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Small towns can be built with walkability in mind. In fact towns built before automobiles were invented were built this way: dense, narrow streets with doors op

Small towns can be built with walkability in mind. In fact towns built before automobiles were invented were built this way: dense, narrow streets with doors opening onto the streets, multi-use buildings, blocks with mixed commerce/residential use. This is a sustainable and resilient way to build communities. Building around cars is not.

reaperducer 8y ago
Small towns can be built with walkability in mind This is true. Look at the bedroom communities surrounding Chicago. There are plenty of them where people take commuter rail into the city, then get around their home towns largely by foot. Cars are only used to go to the outlying malls and neighboring small towns. Chicago is also doing something interesting with the whole notion of "streets." Essentially, the notion is that since streets are public property, why are we allowing people to store their private property in them? Specifically, cars. Parking spaces are being turned into miniature parks, or the parking lanes eliminated entirely in what are called "traffic calming" schemes to make streets more pedestrian-friendly. Unfortunately, the backbone of the project -- Making it harder to park on the street to encourage people to park their private property in private parking garages -- got derailed when the mayor leased the city's parking meters to a private company for 99 years. Now every time a parking space is removed from use (whether for a parade or a street festival or turned into a pocket park), the city has to pay the private company for that space. The payments are in the order of $30 million/year. So, it'll be a good project in 94 years or so, when the parking spaces become public property again.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >Parking spaces are being turned into miniature parks, or the parking lanes eliminated entirely in what are called "traffic calming" schemes to make streets more pedestrian-friendly. What? Why? It seems like it would be better to add additional lanes (shared left turn lane + 2 bike lanes or some similar configuration) to increase overall efficiency and throughput. When you have raised sidewalks traffic speeds don't really doesn't affect walk-ability as long as there's crossings at lights (regardless of traffic speed you won't find an opportunity to cross anywhere else if traffic is reasonably constant)
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    What? Why? Studies show that narrower streets cause cars to drive more slowly, making neighborhoods more livable. (Less noise, among other factors.) There are other methods used that also cause cars to slow down - road humps, textured (fake cobblestone) crosswalks, pedestrian refuge islands, pedestrian bump-outs, replacing parallel parking with angled end-in parking, etc... When you have raised sidewalks traffic speeds don't really doesn't affect walk-ability as long as there's crossings at lights No, walking on a sidewalk with traffic whizzing by at speed is not a pleasant experience. increase overall efficiency and throughput Increasing throughput is last century thinking. Current best practices is to encourage people to use transit, especially in a city like Chicago that has (in spite of its flaws) has pretty good transit for an American city. Here's a PDF from CDOT explaining much of this: https://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/cdot/street/general/ToolsforSaferStreetsGuide.pdf https://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/cdot/st... [Edited to add PDF link]
    - isostatic 8y ago
      How about all those amazon deliveries? I'm all for banning garaging on roads, and I don't see why private cars need to be driven in the centre of major cities at all, especially during the day. Things like the London congestion charge for all cars from say 7AM to 9PM (depending on when transit is running well) are great, although should really scale with the value of the car. But when the supermarket drops the weekly shop off, they need somewhere to park for 10 minutes.
      - madhadron 8y ago
        A number of large cities had extensive networks of pneumatic tubes and underground rail runnels for delivery. They fell out of use with the rise of cars, but the idea that deliveries go via vehicles on streets is far from a given.
        reaperducer 8y ago
        Coincidentally, Chicago has a disused network of underground delivery rail tunnels. They were widely forgotten until a pile was driven into one beneath the Chicago River and the river flooded many of the buildings in the downtown's Loop district.† Today a few are still used, though not for deliveries. Mostly for running fiber optic networks, and the Palmer House Hotel uses its section to raise mushrooms for its restaurant.‡ † https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_flood ‡ https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140618/loop/palmer-house-hilton-grows-mushrooms-old-tunnel-under-loop/ https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140618/loop/palmer-house-h...
asteli 8y ago
My favorite is the Spanish city of Girona (couple of hours north of Barcelona by train). You can walk clear across the city in a half hour, but the buildings are typically 3-7 stories tall.

