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Comment by silverpepsi | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one bothered by articles of this nature never really clarifying that nothing they say has any meaning below a certain very specific population density and in very specific areas with permissive zoning allowing commerce near to housing?

"Parking is, however, just a symptom of our massive car addiction."

It's especially hard to take seriously with comments like the above. I don't personally have a single friend in North America or Europe to whom it would be a "reasonable alternative" to travel on highways (where it is prohibited) by bike or bus and invest maybe 90 minutes to simply get to the closest grocery store and then be able to take home maybe 1/10th of what they normally load into their trunk. This false alternative is always brought up, but the only real option that exists is reorganizing housing across the whole society to massively increase density and to mix commerce zoning with homes in a way currently unheard of.

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> I don't personally have a single friend in North America or Europe to whom it would be a "reasonable alternative" to travel on highways (where it is prohibited) by bike or bus and invest maybe 90 minutes to simply get to the closest grocery store and then be able to

Right. That’s like calling water wet. Of course we live this way, we designed our cities to make us live this way…

I’m not sure what you’re talking about w.r.t Europe. Even if you have friends that drive everywhere that just is not how most people live day-to-day.

Best thing about living in older European cities is they don't have this stupid zoning, they mixed commercial and housing because that's how people chose to live before planners got invented after ww2. Now planners are patting themselves on the back for recently inventing the 20 minute community, Which is exactly the same thing. My one major thing I want in life is to never ever live in a suburban development with zero to do except drive to places.

And I thought it's only software UI designers who like to watch the world burn.

Urban planning is probably as old as cities. Based on my limited experience, European planners just focus more on actual planning than mere zoning.

When an area is being (re)developed, the planners try to figure out many of the details. How should be public transport and parking organized? Where are the walking and biking routes? Where should the parks and commercial spaces be? And so on. Older European cities are not as much organically grown as planned and replanned over centuries.

You might be right, but there was an interesting thing on BBC radio 4 s few years ago, an British architect who grew up in Lebanon explained that he thought the UK should bin it's planners completely as all that had been built post ww2 when that arm of government was created, was monstrosities or at best only allow the equivalent of music's James blunt records. Not great but at least boring and acceptible.

> before planners got invented after ww2.

I mean, I don't disagree on the overall point, but one could do with reading up on people like Haussmann: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eug%C3%A8ne_Haussmann

You are very right. What I said was sort of incorrect. I'm referring to this in the UK:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_and_Country_Planning_Ac...

In particular it means that owning land does not automatically allow you to build on it.

Lack of zoning is one element of the equation but having developed before the car is pretty crucial too. Houston, TX has no zoning laws to speak of but because most of its growth happened in the last century, it grew outwards instead of upwards.

>Of course we live this way, we designed our cities to make us live this way…

I feel like you're almost making a moral statement there, it doesn't have the nuance I think exists.

1) You have people like my parents, siblings, and friends in the Midwest. The idea of living somewhere where they don't have the practical privacy of living on a farm literally horrifies them. I can't convince them otherwise, I've tried. They view me as simply "weird". Literally no hope, but maybe you can convince their kids.

2) You have people like me who love the energy, convenience, and stimulation of high density living but still end up driving and having a car because the cost differential is just way too extreme to logically justify living where I want to.

There's a mystery to me in it. I spent time in Bangkok and Shanghai and why does it seem really easy to rent a centrally located place in a quality tall building, as if it's just normal, and without a prices that seems insanely disproportionate to other life expenses? Yet in the US, it's very rare. There's not enough demand? Labor costs are too high? Laws like building hight limits in the US prevent it? I've heard there are taboos in Europe for high buildings as well.

I think there is also an element of culturally dictated space demands that comes into play. You can have these nice dense places in Bangkok because people will see 300 SQ ft and still rent it. In the US people told me I was brave for trying to survive by myself in "only" 500 SQ ft. They could never "stand not even being able to breathe". You won't have an easy time changing people's minds about this. Personally I'm willing to live in 150sq ft if I'm at the heart of the fun.

