Free Parking Is Killing Cities
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
In Portugal most parking is free as an extension of the businesses, that the owners have to consider. You can just leave home and not think about it while going about your business
In the UK most parking is paid, and there are hundreds of companies to manage parking lots, check the cars, to issue fines, to go after people that don't pay, a 60£ fine that is now 600£ because you have to pay the salary of the goons putting a wheel lock in your car, everyone in UK has paid a car park fine, it is a whole business in itself that is basically just a capitalist cancer
There's a surprising amount of free street parking in San Francisco, although it's often possible to see a meter maid waiting patiently on the sidewalk for the street to go into "no parking" mode, at which point everyone is ticketed immediately.
We welcome many foreign visitors (mostly German) every weekend and they seem to have no problems with it.
An interesting experiment would be that if you pay for parking at the city edge, your parking stub can act as a (family pass?) transit ticket.
Though I think the parking is usually free, in contrast with parking in the city centre.
The parking is free and the bus fee is € 6 for two-way to the center, and addtionally for all lines in the city within an hour of parking or leaving.
Here we take public transport, and in the case of London, there’s a green belt that prevents any further sprawl.
Another point worth mentioning, the EU is significantly denser and more built up than the US. We don’t have huge tracts of empty land around our cities, for the most part, it’s simply not possible to create a new suburb in many parts of Europe due to the lack of empty space.
Public transit is serviceable if you need to get to Paris and live in an area served by the suburban trains (or else you need to take a bus or two to reach the station).
But for your day-to-day needs, shopping malls are mostly outside the towns, and they're usually a hassle to reach without a car. There will usually be a bus service, but again, it will probably not be close to where you live, and going grocery shopping for a whole family by bus can't be particularly enjoyable.
I do all my daily shopping in local shops, I have 5 or 6 in walking distance, 20+ in bicycle distance. The last time I went to a mall was for a specific offer in a specific specialty store, which is certainly not a daily activity.
It's a matter of will and not killing off in-town shopping.
I agree that shopping malls have killed in-town shopping. But maybe there's a reason for that? In-town shops usually don't stay open late enough for people who depend on public transit for longer commutes, which is the case for many people living in the suburbs. Those people don't usually live there by choice, it's usually because they couldn't afford to live in the city center. That's the case for my parents, for example.
I don't doubt that there must also have been a comfort angle to that, it's easier to just drive to a big store, get everything you need in one place, and drive back. Also, malls are usually much cheaper that in-town stores. Which, again, is important for people who have to live in the suburbs because of limited means.
I'm in the same situation as you, probably even better. I have multiple shops open until 10 PM less than a 10-minute walk away. But I realize that not everyone can afford to live in the city center, so it's not just a matter of will.
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My parents live in a 20000 people town, so it's not the boonies. The closest non-bakery shop is 20 minutes away on foot. It's open from 9 AM to 8 PM, and it only has your basics. Want anything other than packaged sausage and cheese? Tough. The butcher and cheese vendor close at 7 PM.
By public transit, it's impossible for them to be home before 7:30 PM for my mom and 8:30 for my dad. They can basically only shop on weekends, so they'd have to haul provisions for the whole week. They cannot do "daily shopping".
Of course, my dad's commute is 1:30 each way by transit if there are no issues, or 30 minutes by car, which is what he ends up using.
I don't live in the city center, it's a 25 minute bus ride there if there's no traffic, but even here I have local shops everywhere, since we don't have zoning laws that restrict shops in residential areas. Shops are generally open until 21 or 22, some until midnight.
My point is that the dependency on malls is not inevitable, it can be prevented and/or remedied, and changing zoning laws is one of the ways to do it.
My girlfriend lives in a town of 1500 people, and there are 3 grocery stores, several pizzarias and bakeries, as well as other local amenities. Everything is walkable and they have both train and bus connections to the nearest cities. That's how to do it, not the like similarly sized village in Germany she came from, where there are literally no stores, no restaurants, no nothing, and the only transit they have is a bus that runs every hour between 8 and 17 on weekdays. No wonder that town is dead.
A quick glance at Wikipedia tells me that the "urban" area of Copenhagen is ten times smaller than that of Paris (292.5 km2 vs 2,853.5 km2). Not sure how comparable those are in practice. But a 25-minute bus ride with no traffic, in Paris, would put you inside Paris proper, not in the suburbs. Public transport is fairly good there.
