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Comment by guimarin | Hacker News Reader

I think there are a lot more roads/freeways now than back then as other commenters have pointed out. We've built our cities for cars, not for people. One possible side-effect of self driving cars, is it may make it safer for kids to wander again. I know I'd love to just attach a GPS tracker to my now 1yr old daughter in 5 years, and let her go where she pleases here in SF.

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Indeed, one does not simply double the population without limiting the distance people can walk. It's a simple matter of geometry. The number of households in the USA has doubled in the last 40 years. The number of major roads has radically increased. Most (85%) live in urban areas so there is only somewhere to walk in the woods if you live on the edge of the sprawl.

Or if your city is built vertically, but with lots of forests throughout it.

That's very rare. American cities are built on "free market" principles as distorted by politics. They are not built for livability, beauty, or any other quantitative or qualitative measure.

I personally advocate for this type of development, but it's unlikely that I will ever see it built: http://carfree.com/topology.html

Like any market, it's not free but created to favor some condtions. Permits for high-rise housing are harder to get than to build a mcmansion far away. True cost of roads does not get paid - the reason why highways are full is that people don't pay market price for using them - in fact government gives them away for free. Proper prices for using roads and burning gas (externalities included) and more american cities would start building highrises for housing.

There's a critique of that design on new world economics:

http://newworldeconomics.com/lets-kick-around-carfree-com/

I think the author did a poor job of arguing there compared to his usual articles, but he does make some decent points.

The articles of this author are interesting, but he’s missing something.

Really narrow roads (<6m) work, but not always. In many cities you have situations where the pedestrian traffic alone is enough to fill 15-20m wide streets.

But he is right that the #1 priority is in proportions.

(Replying to myself because I can’t edit)

For example, during large events, even smaller cities’ streets can look like this: http://www.bergmann-gruppe.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/vo... (A picture taken during Kieler Woche, one of the largest Volksfests in Europe.)

(Image description for the visually impaired: The image shows a roughly 20-30m wide street directly at the edge of the water in a harbour, people completely fill it, as densely as possible, in the background one can see that it continues for hundreds of meters, all the while being this densely filled with people)

It's not Venice, that's true. I simply use it as an example of how a city of millions of people could easily be built in a compact area, without high rise apartment buildings, and with tons of open space.

Even neighborhood roads are larger and faster- the street I grew up on in the 80's is about half the width of the street I live on now (2000's construction), and was short and straight compared to the wide sweeping arcs that seem to be in vogue in newer neighborhoods.

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