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We really do have to radically re-think our cities but the biggest issues aren't going to be practical but emotional. In London parents drive their children aro

We really do have to radically re-think our cities but the biggest issues aren't going to be practical but emotional. In London parents drive their children around in 4x4s, knowing that their vehicle causes the pollution that is affecting their own children's health. I'm not sure how you even start to get around that but to some extent you will never persuade everybody to reduce their damaging behaviour. You need to enable people to travel in non-damaging ways; cycling and walking primary. That should be the first priority, although fighting the ingrained car culture will be the hardest battle.

czechdeveloper 8y ago
You can get easily insulted for proper choices. Homophobic comments on cycling and veganism are common. I rather believe that we are doomed - that we will destroy nature sufficiently for it to stop producing enough food to sustain us as species - than that we will change.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Humans tend to make changes when there are no other options... and often, after significant damage has been done. Presumably if we "stop producing enough food to sustain us", a lot of humans would die off, but some would survive on the reduced food supply, and make changes to prevent further loss of food. Bear in mind, it's incredibly unlikely that all possible human food sources die off simultaneously. A good example of change in behavior to ensure survival, is that major powers used to go much more openly to war for territory and resources right up until those powers got the ability to utterly destroy humanity. While there are still countries who are enemies of each other, and who fight small proxy wars and the like, nobody in their right mind would stage an invasion of another major power, likely ever again.
  - cr0sh 8y ago
    > nobody in their right mind ...until you have a world leader who wonders why we can't use them if we have them.
- wozniacki 8y ago
  Often what gets overlooked is the sad state of public transit even in Tier 1 global metropolises. There are far too many annoyances and outright hazards in using public transit, for individuals much less whole families with kids to boot, to list here. So families even in Europe are opting more and more for SUVs and larger vehicles in general -- which was a total surprise to me and caught me unawares, I have to admit. Hygiene, safety - from both the riff naff & new developing security threats, peace of mind, convenience, dependability [1][2][3] and more rider options are all major pain points. Unless cities opt for a class-tiered approach to public transit -- the likes of first class carriages and premium waiting rooms at transit terminals, of yore -- and make public transit safe and even enjoyable to regular people I don't see this trend reversing. [1] BART announces what caused massive morning power outage last weekend https://abc7news.com/traffic/bart-announces-what-caused-massive-morning-power-outage-/5192799/ https://abc7news.com/traffic/bart-announces-what-caused-mass... [2] Single Computer Switch Failure Triggered Saturday’s BART Shut Down https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/03/11/computer-switch-failure-triggered-saturdays-bart-shut-down/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/03/11/computer-switch... [3] BART still unclear on cause of service outage, waiting to hear from tech support http://www.sfexaminer.com/bart-still-unclear-cause-service-outage-waiting-hear-tech-support/ http://www.sfexaminer.com/bart-still-unclear-cause-service-o...
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  Today's environmental causes suffer from a credibility problem imposed by the mountains of failed breathless malthusian doomsday predictions from yesterday's environmental causes. I've seen the science and believe it, but the boy who cried wolf was also correct, in the end. Please don't be a credibility problem for tomorrow's environmental causes.
  - erik_seaberg 8y ago
    It's not helping that politicians give lip service to an existential crisis and then bury it in the bottom half of a huge agenda. At this point I'm pretty sure I'm more worried than they are.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    A few decades ago there were hoards of people breathlessly demanding that something be done about the hole in the ozone layer or else we're all doomed. Then we banned CFCs and now the ozone hole is starting to heal itself. But if we hadn't banned CFCs we would have been doomed. The ozone layer actually is really important. Now the danger is climate change and what we need is to stop burning carbon. The lesson from past experience is not that everything will be fine if we don't do anything, it's that everything will be fine if we do what is necessary. Everything will not be fine if we don't do what is necessary.
    - jjoonathan 8y ago