reaperducer 8y ago

Small towns can be built with walkability in mind This is true. Look at the bedroom communities surrounding Chicago. There are plenty of them where people take commuter rail into the city, then get around their home towns largely by foot. Cars are only used to go to the outlying malls and neighboring small towns. Chicago is also doing something interesting with the whole notion of "streets." Essentially, the notion is that since streets are public property, why are we allowing people to store their private property in them? Specifically, cars. Parking spaces are being turned into miniature parks, or the parking lanes eliminated entirely in what are called "traffic calming" schemes to make streets more pedestrian-friendly. Unfortunately, the backbone of the project -- Making it harder to park on the street to encourage people to park their private property in private parking garages -- got derailed when the mayor leased the city's parking meters to a private company for 99 years. Now every time a parking space is removed from use (whether for a parade or a street festival or turned into a pocket park), the city has to pay the private company for that space. The payments are in the order of $30 million/year. So, it'll be a good project in 94 years or so, when the parking spaces become public property again.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>Parking spaces are being turned into miniature parks, or the parking lanes eliminated entirely in what are called "traffic calming" schemes to make streets more pedestrian-friendly. What? Why? It seems like it would be better to add additional lanes (shared left turn lane + 2 bike lanes or some similar configuration) to increase overall efficiency and throughput. When you have raised sidewalks traffic speeds don't really doesn't affect walk-ability as long as there's crossings at lights (regardless of traffic speed you won't find an opportunity to cross anywhere else if traffic is reasonably constant)
- reaperducer 8y ago
  What? Why? Studies show that narrower streets cause cars to drive more slowly, making neighborhoods more livable. (Less noise, among other factors.) There are other methods used that also cause cars to slow down - road humps, textured (fake cobblestone) crosswalks, pedestrian refuge islands, pedestrian bump-outs, replacing parallel parking with angled end-in parking, etc... When you have raised sidewalks traffic speeds don't really doesn't affect walk-ability as long as there's crossings at lights No, walking on a sidewalk with traffic whizzing by at speed is not a pleasant experience. increase overall efficiency and throughput Increasing throughput is last century thinking. Current best practices is to encourage people to use transit, especially in a city like Chicago that has (in spite of its flaws) has pretty good transit for an American city. Here's a PDF from CDOT explaining much of this: https://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/cdot/street/general/ToolsforSaferStreetsGuide.pdf https://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/cdot/st... [Edited to add PDF link]
  - isostatic 8y ago
    How about all those amazon deliveries? I'm all for banning garaging on roads, and I don't see why private cars need to be driven in the centre of major cities at all, especially during the day. Things like the London congestion charge for all cars from say 7AM to 9PM (depending on when transit is running well) are great, although should really scale with the value of the car. But when the supermarket drops the weekly shop off, they need somewhere to park for 10 minutes.
    - madhadron 8y ago
      A number of large cities had extensive networks of pneumatic tubes and underground rail runnels for delivery. They fell out of use with the rise of cars, but the idea that deliveries go via vehicles on streets is far from a given.
      - reaperducer 8y ago
        Coincidentally, Chicago has a disused network of underground delivery rail tunnels. They were widely forgotten until a pile was driven into one beneath the Chicago River and the river flooded many of the buildings in the downtown's Loop district.† Today a few are still used, though not for deliveries. Mostly for running fiber optic networks, and the Palmer House Hotel uses its section to raise mushrooms for its restaurant.‡ † https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_flood ‡ https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140618/loop/palmer-house-hilton-grows-mushrooms-old-tunnel-under-loop/ https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140618/loop/palmer-house-h...

asteli 8y ago

My favorite is the Spanish city of Girona (couple of hours north of Barcelona by train). You can walk clear across the city in a half hour, but the buildings are typically 3-7 stories tall.