Its insane to me how large space-wise small towns in the us (Oregon in mind as I write this) are — with a huge percentage of the real estate devoted to parking lots. Even setting aside the traffic, it’s silly to walk across these towns because businesses are separated from each other by massive parking lots.
The traffic is often amazingly inhumane. Many of the small towns in Oregon are formed on either side of the major highway which has speed limits within the town but still sees so much traffic as to be very dangerous for pedestrians.
These towns need the commercial visitors brought by the highway to survive — but the design common in Europe for this scenario is so much better. There will be a sign for an exit off the main road for the “city center” exit — there will be a single parking lot for the city center, and then comfortable walking distance to the businesses ... superior design.
Many small, especially old, towns in Europe have ancient road layouts that are too narrow and steep for cars within the town — which resulted in these car free designs for free. It’s beautiful. Parking is easy because there is only one place to do it on the outskirts — and then walk everywhere. There is no improvement for a small town to be designed otherwise in my opinion.
What really amazes me is the creation of new "Shopping Centres" - miles and miles of independent stores and nothing between them but parking lots. They took the mall and scaled it up so everyone gets a store, and now if I want to go to two places I have to actually drive from one to the other because it's nothing but parking lots and pedestrian hostile roads separating them - sometimes it's a two minute drive, but that's so much easier to do than try and navigate on foot it's ridiculous. You want to go to the next store over, but it's 3 lanes each way of homicidal traffic between you and it, or a 5 minute walk to get to the closest cross-walk.
Even Portland and Eugene love to boast how bicycle friendly they are, but neither are really commutable by anything besides a car for most people. Which is why most cyclists are so prolific -- it's hard to be a cyclist by circumstance. Riding your bike inherently comes with crossing a dozen intersections beaming with cars that treat you like you don't belong on the road.
A solution is to level the planes of separation between types of traffic in urban areas. With pedestrians closer to cars the cars have to go slower by nature. It's antithetical to the common logic and current policy of building walking paths completely separate from roads and all of the businesses attached to them.
"Livability", in America, doesn't really exist as a concept. I get blank stares from most people. They all want a single-family 2000 sq. ft. home somewhere in a suburb that will doom them to be behind the wheel of a car for every little thing and see nothing abnormal about it.
In America, a city is a place where cars drive to get from business A to business B. People enter the equation only as a necessary side-effect. But fuck you if you're a pedestrian or don't have a car.
In Europe, cities exist for people. Streets are built with people in mind, businesses are placed with people in mind, infrastructure is built with people in mind.
I grew up in Europe, and the entire city was "mine" as a teenager - I could go anywhere, cheaply, quickly, and never needed a driver's license. I shopped for groceries, paid bills, hung out with friends, went to school - everything was within walking distance or a short bus ride away.
Here - I don't know how kids do it. To rely on parents to drive you to - where - shopping malls???? - to "hang out" or be doomed to watch tv/play video games all day - I'm so glad that was not my child-hood - I really think it's one reason I'm not on various anti-depressants, nor obese, nor anti-social.
I really wish someone would do a study that looked at the number of depressed/anti-social/about-to-go-on-a-shooting-spree people in a country whose only interaction with other human beings is to say "good how are you" at the clerk at the grocery aisle check-out lane or to curse at other people behind the wheel of their car while getting there.
I really believe (no evidence, just belief) that if cities in America didn't make you stressed out just for trying to get from place A to place B, or putting your life in danger by having to drive, we'd see a lot fewer problems - a lot fewer.
It's the same everywhere, I can vouch for rural Illinois.
Check out strongtowns.org, a non-profit that explores this EXACT phenomena and how it happened.
Basically, infrastructure == progress to a LOT of poorly informed communities who don't bother factoring in maintenance costs or look at the actual economics of building huge roads through their main street.
Throw in a dash of pork-barrel spending and lobbying to secure funding to build more roads for the hell of it and you have the US's current mad-max roads-to-fucking-nowhere infrastructure nightmare. It was all a big experiment where everyone but the guys getting paid to build the roads lost.
Chalk it up to the fact that almost literally every European city developed while people still traveled on horses, and nearly every American city saw 90% of its development when cars existed. If Americans already need cars because cities are so far apart and it isn't yet feasible to rely on public transportation across states and the country, why bother making cities that resemble European, pre-steam engine city layouts unless you are dealing with a city like New York or Los Angeles, where there is no practical reason to leave?