The issue is many people live and work outside of Paris proper, and transit from suburb to suburb is poor. Most suburban trains go to Paris and bus routes are relatively short. They're working on improving things, but there's still much to do. So the issue is more one of time, rather than zoning per se. People don't have the time to go to the local shops were they live, so towns don't thrive.
Maybe if there was less concentration, so if instead of having one big city in the middle of an enormous suburb, there were multiple smaller cities, the situations would resemble that of Copenhagen. But for some reason, people insist on running all their businesses in the same few spots and bring people in from long distances (relatively speaking).
Shopping malls exist, but it seems the majority of the towns the make up the Greater London area have managed to preserve big chunks of their town centres, and recently it feels like there’s been an effort to build out those town centres. The town centres usually have every you need from big to small shops, and open late (the U.K. is a little unusual for Europe in that most of our store, regardless of size, are open late, with a substantial number being 24/7).
Driving into and out of these town centres is painful. Taking the bus and walking is much easier. And because shops are open late, doing small shops after work is very easy and extremely common.
Equally driving “out of town” is incredibly painful. For me, reaching the edge of London is a one hour drive in mostly stationary traffic. Far easier to walk or bike to our nearest town centre, assuming the nearest corner shop doesn’t have what we need.
I think this is a very important point.
In Paris proper, only stores in "tourist areas" (as defined by the local authority — that's basically in the heart of Paris, and around the Eiffel Tower) may stay open late. It's fairly easy to find supermarkets open until 10 PM. After that, not so much. But "regular stores" (say clothing) usually close at 7-8 PM.
Outside Paris proper, the situation isn't as good. Stores usually close around 7 PM and even supermarkets rarely close after 8 PM.
I think the issue is mostly political, there have been attempts to keep stores open later as well as on Sundays, but they have been shot down by local unions.
Some people really do need a car to get to work, but if they also want to live in the center of a large city, then they are frequently not even given the option of paying for a parking spot. The city of Copenhagen famously sold more parking permits than there are actual parking spaces to people living in the city center.
For when you're just going to a cafe, restaurant, or shopping, I don't get why people can just pay the parking fee, it's often not nearly as expensive as people make it out to be.
Why does someone living in NYC, Chicago, London, Paris need a car to get to work? There are some very rare cases yes, but the vast vast majority don't need a car, they want a car.
> The city of Copenhagen famously sold more parking permits than there are actual parking spaces to people living in the city center.
I would almost always expect that to happen. There is far more demand than there is parking, and a permit doesn't give you a right to a space. I would also be hugely surprised if much money (if any) was made from permits. (Enforcement of the CPZs being a different thing that almost certainly does make money).
> I don't get why people can just pay the parking fee, it's often not nearly as expensive as people make it out to be.
It's £4.50 per hour in the city center here, (plus £0.20 to pay by card - and this is a recent option too. 2-3 years ago it was coins only), and most areas have a 2 hour limit. For anyone actually living in the city, it's almost certainly cheaper to get an Uber each way.
My wife would take a train to a train to a bus to get from one part of Queens to another. 90 minutes on a good day. Driving - 25 mins including finding parking.
This is a thread about parking in European cities. Experiences of NYC aren’t exactly useful data points.
Also as a related point. It’s a real shame that the US doesn’t invest in proper bus lanes and busses. Buses don’t need to a shitty form of transport, it’s really on in the US where busses are worse than driving in city centres.
I'm positing that the assertion that the vast majority don't "need a car" is incorrect, certainly in NYC.
There are more cities than that, and many have terrible public transport, even in Europe. I live just outside a city with around 125.000 people. Public transport is terrible, it takes an hour or more to use the bus for traveling 15km (I need to leave home at 6:30 to be at work at 9:15, if I take the bus, but it's a 20 minute drive). Also most of the jobs aren't actually within the city center. Many can bike and do so, but that's not an option for everyone, especially during the winter and autumn.
Sure, but the person I replied to said _large_ city. 125k is definitely not a large city, and having grown up in a similar sized one (~100k) they're poorly served. This is (anecdotally) because those towns and cities used to be small enough to not warrant mass transit, and now that they are people are convinced that it's not worth it because it's slow.
Note, I live in Chicago with 2 kids under 5. Neither my wife or I drive to work and we have one car.
