before the parents can react the subway is moving again. Activities need not revolve aro…

If you have time to drive them somewhere you also have time to take them via public transit in a well connected city.
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