5 ms·

Speaking as someone who is from Vancouver, it is very hard for me to see it (or cities like it) as a good example. Congestion has skyrocketed there, and many pe

by nickff 10y ago

Speaking as someone who is from Vancouver, it is very hard for me to see it (or cities like it) as a good example. Congestion has skyrocketed there, and many people are wasting 5-10 hours a week in traffic delays because of infrastructure which does not match citizens' needs. City planners have wreaked havoc on cities with their continual obsessions with fads; maybe they should focus on helping people get what they want instead of trying to change people.

maxerickson 10y ago
What percentage of the population drives in Vancouver? If only a smaller fraction of commuters are stuck in congestion the situation is probably working okay for everyone else.
- nickff 10y ago
  This is a complicated question because the (rich) population in the city center generally doesn't drive much, but the average resident in the (GVRD) area drives quite a bit. I don't think many people have even argued that the traffic situation is 'working okay'.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    I don't think many people have even argued that the traffic situation is 'working okay'. That isn't what I said. I implied that someone riding in a train probably doesn't care much about road congestion.
    - nickff 10y ago
      You asked "What percentage of the population drives in Vancouver?", and another commenter replied that it is about 65%, which means it is unlikely that most people see massive congestion as 'okay'.
  - wott 10y ago
    > This is a complicated question because the (rich) population in the city center This is a MYTH that must be ended someday. No, not only people living in most city centres are not rich, but they are even poorer than people living in the suburbs. In my country, this the case for every single city except the capital. I don't know Vancouver, but a 5 minute search of maps of densities and maps of income seem to confirm this again: centre, dense areas are the poorest. And yet, on every thread (same in US forums or at my place) about transportation, transit, housing, bicycle(!), urbanisation, whatever that relates to cities, someone (or many) will come and say that people from the centre are rich and privileged and that the suburban people are poor and that they had no other choice than to move there to survive. Truth is, except for a few slum-like suburbs, other suburbs are mostly populated by people who chose to move there to have a bit of a garden or to have bigger houses or to park their cars or to have dogs or to have a swimming pool, etc. and these people have a higher living standard.
    - nickff 10y ago
      My comment is accurate when applied specifically to Vancouver, where a condominium can easily cost >$1000/sqft; I am not sure what is happening in other cities.
    - ams6110 10y ago
      Not that simple. Take a city like Chicago. There are areas where less than a mile separates the extremes of wealth and poverty. And they are in the city, maybe not dead center but certainly not in the 'burbs
    - dodders 10y ago
      Nope. Sorry, but lots of cities have very expensive housing in the center where rich people live. I will start with NYC, San Francisco, LA, London, Sydney, Boston, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Toronto, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Prague, Munich, Berlin, Rome, Amsterdam, Copenhagen...
- vohk 10y ago
  It's getting bit dated but as of 2011, about 65% of metro Vancouver commutes by personal vehicle[1]. [1]https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-012-x/2011003/tbl/tbl1a-eng.cfm https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-012-x/2011...
  - chris_7 10y ago
    "Metro Vancouver" is not Vancouver, though. People there are the equivalent (from my NY perspective) of the people upstate, Jersey, and CT - they can have their cars if they want, but we shouldn't accommodate them here in Manhattan.
criddell 10y ago
So if what people want are car-based cities that work well, what should a city planner do? Take measures to limit growth? Massive taxes on new construction? The city I grew up in had a population of around 27,000 people 30 years ago. I think it's roughly the same today. Unsurprisingly, traffic and parking work about as well today is it did when I was a teenager.
- nickff 10y ago
  The Greater Vancouver Regional District is made up of many municipalities, so if only one limits growth, the others will probably absorb that additional population (causing increases in congestion). Additional taxes on new construction would exacerbate any traffic problems by pushing people out to the suburbs (, especially with Vancouver's already high housing prices). I would argue for precisely the opposite: allow for much greater construction everywhere, with fewer restrictions. City planners' efforts to 'sculpt' a city usually involves restricting supply to force people to live where the planners want them to, which drives up prices and drives population to suburbs.