What exactly is the “required parking”? Here in london most new developments are prohibited from building parking, and are also frequently ineligible for parking permits, because we want less cars on our roads not more. The roads are already full to bursting, and you can’t build more of them.
The number of people who need a car to go work in London is minuscule. We have fantastic public transport, and rapidly growing cycle infrastructure. Today travelling by bike or tube is normally twice a fast as a car. And when I say bike, I don’t mean Lycra clad speeders, I’m talking about casual cycle through the city in normal clothes and no sweat.
> For when you're just going to a cafe, restaurant, or shopping, I don't get why people can just pay the parking fee, it's often not nearly as expensive as people make it out to be.
Most on street parking is
1. Full, so you probably can’t park. Not an issue with a bike, bus or tube.
2. Strictly time limited. Unless you wanna move your cat every hour or two, parking probably isn’t going to work for you.
There are a few new apartment building going up in the city center 20 minutes from my home. Each apartment is required to provide 1.7 parking spot per apartment. It's not required to be on street, or even above ground.
The city wants these developments to add exactly zero parking or cars to the city. Underground or otherwise.
Parked cars don’t pollute or cause traffic, the issue is when people start driving them.
In my new build the developer was restricted (not required to build, a maximum allowed to build) to 0.3 spaces per apartment. That was two years ago, in one years time, a new build here will be restricted to zero spaces per apartment.
In the USA we might have buses. They're usually designed for poor people who don't have enough money to buy a car to get to work.
Isn't this focused on the young, single, and healthy? I can't imagine having multiple children and living with no car. You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days. The bigger part of the proposal actually read like it has a big blind zone about the needs of families - having a family or children weren't even mentioned.
EDIT to address some repeating replies:
- Some form of "school" starts at around 2-3 y/o. 2-3 year olds cannot take a bus.
- There is winter, heavy rains, and wind. In most places you cannot rely on a bike all the time.
- In most cities people work far from home, and the early schools the kids go to are also far away. A young family with two 2-5 y/o children will not be able to rely on a bus and a bike, unless they live in some expensive area where everything is nearby and are lucky to have jobs at the same place.
It does plan you build with this in mind -- in the UK it is assumed kids will walk to school, or take a free bus (which is provided by the school). Most schools strongly discourage parents from driving to school, as it causes road blockages and the chance of accidents near the school entrance.
I also have a few friends in London who have kids and don't own cars.
For as long as I was in daycare, I was walked there by my parents. When I started school, I first walked, then biked there. It was not until I started grade 7 where any form of transport was necessary, and since then I took public transportation until I graduated.
This was in the suburbs of a mid-sized city (~100k) in Sweden, with comparatively bad public transportation.
But about Vilnius - public pre-schools in Vilnius are well placed, but they have huge waiting lines. If you want to get one in time realistically you would have to register your child before his/her birth, which is of course impossible. So most people join the line after birth and when the child reaches 2 years old they take them to a private one, until they reach their place in line and can transfer.
But let's say you get a place for your children 1-1.5 km away and you have a job that takes 30 minutes to reach by car (which in the morning is quite optimistic due to traffic). So to take children and go to work for yourself would take, say, 40 minutes.
One alternative to cars - biking. Only possible in summer days and warm autumn/winter days, and when it's not raining. So maybe 50% of the year. So the bike would take you probably 1.5 hours. Add this time for also going back and its 2 additional hours lost per day, and only on those good sunny days.
Another alternative is a bus. In non-corona times some busses in Vilnius are so crowded that you cannot get in and have to wait for another one. Nobody with young kids even tries to get there. But assume you live in one of less crowded places. Then the question is - how far the bus stop is from your house, how far the bus stop is from the kindergarten, and how far it is from your place of work. And how many different busses you will have to take in order to reach everything, and the waiting and travel times between transfers. So this scenario depends on luck.
That's just how I see it from my perspective here in Vilnius. A big number of families here have 2 cars. For some reason I imagine most bigger US cites would only be worse in that regard.
It's very common to see bicycles with a child seat, or box bicycles, used to take children to/from nursery on the way to work.
There are slightly fewer days with rain here than in Vilnius, but it only matters if it's raining during the journey, which is far less often than ⅓-½ of the year. I usually wear a raincoat, though sometimes I just take the bus.
I don't think the goal is to remove 100% of driving, or private cars, but it is great when a city (including its suburbs) is practical and accessible without one. It also makes it accessible to people without cars, like old-enough children, some pensioners, poor people, etc.
