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There's an important point appearing about 2/3rds of the way into this article: Zürich was not always oriented towards public transportation, and was in fact mu

There's an important point appearing about 2/3rds of the way into this article: Zürich was not always oriented towards public transportation, and was in fact much more car-oriented in the post-WWII years. It was conscious, intentional, and relatively recent urban planning that made it the way it is today. Something similar also occurred in bike-friendly Amsterdam, which as recently as the late 60's was much more car-friendly and much less bike-friendly. Some folks, when shown successful examples of public-transit centered European cities, claim that it would never work in the United States, in part because, they claim, the Euro cities naturally evolved in such a way as to be more amenable to public transport than automobiles. Well, it just isn't so!

205guy 7y ago
Something I've come to realize is that the automobile industries in each country play an important role. Switzerland and the Netherlands don't have any major car manufacturing, though I do bet they have some suppliers. And it doesn't even have to be a direct influence (like the LA streetcar story), it's just a background of economics, priorities, and zeitgeist. Politicians and planners won't be as tempted to go against cars when some non-negligeable percentage of their economy (already fragile) is based on car manufacturing. European countries with large auto manufacturers like France, Germany, and England (also Spain and Italy) still have better transit and town planning than the US (due to history and density), but they won't be as actively seeking car-less solutions (at least until there is total gridlock in the hyper-center). But I think even there, people are realizing that in the suburbs and between towns you need cars, but if you're going to the city center, you're much better off with transit and walking.
- asdff 7y ago
  The sad part is that this thinking gets entrenched in certain populations. People loose idealistic thinking and prefer to stick with the status quo. Even sadder that these certain populations are more likely to vote than those that would stand to benefit from public transport. It comes as no surprise that politicians lean so heavy on NIMBY policies when in CA 2/3 of homeowners vote compared to 1/3 of renters. Politicians are listening to those who've elected them, so if we want change and functional transport more people have to vote in local elections.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    > The sad part is that this thinking gets entrenched in certain populations. People loose idealistic thinking and prefer to stick with the status quo. Even sadder that these certain populations are more likely to vote than those that would stand to benefit from public transport. The status quo actually works on some level. Idealistic thinking often leads to thinking that big disruptive changes will make things better when there are always vastly more ways to make things worse than better. Idealistic thinking is far from an unalloyed good.
  - BigJono 7y ago
    I mean, this sounds good in theory but we have mandatory voting in Australia and all the same problems anyway. There's barely any correlation between people's votes and their interests, unless those interests are so simplified that they can be exploited (i.e everyone voting over and over to lower taxes no matter what they lose in return). Even if you could get all the renters in California to vote, half of them will probably support more roads and urban sprawl anyway.
  - journalctl 7y ago
    I still find it wild that the CA state legislature is arguably the most progressive state legislature in the country... until someone wants to build some apartments.
- blue_devil 7y ago
  >>that the automobile industries in each country play an important role. This. Like the articles states, it's thanks to lots of local resident activists that Zurich got rid of the car-centric urban design. Same for Amsterdam - the protests there was triggered by a string of child deaths in car accidents. There is _no_ city _inherently_ unsuitable to becoming less car-centric. Yes, some factors like density may facilitate it, but ultimately it requires civic responsibility to win over entrenched interests or just plain human psychological short-sightedness.
- md_ 7y ago