  - criddell 10y ago
    Luckily for me, the suburbs are exactly where I want to be.
  - criddell 10y ago
    You're thinking about housing construction and I was thinking more about commercial. If you limit business growth or make it very costly for new businesses to enter the area, then you will probably cut off massive population growth as well.
- alkonaut 10y ago
  The cost of living goes up with popularity. Rents make sure you pay for the privilege of living in a popular place. Car infrastructure like roads and parking doesn't scale so the only real alternative to congestion is rent - I.e congestion fees and more expensive parking. If it was (say) $100 a day to enter a major city by car, and as much again to park, then congestion would be over. You might argue this is surrendering the roads to the 1% which it is, but it also quickly funds new infrastructure and public transport.
revelation 10y ago
Less than 50% of households in NYC have a car. This is the thinking of people who want to live in the suburbs to have space then offload their car-centric lifestyle to people living in the city as they expect to drive within mere feet of their job.
- nickff 10y ago
  >"Less than 50% of households in NYC have a car." How is that relevant? NYC has its own issues, and is very far from Vancouver. edit: comment above was originally only the eight words in my quote when I commented.
  - revelation 10y ago
    The point is clearly that you might someday wake up and realize your behavior no longer matches the majority "citizen". If your city isn't like NYC right now it's only ever going to move in that direction.
    - nickff 10y ago
      I actually live in a city centre, a very walk-able area which is well served by public transit and bike lanes. This is not about me, this is about the thousands of people I've seen who are spending hours of their lives suffering in traffic.
    - marcoperaza 10y ago
      >If your city isn't like NYC right now it's only ever going to move in that direction. That's a hell of an assumption. I know people who live in NYC, making very good money, and they're all crammed into tiny apartments with multiple roommates because the congestion and rent are so ridiculous. That's fine for people in their early 20s, but do you really think these same people are still going to live in NYC once they get married and have kids? A small percent will buy a place in NYC, and the rest will move out to the suburbs. If anything, I'd predict that small and walkable urban areas, interspersed inside large suburbs, are more likely to be the future growth areas.
Pxtl 10y ago
Vancouver's suburbs are atrociously run. Rather than embrace the fact that they are some of the most desirable realestate in the world, they fight against intensification. You have train stations next to million-dollar bungalows. That's madness. Build up.... But doing that raises the NIMBYs ire. The challenge with intensification is that the benefits are to the city and the planet, but the downsides are local. City gets more property taxes with the same infrastructure, and a good node for transit. The world gets greener living. However, the neighbors get more traffic and cast shadows. To me the solution is obvious: make paying off the neighbors part of the standard process.
- yourapostasy 10y ago
  > To me the solution is obvious: make paying off the neighbors part of the standard process. I offer an alternative: the NIMBY's can keep their un-intensified environment, if they pay via taxes to fund the infrastructure that makes it possible to tie an intensified area elsewhere into the city transit infrastructure, and pay any necessary infrastructure to extend out to that intensified area (roads, utilities, datacomm, permitting, environmental studies, etc.). Currently the NIMBY's force an externality upon all other city residents by making the city grow outward (with costs increasing as the square of the linear distance from the city center) instead of upward (6X multiplier per square meter for high-rise skyscrapers over SFR's, don't know what the multiplier to add for expanding infrastructure). So if the NIMBY's want to keep 100 hectares of SFR's as SFR's, no problem if they stump up the money to pay for the nearest 100 hectares that can be zoned for intensification, the rail extension to tie it to the city center, the roads to connect to it, etc. As long as the cost of the externality is captured and passed onto willing buyers, I don't see a problem with NIMBY's.
  - rspeer 10y ago
    You: Hey NIMBYs, pay up. NIMBYs: No. You: There should be a law. NIMBYs: Well, no elected official will pass such a law. If they do, we won't re-elect them. You: I'll find enough YIMBYs to elect someone who will make you pay up. NIMBYs: You'll find nasty greedy developers who want to bulldoze neighborhoods and kick Grandma out of her home? Go for it. We'll let the neighbors know all about it. (edit: to be clear, I am a YIMBY and I agree with you in principle. But NIMBY rhetoric wins big in local politics, and I don't know enough effective YIMBY rhetoric to counter it.)