Half of Kansas City's downtown is parking lots which generally sit empty during the day. To make matters even worse, the city is constantly building mixed-use areas with retail and office space, restaurants, hotels and apartments intermixed with roads running every which way. Walking around these places is just a constant hazard.
One of the most interesting experiences in my life was visiting Tel Aviv on Yom Kippur. On that day all car traffic is prohibited (also TV stations are offline etc). It was absolutely amazing. Tel Aviv is a city with large roads and usually extremely busy. On that day, cyclists ride over the highway, kids play on the streets. I never felt that directly before how invasive the normal car situation is.
I don't know why this didn't occur to me but in San Juan Capistrano, CA, I enjoy that place so much with my kids because of the fairly large area where cars have to have very slow speed limit or no cars allowed at all and pure walking which was far better even. There is such freedom allowing your children to laugh and play and walk on their own pace without worrying they'll be run over and having to strictly hold their hand near each cross walk where cars zip by at instant collision death speeds. I could hear the birds too. Was calming and slows the perception of time so you can actually relax.
This is why I like theme parks.[1] It's sad because in America we've largely relegated what should be a normal living environment to fascimiles of imaginary places.
Actually, I live in San Francisco and the "downtowns" of each neighborhood do allow kids some freedom away from their parents (e.g. to dart in and out of stores and restaurants without waiting for the parent), but it's limited to a single block unless you want to risk being run over. Hit-and-runs occur here regularly, unfortunately, because the city is just barely pedestrian friendly enough that pedestrians feel comfortable, but not friendly enough that cars are actually forced to slow down (e.g. streets too wide). If car and pedestrian are not both carefully paying attention, accidents happen.
[1] My wife doesn't like theme parks. But where she's from you never let kids out of sight, regardless, so they offer little respite for her.
There is a gated neighborhood of large, well appointed homes near Rice University in Houston.* They open up every once in a while for tours, particularly at Christmas. More than once kids or adults raised there have mentioned being able to just play in the street as one of their fondest memories of the place. In car-centric Houston their experience is rare if not exactly unique.
Exactly. Walking with young kids is so stressful. All that kids want to do is run ahead, and I keep having to yell at them to stop, wait. You can never be at ease.
Being able to drive places feels much more like freedom to me than having to walk everywhere. As a kid I literally never walked into the road because I knew it was dangerous, so maybe that's just a problem of communicating the risk properly.
I love pedestrian districts in cities. Copenhagen comes to mind. However, pedestrian district plans need to be considered carefully, else they backfire.
Church st in Burlington VT partially closed to cars starting in 1980 (based on Stroget in Copenhagen) and ongoing into 2005 with more and more blocks carved out for pedestrians only. It has been very successful.
Why did it work, when Raleigh failed? What needs to be "considered carefully", exactly?
(The large college nearby definitely helps in VT's case. But what else?)
As a counter example, Vienna largely converted its second major shopping street, Mariahilfer Straße, to a mostly pedestrian + bike zone, with parts of it also shared space with cars, though they do not have priority over pedestrians. Gets very crowded during core shopping hours, so much that biking there is rather difficult.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Wien_07_...
First one was Kärntner Straße / Graben, which is pedestrians only.
Downtown pedestrian malls were tried in many US cities and mostly failed. They were an attempt to make downtown retail competitive with suburban mall retail, by the former emulating the latter, after the former was already failing. They only worked when other things were in place that made lots of people walking downtown utilitarian, like adjacent universities, tourist attractions, and dense connected residential. Few people wished to drive and park near downtown for a quasi-mall shopping experience, apparently. Lots has been written about this, but one overview: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/revisiting_pedestrian_malls_scmi...
You could also make the argument that opening city centers to cars should be considered carefully, and that is also true. It just happens to be the current default almost everywhere.
Contrary to that anecdote, Jersey City (across the Hudson river from Manhattan), created a no-car zone near one of its busier subway stops and what was once a dead-zone after 8pm is now an extremely vibrant place filled with bars, restaurants and shops.
Proximity to mass transit and having density that already discourages driving helps.
Same thing happened in Kalamazoo, MI back about 1978.
The city center closed part of the main street to cars when a four story enclosed mall of boutique stores was built. Within five years most of the mall and nearby stores were dying.
