4 ms·

There's one more reason why we need housing by the jobs. Global warming. As long as people live >20 minutes from work, there will be many reasons to take the c

by tajen 10y ago

There's one more reason why we need housing by the jobs. Global warming. As long as people live >20 minutes from work, there will be many reasons to take the car, and own a car. In Sydney, most of my colleagues didn't own a car. Cars mean parking lots, hence lower density, hence long distances to travel, hence cars are required. America won't reduce their dependency on carbon emissions as long as everything relies on cars.

DannyBee 10y ago
"There's one more reason why we need housing by the jobs. Global warming. " Truthfully, on that scale, it doesn't matter. Seriously. On that scale, we will run out of space everywhere, no matter what we do (unless you limit the population or expand to other planets). It's not even clear that we could do anything to change the timeline there, either. Really, no matter what we do in the bay area - turn it all into highrises, whatever, is going to matter a few centuries from now.
gaius 10y ago
There's one more reason why we need housing by the jobs. Global warming You're being orthogonal there. Electric cars powered by carbon-free sources (solar, hydro, geo, nuclear) won't have that impact. The economy of scale of cars and other road vehicles is that roads are cheaper per mile to build and maintain than rails, and have fewer constraints on their routing. You can be ideologically anti-car if you like (it's a free country) but be honest in your arguments.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  Building cars is incredibly energy/resource intensive, even if nobody ever drives them (which is why they cost tens of thousands of dollars). Organizing urban design and the rest of society around car travel also directly and indirectly leads to hugely inefficient land use and additional infrastructure construction, which is also energy/resource intensive.
- jdavis703 10y ago
  I don't think the argument here was about rail, it was about moving housing closer to jobs so human-powered transit (i.e. biking, walking, skateboarding etc) becomes viable for more people.
TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
The other responses to your comment seem to disregard that fact that even electric cars don't have an infinite life span, and still require the production of tyres, paint, lubricants, not to mention batteries. As car tyres wear out most of that rubber ends up in the ocean as it's washed in to the drains by rain. Probably not a good idea. In my opinion we need a strong reduce, reuse, recycle ideology. Good design comes from the earth and returns to it. It's a closed system. We need to radically rethink how we do things.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  It's not a closed system. There's a constant, massive energy flux.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    That's true, and a good point. I mean that Earth is a closed system insofar as we haven't found an economic way of removing our trash from the system.
- tajen 10y ago
  Exactly. We just need to sum the energy costs involved in moving 1t of metal to see that no amount of electric cars compares to living close to the workplace, and no "10% saving" will allow USA to divide its emissions by 7 [1]. But electric cars are a solution for the top 5% who worked a lot and deserve luxury, assuming the other layers of the population also make enough effort to avoid global warming. [1] USA has a carbon footprint of ~7 per inhabitant, so unless we assume some Chinese people should keep being restrained to 1/100th of American consumption, we'll have to come up with a scheme where most humans live at the level of an Eastern European in average. Living in a 5-floor building and working within 20 minutes distance being one of the consequences. It's not that bad, compared to the alternative.
  - jdavis703 10y ago
    Actually it's pretty awesome. Whenever I work in Europe for an extended period of time I stay in one of those 5-floor buildings within walking or biking distance of the office (thanks Airbnb). It takes commuting from stressful and makes it relaxing, even when it's around 5 degrees Celsius, raining and with heavy winds.

by tajen 10y ago

DannyBee 10y ago

"There's one more reason why we need housing by the jobs. Global warming. " Truthfully, on that scale, it doesn't matter. Seriously. On that scale, we will run out of space everywhere, no matter what we do (unless you limit the population or expand to other planets). It's not even clear that we could do anything to change the timeline there, either. Really, no matter what we do in the bay area - turn it all into highrises, whatever, is going to matter a few centuries from now.

gaius 10y ago

There's one more reason why we need housing by the jobs. Global warming You're being orthogonal there. Electric cars powered by carbon-free sources (solar, hydro, geo, nuclear) won't have that impact. The economy of scale of cars and other road vehicles is that roads are cheaper per mile to build and maintain than rails, and have fewer constraints on their routing. You can be ideologically anti-car if you like (it's a free country) but be honest in your arguments.

jacobolus 10y ago
Building cars is incredibly energy/resource intensive, even if nobody ever drives them (which is why they cost tens of thousands of dollars). Organizing urban design and the rest of society around car travel also directly and indirectly leads to hugely inefficient land use and additional infrastructure construction, which is also energy/resource intensive.
jdavis703 10y ago
I don't think the argument here was about rail, it was about moving housing closer to jobs so human-powered transit (i.e. biking, walking, skateboarding etc) becomes viable for more people.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago

The other responses to your comment seem to disregard that fact that even electric cars don't have an infinite life span, and still require the production of tyres, paint, lubricants, not to mention batteries. As car tyres wear out most of that rubber ends up in the ocean as it's washed in to the drains by rain. Probably not a good idea. In my opinion we need a strong reduce, reuse, recycle ideology. Good design comes from the earth and returns to it. It's a closed system. We need to radically rethink how we do things.

maxerickson 10y ago
It's not a closed system. There's a constant, massive energy flux.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  That's true, and a good point. I mean that Earth is a closed system insofar as we haven't found an economic way of removing our trash from the system.
tajen 10y ago
Exactly. We just need to sum the energy costs involved in moving 1t of metal to see that no amount of electric cars compares to living close to the workplace, and no "10% saving" will allow USA to divide its emissions by 7 [1]. But electric cars are a solution for the top 5% who worked a lot and deserve luxury, assuming the other layers of the population also make enough effort to avoid global warming. [1] USA has a carbon footprint of ~7 per inhabitant, so unless we assume some Chinese people should keep being restrained to 1/100th of American consumption, we'll have to come up with a scheme where most humans live at the level of an Eastern European in average. Living in a 5-floor building and working within 20 minutes distance being one of the consequences. It's not that bad, compared to the alternative.
- jdavis703 10y ago
  Actually it's pretty awesome. Whenever I work in Europe for an extended period of time I stay in one of those 5-floor buildings within walking or biking distance of the office (thanks Airbnb). It takes commuting from stressful and makes it relaxing, even when it's around 5 degrees Celsius, raining and with heavy winds.