by nickff 10y ago

maxerickson 10y ago

What percentage of the population drives in Vancouver? If only a smaller fraction of commuters are stuck in congestion the situation is probably working okay for everyone else.

nickff 10y ago
This is a complicated question because the (rich) population in the city center generally doesn't drive much, but the average resident in the (GVRD) area drives quite a bit. I don't think many people have even argued that the traffic situation is 'working okay'.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  I don't think many people have even argued that the traffic situation is 'working okay'. That isn't what I said. I implied that someone riding in a train probably doesn't care much about road congestion.
  - nickff 10y ago
    You asked "What percentage of the population drives in Vancouver?", and another commenter replied that it is about 65%, which means it is unlikely that most people see massive congestion as 'okay'.
- wott 10y ago
  > This is a complicated question because the (rich) population in the city center This is a MYTH that must be ended someday. No, not only people living in most city centres are not rich, but they are even poorer than people living in the suburbs. In my country, this the case for every single city except the capital. I don't know Vancouver, but a 5 minute search of maps of densities and maps of income seem to confirm this again: centre, dense areas are the poorest. And yet, on every thread (same in US forums or at my place) about transportation, transit, housing, bicycle(!), urbanisation, whatever that relates to cities, someone (or many) will come and say that people from the centre are rich and privileged and that the suburban people are poor and that they had no other choice than to move there to survive. Truth is, except for a few slum-like suburbs, other suburbs are mostly populated by people who chose to move there to have a bit of a garden or to have bigger houses or to park their cars or to have dogs or to have a swimming pool, etc. and these people have a higher living standard.
  - nickff 10y ago
    My comment is accurate when applied specifically to Vancouver, where a condominium can easily cost >$1000/sqft; I am not sure what is happening in other cities.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    Not that simple. Take a city like Chicago. There are areas where less than a mile separates the extremes of wealth and poverty. And they are in the city, maybe not dead center but certainly not in the 'burbs
  - dodders 10y ago
    Nope. Sorry, but lots of cities have very expensive housing in the center where rich people live. I will start with NYC, San Francisco, LA, London, Sydney, Boston, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Toronto, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Prague, Munich, Berlin, Rome, Amsterdam, Copenhagen...
vohk 10y ago
It's getting bit dated but as of 2011, about 65% of metro Vancouver commutes by personal vehicle[1]. [1]https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-012-x/2011003/tbl/tbl1a-eng.cfm https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-012-x/2011...
- chris_7 10y ago
  "Metro Vancouver" is not Vancouver, though. People there are the equivalent (from my NY perspective) of the people upstate, Jersey, and CT - they can have their cars if they want, but we shouldn't accommodate them here in Manhattan.

criddell 10y ago

So if what people want are car-based cities that work well, what should a city planner do? Take measures to limit growth? Massive taxes on new construction? The city I grew up in had a population of around 27,000 people 30 years ago. I think it's roughly the same today. Unsurprisingly, traffic and parking work about as well today is it did when I was a teenager.

nickff 10y ago
The Greater Vancouver Regional District is made up of many municipalities, so if only one limits growth, the others will probably absorb that additional population (causing increases in congestion). Additional taxes on new construction would exacerbate any traffic problems by pushing people out to the suburbs (, especially with Vancouver's already high housing prices). I would argue for precisely the opposite: allow for much greater construction everywhere, with fewer restrictions. City planners' efforts to 'sculpt' a city usually involves restricting supply to force people to live where the planners want them to, which drives up prices and drives population to suburbs.
- criddell 10y ago
  Luckily for me, the suburbs are exactly where I want to be.
- criddell 10y ago
  You're thinking about housing construction and I was thinking more about commercial. If you limit business growth or make it very costly for new businesses to enter the area, then you will probably cut off massive population growth as well.
alkonaut 10y ago
The cost of living goes up with popularity. Rents make sure you pay for the privilege of living in a popular place. Car infrastructure like roads and parking doesn't scale so the only real alternative to congestion is rent - I.e congestion fees and more expensive parking. If it was (say) $100 a day to enter a major city by car, and as much again to park, then congestion would be over. You might argue this is surrendering the roads to the 1% which it is, but it also quickly funds new infrastructure and public transport.