This was partly due to the growth of a pair of large enclosed malls 5 miles away which sucked business elsewhere. But I think most of the problem was that shoppers don't wants to walk outdoors in the long Michigan Winter. They needed to somehow enclose the pedestrian piazza to minimize peoples' exposure to the elements, but that wasn't in the budget.
They later reopened it, but put in roads that let cars through, but very slowly. Seems to be a good compromise.
Closing a road entirely is probably something you should do once you're at such a level of pedestrian traffic that the car lanes are impeding pedestrians, which isn't terribly common in US cities. However, making areas where people don't drive fast is absolutely a win.
My city did this with bike lanes. Most of the housing isn't within easily walk able distance from downtown and the city is where a lot of people from surrounding towns go to buy things. All the downtown businesses that weathered the recession got rewarded with all their customers decided to spend their money at the businesses a mile away that had readily available parking. Grade A city planning right there. /s
Actually you need people in the city to not depend on cars. Public transport, cycle lanes and a reason to stay in the city centre like good restaurants, cafes, some festivals. Just closing a street to cars might just make everyone drive around and miss it. Also don‘t let big shopping malls be build at the outside of the city with huge parking areas. Create parks instead.
Pedestrianisation works well in European cities, especially small ones. It's quite common here in the UK, often there are strict time limits on when delivieries can be made, e.g. 6-8am when barriers are open to let vehicles in and out.
However this model just does not work in the US, outside of very few places. US cities are designed for cars, and without major redevelopment everything's just too far apart - even within the context of a single street - for this to make sense. If you had electric scooters or something though...
It took major redevelopment for many US cities to become car-centric, so I am not seeing why we could not do another redevelopment to create pedestrian-friendly cities.
Internalize the cost of parking, drop mandatory parking minimums and change zoning to allows for reasonable density. Wait a few decades and cities probably won't be as car centric as they are now.
> there are strict time limits on when delivieries can be made, e.g. 6-8am when barriers are open to let vehicles in and out.
That is nuts.
That means a plumber, electrician, home appliance deliveryman, mover, etc. can only handle one job requiring a vehicle per day. He will have to charge 3-4 times more for his services than someone working in an area where it's feasible to finish 3-4 jobs in a workday. The costs are of course passed on to the customers. Is their car-less life worth living in a pigsty that they can't fix up because laws force contractors to charge exorbitant fees?
That means any business will want a dedicated vehicle to haul what they need in the 6-8 am window. This is not just grossly economically inefficient (no outsourcing delivery to third parties), it results in more vehicles sitting idle during the day, using up parking space!
And that means moving is a nightmare. Moving a two-bedroom apartment worth of stuff into or out of a truck is, realistically, at least a four hour job. That means a cross-town move that could be done in one workday with sane laws will take at least four workdays (two to load the truck, two to unload) in your crazy UK town. Imagine the costs. How is it moral for you to shackle your people to the land by making relocation unaffordable?
>pedestrianised all 300,000 sq m of the medieval centre
It's a lot less impressive when you realize that they just banned cars from the area that was optimized for foot traffic anyway. Good on them for not trying to go to far and force people to walk/bike in areas designed for cars.
>"while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges."
Tangent: This is probably the most European quote ever. Roman senators, medieval lords, members of parliament, Napoleon, the Kaiser, etc, etc. could have all said this.
>And the same shopkeepers who complain are the ones who have survived in spite of the crisis
Surviving in spite of the crisis does not make the crisis fun or necessary. It took a lot of boarded up shops before my city took away the bike lanes and put back the on-street parking (no, the failed businesses did not coincide with the recession if anyone was wondering). You gotta do what works even if it's not what fits your political objectives. If an area of the city was designed for pedestrians that's probably what will work best there. If an area of the city was designed for cars then that's probably what will work best there. It's a disservice to taxpayers to use their money to jam a square peg in a round hole or vise-versa.
>The works were all financed locally and received no aid from regional or central government.
>"while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges."
There's nothing European about it, despite the fantasy of Europe being comfortable with dictatorships. Driving a car is also a privilege in the US - try driving one without your state-sanctioned license to do so and you will discover that.
By the way, Members of Parliament are democratically elected so I am not sure how they fit in with the rest of the motley crew.