      Except for your extrapolation, that's an excellent example, and it needs to be brandied about a hell of a lot more than it is because doing so builds credibility! My high school science teacher telling me that we were running out of oil and that gas would be $10 a gallon by the time I entered the workforce did not build credibility. This is an iterated game. The takeaway is that it's important to be right, important to not be wrong, and important to make sure people know it, not that it's important to lie your ass off (sorry, overstate your cause) in a misguided attempt to help.
dkural 8y ago
The US is an extreme precisely due to these social and emotional reasons. It's shocking to me how this article fails to mention even once that a lot of post WWII suburbanization was due to white flight. The article states: "Millions of soldiers had come home from World War II to overcrowded, run-down cities; their new families needed a place to live." "Overcrowded, run-down": who all of a sudden "overcrowded" these cities? What's a "run-down" area? We can win WWII but not fix a broken roof? The issue was not so much lack of affordability or too many people, what meant was cities / neighborhoods with more black people. Those highways were not built immediately post WWII, but later, to separate black neighborhoods from wealthier areas of the city, in the post-civil rights era. Suburbanization accelerated not directly after WWII but with government-mandated busing of school-children. If you didn't want your daughter to go to school with black boys, you went to the suburbs. Architects & urban planners played handmaiden to white flight, destroying the fabric of cities, and generally harming the environment in the process. Precisely due to their active participation in this cluster- they tend to whitewash the history, move the timelines a bit etc. hoping no one will notice.
- SupremeOverlord 8y ago
  >white flight People have a right to choose their neighbor(hood)s. Freedom of association ought to imply freedom of disassociation. Stats show neighborhood crime correlates much more strongly with race than with education or income/poverty level. It's telling that diversity has to be enforced by government force...
  - ivanbakel 8y ago
    It tells that in the 1950s, many white Americans were racist.
    - SupremeOverlord 8y ago
      Many, including myself, still are. We like to be around our own and no amount of school-age propaganda and government force will change that!
educationdata 8y ago
No. Car is not just the "culture", car serves our need. If you are young without kids, it may not make much difference for you to ride a car, or take a bus, or a train, subway, etc. But if you have a family, it makes a huge pain without your own vehicle. If the city of future requires families to abandon their own vehicle, it is not the correct city of future. Just design a better one.
- usaar333 8y ago
  Where does the difficulty lie? I lived in SF fine with a toddler, taking public transit to local places.
  - hnal943 8y ago
    1 kid who does not have his own schedule is relatively easy to manage. 5 kids who need to be in different places is more difficult.
    - NLips 8y ago
      Five kids is an edge case. Besides, it's impossible to shuttle five kids to different places simultaneously by car without five parents. Not so with good public transit.
    - hycaria 8y ago
      Maybe try to have kids do stuff that are compatible with the schedule then, and not the other way round.
    - darkmighty 8y ago
      I feel that with 5 kids special provisions and certain difficulty will be necessary no matter what. You would be moving around with all children a lot less in any case. But I don't see why it's impossible to go car free; specially considering some kids will be older than others (not 5 toddlers simultaneously).
    - himlion 8y ago
SupremeOverlord 8y ago
>We really do have to radically re-think our cities Yes we do, but the solution isn't less lanes, more public transit, and more bike paths. The solution is double to sextuple decker streets with matching parking. The solution is to make cities even more car friendly. Not everybody has the luxury of being physically fit enough to bike, or so time-loose to tolerate the inefficiencies of public transit!
- adrianN 8y ago
  Not everyone has the luxury of being able to drive a car or having the money for a car.
- bluGill 8y ago
  Transport distances are measured in units of time. If you have a supersonic helicopter (such a thing doesn't exist and is probably impossible) the distance you can get in a given amount of time is much farther than a slow walk. However in both cases anything more than half an hour away is far away, and anything less is close. The distances are different, but the time is the same. Sextuple streets are one solution to the problem. Another is not having as far a distance to travel for in the first place. Sextuple streets are extremely expensive - on the order of multi-billions per mile, but they would work. If you sextuple streets only support walkers but not cars they are much cheaper.
danielecook 8y ago
