Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

I agree that most European (and many ancient) cities had no city planning and grew organically. Though, this is not what I'm talking about. Yet, there are still quibbles around this as many European cities were rebuilt many times. Sometimes this reconstruction was the result of war, sometimes it was sheer reconstruction out of Urban planning. "The city [Paris] is one of the most striking examples of rational urban planning, conducted in the middle of the nineteenth century during the “Second Empire” of Napoleon III to ease congestion in the dense network of medieval streets." [1]

Though, the reason why 1940 - 1970 is so important is because it is post-war and a lot was rebuilt in Europe while at the same time there was a lot of growth in American cities (the baby boom; federal investment in roads, etc..), and both European and American Urban growth and reconstruction were heavily influenced by "Modernism" [2][3]. "European engineers were sent in flocks to the US to learn from the environments in which these revolutionary ideas were playing out, returning with tabula rasa development plans to realise their own modernist dreams." [4]

Modernist Urban planning ideas started in the 1910's and on, but it wasn't until 1940 that there was the mass of opportunity for rebuilding and the funding to implement those ideas. "Modernist principles have shaped city-building since the beginning of the twentieth century. Numerous authors draw a connection between modernist discourse within planning practice and the rise of the Fordist paradigm (Irving 1993; Calthorpe and Fulton 2001; Sandercock 1998). In following these principles, the North American built environment has taken the form of low-density sprawl. This development pattern is characterized by a dominance of single-family housing, a reliance on automobile transportation and a strict separation of land uses." [5]

A key difference is that US civil engineers still are quite influenced by Modernism. For example, US traffic engineers continue to optimize for the throughput of vehicles on city streets rather than the throughput of people [6].

On the other hand, around the 1970s affluent European urban planners pushed back on "Le Corbesier" style planning and "Modernist planning fell into decline. "By the late 1960s and early 1970s, many planners felt that modernism's clean lines and lack of human scale sapped vitality from the community, blaming them for high crime rates and social problems.[59] ... Modernist planning fell into decline in the 1970s when the construction of cheap, uniform tower blocks ended in most countries" [7]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130722-revolution-in-pa...

[2] https://www.archdaily.com/604056/north-america-s-radiant-cit...

[3] [How a Controversial European Architect Shaped New York](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-controversial-...)

[4] [Story of cities #36: how Copenhagen rejected 1960s modernist 'utopia'](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/05/story-cities-...)

[5] http://www.etsav.upc.es/personals/iphs2004/pdf/003_p.pdf (page 3)

[6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-30/a-swiss-l...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_urban_planning#Mode... - "Reaction against modernism"

-----------------------

Beyond the above, the more extended exerts below I believe make the same point I made. I would find it interesting where these are patently false and do not support the assertion I made earlier:

> "Modernism: In the 1920s, the ideas of modernism began to surface in urban planning. The influential modernist architect Le Corbusier presented his scheme for a "Contemporary City" for three million inhabitants (Ville Contemporaine) in 1922. The centrepiece of this plan was the group of sixty-story cruciform skyscrapers, steel-framed office buildings encased in huge curtain walls of glass. [....] He segregated pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways and glorified the automobile as a means of transportation. "

> "Reaction against modernism: By the late 1960s and early 1970s, many planners felt that modernism's clean lines and lack of human scale sapped vitality from the community, blaming them for high crime rates and social problems.[59]

> Modernist planning fell into decline in the 1970s when the construction of cheap, uniform tower blocks ended in most countries, such as Britain and France. Since then many have been demolished and replaced by other housing types. Rather than attempting to eliminate all disorder, planning now concentrates on individualism and diversity in society and the economy; this is the post-modernist era.[59]"

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_urban_planning#Mode...

