Comment by tfehring | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tfehring | Hacker News Reader

Great article, thanks for sharing. But I think this misses the mark a bit. I agree with the general point that the folks who think they want to live in 1960s New York wouldn't be caught dead in the most similar places that exist today, but obviously that's not really what they're asking for. They're wondering why every safe, walkable urban neighborhood seems to be gentrified to the point of being unaffordable to all but the top decile or so. Even if neighborhoods like that have never existed in the past (aren't cities today safer than they've ever been?), it doesn't seem like that should be an unattainable goal, but they seem to be rare if not nonexistent.

As an aside, there are probably classist elements to what they're asking for but it's not just a class thing. Since taking a fully remote job I've seriously considered moving back to my hometown, where I could get a 3BR detached house for <$150k within a couple blocks of an intact downtown, but I keep remembering that this [0] (recorded 3 miles away) is representative of the people who would be my neighbors there. "Classist" is adjacent to the right term for my attitude here but it's not quite right.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4Zdx97A63s

> safe, walkable urban

"Walkable" is an incredibly loaded term. It has evolved to mean "convenient" rather than "has sidewalks".

Struggling creatives don't usually live in neighborhoods that are safe or "walkable", though they may be urban and have sidewalks.

“Walkable” has never meant “has sidewalks.” It means the neighborhood’s denizens can reasonably walk to meet their day-to-day necessities. It has always meant that.

> “Walkable” has never meant “has sidewalks.”

Nonsense. Interstate Highway 90 is quite unwalkable due to its lack of sidewalks.

And if it had sidewalks it still wouldn't mean "[that] the neighborhood’s denizens can reasonably walk to meet their day-to-day necessities". (And in reverse, an interstate without sidewalks can be part of a walkable neighborhood if other infrastructure compensates for it)

> ... still wouldn't be a walkable neighborhood

You clearly have not seen some of the highway interchanges in Olympia, WA.

They aren't just neighborhoods, they're whole towns. Of tents. Walkable, but surely not safe.

;)

This seems like a bizarre argument, surely it's an "and". Sidewalks are a necessary but not sufficient condition for walkability.

They really aren't. Sufficiently slow traffic (or none at all) will render streets walkable. Prioritizing pedestrian use over vehicle use is what creates walkability.

In the US you tend to find this in places that were built before cars but with sufficiently high property values that rearranging the buildings to widen the streets doesn't make sense. See parts of Boston for example. The places that are both old and wealthy tend to have streets that are pretty much local access only through size alone.

Residential neighborhoods in the Tokyo metro area are generally walkable but have very few sidewalks.

In a dense enough place with narrow streets you can just walk on the road. A lot of old towns are like this.

In montreal there is an extensive system of back lanes, and I did a lot of my walking there, no sidewalks. The lanes were shared by cars but they were slow and infrequent.

>"Classist" is adjacent to the right term for my attitude here but its not quite right.

Conflict of belief systems or maybe anomie?

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