revelation 10y ago

Less than 50% of households in NYC have a car. This is the thinking of people who want to live in the suburbs to have space then offload their car-centric lifestyle to people living in the city as they expect to drive within mere feet of their job.

nickff 10y ago
>"Less than 50% of households in NYC have a car." How is that relevant? NYC has its own issues, and is very far from Vancouver. edit: comment above was originally only the eight words in my quote when I commented.
- revelation 10y ago
  The point is clearly that you might someday wake up and realize your behavior no longer matches the majority "citizen". If your city isn't like NYC right now it's only ever going to move in that direction.
  - nickff 10y ago
    I actually live in a city centre, a very walk-able area which is well served by public transit and bike lanes. This is not about me, this is about the thousands of people I've seen who are spending hours of their lives suffering in traffic.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    >If your city isn't like NYC right now it's only ever going to move in that direction. That's a hell of an assumption. I know people who live in NYC, making very good money, and they're all crammed into tiny apartments with multiple roommates because the congestion and rent are so ridiculous. That's fine for people in their early 20s, but do you really think these same people are still going to live in NYC once they get married and have kids? A small percent will buy a place in NYC, and the rest will move out to the suburbs. If anything, I'd predict that small and walkable urban areas, interspersed inside large suburbs, are more likely to be the future growth areas.

Pxtl 10y ago

Vancouver's suburbs are atrociously run. Rather than embrace the fact that they are some of the most desirable realestate in the world, they fight against intensification. You have train stations next to million-dollar bungalows. That's madness. Build up.... But doing that raises the NIMBYs ire. The challenge with intensification is that the benefits are to the city and the planet, but the downsides are local. City gets more property taxes with the same infrastructure, and a good node for transit. The world gets greener living. However, the neighbors get more traffic and cast shadows. To me the solution is obvious: make paying off the neighbors part of the standard process.

yourapostasy 10y ago
> To me the solution is obvious: make paying off the neighbors part of the standard process. I offer an alternative: the NIMBY's can keep their un-intensified environment, if they pay via taxes to fund the infrastructure that makes it possible to tie an intensified area elsewhere into the city transit infrastructure, and pay any necessary infrastructure to extend out to that intensified area (roads, utilities, datacomm, permitting, environmental studies, etc.). Currently the NIMBY's force an externality upon all other city residents by making the city grow outward (with costs increasing as the square of the linear distance from the city center) instead of upward (6X multiplier per square meter for high-rise skyscrapers over SFR's, don't know what the multiplier to add for expanding infrastructure). So if the NIMBY's want to keep 100 hectares of SFR's as SFR's, no problem if they stump up the money to pay for the nearest 100 hectares that can be zoned for intensification, the rail extension to tie it to the city center, the roads to connect to it, etc. As long as the cost of the externality is captured and passed onto willing buyers, I don't see a problem with NIMBY's.
- rspeer 10y ago
  You: Hey NIMBYs, pay up. NIMBYs: No. You: There should be a law. NIMBYs: Well, no elected official will pass such a law. If they do, we won't re-elect them. You: I'll find enough YIMBYs to elect someone who will make you pay up. NIMBYs: You'll find nasty greedy developers who want to bulldoze neighborhoods and kick Grandma out of her home? Go for it. We'll let the neighbors know all about it. (edit: to be clear, I am a YIMBY and I agree with you in principle. But NIMBY rhetoric wins big in local politics, and I don't know enough effective YIMBY rhetoric to counter it.)