Not exactly rocket science. Many cities around the world have figured it out already. To me it seems that the US went to the other extreme and is only slowly turning around.
I remember reading "Das neue Universum"² in the early 80s where they proposed large skyscrapers connected by tubes. No cars in sight.
Many cities in the OECD maybe. Lots of cities in Africa and Asia are going with the American model of car dependent sprawl and it’s completely untenable. My childhood home of Bangalore has become a nightmare.
> the US went to the other extreme and is only slowly turning around.
US car manufacturers are doubling down on large trucks and SUVs and the current administration continues to thwart progress on tackling climate change and other societal concerns. I would say the US, at least on a macro level, is still on the "other extreme" path.
I've enjoyed Christopher Alexanders' "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction"* as an interesting series of essays about designing spaces at a human scale. Computer / programming people rave about the book's structure (as an inspiration for the GoF "Design Patterns" book), but the content is also fascinating.
Rocket science seems straight forward in comparison to creating attractive, rather than combative, societies. The Nordic countries had insane possibilities the 'win' the information age, but have all to a large extent been going the other way (at least in terms of outlook).
> To me it seems that the US went to the other extreme and is only slowly turning around.
I don't think the US has been going the other way, so much that it has always been combative and the way to not get exponentially exploited in such a society is to build the easiest house anywhere. (You are still paying the price of course). Now as people are moving to cities again, they are rediscovering the dysfunctional society spanning both capitalism and government.
> I remember reading "Das neue Universum"² in the early 80s where they proposed large skyscrapers connected by tubes. No cars in sight.
As I heard someone say recently most of the futuristic ideas of that era is based on the idea of free energy, but what we got instead is free information. So what we have to deal with is a lot closer to Gibson than Asimov.
> I remember reading "Das neue Universum"² in the early 80s where they proposed large skyscrapers connected by tubes. No cars in sight.
This reminds me of the pedway scheme they tried to do in London, even going so far as to require buildings in the city to prepare for these bridge walkways between buildings. Here's a nice little documentary about it: https://vimeo.com/80787092
For anyone interested in architecture visiting the city of London, I highly recommend a visit to the barbican as well.
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 enable people to travel in non-damaging ways; cycling and walking primary. That should be the first priority, although fighting the ingrained car culture will be the hardest battle.
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 cities? What's a "run-down" area? We can win WWII but not fix a broken roof? The issue was not so much lack of affordability or too many people, what meant was cities / neighborhoods with more black people. Those highways were not built immediately post WWII, but later, to separate black neighborhoods from wealthier areas of the city, in the post-civil rights era.
Suburbanization accelerated not directly after WWII but with government-mandated busing of school-children. If you didn't want your daughter to go to school with black boys, you went to the suburbs.
Architects & urban planners played handmaiden to white flight, destroying the fabric of cities, and generally harming the environment in the process. Precisely due to their active participation in this cluster- they tend to whitewash the history, move the timelines a bit etc. hoping no one will notice.
Having recently moved to London I am a bit shocked at how poor the cycling infrastructure is. Granted, the city was never exactly planned out, but it seems to me it wouldn’t be hard to add dedicated bike paths given the fair amount of green space. Consider richmond Park as a prime location where dedicated bike-only lanes would be a great improvement. Instead you must bike along side diesel fumes on the roads that should be removed imo.
What are the primary obstacles towards improving the cycling infrastructure here?
By the way - biking here is quite different from the US. Unlike the US, I can taste the pollution. It’s a much heavier thing. Perhaps I’m not used to it, but I often find myself holding my breath to get through fumes.
>> You need to enable people to travel in non-damaging ways; cycling and walking primary.
And EVs? It will be very hard to convince anyone to get out of their cars when those cars are, potentially, less polluting than the available public transport options.
This also isn't just about commuting and pollution. There are a multitude of cultural reasons people use cars. Security is at the top of the list, the ability to be in your own locked box. You won't get people out of their cars until they are confidant in their physical security. Those parents driving their kids to work are constantly told that their kids are in danger and it is their duty as parents to maximize their children's individualized safety over all other concerns. Breaking that mindset requires far more than explaining to them why buses might be slightly faster than cars.
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.
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.