It took me far too many times reading that to realize it was autocorrected from "secondary"
I hated it.
At primary school, if I visited a friend after school we could walk through the park, or the playground, or the library, which was all much more fun than being in a car and then at home 5 minutes later.
At secondary school all my friends took buses, and had the wonderful freedom to take the next bus, or the one after. The playground didn't have the same appeal, but there were shops, cafés and so on.
> in the UK it is assumed kids will walk to school, or take a free bus (which is provided by the school).
The journey will be free, but in larger urban areas (especially London) it's also common for the children just to be given a pass for the city buses.
It might be worthwhile to check out how cities are planned elsewhere. My wife and I recently moved to the Netherlands because we think the way they do things is much better in this regard. I would highly recommend checking out the Not Just Bikes YouTube Channel, as well as Bicycle Dutch.
Here are some videos that might be of interest to you:
- Cycling with babies and toddlers in The Netherlands (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfLJ876lXsQ)
- Why We Won't Raise Our Kids in Suburbia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98)
After I started my family and moved out to a bigger city, all of these things changed. Your parents cannot help with the children because they are in another city. For me and my wife it takes about an hour both to reach our jobs. And the kindergarten we were taking our kids to was about 30 minutes (by car) away. The ones that are near our house or near our work-places had 3-year waiting lines.
And then there are winters and heavy rains. And you might have multiple children all of whom need to be taken someplace in the morning. It's just not realistic to bike, unless you somehow have everything nearby.
This depends on the country planning. In at least some European countries, the state guarantees enrollment to kindergardens/schools close to the family residence.
I actually wonder how cities (countries) that don't make such guarantee (and are not car-centered like the US) can actually survive. Assuming that all the families with multiple children use the car during winter in the morning (you've described it as a necessity), that would make the city traffic completely stuck. I don't doubt that this may be the reality in those circumstances.
I remember similar descriptions about cities like Rome, where people use the car comparatively more than other European cities. Indeed, traffic in Rome is hell, and ultimately, it boils down to insufficient city infrastructure/planning (the official take is that they can't build underground lines due to ruins), so even willing citizens have very little wiggle room.
I live 4 km from work and take a bike most of the year, otherwise it would be the tram or maybe even a walk if time permits. I don't have kids but usually the next elementary school is a 15 minute walk tops, there is one across the street for me actually. Kindergartens are even more ubiquitous. This is a city of ~250k. So obviously, you don't just transform an existing city into this by banning cars. And there are plenty of car-first cities in Europe still. Living in the countryside without a car is certainly very inconvenient.
Also, if the health system in the US is really as bad as it always appears to us, having good coverage of family practitioners might be off the table, and I'd certainly feel uncomfortable with the hospital being an hour away if I had toddlers around, and an ambulance either taking forever to arrive or being prohibitively expensive.
Plenty of the pedestrian-friendly cities with good trains and all got built up during times when there weren't any automobiles.
They're nice to look at and great to live in. But it's not possible to transform Salt Lake city or San Antonio into New York City with the snap of a finger. Takes capital, takes time, and people need to live their lives in the meanwhile.
Transit around here is good in some bits, bad in others. House prices are about double, maybe more, if the house is walking distance to good transit. And transit isn't free. Better economics to own an inexpensive car and drive it. For a lot of people, money's tight and need to put food on the table for the family.
Your not wrong, it’s take the Neatherlands 30-50 years to transition from a car centric culture that would make even an American blush, to the cycle centric one they have today.
But as with trees, the best time plant one was ten years ago, the second best time is now. If we keep using the excuse that you can’t build people friendly infrastructure, because there’s no other people friendly infrastructure for it to work with. Then you’ll never build people friendly infrastructure, and you’ll be forever stuck in a car dominated hell scape, where a 30 min drive to do anything is an inescapable reality.
The suburbs (not rural though) have much more accessible… everything really. Go to a Target (a “basically anything that’s not food but also some food” store) in an inner city and they’ll either be out of half the things you need or simply not stock them at all. Suburban stores are fully stocked and prices are lower, with larger sizes available.
The same dynamic exists in healthcare to the point if I actually have real healthcare needs, I go out to the suburbs. I went to the ER in the city one time because I had cut myself pretty badly while cooking. The person who was stitching me up had to stop halfway through to rush and deal with 3 gunshot victims who had all come in at the same time. I sat there with a bleeding, half-stitched hand for 2 hours until they could get someone else.
