4 ms·

People in the US keep bringing this up. Oh, but look, the US is such a big place! It will never work here. Oh, but look, everybody is living in the suburbs and

People in the US keep bringing this up. Oh, but look, the US is such a big place! It will never work here. Oh, but look, everybody is living in the suburbs and there is no shopping in 20 miles here! You know, in 1960, Amsterdam was the same car-centric hellhole. They didn't always have that transport modal share. They worked on it.

Noted 11y ago
You realize that LA (the city proper, not metro area) is over 5x the size of Amsterdam with over 4x the population. I think that's part of what he meant by they're not really comparable. I definitely agree that, yes, it needs to be worked on. It just might be a longer process and some of the tricks that work in other locales aren't directly applicable.
- revelation 11y ago
  I don't get it. What does that even mean? It's 5x as big and has 5x the population? Do you realize what you are saying here? Yeah, it's always a longer process. You still gotta start at some point. 30 years behind Amsterdam and the clock is still clicking on for the process to actually start. Tomorrow it will be 30 years and 1 day without action. (I'll just say it to be very clear here: when I say Amsterdam, really it's all of the Netherlands, to slightly varying degree.)
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    LA is a lot of communities crammed into one huge community. You can do almost anything there but the distinct sections are really far apart. Especially when it comes to jobs. Mom know the subject is LA's transportation system, but I can't help but see it as a problem of densification.
  - pinaceae 11y ago
    he is saying that it has 4x population on 5x the area. the latter being the kicker, most euros do not comprehend the distances that hit you in the US. plus, cali is a desert. try cycling in 40C heat, for 10miles (15km). people use cars because of the AC. distances also hit as your work rarely is located where you live - US has planned cities with strict zones. you live here but you work there. US commute is very, very different than anything in Europe.
jonknee 11y ago
Amsterdam has ~1.5m people in the metro area while LA has ~18m (more than The Netherlands in total!). They're just not comparable in terms of infrastructure. LA is also growing very rapidly (it's added 2 Amsterdam's worth of people since just 1990!) which makes it difficult to properly plan infrastructure.
- revelation 11y ago
  You're right they are not comparable in infrastructure, there are no dedicated bike lanes forming a connected network, but there are surely lots of dead pedestrians and car carnage.
- yxhuvud 11y ago
  They are not directly comparable, but not for the reason you state. Thing is, mass transit scale a heck of a lot better than highways do when population rises.
Frondo 11y ago
Yeah, I don't get this either. It's a weird kind of American exceptionalism, except in reverse: we can't have good broadband on a national level like in Finland, because America! a strong social welfare system won't work here like it does in Scandinavia, because America! People won't adapt to biking, because America! Yeah, we're bigger and more diverse, but so what? It's like people give up on solving problems, and use that as an excuse, without even trying. When I think of the conservatism that's really hurting us, it's not Fox News or any of those right-wing nitwits, it's otherwise-smart people putting out this attitude of "we can't do anything, because America!"
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > When I think of the conservatism that's really hurting us, it's not Fox News or any of those right-wing nitwits, it's otherwise-smart people putting out this attitude of "we can't do anything, because America!" I've quite often heard the "because America!" lines you refer to -- in response to the specific issues you mention -- used by Fox News and similar right-wing outlets. So, I'm not sure the two things you contrast here as sources of the issue are actually mutually exclusive alternatives, rather than closely related facets of the same thing.
- rayiner 11y ago
  > When I think of the conservatism that's really hurting us, it's not Fox News or any of those right-wing nitwits, it's otherwise-smart people putting out this attitude of "we can't do anything, because America!" Ironically, it was the wide-eyed liberal optimists of their day that inflicted suburbia on us. Disrupting how we built cities to that point was supposed to make everything better.
  - pjlegato 11y ago
    This is true. The zoning laws that led to suburbia were introduced in the 1910s and 1920s by well-meaning "progressives" who decried the ability of the rich to cloister themselves in country estates while the poor were forced to live among commerce in the city. They won, and the result was the legislation of vast suburban "residential" zones where commercial business was prohibited, with minimum lot sizes and setbacks and minimum space between houses.

