Neighborhoods with Limited Access to Streets | Hacker News Reader

Neighborhoods with Limited Access to Streets

millionneighborhoods.org

43 pointsvincent_s31 comments

Providing some link to how this data was "collected" would be tremendously helpful.

Looking at https://millionneighborhoods.org/#11.46/29.7099/-9.7936 a private beach resort has "high access" while the few holiday mansion ghettos that dot the beaches just north of it have "low access". In reality all the same layout: big entrance, villas on a grid, road access to each house.

And again further north all has "high access" despite there being only one road, wide enough for just one car and potholes I now know by name. Even locals avoid that road if they like their car... and to reach the "high access" coast side, one even has to get off that road and onto gravel roads (4x4 advised).

I checked the neighborhood I grew up in Ukraine, that had great road access. It was orange and red. I think the methodology is too aggressive.

In central Donetsk, which is what I'm familiar with, the "neighborhoods" they classified as having the worst access to streets are a steelworks, a chemical plant, and a coal mine.

A news article linked by U. Chicago gives some more context: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/mapping-tech-could-formaliz...

It looks like the creators are focused on detecting issues with property rights more than transportation.

I checked for red spots in regions in Indian that I am aware of. The big ones mostly are cantonments / areas reserved by military and wild life reserves.

Just wondering, why is there no data for the USA?

[edit: also, Russia, most of Europe, Australia, and many other regions. Maybe I’m missing something on mobile?]

You're not missing anything; those countries are completely white on the map. "Limited access to streets" is kind of a euphemism for what we used to call "third-world slums" which aren't really a problem in developed countries so those countries probably get a lot less study.

I saw an interesting paper a while back about computing the minimum number of shacks to tear down that would allow putting in new streets/utilities to provide access to every structure. It's a very different mindset from urban planning in the developed world.

I looked at the city where I used to live in Brazil and most of it is red. It doesn't make sense. It's a pretty normal city not unlike a first world one. I'm not sure what they're really measuring there.

they are most likely purposely being left off the map since theyd probably show up red in some areas just like ukraine and belarus which would imply the west has these 'slum issues' wich would be kind off ridiculous. this would not support their case.

Considering the lack of red in both El Salvador and Russia, it seems pretty clear that the countries colored in are simply those the researchers chose to study. Nobody believes El Salvador has no slums and nobody is trying to make Russia look good. Exactly one impacted region is depicted in North Korea, in the Kaesong region -- it's easy to see why from the map.

i dont have an explanation for excluding those. except russia. a huge piece of red there would be a very easy giveaway something is wrong. however the authors can do a specific thing for a specific reason and still leave out some other places. the idea to leave out the us, the eu, brittain, norway, iceland, australia, new zealand, japan, etc in addition to those you mentioned can't be counted as mere coincidence. that's deliberate. the fact that the method is very flawed is painfully obvious from other things as well. those large very red swathes of lands in Niger and mauretania are a stretch of sahara, not some massive slum. i hope the authors will not be discouraged by their failure. next time i will hope they will include the west and not paint the desert/tundra/etc red.

There's quite a bit of red on Puerto Rico!

After 2 devastating hurricanes in less than a decade their infrastructure is pretty poor. I visited 1 year ago, before the last hurricane, and most roads were good but they still had downed trees and destroyed buildings everywhere. (Countryside and San Juan, their city).

There is. You have to zoom in on a region. I zoomed in on Portland, OR and found areas of light pink.

I'm more curious why the Sahara is considered a neighborhood with limited street access, but the sparsely populated Oregon High Desert (SE Oregon) is not.

Nomad people consider all sand their roads, and since their home moves with them the acceess is pretty neat?

Most red zones in Chile are national parks/private ecological reserves

Places without cars don't really need streets. If you replace all streets with footpaths, you can pack houses in much more densely, making walking a viable option, rather than needing lots of cars.

Streets are inefficient use of land, especially if most people can't or don't want to use them.

How do you easily transport cargo without accessible streets? Also, what about longer-distance mass transit. Narrow alleyways and footpaths work well at the scale of an urban block, maybe a bit larger than that - but streets are quite important to the bigger picture.

Nevermind cargo, but how about ambulances and fire engines?

Entire civilizations have operated without wheels. You guys are just arguing on behalf of what you're familiar with.

Operated, yes. Note, past tense. And people died like flies and whole cities burnt down.

I'm pretty sure it's sewerage and clean water that stopped people dying like flies, not streets.

Cities with streets have burned down as well, and as far as I know everybody still dies, as do flies.

An ambulance or fire engine only needs a 12' alley, not a whole street. That's plenty of room for pedestrians most of the time and maintenance or emergency vehicles on occasion.

I don't think anybody is suggesting no spaces between houses is a good plan

It's just not practical to live somewhere without a street. Even if you don't have a car yourself, it makes any kind of logistics much harder. What if you order a couch, and the truck can't reach your house? And why is the goal to pack more houses more densely as opposed to just finding ways to decrease population growth?

It's just not practical to live somewhere without a street.

That depends whether you think of a street as something that just needs to carry a sofa delivery or six lanes of tarmac.

Population growth is sorting itself out already in most parts of the world.

Density is important because there is a demand for it. People are moving to cities. There is a question whether that is because they want to or that is where the work is but the demand is clearly there.

> What if you order a couch, and the truck can't reach your house?

Not everyone can afford or even prioritises getting junk like new couches delivered. Some people have little houses with furniture that's been there a hundred years and they're perfectly happy like that.

What if you need an ambulance or fire truck?

You get off-road ambulances and fire trucks in these areas.

Or you just don't prioritise (or can't afford!) those things either.

800 million people don’t have enough to eat, so I’m almost certain they don’t care about getting a new couch delivered.

I don’t want to be a dick but your comment is very blind to the problems many people face.

https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/15-07-2019-world-hunger...

I see your point if one treats the context around third world countries. I didn't reply to the parent message as such though.

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