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Comment by holoduke | Hacker News Reader

Amsterdam is gone mad with their anti car policy. Most people here I guess are in their 20 and 30s. Living in small apartments in bigger cities without children. For them it's fine. But once you reach 40 and have older children you need a car still, because it makes live much easier. Life is not only the city (fortunately) I actually left Amsterdam because of their insane car policy. At some point I wasn't able to park my car near my home anymore ,because they decided to reduce parking spots. Everyday I was commuting to a spot outside of the city where my car was parked. I now comfortably live in a village 30km outside of Amsterdam. I can park 3 cars if I want. That's also a reason why most people leave Amsterdam once kids turn 5 years old. The city is now only with 20s and 30s people. A pitty.

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Yeah, it was so much nicer with cars everywhere. A great place to raise kids, because if kids need to go somewhere they can just take the car.

Glad you found a place where you can park 3 cars, it is very useful to have so many cars.

Nothing like an accidental death when kid rushes on a road. Much safer than with those dangerous bikes.

You may have a good reason for using that tone, but I'd never figure out that reason from the content of your post.

You might have a point. Mu frustration with the comment I was replying to was that it seems to be mostly about owning cars for owning cars sake (as if being able to park 3 cars was an actually desirable or reasonable thing to do) and promoting car ownership as the only possibility when kids turn 5 for reasons unknown.

Some of the most livable cities in the world have good public transport and low rates of car ownership (a fact that seems more and more correlated to said livability) and are good places to raise families.

A city is not a good place to grow up children. Crowded, busy place where they hardly can play outside. Maybe good to raise Instagram type of people. Kids need to become dirty outside in bushes. In Amsterdam you never see +5 year old kids outside. Because they aren't many and because they cannot play outside.

Getting a car when you have kids is, happily, a lifestyle choice in Amsterdam, one where you choose personal convenience over the health and happiness of others. We have two kids and a cargo bike and don't need or miss having a car in Amsterdam, and we're hardly unique in that...

We may hope that one day we'll look back at this practice of having personal cars sitting around in cities as a backward phenomenon, something like open sewers.

Once kids turn 5, isn't it time to, you know, get them their own bike? Seems tons of Amsterdamers with kids get by just fine with good bike infrastructure.

The only way reasonably dense cities such as Amsterdam could accommodate everyone's desire to drive is by tolerating dirty air, severe congestion and roads that are dangerous and unpleasant for people walking or cycling. From experience it is entirely possible to raise a family in a city without owning a car, even in a country that isn't as enlightened towards urban planning as the Netherlands.

The thing about Dutch planning that is even nicer than their car constraining policies in the cities is that safe cycling is provided for way beyond city limits. A few years ago I took my family on holiday to the Netherlands and we travelled safely and comfortably by bike, both in the cities, the countryside and the villages in between.

It doesn't surprise me that not everyone is happy. Car drivers have been able to claim the lions share of scarce road space for themselves for so long, equality must feel like victimisation.

What about the older children makes them car-dependent? Don’t you worry they’ll miss out on the cultural richness of the city? I grew up in the car-dependent village lifestyle (albeit in the US, which is surely less livable than the European interpretation) and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone’s children.

> What about the older children makes them car-dependent

Nothing, certainly not in Amsterdam. Kids from 4~5 years on learn to ride a bike, from around 8~9 years old they can ride a bike to school by themselves.

I don't think that's the case in the Netherlands. In cities you hardly ever see older children playing outside. Hardly any place to do so. In villages children can play in forrests or just down the road. A city is crowded and busy. not a good and healthy place to grow up. A bit too artificial in my opinion.

Glad you live outside nowadays. City needs less people like you.

Sounds like San Francisco. Perfect for young people without kids, but eventually most people leave for greener pastures (for parents).

Nothing wrong with that. Kinda like how NYC (or at least Manhattan) has been for a while. You’re either young or fabulously wealthy - everyone else leaves.

Except it's nothing like they describe. I live in Amsterdam and use bike everyday, I constantly see families on a cargo bikes and they couldn't have been happier.

Nothing signals "we have just enough money to be happy and don't push ourselves to make more" than owning a cargo bike. Past the point of material wealth that allows one to buy nice electrified one, having more money gets one into trap of diminished returns, sunken costs and all being taxes on Box 3 way too much. Those people have found the equilibrium and of course they look happy.

SFUSD is the sixth largest school district (by student population) in California, and the largest in the Bay Area.

https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/ad/ceflargesmalldist.asp

SF has the lowest percentage of kids of any major city in the US

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