Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw_away1525 | Hacker News Reader

I now live in a small walkable city in Europe and parks and playgrounds are packed. It is very common for my daughter to randomly meet a friend from school there and start playing, or to encounter a friend of ours there also on a walk which usually leads to grabbing a coffee or beer together.

This kind of stuff just won't happen if you have to drive to your local park. Cars and car-centric city design is a huge, huge part of the problem and lack of third spaces in my opinion.

View on HN

Yep, I'm in USA at the moment, but after my last trip abroad to a walkable city with transit I'm planning my escape. Not my first time being over there, but I'm finally like "why am I wasting my life over in car hell?"

Yeah my partner and I moved to Amsterdam last year and it's wild how different from American cities it is. We think of it as a "NYC lite", as in you don't have the bonkers density, height, and din of NYC but you get almost all the benefits (diversity, walkability, liberalism, culture, tolerance), and there are actually children and families here (OK I know this stuff exists outside of Manhattan, don't @ me).

But even compared to NYC the proliferation of parks and playgrounds is astounding. We thought we must live in a green paradise, but it really doesn't even rate (something like 14% tree cover; most major EU cities are > 20%).

I think stuff like this is changing. You're starting to see far less car-centric design, and there are little programs like NYC's request a tree. I worry a little about what self-driving cars will do the trend though, but maybe it's not a big deal?

and what's more interesting, Amsterdam is not even super child friendly city because of the high and thin buildings and it still thrives. I read somewhere that Utrecht is even cooler for families(but less vibes) because of better buildings

It can and does happen at the local shopping mall, where middle schoolers too young to drive a car play hooky and go to the mall.

"Car centric urban design" is the catch all ill and if we just fixed transit it would go away.

Except it won't, because all the social factors that make car centric urban design preferable will still be there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com