Kids is actually a tough case, especially when they're infants. You actually need to haul around a bunch of stuff to take a kid out and transit is rarely design around the needs of parents. Strollers are a pain to get into a bus or train, and often worsen crowding because they're so big. And it's just not practical to have to get car seats in and out of car-shares or cabs. Even in places with well considered transit options, like urban Japan, most people who can afford to have a car prefer to get a car.
I was once told by someone close to me that “Caring for the environment is nice and all, but we’re not going to stop living for it”.
So I am not surprised by how people are acting right now.
I live in Los Angeles; The Mecca for the automobile. Back in the early 20th century, the city was trying really hard to invest in public transportation through the use of electric street cars. Unfortunately, car manufacturers were able to weasel their way into the pockets of the city planners and put a stop to that.
We have a problem in Los Angeles. And that problem is that it's almost impossible to live close to where you work. Most white collar jobs here require an hour or longer of commuting time. Sure, it's possible to find jobs closer to your home, but when you are a professional in a specific field, your choices are restricted.
I live in North Hollywood, which is just West of Burbank in the San Fernando Valley. It's actually miles from Hollywood despite what the name may suggest.
I work in El Segundo. Before that, I worked in Culver city.
It would take me 4 or more hours and several metro -> bus -> metro transfers to get to work without driving.
The city is working on several new Metro lines and Bus only lanes, but it doesn't solve the problem of everyone being so spread out.
I'm not sure these articles are good for my mental health. I live in Utah Valley, which has the worst air quality in the United States. I'm on the train right now as I type this, it takes twice as long for me to get to work this way but i'm trying to increase train usage. People here are just so invested in making their hour long commutes with their gigantic trucks. Trucks are ridiculously expensive even before you factor in the prohibitive cost of gas and maintenance for them. It still doesn't seem to dissuade anyone.
I'm considering protesting for more environmentally friendly city designs and transportation decisions. I could find an extremely congested intersection and protest by just pressing the walk sign and marching back and forth. Annoying, but probably effective at getting my message seen.
I imagine that's the kind of protest that would get me arrested for being a nuisance.
I am far from you but follow some of UT news and it seems like there is some appetite. It is a conservative stronghold that loves it's trucks, but people also love their children, and having the #1 worst air quality is an attention grabber. Not to mention on the bad days it is enough for parents to witness it affecting their children.
I don't know how to make it happen, and my local region has its own struggles with AQI we haven't yet solved, but it seems to me like you have reason to hope.
Utah Valley (and Salt Lake Valley) trap pollution. There's no getting away from that. But the worst air quality in the US? After Geneva Steel closed? Worse than, say, San Bernardino, where the wind tends to trap LA's smog? I'm kind of skeptical. (Or do you have hard data, which I admit that I don't?)
Cool little post by Mr Money Mustache about a twitter post he put out describing a future city without cars. Media picked it up as reality, pretty funny stuff.
I see it less about eliminating cars (though that would be awesome if possible) and more about giving people alternatives (public transit, walking), which you don't have in American suburbia.
Much of the rest of the world has already figured it out. I'm in a "suburb" of Seoul right now. I can get to Gangnam in 30 minutes door to door via the subway (subway ticket is ~$2 each way). I'm a short walk (< 5 mins) to grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. It's all apartments here, which is why everything is so walkable. Of course this means less space than a house, but it's quiet and there are plenty of parks/green and a big lake nearby (5-10 minute walk).
Meanwhile back at my parents' house in the suburbs of Washington DC, the closest commercial business I can walk to is a gas station 20 minutes away, next to an ugly car-ridden highway. The nearest grocery store would require crossing that wide road and walking an additional 10-15 minutes through a massive parking lot. There is no viable public transport - if I want to take the subway into DC I need to drive 15 minutes to the nearest subway station (subway ticket is ~$5-8 I believe). Although my immediate neighborhood is very nice in the sense that there are a lot of trees, there actually aren't any parks (unless you count the local elementary school) or businesses of any form, including simple convenience stores (something I noticed is commonplace in most of the rest of the world).
Everytime I'm at my parents' house I'm completely dependent on having a vehicle to do anything, and bored out of my mind within about a week because it's extraordinarily isolating. I get very little exercise because I end up just staying in my house all day because there's little to do. On the other hand I can be in "city"-like suburbs like the one I'm in now and not feel lonely even if I don't talk to anyone because I can just step outside and there are people everywhere, or go walk to one of the million coffee shops nearby that are always packed with people hanging out.
