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We get it citylab, you hate cars, and think everyone lives in the downtown of a metropolis. Meanwhile, the rest of us have places to be, and 99% of my country h

We get it citylab, you hate cars, and think everyone lives in the downtown of a metropolis. Meanwhile, the rest of us have places to be, and 99% of my country has no public transport. While I agree that city centers need more walking room, the categorical exclusion of longer distant transport options will just create more parking lots at the border of such areas. The more modern planning ignores the forest (countries) for the trees (big cities), the technological and class divide will only widen.

C1sc0cat 7y ago
Its a very common failing of architecture fans who want to decide how the masses live without actually asking the end users.
durkie 7y ago
They are called Citylab, after all.
monknomo 7y ago
80% of Americans live in an urban area
- big_chungus 7y ago
  Many of those live near and around a city, rather than in it, and commute daily.
  - 0b0001 7y ago
    That's one of the things that need to be solved, rather than celebrated. Commuting -- no matter which transport you're using, is a waste of time and energy.
    - big_chungus 7y ago
      I agree, but I also don't want to live like a sardine in a can, packed in with millions of others, living in a small box, having no green space, etc. I'm generally a social person, but don't like living that close to that many people. Many others seem to agree.
      - dashundchen 7y ago
        There are livable and afforable alternative to Manhattan style density and there are plenty of working examples. We just refuse to build that way. Look at many continental European cities. A mid-sized German city will be full of low to mid density buildings and walk up apartments, few skyscrapers. Mixed use of retail and residential, and very good transit by American standards, connecting to intercity rail transit. Highways frequently terminating or routing outside the city. Plenty of greenspace. Leipzig, Germany https://www.google.com/maps/place/Leipzig,+Germany/@51.3331028,12.3693392,13.26z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x47a6f818200f2c73:0x93df80d2b9b4f552!8m2!3d51.3396955!4d12.3730747!5m1!1e2 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Leipzig,+Germany/@51.33310... Even the US used to have this, though they are long drowned in sprawl. Any city that was of decent size pre-WWII usually has street car suburbs - a dense mix of single family homes, shops and apartments usually built around a transit node that connected to the core and region. Look at Shaker/Cleveland Heights and Lakewood in Cleveland. There is a healthy mix of uses and density centered around transit. You can see the pattern they developed around, even if it's vestigial at this point.
        ars 7y ago
        I think you have a very different definition of low density than everyone else. Low density means there is at least a full building worth of space between houses and ideally several buildings worth. It means you can stand on every side of your house and look and have difficulty seeing your neighbor.
        big_chungus 7y ago
        That's not low-density. Maybe not everywhere is as bad as Manhattan, but that is indeed very dense. Note that you twice described your ideal solution as dense: "a dense mix of single family homes, shops and apartments" "a healthy mix of uses and density centered around transit." Not a big fan of that kind of density, nor are many others. I'd at least like to have my own backyard, and not have my neighbors peering in from a second story.
- ConceitedCode 7y ago
  This is misleading to most people. The US census counts the suburbs as urban. I don't believe most people referring to urban areas are referring to people in the suburbs. "To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,500 people, at least 1,500 of which reside outside institutional group quarters." https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/about/faq/2010-urban-area-faq.html#par_textimage_1 https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/about/faq/...
  - ghaff 7y ago
    As I tell people, together with my two neighbors I live in the middle of about 100 acres on a road with no sidewalks. This counts as urban as far as the census is concerned. The US is big. That the above is urban makes sense in the context that I'm only about a 15 minute drive from a small city and am only about an hour drive from a large city. There are lots of places in the US that are 100+ miles from the nearest Walmart.
  - bitwize 7y ago
    Ban suburbs, too. They basically mainly exist to give white people a place to move to, to get away from pesky minorities.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      First, not everything is about race. Some people may move to the suburbs to get away from minorities, but not everyone does. Second, you want to force us to live the way you think we should? Feel free to get lost.
- everdrive 7y ago
  Dense urban areas are harmed by cars, but where do you draw the line? Suppose I can drive through the suburbs of Philadelphia, but not the city center. What happens to the area around the restricted-driving zone? Does it become an crowded parking lot as people trade their cars for transit? I'm not suggesting that there are no solution here -- I'm genuinely asking what the solutions are.
  - timerol 7y ago
