[dddddaviddddd]

I'd be happy if whoever built the road (municipality, state, etc) had civil liability for deaths and injuries, in cases where it could be shown that an inadequate effort was made to protect pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists (nearly all roads in Canada/US, unfortunately). Maybe that could be a positive incentive for safer design from the people with the power to change the situation.

[pixl97]

But it's not just the road. The road itself is an outcome of the buildings on it. When you have things like Super Walmarts/Targets taking up 500,000 square feet, with another 500k sqft of retail shopping surrounded by single family homes you pretty much guarantee that people have to drive there. The entire parking lot is pedestrian unfriendly from the number of cars that arrive there to the excessive heat generated in summer, especially in the southern US.

It's the single family home buyer with two cars and is a registered voter that is demanding the human unfriendly architecture at this point. We are getting more integrated architecture and people seem to like it, but it doesn't replace the millions of miles of bad design we already have.

[renewiltord]

Inevitably you'll have to grandfather in existing infrastructure because a lot of it is from ancient times and all you'll do is make it impossible to have a Chinatown, or a NY brownstone. So what you'll get is that almost nothing new gets developed because the cost structure makes it impossible.

Everyone always thinks "why don't we make it harder to make things and that way they'll be nice" but they can't connect the dots to "but to do that we have to grandfather in the existing stuff" and from that to "nothing new will happen and all the old things will stay that way".

Thing of the obvious effects, man. Come on.

[shortrounddev2]

> Inevitably you'll have to grandfather in existing infrastructure because a lot of it is from ancient times and all you'll do is make it impossible to have a Chinatown, or a NY brownstone. So what you'll get is that almost nothing new gets developed because the cost structure makes it impossible.

I don't see how that's true - if you create cities or neighborhoods which are more walkable, such as New York's Chinatown, then you'll have less civil liability than suburban car-centric infrastructure. I would think that NY style neighborhoods would be MORE incentivized

[CalRobert]

Why couldn’t you have a China town or brownstone? If the infrastructure is unsafe for cars, don’t allow cars there.