4 ms·

Not in Europe. Cars aren't really practical anywhere near city centres.

• varjag 8y ago
  I am in Norway, not even in the capital.
  • TomMarius 8y ago
    Owning a car in city such as Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Prague, Brno... is significant pain, and it costs you a lot to even keep that car on the street (if you can find a place - you can't). As a result, people in many historical cities with compact greater city centres (where there simply is not enough land to even theoretically accommodate 1 car per household) simply don't own a car, because why. Probably more than half of the people living in the building where I do don't have a car, many of my coworkers don't...
    • varjag 8y ago
      All of the European cities I've been to are full of parked vehicles. Someone got to own all them. Anyway we were talking about parking norms for newly commissioned buildings, and "you can't find parking place on the street" isn't really an argument against it.
      • TomMarius 8y ago
        We are not saying that there are no cars. We are saying that a significant portion of the people in these cities don't have a car. You saw cars of the other half. I'm saying that it's weird to require parking spaces in cities where there is a problem with housing prices when a lot of people don't have a car and thus prove that it's possible. It even completely goes agains the goal of reducing cars in cities.
        • varjag 8y ago
          A lot of things are possible. I can live for months on potato and lard alone, and people buying apartments in new high rises of central Oslo could eschew their Teslas and bike instead. That's just not happening however, and build code deals with realities on the ground. There is little reason not to enforce parking norms, and "I personally would never own a car" is a poor justification. Maybe the guy you'd sublet it to would, or you decide to start a family and the only kindergarten spot you get is 12km away, or you sell your apartment and move elsewhere but the new owner needs a car. If you genuinely need no parking spot, there's typically no shortage of nice apartments in the older buildings of nearly every European city out there. Costs less, too.
          • Arnt 8y ago
            The only European city I know well is Munich, and here there definitely is a shortage of apartments, particularly for rent. People tell stories about having searched for years. The reason why the current parking norms are bad is that they require many more off-street parking spots than residents need. Building those costs €25-45k each at current Munich construction costs, and roughly half of that's wasted money (details vary widely). The streets are packed with parked cars, but we're not talking about public parking here.
          • Symbiote 8y ago
            I live in a new building in central Copenhagen, where every household is surely making at least double the average Danish salary, so could easily afford a car. By counting in the basement I estimate about 20% of households own cars. This includes families. There are plenty of child-sized bicycles (all sizes of child) in the courtyard.
      • Arnt 8y ago
        The streets are packed with cars, sure, but the buildings are packed with people. That car owners park in my street doesn't imply that a majority of people who live nearby either need or have cars.
      • shaki-dora 8y ago
        To bring some numbers into this otherwise useless exchange of made-up anecdotes: half of all households in Berlin do not own a car. To get back to useless anecdotes: as far as I can tell, this is not a result of poverty. Indeed car ownership is far more prevalent among the poorer immigrant community than the younger hipster community. I know people owning apartments but not cars. It’s simply a shift in the value system.
        • varjag 8y ago
          Younger people tend to have both smaller incomes and smaller families, so it's neither anything new nor surprising. Give them 15 years.
          • shaki-dora 8y ago
            You missed the part where I mentioned people owning apartments yet not cars, and also where I explicitly referred to my (admittedly subjective) impression of a subset of car owners as ‘poorer’. To expand: this is a rather well-known cultural effect, with first-gen immigrants valuing wealth and its symbols more than the postmaterialistic boheme. The families I know generally use attachable bike carriages for their children, and car sharing for exceptional needs.
            • varjag 8y ago
              Meh, I owned an apartment and didn't own a car until I was 30, until the kindergarten commute with two bus changes really started to get old. You extrapolate the trend from an early datapoint. Maybe where you live car ownership is for poor, but not here. A rustbucket in Norway would buy you a great car in Germany.
          • nicoburns 8y ago
            Well sure, but if half a people living in an area don't have a car, that's a very significant difference to everyone having a car. When the young people grow up, they'll be new young people to replace them. And fewer families tend to want to live in city centres anyway.
    • xte 8y ago
      I've lived for most of my life in a big northern Italian city, I ever have had a car. Of course I tend to use public transportation for moving around the center but I still need a car to buy food, to go outside the city etc. I know very few people who buy only pre-made foods, on daily basis instead a weekly "big" shopping and very few that only use public transportation for anything. Essentially if I count they are well... only one in few hundreds...