I despise American suburbs. Who decided that the "American Dream" is owning a single-family home in the suburbs? I guess I'm just not enough of a hermit to enjoy that lifestyle.
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.
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 Density
I think the issue is that public transportation is rarely point to point.
A point to point self-driving transportation capsule could be more efficient and be better utilized than public transportation.
Until there’s a politically viable solution to homelessness, reasonable people are going to prefer spaces with basic socioeconomic filters like “doesn’t reek of urine” and “isn’t obviously an untreated mentally ill hard drug user.”
Exposure to human feces is a legitimate factor in transportation mode choice right up there with cost and door to door time. We are all worse off for transit advocates’ side dismissals of its role.
I'd much rather have my own self-driving climate-controlled more private space filled with my own stuff than be packed into a subway or bus every day, yes.
I’d argue that cities will shrink over time. It’s going to become easier for people to live in rural areas. I don’t think there is some magic formula to manage the inevitable congestion (not just traffic).
Edit: It’d also be interesting to see the environmental impact of mega cities. And what about cities like Portland where they have put in a lot effort to plan around growth? Is it working?
My parents live in a beautiful part of the rural UK and have super-fast fibre to the premises internet, next day Amazon prime available, online food shopping from 4 or so supermarkets locally, etc.
Basically everything you'd think you'd need to live away from the city, but still the area is depopulating rapidly.
Younger people don't want a life of car dependancy and social isolation.
I thought the same thing when the internet was emerging but the opposite happened.
The problem with your prediction is that it will also become easier to live in cities. AV's will reduce the need in cities for land allocated to parking. I can see this first hand in my neighborhood in Queens. It's becoming far easier to live without a car and population density is increasing at a rapid rate.
If our species is to survive this century we have to get out of our cars. There is no way to sustainably build billions of electric cars- we need to consider that our existing ICE fleet needs to simply be retired and not replaced. Cars are one of the ultimate symbols of the consumption that needs to end if we are to address climate change. Between the asphalt and concrete needed to build infrastructure for them to the plastics, rubber, and metals used to manufacture them cars are rolling ecological disasters.
I'd love to have a shared car pool situation with an automatic driver booked via an app that takes me door to door with say 5 minutes notice for a short trip (say upto 5 miles), and half hour notice for a longer trip (say upto 50 miles), and maybe 5 hours notice for a 500 mile trip. One that's clean, reliable, has appropiate child seats.
That's not happening in the next 20 years. My country is still going down the protectionism route when it comes to the taxi industry.
The child seats is the problem though -- as an adult in a city I can easily hail an uber or whatever to get me where I want to go. With kids in tow I'm limited to mass transit, as I can't rely on getting a cab with 2 car seats that will fit. This itself limits the amount of stuff I can take and places I can go.
Perhaps if I had no need for local trips (like yesterday when we went to a canal-side pub 4 miles away for dinner) I could live with simply renting a car for the larger trips -- but to rent a car it involves a walk to the station, an hourly train into the large town, then walk to the car rental place -- all between 8AM and 6PM, then do the reverse on monday morning to drop it off.
Any solution which requires people to give up convenience in the name of saving the environment is dead on arrival. This is human nature, we have never before managed to conserve our way out of a problem, we innovate our way out of it or we will die trying.
Hi HN! I'm the Director of Engineering at UrbanFootprint (https://urbanfootprint.com/), one of the companies featured in the National Geographic article. Peter Calthorpe is a cofounder of the company. The El Camino corridor is highlighted at the beginning of the National Geographic article. If you want to dig into more details on that please take a look at our blog post on the topic from last year (https://urbanfootprint.com/can-one-street-solve-the-san-fran...).
At UrbanFootprint, we provide data and tools for urban planners to assess and compare the impacts of land use and transportation decisions. A basic use case is a city updating its General Plan, which would start with a forecast of how much population growth is anticipated / needs to be accommodated. A planner then needs to assess where new residents will live, work, shop, and play. Perhaps even more essential, how are people going to travel between all of these activities? Will the new growth be auto-dependent, transit-focused, walkable? Is any of the existing or planned development in hazard areas such as flood of wildfire? What are the energy and water use impacts of the plans?