Cars have to some extent led us through part of the industrial revolution. However, it's my belief that cars, except from polluting the environment and destroying our cities - makes people unhappy and sad.
Visiting LA this summer, I knew I was in for a car heavy metropolis but this... I can't understand why people waste so much time of their precious life (usually alone which also greatly worsen the problem) - locked in a car.
Coming to the topic of the autonomous car revolution, which I frankly do not understand. Sometimes it feels like the ambition is to end up as the humans in WALL-E. What kind of life is that?
Ps. Coming from Europe, I crossed US by bicycle a few years ago, from NY to US. People say it's a country to be seen through a car, but I argue it's to be seen on a bike.
First thing I noticed when moved to SF Bay Area from Europe was “God, Los Gatos would be so beautiful if the main street was a pedestrian area.” Then went actively searching for one and found a little stretch at Santana Row in San Jose, if you can call 30 meters of blocked off street pedestrian area.
But even dense populated cities like SF dont have a pedestrian zone. It is one of the rare things I miss quality of life wise.
As a kid in the early '90s the corner market, grocery store, schools from elementary to high, both jobs I had, and park were all within a 10 minute walk -- and that was in the suburbs. Cars don't need to be a requirement for daily life even in the suburbs it just requires good planning or planning at all.
When people ask me why I like living in Mexico, this is one of the main reasons:
The other week I walked around my neighborhood in Guadalajara to do some errands. I got my knives sharpened, picked up my repaired shoes from the cobbler, some fried pumpkin seeds from the seed guy, some meat from the butcher, and then some tacos of course. All within two blocks.
>People don’t like being told they can’t drive wherever they want, but Lores says that while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges.
I work in the Domain of Austin Texas, it's an outdoor mall, office park and residential area that is supposed to be like a downtown 2.0 in many ways. A place for humans to "live, shop and work" according to their mantra.
In reality, it's scary to walk to whole foods to get lunch at times. Cars NEVER yield to crosswalks or pedestrians. It's so bad they have flashing LED's on the stop signs in some areas.
The domain would be beautiful if parking garages were on the exterior and everyone had to walk in. Imagine being able to walk to shops, work and dining without worrying about getting plowed down by an F150 with a "thank god for our snipers" sticker on the back.
In fact, the best couple of days at this area are the art walk days but its been a while since I've seen those. For the artwalk days, they close the streets and it's like a magic little city of everyone breathing easier, enjoying some quiet serenity and kids walking around without parents needing 100% attention.
For the price they demand to live and lease space here, it would seem serenity and peacefulness would be the best thing they could do! (and there was plenty of land at one point for exterior garages... now its just a mad dash for people to find spots across the different garages which are all too small for the big trucks texans love)
Most cities in the Netherlands have a car-free inner city or shopping streets, no need to idolize this particular one. Going from a congested city to a car-free one is a good move though.
Interestingly, while Amsterdam's historic inner city is fully open to cars, you don't really see much of them - in part because it's just not practical, in part because parking is very expensive.
I thing "banning" cars in a Town/City work well for smaller cities, through you still might want to have some time frame in which e.g. trucks can bring new goods to super markets, fire fighter etc.
For larger cities I think it would still be possible to have many "no-car" isles, paired with good public
transportation available for anyone at "any" place (which can be done today by e.g. using this small and _slow_ self-driving mini buses to connect the home/side streets with the underground trains, regular trains and potentially normal sized buses,
you just need to deploy enough of them with a good
rout planing algorithm and a smartphone app, through it might be slightly expensive).
It's interesting how people's expectations and attitudes develop. I remember landing at San Diego airport and asking how I could walk the relatively short distance into the city center. I just got looks of derision and directions to the taxi rank. I did attempt to find a walkable route myself to no avail.
It's an interesting contrast to banning cars and essentially banning walking
I'll preface this with saying that I own two cars and in general like cars. However, I think personal motorized transportation along with industrialized animal farming are for me among the two biggest evils that arose in the last century. Cities in North America are entirely architected for the presence and convenience of cars. The mortality arising from pollution and accidents is staggering. The alienation and isolation of people as well. The cities and suburbs stretch so far out that you rarely get to see your friends unless you specifically organize something well ahead of time. Pedestrian zones with small shops are replaced with massive shopping malls.