> I spent time in Bangkok and Shanghai and why does it seem really easy to rent a centrally located place in a quality tall building, as if it's just normal, and without a prices that seems insanely disproportionate to other life expenses? Yet in the US, it's very rare. There's not enough demand? Labor costs are too high? Laws like building hight limits in the US prevent it?

There aren’t enough of them because in huge swaths of the country it’s illegal to build anything denser than a single-family home. There’s plenty of demand for it, there’s just not enough supply.

Doesn’t even have to be high-rises, in most places it’s illegal to build the sort of mid-rises that are everywhere in European cities.

EDIT: Oh, and it’s also usually illegal to put a business in a residential area, which forces things further apart and forces people to drive to get to anything.

I live in the midwest too. The vast majority of people live in the suburbs or an urban area. I don’t know why those who live on farms who already have the roads they need should be the primary voice we listen to, especially when nothing changes for them. That’s the thing. Nobody is changing their way of life.

> 2) You have people like me who love the energy, convenience, and stimulation of high density living but still end up driving and having a car because the cost differential is just way too extreme to logically justify living where I want to.

Right but those places are so expensive because they are so rare. Why are they so rare? Because we don’t build them.

> I think there is also an element of space demands. You can have these nice dense places in Bangkok because people will see 300 SQ ft and still rent it. In the US people told me I was brave for trying to survive by myself in "only" 500 SQ ft. They could never "stand not even being able to breathe".

This is another end of a spectrum, one which I don’t like either. We don’t need skyscrapers. We can build with a great level of density and have the best of all worlds.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/9b/26/379b266652e0a2013c0c...

This is in Columbus. You can have a car, you can even have two, you can have a garage, or park on the street. But you can also ride your bike to work or walk. These aren’t 500 square foot homes.

“Yea but all of that is so expensive” yes because we don’t build them. There is no reason this isn’t affordable except that we simply choose to not build like this. That’s it. We just choose to amputate our mobility and pay outrageous amounts of money to have the privilege of driving. The high prices of these homes demonstrate that they are desired.

I don’t advocate for skyscrapers. They are an anti-pattern enabled by cheap energy and oil. The other end, the car-driven suburb is bad too. Ideally we’d have towns like they do in Europe with rural communities surrounding them. So your family can have their space and farm. And everyone who wants a town can have that too.

> nothing changes for them

People who don't live in cities still go to cities occasionally, and most anti-car proposals negatively impact this use case the most.

Well then don’t live on a farm? I mean I’m not sure what they’re expecting. If anything there would be fewer cars on the road and less traffic.

Maybe we should buy the land surrounding their farm and just place apartments and Wal-Marts and tear down the trees? They can live next to the city they wanted. Oh and that way I can go visit a farm whenever I want, easily and conveniently and feel like I’m on the countryside. Similar to a farmer getting to feel like they are part of the city or town. This cuts both ways.

“But Eric this is already happening”

Yea because we build suburbs, and have to spread everything out.

> Well then don’t live on a farm?

People who live on farms are feeding the rest of us. They're kind of important.

Of course they are. I love farmers. I wish I could buy their fresh produce directly similar to how it occurs in small European towns and city markets. I want local farmers feeding me and my family. But… those farmers apparently prefer that I live in a suburb and go to the grocery store and buy produce from somewhere else instead so they can have a highway and easy parking to the city center they don’t go to.

“Choose” is a critical word, too. We’ve chosen it partially because some laws setup over half a century ago have a lot of inertia, and have literally made it illegal to build many of the places you’re describing.

Even when it’s not explicitly illegal, it can be stymied by people who were appointed who simply can’t imagine people wanting to live near public transit and not own a car. Just recently in Boston, a building that was 5 stories high, and a 5 minute walk to an excellent subway station, was rejected by the Zoning Board of Appeals. [1]

The arguments made included that the building was too high, and that it lacked parking. At 5 stories high, it was 1 story higher than a very nearby building, and 2 stories higher than many residences near it, which are 3 stories.