We’re using Python and Postgres/PostGIS on the backend to answer these questions and a React SPA to serve it up and make it interactive in a browser. It's a lot of fun getting our hands dirty with data describing the physical world in which we live in now, in addition to modeling the future of cities.
If this type of work interests you please get in touch - email me at [email protected]. I'm always interested in hearing from folks who want to use technology to improve cities.
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 live there or want to live there.
In Orson Welles' classic film, "The Magnficent Ambersons", one of the original inventors of the automobile predicts the changes, many negative, that the automobile will bring to civilization. Almost exactly 100 years later it sounds quite prescient:
Most cities don't need cars. It's already like this you don't need to go to the future.
Suburban layouts were actually the new thing that came after cities. The reason why we need cars is because of suburbia. For suburbia to function you have to live very far away from work and in very very low density neighborhoods where public transportation is virtually impossible to build. See Los Angeles.
If you are interested in learning more about how cities are dealing with the myriad of challenges outlined in the National Geographic article, I encourage you check out UrbanFootprint (https://urbanfootprint.com/).
Building off our background as urban planners, the UrbanFootprint software platform helps communities, cities, and regions deal with the challenges that they face. We bring data, analytics, and most importantly, actionable insight to problems such as congestion, pollution, accessibility, and risks like flooding, sea level rise, and fires.
The software is used by public jurisdictions across the country, the private consultants who consult for those jurisdictions, and by others in real estate, finance, and new mobility modes.
What gets me about these densification of suburban center proposals is that they don't come with racing the sprawl. If you just create more "central", well assuming some x-far-from-center contour lines distribution you might be creating more sprawl too.
We need to demolish our mistakes not just build new non-mistakes. We need fractal density so everyone gets both green space and high density very close, and reclaimed nature and super density not far away either.
Go to inwood Manhattan to feel what reclaimed natue is like.
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 or something. I find the drive thru experience really nice - bring the dog along in the passenger seat, get a burger, eat in the parking lot and give her some of the beef, whole trip takes under 10 minutes. A joy instead of a drag like walking is.
If a city of the future must abandon cars then the way I'd like it is if there were equal or less walking compared to driving. Futurama tubes would be great.
Side note: "No walking is a prescription for obesity" - exercising for weight loss has been thoroughly debunked. [1]
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.
I love walking. I get groceries every week. It feels good to move my body, one day I will not be able to walk, either through death or disability. I would like to enjoy it while I can. When I walk places, I have less to worry about than when I am driving. There is significantly less chance of me accidentally murdering someone or being accidentally murdered.
A 2 minute drive feels so lazy to me.
I still enjoy going out to eat. I take the dog with me, on a leash, we both get moving. Grab the food, sit outside and enjoy the people watching.
It isn't easy if you don't walk a lot but eventually you feel a sense a pride in your walking gains. Feeling comfortable enough to go on long walks is a pretty basic human desire I feel. Even if exercise for weight loss is ineffective, it is not ineffective for mood change.
Medium-intensity exercise (e.g., jogging) for weight loss has been debunked. Long-duration, low-intensity exercise (e.g., walking) or high-intensity exercise (e.g., interval sprints) will both lead to weight loss. Most people don't have time for the former (unless it's part of their lives, i.e. they walk a lot in a city), so if your goal is weight loss, skip the jogging and look at HIIT.
Personally, I live a 3 min walk from a grocery store and it's great. I stop by on my 8 min walk back from the train station (after a 17 min ride to work) a couple times a week. Many things I buy wouldn't last 2 weeks (though for things that do, I still take the occasional trip to Costco). If I lived in an area not designed for walking (like 95% of America), I'm sure I'd feel similarly to you, but I much prefer living here in Seattle (and walking) than I did living in a car-oriented city.
> In the 1990s Calthorpe scored a breakthrough: He helped persuade Portland, Oregon, to build a light-rail line instead of another freeway and to cluster housing, offices, and shops around it.
Mr Calthorpe is playing simcity in Real Life, ENVY!
[+] [-] Tepix|7 years ago|reply
I remember reading "Das neue Universum"² in the early 80s where they proposed large skyscrapers connected by tubes. No cars in sight.
