Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

theamericanconservative.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 148 posts

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#91

Post by themaninthedark »

non-entity wrote: post #61
bcrosby95 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crazy thing is a minor change could make many suburbs much more walkable: put the stores on the street and parking in the back. Not sure why they started doing the reverse. I've lived in a lot of California suburbs that are still within walking distance to shops (~1 mile), but the experience is so bad because of the way they've arranged parking.

I don't understand why in many suburban areas there will be sidewalk for miles, and then it will just cut off for maybe a mile or so, just to have the sidewalk pick back up again on that same road

In suburbs, the sidewalk is supposed to be installed by the contractor who is doing the building. Some of them "forget" and the inspector doesn't notice/care.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#92

Post by asdff »

LA used to have a lot of little cut throughs and stairways going up and down the hillier neighborhoods during the streetcar era. Some of them are still around of course, but they are pretty secret as their original use case (getting to the street car stop) has been gone for 60 years.

New builds don't really consider the pedestrian or the neighborhood, and are generally hostile to the cohesiveness of the area. They are massive and take up sometimes the whole city block (while only building 5 or so stories generally), and the only way to bypass them is to go all the way around them which can take 10 minutes sometimes (vs. like 2 if there was a cut through).

Due to the homeless, most apartments also gate their parking lots so you can't cut through there either. My current apartment is one of these places and walkability is severely limited because there are only two exits (despite the place taking up nearly a block). If the surrounding fencing was removed or at the very least I had an exit on every cardinal direction and not just to the east and south west, I'd be able to walk to the subway that is NNW of me 10 minutes faster(calculated by google maps).

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#93

Post by siidooloo »

greggman2 wrote: post #72
chasing wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. It's the main reason many European cities and Manhattan feel so engaging and alive in comparison to other US cities (just using my experiences). In walking cities you interact with the city itself -- you can stop and look at things closely, walk into a small store you've never noticed before, run into a friend and chat, or pause and just people watch. In car cities everything's far off and viewed through glass,…

Manhattan? Manhattan seems like a grid made for cars. Not place full of "nooks an crannies". I'm not saying it's not nice but it doesn't seem to fit the article at all. Most European cities are a wonderful mess of winding roads. Manhattan is mostly a grid. They don't seem comparible.

The big thing about Manhattan isn’t that its built in a grid, but that the shopping/offices/living are all mixed together. People are coming and going all day long. A lot of suburbs are like deserts.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#94

Post by [deleted] »

themaninthedark wrote: post #91
non-entity wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why in many suburban areas there will be sidewalk for miles, and then it will just cut off for maybe a mile or so, just to have the sidewalk pick back up again on that same road

In suburbs, the sidewalk is supposed to be installed by the contractor who is doing the building. Some of them "forget" and the inspector doesn't notice/care.

[deleted]

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#95

Post by drstewart »

carapace wrote: post #45

I was walking with my mom and her dog up Brotherhood Way in San Francisco and we tried to take a shortcut through the new development on Summit Way to get into Park Merced. (There is no shortcut, BTW. There are some abandoned could-have-been-stairs but, as I say, they are abandoned.) Anyhow. The houses are each quite nice but the neighborhood itself is terribly soulless. It's like a locker room for people. The vibe w…

Ugh. That streetscape is terrible, just garage door after garage door. Absolutely no character, no charm, no expectation you might run into an interesting art installation, parklet, store, or anything. Bland and pedestrian hostile.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#96

Post by UncleOxidant »

drewcoo wrote: post #14

As often is the case, cars are the elephant in the room. In the alley? We have rebuilt our urban spaces for cars instead of people. Now we wonder at what we've lost but have trouble connecting it to the automobile because t's ubiquitous and most of us can't imagine it otherwise.

This is why it seems surprising to see an article like this in The American Conservative. I'd think those folks don't wan to give up their cars for anything.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#97

Post by chrischen »

chasing wrote: post #23
drewcoo wrote: post #14

As often is the case, cars are the elephant in the room. In the alley? We have rebuilt our urban spaces for cars instead of people. Now we wonder at what we've lost but have trouble connecting it to the automobile because t's ubiquitous and most of us can't imagine it otherwise.

Yup. It's the main reason many European cities and Manhattan feel so engaging and alive in comparison to other US cities (just using my experiences). In walking cities you interact with the city itself -- you can stop and look at things closely, walk into a small store you've never noticed before, run into a friend and chat, or pause and just people watch. In car cities everything's far off and viewed through glass,…

The premise of the movie Crash (Academy Award winner) is that these glass and steel objects insulate the various cultures and races from each other... until they crash into each other.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#98

Post by ozzyman700 »

rayiner wrote: post #81

> Unbroken sheets of glass, prefabricated panels, poured concrete, steel girders—these are the basic units of construction, and all resist the kind of random puncturing and cobbling that subordinated the work of the architect to the changing needs of the community. Glass curtain walls are progress, civilization, and enlightenment. "Random puncturing" by contrast, is pernicious just from the sound of it. Romanticism.

big brain ova here watch out

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#99

Post by AtlasBarfed »

chasing wrote: post #23
drewcoo wrote: post #14

As often is the case, cars are the elephant in the room. In the alley? We have rebuilt our urban spaces for cars instead of people. Now we wonder at what we've lost but have trouble connecting it to the automobile because t's ubiquitous and most of us can't imagine it otherwise.

Yup. It's the main reason many European cities and Manhattan feel so engaging and alive in comparison to other US cities (just using my experiences). In walking cities you interact with the city itself -- you can stop and look at things closely, walk into a small store you've never noticed before, run into a friend and chat, or pause and just people watch. In car cities everything's far off and viewed through glass,…

And people actually live in the cities.
Post reply on HN