5 ms·

If I had to choose between a world where 1) everyone owned electric cars 2) no one owned cars but just hitched rides on autonomous ones and 3) no one used cars

If I had to choose between a world where 1) everyone owned electric cars 2) no one owned cars but just hitched rides on autonomous ones and 3) no one used cars at all, I would take the third option. I think it's possible if we start building new cities designed for walking, instead of just expanding our current cities, with all the problems that presents. I think the trick would be to strictly limit their footprint to something that would allow anyone to walk from one end to another in ~30 minutes. You can still have a big city, you just have to rely on the world's greatest form of public transportation (the elevator) and build up. Aside from the serenity of not having cars wiz around, dividing up the city and running people over, there are a bunch of other benefits. Not having to provide services to every residence makes the government's job much easier (so less government); the city would become more of a community if everyone is always walking everywhere and running into each other; you'd have more public green space since the city would be surrounded by a large green loop; and it could fit into some really amazing locations, like a lush valley, or between a lake and a mountain. You can connect a bunch of them with a hyperloop (or something as simple as a bus service).

noahbradley 9y ago
And for people not interested in living in a city? I'm genuinely curious on this note. I love utopian visions of cities, but also recognize that even if they existed, more than a few folks wouldn't want to inhabit them.
- baron816 9y ago
  They can live somewhere else and drive their ICE cars around. I don't care that much what they do, but I want a live in a city that's livable. I think my vision would make for the most livable city possible.
  - Tade0 9y ago
    I live in a city which has a central district unavailable for most of the cars(aside from residents, but parking spaces are very limited). I would never want to live in that district. Reasons: - Buildings are very close to each other which makes the place dark and noisy(sound bounces off the walls). - Rent is high, because apartments are so close to everything that landlords can get away with high prices. - Trash day is once a week, because you can't have a garbage truck roaming the streets every morning waking everybody up. - Summer is hell, because air can't travel through all this tight space. Once you get rid of the roads you create a perverse incentive to place something there instead, e.g. buildings. And this is what ultimately happens. Also: assuming you're walking at a brisk pace of 6km/h. In 30 minutes you're going to travel 3km, which means that in order to be able to walk from one end to another you'll need a city with an area of at most 7km^2.
    - JoshTriplett 9y ago
      > - Trash day is once a week, because you can't have a garbage truck roaming the streets every morning waking everybody up. While I agree with the rest of your points, "once a week" trash service is pretty standard in many areas. And if you have properly integrated mechanisms within buildings, even that might be more often than needed.
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
A green space that city folk can reach in a 15 minute walk? Welcome to the forest of trash!
ph0rque 9y ago
> I think the trick would be to strictly limit their footprint to something that would allow anyone to walk from one end to another in ~30 minutes. How many inhabitants do you think that will be?
- baron816 9y ago
  The Upper East Side of Manhattan (one of the wealthiest and most desirable neighborhoods in the world) has over 200,000 residents. The UES doesn't have much office space though, which would be needed. But you could probably have a little bit bigger footprint than that, and certainly many more much taller buildings. So, I don't really know, but maybe 100,000 to 400,000 residents?
kumarvvr 9y ago
>I think it's possible if we start building new cities designed for walking, instead of just expanding our current cities, with all the problems that presents. I think the trick would be to strictly limit their footprint to something that would allow anyone to walk from one end to another in ~30 minutes. You can still have a big city, you just have to rely on the world's greatest form of public transportation (the elevator) and build up. We can build new cities, or expand current ones, with concepts in place that eliminate the need for travel, but a more pressing problem that requires immediate attention is the population currently in cities. In the given circumstances, mass public transport systems (like the one envisaged by Musk) are the best way forward, IMO. Electric cars are the next best option, considering the overall eco-friendly nature of coal to miles drive efficiency of electrical systems, plus their suitability to go off grid. To me one major focus point seems to be investment in technologies, concepts and constructs of nano-grids, at the level of individual communities and homes, drastically reducing fossil fuel usage. This could be a major push point for governments, and yes, problems of this scale require massive push from governments, to pull people kicking and screaming into a greener future, before it's too late. For that the world need strong leaders and forward thinkers. To quote an example, in India, where I am from, the govt. is pushing very hard for solar power generation, to the detriment of existing