Want to Build a Perfect 21st Century Town? Ban Cars
outsideonline.com
outsideonline.com
But for people that live in towns, they shouldn't live in environments built for cars rather than people.
I'm European and lived in Columbus, Ohio for a period and traveled the US a bit and I just can't understand how can people do not recognize those cities are barely livable, walkable let alone enjoyable.
At the end of the day it's a matter of trade offs and I have nothing against people willing to live in car oriented cities, I'm just surprised that it's like that literally everywhere bar some downtowns I've seen like Boston (but my memory may fail me), there should be more variety of city planning, rather than isolated buildings with countless parkings everywhere.
Also, cars are really bad for health, even if they are not gas powered tires create tons of dust. If you've lived in a city and a country you know the difference in dirt in them, and it's largely car dependent.
You're right. The problem is all of the people saying things to the effect of "we need to ban low-density single-family housing to save the environment" who want to keep us from living how we want.
Seems easy if you're not the one paying for the cleanup I guess, except if you're a taxpayer then ultimately you will be.
Even if you discount CO2, cars still produce a lot of plastic waste in the form of tyre wear, estimated as about 9% of that currently produced (https://www.systemiq.earth/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Breaki...). EVs actually produce _more_ of this because of their weight.
Cars are also the primary source of noise pollution (again, even EVs) and are responsible for a considerably number of deaths (number 1 cause of deaths outside of disease). Road maintainance is also one of the highest financial burdens on towns, to the extent that towns actually are unable to pay for their own road maintainance at all and taxes from people living in cities needs to make up the shortfall. A massive reduction in driving would constitute an enormous cost reduction for the federal government, allowing taxes to be allocated to other sectors.
Maybe none of these seem particularly compelling by itself, but taken together it adds up to a lot of reasons to reduce car reliance to whatever extent we can.
> Banning single-family housing in most places in the US is not necessary
Why do you qualify those statements with "most" and "a vast majority of"? Are there places where you do want to only allow high-density housing and totally ban single-family homes?
What is the ideal city lacking that sees you need to travel for other reasons?
Don't get hung up imagining the shitty cities of today, except without cars, actually think about an ideal city.
There are plenty of reasons you might want to leave somewhere even if it is quite literally perfect.
I suppose if you can't stand other people then living in a community would be an issue, but the majority of people tend to enjoy being around other people. Then densities required for being car-free aren't that high regardless.
I'm not really sure how such a place would be more susceptible to algorithms and bad landlords than anywhere else.
A big problem with cars was that people had to stop walking on (or near!) roads.
People around is great. People around in great density tends to breed problems instead. Your parent is probably thinking density. Like lots of 3 storey plus buildings with paper thin walls and ceilings. In dense urban development.
You can like people and community all you want but if that's all over the place you are gonna breed interpersonal issues. You have to be a very tolerant person to endure that.
And for the record, yes, not everyone likes non family people being that close. I am OK with my neighbors doing whatever they want if I can't hear their loud bass all afternoon and night time. But if it feels like their every weekend (or worse weeknight) is happening right in my bedroom then yeah I "can't stand people".
For one, which large cities in NA have any of that? They've got buildings that are not new all over.
Also, what is "new"? I've lived in buildings built in the last 10-15 years that were definitely still paper thin.
Heck we have several tens of meters between us and the neighbors house and we can hear them sometimes.
The other thing is for example balconies. There's not a thermal or insulated wall new building thing in the world that is gonna save you from your downstairs neighbor chain smoking on the balcony all hours of the day. You can't sit outside in the afternoon or on the weekend enjoying life. You can't sleep with the window open (fresh cool air required for proper sleep).
At least because you live in a city without cars you can have the window open during the night without noise pollution, right? We'll sorta because the neighborhood youth is out three stories below, gathering and having "fun" while you are trying to get the baby go to sleep before you yourself pass out from exhaustion. All the while annoying the elderly couple three balconies over with baby cries yourself.
