The topic is explored thouroughly on the 'Not Just Bikes' youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes which uses information from urban planning group 'Strong Towns' https://www.strongtowns.org/.
The sweet spot seems to be about 1920-1940.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeshore/Lake_Vista,_New_Orle...
> consider college campuses and their central quads, which typically do not have automobiles even today. The ones people admire are the older ones, not the newer campuses, which tend to be functional but aesthetically mediocre
I suspect that there is considerable survivor bias going into that. There were plenty of bad aesthetic choices in the past, too; we just recognise and remember the good ones.
Similarly, there surely are good aesthetic choices being made today—it's just that, as in any age, there are many more bad ones, and those are the ones that are easier to call to mind. A lot of good modern aesthetic choices borrow from the past, but that, too, is true of any age; the choices of the past we admire were not born ab novo, but were themselves inspired by still older design.
This is not to make the ridiculous claim that nothing is changing, only that "we look to the past for cues to good design" is not in and of itself an indictment of some fallen modern age.
But by your very logic, we also look to the past for cues to bad design. There are plenty of ugly old towns and cities in the US. Regardless, the most beautiful cities in the US: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Charleston, New Orleans, Boston, Seattle are also some of the oldest.
> there surely are good aesthetic choices being made today
With how restrictive the building and city planning codes are, the amount of creativity is extremely limited.
Neither source just simplistically says "it's the fault of cars", both are deeply thought-out perspectives on what is really going on. It's not just cars, it's certain engineering and bureaucratic decisions that were made around cars. It's also the scale of development, i.e. governments that are set up to work with large-scale developers and are too hard for small-scale developers to deal with, and the general trend toward all-at-once top-down development, and I could go on and on. StrongTowns has successfully diagnosed the entire systemic pattern. It's not just blame-the-cars.
Check out the actual resources, don't just assume they are only the simple thing the poster had to say to make any point at all.
If anyone is interested in what's being discussed here and in Strong Towns, I'd highly recommend reading it[0]. I had been a fan of Strong Towns for a long time, but just finally read the book recently.
Admiring the old brick styles of the ivy leagues is simple confirmation bias due to their academic prestige. There are plenty of beautiful Modernist buildings, it comes down to if the college is willingly to pay for it.
I live in an apartment, but the house I grow up in had more lawn space than was used by the car.
So that’s in a city, not even the maligned suburbs!
Because if so they're also responsible for housing prices being insane in the area
Heh found a trailer park.
I'm not sure any development built after about 1975 in my midwestern metro area isn't like this, including the sound walls if they're next to an interstate or major highway.
My neighborhood, with... oh, I dunno 150houses? At least a dozen named-and-numbered streets present in it? It has two exits. Get this: one of those can only be entered if you're going a particular direction on the road it intersects, because there's an unbroken median curb there. So it's more like 1.5 entrances.
Our neighborhood before this one? Two exits (it's bigger than this neighborhood and still developing, so I expect it'll get a third pretty soon).
Our neighborhood before that? One exit. One. technically two, but the second was marked "dead end" (it wasn't, really, but that was probably still the right thing to label it) and took you on a weird barely-developed road with no other intersecting roads, which looped you back up to the same highway the the neighborhood's other route would have put you on, so even for people who lived right by the connection to that road, leaving the normal way was faster.
The general rule seems to be: no more than one exit on any major road bounding the neighborhood. This means neighborhoods that are right next to each other can be slow to travel between on foot or by bike, without cutting through yards.
> They are built in such a way the actual city neighborhood is disconnected from its surroundings and makes transit by anything other than car difficult -buses don't go in, and biking is fraught -all relatively close to the downtown area.
Some folks for whom keeping a working car around isn't a big deal, consider it a feature that their neighborhoods are hard to reach by a combination of public transit and foot. Crime rates go up and the homeless population shoots up, they say, when they add a bus stop next to your neighborhood. Time to sell before the market drops if you see them working on a new bus stop in walking distance of your house, they say. (seriously, this is straight from several people I know, not something I'm inventing or guessing at)
Setting aside questions of morality, what part of that is factually incorrect?