Oh and don't miss "Das Neue Universum Volume 84 (1967)": http://klausbuergle.de/buergle_verkehr1.htm -
Click on the bottom left image - looks a lot like Hyperloop, doesn't it? The text even mentions that the tubes contain a vacuum!
--
² https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Neue_Universum
[+] [-] naravara|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtberatwork|7 years ago|reply
US car manufacturers are doubling down on large trucks and SUVs and the current administration continues to thwart progress on tackling climate change and other societal concerns. I would say the US, at least on a macro level, is still on the "other extreme" path.
[+] [-] dukoid|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbm-vic-20|7 years ago|reply
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language
[+] [-] njepa|7 years ago|reply
Rocket science seems straight forward in comparison to creating attractive, rather than combative, societies. The Nordic countries had insane possibilities the 'win' the information age, but have all to a large extent been going the other way (at least in terms of outlook).
> To me it seems that the US went to the other extreme and is only slowly turning around.
I don't think the US has been going the other way, so much that it has always been combative and the way to not get exponentially exploited in such a society is to build the easiest house anywhere. (You are still paying the price of course). Now as people are moving to cities again, they are rediscovering the dysfunctional society spanning both capitalism and government.
> I remember reading "Das neue Universum"² in the early 80s where they proposed large skyscrapers connected by tubes. No cars in sight.
As I heard someone say recently most of the futuristic ideas of that era is based on the idea of free energy, but what we got instead is free information. So what we have to deal with is a lot closer to Gibson than Asimov.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] sarnu|7 years ago|reply
I really loved them. Especially these futuristic panels like in http://klausbuergle.de/buergle_verkehr1.htm .
[+] [-] mstade|7 years ago|reply
This reminds me of the pedway scheme they tried to do in London, even going so far as to require buildings in the city to prepare for these bridge walkways between buildings. Here's a nice little documentary about it: https://vimeo.com/80787092
For anyone interested in architecture visiting the city of London, I highly recommend a visit to the barbican as well.
[+] [-] betandr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkural|7 years ago|reply
"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 cities? What's a "run-down" area? We can win WWII but not fix a broken roof? The issue was not so much lack of affordability or too many people, what meant was cities / neighborhoods with more black people. Those highways were not built immediately post WWII, but later, to separate black neighborhoods from wealthier areas of the city, in the post-civil rights era.
Suburbanization accelerated not directly after WWII but with government-mandated busing of school-children. If you didn't want your daughter to go to school with black boys, you went to the suburbs.
Architects & urban planners played handmaiden to white flight, destroying the fabric of cities, and generally harming the environment in the process. Precisely due to their active participation in this cluster- they tend to whitewash the history, move the timelines a bit etc. hoping no one will notice.
[+] [-] danielecook|7 years ago|reply
What are the primary obstacles towards improving the cycling infrastructure here?
By the way - biking here is quite different from the US. Unlike the US, I can taste the pollution. It’s a much heavier thing. Perhaps I’m not used to it, but I often find myself holding my breath to get through fumes.
[+] [-] sandworm101|7 years ago|reply
And EVs? It will be very hard to convince anyone to get out of their cars when those cars are, potentially, less polluting than the available public transport options.
This also isn't just about commuting and pollution. There are a multitude of cultural reasons people use cars. Security is at the top of the list, the ability to be in your own locked box. You won't get people out of their cars until they are confidant in their physical security. Those parents driving their kids to work are constantly told that their kids are in danger and it is their duty as parents to maximize their children's individualized safety over all other concerns. Breaking that mindset requires far more than explaining to them why buses might be slightly faster than cars.
[+] [-] educationdata|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] czechdeveloper|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naravara|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Amygaz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SupremeOverlord|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] scriptkiddy|7 years ago|reply
We have a problem in Los Angeles. And that problem is that it's almost impossible to live close to where you work. Most white collar jobs here require an hour or longer of commuting time. Sure, it's possible to find jobs closer to your home, but when you are a professional in a specific field, your choices are restricted.
I live in North Hollywood, which is just West of Burbank in the San Fernando Valley. It's actually miles from Hollywood despite what the name may suggest.
I work in El Segundo. Before that, I worked in Culver city.
It would take me 4 or more hours and several metro -> bus -> metro transfers to get to work without driving.
The city is working on several new Metro lines and Bus only lanes, but it doesn't solve the problem of everyone being so spread out.