Much of this was driven historically by racism, redlining and white flight, but it still doesn’t change the fact that health care in cities is more expensive, significantly more burdened and way more of a bureaucratic machine.
These things are doable in cities, the city however have to be build to allow it.
WRT child transport: child transport bikes are seeing a rising adoption here, so it is feasible to bike to work and drop of your kid on the way. Kids will stay dry below the bike's rain cover, though of course the parent who cycles will need some upgrade to his clothing compared to what's needed when going by car (finding cloth that is both rain-tight but doesn't cause sweating takes some experimentation).
If you want to look at the spectrum of possibilities, have a look at e.g.
http://www.nihola.com/home.html
(just enumerating what bikes I see on a regular basis, this list would go on and on)
PS: you may also want to factor in the time spent on maintenance and bureaucracy (dealing with car insurance etc) and the extra monetary effort involved with owning a car vs owning a bike.
However, electric bikes are changing that equation drastically. With an e-bike those climbs are not an issue at all. So there's been a good uptick in people who ride bikes here.
Of course, e-bikes are quite expensive compared to regular bikes, but compared to owning a car they're quite cheap. So for someone living in Oslo, having an e-bike and renting a car a few times for the long trips can be a very good deal.
Sweden is very not flat, and they have plenty of extremely well used cycle infrastructure. Hell their kids cycle to school in snow.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15389588.2019.1...
what happens when kids are 10yrs old. they prbly get their own bikes?
edit: looks like dutch do cycle in winter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViaDwkkXzC8
The linked video discusses the deep effect that urban planning can have sociologically; e.g. if a neighbourhood isn't walkable, kids don't walk, and if kids aren't out walking, kids not being out on their own can become normalised, and even lead to censure/punishment for children's independence.
Which seems crazy (to me, anyway) and very much at odds w/ what we want kids to grow into, e.g. that they be independent and active.
Talk about unintended consequences.
Two of the most cycling friendly cities in the world are also cities with a lot of rainy days (Amsterdan and Copenhagen). A lot of people with kids there will disagree with you.
It seems to me the biggest issue people who never cycle think stops people from cycling is weather, while in reality it is unsafe infrastructure. Build the infrastructure, people will cycle and will not bother about the weather.
also as an aside there's a lot more potential for variance in travel time on a bike and if a school has punitive tardiness systems, this will get taken out on the student a lot.
I can't think of many situations where schedules collided to the point where I needed to take several bulky items home and back on the same day. And worst case, I'd just leave my sports kit at school overnight perhaps? Or get a lift on that one day. Or take the bus!
I can't speak to large instruments though, that's a bigger (although fairly niche!?) problem.
Overall I think it's a cultural/convenience thing.
No?
Cars are expensive, and they're not accessible: vision or motor issues will ban you from car usage (and rightfully so). They are also a major and active danger to everyone outside a car. Even more so these days as ebikes, motorized wheelchairs, accessibility scooters, and cantas are more available than ever, and public transport has much improved in their allowance for those (except cantas I guess). I can certainly say that around here, 20 years back, the odds you could get a wheelchair (to say nothing of a motorised one) on a bus were essentially nil.
Limiting cars and improving alternatives makes the entire thing less dangerous and more accessible to everyone.
> I can't imagine having multiple children and living with no car. You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days.
So… are you saying that the Dutch don't have rain or that they don't have children?
A decent city accommodates this, requires a lot less upfront cost, and just fewer resources all around. The comment you're replying to seems to think its not feasible.
When I lived in Singapore, it was very common for families to have cars despite the world class transit system. And despite the $50-70k for a permit to own a car and the 100% tariffs. That just demonstrates how much utility people get from cars. People are willing to pay a lot to have access to a car.
I remember discussing commutes with a developer in Singapore, she "had to" drive for an hour every day. We were looking at Google Maps to help me follow what she described, and I noticed a rail line. Was that an option? No! She couldn't be seen using the train.
Keep in mind despite the rail lines, it's much cheaper to own a place that isn't within easy walking distance. For the same amount of money you'd get a much bigger place.
But regardless, it was mostly just due to the demands of family. The train makes sense when it's you alone. When you're paying $20-30 per day for a family's transit costs (4 rides at $1.50 each times for 2 adults and 2 teens), then suddenly the $700-$1000/month to own a car doesn't seem so silly.