I've always imagined a modern city with no cars, but I never knew that anyone actually had the balls to make this a reality. Kudos to this Spanish city! You can try to argue that the specifics of this city make it more amenable to being car-free, but I think that if there was enough desire, it would work anywhere. Just think if everyone paid their monthly car loan/lease into the public transportation system how incredibly functional it could be.
Working in the center of Berlin, I wish Berlin would do the same. There is a hospital near, and a constant load noise level from ambulances. Without cars, those could be much much quieter, but traffic increased, cars got more soundproof and people hear loud music, so ambulances became loader all the time. Noise kills people.
[+] [-] breatheoften|7 years ago|reply
The traffic is often amazingly inhumane. Many of the small towns in Oregon are formed on either side of the major highway which has speed limits within the town but still sees so much traffic as to be very dangerous for pedestrians.
These towns need the commercial visitors brought by the highway to survive — but the design common in Europe for this scenario is so much better. There will be a sign for an exit off the main road for the “city center” exit — there will be a single parking lot for the city center, and then comfortable walking distance to the businesses ... superior design.
Many small, especially old, towns in Europe have ancient road layouts that are too narrow and steep for cars within the town — which resulted in these car free designs for free. It’s beautiful. Parking is easy because there is only one place to do it on the outskirts — and then walk everywhere. There is no improvement for a small town to be designed otherwise in my opinion.
[+] [-] SketchySeaBeast|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sunshinelackof|7 years ago|reply
A solution is to level the planes of separation between types of traffic in urban areas. With pedestrians closer to cars the cars have to go slower by nature. It's antithetical to the common logic and current policy of building walking paths completely separate from roads and all of the businesses attached to them.
[+] [-] PopsiclePete|7 years ago|reply
In America, a city is a place where cars drive to get from business A to business B. People enter the equation only as a necessary side-effect. But fuck you if you're a pedestrian or don't have a car.
In Europe, cities exist for people. Streets are built with people in mind, businesses are placed with people in mind, infrastructure is built with people in mind.
I grew up in Europe, and the entire city was "mine" as a teenager - I could go anywhere, cheaply, quickly, and never needed a driver's license. I shopped for groceries, paid bills, hung out with friends, went to school - everything was within walking distance or a short bus ride away.
Here - I don't know how kids do it. To rely on parents to drive you to - where - shopping malls???? - to "hang out" or be doomed to watch tv/play video games all day - I'm so glad that was not my child-hood - I really think it's one reason I'm not on various anti-depressants, nor obese, nor anti-social.
I really wish someone would do a study that looked at the number of depressed/anti-social/about-to-go-on-a-shooting-spree people in a country whose only interaction with other human beings is to say "good how are you" at the clerk at the grocery aisle check-out lane or to curse at other people behind the wheel of their car while getting there.
I really believe (no evidence, just belief) that if cities in America didn't make you stressed out just for trying to get from place A to place B, or putting your life in danger by having to drive, we'd see a lot fewer problems - a lot fewer.
[+] [-] honkycat|7 years ago|reply
Check out strongtowns.org, a non-profit that explores this EXACT phenomena and how it happened.
Basically, infrastructure == progress to a LOT of poorly informed communities who don't bother factoring in maintenance costs or look at the actual economics of building huge roads through their main street.
Throw in a dash of pork-barrel spending and lobbying to secure funding to build more roads for the hell of it and you have the US's current mad-max roads-to-fucking-nowhere infrastructure nightmare. It was all a big experiment where everyone but the guys getting paid to build the roads lost.
[+] [-] x220|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sakopov|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keelhaule|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elcapitan|7 years ago|reply
Here's a photo https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2015/09/F141003...
[+] [-] sebringj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wahern|7 years ago|reply
Actually, I live in San Francisco and the "downtowns" of each neighborhood do allow kids some freedom away from their parents (e.g. to dart in and out of stores and restaurants without waiting for the parent), but it's limited to a single block unless you want to risk being run over. Hit-and-runs occur here regularly, unfortunately, because the city is just barely pedestrian friendly enough that pedestrians feel comfortable, but not friendly enough that cars are actually forced to slow down (e.g. streets too wide). If car and pedestrian are not both carefully paying attention, accidents happen.
[1] My wife doesn't like theme parks. But where she's from you never let kids out of sight, regardless, so they offer little respite for her.