    Ideally there would be expensive parking lots right at the edge of the area, and cheaper parking lots further out. So you could park and walk right at the boundary, or park near the Broad Street Line and take that in. Or you could park at a Regional Rail stop even further out and take the train all the way in. Or you could Uber right to the boundary. Depending on where exactly you live and how much you value time vs. money, different options will make sense for different people. But considering that the people who will be getting dropped off right at the boundary would have otherwise been driving to the city center, it doesn't make traffic any worse. The car-free zone makes sense if it's smaller than the area that has public transit. Note that even in the complete absence of public transit, you can still comfortably implement about a quarter-mile radius of car-free area, since a quarter mile walk is only 5 minutes. In the US what we're mostly talking about is closing individual downtown streets to through traffic (like, say, Market between 5th to 13th, ignoring the City Hall death circle). On NYC 14th street, any car is allowed, as long as it turns off within 2 blocks. This greatly limits the usefulness of the street to through traffic, (and therefore makes it a much better pedestrian and bus environment) without changing the parking situation at all.
  - monknomo 7y ago
    Part of the solution might be using the local population density to inform how much of the street you devote to cars. For example, in rural areas, two lane blacktop with no shoulder and 100% devoted to cars is ok, because there aren't many cars, so people can still use the road even if they aren't driving. In the suburbs, car travel lanes should begin to narrow, sidewalks should appear, bike lanes should appear, etc. In the densest part of the city, the streets should give space to transit, delivery/infrastructure vehicles, low speed transport like bikes, scooters, etc. and people. Primarily people and transit
- dahfizz 7y ago
  "urban" is a very imprecise word. You're likely quoting the census, who defines any town with more than 2,500 people as urban. I promise you, if you went to a town of 2,500 people, you would not have the word "urban" in your head. EDIT: After a little reflection, this really blows my mind. Over 60 million Americans live in towns of less than 2,500 people. This country is massive.
- annoyingnoob 7y ago
  Claiming that I live in an urban area does not suddenly make my commute walk-able or produce new public transportation options. I live in an urban area and still need transportation. My city does not allow mixed use buildings, which would go a long way toward reducing the need for transportation.
- MisterBastahrd 7y ago
  I live in an urban area of about 2M people. It takes me 40 minutes to get to work on a good day, driving on an interstate. The closest mass transportation option would require me to drive about 25 minutes to get there. Most people are like me.
big_chungus 7y ago
This is absolutely true. If the goal is to move people, "just banning cars" is not the solution. Living inside a city is simply too expensive, and that sort of position is reserved for those with cushy jobs and a very specific life style. It's the ivory tower shouting down at the un-educated, un-washed masses once again.
- kevinqiu1 7y ago
  In a Western context with our property situation perhaps but look at Japan. 91% of the population lives in an urban area and even in the most desirable metropolis Tokyo it is relatively affordable: https://www.curbed.com/2017/2/3/14496248/tokyo-real-estate-affordable-homes https://www.curbed.com/2017/2/3/14496248/tokyo-real-estate-a... Not every city in the world has to be like New York or San Francisco. Cars should be banned (more or less) in cities. And it should viable for someone to live in a city if they so choose or in a rural area with a car if they so choose. We're failing on both fronts really in America...
  - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
    It's expensive to live in a city that's 40% asphalt to move cars around and park cars in. You basically need to pay 40% more for the same living space, since you don't really pay for the moving space. Great way for car companies to force externalities onto everyone else. Don't like cars? "Oh well, you're paying for the road and parking anyway. You can't beat the problem, so you may as well join it."
    - big_chungus 7y ago
      If induced demand is a problem for cars, might it not be a problem for cities? A higher potential density will lead to a higher density.
      - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
        People appear not be a space filling curve anymore. It looked that way prior to the Industrial Revolution and the advent of Birth Control. But it doesn't look like people will infinitely fill all space available to them anymore. Perhaps it's because we're running out of space (artificially, by not building) in places where there's till opportunity. But I'm not sure we have convincing evidence of that. We do have evidence that people aren't wildly reproducing in almost every advanced economy, though.
vorpalhex 7y ago
Even in Japan, which has wonderful public transportation and was actually a joy to navigate, there are cars everywhere and frequently there are times when you need a car or your ability to get to places outside of the cities becomes expensive and takes a long time if it's possible at all.
- benrbray 7y ago
  Living in/around Tokyo, I had the exact opposite experience. Cars, trains, pedestrians, and bicyclists are in near-perfect balance. For the most part, people live within walking or biking distance of a train station that takes them to work. Around each station is a cluster of shops and restaurants. Commercial traffic is well-separated from places where people live, meaning that on neighborhood streets there are virtually no cars. And the result? Children playing. Kindergartners walking themselves to school. Birds chirping. Green spaces. Peace and quiet. All in the middle of one of the world's largest cities. Outside of Tokyo, the balance is slightly more in favor of cars, but the country's extensive train system means you don't need to own a car to get yourself there. It's easy enough to rent a car locally for a few days when you really need one. Cheaper too compared to the cost of purchasing a car and paying for insurance, parking, maintenance, etc..
