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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

My wife and I are very conflicted about moving to Utrecht because we very much want to live in a bike-friendly city where our kids can be independent (where we are now, Ireland, is horrible for this) but we also want somewhere that isn't too hot in 30 years. The Nordics might manage to have both?

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I would imagine that the rising ocean levels would be more concerning

It seems like you just need a reason not to move. If Utrecht is too hot the rest of the world will be in hell.

I'm not sure if I need a reason not to move. My wife will be naturalized in ~6 months so we're figuring out what to do next.

Honestly I've been considering moving to Ireland and one of the reasons is because Belgium might get too hot and i'm not a fan of winter depression. I worry the gulf stream might slow down tho but I assume that won't happen anytime soon.

Ireland is great for weather! There's a lot to love about this place. It's very car-dependent and sprawling by European standards, though.

> where our kids can be independent (where we are now, Ireland, is horrible for this)

Could you elaborate?

Having not been to Ireland but relating to this a lot in the US, my guess is it’s about biking not generally being safe. Kids can’t drive, but in the US at least we’ve built a ton of places where you basically have to drive to get around, so parents end up shuttling their kids around to wherever they want to go.

I've looked at a few random points in Irish cities and they don't seem to be any different than your typical European urban landscape.

There are narrow streets, low-speed zones, even bike paths. Where's the horrible part?

I’m looking around street view in Dublin and it looks similar to my own city (Philadelphia) in a lot of ways. Narrow side streets yes, but it seems where there are bike lanes they’re extremely unprotected/not even buffered, and there are plenty of wide streets without bike infrastructure of any sort. And ultimately you do usually need to be on a main road some of the time when going to many places. (In Dublin’s case I notice there’s a river running through town that only the larger streets seem to cross.)

Compared to Utrecht (which was the initial point of comparison here), it looks awful for cycling.

The main thing is that Ireland has far more suburban sprawl and the bike infrastructure is almost entirely unprotected. Though I admit my standards are high - I think most European urbanity isn't at the stage where I'd like an 8 year old ride a bike to school.

I see.

Why bike though? Plenty of places in Europe where children can walk to school.

Cycling increases your reasonable travel radius substantially. In a dense city with good transit this might be less of a big deal, but outside of cities in sprawling suburbs it’s more important.

School isn’t the only place a kid might want to go; their friends might live further away, there might be a park that would take quite a while to walk to but is an easy bike ride, etc.

Perhaps it's my commie block upbringing talking, but as a child I never saw bike paths as necessary to get around.

Sure, I cycled, but for leisure, not transport.

As I said it depends on the area. Where I live right now (Philadelphia) you can get by on foot and via transit pretty easily. Although I do wish it were more bikeable; I could get to my local hackerspace in about 20 minutes by bike vs. 40 minutes by transit.

I’m about to move somewhere slightly less dense though, with no local transit to speak of. From my house to the local high school is 27 min on foot vs. 7 by bike. From the high school to the neighboring town is 41 minutes on foot vs. 12 by bike. From there back home is again 41 minutes on foot or 12 by bike.

You can probably see how this might make an after-school trip possible that wouldn’t be otherwise.

To me those estimates seem to assume a slow walker or a really fast cyclist. How long is that in kilometres?

1.93 for the first distance, 3.06 for the other two. So probably would be a fast cyclist given that’d be an average of 15 km/h.

That speed is totally doable on a bike, but there’s some time taken up at intersections so top speed would need to be higher to make up. (Although the main roads on these routes don’t have many signaled intersections, so maybe not too much faster.)

Funny you say so Robert. Currently living in Zurich and definately planning to move to Utrecht.

It certainly won't be too hot in 30 years. And sea level rise shouldn't be problematic yet this century.

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