In places where driving a car is more convenient than taking mass transit (almost everywhere in the US), mass transit is primarily used by persons who cannot afford to own a car. If a mass transit stop is added to a neighborhood which did not previously have one, that means poorer individuals and families can now live there (or visit there). There are known correlations between poverty (including homelessness) and crime, so it is logical that adding a mass transit stop will increase crime over time.
Why is that incorrect?
You're all focusing on the low level details while you're destroying the urban fabric of your cities and towns and housing is becoming super expensive that you end up with those masses of homeless people you then try to avoid by tearing down bus stops (or not building them in the first place).
I do understand however what it is trying to say. My opinion is that housing development is vastly commoditized and builders wants tried and trusted designs at lowest prices and fastest speed. There is not much room for creativity and experimentation. I went to see houses build by Toll Brothers which are premium expensive builders and even their designs were regular with few bells and whistles only to show off. Lower end market basically just follows the template. This is extremely disappointing because house construction is something that lasts for so long.
I chatted with Chuck Marohn (founder and face of Strong Towns) once at an event a couple years ago, and they're quite aware that they get a lot of traffic from HN.
As others point out, Americans like and want to transport themselves by car. Let's accept this, work with it, and build around it instead of lusting after a minority defined Utopia.
But the GP spoke of single-use zoning, a slightly different cudgel. I understand the abstract appeal of dividing up a map into neatly-separated areas, a la SimCity, but that just doesn't accomodate real life.
This is such a neighbourhood from the early 1920s not too far from where I grew up. Take a stroll through it with Street View. It is perfectly walkable.
https://goo.gl/maps/kKqhtNbKDy6oycSi9
The lots are smallish compared to the American standard, though. This is a crowded continent.
https://theconversation.com/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-cycl...
The group that talks about systemic racism is perpetuating it.
Society (cities) would quickly re-orientate themselves so work wasn't so far away from home. So shops weren't on the outskirts of town.
Your argument is predicated on cars existing. On cars causing the problem you suggest they solve.
It takes very little empathy to realise that driving a car is a huge technical barrier compared to a wheelchair/scooter/just walking slower. There is no reason you need to be healthy to avoid car use... except one. That motorists will kill you if you don't quickly get of out their way. I've seen large parts of my local area become completely inaccessible to the less-abled because of fast roads, so can it with the "I'm thinking or the sick!". You're not.
Or to just go look at which cities are not color-coded into mansions and slums, and notice those cities are ones where the poor do not need to maintain their own expensive machinery for basic tasks. Because ... again, I don't believe I need to explain that. It's a deliberate choice you're making to not understand it.
The standard social hierarchy is: walk everywhere -> bike everywhere -> go by motorbike everywhere -> drive a car everywhere.
I tried to find the tweet, but it was succinctly put ~"it's said people in Los Angeles love their cars, but people in LA have no choice but to own a car, it's not love, it is necessity".
In every city that has made a concerted effort to accommodate all modes of transport, driving as a percentage has gone down. "build it and they will come" is better suited to transport than it ever was to SaaS.
It is easy to conclude that people don't "want" to drive.
LA is also cherry picked to be one of the worst places for cars. It’s legendary for its traffic.
Writing in from the PNW where I wouldn’t trade my car, and the freedom it gives me and my friends and my dogs to travel, for anything.
If it was a hellscape dominated by 26 lane highways and hours of traffic to get anywhere like many parts of the US, I never would've bothered moving there.
"people in los angeles love their cars"
and the top result was
"People in Los Angeles Are Getting Rid Of Their Cars"
Hypothetically, if one person had to die every time you used your car (for your dogs to travel or whatever) would you stop using your car? How about if it were one person for every 1000 journeys. What if every single journey you made in your car had a very small and undeniable contribution to the deaths of people you live around, would you stop then?