Having recently moved to London I am a bit shocked at how poor the cycling infrastructure is. Granted, the city was never exactly planned out, but it seems to me it wouldn’t be hard to add dedicated bike paths given the fair amount of green space. Consider richmond Park as a prime location where dedicated bike-only lanes would be a great improvement. Instead you must bike along side diesel fumes on the roads that should be removed imo. What are the primary obstacles towards improving the cycling infrastructure here? By the way - biking here is quite different from the US. Unlike the US, I can taste the pollution. It’s a much heavier thing. Perhaps I’m not used to it, but I often find myself holding my breath to get through fumes.
- selectodude 8y ago
  It's all the diesel cars. They pump out a ton of particulate matter that you don't get from petrol.
- jniedrauer 8y ago
  After spending a lot of time in clean mountain air, it's gotten to the point where I can taste the fumes in the air in the United States. It's noxious. I run very early in the morning before anyone starts driving to avoid it.
  - wozniacki 8y ago
    After spending a lot of time in clean mountain air May I ask where this mountain air was and why you had to relocate to a fume-ridden place in United States? Is it for economic mobility? If that's the case shouldn't you consider taking a hit in that lone aspect, for a better quality of living? I'm sure you will be gainfully employed breathing clean, crisp mountain air provided your skills are in demand. You'll just make a little less.
    - 0xffff2 8y ago
      As someone in a similar situation, I think you're underestimating the potential economic hit. I own a house in rural Oregon, but I also work and rent an apartment in the bay area. First of all, my house in the clean mountain air is also at the very edge of the electric grid. I have utility-provided power and telephone, but I'm so far out that the phone company won't offer me DSL at any speed. So I'm stuck with satellite internet, which really isn't suitable for remote work. Second, almost no one offers a flat pay-scale that ignores your home address. Incredibly, this has meant that so far renting an expensive one bedroom apartment in the bay in addition to my mortgage is a much better economic decision than finding a remote job that would let me leave the bay behind.
naravara 8y ago
Kids is actually a tough case, especially when they're infants. You actually need to haul around a bunch of stuff to take a kid out and transit is rarely design around the needs of parents. Strollers are a pain to get into a bus or train, and often worsen crowding because they're so big. And it's just not practical to have to get car seats in and out of car-shares or cabs. Even in places with well considered transit options, like urban Japan, most people who can afford to have a car prefer to get a car.
- ak217 8y ago
  Or live in an area (design and build areas) with good childcare options within walking distance. (Where "walking distance" is up to a mile away, not what Americans have gotten used to.) Modern car seats and LATCH anchors actually make it fairly easy to bring a child car seat with you. I agree with you though, all this stuff is bulky and adds up to a lot of baggage. It makes sense to have a car for your child. But those cars create enormous problems, and car owners should be required to pay to fix them.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    For nearly essential services (like child care, groceries, etc.) having a population that must go to one or a few particular establishment(s) out of geographical necessity is a recipe for rent seeking and other bad behavior. See also: food deserts
    - adrianN 8y ago
      Where I grew up there were three Kindergartens and two supermarkets within walking distance. A short bus ride away were many more. How many options do you think are necessary to avoid the bad behavior that you fear?
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        Those sound like reasonable numbers. A number of options higher than 1 within walking distance is atypical in my experience.
sandworm101 8y ago
>> You need to enable people to travel in non-damaging ways; cycling and walking primary. And EVs? It will be very hard to convince anyone to get out of their cars when those cars are, potentially, less polluting than the available public transport options. This also isn't just about commuting and pollution. There are a multitude of cultural reasons people use cars. Security is at the top of the list, the ability to be in your own locked box. You won't get people out of their cars until they are confidant in their physical security. Those parents driving their kids to work are constantly told that their kids are in danger and it is their duty as parents to maximize their children's individualized safety over all other concerns. Breaking that mindset requires far more than explaining to them why buses might be slightly faster than cars.
Amygaz 8y ago
I was once told by someone close to me that “Caring for the environment is nice and all, but we’re not going to stop living for it”. So I am not surprised by how people are acting right now.

