4 ms·

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 tim

by 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
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    Not the metropolitan areas, though. What a “city” is depends on your local history and how arbitrary political lines in the sand were drawn.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      >Not the metropolitan areas, though. At some level, that's true. For example, if you take the US census definition of "urban," which some 80% of the US population lives in, there's been pretty much steady urbanization. But most people don't mean places like where I live--with about 3 houses scattered across 100 acres--when they talk about urban although it is according to the census. On the other hand, the city of Boston--for example--whose political boundaries more or less correspond to good public transportation and the like (or mostly a bit bigger than that) was losing population into the 1990s.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  > 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. Hmm. And what would be the result of that? It might be that cities become more expensive. And I keep reading about how American cities are too expensive, and how the lack of affordability is causing all kinds of negative sociological effects. Could the car focus be the root cause of that?
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Some cities are vastly more expensive than others. Most of the reasons for the expense is not related to cars vs transit. Of course a growing city will be more expensive than one in decline, some growing cities are significantly cheaper than others. Huston is the poster for a car oriented city that isn't very expensive - they have built and built so that is possible to afford a house. Transit oriented New York is less affordable than that (but overall not too bad)
blue_devil 7y ago
>>It was never particularly drivable. Neither are lots of other very dense cities in Europe, say in Italy, Germany, Spain etc. yet they drive and park in crazy ways. Space is _but_ a factor. People react to policy incentives and available alternatives. Make parking scarce and expensive, create convenient/affordable public transport or park & ride, and your city will be the better and more humane for it.
lrem 7y ago
Zurich, a city of 400k, has suburbs housing another 1.2M [1]. People in there also don't use cars: you can have a commute via a bus, train and two trams and nobody will bat an eye. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zurich_metropolitan_area?wprov=sfla1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zurich_metropolitan_area?wpr...

by gok 7y ago

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
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  Not the metropolitan areas, though. What a “city” is depends on your local history and how arbitrary political lines in the sand were drawn.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    >Not the metropolitan areas, though. At some level, that's true. For example, if you take the US census definition of "urban," which some 80% of the US population lives in, there's been pretty much steady urbanization. But most people don't mean places like where I live--with about 3 houses scattered across 100 acres--when they talk about urban although it is according to the census. On the other hand, the city of Boston--for example--whose political boundaries more or less correspond to good public transportation and the like (or mostly a bit bigger than that) was losing population into the 1990s.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
> 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. Hmm. And what would be the result of that? It might be that cities become more expensive. And I keep reading about how American cities are too expensive, and how the lack of affordability is causing all kinds of negative sociological effects. Could the car focus be the root cause of that?
- bluGill 7y ago
  Some cities are vastly more expensive than others. Most of the reasons for the expense is not related to cars vs transit. Of course a growing city will be more expensive than one in decline, some growing cities are significantly cheaper than others. Huston is the poster for a car oriented city that isn't very expensive - they have built and built so that is possible to afford a house. Transit oriented New York is less affordable than that (but overall not too bad)

blue_devil 7y ago

>>It was never particularly drivable. Neither are lots of other very dense cities in Europe, say in Italy, Germany, Spain etc. yet they drive and park in crazy ways. Space is _but_ a factor. People react to policy incentives and available alternatives. Make parking scarce and expensive, create convenient/affordable public transport or park & ride, and your city will be the better and more humane for it.

lrem 7y ago

Zurich, a city of 400k, has suburbs housing another 1.2M [1]. People in there also don't use cars: you can have a commute via a bus, train and two trams and nobody will bat an eye. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zurich_metropolitan_area?wprov=sfla1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zurich_metropolitan_area?wpr...