Noted 11y ago

You realize that LA (the city proper, not metro area) is over 5x the size of Amsterdam with over 4x the population. I think that's part of what he meant by they're not really comparable. I definitely agree that, yes, it needs to be worked on. It just might be a longer process and some of the tricks that work in other locales aren't directly applicable.

revelation 11y ago
I don't get it. What does that even mean? It's 5x as big and has 5x the population? Do you realize what you are saying here? Yeah, it's always a longer process. You still gotta start at some point. 30 years behind Amsterdam and the clock is still clicking on for the process to actually start. Tomorrow it will be 30 years and 1 day without action. (I'll just say it to be very clear here: when I say Amsterdam, really it's all of the Netherlands, to slightly varying degree.)
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  LA is a lot of communities crammed into one huge community. You can do almost anything there but the distinct sections are really far apart. Especially when it comes to jobs. Mom know the subject is LA's transportation system, but I can't help but see it as a problem of densification.
- pinaceae 11y ago
  he is saying that it has 4x population on 5x the area. the latter being the kicker, most euros do not comprehend the distances that hit you in the US. plus, cali is a desert. try cycling in 40C heat, for 10miles (15km). people use cars because of the AC. distances also hit as your work rarely is located where you live - US has planned cities with strict zones. you live here but you work there. US commute is very, very different than anything in Europe.

jonknee 11y ago

Amsterdam has ~1.5m people in the metro area while LA has ~18m (more than The Netherlands in total!). They're just not comparable in terms of infrastructure. LA is also growing very rapidly (it's added 2 Amsterdam's worth of people since just 1990!) which makes it difficult to properly plan infrastructure.

revelation 11y ago
You're right they are not comparable in infrastructure, there are no dedicated bike lanes forming a connected network, but there are surely lots of dead pedestrians and car carnage.
yxhuvud 11y ago
They are not directly comparable, but not for the reason you state. Thing is, mass transit scale a heck of a lot better than highways do when population rises.

Frondo 11y ago

Yeah, I don't get this either. It's a weird kind of American exceptionalism, except in reverse: we can't have good broadband on a national level like in Finland, because America! a strong social welfare system won't work here like it does in Scandinavia, because America! People won't adapt to biking, because America! Yeah, we're bigger and more diverse, but so what? It's like people give up on solving problems, and use that as an excuse, without even trying. When I think of the conservatism that's really hurting us, it's not Fox News or any of those right-wing nitwits, it's otherwise-smart people putting out this attitude of "we can't do anything, because America!"

dragonwriter 11y ago
> When I think of the conservatism that's really hurting us, it's not Fox News or any of those right-wing nitwits, it's otherwise-smart people putting out this attitude of "we can't do anything, because America!" I've quite often heard the "because America!" lines you refer to -- in response to the specific issues you mention -- used by Fox News and similar right-wing outlets. So, I'm not sure the two things you contrast here as sources of the issue are actually mutually exclusive alternatives, rather than closely related facets of the same thing.
rayiner 11y ago
> When I think of the conservatism that's really hurting us, it's not Fox News or any of those right-wing nitwits, it's otherwise-smart people putting out this attitude of "we can't do anything, because America!" Ironically, it was the wide-eyed liberal optimists of their day that inflicted suburbia on us. Disrupting how we built cities to that point was supposed to make everything better.
- pjlegato 11y ago
  This is true. The zoning laws that led to suburbia were introduced in the 1910s and 1920s by well-meaning "progressives" who decried the ability of the rich to cloister themselves in country estates while the poor were forced to live among commerce in the city. They won, and the result was the legislation of vast suburban "residential" zones where commercial business was prohibited, with minimum lot sizes and setbacks and minimum space between houses.