czechdeveloper 8y ago

You can get easily insulted for proper choices. Homophobic comments on cycling and veganism are common. I rather believe that we are doomed - that we will destroy nature sufficiently for it to stop producing enough food to sustain us as species - than that we will change.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Humans tend to make changes when there are no other options... and often, after significant damage has been done. Presumably if we "stop producing enough food to sustain us", a lot of humans would die off, but some would survive on the reduced food supply, and make changes to prevent further loss of food. Bear in mind, it's incredibly unlikely that all possible human food sources die off simultaneously. A good example of change in behavior to ensure survival, is that major powers used to go much more openly to war for territory and resources right up until those powers got the ability to utterly destroy humanity. While there are still countries who are enemies of each other, and who fight small proxy wars and the like, nobody in their right mind would stage an invasion of another major power, likely ever again.
- cr0sh 8y ago
  > nobody in their right mind ...until you have a world leader who wonders why we can't use them if we have them.
wozniacki 8y ago
Often what gets overlooked is the sad state of public transit even in Tier 1 global metropolises. There are far too many annoyances and outright hazards in using public transit, for individuals much less whole families with kids to boot, to list here. So families even in Europe are opting more and more for SUVs and larger vehicles in general -- which was a total surprise to me and caught me unawares, I have to admit. Hygiene, safety - from both the riff naff & new developing security threats, peace of mind, convenience, dependability [1][2][3] and more rider options are all major pain points. Unless cities opt for a class-tiered approach to public transit -- the likes of first class carriages and premium waiting rooms at transit terminals, of yore -- and make public transit safe and even enjoyable to regular people I don't see this trend reversing. [1] BART announces what caused massive morning power outage last weekend https://abc7news.com/traffic/bart-announces-what-caused-massive-morning-power-outage-/5192799/ https://abc7news.com/traffic/bart-announces-what-caused-mass... [2] Single Computer Switch Failure Triggered Saturday’s BART Shut Down https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/03/11/computer-switch-failure-triggered-saturdays-bart-shut-down/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/03/11/computer-switch... [3] BART still unclear on cause of service outage, waiting to hear from tech support http://www.sfexaminer.com/bart-still-unclear-cause-service-outage-waiting-hear-tech-support/ http://www.sfexaminer.com/bart-still-unclear-cause-service-o...
jjoonathan 8y ago
Today's environmental causes suffer from a credibility problem imposed by the mountains of failed breathless malthusian doomsday predictions from yesterday's environmental causes. I've seen the science and believe it, but the boy who cried wolf was also correct, in the end. Please don't be a credibility problem for tomorrow's environmental causes.
- erik_seaberg 8y ago
  It's not helping that politicians give lip service to an existential crisis and then bury it in the bottom half of a huge agenda. At this point I'm pretty sure I'm more worried than they are.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  A few decades ago there were hoards of people breathlessly demanding that something be done about the hole in the ozone layer or else we're all doomed. Then we banned CFCs and now the ozone hole is starting to heal itself. But if we hadn't banned CFCs we would have been doomed. The ozone layer actually is really important. Now the danger is climate change and what we need is to stop burning carbon. The lesson from past experience is not that everything will be fine if we don't do anything, it's that everything will be fine if we do what is necessary. Everything will not be fine if we don't do what is necessary.
  - jjoonathan 8y ago
    Except for your extrapolation, that's an excellent example, and it needs to be brandied about a hell of a lot more than it is because doing so builds credibility! My high school science teacher telling me that we were running out of oil and that gas would be $10 a gallon by the time I entered the workforce did not build credibility. This is an iterated game. The takeaway is that it's important to be right, important to not be wrong, and important to make sure people know it, not that it's important to lie your ass off (sorry, overstate your cause) in a misguided attempt to help.