And it’s a 5 minute walk to a subway. That’s exactly the kind of place to live and not own a car. But the city zoning board didn’t think that was an acceptable way to live, and they chose not to… partially because the law gave them the ability to choose that, because not having minimum amounts of parking is illegal when building a new place to live. It’s illegal even if you live a 5 minute walk from a subway stop.

[1] https://www.universalhub.com/2022/board-rejects-apartment-bu...

I would happily live in a 150 sq ft shed if it kept me out of the city and the "fun". It's not that I'm not willing to make do with a small space, it's that I don't want to be tripping over my neighborsband dealing with their noise and idiosyncrasies.

The biggest problem with increasing density is noise. Some of it can be solved with better building standards, but that increases cost again.

And in western countries there seems to have been a general erosion of the kind of local level government authority you need to deal with the one household that is a chronic noise problem for the hundreds of people they disturb around them.

These discussions tend to gloss over the fact that more density is going to require tackling antisocial behaviour head on, and local government are neither willing or able to do so.

> The biggest problem with increasing density is noise.

Most of that noise is from the cars.

https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8

Most of the noise might be from cars, but the noise that makes me want to hurt people is from stereos and parties and dickheads with power tools at fuck off O'clock in the morning.

Edit: and motorbikes, fuck motorbikes. I'll give you that one.

The stomping noises upstairs in my old apartment were from cars? And cars pumped Tejano music through my vents? (Didn't actually mind that one. They were very loud, but during reasonable-ish hours) I guess what I thought was a screaming child in the hallway was also cars. Crazy.

> The biggest problem with increasing density is noise.

Noise can be managed with sound insulation, but the biggest problem with density is the crowds. Big lines and waits for everything because there are so many people. I'm very happy to live in a borderline-rural suburb. No lines anywhere, no traffic, no waiting anywhere. It's so nice.

I'm looking at spending a massive amount of money to move somewhere remote. I can't stand cities.

> Personally I'm willing to live in 150sq ft if I'm at the heart of the fun.

How could that work? Do you own anything? Do you have any hobbies? I'm having trouble imagining how that could possibly work.

That's smaller than my office and my office only contains two desks, a few ikea shelves and a handful of computers and books. No beds, no kitchen, no bathroom (there's a bathroom in the office building elsewhere), no personal posessions, nothing.

> I’m not sure what you’re talking about w.r.t Europe. Even if you have friends that drive everywhere that just is not how most people live day-to-day.

I'm european and I've lived in several european countries. It's definitely how a huge percentage of the european population lives day to day.

Not even 40% of the european population lives in cities. 30% is towns + suburb and 30% is countryside/seaside/mountain/rural.

That's 60% right there where car is the de facto daily way of moving.

And even in cities like Brussels or Paris you have those who do use their car on a daily basis, for short trips (like going to drop/pick the kids at school a few kilometers away). Insane statistics (x% of all car trips in Brussels are for less than y kilometers with both x and y being very low: although I forgot the numbers).

I guess it depends on who your friends are but around me, in the various place I've lived in Europe, the car is totally king.

Ah ok. I didn’t realize Europe was built like places like Houston, LA, and Atlanta and everybody took cars everywhere, they did the whole 2hr car commute to the office, and they didn’t walk to the grocery store in their neighborhood and instead they all got in their big SUVs (which they own at least 2 of of course) to the local grocery store about a mile away with the huge parking lot. It’s a small wonder that Europeans can even afford to do this, given how expensive gas is compared to America.

"Europe" is much less homogeneous, from an urban-planning perspective, than the US. We have medieval cities with narrow streets, like Barcelona or Firenze, mixed with '70s developments, suburban dormitories, megalopolis like London and Paris, and so on. So depending on who you ask, you will get a very different picture of their habits around transportation. Undoubtedly, you Americans drive more and longer than we do; but we still drive some, and have a similar issue with choosing our development models post-1980. But undoubtedly, ditching cars would be significantly easier for us than it would be for you.

I've never lived in Europe but have family in three European countries, two major famous cities. All of them drive to work every day.

