Show HN: Transform Your City | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Transform Your City

transformyour.city

77 pointsgregsadetsky38 comments

Hey HN,

As noted in a previous comment posted on the "Paris Will Become ‘100% Cyclable’" thread [0], I've been contributing to a project (as a volunteer backend developer) to try to accelerate urban change around pedestrian/cyclable/car-free streets.

It's "change.org for urban transformation".

It started with a Twitter account posting Dall-E-ified versions of streets [1] which picked up steam in the press [2].

And now, we're live with our own site!

Happy to answers questions, and other folks from the project might chime in as well.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33047412

[1] https://twitter.com/betterstreetsai

[2] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/07/28/this-artificial-intel...

Open articleView on HN

I recently discovered the "Remix" urban design tool that lets users redesign existing streets and intersections like an IRL Cities Skylines. It's brilliant.

https://www.remix.com

I came across it when someone on a local subreddit shared a redesign of an intersection, I was blown away with the results.

Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/qorZWwg

Remix share link(desktop recommended): https://platform.remix.com/streets/plan/a367ea4b/scenario/f8...

Unfortunately, it appears to be enterprise only at the moment. I'm genuinely shocked they don't have a hobbyist-level free / cheap tier—I'd wager that there are thousands of urban design enthusiasts who would love to use this thing.

OP, you should reach out and see if you can collaborate with them.

this is neat, but seems to be focused primarily on the configurations of thoroughfare lanes? i'd love something that lets you change with setbacks, parkways, sidewalks, building heights/shadows as well, then render that reasonably (but not necessarily perfectly photorealistically) for sharing and discussion.

It’s hard to get a sense from the site or from the actual idea pages what the goal is. Removing the BQE (https://transformyour.city/vision/new-york-city/the-bqe ) would affect millions of people and businesses, and simply saying “transform it into a linear park” comes across as incredibly naïve. I would feel foolish signing this petition because…what’s the actual plan?

Sure, maybe there is some way to do it with a multi-decade effort, an enormous cost, and a fundamental shift in NYC’s layout and even economy, but something about how MASSIVELY oversimplified the statement “Remove the BQE” is makes it hard to take this seriously.

I applaud the sentiment, though! And I hate the BQE.

Edit: Also just to be even clearer for anyone not familiar with NYC geography: the BQE is a stretch of interstate highway 278 that connects Brooklyn and Queens.

This isn’t the High Line, built from a disused rail line. It’s proposing removing a stretch of interstate and putting a park in its place.

Edit 2: Ok, apparently the goal is to gather signatures and then show elected officials. The minimum bar appears to be 100 signatures. I have a hard time understanding what outcome is expected when an elected official in NYC is shown a petition in which 100 people say we should rip out part of the interstate (and one of NYC’s most important stretches of road) and put in a park.

put the BQE underground and you get the best of both worlds. scrub all the pollution (not CO₂) out of the exhaust and it's environmentally positive too. sure, it's expensive, but we're the richest country in the world. boston did it and everyone loves the result now despite the grousing about cost and inconvenience during construction.

There is a ton of underground infrastructure this idea would run afoul of.

pretty sure the contractors and engineers would consider that before they started digging. do you think boston didn't have underground infrastructure already?

Boston's Big Dig was a 1.5 mile (2.4 km) tunnel under the harbor, that cost 22 billion dollars and took 15 years to build.

The BQE is 11.6 miles (18.7 km) long, and runs through Brooklyn and Queens.

So remove it. Way simpler.

This is not a "plan". What are the proposals for transit on the place of BQE? Where will all the traffic from BQE go? To local streets?

you're right, it's an online discussion. the traffic from the BQE already goes to local streets. the point is to give the above ground space back to people, and perhaps clean the air while we're at it.

Currently the traffic enters BQE on one local street and exits it most likely far away. When BQE is removed, the traffic will go through a lot of local streets, increasing noice and air pollution in residential areas.

not remove, but rather replace. put the BQE underground.

This is VERY expensive. A lot of new subway lines could be built at the same cost.

yes, cost was mentioned in my original post.

If you’re digging an underground tunnel in NYC throwing low throughout roads in it is the worst idea possible.

There is absolutely no reason to not put a subway track, which would have an order of magnitude higher capacity, in an underground tunnel instead.

you could also put in a subway track down the middle while you're at it, but the primary point of undergrounding the road is so we get our most precious above ground space back for people, not cars. it's not simply about optimizing throughput, though that's also a worthy, and compatible, goal.

If we got 8 million signatures they couldn't move the BQE. Closing streets is like banning alcohol or abortions. If you choke off supply it just makes the price go up. The solution is to throttle _demand_. Like making our subway stations less dank. Curing America's car addiction is not going to be easy.

Yeah, but the BQE isn’t in random place America. It’s in a city which has less than 30% car ownership.

