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Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

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Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#881

Post by pezezin »

powvans wrote: post #10

This is really amazing to see trending on HN. I spent a couple days in Pontevedra this summer while walking the Camino de Santiago. It was absolutely delightful and what I experienced aligns with the article. The old town was filled with wide streets almost exclusively for walking, cafes and restaurants that sprawled into plazas, and people young and old enjoying the car free public space. It was one of the first sto…

I am Spanish, so I grew up with what you describe.

I now live in rural Japan, a country that outside of the big cities also suffers from awful American-style urban sprawl, and holy guacamole, how can people live like this? The area where I live is just big box stores and houses scattered everywhere, and you need a car to do anything. It has made me really appreciate my homeland...

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#882

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

reillyse wrote: post #859
potac wrote: post #798

I'm from Pontevedra. It has been the major's long-term project (~ 20 years) to make the city for the pedestrians: and he's done it. This works mainly because of two things: 1) the city is small and it takes aprox 30 min to walk it entirely from end to end, and 2) it is mostly flat. Only a smooth hill from "orillamar" to "alameda/peregrina". Unfortunately, the major obsessed with getting rid of cars (which I am highly…

How do the employment prospects compare to other Spanish cities? It's one thing to say prioritise quality jobs but it seems breaking the mold in one dimension is hard enough, but to do it for 2 dimensions at the same time is pretty tough.

The situation they describe is true in the overwhelming majority of Spanish cities of comparable size. It is an actively discussed topic in Spain that there is a serious problem with people having to move to Madrid or Barcelona for jobs and the rest of the country emptying out. Regions with no coast that aren't Madrid are now often called "la España vaciada" ("the emptied Spain"). Near the sea cities don't empty so much, but often most jobs are in tourism so there is still a lack of high-skilled jobs.

There are a few cities of that size that are more dynamic, because they have managed to attract some IT/biomedical/etc. Santiago, which they mention, probably falls into that bucket, although it's still far from being a skilled jobs powerhouse. And anyway it's an exception rather than the rule, and I'd say it's mostly related to having a university with over five centuries of history and all the ecosystem that generates, not to anything a mayor could do.

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#883

Post by inglor_cz »

LexiMax wrote: post #815
tengbretson wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you agree that being able to drive away from that situation is different from sharing space in a confined metal tube for 20+ minutes?

If you're sitting next to a homeless person for 20+ minutes you're not in danger, you're just uncomfortable sharing space with the less fortunate.

"you're just uncomfortable sharing space with the less fortunate."

This is the sort of vacuous moral posturing that loses elections and if it wins them, it makes cities unlivable.

Why should I be fine sitting next to someone who shit his pants several times and likely has lice and scabies? And yes, it occassionally happens even in Czech public transport.

If you not just tolerate this, but scold people for being disgusted, the public transport system will lose the middle class and with it, any benevolence of the tax payer.

Civilizations always have some minimum for public behavior. Not stinking to high heaven in closed spaces is one of them. If you fight against such bare minimums and tell people that they are bad people for requiring them, you are promoting pure, unadulterated barbarism.

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#884

Post by Vinnl »

pezezin wrote: post #851
jandrewrogers wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another practical reality that separates the US from Europe specifically with respect to walkability. The US has much more extreme weather in many places. What would be called severe heat or cold in much of Europe, which I've suffered through for the week if need be, is normal weather in many parts of the US for several months on end. You need alternative transportation for those extended periods. Few people…

Europe also spans some extreme weather, from the frozen North to the scorching hot Meditarranean. I am from Spain, where 40ºC in summer is normal but winters are mild. I have friends and colleagues from Finland and Latvia, which are pretty much the opposite. And yet all our countries are walkable.

And like in the US, population is mostly concentrated in the spots where it's not that extreme, so that's where most people are/would be able to benefit from human-centred urban design.

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#885

Post by Vinnl »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #77
abraxas wrote: post #49

North Americans visiting Europe often grapple with why they enjoy European cities more than North American ones. It's often perceived as an architecture issue ("Europe has historical buildings that we don't have") but very few notice that the main difference is the urban scale and the resulting walkability. The Netherlands has plenty of modernist and even brutalist architecture yet every city there is a pretty nice p…

Important to note is how most cities have two (or more) zones; the old inner city for leisure, tourism, shopping and going out, the suburban areas around it where most people live, and industrial / office building estates where most people work. Amsterdam is a great example [0] and well-known for a lot of tourists, with the city center being the tourism hub, the zones around it for living, west/northwest for industry…

It's still very doable (preferable even) to navigate those other neighbourhoods without a car though.