Of course you can take 2-3 year olds on a bus? (Not like they could drive the car themselves either...)
Most of my life is close to my home, so I can bike to work and bike for shopping. When the snow hits, people start asking why I don't walk instead. According to them, biking in the snow is dangerous. The answer is simple enough: sidewalks are impassible for a few days after a snowfall, and can be icy for weeks after. Aside for side streets, roads tend to be dry and ice free within hours of the snow stopping. Even the side streets aren't too bad except for the intersections. The worse part is climbing over a three foot tall snowbank to get onto and off of the road.
Somehow people are still able to have families and get kids to school.
Add on top you’ll often be riding a motorbike in between container trucks i think your example makes the opposite point you think it does.
My point was that hundreds of millions of people have families without having a car.
I didn't say anything about being a pedestrian.
And container trucks aren't allowed in the city before 10pm, so I doubt you'll spend much time riding among them
And I’m not sure balancing a family of two adults and two children on a motorbike is much of a better option.
And sure if you’re wealthy enough to live in the city center there aren’t many container trucks, but many people aren’t.
That is because everything in U.S. American life is centered around having a car and not having a car is fighting against that setup. There are perfectly viable alternatives for living without a car but there's been a strong social trend away from these for a very long time.
It will require new modes of living and some re-organization of our cities to get back to a point where not-having a car becomes an attractive default mode again.
E-bikes are a wonderful thing. In countries with good cycling cultures, the older population cycles more than the younger.
People bike as children and teenagers, then get driving licenses and drive for a few years. Once the novelty of car wears off they start cycling again. It’s cheaper, quicker, easier, and healthier.
> You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days.
Yes you can. The Dutch do it everyday. Also you don’t need to bike your kids to school, with proper cycle infrastructure, they can bike themselves, sans helicopter parent.
> Some form of "school" starts at around 2-3 y/o. 2-3 year olds cannot take a bus.
There are many types of bikes, include cargo bikes designed to transport multiple young children, driven by one adult. You can even get motor to help you out!
> There is winter, heavy rains, and wind. In most places you cannot rely on a bike all the time.
Dress appropriately! Wear coats! We solved this problem a long time ago. There are plenty of countries where people of all ages and experience cycle year round. In the sun, in the rain, in the wind, in the snow! Don’t limit your cycling to just pleasant weather, by proper clothing so all weather is pleasant.
> In most cities people work far from home, and the early schools the kids go to are also far away. A young family with two 2-5 y/o children will not be able to rely on a bus and a bike, unless they live in some expensive area where everything is nearby and are lucky to have jobs at the same place.
This is very US centric world view. The US has a strange obsession with spreading everything out as much as possible, ensuring that you have to spend your life in car going from A to B. I would argue that more enlighten approach is to put stuff close together, so you can spend your time doing stuff, not travelling to stuff.
That honestly sounds masochistic. I'm not from US btw.
I’m not sure what wonderful part of world you live in, but for me, dressing correctly for the weather is a basic requirement for comfortable living. Assuming of course you ever want to leave your home.
The local elementary school has a large number of walkers and a large number of children who are driven in. Those who walk in are frequently accompanied by their parents, the parents appear to enjoy the time with their children, and the parents typically hang around to socialize with other parents. Parents who drive their children in usually drop their children off in dangerous spots and spend an awful lot of time socializing with police officers. A number of those parents also try to drive through crossing guards (sometimes literally) who are there to keep the children safe, including the children who were dropped off on the wrong side of the street. Driving may be convenient, but there are many times when convenience is taken too far and the walkers seem to be happier.
Schools in my city tend to be cancelled when the weather is too dangerous for driving yet safe for walking (e.g. large snowfalls) and are virtually never cancelled when it is too dangerous for walking yet fine for driving (e.g. high wind chill). In a way, it makes sense. Walkers can still be driven in when it is unsafe to walk, while most of the children who are driven in cannot walk to school. It is one of the many costs of designing car centric cities instead of walkable ones.
Where I live, people walk their small children to school. There's also a "footbus" which is basically parents taking turns walking the kids from their block to the school.
17 acres may be a bit small to have a school, but a moderately dense neighbourhood should be able to afford a school within 5-10m walking distance.
Therein lies the rub.
