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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

The things that seem largely missing from such articles:

1. Walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods.

2. Passive solar design.

We have created a world highly dependent on various energy inputs. It has gone a long way towards killing off walking, cycling and vernacular architecture (where passive solar is a historic default).

Those technologies still exist. They can be brought back into more mainstream use.

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I fully support those things for health reasons. We would be so much more healthy, physically and mentally, if we had good local connections and comfortable, pleasant public spaces to occupy.

They aren't relevant to the problems of making steel or non-ferrous metals or cement or plastics, or to the problems of shipping things around over long distances. Which we cannot avoid, while maintaining a high-tech civilisation.

If you don't need to drive around in a car then you are 1) not burning fossil fuels to drive and 2) not needing steel and other materials to manufacture said car. Energy efficiency saves energy to use it where it's really needed.

This does not matter if it's one Potemkin village but it matters on the level of states and can be seen in statistics like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co... where probably every EU country is much lower than the US, for example.

And not burning fossil fuels, reduces polution, this making more positive impact on health.

National energy consumption figures should really include the embodied energy of imports, minus that of exports. Consumption is not the same as production. Consumption of goods (not just storage and passing-through) should also count.

I think this is backwards. Everyone assumes people are lazy because of the cars. I propose that cars were made because people are lazy (or, in reality, have no time in this dual income era we live in - walking takes a lot of time, even if it is very enjoyable).

If you make walk-able, mixed-use neighborhoods there is no guarantee people will use them.

In contrast, I bike over 1000 miles a year and walk several times a week. Yet I am not in a walk-able mixed use neighborhood nor have any interest in living in one.

if you look at housing prices of walkable mixed use neighborhoods in the US, it certainly appears people want to live in them.

Cars were made for game theoretic reasons: As long as few people drive, cars give drivers extreme advantages. When a critical mass of drivers exist, the advantages deminish, but infrastructure investements (now politically viable!) can delay the process. As soon as most people drive most of these advantages disappear regardless of further infrastructure investments, but people who don't drive now suffer from extreme disadvantages that didn't exist before car-centric infrastructure.

And because drivers are now the majority, we can rob the people who don't drive to pay for the infrastructure to support our unsustainable lifestyle!

Go democracy!

---

Sorry for the sarcasm. I'm more and more leaning towards libertarianism nowadays.

That's an interesting philosophical progression...

It's just combining the fact that the suburban lifestyle is subsidized, and the libertarian meme of "taxation is theft".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

You're going from one extreme to another.

Taxes are the price of civilization, we just need to be better about using them.

Most libertarians believe some taxation is necessary.

I was hoping that my phrasing made it obvious that I don't believe in the most extreme interpretation of that slogan. But I do believe there's truth in it.

Back to the infrastructure cost problem. I painted an insidious picture. Of course suburbanites are not mustache-twirling villains. They're just asking the government to maintain the infrastructure they use.

The problem is they're not willing to (vote for politicians who make them) pay for the true cost. When the cost is borne by other people, how is this not robbery with majority votes (and thus state power)?

This video, also from NJB, describes such politcal dynamics in Toronto.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkO-DttA9ew

> ...look at the map of his election victory. This was the suburbs politically dominating the will of old Toronto.

> ...because he advocated for more cars, he had the support of Toronto's suburbs. In other words he fed the addiction.

To quote George Bernard Shaw, "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

> As long as few people drive, cars give drivers extreme advantages.

I don't know about that. I'm living in London right now, and I'd hate to have a car. It would mean need a parking space all the time for it, for something I wouldn't use most days because almost everything I need say-to-day is a 10 min walk away, and if it isn't then it's a quick bus or tube ride away.

But assuming that few people drove, you could move a dozen kilometers out of London, enjoy clean air, peace and quiet, low rents etc and still have everything you wanted ten minutes away. Just by car.

> I think this is backwards. Everyone assumes people are lazy because of the cars. I propose that cars were made because people are lazy (or, in reality, have no time in this dual income era we live in - walking takes a lot of time, even if it is very enjoyable).

> If you make walk-able, mixed-use neighborhoods there is no guarantee people will use them.

This isn't supported by the evidence. We see huge increases in the numbers of people walking and cycling when the infrastructure is adjusted to support them.

I'm not against infrastructure to support walking and/or cycling. I'm an avid cyclist. I thoroughly believe people will bike/walk more if there is support for it in their neighborhood.

But is it serving as a car replacement for those people? I'd wager not due to a variety of factors. But I'd be curious if there was evidence it was for any significant percentage of them.

How could it not be? What kind of evidence would you want to see? There are certainly other factors that affect changes in car ownership rates, but the ease (or otherwise) of making journeys by other means must surely have an impact at the margin.

I would assume people are about equally lazy everywhere around the world.

But how car centric different places are varies. Even if you only compare places with similar income levels to each other.

Laziness is efficiency. People drive because they are lazy and driving is the most efficient use of their resources. People also walk because they are lazy and walking is the best use of their resources. Driving is so prevalent because 1) we don’t incorporate the full cost (social, environmental, etc.) into driving, 2) driving is often the locally (individually) most efficient choice while being globally (socially) the suboptimal. We should engineer and environment where the globally optimal choice is the lazy choice.

It's also safer. In between where I live and work are neighborhoods that I do not want to walk down.

If a town is easier to walk in than to drive in, I will walk. I have never lived in such a place, so I drive.

Not sure where you are, but a large amount of places are easier to walk than drive in. I live in Edinburgh, and driving through the city, (and even worse, parking in the city) is an absolute nightmare. Walking or taking a bus is a no brainer. Similarly, Glasgow (less so), Dublin, and most major European cities are all significantly more difficult to navigate by car.