[+] [-] ngngngng|7 years ago|reply
I'm considering protesting for more environmentally friendly city designs and transportation decisions. I could find an extremely congested intersection and protest by just pressing the walk sign and marching back and forth. Annoying, but probably effective at getting my message seen. I imagine that's the kind of protest that would get me arrested for being a nuisance.
[+] [-] ip26|7 years ago|reply
I don't know how to make it happen, and my local region has its own struggles with AQI we haven't yet solved, but it seems to me like you have reason to hope.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2019/02/27/lawmakers...
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900057070/guest-opinion-...
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluewater|7 years ago|reply
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2019/02/27/how-to-create-real...
[+] [-] JDiculous|7 years ago|reply
Much of the rest of the world has already figured it out. I'm in a "suburb" of Seoul right now. I can get to Gangnam in 30 minutes door to door via the subway (subway ticket is ~$2 each way). I'm a short walk (< 5 mins) to grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. It's all apartments here, which is why everything is so walkable. Of course this means less space than a house, but it's quiet and there are plenty of parks/green and a big lake nearby (5-10 minute walk).
Meanwhile back at my parents' house in the suburbs of Washington DC, the closest commercial business I can walk to is a gas station 20 minutes away, next to an ugly car-ridden highway. The nearest grocery store would require crossing that wide road and walking an additional 10-15 minutes through a massive parking lot. There is no viable public transport - if I want to take the subway into DC I need to drive 15 minutes to the nearest subway station (subway ticket is ~$5-8 I believe). Although my immediate neighborhood is very nice in the sense that there are a lot of trees, there actually aren't any parks (unless you count the local elementary school) or businesses of any form, including simple convenience stores (something I noticed is commonplace in most of the rest of the world).
Everytime I'm at my parents' house I'm completely dependent on having a vehicle to do anything, and bored out of my mind within about a week because it's extraordinarily isolating. I get very little exercise because I end up just staying in my house all day because there's little to do. On the other hand I can be in "city"-like suburbs like the one I'm in now and not feel lonely even if I don't talk to anyone because I can just step outside and there are people everywhere, or go walk to one of the million coffee shops nearby that are always packed with people hanging out.
I despise American suburbs. Who decided that the "American Dream" is owning a single-family home in the suburbs? I guess I'm just not enough of a hermit to enjoy that lifestyle.
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syshum|7 years ago|reply
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 Density
[+] [-] zip1234|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] closeparen|7 years ago|reply
Exposure to human feces is a legitimate factor in transportation mode choice right up there with cost and door to door time. We are all worse off for transit advocates’ side dismissals of its role.
[+] [-] jimmaswell|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitxbit|7 years ago|reply
Edit: It’d also be interesting to see the environmental impact of mega cities. And what about cities like Portland where they have put in a lot effort to plan around growth? Is it working?
[+] [-] adwww|7 years ago|reply
My parents live in a beautiful part of the rural UK and have super-fast fibre to the premises internet, next day Amazon prime available, online food shopping from 4 or so supermarkets locally, etc.
Basically everything you'd think you'd need to live away from the city, but still the area is depopulating rapidly.
Younger people don't want a life of car dependancy and social isolation.
[+] [-] wefarrell|7 years ago|reply
The problem with your prediction is that it will also become easier to live in cities. AV's will reduce the need in cities for land allocated to parking. I can see this first hand in my neighborhood in Queens. It's becoming far easier to live without a car and population density is increasing at a rapid rate.
[+] [-] makerofspoons|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] isostatic|7 years ago|reply
That's not happening in the next 20 years. My country is still going down the protectionism route when it comes to the taxi industry.
The child seats is the problem though -- as an adult in a city I can easily hail an uber or whatever to get me where I want to go. With kids in tow I'm limited to mass transit, as I can't rely on getting a cab with 2 car seats that will fit. This itself limits the amount of stuff I can take and places I can go.
Perhaps if I had no need for local trips (like yesterday when we went to a canal-side pub 4 miles away for dinner) I could live with simply renting a car for the larger trips -- but to rent a car it involves a walk to the station, an hourly train into the large town, then walk to the car rental place -- all between 8AM and 6PM, then do the reverse on monday morning to drop it off.