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    Agreed. Additionally: All of my co-workers had a car, but they only used them a few times a month except for the couple of coworkers who had hobbies that took them out into rural areas. And there were buses everywhere. You could take transit from the middle of Tokyo to that onsen in the middle of nowhere. It wouldn't be convenient or fast, but it could be done and we did it all the time. You just had to be careful with your scheduling and have something to read on the bus or someone to chat with. Nobody used their cars to get groceries. The 7-11 on the corner is crazily well-stocked with reasonable prices, and the grocery store is by the train station you walk to and from every day.
    - vorpalhex 7y ago
      I absolutely miss the 7-11s (and other convenience stores) from Japan. I was shocked at how well stocked they were and how high the food quality was.
telchar 7y ago
Parking lots at the border is, in my opinion, much better than parking garages in the center. At least that way the city streets won't be clogged by people coming from out of town. After they get to the city they don't need the cars, so leave them at the edge.
- sdenton4 7y ago
  And there's (3 times the change in radius) more space to put the parking lots at the edge... That seems fine!
  - dashundchen 7y ago
    With lower costs to acquire and build in these areas to begin with, freeing up space to build and densify the core (lowering real estate costs there).
electricviolet 7y ago
Honestly I'd be fine with a model where city centers are primarily pedestrian and there are big parking garages on the borders of those areas. Less parking space would be needed overall since each residence and business wouldn't need it's own set of parking spaces that aren't always in use.
benrbray 7y ago
America is certainly decades (if not centuries) behind in public transportation. However, these CityLab articles are doing a great thing by highlighting our unhealthy dependence on cars and making it a part of everyday conversation. If we're ever going to change we need to start by agreeing there is a problem and discussing realistic solutions. I don't quite understand your point about the "technological and class divide" widen[ing]. Good public transportation (as in places like Japan) drastically reduces the cost of moving around the city/country. In the United States, for most people, owning a car (an expensive up-front cost with expensive monthly payments) is a prerequisite to finding and keeping a job. Public transportation adds to our social safety net.
- FussyZeus 7y ago
  > America is certainly decades (if not centuries) behind in public transportation. However, these CityLab articles are doing a great thing by highlighting our unhealthy dependence on cars and making it a part of everyday conversation. If we're ever going to change we need to start by agreeing there is a problem and discussing realistic solutions. Then let's discuss some realistic solutions: Outside of densely populated metros, public transportation is a wash. In my area, small-ish city, we have pretty solid mass transit options but it's still a massive pain in the ass because you end up scheduling your entire day around the bus schedule. And if the bus isn't running when you might need to run an errand out? Oh fuckin well. People parade around mass transit like it's the end all be all of great things we can do, and being a liberal around most things, I wish that was true. But even the stories about Japan's awesome mass transit make me cringe; stuck in a train for 45 minutes each way? Pass. The hardest conceivable pass. You know what my commute is? I get in my car and drive from my suburb to a business park. It takes 10 bloody minutes. Even driving my pickup truck, I use roughly 30 gallons of fuel every three weeks. When I want to run errands, or pop out for lunch, or whatever, I can walk outside and use my vehicle. It's there all the time, 24 hours a day. No app required. No booking required. Certainly no waiting on someone to drive over and get me. There is simply no mass transit option that can equate this, end of. I'm not saying there aren't improvements to be made and I'm certainly not saying that all mass transit is bad; but to put forward mass transit as a realistic option to get rid of cars, you look like a complete fool to anyone who doesn't live in a city. Pie in the sky fucking nonsense.
skocznymroczny 7y ago
Even having public transport doesn't mean the car is useless. Public transport fails if you have a lot of groceries to deliver, or some big products. Also public transport often takes much longer than a car, because it's stopping at every little stop, while a car can go directly, or even take a shortcut in some cases.
- paulcole 7y ago
  If you have big products or groceries to deliver or otherwise truly believe that public transportation can't meet your unique needs, you should be STRONGLY in favor of additional public transportation to reduce traffic.
- katbyte 7y ago
  Car share works pretty well there. Let insurance on my car lapse months ago and I’m getting buy fine without it
- tomtheelder 7y ago