> invest maybe 90 minutes to simply get to the closest grocery store

But that’s not how cities in Europe are laid out. The closest grocery store to me is 3 minutes by bike (1.19 km) and I live at the edge of my particular neighborhood (shops are usually concentrated near the center of neighborhoods). Even the city center (where the more specialized shops are) is only about 8 minutes by bike (or about 15 by car due to traffic).

Especially within the city a bike is always faster.

I live in a suburb in northern Europe. Mix of modest and not-so-modest townhouses. I sometimes choose to go to the second-nearest grocery store 900m away because I want to walk more than the 300m to the nearest one.

I guess you just have to make multiple trips if you need to buy a significant amount of groceries? My grocery trips always involve more than I could carry by bike.

Generally I just shop more often, my nearest grocery store is 3 doors down. There are two bigger ones 3 mins walk away, and a big one 10 mins walk away. When you're talking distances like that, buying more than you could carry doesn't make much sense. And if I did, I'd use Ocado or something.

Chances are if you have an apartment in the city you buy far less food. Less room to store it and more options to eat out

The traditional model of grocery shopping in Europe is daily. That's what our grandparents did - as it has been since the Romans invented the urbe and exported the concept around the continent. The famous stereotype of French people biking with their baguette under an arm, is because people did buy bread every day.

Then women started working more and more, and they had less time to shop for food, so the supermarkets happened here too - much later than in the US though, because of space and legal constraints. But there is still an attraction for the traditional way of life that keeps a significant amount of smaller and more central stores in business, keeping shopping more distributed: one day you buy fish, the next you buy meat, and everything fits in your bag.

Is there any business you would frequent - a pub, restaurant, grocer, etc. - that’s within, say, a 10 minute walk of where you live? I grew up in a city, yet everything was more than a 10 minute walk from my home.

Have you visited a place where there were multiple stores within a 10 minute walk? Once I started living in places like that, my way of life changed in ways I never would have predicted.

Walking home from work meant I walked right by a grocery store, and I could grab something quick. Would I always? Nope. Did I sometimes still do big grocery store trips? Sure. And would I sometimes even bring my car if I had a bunch of stuff? Yes, because I lived up a tall hill.

The reason I mention this is that your well-established may simply change in unexpected ways that you never would have imagined.

I never need a significant amount of groceries because the supermarket is only 3 minutes away. This means you only get what you need at the moment, you don’t buy things in advance. This is much more convenient, as I don’t need to plan anything in advance. I decide what I’d like to have for dinner tonight and then go out to get whatever ingredients I need. I’d hate for shopping trips to be this whole weekly expedition where you have to plan and haul all the stuff for an entire week just because you can’t quickly hop over to the store.

It also means you get fresh products. I’d hate to have to eat week old bread.

All of your friends have to take highways to reach a grocery store? That's nuts! Is this some kind of international agrarian hermit club?

Or are you saying you don't have many friends? There are more possible friends to be made in more populous areas. Come, join us!

Not seeing it mentioned in the other replies, so I'll mention that (at least the way I read it) "our massive car addiction" should be taken as a societal addiction to cars rather than addiction of any individual. If someone lives in a place where a car is the only feasible way to meet their day-to-day needs, it's not fair to say they're addicted to their cars; however we might question why they find themselves in that situation in the first place. Often this comes down to societal pressures (zoning, lack of funding for other modes of transportation, etc.) which are largely outside the control of individuals. The challenge is to change the cultural mindset from "I need a car today, so cars are a necessity for life" to acknowledge that other options can be viable if we, as a society, are willing to recognize and seriously consider them.

> ... the only real option that exists is reorganizing housing across the whole society to massively increase density and to mix commerce zoning with homes in a way currently unheard of.

Places like this already exist (ie. basically any major urban center), but I don't think the intent is that every place needs to be like that. Small steps toward better options (eg. allowing limited commercial redevelopment in residential-only areas, improving the safety/speed/accessibility of alternate transit options) should be the short-term goal, and we can work slowly towards them. But societal pressure (eg. from NIMBYs and zero-sum car-first people) often makes even small improvements glacially slow or impossible.

