5 ms·

We need cities that are easily traversed by humans, not cars.

thriftwy 9y ago
They need to be really small for that to work, and what's happening is that only 1M+ or even 5M+ population areas are in demand. A home to 5M people isn't likely going to be very walkable.
- CAT0 9y ago
  > They need to be really small for that to work That's not true. One solution is the '10 Minute City/Neighborhood' and its guide to decision-making.
- sveme 9y ago
  You can have locally village-like situations in a large city if you have a high enough population density and then connect these local villages with mass transit. I can walk to three movie theatres, all doctors, a university hospital, five or six different supermarkets and a shitload of other shops despite living in an agglomeration of three million. Another similar area is just six stops on the subway away.
  - m_mueller 9y ago
    Yes, that’s how Tokyo works. Living standard with average salary is quite nice for this reason.
- Noughmad 9y ago
  The need to be small geographically. Manhattan is very walkable, and very in demand.
- Scarblac 9y ago
  Add good bicycle infrastructure and it's a lot more doable.
- erispoe 9y ago
  Most large European cities are very walkable. London, Paris or Berlin are really walkable and host millions of people. On the contrary, with the exception of North America, larger cities are usually more walkable than small settlements and rural places.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    I'm not really sure they're so walkable. You can probably walk your local borough, dissected by highways and rail. There's not much happening on it, and it quickly becomes repetitive. This unless you live in urban core, which is contiguous but expensive so that it needs the outskirts to maintain its buzz.
- CalRobert 9y ago
  Citation massively needed. Plenty of folks walk in cities with more than 5M people (London comes to mind). It's not like you routinely visit every last business in that city. Also, if you have a bicycle and decent bike network you can traverse an entire major city in 45 - 60 minutes. The problem is that most new cities are virtually nothing but asphalt and empty land in order to accommodate cars. I am sometimes called weird for saying this - but seriously - look at pictures taken at elevation and a modern "city" looks very sparse indeed.
chroem- 9y ago
This is how SF-style housing crises are made. When you force everyone to be very geographically close to their place of employment, it has the dual effects of reducing the effective supply of available housing options, while simultaneously increasing demand for housing in a very specific geographic area. If you look at the cities that have done this, both in the US and abroad, you will notice that their rents are typically astronomical.
- vertex-four 9y ago
  SF has the issue that certain popular types of work are only available in SF, and if someone wants to be in that type of work, they have very few options for where to live. More, smaller cities - or even large cities with multiple “city centres” - and an approach which attempts to ensure that the SF centralisation of the consumer tech industry couldn’t be a thing, would be the solution, surely, if you decided to design from top-down?
  - chroem- 9y ago
    No, the point is that the Bay Area is too congested (and to some extent intentionally congested) to allow for an appreciable amount of commuting. One person's sprawl is another person's affordable housing.
    - vertex-four 9y ago
      The point is that the Bay Area is essentially the unique place where you have to work if you want to work in the consumer tech industry on things that make newspaper headlines. The point is that if people could work on that in more places, the problem of wanting to commute to a specific area wouldn't exist.
      - chroem- 9y ago
        While that may be true, it's also passing the buck since there are a lot of economically productive cities where commuting is practical and rents are cheap.

They need to be really small for that to work, and what's happening is that only 1M+ or even 5M+ population areas are in demand. A home to 5M people isn't likely going to be very walkable.

CAT0 9y ago
> They need to be really small for that to work That's not true. One solution is the '10 Minute City/Neighborhood' and its guide to decision-making.
sveme 9y ago
You can have locally village-like situations in a large city if you have a high enough population density and then connect these local villages with mass transit. I can walk to three movie theatres, all doctors, a university hospital, five or six different supermarkets and a shitload of other shops despite living in an agglomeration of three million. Another similar area is just six stops on the subway away.
- m_mueller 9y ago
  Yes, that’s how Tokyo works. Living standard with average salary is quite nice for this reason.
Noughmad 9y ago
The need to be small geographically. Manhattan is very walkable, and very in demand.
Scarblac 9y ago
Add good bicycle infrastructure and it's a lot more doable.
erispoe 9y ago
Most large European cities are very walkable. London, Paris or Berlin are really walkable and host millions of people. On the contrary, with the exception of North America, larger cities are usually more walkable than small settlements and rural places.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  I'm not really sure they're so walkable. You can probably walk your local borough, dissected by highways and rail. There's not much happening on it, and it quickly becomes repetitive. This unless you live in urban core, which is contiguous but expensive so that it needs the outskirts to maintain its buzz.
CalRobert 9y ago
Citation massively needed. Plenty of folks walk in cities with more than 5M people (London comes to mind). It's not like you routinely visit every last business in that city. Also, if you have a bicycle and decent bike network you can traverse an entire major city in 45 - 60 minutes. The problem is that most new cities are virtually nothing but asphalt and empty land in order to accommodate cars. I am sometimes called weird for saying this - but seriously - look at pictures taken at elevation and a modern "city" looks very sparse indeed.

chroem- 9y ago

This is how SF-style housing crises are made. When you force everyone to be very geographically close to their place of employment, it has the dual effects of reducing the effective supply of available housing options, while simultaneously increasing demand for housing in a very specific geographic area. If you look at the cities that have done this, both in the US and abroad, you will notice that their rents are typically astronomical.

vertex-four 9y ago
SF has the issue that certain popular types of work are only available in SF, and if someone wants to be in that type of work, they have very few options for where to live. More, smaller cities - or even large cities with multiple “city centres” - and an approach which attempts to ensure that the SF centralisation of the consumer tech industry couldn’t be a thing, would be the solution, surely, if you decided to design from top-down?
- chroem- 9y ago
  No, the point is that the Bay Area is too congested (and to some extent intentionally congested) to allow for an appreciable amount of commuting. One person's sprawl is another person's affordable housing.
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    The point is that the Bay Area is essentially the unique place where you have to work if you want to work in the consumer tech industry on things that make newspaper headlines. The point is that if people could work on that in more places, the problem of wanting to commute to a specific area wouldn't exist.
    - chroem- 9y ago
      While that may be true, it's also passing the buck since there are a lot of economically productive cities where commuting is practical and rents are cheap.