"Modernist principles have shaped city-building since the beginning of the twentieth century. Numerous authors draw a connection between modernist discourse within planning practice and the rise of the Fordist paradigm (Irving 1993; Calthorpe and Fulton 2001; Sandercock 1998). In following these principles, the North American built environment has taken the form of low-density sprawl. This development pattern is characterized by a dominance of single-family housing, a reliance on automobile transportation and a strict separation of land uses." (page 3)

"A significant individual embracing these values was the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. Beginning his practice in the late ‘10s, he wanted to correct the ‘chaos’ of the city and create an ideal order. His impact on modernist planning thought is incalculable, and his ideas were widely applied in cities during the 1950s and ‘60s." (Page 4)

"Following a 1926 US Supreme Court decision to safeguard property values from noxious land uses and neighbours, zoning became accepted as the principal planning tool (Hall 1988). The result was the strict separation of work, home, marketplace and social life. This move to create areas dedicated to specific purposes, and to remove uses that conflict produced single-use central business districts, uniform housing tracts, and dispersed shopping centres and recreational facilities." (Page 6)

"Transportation policy during the 1950s and ‘60s focused primarily on increasing vehicle capacity on roads. Analytical tools considered highways and cars only, while ignoring community design and public transit considerations. Instead of deciding where development should go, engineers just looked at projected traffic trends and designed infrastructure in an attempt to accommodate them" (Page 7)

"Inherent in the modernist project was a belief in the ‘tabula rasa.’ As a result, enormous areas were cleared with completely new environments inserted. Again, Le Corbusier led the drive with his unrealized 1925 proposal to demolish historic Paris north of the River Seine (except selected monuments that would be moved), and to replace it with eighteen 700-foot towers (Moe and Wilkie 1997)" (page 12)

http://www.etsav.upc.es/personals/iphs2004/pdf/003_p.pdf

If you are going to get into cycling i recommend finding a geometry that works good for you, like something general from a major brand, and then have a titainium frame builder in china make a frame with those dimentions. For 1250 you can have a frameset that lasts forever, doesn't rust, cleans well. Rim brakes are the way to go as they are lighter and cheaper to maintain. Disc brakes weigh more and only offer performace improvements in the wet and other more intense situations. There is a push to move people to disc for product design uniformity so the industry as a whole can keep costs down... you know.. hedge funds n stuff.

We're not all not arguing that though. On an ebike powered to 30km/hr, that's an 80 minute ride. If their small town supplies most of their needs and they go into the big city once a month, that's quite feasible... lots of people do a 90+ minute drive once a month for something or other. 1-2 hour rides aren't exhausting or requiring special fitness on an e-bike, and can be very pleasant (if they had nice routes).

Now if they mean they go 40km to take the kids to school every day, that's a different matter.

> Yet, there are still quibbles around this as many European cities were rebuilt many times.

Thats not correct. Some noticeable percentage of German cities and some cities of the war-affected regions were rebuilt. And most partially. The re-architecting of Paris does not have any relevance to cars since it happened in 19th century.

> Beyond the above, the more extended exerts below I believe make the same point I made

They actually invalidate your argument - including the earlier excerpts: Modernist architects adopting car-centric ideas and high rises does not mean that they got to implement what they wanted to do in Europe. There is no such case of large-scale reconstruction of any European city around cars except the war-affected ones (and most partially), and all your excerpts just confirm that. They talk about how (the part of) a generation of European architects adopted modernist car-centric ideas - not them actually getting around to implement them. Its Le Corbusier proposing to demolish part of Paris in a furtive attempt, or him planning a high rise somewhere and whatnot.

Aside from that the excerpts explicitly demonstrate that car-centric cities were a US phenomenon. Not European.

Normally so. Because even the mere act of buying any zone in an average European city to demolish it would cost !enormous! amounts of money that nobody would be willing to spend. Leave aside the reconstruction. This is why the 19th century reconstruction of parts of Paris is the sole incident of this.

All of this, before the fact that most European cities do not have space - nobody can imagine demolishing an entire city to rebuild it with less density so that more cars could be used in sparse urbanization. Europe does not have that much space.

I looked into carseat rentals about ten years ago, and it sounded like it's only really common at the agencies located around airports. Overall, I got the sense that there's a lot of fear and liability tied up in it— that giving someone the wrong seat or installing it incorrectly or not cleaning it adequately were all potential landmines waiting to happen.