> permissive zoning allowing commerce near to housing

Generally people who want to reduce car dependence are advocating for this zoning alongside their advocacy for transit and bike lanes.

> invest maybe 90 minutes to simply get to the closest grocery store and then be able to take home maybe 1/10th of what they normally load into their trunk. This false alternative is always brought up

I'm not 100% sure I understand what you mean here, but my nearest grocery store in London is 3 doors away. My second nearest in 3 mins walk away. My 3rd nearest, 3 mins 30 secs away. My nearest big supermarket is 10 mins walk away. That's the alternative here.

Just curious, where in Europe is the nearest grocery store 90 min away?

I think the most plausible interpretation of that remark is that the OP has 0 friends in Europe.

Funny you ask: I'm moving in a few days to a remote place in France. Closest village, by walk, is 50 minutes away according to google maps. It's also all steep uphills and downhills, so bicycling there is hard (I do have a MTB for fun and, darn, it's hard to cycle there... Although the local policemen from the village do use bikes on non-rainy days).

By car it's a 5 minutes drive. So 50 minutes vs 5 minutes. Bicycling would be 15 minutes then 15 minutes back but I'd be toast due to the hills.

Closest highway: 45 minutes drive.

Closest city: 1h15 minutes.

Driving my kid to school in the morning: second closest village, 12 km / 7 miles. By bicycle? More than 40 minutes just to get there. Car: 12 minutes.

Of course I don't get the "vibrant" city life.

But I do get shitloads of nature and a sky so clean at night I can not just see stars but the Milky Way too.

As to where it is: I won't give the exact location but let's say "somewhere on the french riviera" (think Sonoma County vineyards meet the mediterannean sea: a little piece of paradise on earth with ultra-low density of population).

That's certainly interesting, and the place sounds nice. I think most people (certainly me) will admit that cars are almost necessary in your situation. Just curious though, would it not be better to live near a larger place assuming larger towns/cities may have better schools (on average)?

It's not unheard of. I live in a Dutch city. There are five supermarkets within 1km from my home, a tiny one, two medium ones and two larger ones. Now that I’m working from home, I usually walk to one twice a week. When I worked at an office, I biked to the office and took a small detour once a week to stop by a supermarket. Also, they have flash delivery here where you can order groceries and somebody will bring them to your door in literally 10 minutes. Those use e-bikes. There's also regular grocery delivery, one company uses these tiny electric vans, another uses normal vans.

Flash delivery is only available in the big cities but the rest is pretty standard.

IMO you have to actually look at the current makeup of zoning. Plenty of places have great, amazing bones, because they were actually laid out in an age where people did walk to the grocery store, or maybe they took a streetcar, and there might have been a rail station in the middle of town that is currently only used for freight today. It's not a form of development that is specific to only new, dense areas, it was a form of development that was the standard everywhere in this country 100 years ago, and still remains. Look at some mid or small sized places like Pensacola FL, Sandusky OH, Corpus Christi tx, and hundreds more. They are gridded like the SF peninsula because 100 years ago they very much looked like the SF peninsula did 100 years ago, with dozens of street cars or cable cars and people walking with groceries. There are good bones everywhere, now lets shake off the dust and start improving things like bus service, affording a lane for a bike along these easy to navigate grids with commercial zoned relatively evenly throughout.

> reorganizing housing across the whole society to massively increase density and to mix commerce zoning with homes

Exactly.

They seem to believe that by working to actively make roads and parking worse, then some sort of car-free utopia will emerge. Of course, the actual effect is that things are just worse.

The headline is demonstrably false, so clickbait.

I see a space for cities/towns that were laid out before cars were common, and also for living out in the country.

Most current development (in the US) seems to go to high density car-dependent developments that aren't walkable to anything. (They could partially solve this by making 10% of the development commercial, but choose not to.)

I assume most of those new developments will be abandoned in my lifetime. There's no reason to choose such housing other than existing stock. They don't seem to be built to last, and don't provide basic amenities for young, middle aged or older people.

Sadly, the people building them can cash out well before the value of such housing drops to zero.

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