dkural 8y ago

The US is an extreme precisely due to these social and emotional reasons. It's shocking to me how this article fails to mention even once that a lot of post WWII suburbanization was due to white flight. The article states: "Millions of soldiers had come home from World War II to overcrowded, run-down cities; their new families needed a place to live." "Overcrowded, run-down": who all of a sudden "overcrowded" these cities? What's a "run-down" area? We can win WWII but not fix a broken roof? The issue was not so much lack of affordability or too many people, what meant was cities / neighborhoods with more black people. Those highways were not built immediately post WWII, but later, to separate black neighborhoods from wealthier areas of the city, in the post-civil rights era. Suburbanization accelerated not directly after WWII but with government-mandated busing of school-children. If you didn't want your daughter to go to school with black boys, you went to the suburbs. Architects & urban planners played handmaiden to white flight, destroying the fabric of cities, and generally harming the environment in the process. Precisely due to their active participation in this cluster- they tend to whitewash the history, move the timelines a bit etc. hoping no one will notice.

SupremeOverlord 8y ago
>white flight People have a right to choose their neighbor(hood)s. Freedom of association ought to imply freedom of disassociation. Stats show neighborhood crime correlates much more strongly with race than with education or income/poverty level. It's telling that diversity has to be enforced by government force...
- ivanbakel 8y ago
  It tells that in the 1950s, many white Americans were racist.
  - SupremeOverlord 8y ago
    Many, including myself, still are. We like to be around our own and no amount of school-age propaganda and government force will change that!

educationdata 8y ago

No. Car is not just the "culture", car serves our need. If you are young without kids, it may not make much difference for you to ride a car, or take a bus, or a train, subway, etc. But if you have a family, it makes a huge pain without your own vehicle. If the city of future requires families to abandon their own vehicle, it is not the correct city of future. Just design a better one.

usaar333 8y ago
Where does the difficulty lie? I lived in SF fine with a toddler, taking public transit to local places.
- hnal943 8y ago
  1 kid who does not have his own schedule is relatively easy to manage. 5 kids who need to be in different places is more difficult.
  - NLips 8y ago
    Five kids is an edge case. Besides, it's impossible to shuttle five kids to different places simultaneously by car without five parents. Not so with good public transit.
  - hycaria 8y ago
    Maybe try to have kids do stuff that are compatible with the schedule then, and not the other way round.
  - darkmighty 8y ago
    I feel that with 5 kids special provisions and certain difficulty will be necessary no matter what. You would be moving around with all children a lot less in any case. But I don't see why it's impossible to go car free; specially considering some kids will be older than others (not 5 toddlers simultaneously).
  - himlion 8y ago

SupremeOverlord 8y ago

>We really do have to radically re-think our cities Yes we do, but the solution isn't less lanes, more public transit, and more bike paths. The solution is double to sextuple decker streets with matching parking. The solution is to make cities even more car friendly. Not everybody has the luxury of being physically fit enough to bike, or so time-loose to tolerate the inefficiencies of public transit!

adrianN 8y ago
Not everyone has the luxury of being able to drive a car or having the money for a car.
bluGill 8y ago
Transport distances are measured in units of time. If you have a supersonic helicopter (such a thing doesn't exist and is probably impossible) the distance you can get in a given amount of time is much farther than a slow walk. However in both cases anything more than half an hour away is far away, and anything less is close. The distances are different, but the time is the same. Sextuple streets are one solution to the problem. Another is not having as far a distance to travel for in the first place. Sextuple streets are extremely expensive - on the order of multi-billions per mile, but they would work. If you sextuple streets only support walkers but not cars they are much cheaper.