  > Public transport fails if you have a lot of groceries to deliver, or some big products. That's commercial traffic, car-free policies are usually designed with support for commercial vehicles. It's really about eliminating private automobile traffic in city centers. If you mean going to the store to buy large items, delivery is probably the solution there. Deliveries like that can be grouped into a smaller number of larger vehicles, or done at off hours, or only on certain roads, or all sorts of different things. Car-free isn't the greatest moniker in the world. It really means eliminating private automobile traffic, not eliminating vehicles altogether. > Also public transport often takes much longer than a car, because it's stopping at every little stop, while a car can go directly, or even take a shortcut in some cases. This isn't typically true in dense urban areas with high quality transit networks. Those are the areas that are suitable for car-free. Certainly most places would suffer greatly from the elimination of cars, but those areas aren't the target.
- krschultz 7y ago
  Does it? I cook almost every night and managed to survive without a car for 6 years in Manhattan. Yes, you go to the grocery store more often because you can only take home what you can carry. But the grocery store was a block from my apartment, it took less time to do a round trip there on foot than anywhere I've lived in the suburbs with a car.
ogre_codes 7y ago
> the technological and class divide will only widen. Car friendly infrastructure widens the technological and class divide. They create a base state where you are required to own and maintain an expensive piece of equipment in order to be an equal member of society. You are required to have parking for those cars, both at home and at your work. Forcing people to pay thousands of dollars per year to participate in society is highly repressive.
- allovernow 7y ago
  >Car friendly infrastructure widens the technological and class divide. They create a base state where you are required to own and maintain an expensive piece of equipment in order to be an equal member of society. Great, so if we can't all have something, none of us should have it! Forget the fact that the vast majority of families own and benefit from personal transportation, the important thing is that we're all equal, even if the equal case is on average worse for everyone, right? >Forcing people to pay thousands of dollars per year to participate in society is highly repressive Is it also repressive to "force" people to hold down jobs to participate in society? To "force" people to commute to work? What about the fact that some people have the luxury of working from home? Should we make that illegal as well? I do not understand how people can be so focused on equality as to totally ignore the average, greater good. The nature of modern civilization is such that some degree of inequality is inevitable if one optimizes for median welfare.
  - tomtheelder 7y ago
    > Great, so if we can't all have something, none of us should have it! Forget the fact that the vast majority of families own and benefit from personal transportation, the important thing is that we're all equal, even if the equal case is on average worse for everyone, right? This is entirely the opposite of what the car-free movement is trying to accomplish. Car-free is strictly concerned dense urban areas, where private automobiles pretty strictly work against the common good. They are noisy, dangerous, polluting, and fail to create efficient transportation networks. In such places, there is very good reason to believe that car-free would improve quality of life and median welfare for residents. Obviously car-free is not a realistic option in suburban, semi-urban, and rural areas. No one who is advocating car-free is suggesting we do it there. Any increase in equality that comes along with it (honestly I'm skeptical it would make much of a difference) would be purely incidental.
_jal 7y ago
One popular attack on public transportation is to tie it to class and race issues, in order to prime people to think in zero-sum, tribal terms. Another is to place the burden of solving every transportation problem upon those who would dare propose any modification to the status quo. Once you see it, it stops working so well. (More depressingly, you see this cynical strategy repeated elsewhere and repeated by people who don't actually realize what's going on.)
amwelles 7y ago
“Ban cars” is shorthand for a much bigger societal problem. It’s not an attack on a person or what they need to do to survive. These articles are about us as a whole, not the individual. This toot explains it well: https://mspsocial.net/@t54r4n1/100699058171393417 https://mspsocial.net/@t54r4n1/100699058171393417
herbstein 7y ago
Dane here. Most cities of 15k or more has what is essentially a couple of streets worth of strip mall with no cars allowed (except for deliveries). This works really well as long as there's ample parking around - which there usually is here.
notatoad 7y ago
> just create more parking lots at the border of such areas afaik, most proponents of car-free streets or dense urban development regard parking lots at the border of the dense area ("intercept parking") as a good idea to be encouraged. The point is not to wage war on cars, it's to make downtowns a safe and pleasant place to be.
tharne 7y ago
This is exactly why I left the field of urban planning. Practitioners were wildly out of touch with the way the vast majority of people lived that it rendered the field irrelevant. The job was basically a continued effort in trying to coerce people into living in pre-WWII style cities, when the fact is that most people who live in the suburbs are quite happy with the arrangement, even if 24 year-old me found the idea of suburbs distasteful.

