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I do not know how parking/constructions are ruled in the USA however here (France) and in my origin country (Italy) it was common to have minimum park space for

by xte 8y ago

I do not know how parking/constructions are ruled in the USA however here (France) and in my origin country (Italy) it was common to have minimum park space for any new building in cities simply because we are out of parking space, going from A to B in a city often take far less than orbiting around B looking for a parking lot... IMO the problem reside in city concept itself: in the past we need cities because we need to be together around water, together to have services, to being able to defend ourselves etc now those needs are substantially disappear or marginal but space need it start to be a super-serious problem. Basically we can't evolve a city simply because we are so dense that we can't reach agreements to destroy something old to build something new or even if we can reach such agreements costs are so high that no one face them looking for other options. IMO the sole thing we can and should and must do is start to limit population like "only one child per capita" incentives to child-less peoples etc and start to create distributed place to live make easier work from remote as much as possible, make ease to travel around the country but without "concentrated place" except for factories, official buildings etc that need a small scale concentration.

ginko 8y ago
I disagree. High density cities are more energy efficient and ecological than sprawling ones. The solution to this is public transport, not density restrictions. No one living in a city should have to own a car in the first place.
- xte 8y ago
  Try to compute how much energy you need to build and maintain a dense city than a sprawling suburb. Try to compute evolution possibilities of a dense area than a sparse one. Try to compute the magnitude of any disaster from natural phenomenon to human-made ones on a dense area than the countryside. I have lived in a dense and modern big European city, now I'm living on mountains: cost, quality of life, energy efficiency etc are far superior here than in a city. No matter how developed is public transportation that's it's regularly inefficient because to handle peak time it work at a very bad efficiency for the rest of the year and you can't reduce it without hurting people freedom.
  - lesdeuxmagots 8y ago
    Many people have done this math and have researched this extensively. Urban environments on average are significantly more ecological, more efficient, than sprawl, on a per person basis. The amount of energy required to build and maintain 500,000 people spread across suburbs is far more than 500,000 in a dense city. The amount of material needed for construction, especially cement goes up massively. Services are able to serve less people, so require more quantity of doctors, grocers, power stations, etc per capita, requiring more land and space and waste. The fact that individuals need to use cars in less dense environments vs many exclusively using shared services such as public transit in dense cities, which are ridiculously more ecological.
    - xte 8y ago
      Many people have done it wrong, few start to acknowledge this these days. For instance many compute how much fuel consume a bus to transport maximum load of people vs that number of people in individual cars. They do, of course, a right computation, only they forget a thing: if bus goes only full nobody will use them (too uncomfortable), normally they goes with very few people inside for most of the time, so they consume more than individual cars during the day/year except at few peak times. Same for undergrounds: many compute how much electricity they consume, but omit to compute how much energy you need to create, maintain and evolve them. Same for buildings: many confront how much energy is needed to heat or cool a building instead of individual houses, but they omit a thing: individual houses can evolve, being demolish for instance by children when parent's dead, tall buildings are normally not demolished and rebuilt as a result their energy efficiency is far behind individual houses (I have proven myself switching from an apartment in a big city far less cold than my actual individual home), also type of material you need to build a tall (and safe) building is far less recyclable than many individual houses.
      - lolc 8y ago
        So are there studies that show where the others went wrong? Or do you argue based on a gut feeling?

by xte 8y ago

ginko 8y ago

I disagree. High density cities are more energy efficient and ecological than sprawling ones. The solution to this is public transport, not density restrictions. No one living in a city should have to own a car in the first place.

xte 8y ago
Try to compute how much energy you need to build and maintain a dense city than a sprawling suburb. Try to compute evolution possibilities of a dense area than a sparse one. Try to compute the magnitude of any disaster from natural phenomenon to human-made ones on a dense area than the countryside. I have lived in a dense and modern big European city, now I'm living on mountains: cost, quality of life, energy efficiency etc are far superior here than in a city. No matter how developed is public transportation that's it's regularly inefficient because to handle peak time it work at a very bad efficiency for the rest of the year and you can't reduce it without hurting people freedom.
- lesdeuxmagots 8y ago
  Many people have done this math and have researched this extensively. Urban environments on average are significantly more ecological, more efficient, than sprawl, on a per person basis. The amount of energy required to build and maintain 500,000 people spread across suburbs is far more than 500,000 in a dense city. The amount of material needed for construction, especially cement goes up massively. Services are able to serve less people, so require more quantity of doctors, grocers, power stations, etc per capita, requiring more land and space and waste. The fact that individuals need to use cars in less dense environments vs many exclusively using shared services such as public transit in dense cities, which are ridiculously more ecological.
  - xte 8y ago
    Many people have done it wrong, few start to acknowledge this these days. For instance many compute how much fuel consume a bus to transport maximum load of people vs that number of people in individual cars. They do, of course, a right computation, only they forget a thing: if bus goes only full nobody will use them (too uncomfortable), normally they goes with very few people inside for most of the time, so they consume more than individual cars during the day/year except at few peak times. Same for undergrounds: many compute how much electricity they consume, but omit to compute how much energy you need to create, maintain and evolve them. Same for buildings: many confront how much energy is needed to heat or cool a building instead of individual houses, but they omit a thing: individual houses can evolve, being demolish for instance by children when parent's dead, tall buildings are normally not demolished and rebuilt as a result their energy efficiency is far behind individual houses (I have proven myself switching from an apartment in a big city far less cold than my actual individual home), also type of material you need to build a tall (and safe) building is far less recyclable than many individual houses.
    - lolc 8y ago
      So are there studies that show where the others went wrong? Or do you argue based on a gut feeling?