[+] [-] technofiend|7 years ago|reply
*1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadyside,_Houston
[+] [-] francisofascii|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimmaswell|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mycellium|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JaggerFoo|7 years ago|reply
I go there quite often and would like to see this for myself. Especially the area where no cars are allowed.
Cheers
[+] [-] nrjames|7 years ago|reply
https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/163829/
The city reopened it to traffic, however, and "revitalized" the area, resulting in a booming downtown economy:
https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning-...
I love pedestrian districts in cities. Copenhagen comes to mind. However, pedestrian district plans need to be considered carefully, else they backfire.
[+] [-] simonsarris|7 years ago|reply
Why did it work, when Raleigh failed? What needs to be "considered carefully", exactly?
(The large college nearby definitely helps in VT's case. But what else?)
https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/
https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/about/history
[+] [-] mschuetz|7 years ago|reply
First one was Kärntner Straße / Graben, which is pedestrians only.
https://www.streifzugmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/AM...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Vienna%2...
I'm looking forward to more streets getting closed off to cars. Way too much space is reserved for cars already.
[+] [-] mlinksva|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miketuritzin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevstev|7 years ago|reply
Proximity to mass transit and having density that already discourages driving helps.
[+] [-] randcraw|7 years ago|reply
The city center closed part of the main street to cars when a four story enclosed mall of boutique stores was built. Within five years most of the mall and nearby stores were dying.
This was partly due to the growth of a pair of large enclosed malls 5 miles away which sucked business elsewhere. But I think most of the problem was that shoppers don't wants to walk outdoors in the long Michigan Winter. They needed to somehow enclose the pedestrian piazza to minimize peoples' exposure to the elements, but that wasn't in the budget.
[+] [-] hyperpape|7 years ago|reply
When I go downtown, I usually don’t park on Fayetteville, I usually park a few blocks away and walk.
[+] [-] davidw|7 years ago|reply
They later reopened it, but put in roads that let cars through, but very slowly. Seems to be a good compromise.
Closing a road entirely is probably something you should do once you're at such a level of pedestrian traffic that the car lanes are impeding pedestrians, which isn't terribly common in US cities. However, making areas where people don't drive fast is absolutely a win.
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nedt|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vbuwivbiu|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredley|7 years ago|reply
However this model just does not work in the US, outside of very few places. US cities are designed for cars, and without major redevelopment everything's just too far apart - even within the context of a single street - for this to make sense. If you had electric scooters or something though...
[+] [-] betterunix2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianN|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tetromino_|7 years ago|reply
That is nuts.
That means a plumber, electrician, home appliance deliveryman, mover, etc. can only handle one job requiring a vehicle per day. He will have to charge 3-4 times more for his services than someone working in an area where it's feasible to finish 3-4 jobs in a workday. The costs are of course passed on to the customers. Is their car-less life worth living in a pigsty that they can't fix up because laws force contractors to charge exorbitant fees?
That means any business will want a dedicated vehicle to haul what they need in the 6-8 am window. This is not just grossly economically inefficient (no outsourcing delivery to third parties), it results in more vehicles sitting idle during the day, using up parking space!
And that means moving is a nightmare. Moving a two-bedroom apartment worth of stuff into or out of a truck is, realistically, at least a four hour job. That means a cross-town move that could be done in one workday with sane laws will take at least four workdays (two to load the truck, two to unload) in your crazy UK town. Imagine the costs. How is it moral for you to shackle your people to the land by making relocation unaffordable?
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|7 years ago|reply
It's a lot less impressive when you realize that they just banned cars from the area that was optimized for foot traffic anyway. Good on them for not trying to go to far and force people to walk/bike in areas designed for cars.
>"while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges."
Tangent: This is probably the most European quote ever. Roman senators, medieval lords, members of parliament, Napoleon, the Kaiser, etc, etc. could have all said this.
>And the same shopkeepers who complain are the ones who have survived in spite of the crisis
Surviving in spite of the crisis does not make the crisis fun or necessary. It took a lot of boarded up shops before my city took away the bike lanes and put back the on-street parking (no, the failed businesses did not coincide with the recession if anyone was wondering). You gotta do what works even if it's not what fits your political objectives. If an area of the city was designed for pedestrians that's probably what will work best there. If an area of the city was designed for cars then that's probably what will work best there. It's a disservice to taxpayers to use their money to jam a square peg in a round hole or vise-versa.
