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Comment by kqr | Hacker News Reader

I had never considered there is a difference between the two words, but Wikipedia backs it up:

> The word street is still sometimes used informally as a synonym for road, but city residents and urban planners draw a significant modern distinction: a road's main function is transportation, while streets facilitate public interaction.

Even with this clarification, though, I think you unfairly characterise the quote from the article. Modern society has an insane demand for transportation. Roads – the medium on which we transport things – are the fabric on which cities are built. Not just inside the cities, but the vast network of roads outside the city, that feed it.

Before the 1900s, we weren't able to build cities far from water because of their demand for transportation. We can today, and it is only because of roads we are able to do that.

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I think American society is very much road-focussed, having lived there for a couple of decades. I think UK (and European in general) society is very much street-focussed.

A lot of that comes down to geography - the UK is a high-density population compared to the USA but the impact on our lives is significant. In the US, I would drive everywhere. Literally everywhere - to the shops, to the library, to the beach, everywhere. Yesterday I took my son to his archery practice, we walked along the coast road for about 20 minutes, and picked up a "Mr Whippy" 99er ice-cream (yes, even in the cold weather) along the walk back. It was pleasant, and healthier.

USA cities are low density because they are road–focused

The United States emerged during a period of abundant frontier land, which normalized the idea that ordinary people could own large, independent plots. This contrasted sharply with Europe’s older, land-constrained settlement patterns. That early culture of space and ownership later interacted with industrialization, the automobile, and government policy to produce the low-density development that characterizes much of the U.S. today.

Another interesting fact about plot sizes in Europe: You can see within an area which kind of inheritance law was in place: If farming plots are large, usually the oldest son inherited everything. If they are small, they were evenly distributed.

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026483772...

When you go into the Northeast, a lot of narrower roads were planned for slow-moving horse-drawn carts.

The vast, _vast_ majority of such infrastructure was turn down in the 60s to make way for the almighty automobile.

The number of places in the north american continent that retain their street focused infrastructure is pretty much countable on one hand, and most of that is being terribly managed.

Exactly go Worcester, Providence and Boston and be in awe at how fucking horrendous the maze is.

Boston is only horrendous in a car. Walking around and taking public transit in Boston is very nice. OTOH Providence feels like it's designed for cars, much easier to drive there but always need the car around and their highways and roads are terrible. There's a ton of highway to split the city. Worcester is less highway constricted but still definitely need a car to get around and I still can't figure my way around.

Horse-drawn carts are not any narrower than cars are, and many place (e.g., the Marina District of San Francisco) designed in the horse era have very wide streets.

Pretty much any car that's bigger than a subcompact is wider than a horse drawn cart.

This may be true, but I think the points made in the comment you are responding to are nevertheless true for UK and European cities as well. Roads have been a fundamental part of the development of modern towns and cities throughout the Western world.

> Modern society has an insane demand for transportation. Roads – the medium on which we transport things – are the fabric on which cities are built. Not just inside the cities, but the vast network of roads outside the city, that feed it.

This is a very American point of view IMO.

Cities are built on streets first and foremost. Otherwise you end up with strip malls separated by endless swaths of car parks.

As for transportation, we have to separate cargo from people, and inner city from inter-city.

For people inside the city you have multi-modal transport options. Walking, biking, busses, trams, subways, commuter trains, taxis, individual cars, ferries.

For intercity people you have trains, planes, boats, busses, individual cars.

Most inner city cargo can be handled by smaller trucks going from warehouses to specific places in the city. And for smaller cargo like mail I've even seen small scooters and cargo bikes.

For inter-city you once again have multi-modal transport (depending on the city). Trucks, rail, cargo planes, boats.

Even the US was built on railways, not on roads. Roads are the "backbone of cities" only if you make them one, as the US has done

Yeah, maybe I'm overly pedantic, but the author is also overly pedantic about the curvatures of streets/roads in games, so... :)

But, to continue with the pedantry: the Romans already built cities far from (navigable) water. There have been roads since antiquity, then since the mid 19th century it was first the railways that made it easy to transport passengers and goods over large distances. The current version of roads being the main/only form of transportation only came about in the 1950s.

Slight correction: It was the 1830s when the railroad arrived that we started to be able to build cities far from navigable water. (navigable is important - if your water can only support small boats your city will be smaller than if it can support large ships). Trucks in the 1900s allow the same thing, and have enough advantages that we would use them for smaller cities, but large cities are still going to get rail transportation. And water transport is still powerful enough that the largest cities still likely need it even though it isn't a strict requirement.

>Modern society has an insane demand for transportation. Roads – the medium on which we transport things

Why do you say it like roads are the only option? Its even far from the most effective option. You mean rails?

rail-roads

is in the name mon ami

Not in other languages. In German, for example, it would very weird to think of railroads (Bahn/Eisenbahn/Bahnstrecke) as roads (Straßen). Would you also claim that a hedgehog is a pig?

But autobahn is a road, no?

Yes, but "Bahn" actually means "track", "path" or "lane". "Bahn" in the sense of "railroad" is an abbreviation of "Eisenbahn" (literal translation: "iron tracks"). So "Autobahn" has nothing to do with railroad, it just means "car track".

Railroads are roads.

Only by name.

I hope the water comes to the city through a pipe and not with trucks on roads.

I believe they have referred to the transportation possibilities the water allows rather than the possibility to transport water (which was possible at scale way earlier)

We finally have water–powered cars?

Roads are important for a good transportation infrastructure. However, cities in north america are overreliant on them. In European cities public transit is also important and in my opinion even more important than roads. Cars are not useful in cities compared to public transit / bikes / walking if the city is designed for humans and not cars. ( and yes, you still need roads for delivery and people who sometimes have to transport heavy things).

There is a lot more than people to move around a city. Transit is more visible and yes europe does well there - but freight is less visible and europe isn't doing as well there.

> Before the 1900s, we weren't able to build cities far from water because of their demand for transportation.

Incorrect.

In the 1800s the train took off as a primary form of transportation. By 1869, we'd completed the first intercontinental railway in the US which ultimately opened up the economy between the east and west.

Sears flourished as a company because of the train.

It wasn't roads which ultimately opened up mass transport, it was rail. It wasn't until the 1950s that rail was ultimately de-prioritized and roads were prioritized.

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