Look I don't mind if you want to live with those things. No issues at all. If you love it, go for it.
Just don't make me do it.
And yes I've lived in properly built concrete apartments where I did not hear my neighbors at all and I had no balcony and I was able to open my windows without issue. Not in NA and I had one of the very luckily located apartments out of like 100 in that building.
I've also lived in concrete apartments with a balcony and all the problems I described earlier. Never again as long as I can help it.
As for putting dwelling further apart, that's why we have the suburbs.
When Boeing or Airbus announce a new airplane, they come up with all sorts of luxurious concepts that would make air travel less miserable if not enjoyable. We all know damn well that the airlines aren't going to do any of that except maybe for first class. Housing is the same. Cheap out on everything, pack 'em in, profit. Then when there's a big fire or it all falls down, close up and start again under a different name.
Being around people and being on top of them are two entirely different situations. I lived in apartments until a late age when I could afford to put down roots. They were ill built, insulated, and ventilated then and getting worse. When remote neighbors made fish, I gagged all the same. Navigating cramped parking lots, dealing with stolen packages and mail, and having the musical choices of others thrust on me? I can do without that and a lot more.
We have family members that lived in a huge SoCal apartment complex for a few years. One is in a wheelchair and the development had some mandated ADA units. Every year they had to move to a new apartment within the complex to /minimize/ the rent increase. Minimize. They tried to negotiate with the faceless corporation that said no negotiations were possible. Pay to stay or pay a little less to move. They eventually left for NorCal where they could purchase a home.
These developments are put up by, whaddya whaddya, developers. They are cheaping out on quality so the units are smaller, the walls are thinner, and the ventilation just good enough to pass. Enshittification is everywhere. And, just like the new generation of malls, any public and semi-private spaces are governed by heavy restrictions on what can be done (not much) and what can't (quite a bit).
There's a YT channel, I forget the name, that had lots of vids on "It's better in Amsterdam" because the 30-something creator could bike to his grocer and cafe. Lots of repeated clips of the same bike going down the same flat path in good weather to a shop or restaurant. I'm for livable, walkable cities but I soon had enough and blocked the guy.
Glad it worked in Switzerland. Our demographics, scale, and politics are just a tad different.
You can still use public transport which would include taxis.
Also, if you don't want sights and sounds and smells of other people..don't live in a town?
I mean, you could grant taxi use only under certain circumstances (e.g. medical need), but then the taxi isn't really an option for general use. And in that case, you could apply the same restrictions on personal vehicles, rendering the exception for taxis alone to be rather pointless (unless you are trying to subsidize your taxi operator friends, I suppose).
The point is to try to remove car travel as much as is possible, even if that isn't 100%. You can build a city where everything you need on a day to day basis is within walking or cycling distance, and nearly everything else can be got to easily with public transport. There will almost certainly be some edge cases though. Replacing everyones commute with walking or cycling or public transport gets rid of something like 50% of cars on the road. Doing the same with shopping trips is probably another 80% of what remains, so just doing that is already a significant improvement (numbers pulled out of my ass but they seem realistic). If you only need to use a car once a _month_ then suddenly the economy of owning one yourself becomes very questionable next to just getting a taxi on those rare occasions, or hiring one if you need to drive somewhere not so ideal.
So there would still be cars on the road, but it would be very far from the same number of cars.
None of this explains the car ban. Yeah, make cites more walkable. That's just logical. These wannabe rural areas we call cities today are hilariously nonsensical. But you don't need to ban cars to get there. And if we hypothetically assume for the sake of discussion that you do need to ban cars to get there, then exempting taxis won't help as people will simply replace their personal vehicle use with taxis, negating the hypothetical pressure to change.
If someone wants to own a car for their once a month trip, who cares? It is not cars in a garage that is bothersome with respect to the topic at hand.
Emergency/delivery vehicles are usually given a pass in these kind of designs as well.