thermal power plant manufacturing infrastructure. There is a lot of resentment in affected companies, vendors, operators, etc, for this move. But what has to be done has to be done. Left to their own, or to market forces, we will boil ourselves dead. Remember, climate change has a lot of lag. It's effects are not immediate, nor apparent until it is too late. We are already seeing that now. > Aside from the serenity of not having cars wiz around, dividing up the city and running people over, there are a bunch of other benefits. Not having to provide services to every residence makes the government's job much easier (so less government); the city would become more of a community if everyone is always walking everywhere and running into each other; you'd have more public green space since the city would be surrounded by a large green loop; and it could fit into some really amazing locations, like a lush valley, or between a lake and a mountain. You can connect a bunch of them with a hyperloop (or something as simple as a bus service). This seems too fantastical to be made true in reality. Maybe I'm wrong, but IMO it's better we plan and do things keeping in mind the nature of the average human. After all, we still have huge swaths of population still thinking climate change is not caused or accelerated by human activities.
mikeash 9y ago
I can see a city with the third option, but the whole world? What if you want to go someplace that isn't in a city? Public transportation can't cover every rural destination.
- baron816 9y ago
  Sorry if I gave the impression that I want to make everyone live there. I don't want to make anyone do anything they don't want to do.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Gotcha. I took "a world" literally, but guess I shouldn't have.
d6e 9y ago
You mean a city like Tokyo?
bwanab 9y ago
I agree with you in principle, but any city has to have the ability for delivery services and emergency vehicles to move around.
- baron816 9y ago
  I think there are ways to deal with those things. You could have underground tunnels that allow limited motorized transit.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    Boston
rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
I've lived in Rome. It's basically like that. Everything you need is within a 3-4 block radius. It was very pleasant and I only rarely needed public transportation, and never a car. Groceries were a total pain in the ass, every time.
JoshTriplett 9y ago
That would also make the city completely inaccessible to people who can't walk those distances. The elderly, the disabled, the temporarily injured, etc. You'd also drastically increase commute times for the average person; a distance that takes 5 minutes to drive can take 30-60 to walk, and that's a huge amount of time wasted. (Not everyone can live within a few minutes walking distance of their workplace.) If you're talking about not having roads at all, you'd also break things like shipping and package delivery, other types of deliveries, trucking in general, many aspects of emergency services, and so on. Or just the ability to go pick up large/bulky items. I'd love to see designs that rely less on cars as a sole means of transportation. They still have a place in the ecosystem, however, and they serve a useful function.
imchillyb 9y ago
> ... we start building new cities ... I hope that you realize that cities are not just begun and built up (like the ghost-cities of China), but are built up over time because the area was desirable and people migrated to those areas. The US isn't in the habit of just building a city somewhere. That just doesn't happen. That -new city building- is something that happens when a country's GDP is slipping so low they have no choice but to spend money (looking at you China) to falsely inflate their growth metric. In the west, we are capitalist driven. That means a city will spring up around a feature. Doesn't matter what that feature is, but it's growth is organic and not necessarily well-planned as you're suggesting. We could theoretically do this, but we don't.
- maxsilver 9y ago
  I don't think that's a fair representation of what's happening. It's like judging a movie theater based on it's attendance the day before the movie opens. For China, planned cities look like a "ghost town" for a while... until the people start moving in, and suddenly it's not a ghost town anymore. I'm not claiming their approach is perfect, but I do like that they tried to plan ahead, something the US does not do often enough. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/21/china-west-ghost-city-comes-to-life-lanzhou-new-area https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/21/china-west-gh... I personally think America could benefit from taking a little bit of China's approach here. Can you imagine how much more affordable housing would be in San Francisco if a bunch of "unnecessary" / "ghost" housing got built before all the new tech jobs moved in. And sure, it's possible to misjudge things, not every future plan will be wildly successful. But what's really the worst case scenario? "Oh no, we built too much housing. I guess apartments will be really easy to afford. I guess we can start sheltering homeless people really cheaply now, or artists can retrofit some for cheap studio space."
  - nercht12 9y ago
    Someone has to front the money though, and there have to be developers who believe that they are going to make their money back. sigh The US is profit-driven, so developers go where the money is at. No promise? No money.

