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To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#91

Post by wozniacki »

czechdeveloper wrote: post #73
betandr wrote: post #71

We really do have to radically re-think our cities but the biggest issues aren't going to be practical but emotional. In London parents drive their children around in 4x4s, knowing that their vehicle causes the pollution that is affecting their own children's health. I'm not sure how you even start to get around that but to some extent you will never persuade everybody to reduce their damaging behaviour. You need to…

You can get easily insulted for proper choices. Homophobic comments on cycling and veganism are common. I rather believe that we are doomed - that we will destroy nature sufficiently for it to stop producing enough food to sustain us as species - than that we will change.

Often what gets overlooked is the sad state of public transit even in Tier 1 global metropolises. There are far too many annoyances and outright hazards in using public transit, for individuals much less whole families with kids to boot, to list here.

So families even in Europe are opting more and more for SUVs and larger vehicles in general -- which was a total surprise to me and caught me unawares, I have to admit.

Hygiene, safety - from both the riff naff & new developing security threats, peace of mind, convenience, dependability [1][2][3] and more rider options are all major pain points.

Unless cities opt for a class-tiered approach to public transit -- the likes of first class carriages and premium waiting rooms at transit terminals, of yore -- and make public transit safe and even enjoyable to regular people I don't see this trend reversing.

[1]

BART announces what caused massive morning power outage last weekend

https://abc7news.com/traffic/bart-announces-what-caused-mass...

[2]

Single Computer Switch Failure Triggered Saturday’s BART Shut Down

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/03/11/computer-switch...

[3]

BART still unclear on cause of service outage, waiting to hear from tech support

http://www.sfexaminer.com/bart-still-unclear-cause-service-o...

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#92

Post by impostir »

jimmaswell wrote: post #79

I'd hate walking everywhere, having to get tiny amounts of groceries every day instead of stocking up every 2 weeks, etc. Walking/standing all day at conventions feels like death and a half a mile trip to the fast food places around here turns from 2 minutes to 10 minutes if I walk, which I tried when someone from Europe said that's walking distance. Walking such distances just makes me constantly wish I was driving…

Why are you assuming that a removal of cars means there will be no mechnism that would replace its functions? Many people benefit from a car's cargo potential and their need for this function wouldn't disappear with the cars. I can't say what the particular method could be, maybe medium-sized autonmous vehicles, but I would be surprised of nothing was created.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#93

Post by Sacho »

syshum wrote: post #69
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #63

This is one of the reasons the self-driving craze in tech is so silly: We have vehicles you can commute in and not drive called public transit. Self-driving cars is desire for public transit that doesn't have your rich self sitting next to a poor person on the way to work.

Or you know people that value their time... For me to use Public Transport here would increase my commute time to work by order of magnitude, not to mention all the places I go weekly that is not on a public transit stop or would require multiple line hops and be many times more time consuming than if I just drove directly their in my own personal vehicle Public transport only works in area with High Population Densi…

I can't imagine how bad public transport must be to increase your commute time by an order of magnitude. I use public transport precisely because I value my time - it takes longer(around x1.5) than using a car, but that time is relaxing, can be used to read a book, listen to a podcast or just order your thoughts. Time spent in a car is stressful and requires your focus and attention.

I'm not sure what kind of population density you need to make public transport workable, but it's a blessing when you have it available. There's some sample math at the end of this article(https://www.ptua.org.au/myths/density/ - technical appendix) which concludes that you don't really need that high a density(it focuses on Melbourne), as long as people actually prefer to use the public transport service over their own cars.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#94

Post by jakeinspace »

jimmaswell wrote: post #79

I'd hate walking everywhere, having to get tiny amounts of groceries every day instead of stocking up every 2 weeks, etc. Walking/standing all day at conventions feels like death and a half a mile trip to the fast food places around here turns from 2 minutes to 10 minutes if I walk, which I tried when someone from Europe said that's walking distance. Walking such distances just makes me constantly wish I was driving…

Sounds like my experience living in Houston. Of course I'd hate living here without a car, I did it for a few months and it's ridiculous. But compared to Montreal, Sydney, Toronto, or even Philadelphia (my points of reference), this is far and away the worst living experience. My commute to work is 15 minutes, which isn't too bad. It used to be a 10-minute bike ride or 20-minute walk, which was both healthier and more enjoyable, not to mention more environmentally friendly and free. I enjoyed getting groceries every few days: picking up some produce and bread on the way home from one of the dozens of businesses on the way was delightful, and meant I could always have fresh food.