[+] [-] rootusrootus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ip26|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jalessio|7 years ago|reply
At UrbanFootprint, we provide data and tools for urban planners to assess and compare the impacts of land use and transportation decisions. A basic use case is a city updating its General Plan, which would start with a forecast of how much population growth is anticipated / needs to be accommodated. A planner then needs to assess where new residents will live, work, shop, and play. Perhaps even more essential, how are people going to travel between all of these activities? Will the new growth be auto-dependent, transit-focused, walkable? Is any of the existing or planned development in hazard areas such as flood of wildfire? What are the energy and water use impacts of the plans?
We’re using Python and Postgres/PostGIS on the backend to answer these questions and a React SPA to serve it up and make it interactive in a browser. It's a lot of fun getting our hands dirty with data describing the physical world in which we live in now, in addition to modeling the future of cities.
If this type of work interests you please get in touch - email me at [email protected]. I'm always interested in hearing from folks who want to use technology to improve cities.
[+] [-] Shivetya|7 years ago|reply
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 live there or want to live there.
[+] [-] cageface|7 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTTF2QIHDCM
[+] [-] jayalpha|7 years ago|reply
The Real Reason Your City Has No Money
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
[+] [-] crimsonalucard|7 years ago|reply
Suburban layouts were actually the new thing that came after cities. The reason why we need cars is because of suburbia. For suburbia to function you have to live very far away from work and in very very low density neighborhoods where public transportation is virtually impossible to build. See Los Angeles.
[+] [-] jak92|7 years ago|reply
They are doubling down on stupid.
[+] [-] myself248|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afettere|7 years ago|reply
Building off our background as urban planners, the UrbanFootprint software platform helps communities, cities, and regions deal with the challenges that they face. We bring data, analytics, and most importantly, actionable insight to problems such as congestion, pollution, accessibility, and risks like flooding, sea level rise, and fires.
The software is used by public jurisdictions across the country, the private consultants who consult for those jurisdictions, and by others in real estate, finance, and new mobility modes.
[+] [-] Ericson2314|7 years ago|reply
We need to demolish our mistakes not just build new non-mistakes. We need fractal density so everyone gets both green space and high density very close, and reclaimed nature and super density not far away either.
Go to inwood Manhattan to feel what reclaimed natue is like.
[+] [-] jimmaswell|7 years ago|reply
If a city of the future must abandon cars then the way I'd like it is if there were equal or less walking compared to driving. Futurama tubes would be great.
Side note: "No walking is a prescription for obesity" - exercising for weight loss has been thoroughly debunked. [1]
1: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-you-shouldn-t-exercis...
[+] [-] jakeinspace|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ozzyman700|7 years ago|reply
I love walking. I get groceries every week. It feels good to move my body, one day I will not be able to walk, either through death or disability. I would like to enjoy it while I can. When I walk places, I have less to worry about than when I am driving. There is significantly less chance of me accidentally murdering someone or being accidentally murdered.
A 2 minute drive feels so lazy to me.
I still enjoy going out to eat. I take the dog with me, on a leash, we both get moving. Grab the food, sit outside and enjoy the people watching.
It isn't easy if you don't walk a lot but eventually you feel a sense a pride in your walking gains. Feeling comfortable enough to go on long walks is a pretty basic human desire I feel. Even if exercise for weight loss is ineffective, it is not ineffective for mood change.
moderation in all things, including moderation.
[+] [-] licyeus|7 years ago|reply
Medium-intensity exercise (e.g., jogging) for weight loss has been debunked. Long-duration, low-intensity exercise (e.g., walking) or high-intensity exercise (e.g., interval sprints) will both lead to weight loss. Most people don't have time for the former (unless it's part of their lives, i.e. they walk a lot in a city), so if your goal is weight loss, skip the jogging and look at HIIT.
Personally, I live a 3 min walk from a grocery store and it's great. I stop by on my 8 min walk back from the train station (after a 17 min ride to work) a couple times a week. Many things I buy wouldn't last 2 weeks (though for things that do, I still take the occasional trip to Costco). If I lived in an area not designed for walking (like 95% of America), I'm sure I'd feel similarly to you, but I much prefer living here in Seattle (and walking) than I did living in a car-oriented city.
[+] [-] raphar|7 years ago|reply
Mr Calthorpe is playing simcity in Real Life, ENVY!