noahbradley 9y ago

And for people not interested in living in a city? I'm genuinely curious on this note. I love utopian visions of cities, but also recognize that even if they existed, more than a few folks wouldn't want to inhabit them.

baron816 9y ago
They can live somewhere else and drive their ICE cars around. I don't care that much what they do, but I want a live in a city that's livable. I think my vision would make for the most livable city possible.
- Tade0 9y ago
  I live in a city which has a central district unavailable for most of the cars(aside from residents, but parking spaces are very limited). I would never want to live in that district. Reasons: - Buildings are very close to each other which makes the place dark and noisy(sound bounces off the walls). - Rent is high, because apartments are so close to everything that landlords can get away with high prices. - Trash day is once a week, because you can't have a garbage truck roaming the streets every morning waking everybody up. - Summer is hell, because air can't travel through all this tight space. Once you get rid of the roads you create a perverse incentive to place something there instead, e.g. buildings. And this is what ultimately happens. Also: assuming you're walking at a brisk pace of 6km/h. In 30 minutes you're going to travel 3km, which means that in order to be able to walk from one end to another you'll need a city with an area of at most 7km^2.
  - JoshTriplett 9y ago
    > - Trash day is once a week, because you can't have a garbage truck roaming the streets every morning waking everybody up. While I agree with the rest of your points, "once a week" trash service is pretty standard in many areas. And if you have properly integrated mechanisms within buildings, even that might be more often than needed.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago

A green space that city folk can reach in a 15 minute walk? Welcome to the forest of trash!

ph0rque 9y ago

> I think the trick would be to strictly limit their footprint to something that would allow anyone to walk from one end to another in ~30 minutes. How many inhabitants do you think that will be?

baron816 9y ago
The Upper East Side of Manhattan (one of the wealthiest and most desirable neighborhoods in the world) has over 200,000 residents. The UES doesn't have much office space though, which would be needed. But you could probably have a little bit bigger footprint than that, and certainly many more much taller buildings. So, I don't really know, but maybe 100,000 to 400,000 residents?

kumarvvr 9y ago

>I think it's possible if we start building new cities designed for walking, instead of just expanding our current cities, with all the problems that presents. I think the trick would be to strictly limit their footprint to something that would allow anyone to walk from one end to another in ~30 minutes. You can still have a big city, you just have to rely on the world's greatest form of public transportation (the elevator) and build up. We can build new cities, or expand current ones, with concepts in place that eliminate the need for travel, but a more pressing problem that requires immediate attention is the population currently in cities. In the given circumstances, mass public transport systems (like the one envisaged by Musk) are the best way forward, IMO. Electric cars are the next best option, considering the overall eco-friendly nature of coal to miles drive efficiency of electrical systems, plus their suitability to go off grid. To me one major focus point seems to be investment in technologies, concepts and constructs of nano-grids, at the level of individual communities and homes, drastically reducing fossil fuel usage. This could be a major push point for governments, and yes, problems of this scale require massive push from governments, to pull people kicking and screaming into a greener future, before it's too late. For that the world need strong leaders and forward thinkers. To quote an example, in India, where I am from, the govt. is pushing very hard for solar power generation, to the detriment of existing thermal power plant manufacturing infrastructure. There is a lot of resentment in affected companies, vendors, operators, etc, for this move. But what has to be done has to be done. Left to their own, or to market forces, we will boil ourselves dead. Remember, climate change has a lot of lag. It's effects are not immediate, nor apparent until it is too late. We are already seeing that now. > Aside from the serenity of not having cars wiz around, dividing up the city and running people over, there are a bunch of other benefits. Not having to provide services to every residence makes the government's job much easier (so less government); the city would become more of a community if everyone is always walking everywhere and running into each other; you'd have more public green space since the city would be surrounded by a large green loop; and it could fit into some really amazing locations, like a lush valley, or between a lake and a mountain. You can connect a bunch of them with a hyperloop (or something as simple as a bus service). This seems too fantastical to be made true in reality. Maybe I'm wrong, but IMO it's better we plan and do things keeping in mind the nature of the average human. After all, we still have huge swaths of population still thinking climate change is not caused or accelerated by human activities.

