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They can defend it by having good enough public transportation to not need a car in Manhattan. Unless you're carrying something large/heavy, there's no reason t

They can defend it by having good enough public transportation to not need a car in Manhattan. Unless you're carrying something large/heavy, there's no reason to go to Manhattan via car. It's something we Americans aren't used to and don't think about, but basing cities around cars instead of people is a bad idea. In NYC, it's often faster to take the subway instead of drive.

jimmaswell 9y ago
Was Manhattan "based around cars"? I don't know the specifics but I thought NYC mostly just grew from its roots from a time quite a while before cars. I imagine a city truly based around cars could be made to have much less congestion while still accommodating walkers/bicyclists. More lanes between buildings, with sidewalks replaced by pedestrian bridges so traffic flows with less obstruction, for example. Less intersections and more straight stretches.
- rthomas6 9y ago
  No, Manhattan was not based around cars, and that's a good thing. It's what allows for such high population density, and so many unique neighborhoods. Allowing so many people to live comfortably and efficiently in its limited space is what give Manhattan many of its most sought-after features: The food, the diversity, the infrastructure, the walkability. We shouldn't design for cars and accommodate for pedestrians, we should design for pedestrians and accommodate for cars. There are many cities based around cars exactly as you describe. They're okay, and there are great places in them that you can drive. But it sort of necessitates driving. In these cities, it's harder to just walk out of your apartment and get groceries, or eat at a restaurant, or watch a movie, or go to a pub, because things are much farther away, because of the scale of roads and parking needed for fast car transportation. And that, in turn, decreases population density, increases isolation, and destroys any sense of a neighborhood. It make far, far, far more sense to make places easy to walk to first, and worry about cars second. I don't think you realize what NYC would be giving up if it were designed the way you suggest. Less intersections and faster traffic + all the parking needed would mean less people, less shops, and most of all less culture. Those roads have to go somewhere. It doesn't matter how many pedestrian bridges you build, designing things around cars means that you need to design everything at the scale of cars. Imagining Manhattan designed around cars and every attraction having individual parking so people can drive there is a nightmare scenario. Times Square: Gone. Street food on every corner: Gone. Small niche shops and restaurants: gone. Because people couldn't walk there easily anymore. Look at these two satellite images [0]. One is downtown Florence, Italy. The other is an interstate interchange in Atlanta. These two images are at the same scale. Which makes more sense? Which would you rather live in? How much does it matter that driving is hard in the first picture? [0]: https://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2014/06/sprawl.jpg.662x0_q70_crop-scale.jpg https://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2014/06/sprawl.jp...
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    I was imagining widening the roads and replacing crosswalks with bridges while holding everything else pretty much constant. I spent a month in a city like the second picture, at a hotel for job training, and it was annoying that I couldn't safely walk right across the street to the stores over there, but if there were just some bridges it would've been fine. Something else that I've imagined would be cool is a system of skybridges mirroring the sidewalks. Maybe even in that case pedestrian traffic could be removed from the street level, so pedestrians and vehicles would be fully separated, working out best for everyone. Another interesting idea is a second network of roads on bridges that maybe go through buildings, which has happened a bit in a few cities. Unfortunately both of these ideas are probably too expensive in practice.
    - rthomas6 9y ago
      I see what you're saying. That seems like an acceptable way to make a city walkable while having faster driving. Another idea is some kind of underground road layer under the city. I think the important thing is keeping as much real estate as possible for spaces where people live, work, and eat. That's what is needed anyway to have the population density to produce the tax revenue sufficient for one of these solutions.

jimmaswell 9y ago

Was Manhattan "based around cars"? I don't know the specifics but I thought NYC mostly just grew from its roots from a time quite a while before cars. I imagine a city truly based around cars could be made to have much less congestion while still accommodating walkers/bicyclists. More lanes between buildings, with sidewalks replaced by pedestrian bridges so traffic flows with less obstruction, for example. Less intersections and more straight stretches.

rthomas6 9y ago
No, Manhattan was not based around cars, and that's a good thing. It's what allows for such high population density, and so many unique neighborhoods. Allowing so many people to live comfortably and efficiently in its limited space is what give Manhattan many of its most sought-after features: The food, the diversity, the infrastructure, the walkability. We shouldn't design for cars and accommodate for pedestrians, we should design for pedestrians and accommodate for cars. There are many cities based around cars exactly as you describe. They're okay, and there are great places in them that you can drive. But it sort of necessitates driving. In these cities, it's harder to just walk out of your apartment and get groceries, or eat at a restaurant, or watch a movie, or go to a pub, because things are much farther away, because of the scale of roads and parking needed for fast car transportation. And that, in turn, decreases population density, increases isolation, and destroys any sense of a neighborhood. It make far, far, far more sense to make places easy to walk to first, and worry about cars second. I don't think you realize what NYC would be giving up if it were designed the way you suggest. Less intersections and faster traffic + all the parking needed would mean less people, less shops, and most of all less culture. Those roads have to go somewhere. It doesn't matter how many pedestrian bridges you build, designing things around cars means that you need to design everything at the scale of cars. Imagining Manhattan designed around cars and every attraction having individual parking so people can drive there is a nightmare scenario. Times Square: Gone. Street food on every corner: Gone. Small niche shops and restaurants: gone. Because people couldn't walk there easily anymore. Look at these two satellite images [0]. One is downtown Florence, Italy. The other is an interstate interchange in Atlanta. These two images are at the same scale. Which makes more sense? Which would you rather live in? How much does it matter that driving is hard in the first picture? [0]: https://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2014/06/sprawl.jpg.662x0_q70_crop-scale.jpg https://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2014/06/sprawl.jp...
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  I was imagining widening the roads and replacing crosswalks with bridges while holding everything else pretty much constant. I spent a month in a city like the second picture, at a hotel for job training, and it was annoying that I couldn't safely walk right across the street to the stores over there, but if there were just some bridges it would've been fine. Something else that I've imagined would be cool is a system of skybridges mirroring the sidewalks. Maybe even in that case pedestrian traffic could be removed from the street level, so pedestrians and vehicles would be fully separated, working out best for everyone. Another interesting idea is a second network of roads on bridges that maybe go through buildings, which has happened a bit in a few cities. Unfortunately both of these ideas are probably too expensive in practice.
  - rthomas6 9y ago
    I see what you're saying. That seems like an acceptable way to make a city walkable while having faster driving. Another idea is some kind of underground road layer under the city. I think the important thing is keeping as much real estate as possible for spaces where people live, work, and eat. That's what is needed anyway to have the population density to produce the tax revenue sufficient for one of these solutions.