Current zoning laws in most of the US make it pretty much impossible to build anything except suburbs, attached to ginormous parking lots you call cities, by massive highways. It’s not hard to see why building better public infrastructure is so difficult when the current layout of most American cities means it’s difficult to even walk between shops on the same road, so public transport can’t move people between pedestrian hubs.
Changing that fundamental issue with American cities would require people to realise that current approach (which they grew up with, and was touted as the future for most of their lives) is broken and needs to change. As much as it needs to change, I can understand why people have a lot of difficulty accepting that.
It sucks because we are just sleepwalking through this. Everyone takes it for granted that energy will be cheap and plentiful and that we can always just spread further out or build a bigger highway.
The issue is that we have extraordinarily cheap energy so of course people are going to buy cars. Oh and gotta keep the domestic car manufacturing industry alive in case we need to build tanks. Nobody has been paying the price for global warming either - so cars are subsidized big time in that way too.
Would you be ok with a strip club and liquor store next to a elementary school? I wouldn't, and appreciate zoning laws for that reason.
Simply blaming NIMYism feels like lazy analysis. Every community is different.. how, why, and where things are built is far too complex to explain w/one word.
There is a link between the availability of liquor stores and fast food restaurants near school, and students consuming unhealthy levels of both. (For liquor you just pay some random in the street to buy for you, or you find a store that doesn’t ID). As with many things in life, if you make something convenient, people will use it more.
As a result fast food restaurants and off licences are generally restricted from be built near schools, and for fast food restaurants, also delivering to schools.
Obviously elementary school children are probably to young to be influenced by either, the but the above applies for older age groups.
I don’t think strict zoning is the right approach to solve issues like this, it’s an extremely crude tool for urban planning. But specific, evidence backed (I.e. there’s strong evidence that co-locating these buildings have significant negative impacts on local populations), restrictions on what types of buildings can co-exist seems reasonable.
Not in your backyard indeed. Others don't want multi-family low-income housing in their neighborhood either for presumably similar reasons.
You don’t want heavy industry to be co-located with residential areas, for no other reason than heavy industry occasionally have catastrophic accidents that destroy many square miles of buildings. You don’t want residential buildings in that blast radius.
Equally zoning laws that specify the exact type of housing in a residential area strikes me as counterproductive, and clear case of NIMBYism encoded in policy.
I am fan of planning policy that restricts building types in order to mitigate obvious health risks. And provides guidance on where commercial and residential areas are (but doesn’t introduce strict restrictions). After that I think people should be allowed to build where they want. If they want a house in the middle of a commercial district, that’s their choice. Just don’t complain about the noise.
It is very much true that you need zoning, but the most egregious elements of american zoning are the outcome of NIMBYism and racism, and yet american zoning will allow schools within the blast radius of chemical plants. Horrifyingly, I was thinking of the 2013 West Fertiliser plant and checking whether my recollection that there had been a school nearby was correct (it was) when I discovered that in 2019 a TPC plant blowing up also damaged a nearby school.
> After that I think people should be allowed to build where they want. If they want a house in the middle of a commercial district, that’s their choice. Just don’t complain about the noise.
IIRC, japanese zoning works in terms of "nuisance levels" (noise, pollution, traffic, …). You could have a house in the middle of a mid-level nuisance commercial district, but not a noisy business in the middle of a (low nuisance) residential district; however low-nuisance businesses would be allowed just fine.
For the past 30-40 years, the Dutch have managed to completely transform their urban landscapes into something far more people friendly. Additionally American cities used to be dominated by pedestrians and bike, the car centric city is a relatively new phenomenon. So it quite possible for the US to reverse the damage done by cars, and plenty of case studies to base the work on.
There's a logical place for an autonomous delivery vehicle, but wasting 95% of its energy fighting against gravity to carry a six pack of beer is absurd. Make a ground vehicle the size of a Saint Bernard that travels in bike lanes. Big enough to handle a large array of direct deliveries, and probably had a much longer runtime on a charge.
If you want to be really seamless, build dedicated routes for them in underground tunnels.
But then something happens. They get married and realize the schools there suck and are completely unaccountable to meddling from parents. So they have to move to find a decent school.
Or, they or their spouse or friend gets mugged, or their house gets burgled, or any number of other crimes that are prevalent in cities run by a single political party. So, they move to escape the crime.
If people have the means to move, they will do so to get out from under high crime, high tax, low service regimes.