mikeash 9y ago

I can see a city with the third option, but the whole world? What if you want to go someplace that isn't in a city? Public transportation can't cover every rural destination.

baron816 9y ago
Sorry if I gave the impression that I want to make everyone live there. I don't want to make anyone do anything they don't want to do.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Gotcha. I took "a world" literally, but guess I shouldn't have.

d6e 9y ago

You mean a city like Tokyo?

bwanab 9y ago

I agree with you in principle, but any city has to have the ability for delivery services and emergency vehicles to move around.

baron816 9y ago
I think there are ways to deal with those things. You could have underground tunnels that allow limited motorized transit.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Boston

rm_-rf_slash 9y ago

I've lived in Rome. It's basically like that. Everything you need is within a 3-4 block radius. It was very pleasant and I only rarely needed public transportation, and never a car. Groceries were a total pain in the ass, every time.

JoshTriplett 9y ago

That would also make the city completely inaccessible to people who can't walk those distances. The elderly, the disabled, the temporarily injured, etc. You'd also drastically increase commute times for the average person; a distance that takes 5 minutes to drive can take 30-60 to walk, and that's a huge amount of time wasted. (Not everyone can live within a few minutes walking distance of their workplace.) If you're talking about not having roads at all, you'd also break things like shipping and package delivery, other types of deliveries, trucking in general, many aspects of emergency services, and so on. Or just the ability to go pick up large/bulky items. I'd love to see designs that rely less on cars as a sole means of transportation. They still have a place in the ecosystem, however, and they serve a useful function.

imchillyb 9y ago

> ... we start building new cities ... I hope that you realize that cities are not just begun and built up (like the ghost-cities of China), but are built up over time because the area was desirable and people migrated to those areas. The US isn't in the habit of just building a city somewhere. That just doesn't happen. That -new city building- is something that happens when a country's GDP is slipping so low they have no choice but to spend money (looking at you China) to falsely inflate their growth metric. In the west, we are capitalist driven. That means a city will spring up around a feature. Doesn't matter what that feature is, but it's growth is organic and not necessarily well-planned as you're suggesting. We could theoretically do this, but we don't.

maxsilver 9y ago
I don't think that's a fair representation of what's happening. It's like judging a movie theater based on it's attendance the day before the movie opens. For China, planned cities look like a "ghost town" for a while... until the people start moving in, and suddenly it's not a ghost town anymore. I'm not claiming their approach is perfect, but I do like that they tried to plan ahead, something the US does not do often enough. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/21/china-west-ghost-city-comes-to-life-lanzhou-new-area https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/21/china-west-gh... I personally think America could benefit from taking a little bit of China's approach here. Can you imagine how much more affordable housing would be in San Francisco if a bunch of "unnecessary" / "ghost" housing got built before all the new tech jobs moved in. And sure, it's possible to misjudge things, not every future plan will be wildly successful. But what's really the worst case scenario? "Oh no, we built too much housing. I guess apartments will be really easy to afford. I guess we can start sheltering homeless people really cheaply now, or artists can retrofit some for cheap studio space."
- nercht12 9y ago
  Someone has to front the money though, and there have to be developers who believe that they are going to make their money back. sigh The US is profit-driven, so developers go where the money is at. No promise? No money.