>The works were all financed locally and received no aid from regional or central government.
Good on them for not asking for a handout.
[+] [-] JetSetWilly|7 years ago|reply
There's nothing European about it, despite the fantasy of Europe being comfortable with dictatorships. Driving a car is also a privilege in the US - try driving one without your state-sanctioned license to do so and you will discover that.
By the way, Members of Parliament are democratically elected so I am not sure how they fit in with the rest of the motley crew.
[+] [-] erkken|7 years ago|reply
Visiting LA this summer, I knew I was in for a car heavy metropolis but this... I can't understand why people waste so much time of their precious life (usually alone which also greatly worsen the problem) - locked in a car.
Coming to the topic of the autonomous car revolution, which I frankly do not understand. Sometimes it feels like the ambition is to end up as the humans in WALL-E. What kind of life is that?
Ps. Coming from Europe, I crossed US by bicycle a few years ago, from NY to US. People say it's a country to be seen through a car, but I argue it's to be seen on a bike.
[+] [-] freediver|7 years ago|reply
But even dense populated cities like SF dont have a pedestrian zone. It is one of the rare things I miss quality of life wise.
[+] [-] sunshinelackof|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] always_good|7 years ago|reply
The other week I walked around my neighborhood in Guadalajara to do some errands. I got my knives sharpened, picked up my repaired shoes from the cobbler, some fried pumpkin seeds from the seed guy, some meat from the butcher, and then some tacos of course. All within two blocks.
[+] [-] Barjak|7 years ago|reply
This strikes me as the fundamental issue.
[+] [-] supernovae|7 years ago|reply
In reality, it's scary to walk to whole foods to get lunch at times. Cars NEVER yield to crosswalks or pedestrians. It's so bad they have flashing LED's on the stop signs in some areas.
The domain would be beautiful if parking garages were on the exterior and everyone had to walk in. Imagine being able to walk to shops, work and dining without worrying about getting plowed down by an F150 with a "thank god for our snipers" sticker on the back.
In fact, the best couple of days at this area are the art walk days but its been a while since I've seen those. For the artwalk days, they close the streets and it's like a magic little city of everyone breathing easier, enjoying some quiet serenity and kids walking around without parents needing 100% attention.
For the price they demand to live and lease space here, it would seem serenity and peacefulness would be the best thing they could do! (and there was plenty of land at one point for exterior garages... now its just a mad dash for people to find spots across the different garages which are all too small for the big trucks texans love)
[+] [-] cf141q5325|7 years ago|reply
This seems to be the key point why it works.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|7 years ago|reply
Interestingly, while Amsterdam's historic inner city is fully open to cars, you don't really see much of them - in part because it's just not practical, in part because parking is very expensive.
[+] [-] kenmicklas|7 years ago|reply
1) that lifestyle is vastly subsidized by economic activity generated in the cities
2) the biggest reason cities are unpleasant is (surprise) the high density of car traffic and noise!
The mass distribution of personal cars is going to go down as the greatest mistake in societal development.
[+] [-] jimmybot|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eloycoto|7 years ago|reply
I'm living in one of the closes villages around Pontevedra, I'm heabilly use the city, and I'm doing some remote job for an SF startup.
If you have questions, I'm happy to help and provide feedback.
[+] [-] dathinab|7 years ago|reply
For larger cities I think it would still be possible to have many "no-car" isles, paired with good public transportation available for anyone at "any" place (which can be done today by e.g. using this small and _slow_ self-driving mini buses to connect the home/side streets with the underground trains, regular trains and potentially normal sized buses, you just need to deploy enough of them with a good rout planing algorithm and a smartphone app, through it might be slightly expensive).
[+] [-] pixelbeat__|7 years ago|reply
It's an interesting contrast to banning cars and essentially banning walking
[+] [-] dre85|7 years ago|reply
I've always imagined a modern city with no cars, but I never knew that anyone actually had the balls to make this a reality. Kudos to this Spanish city! You can try to argue that the specifics of this city make it more amenable to being car-free, but I think that if there was enough desire, it would work anywhere. Just think if everyone paid their monthly car loan/lease into the public transportation system how incredibly functional it could be.
[+] [-] _Codemonkeyism|7 years ago|reply