  Switzerland has fairly high rates of car ownership per capita: 716/1000, vs 811/1000 for the US, according to Wikipedia. The Swiss rate of car ownership far exceeds that of Germany (561), France (478), or even an auto-oriented country like Italy (625). I think that calls into question your hypothesis: first, direct ownership by voters seems like it should have at least as great an effect on politicians' behavior toward auto transit as would the existence of domestic auto manufacturing, and, second, it demonstrates that Switzerland's car-unfriendly urban planning (and, moreover, extremely high rail density nationwide) does not result in a crippling of the domestic auto market. Of course, this has to be viewed through the lens of wealth; Switzerland also has the highest wealth per capita in the world, so of course people can afford to keep a cheap Maserati for weekend trips. Given that confounding variable, direct comparisons are hard. (But I also don't really understand the comparisons you make to other European cities; Italian inter-city transit is heavily car-based, but large cities like Milan have quite functional urban transit, and large cities and small towns alike have limited-traffic zones. Paris certainly has large thoroughfares, but I don't think there has been a lot of widening; the Champs Élysées predates automobiles and serves more as a venue for parades and the like than as a functional high-throughput road.) So, hard to compare data apples-to-apples, but I think your assumption that urban planning is heavily responsive to the presence of a domestic auto industry is not entirely credible.
Bluecobra 7y ago
Funnily enough, one of the scenarios in SimCity on the SNES was dealing with Bern traffic in 1965. I remember that one being pretty easy as all you needed to do was bulldoze a bunch of roads and replacing it with rail.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Funny how such blatant propaganda passed right under the noses of millions of kids.
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    Sim City (especially later versions) has generally been built around models based on American car-centric planning. The game very much encourages sprawl-style development.
    - journalctl 7y ago
      That there’s no mixed use zoning kind of says it all. Although, rather adorably, apparently a lot of city planners were inspired by Sim City! [1] [1] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-simcity-inspired-urban-planners-20190305-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-simcity...
      - microtherion 7y ago
        And yet we're still waiting for our Arcologies.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    Finding the easiest way to solve a problem given constraints is a poor exemplar of propaganda. I’m sure it is and was possible to build perfectly lovely car centric cities in various Sim City games. If your problem is congestion you need to increase capacity. This requires either bigger tubes (freeways instead of single lane roads) or fitting more stuff into the same tubes, greater pressure (a tram or some other form of rail). If you want to maintain a historic city you can’t do a total rebuild so you can’t build freeways. Thus rail is the only solution apart from congestion charges. Reality constrains possible solutions. If you model reality in a game the solutions won’t be too much different.
gok 7y ago
It's stated in the article but it's not really accurate. Zürich is thousands of years old. It was never particularly drivable. There a very brief period of time where they tried to make driving easier, then gave up. It was always a high density city that was fundamentally walkable. During the brief period of auto-friendliness, there was also a tram system that remained operational. Most American cities have no such density. You could magically make all the streets narrow, rip out all the interstates and install a tram system in, say, Omaha, and you wouldn't have a functional city. You'd just have ~500,000 people who couldn't get around.
- burlesona 7y ago
  That’s not quite true. Many American cities did have this kind of walkable orientation and moderate density - they give the example of Bridgeport CT in the article, showing what it looked like in 1913 and what it looks like now. What many American cities did not have was the population that they have today. It is indeed quite different to talk about retrofitting the suburbs, where a hundred million or so Americans live, where there was never anything but car-oriented development. The cities and towns that pre-date that era, however, could have easily grown this way instead of the car oriented way. The real problem is that car oriented development scales very poorly, and there are few or maybe no easy ways to adapt it to accommodate either higher density or more traffic from more horizontal adjacent growth.
  - wbl 7y ago
    Most American cities had population peaks in the immediate postwar period.
    - jacobolus 7y ago
      Among other things, (a) many white people moved out because they could keep people of color out of living in the suburbs, (b) the federal government heavily subsidized suburban sprawl and the car transportation network. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
    - 7y ago
wmf 7y ago
I wonder how bad it was during the transition though. Many people who urbanize in the US are still paying the full cost of a car while using transit when they can.