Living in suburban America (it's hard to call Houston a city in the same sense as the ones I mentioned above) is emotionally draining. Yes, there are positives: good food, good beer, cheap cost of living. However, I don't feel like I'm part of a community. I feel like I live on a small island in an archipelago of disconnected islands. It feels like everybody here who hasn't lived in a walkable dense urban city doesn't know what they're missing, there are intangible psychological benefits. Of course, these are just the thoughts of an east-coaster.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#95

Post by jjoonathan »

czechdeveloper wrote: post #73
betandr wrote: post #71

We really do have to radically re-think our cities but the biggest issues aren't going to be practical but emotional. In London parents drive their children around in 4x4s, knowing that their vehicle causes the pollution that is affecting their own children's health. I'm not sure how you even start to get around that but to some extent you will never persuade everybody to reduce their damaging behaviour. You need to…

You can get easily insulted for proper choices. Homophobic comments on cycling and veganism are common. I rather believe that we are doomed - that we will destroy nature sufficiently for it to stop producing enough food to sustain us as species - than that we will change.

Today's environmental causes suffer from a credibility problem imposed by the mountains of failed breathless malthusian doomsday predictions from yesterday's environmental causes. I've seen the science and believe it, but the boy who cried wolf was also correct, in the end.

Please don't be a credibility problem for tomorrow's environmental causes.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#97

Post by helen___keller »

lazyjones wrote: post #39
helen___keller wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Building a "feel good" fantasy around the hatred of cars isn't going to improve anything The alternative is the status quo of the past half century where we pay lip service to city livability then expand our automobile-dependent suburban sprawl outward while adding one bus line that runs once an hour until it's cut for low ridership Defeating the status quo always takes a motivated group, and hatred of cars is a go…

> The alternative is the status quo of the past half century There are many alternatives. You can even go live in car-free areas right now and have been able to do so for decades, e.g. the island Hydra in Greece. > Defeating the status quo always takes a motivated group, and hatred of cars is a good motivator as any. I happen to like the status quo and don't want a loud minority to "defeat" it based on their hatred.

>I happen to like the status quo and don't want a loud minority to "defeat" it based on their hatred.

This is certainly a valid opinion. I'm simply saying, some of us really like having viable transit options, which is opposing the status quo. To oppose the status quo we must be motivated. One motivation is to hate all the externalities of a car-dependent society.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#98

Post by educationdata »

betandr wrote: post #71

We really do have to radically re-think our cities but the biggest issues aren't going to be practical but emotional. In London parents drive their children around in 4x4s, knowing that their vehicle causes the pollution that is affecting their own children's health. I'm not sure how you even start to get around that but to some extent you will never persuade everybody to reduce their damaging behaviour. You need to…

No. Car is not just the "culture", car serves our need. If you are young without kids, it may not make much difference for you to ride a car, or take a bus, or a train, subway, etc. But if you have a family, it makes a huge pain without your own vehicle.

If the city of future requires families to abandon their own vehicle, it is not the correct city of future. Just design a better one.

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#99

Post by SupremeOverlord »

dkural wrote: post #89
betandr wrote: post #71

We really do have to radically re-think our cities but the biggest issues aren't going to be practical but emotional. In London parents drive their children around in 4x4s, knowing that their vehicle causes the pollution that is affecting their own children's health. I'm not sure how you even start to get around that but to some extent you will never persuade everybody to reduce their damaging behaviour. You need to…

The US is an extreme precisely due to these social and emotional reasons. It's shocking to me how this article fails to mention even once that a lot of post WWII suburbanization was due to white flight. The article states: "Millions of soldiers had come home from World War II to overcrowded, run-down cities; their new families needed a place to live." "Overcrowded, run-down": who all of a sudden "overcrowded" these c…

>white flight

People have a right to choose their neighbor(hood)s. Freedom of association ought to imply freedom of disassociation. Stats show neighborhood crime correlates much more strongly with race than with education or income/poverty level. It's telling that diversity has to be enforced by government force...

Re: To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars

#100

Post by fbonetti »

falcolas wrote: post #65
Shivetya wrote: post #40

Cars are not the cause of the issue with cities, cars are symptom of bad zoning and regulation which more times than not prevents owners of property from doing what they want. when every new building requires effectively bring special interest groups, politicians, regulatory boards, and unions, their due is it a surprise cities are not getting better. they are serving a politically connected elite, not the people who…

> prevents owners of property from doing what they want As someone who has, in the past, been a neighbor to an unofficial junkyard (unzoned land), and as a person who currently only has houses for neighbors (zoned) thank god people can't do whatever they want.

There’s a middle ground between living next to a landfill and living a city that has been so completely ossified by zoning that no new housing can be built.
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