The US, outside of any major city.

I live in a major EU city and even though they really try hard to make driving unbearable, it's still the best option in many cases. And you don't have any other option if you're going to a less major town nearby - even with worlds' best public transport infrastructure, it's still not good enough. Makes me very sceptical about mass transit.

Edinburgh is exceptional though - as well as being one of the most beautiful cities in the world it also has a fairly compact city centre with pretty good public transport links.

Hard to believe that we almost got Glasgow style inner city motorways:

https://www.gcat.org.uk/blog/?p=682

NB I lived in the centre of Edinburgh for over 30 years before moving across to Fife and commuting in by train - which is generally a pretty pleasant experience.

Edit: I very rarely drive into Edinburgh - its generally a nightmare.

You are an outlier which sure exist, but just look at examples where it is provided. Always surprised to see so many people (including juveniles from age of 6 or latest 8 without adults, til far beyond 60 or 70) bicycling around here, so many that I often get overrun while walking around daily for usually 30-60 minutes a day (which I also didn't do as much prior moving here), its amazing. (from one of the green districts in Berlin, where walkable neighborhood is far from complete and too many cars around still, really wonder what it could be like in fully designed districts).

Just providing it has a huge impact on a lot of "maybe" people and I think practice proofs this is not backwards thought at all. Not guaranteed, but a huge impact on most, nothing is binary as always.

> In contrast, I bike over 1000 miles a year and walk several times a week. Yet I am not in a walk-able mixed use neighborhood nor have any interest in living in one.

So really like to know, why is that. I can only imagine you are living rural, and now wouldn't understand why anyone living in a dense city would want to have it different.

Because it wouldn't be that useful. I'd grow tired/bored of the same restaurants all the time. When we go shopping once every week or two, we hit up a lot of different stores. It's doubtful they could support having all those stores in walking proximity to everyone in my city. Each brand has about one store in my city.

Basically it would not provide much value to me as I'd still use a car all the time.

> If you make walk-able, mixed-use neighborhoods there is no guarantee people will use them.

Plenty of evidence exists in 2022. Book a flight to Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Milano ,Casablanca, Tunis …

I don’t know Asia or South america but I’m sure you can find some example running in production right now.

I don't know about Paris, Barcelona etc, but Berlin has 1.4m private cars for 3.6m people living in roughly 2m households, clearly people aren't giving up their cars just because you can walk to the corner store.

Using your car in Paris intra-muros is a beginner move.

It’s just faster with public transportation or biking; or it’s so close that you walk there.

Also: parking is a nightmare that will add 10 to 30 min to your travel time. ( or make it even more expensive)

But your stats are great, I would be curious to find the same for Paris. To check my completely anecdotal assumption.

Edit:

- Paris 0,27 car / inhabitants

- Amsterdam (0,24)

- 0,33 : Bruxelles

- 0.35 : Berlin

- 0,36 : Madrid

- 0,41 :Barcelona

- 0.87 : Phœnix, AZ

> In contrast, I bike over 1000 miles a year and walk several times a week. Yet I am not in a walk-able mixed use neighborhood nor have any interest in living in one.

You do realize that, statistically, you are a MASSIVE outlier - right?

> If you make walk-able, mixed-use neighborhoods there is no guarantee people will use them.

Statistics disagree here. Look up walking commute rates in walkable neighborhoods vs random suburbs. Look at vehicle ownership rates. Look at gasoline sales per capita, etc, etc.

> I propose that cars were made because people are lazy (or, in reality, have no time in this dual income era we live in - walking takes a lot of time, even if it is very enjoyable).

What's been proven is that people have set limits for how long they are willing to commute. If cars could drive 2x as fast, people who are willing to commute by car would live farther away from work. Ditto for train riders, bikers, or walkers.

The goal is to shrink the distance people who DON'T want to own a car have to live from work by building more housing and making nearby neighborhoods more walkable and bikable.

Many people in cities would rather not drive if the option was realistic.

Many people in America LOVE their cars, and will go to their grave defending car culture. But many people who drive cars do so out of necessity and would rather not.

You are looking at a massive outlier as well. Those people who are fortunate enough to be able to move within walking distance of their employment, and live in an area rich enough to have a wide variety of restaurants and shops in walking distance. This is just not practical when scaled to the masses. Many compromises would need to be made.

I visit dense cities all the time and have friends that live in them. Even though they are walk-able, we are always driving across the city to visit that one shop, restaurant or park.

Okay - so why do you have to be rich to live somewhere walkable in the US - but not rich pretty much every other country in the world?

The vast majority of Madrid and Paris and Berlin are walkable. Sure, there are expensive neighborhoods. But most people can afford to live in walkable areas of pretty much everywhere beside London, some Asian outliers, & anywhere in the US.

I get that he does not call out your exact favorites in there but the last few paragraphs talk quite a bit about the potential for energy demand going down for reasons that could be extended or even include yours.

Also I would say passive solar design is only one part (and seemingly becoming less important) of Passivhaus way of building. Why not include all energy efficiency improvements?

Let’s not forget how incredibly relatively efficient Otto and Diesel engines are. Doing the same work with actual horse or ox power would produce considerably greater emissions.

Regarding 2, from the article:

> People think you can’t throw GPUs at solving an energy shock but in the medium term you really can if those GPUs are used by civil and chemical engineers and not to mine shitcoins.

I suspect 1 is usually missing because the obvious conclusion is that excess (and increasing) production capacities will mean people have more choices regarding their lifestyles. If you want walkable, go for it!

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