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Its not a suburb or sprawl problem. It's a car problem. I now live in Manhattan, the most densely populated chunk of the US. Any time I walk somewhere I spend
by lstyls 9y ago
Its not a suburb or sprawl problem. It's a car problem.
I now live in Manhattan, the most densely populated chunk of the US. Any time I walk somewhere I spend about half the time waiting for lights so that I can safely cross a street.
Cars are massively subsidized by government.
- brailsafe 9y agoWell, I don't disagree at all, but would argue that it's kind of a circular dependency problem. Sprawl would exist without cars to be sure, but cars make it much easier to expand, which increases dependency on cars, which supports sprawl. Then the people who have moved outward use their cars to work in the city because there's nothing in the suburbs and a poorly designed city (or one that is dependant on the people with cars) prioritizes that.
- lstyls 9y agoDefinitely. Suburbia could not exist without cars.
- brailsafe 9y agoWell, suburbia started becoming a thing long before cars and comes from the Greeks. However, I don't think the kind of cities you see today would necessarily have expanded so far without cars. They are not a book to cities or density from what I can tell.
- Endy 9y agoAs someone who walks in Manhattan, I see where you're coming from, but my experience differs. Specifically, 99% of the time I'm walking in Manhattan, I'm not trying to get somewhere on the same street or avenue I started on, so I can turn and walk along whatever block to avoid the lights. Plus (at least in the 40s), there are plenty of subway entries/passages where you don't need to pay but can pass through to get underneath the street - and buildings you can pass through as well. Of course, figuring out this maze is half the "fun" of walking in Manhattan.
- rorykoehler 9y agoIn Singapore they are experimenting with putting all traffic beneath the ground in new residential neighbourhoods.