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I don’t get why cities are built around cars. As much as I love to jump into my car right outside my house, I’d love it even more when there was no car sound in

by baxtr 8y ago

I don’t get why cities are built around cars. As much as I love to jump into my car right outside my house, I’d love it even more when there was no car sound in the streets and children could safely walk everywhere. In densely populated cities cars should be banned outside of major roads

whatshisface 8y ago
Building a city around cars means building it around people who live far away. The people who live out in the suburbs and commute in get a lot more out of the roads than the people who are a block away from every place they need to go.
- Touche 8y ago
  Aka, the superwealthy.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    I don't see how living in the suburbs makes you super-wealthy. In most American cities that I know of, the very poor live in the city, the middle class lives in the suburbs, and the very rich live in top-floor penthouses and wherever else they want. Roads, cars and long commutes are very much a middle-class thing, because the poor can't afford all the driving and the rich can buy a great house in the middle of the city where it would be the most expensive.
    - Touche 8y ago
      I got a lot of downvotes and it's because I didn't direct my comment well enough, this is who I was referring to as the superwealthy: > people who are a block away from every place they need to go. I don't know of any city in the U.S. where a middle class person can live within walking distance of everything that they need. Take a look at the most urban cities in the U.S., San Francisco, New York, Boston. You're not living in a walkable place in those cities unless you have a title that includes "executive" or "vice" in it. The closest is probably Chicago.
  - swebs 8y ago
    Uhh... you haven't been to the suburbs lately.
  - nicoburns 8y ago
    I'd argue that the super-wealthy only live in the suburbs because that's the best place to live in a city designed to serve the suburbs. In London, the super wealthy live right in the centre...
  - daveFNbuck 8y ago
    Depending on the city, the suburbs can be much cheaper.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    The situation is reversed in the USA. In the US, the wealthy and middle class live in suburbs. The poor live in the "inner city" which essentially is a euphemism for ghetto.
    - maxsilver 8y ago
      That situation reversed again in the USA about twenty years ago. The typical American situation today in 2018, is the poor live in inner-ring "old" suburbs, or the edge of the inner city. The middle class live in outer-ring "new" suburbs. The wealthy live in the heart of city, or in any part of the city dense enough to feel urban-ish (any 'gentrified' neighborhood).
- romwell 8y ago
  >Building a city around cars means building it around people who live far away. No, that's what the suburban rail is for (see: NYC). If anything, the suburban people can always park on the outskirts of city centers, and use public transportation (or walk) in the city. But no, the cities had to be designed for the automobile. There was a lot of money to be made that way for the auto companies. Think it sounds like a conspiracy theory? You are right, except that it's actually true[1]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
robertAngst 8y ago
This was brought up in Adam Ruins Everything, and his Automotive episode was so misleading that I don't trust anything he says. >I don’t get why cities are built around cars. Sure there is a fantasy that we could have cities that don't require roads. However our modern 5,000,000 population Metro areas wouldnt exist. Instead housing prices would skyrocket, and the lowest income people would be forced to live in rural areas. > In densely populated cities cars should be banned outside of major roads >I’d love it even more when there was no car sound These are short sighted. EDIT: I'm sorry to kill the fantasy, but wouldnt you rather hear why an idea doesnt work? Or maybe this is another case of 10%ers that care more about quiet streets than societal impact.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  You assume the issue is binary: cars or no cars. Nobody is asking for no cars. We want less cars. Right now, cars are first class citizens in every American city. Motorists get what they want, and walkers, cyclists, and transport users get what's left over. It doesn't have to be that way. European cities get by fine without cars in city centers. Do you really need a car to get to work in midtown Manhattan? Why are the 2 subway systems with stops every 5th block, 3 rail systems, and 2 bus systems that serve it not good enough? Do you really need 6 car lanes on 6th Ave while cyclists fear for their lives in the traffic and pedestrians smoosh on the sidewalks?
  - Toutou 8y ago
    > European cities get by fine without cars in city centers. Where did you get that from? Some of them, sometimes, with exceptions, with mixed success. Certainly not Prague (which is where I live). The public transport system is absolutely fantastic, but as of now it's at 100 % capacity (locally) and the city center is still full of cars. People need to move stuff, plumbers, electricians can't haul their tools around in a bag, the streets need to remain perfectly accessible for ambulances and firetrucks. Don't forget that most European cities are hundreds of years old, built on river banks, rocks, hills, the complete opposite of most US cities.
    - 8y ago
ip26 8y ago
I figure the best way to understand it is as an incremental set of small choices that each seemed like a good idea at the time. Fundamentally people like traveling in cars, and hate traffic. These two things pretty easily make the case as the underlying principals of everything driving car-centered city design today- parking minimums, wider & wider roads, cannibalizing trolley track, marginalization of pedestrian & bicyclists, etc. Then you begin to get second order effects- because everyone drives, things like storefront design codes are just inherently designed for the gaze of the automobile driver. (That one was an eye-opener for some of the subtle effects of car-centric worldview)
_ph_ 8y ago
I don't think many cities were "built around cars", that was mostly a process of evolution. In Europe, many cities had their cores layout even by the romans, latest for sure in the medieval times[1]. At the time the first cars arrived, cities had large roads, used by pedestrians, riders and horse carts. Allowing cars on those streets was the logical thing back when there were not many of them. And while the cars were pushing out pedestrians from the streets quickly, fundamentally the cars still "worked". Street side parking could still deal with all cars, you could drive to the shops you wanted to visit and park there - which still holds true in extremely low density areas today. With each decade, car ownership grew significantly, but back then it was decided to deal with the increasing traffic by making cities more "car friendly". To a certain point that worked, but later even large efforts couldn't keep up, but the damanges were done to the cities. To reverse them, it will take a long time, as the car traffic needs to be replaced by other means of transportation.

by baxtr 8y ago

whatshisface 8y ago

Building a city around cars means building it around people who live far away. The people who live out in the suburbs and commute in get a lot more out of the roads than the people who are a block away from every place they need to go.