205guy 7y ago

Something I've come to realize is that the automobile industries in each country play an important role. Switzerland and the Netherlands don't have any major car manufacturing, though I do bet they have some suppliers. And it doesn't even have to be a direct influence (like the LA streetcar story), it's just a background of economics, priorities, and zeitgeist. Politicians and planners won't be as tempted to go against cars when some non-negligeable percentage of their economy (already fragile) is based on car manufacturing. European countries with large auto manufacturers like France, Germany, and England (also Spain and Italy) still have better transit and town planning than the US (due to history and density), but they won't be as actively seeking car-less solutions (at least until there is total gridlock in the hyper-center). But I think even there, people are realizing that in the suburbs and between towns you need cars, but if you're going to the city center, you're much better off with transit and walking.

asdff 7y ago
The sad part is that this thinking gets entrenched in certain populations. People loose idealistic thinking and prefer to stick with the status quo. Even sadder that these certain populations are more likely to vote than those that would stand to benefit from public transport. It comes as no surprise that politicians lean so heavy on NIMBY policies when in CA 2/3 of homeowners vote compared to 1/3 of renters. Politicians are listening to those who've elected them, so if we want change and functional transport more people have to vote in local elections.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  > The sad part is that this thinking gets entrenched in certain populations. People loose idealistic thinking and prefer to stick with the status quo. Even sadder that these certain populations are more likely to vote than those that would stand to benefit from public transport. The status quo actually works on some level. Idealistic thinking often leads to thinking that big disruptive changes will make things better when there are always vastly more ways to make things worse than better. Idealistic thinking is far from an unalloyed good.
- BigJono 7y ago
  I mean, this sounds good in theory but we have mandatory voting in Australia and all the same problems anyway. There's barely any correlation between people's votes and their interests, unless those interests are so simplified that they can be exploited (i.e everyone voting over and over to lower taxes no matter what they lose in return). Even if you could get all the renters in California to vote, half of them will probably support more roads and urban sprawl anyway.
- journalctl 7y ago
  I still find it wild that the CA state legislature is arguably the most progressive state legislature in the country... until someone wants to build some apartments.
blue_devil 7y ago
>>that the automobile industries in each country play an important role. This. Like the articles states, it's thanks to lots of local resident activists that Zurich got rid of the car-centric urban design. Same for Amsterdam - the protests there was triggered by a string of child deaths in car accidents. There is _no_ city _inherently_ unsuitable to becoming less car-centric. Yes, some factors like density may facilitate it, but ultimately it requires civic responsibility to win over entrenched interests or just plain human psychological short-sightedness.
md_ 7y ago
Switzerland has fairly high rates of car ownership per capita: 716/1000, vs 811/1000 for the US, according to Wikipedia. The Swiss rate of car ownership far exceeds that of Germany (561), France (478), or even an auto-oriented country like Italy (625). I think that calls into question your hypothesis: first, direct ownership by voters seems like it should have at least as great an effect on politicians' behavior toward auto transit as would the existence of domestic auto manufacturing, and, second, it demonstrates that Switzerland's car-unfriendly urban planning (and, moreover, extremely high rail density nationwide) does not result in a crippling of the domestic auto market. Of course, this has to be viewed through the lens of wealth; Switzerland also has the highest wealth per capita in the world, so of course people can afford to keep a cheap Maserati for weekend trips. Given that confounding variable, direct comparisons are hard. (But I also don't really understand the comparisons you make to other European cities; Italian inter-city transit is heavily car-based, but large cities like Milan have quite functional urban transit, and large cities and small towns alike have limited-traffic zones. Paris certainly has large thoroughfares, but I don't think there has been a lot of widening; the Champs Élysées predates automobiles and serves more as a venue for parades and the like than as a functional high-throughput road.) So, hard to compare data apples-to-apples, but I think your assumption that urban planning is heavily responsive to the presence of a domestic auto industry is not entirely credible.

Bluecobra 7y ago

Funnily enough, one of the scenarios in SimCity on the SNES was dealing with Bern traffic in 1965. I remember that one being pretty easy as all you needed to do was bulldoze a bunch of roads and replacing it with rail.

lonelappde 7y ago
Funny how such blatant propaganda passed right under the noses of millions of kids.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  Sim City (especially later versions) has generally been built around models based on American car-centric planning. The game very much encourages sprawl-style development.
  - journalctl 7y ago
    That there’s no mixed use zoning kind of says it all. Although, rather adorably, apparently a lot of city planners were inspired by Sim City! [1] [1] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-simcity-inspired-urban-planners-20190305-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-simcity...
    - microtherion 7y ago
      And yet we're still waiting for our Arcologies.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Finding the easiest way to solve a problem given constraints is a poor exemplar of propaganda. I’m sure it is and was possible to build perfectly lovely car centric cities in various Sim City games. If your problem is congestion you need to increase capacity. This requires either bigger tubes (freeways instead of single lane roads) or fitting more stuff into the same tubes, greater pressure (a tram or some other form of rail). If you want to maintain a historic city you can’t do a total rebuild so you can’t build freeways. Thus rail is the only solution apart from congestion charges. Reality constrains possible solutions. If you model reality in a game the solutions won’t be too much different.

gok 7y ago

It's stated in the article but it's not really accurate. Zürich is thousands of years old. It was never particularly drivable. There a very brief period of time where they tried to make driving easier, then gave up. It was always a high density city that was fundamentally walkable. During the brief period of auto-friendliness, there was also a tram system that remained operational. Most American cities have no such density. You could magically make all the streets narrow, rip out all the interstates and install a tram system in, say, Omaha, and you wouldn't have a functional city. You'd just have ~500,000 people who couldn't get around.

burlesona 7y ago
That’s not quite true. Many American cities did have this kind of walkable orientation and moderate density - they give the example of Bridgeport CT in the article, showing what it looked like in 1913 and what it looks like now. What many American cities did not have was the population that they have today. It is indeed quite different to talk about retrofitting the suburbs, where a hundred million or so Americans live, where there was never anything but car-oriented development. The cities and towns that pre-date that era, however, could have easily grown this way instead of the car oriented way. The real problem is that car oriented development scales very poorly, and there are few or maybe no easy ways to adapt it to accommodate either higher density or more traffic from more horizontal adjacent growth.
- wbl 7y ago
  Most American cities had population peaks in the immediate postwar period.
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    Among other things, (a) many white people moved out because they could keep people of color out of living in the suburbs, (b) the federal government heavily subsidized suburban sprawl and the car transportation network. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
  - 7y ago

wmf 7y ago

I wonder how bad it was during the transition though. Many people who urbanize in the US are still paying the full cost of a car while using transit when they can.