You could ban all private cars from the roads tomorrow and people in NYC would be getting around much faster (including those who currently drive) if you do nothing else but increase bus service and frequency, as they’re not log jammed because of higjly inefficient cars anymore.

Silly question from afar: could you tunnelify the BQE (no digging, just cover it!) and drop a park on top? Best of both worlds.

Seems silly to rip up roads when self driving electric buses could be running down them (or at least get their own priority lane).

It is amusing watching some of the discourse over the implications if this project was to actually succeed in its goal of making cities as they where before the Eisenhower act demolished downtown's[0]. There is some research[1] coming out of the University of Colorado showing that by prioritizing bike lanes, all road users end up safer. It would then only logically conclude if you removed cars that it would only cause further advancements in safety.

[0]https://www.archdaily.com/981425/did-a-highway-kill-the-city... [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwYeNz1jCkM&t=8s

I wasn't sure what this was at first, but it's actually a really cool project.

It uses AI to generate images of what cities could look like if they were more pedestrian-friendly. The idea is to show people these images and get them to sign petitions or take other action to get local governments to make these changes.

I would imagine these AI generated images are mostly useless for real world planning without some sort of feasibility study to go along with them.

Cool project. Excited to see it filled out more.

Small suggestion: user-select:none was made for the sliders (they currently highlight the entire page on macOS Safari)

great suggestion, thanks a ton! just fixed & deployed

This is nice and all and maybe it works in Paris, but the main problem with American cities that prevents transit and cycling and being car free is that the crime is too high and the car acts as a natural barrier to that when you have to be in an urban area.

It's true. I went from taking transit everywhere to my transit stop becoming a gang hotspot, and now I drive. Would love to take the train again, but my city was greatly affected by the environmental disaster known as defunding the police.

This is pretty cool, I applaud what you're doing. I think some people will be fixated on the (non-)efficacy of petitions, but just using AI to show people what we're missing out on because of car-centric city design is powerful in itself.

This is a cool project - looking forward to following it.

I've noticed a lot of pushback against ideas like this because they're seen as infeasible, but I have to assume that there was a lot of pushback when someone first proposed razing a neighbourhood to make way for a highway. The first step is deciding we want to change, so I'm excited by anything that lets people express that.

There are tons of city planners who can figure out the specifics of how to transform each street. They've been talking about it for decades. The problem is political will and this is the gap that this site is trying to bridge.

Totally off topic, but scrolling through the front page I first read the title as “Terraform your city” and for a second my mind was blown thinking about what that could possibly mean…

Make it habitable for human beings? Sounds about right!

By simply demanding that the city refurbishes existing subway lines, makes them safe and clean (!), and builds new ones (!!), you will do the city much more good.

Did you know: roads predate the motor car and have a purpose. Getting rid of them isn't viable

Say you live in a building in front of a car-free street. How are you going to move in/out, given that many buildings in New York have only one entrance? What about garbage trucks? What will happen to all the existing traffic and how will the "clean up" affect the surrounding areas?

This is a nice "I wish" project, but each transformation lacks strategy, which is the key component of any kind of transformation.

Car free streets often allow traffic for public services, emergency vehicles, etc

in the examples provided they just barrier off streets. Is it a flying ambulance that airlifts you like the coastguard?

There are some pedestrian streets in the City I live in that have commercial, office, and residential buildings along it. Delivery trucks are permitted on the street. There are anchors for removeable bollards which are installed during events to prevent any vehicle traffic from coming in.

Regarding traffic, generally traffic increases as you build more roads. If you build more transit, cycling, and walking infrastructure, the same rule applies. If you remove roads, you are creating more of an incentive to use alternative modes. It's obviously not an instant effect, but as lanes are being removed from cars and converted to allowed bicycles in Paris, vehicle traffic has reduced by 5% in 10 years.

I get that a solution does exist. But you can't simply throw an idea and have someone else implement it for you. First, you need to describe a problem. Like, why do you believe that, say, Court Street should be car-free. Next, propose a solution. Do cost and risk analysis. Have people review it all. Only after we can start a conversation.

There are so many unknown unknowns that I don't even want to try to guess.

The author of the project decided to go with New York as the first candidate for transformation. In my opinion, this is a mistake. New York is likely one of the most challenging cities in the world to transform.

The assumption seems to be that people only hire delivery companies who work unsociable hours.

Or you're supposed to have a car, but not where you live, and infrequently move large objects that way.

I don't really get it personally. I live in a city, fairly centrally, and moving stuff that wouldn't fit on my cargo bike is a weekly occurrence or more. Plywood sheets, furniture, exercise gear, that sort of thing.

I think it only works if you fully subscribe to the tiny apartment + everything is rented mentality, which just sounds like a really fragile dependency tree to me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com