Touche 8y ago
Aka, the superwealthy.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  I don't see how living in the suburbs makes you super-wealthy. In most American cities that I know of, the very poor live in the city, the middle class lives in the suburbs, and the very rich live in top-floor penthouses and wherever else they want. Roads, cars and long commutes are very much a middle-class thing, because the poor can't afford all the driving and the rich can buy a great house in the middle of the city where it would be the most expensive.
  - Touche 8y ago
    I got a lot of downvotes and it's because I didn't direct my comment well enough, this is who I was referring to as the superwealthy: > people who are a block away from every place they need to go. I don't know of any city in the U.S. where a middle class person can live within walking distance of everything that they need. Take a look at the most urban cities in the U.S., San Francisco, New York, Boston. You're not living in a walkable place in those cities unless you have a title that includes "executive" or "vice" in it. The closest is probably Chicago.
- swebs 8y ago
  Uhh... you haven't been to the suburbs lately.
- nicoburns 8y ago
  I'd argue that the super-wealthy only live in the suburbs because that's the best place to live in a city designed to serve the suburbs. In London, the super wealthy live right in the centre...
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  Depending on the city, the suburbs can be much cheaper.
- noobermin 8y ago
  The situation is reversed in the USA. In the US, the wealthy and middle class live in suburbs. The poor live in the "inner city" which essentially is a euphemism for ghetto.
  - maxsilver 8y ago
    That situation reversed again in the USA about twenty years ago. The typical American situation today in 2018, is the poor live in inner-ring "old" suburbs, or the edge of the inner city. The middle class live in outer-ring "new" suburbs. The wealthy live in the heart of city, or in any part of the city dense enough to feel urban-ish (any 'gentrified' neighborhood).
romwell 8y ago
>Building a city around cars means building it around people who live far away. No, that's what the suburban rail is for (see: NYC). If anything, the suburban people can always park on the outskirts of city centers, and use public transportation (or walk) in the city. But no, the cities had to be designed for the automobile. There was a lot of money to be made that way for the auto companies. Think it sounds like a conspiracy theory? You are right, except that it's actually true[1]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

robertAngst 8y ago

This was brought up in Adam Ruins Everything, and his Automotive episode was so misleading that I don't trust anything he says. >I don’t get why cities are built around cars. Sure there is a fantasy that we could have cities that don't require roads. However our modern 5,000,000 population Metro areas wouldnt exist. Instead housing prices would skyrocket, and the lowest income people would be forced to live in rural areas. > In densely populated cities cars should be banned outside of major roads >I’d love it even more when there was no car sound These are short sighted. EDIT: I'm sorry to kill the fantasy, but wouldnt you rather hear why an idea doesnt work? Or maybe this is another case of 10%ers that care more about quiet streets than societal impact.

hannasanarion 8y ago
You assume the issue is binary: cars or no cars. Nobody is asking for no cars. We want less cars. Right now, cars are first class citizens in every American city. Motorists get what they want, and walkers, cyclists, and transport users get what's left over. It doesn't have to be that way. European cities get by fine without cars in city centers. Do you really need a car to get to work in midtown Manhattan? Why are the 2 subway systems with stops every 5th block, 3 rail systems, and 2 bus systems that serve it not good enough? Do you really need 6 car lanes on 6th Ave while cyclists fear for their lives in the traffic and pedestrians smoosh on the sidewalks?
- Toutou 8y ago
  > European cities get by fine without cars in city centers. Where did you get that from? Some of them, sometimes, with exceptions, with mixed success. Certainly not Prague (which is where I live). The public transport system is absolutely fantastic, but as of now it's at 100 % capacity (locally) and the city center is still full of cars. People need to move stuff, plumbers, electricians can't haul their tools around in a bag, the streets need to remain perfectly accessible for ambulances and firetrucks. Don't forget that most European cities are hundreds of years old, built on river banks, rocks, hills, the complete opposite of most US cities.
  - 8y ago

ip26 8y ago

I figure the best way to understand it is as an incremental set of small choices that each seemed like a good idea at the time. Fundamentally people like traveling in cars, and hate traffic. These two things pretty easily make the case as the underlying principals of everything driving car-centered city design today- parking minimums, wider & wider roads, cannibalizing trolley track, marginalization of pedestrian & bicyclists, etc. Then you begin to get second order effects- because everyone drives, things like storefront design codes are just inherently designed for the gaze of the automobile driver. (That one was an eye-opener for some of the subtle effects of car-centric worldview)

_ph_ 8y ago

I don't think many cities were "built around cars", that was mostly a process of evolution. In Europe, many cities had their cores layout even by the romans, latest for sure in the medieval times[1]. At the time the first cars arrived, cities had large roads, used by pedestrians, riders and horse carts. Allowing cars on those streets was the logical thing back when there were not many of them. And while the cars were pushing out pedestrians from the streets quickly, fundamentally the cars still "worked". Street side parking could still deal with all cars, you could drive to the shops you wanted to visit and park there - which still holds true in extremely low density areas today. With each decade, car ownership grew significantly, but back then it was decided to deal with the increasing traffic by making cities more "car friendly". To a certain point that worked, but later even large efforts couldn't keep up, but the damanges were done to the cities. To reverse them, it will take a long time, as the car traffic needs to be replaced by other means of transportation.