Are you a vegan? Hypothetically, how many people have to die due to the greenhouse gasses emitted due to your meat consumption? Have you ever served somebody an egg that didn't have a fully cooked yolk? Do you consume any single-use plastics? Do you use a compost toilet?
We could go on and on.
doesn't need a survey or study. Are you disputing the perception that Los Angeles is a car-centric city?
> Are you a vegan?
Yes.
This is the part that needs a study or survey to back it up.
If we're just throwing around anecdotes, I've both driven a car and taken the bus in a city that was known for its mass transit, and the mass transit sucked compared to being in a car.
> Yes.
And how about the rest? I'm just making sure we're being consistent, and that you optimize all your life choices to avoid any possibility of harming someone, no matter how remote or indirect.
Los Angeles is famed for its motordom.
Tell me, where are you from that that needs explaining? It's fascinating to meet someone from such a remote tribe.
I've lived in Sacramento, San Diego and Seattle. I've taken mass transit and driven a car in all of those cities.
In my experience, in every city, the mass transit sucked. Access to anything not on a bus line is effectively inaccessible without a car. The busses smell like urine. They don't show up on time. Mentally ill people harass me and my dog on a regular enough basis where it's more trouble than it's worth.
I love my car. I don't see it as a thing I'm forced to use, it's something I chose when given the option between it and a bus. It's a safe, climate controlled vehicle which is available at any minute of the day that I want it to be.
I think what you're trying to say is "people will always choose a private air-conditioned car", but I'm saying car use is artificially high because other options are not feasible. Where it is safe and comfortable (i.e. away from cars) to make most of one's journeys (under 5 or 10 miles) by other means, people choose non-car options at a higher rate than people in LA (or Sac etc) are choosing.
You are being obtuse by asking for journal references where they're not needed (this isn't a conference, it's a conversation in the comment section on a website).
I'm asking for you to back up the claim that people in LA hate their cars, not that cars aren't the most popular form of transport there. People hate _traffic_, not their cars. I live somewhere with low traffic. Best of both worlds.
Sure, it would be great to have better public transit options in LA. But I'd wager (because we're going off of our theory of mind intuition, and not polls) that people would prefer their cars to bus transport, even in LA.
"81% of Americans agree with the sentiment that their car reflects who they are...59% consider themselves as someone who is passionate about cars, trucks, motorcycles, or other vehicles" [1]
78% of Americans personally enjoy driving moderately to greatly [2]
> Wrong.
> In every city that has made a concerted effort to accommodate all modes of transport
These are strong claims without citation. Your subsequent comments in this thread reveal a fairly extreme and inflexible viewpoint on cars which you advance through many logical fallacies (straw men, false dilemma, and hasty generalizations). In other words, I don't think you're evaluating this issue in good faith or rationally. So, I'm not going to engage beyond this comment.
The main point of my initial comment was to point out that this "walk-able utopia" goal is not shared by a great number of people and contravening both the will of the majority and the current state is an exercise in futility and thus a waste of a society's time and resources.
[1] https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/american-attitudes-on...
[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/234416/driverless-cars-tough-se...
Apparently a whole lot of Americans _don't_ want to transport themselves by car.
It's almost a tautology to say that if you want to have a particular kind of nice neighborhood you'll have to include those uses in your planning.
I think that most people want to be able to get from A to B in comfort, and are not necessarily married to one particular mode of transport.
If the only way to get anywhere is by car, then of course people want to transport themselves by car. If you offer other competitive options, people will sometimes take those options instead.
I think the minority are questioning the strangeness of this supposition. Least of all because the government has a hand in it.
Neighbourhoods are where people live, yet built for and around cars?
It may be single variable but I think a reasonable person might want to question that at least on some way.