C1sc0cat 7y ago

Its a very common failing of architecture fans who want to decide how the masses live without actually asking the end users.

durkie 7y ago

They are called Citylab, after all.

monknomo 7y ago

80% of Americans live in an urban area

big_chungus 7y ago
Many of those live near and around a city, rather than in it, and commute daily.
- 0b0001 7y ago
  That's one of the things that need to be solved, rather than celebrated. Commuting -- no matter which transport you're using, is a waste of time and energy.
  - big_chungus 7y ago
    I agree, but I also don't want to live like a sardine in a can, packed in with millions of others, living in a small box, having no green space, etc. I'm generally a social person, but don't like living that close to that many people. Many others seem to agree.
    - dashundchen 7y ago
      There are livable and afforable alternative to Manhattan style density and there are plenty of working examples. We just refuse to build that way. Look at many continental European cities. A mid-sized German city will be full of low to mid density buildings and walk up apartments, few skyscrapers. Mixed use of retail and residential, and very good transit by American standards, connecting to intercity rail transit. Highways frequently terminating or routing outside the city. Plenty of greenspace. Leipzig, Germany https://www.google.com/maps/place/Leipzig,+Germany/@51.3331028,12.3693392,13.26z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x47a6f818200f2c73:0x93df80d2b9b4f552!8m2!3d51.3396955!4d12.3730747!5m1!1e2 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Leipzig,+Germany/@51.33310... Even the US used to have this, though they are long drowned in sprawl. Any city that was of decent size pre-WWII usually has street car suburbs - a dense mix of single family homes, shops and apartments usually built around a transit node that connected to the core and region. Look at Shaker/Cleveland Heights and Lakewood in Cleveland. There is a healthy mix of uses and density centered around transit. You can see the pattern they developed around, even if it's vestigial at this point.
      - ars 7y ago
        I think you have a very different definition of low density than everyone else. Low density means there is at least a full building worth of space between houses and ideally several buildings worth. It means you can stand on every side of your house and look and have difficulty seeing your neighbor.
      - big_chungus 7y ago
        That's not low-density. Maybe not everywhere is as bad as Manhattan, but that is indeed very dense. Note that you twice described your ideal solution as dense: "a dense mix of single family homes, shops and apartments" "a healthy mix of uses and density centered around transit." Not a big fan of that kind of density, nor are many others. I'd at least like to have my own backyard, and not have my neighbors peering in from a second story.
ConceitedCode 7y ago
This is misleading to most people. The US census counts the suburbs as urban. I don't believe most people referring to urban areas are referring to people in the suburbs. "To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,500 people, at least 1,500 of which reside outside institutional group quarters." https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/about/faq/2010-urban-area-faq.html#par_textimage_1 https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/about/faq/...
- ghaff 7y ago
  As I tell people, together with my two neighbors I live in the middle of about 100 acres on a road with no sidewalks. This counts as urban as far as the census is concerned. The US is big. That the above is urban makes sense in the context that I'm only about a 15 minute drive from a small city and am only about an hour drive from a large city. There are lots of places in the US that are 100+ miles from the nearest Walmart.
- bitwize 7y ago
  Ban suburbs, too. They basically mainly exist to give white people a place to move to, to get away from pesky minorities.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    First, not everything is about race. Some people may move to the suburbs to get away from minorities, but not everyone does. Second, you want to force us to live the way you think we should? Feel free to get lost.
everdrive 7y ago
Dense urban areas are harmed by cars, but where do you draw the line? Suppose I can drive through the suburbs of Philadelphia, but not the city center. What happens to the area around the restricted-driving zone? Does it become an crowded parking lot as people trade their cars for transit? I'm not suggesting that there are no solution here -- I'm genuinely asking what the solutions are.
- timerol 7y ago
  Ideally there would be expensive parking lots right at the edge of the area, and cheaper parking lots further out. So you could park and walk right at the boundary, or park near the Broad Street Line and take that in. Or you could park at a Regional Rail stop even further out and take the train all the way in. Or you could Uber right to the boundary. Depending on where exactly you live and how much you value time vs. money, different options will make sense for different people. But considering that the people who will be getting dropped off right at the boundary would have otherwise been driving to the city center, it doesn't make traffic any worse. The car-free zone makes sense if it's smaller than the area that has public transit. Note that even in the complete absence of public transit, you can still comfortably implement about a quarter-mile radius of car-free area, since a quarter mile walk is only 5 minutes. In the US what we're mostly talking about is closing individual downtown streets to through traffic (like, say, Market between 5th to 13th, ignoring the City Hall death circle). On NYC 14th street, any car is allowed, as long as it turns off within 2 blocks. This greatly limits the usefulness of the street to through traffic, (and therefore makes it a much better pedestrian and bus environment) without changing the parking situation at all.
- monknomo 7y ago
  Part of the solution might be using the local population density to inform how much of the street you devote to cars. For example, in rural areas, two lane blacktop with no shoulder and 100% devoted to cars is ok, because there aren't many cars, so people can still use the road even if they aren't driving. In the suburbs, car travel lanes should begin to narrow, sidewalks should appear, bike lanes should appear, etc. In the densest part of the city, the streets should give space to transit, delivery/infrastructure vehicles, low speed transport like bikes, scooters, etc. and people. Primarily people and transit
dahfizz 7y ago
"urban" is a very imprecise word. You're likely quoting the census, who defines any town with more than 2,500 people as urban. I promise you, if you went to a town of 2,500 people, you would not have the word "urban" in your head. EDIT: After a little reflection, this really blows my mind. Over 60 million Americans live in towns of less than 2,500 people. This country is massive.
annoyingnoob 7y ago
Claiming that I live in an urban area does not suddenly make my commute walk-able or produce new public transportation options. I live in an urban area and still need transportation. My city does not allow mixed use buildings, which would go a long way toward reducing the need for transportation.
MisterBastahrd 7y ago
I live in an urban area of about 2M people. It takes me 40 minutes to get to work on a good day, driving on an interstate. The closest mass transportation option would require me to drive about 25 minutes to get there. Most people are like me.