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#886

Post by Vinnl »

loudmax wrote: post #510
mykowebhn wrote: post #158

There are (at least) two Youtube channels, Ray Delahanty | CityNerd and Not Just Bikes, that really drive home the point in their videos that car-centric cities really stink. https://www.youtube.com/@CityNerd https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes

The Not Just Bikes channel really makes clear the benefits of living in an environment that isn't designed around cars, but also the challenge of designing such an environment. You can't just plop in some busses and bike lanes and expect immediate improvement, you really need to think about transportation holistically. This means considering how cars, trucks, busses, bikes, pedestrians and everything will interact. T…

This is true, but urban mobility in the Netherlands was already great a few decades ago. It's just that once you get to that point, further improvements aren't that controversial anymore, because the benefits are obvious. Thus, the situation just kept on improving, and is doing so to this day.

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#887

Post by pjmlp »

lukan wrote: post #178
trial3 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately i think the crab bucket mentality kicks in when sitting in stop and go traffic and seeing someone breeze by in a bike lane makes people so enraged they’re against cycling infrastructure for the rest of their lives

Or some of them can make the mental transition towards "hey, I could also be the one enjoying a free ride instead of being stuck in my car here"

Depends if I seat cozy drinking my warm take away coffee while it is pouring rain or snow.

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#888

Post by an_aparallel »

prmoustache wrote: post #856
thekyle wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think big box stores are popular largely because it would be inconvenient to drive between many smaller shops just to find the same variety of goods. It’s the same dynamic we see with car-dependent shopping malls, where the main advantage is being able to park once and visit multiple stores. If instead you had to re-park at each individual store, the experience would be far less convenient. But if a town is designe…

"so that people can easily walk from store to store (similar to the experience of shopping inside a indoor mall), " That is funny to read that, because indoor malls were meant to replicate the experience of shopping in a commercial area in a city, not the opposite. It actually failed though. I feel terrible, sleepy and only want to get out after more than half an hour in these indoor malls. Probably something that ha…

The gruen transfer...look it up :)

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#889

Post by ojosilva »

zahlman wrote: post #837
abraxas wrote: post #49

North Americans visiting Europe often grapple with why they enjoy European cities more than North American ones. It's often perceived as an architecture issue ("Europe has historical buildings that we don't have") but very few notice that the main difference is the urban scale and the resulting walkability. The Netherlands has plenty of modernist and even brutalist architecture yet every city there is a pretty nice p…

Not all European cities live up to the stereotype. I've been to Germany a couple of times; most of the cities I've stayed in were quite nice, but Stuttgart came across as an American-style car hell and Frankfurt seemed quite dirty. (Berlin has a strange charm to it, actually, from a combination of modern architecture and historical preservation.)

They don't. Larger cities have many loops of busy highway belts embracing the city, and plenty of tunnels, parking lots and emissions (ie Madrid, Rome, Paris...). But there's always a sizeable walkable urban area, usually proportional to the overall city-size. Even Stuttgart has a nice downtown walking area [1] and a usable public transport system [2].

But, as a fun notice, Stuttgart could be somewhat of a "Detroit of Europe", being the home of Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, so there's added incentive, and pride, to be a car city.

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/aQCEYkc3oWsKpD9F7

[2] https://www.travelstuttgart.com/transport-in-stuttgart.html

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#890

Post by pjmlp »

dijit wrote: post #87
yostrovs wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Train oriented people always forget that trains don't transport people from the origin to the destination. You still need to get to and from a train station. With all your groceries, gear, children's things, etc. Oh and you might be odor sensitive, but there's a lady next to you on the train that covered herself in perfume.

Yeah, that's why you build stations periodically and run trains at faster speeds than cars. I always found it infuriating to have a discussion like this with people who prefer to fly. For example, a flight from Copenhagen to Stockholm (or, Malmo to Stockholm) is about 50 minutes. But a train is four hours.. clearly the train is slower! Except the train takes you into downtown Stockholm- no express train, no getting t…

In Germany, even if it takes the same amount of time, door to door, usually flying is half price, and isn't hit as often in delays as having your ICE stopped in the middle of nowhere, and then miss one of the two connections yet to come.

It is an interesting exercise to see how frequently people start using their Bahn app, trying to work around what might be their way to still make it into the destination, as the pause times between stations increase.

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