8 ms·

>Car-free shopping districts are an interesting choice, but you still need to make some concessions to mass transit (eg delivery hours for trucks, right-of-way

>Car-free shopping districts are an interesting choice, but you still need to make some concessions to mass transit (eg delivery hours for trucks, right-of-way or other lanes for buses or expensive construction of subways, etc), Car free shopping districts and streets are common worldwide. Even the US has them. Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House is open only to foot traffic and bikes. The only cars in there are emergency vehicles. Charlottesville, Virginia has a pedestrian mall. >Europe generally doesn't have the sprawling suburbia of the eastern United States that would require massive ring-roads to handle traffic that isn't feasible to serve via mass transit The sprawling suburbia of the US comes from poor land use policies that do things like require single family housing. This is true even in cities which are famous for not having zoning, like Houston. Before we engaged in the Great Suburban Experiment the US was one of the world leaders in public transit. LA had one of the largest public transit systems in the entire world. Loosening certain land use controls would slowly repair this problem amongst many others. Lately these laws have attracted a lot of attention in the press, with economists from Paul Krugman on down commenting on land use controls, mostly negatively. Cities are slowly reforming these laws, or attempting to reform these laws, and I suspect that the America of the future will be much more walkable nationally than today's America. Even LA's leadership has realized that the car doesn't scale.

baldfat 11y ago
Suburbia - When tech books are written in a 100 years the disaster of Suburbia will be in all of them. I live in a city and walk to work and enjoy the life here (120,000 people). My city (Allentown, PA) is just now turning around from the "White Flight" we had int he 1980s. To me Suburbia = Center City destroying, inconvenient, isolating and depressing and is maybe the reason why drug use is so rampant in these areas. http://articles.philly.com/2007-02-08/news/25238943_1_drug-overdoses-drug-abuse-drug-treatment-centers http://articles.philly.com/2007-02-08/news/25238943_1_drug-o...
- criddell 11y ago
  Hey now, some of us love living out in the burbs. When self-driving cars are available, I'll buy one and move even further out.
  - UVB-76 11y ago
    Exactly. Self-driving cars will be the suburbs' renaissance.
    - criddell 11y ago
      When I was younger (in my 20's), I thought I would never move from the city center. I loved having lots of stuff close by. Getting up and taking a short walk to get some coffee and meet friends was awesome. The crowds and options were exciting and I loved my life. Then my wife and I decided to have kids and so when our lease was up on our apartment, we took the plunge and bought a house in the 'burbs. We had two kids and I adjusted to living on the edge of the city. The unthinkable happened - I love it in the suburbs. I don't think I could live in an apartment again.
    - baldfat 11y ago
      I have 5 kids and live in the city. I think Burbs need to go away. People should either go City or Country but mixing both has not shown to be a successful model.
    - apendleton 11y ago
      Except that many cities have no interest in building the necessary highways to make more driving practical. Washington, DC, where I live, is unlikely to ever have any more inbound highways constructed, and the ones we have are already congested. Any new transportation capacity into the city will almost definitely be mass-transit. There's simply no political will within the city to do the kind of awful urban-renewal-style tearing up of neighborhoods that'd be necessary for it, and frankly we don't really care if suburbanites want to more easily drive in in their self-driving cars.
      - Grishnakh 11y ago
beachstartup 11y ago
> LA had one of the largest public transit systems in the entire world. it still does, it's just mainly used by non-affluent (not just poor) people so nobody hears about it. the bus and rail system dwarf that of most major cities. the plan through 2030 is extremely ambitious and is half done already. there will be light rail from downtown to the ocean this year (already running halfway there), and the wilshire subway has already broken ground. i commuted from hollywood to pasadena every day for a year on it, and that was 10 years ago. when the expo/ocean line opens i will take it frequently to go downtown. i've taken the bus many times before, it acts like a train. hop on, hop off on major thoroughfares. http://thesource.metro.net/2013/06/13/new-under-construction-map-for-metro-rail-debuts/ http://thesource.metro.net/2013/06/13/new-under-construction...
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  I was in Santa Monica recently and saw the rail line. Everyone local commented that it's been built in the stupidest possible way: it runs across major streets, many crossings don't have gates or other safety measures, etc., and they're all saying that it's just a matter of time before the fatal accidents start happening.
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    yeah, take all that with a grain of salt. everyone here in SM is basically a rich NIMBY asshole.
    - ubernostrum 11y ago
      Well, my point of comparison is Portland's tram lines. Which already have such problems with clueless people just going right out in front of moving trains that they're having to run public-awareness campaigns about actually looking both ways before you cross the track. So I can certainly believe that putting a rail line in anywhere -- regardless of what you think of the residents -- without installing basic safety stuff like gates and signals at street crossings is kinda bad.