danielecook 8y ago

Having recently moved to London I am a bit shocked at how poor the cycling infrastructure is. Granted, the city was never exactly planned out, but it seems to me it wouldn’t be hard to add dedicated bike paths given the fair amount of green space. Consider richmond Park as a prime location where dedicated bike-only lanes would be a great improvement. Instead you must bike along side diesel fumes on the roads that should be removed imo. What are the primary obstacles towards improving the cycling infrastructure here? By the way - biking here is quite different from the US. Unlike the US, I can taste the pollution. It’s a much heavier thing. Perhaps I’m not used to it, but I often find myself holding my breath to get through fumes.

selectodude 8y ago
It's all the diesel cars. They pump out a ton of particulate matter that you don't get from petrol.
jniedrauer 8y ago
After spending a lot of time in clean mountain air, it's gotten to the point where I can taste the fumes in the air in the United States. It's noxious. I run very early in the morning before anyone starts driving to avoid it.
- wozniacki 8y ago
  After spending a lot of time in clean mountain air May I ask where this mountain air was and why you had to relocate to a fume-ridden place in United States? Is it for economic mobility? If that's the case shouldn't you consider taking a hit in that lone aspect, for a better quality of living? I'm sure you will be gainfully employed breathing clean, crisp mountain air provided your skills are in demand. You'll just make a little less.
  - 0xffff2 8y ago
    As someone in a similar situation, I think you're underestimating the potential economic hit. I own a house in rural Oregon, but I also work and rent an apartment in the bay area. First of all, my house in the clean mountain air is also at the very edge of the electric grid. I have utility-provided power and telephone, but I'm so far out that the phone company won't offer me DSL at any speed. So I'm stuck with satellite internet, which really isn't suitable for remote work. Second, almost no one offers a flat pay-scale that ignores your home address. Incredibly, this has meant that so far renting an expensive one bedroom apartment in the bay in addition to my mortgage is a much better economic decision than finding a remote job that would let me leave the bay behind.

naravara 8y ago

Kids is actually a tough case, especially when they're infants. You actually need to haul around a bunch of stuff to take a kid out and transit is rarely design around the needs of parents. Strollers are a pain to get into a bus or train, and often worsen crowding because they're so big. And it's just not practical to have to get car seats in and out of car-shares or cabs. Even in places with well considered transit options, like urban Japan, most people who can afford to have a car prefer to get a car.

ak217 8y ago
Or live in an area (design and build areas) with good childcare options within walking distance. (Where "walking distance" is up to a mile away, not what Americans have gotten used to.) Modern car seats and LATCH anchors actually make it fairly easy to bring a child car seat with you. I agree with you though, all this stuff is bulky and adds up to a lot of baggage. It makes sense to have a car for your child. But those cars create enormous problems, and car owners should be required to pay to fix them.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  For nearly essential services (like child care, groceries, etc.) having a population that must go to one or a few particular establishment(s) out of geographical necessity is a recipe for rent seeking and other bad behavior. See also: food deserts
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Where I grew up there were three Kindergartens and two supermarkets within walking distance. A short bus ride away were many more. How many options do you think are necessary to avoid the bad behavior that you fear?
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      Those sound like reasonable numbers. A number of options higher than 1 within walking distance is atypical in my experience.

sandworm101 8y ago

>> You need to enable people to travel in non-damaging ways; cycling and walking primary. And EVs? It will be very hard to convince anyone to get out of their cars when those cars are, potentially, less polluting than the available public transport options. This also isn't just about commuting and pollution. There are a multitude of cultural reasons people use cars. Security is at the top of the list, the ability to be in your own locked box. You won't get people out of their cars until they are confidant in their physical security. Those parents driving their kids to work are constantly told that their kids are in danger and it is their duty as parents to maximize their children's individualized safety over all other concerns. Breaking that mindset requires far more than explaining to them why buses might be slightly faster than cars.

Amygaz 8y ago

I was once told by someone close to me that “Caring for the environment is nice and all, but we’re not going to stop living for it”. So I am not surprised by how people are acting right now.