A good example of a car centric city that is very attractive is Seattle from ten years ago. The city had a strong sense of community because it was composed of intimate neighborhoods mostly with single family zoning rather than mid rise boxy apartment blocks everywhere, ample green space for its population, and roads with little traffic. It is because Seattle was so attractive that people and businesses flocked to it. Now those aspects are going away as density, anti car policies, and other issues are making the overall quality of life worse.
But I suspect a huge part of it is visiting Europe or Asia as a tourist and enjoying being without a car.
But they didn’t actually live there.
Agreed.
As a tourist you also tend to visit the historic center of capital cities, which have by far the best public transport and fanciest architecture.
Plus you're on vacation and having fun.
When you live there and walk to your commuter train a gray november morning, it's a very different experience.
Still preferable, to me at least! Getting in to work and shucking off your mist-covered coat and making a nice cup of tea made it just fine.
I think it's such a pervasive meme that the US is bad for transit that people don't even try. I don't ever use cars (like twice in 450 days) AND I live beside one of the major transport hubs in my city (65/Folsom in Sacramento), yet I don't know where or when buses could bring me.
There is a dearth in communication.
I was in Orlando last week and the buses were great, and empty.
There are tradeoffs, but I much preferred being able to take the train or bus and relax and zone out rather than have spend the entire trip in the vigilant state you need while driving. And while cycling, yes, you have to be vigilant, but you're getting exercise too.
I'm at a point in my life where, I probably don't want to live in the big city as much. (Funnily enough, when I was much younger I never thought I would want to.) But anyway, I'd still much prefer to live in a denser, more walkable suburb, which tend to be unfortunately hard to find and expensive in the US for reasons that are probably already all discussed in comments in this thread.
I live in Dublin. I'd rank it as pretty middling in transport by European standards. We have a decent bus network, commuter rail to the suburbs, trams that are frequent but overcrowded at rush hour, and intercity trains to the other cities in the country.
I've been here nearly a decade and have no great rush to buy a car. And there's still obvious improvement to be made. The red line needs a relief line unless work from home makes the expanse of new offices at the end of the line mostly empty, cycling lane coverage is spotty and often conflicting with buses or parking, and bike parking is lacking.
Very few American cities actually offers FAST point to point transit via automobiles. 50 years ago, it was probably realistic, but now automobile traffic in most American cities makes quick transportation anywhere unrealistic.
To be fair, cars are on demand, unlike tube where waiting times can reach an outrageous 5 minutes.
https://content.tfl.gov.uk/technical-note-12-how-many-cars-a...
I for one simply don't want to pay the to own and maintain a car, preferring instead to rent one or purchase a ride (via taxi or rideshare etc) as needed.
If you design cities to not have alternatives to cars then of course there's no substitute. All my day-to-day trips are currently faster using a bike+train, significantly less stressful, cheaper and also much healthier. People don't generally prefer specific modes of transportation, they just want to travel quickly and conveniently. That can be achieved with any mode of transportation, yet cars are the most expensive, most polluting, loudest, lowest density and most stressful.
I just took a look at a picture of Seattle from 2011 and it looks like half the area is dedicated to car parking with huge stroads everywhere. Having to take a car to go to the shops 300m away sounds like a total nightmare. And it's not even the suburbs! If those roads had little traffic on them then that was clearly just due to the population not having caught up. Once it did of course those roads weren't going to be enough. At that point you can either bulldoze more of the city for the car and still get awful traffic or provide better alternatives...
For reference this is the photo I found: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Downtown...
I've never been to Seattle, but it looks like a medium-density city on the map.
Yes.
Now go look at Peter Cooper Village in NYC.[1]
"The complex is designed as two large "superblocks", independent of the grid system that characterizes the majority of Manhattan below 155th Street.It consists of two large parks, one for each part of the complex, juxtaposed with modern red brick apartment towers."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_Town%E2%80%93Peter_...