baldfat 11y ago

Suburbia - When tech books are written in a 100 years the disaster of Suburbia will be in all of them. I live in a city and walk to work and enjoy the life here (120,000 people). My city (Allentown, PA) is just now turning around from the "White Flight" we had int he 1980s. To me Suburbia = Center City destroying, inconvenient, isolating and depressing and is maybe the reason why drug use is so rampant in these areas. http://articles.philly.com/2007-02-08/news/25238943_1_drug-overdoses-drug-abuse-drug-treatment-centers http://articles.philly.com/2007-02-08/news/25238943_1_drug-o...

criddell 11y ago
Hey now, some of us love living out in the burbs. When self-driving cars are available, I'll buy one and move even further out.
- UVB-76 11y ago
  Exactly. Self-driving cars will be the suburbs' renaissance.
  - criddell 11y ago
    When I was younger (in my 20's), I thought I would never move from the city center. I loved having lots of stuff close by. Getting up and taking a short walk to get some coffee and meet friends was awesome. The crowds and options were exciting and I loved my life. Then my wife and I decided to have kids and so when our lease was up on our apartment, we took the plunge and bought a house in the 'burbs. We had two kids and I adjusted to living on the edge of the city. The unthinkable happened - I love it in the suburbs. I don't think I could live in an apartment again.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    I have 5 kids and live in the city. I think Burbs need to go away. People should either go City or Country but mixing both has not shown to be a successful model.
  - apendleton 11y ago
    Except that many cities have no interest in building the necessary highways to make more driving practical. Washington, DC, where I live, is unlikely to ever have any more inbound highways constructed, and the ones we have are already congested. Any new transportation capacity into the city will almost definitely be mass-transit. There's simply no political will within the city to do the kind of awful urban-renewal-style tearing up of neighborhoods that'd be necessary for it, and frankly we don't really care if suburbanites want to more easily drive in in their self-driving cars.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago

beachstartup 11y ago

> LA had one of the largest public transit systems in the entire world. it still does, it's just mainly used by non-affluent (not just poor) people so nobody hears about it. the bus and rail system dwarf that of most major cities. the plan through 2030 is extremely ambitious and is half done already. there will be light rail from downtown to the ocean this year (already running halfway there), and the wilshire subway has already broken ground. i commuted from hollywood to pasadena every day for a year on it, and that was 10 years ago. when the expo/ocean line opens i will take it frequently to go downtown. i've taken the bus many times before, it acts like a train. hop on, hop off on major thoroughfares. http://thesource.metro.net/2013/06/13/new-under-construction-map-for-metro-rail-debuts/ http://thesource.metro.net/2013/06/13/new-under-construction...

ubernostrum 11y ago
I was in Santa Monica recently and saw the rail line. Everyone local commented that it's been built in the stupidest possible way: it runs across major streets, many crossings don't have gates or other safety measures, etc., and they're all saying that it's just a matter of time before the fatal accidents start happening.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  yeah, take all that with a grain of salt. everyone here in SM is basically a rich NIMBY asshole.
  - ubernostrum 11y ago
    Well, my point of comparison is Portland's tram lines. Which already have such problems with clueless people just going right out in front of moving trains that they're having to run public-awareness campaigns about actually looking both ways before you cross the track. So I can certainly believe that putting a rail line in anywhere -- regardless of what you think of the residents -- without installing basic safety stuff like gates and signals at street crossings is kinda bad.