Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#531

Post by mcv » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #498

noobermin wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As have been pointed out by multiple people, kids are perfectly capable of taking public transit themselves. This is another difference that intersects with other issues in America. In a car, your child is under your control . Moreover, adding to your following point of a child under ten being unaccompanied in public, no American parent would dream of letting their children go out alone and recently, this includes…

It is incredibly common for kids to be alone in cities in the US. I can look out my window right now and see 2 children playing in a park with no supervision. On my train commute every morning there were school children who get off at my stop because it’s where their school is. Their rides happen at reduced fares as well. The trope rings very false to me and seems to be about one particular demographic (white and sub…

There have also been cases where families were threatened with/by CPS for letting their children outside without supervision. It's good to know that attitude is not universal, but it does occur.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#532

Post by wpietri » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

RyanAF7 wrote: post #156

wpietri wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good question, but I think if that were true, we wouldn't see many startups in places like SF and NYC, and quite a lot of them in the middle of nowhere. For me, interactions with novel people, experiences, and ideas are a big feeder for my own ideas.

Venture Capitalists aren't in the middle of nowhere.

This is an excellent point. People talk about the important network effects of SV, and that was definitely material before the Internet made distance less relevant. But however much information flows through copper wire, investment doesn't, because VCs expect people to come to them.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#533

Post by mcv » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #422

Traster wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've got this almost exactly backwards. People in Paris don't buy cars because they have low utility. A car is slower than public transport for almost any journey in Paris. That's because population density in France is 4x higher than that in the US. What's also important to remember as well is that commuting by car doesn't scale well. As population density rises, commutes become exponentially longer due to…

>That's because population density in France is 4x higher than that in the US. That's a meaningless statement unless you're comparing the Paris metropolitan area to some similar area in the US. France doesn't have a sparsely populated continental interior to drag down the nation wide population density.

Depends on what you compare it with. Compared with Netherland, rural France is very sparsely populated.

But even in rural Netherland (it exists!) you need a car. We're really talking about cities here. In a well-designed city, you shouldn't need a car unless you need to go to a rural area outside the city.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#534

Post by n4r9 » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #451

n4r9 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? The US spends about 1% of its budget on agricultural subsidies compared to the EU's 40%.

The EU's budget is tiny, though. It doesn't maintain armies, police, infrastructure, health care or any sort of social security. Farm subsidies are among the few things the EU spends money on. The rest is paid by member states. So this is not a meaningful comparison.

A meaningful comparison is difficult, granted. If anything, doesn't that make OP's point about food prices being low due to agricultural subsidies less tenable though?

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#535

Post by wpietri » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

seer wrote: post #209

wpietri wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good question, but I think if that were true, we wouldn't see many startups in places like SF and NYC, and quite a lot of them in the middle of nowhere. For me, interactions with novel people, experiences, and ideas are a big feeder for my own ideas.

Never been to SF (or US for that matter) so genuinely interested if this is a factor - from all the biographies I’ve read and looking from the sidelines it seems to me - novel people + capital + entrepreneurship + technical expertise (post apollo) + boredom are the key sauce for those kinds of things. And thats not about what SV is today. I was lead to believe the so named HBO show portrays it quite accurately. I was…

Maybe some people are bored, but definitely not all of them. Stanford is a really exciting, interesting place for people that are intellectually inclined. But Google was born on its campus.

A good comparison is creativity in art. I know people who attend a ton of plays, for example, but that doesn't prevent them from creating new plays. Artists tend to cluster in space and in social networks (that is, schools of art) because they draw inspiration and ambition from other artists and their works.

I think it's not boredom, exactly, but being more interested in creation than consumption. For people inclined to consumption, we now have infinite amounts of entertainment. But plenty of people still like creating things for others, creating things with a real impact on the world. YouTube and GitHub make it clear that there are a lot of those people out there.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#536

Post by primitur » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

I love my electric moped. Riding it around my European big-city, it just feels so comforting. Its so quiet, it doesn't scare ducks.

Scooters are taking over - Vienna is a green city that has had time to refine its transportation culture over a millenia. Parts of it were built for horses.

When I'm on my electric moped, I ride it like a horse. No need to over-do it and speed, or whatever, just pace along at a trot. There's a harmonic spot where the curves and corners of the city suddenly become super-fluid, and I even get all the green lights .. I'm pretty sure its because the physical geometry is designed for horses, and the electric moped drive train can approximate that.

Anyway, I can't wait until all the cars disappear. Europe is going to be even more beautiful.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#537

Post by 762236 » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 3:13 PM UTC

I think downtown Palo Alto should close off University to cars, and give it a try. Turn it into a big pedestrian zone, and let the restaurants put seating out in the space that this opens up.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#538

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

primitur wrote: post #536

I love my electric moped. Riding it around my European big-city, it just feels so comforting. Its so quiet, it doesn't scare ducks. Scooters are taking over - Vienna is a green city that has had time to refine its transportation culture over a millenia. Parts of it were built for horses. When I'm on my electric moped, I ride it like a horse. No need to over-do it and speed, or whatever, just pace along at a trot. The…

One problem though: as of today, shared electric moped/scooters are actually worse for the environment than privately-owned ICE cars.

Source: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2da8

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#539

Post by mcv » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #484

mcv wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are people who choose to die rather than risk bankrupting their family with uncontrollable medical costs. So there's plenty of drama. Medical bankruptcy in particular is something that I don't think occurs anywhere else.

> So there's plenty of drama. Medical bankruptcy in particular is something that I don't think occurs anywhere else. I doubt the veracity of this oft-repeated meme, but I'll let Snopes provide the detailed analysis: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/643000-bankruptcies-in-the... I would appreciate similarly-detailed evidence to the contrary.

The summary of that Snopes article is that while medical bankruptcy in the US is indeed far more common than anywhere else, it's not entirely unheard of outside the US. Not all medical expenses are always covered, and disability can always lead to financial difficulties anywhere. Though medical bankruptcy is still significantly less common; in the US it's the leading cause of personal bankruptcies, in other countries it's a lesser cause.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#540

Post by dsfyu404ed » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #348

DrOctagon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Class isn't purely economic. It is the perception of 'inner city elites' being out of touch with the rest of the country. In the recent Australian election, the (losing) Labour Party had a policy to target 50% of vehicles being electric by 2030. The Liberal party jumped on this and ran a scare campaign that Labour was trying to take away the vehicles that Australians love for work and recreation, utes and 4WD/SUVs. I…

Living unsustainably and ignoring pollution and global warming is their "need"? Politicians running that kind of campaign should be jailed. They probably do much more actual damage than those who support terrorism or racism, which are illegal in most countries.

In a democracy it's generally accepted that the people deserve to get what they want even if it's stupid and bad for them. History mostly indicates that the downsides of this approach are far less bad than the downsides of any system where the people do not get what they want.