big_chungus 7y ago

This is absolutely true. If the goal is to move people, "just banning cars" is not the solution. Living inside a city is simply too expensive, and that sort of position is reserved for those with cushy jobs and a very specific life style. It's the ivory tower shouting down at the un-educated, un-washed masses once again.

kevinqiu1 7y ago
In a Western context with our property situation perhaps but look at Japan. 91% of the population lives in an urban area and even in the most desirable metropolis Tokyo it is relatively affordable: https://www.curbed.com/2017/2/3/14496248/tokyo-real-estate-affordable-homes https://www.curbed.com/2017/2/3/14496248/tokyo-real-estate-a... Not every city in the world has to be like New York or San Francisco. Cars should be banned (more or less) in cities. And it should viable for someone to live in a city if they so choose or in a rural area with a car if they so choose. We're failing on both fronts really in America...
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  It's expensive to live in a city that's 40% asphalt to move cars around and park cars in. You basically need to pay 40% more for the same living space, since you don't really pay for the moving space. Great way for car companies to force externalities onto everyone else. Don't like cars? "Oh well, you're paying for the road and parking anyway. You can't beat the problem, so you may as well join it."
  - big_chungus 7y ago
    If induced demand is a problem for cars, might it not be a problem for cities? A higher potential density will lead to a higher density.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
      People appear not be a space filling curve anymore. It looked that way prior to the Industrial Revolution and the advent of Birth Control. But it doesn't look like people will infinitely fill all space available to them anymore. Perhaps it's because we're running out of space (artificially, by not building) in places where there's till opportunity. But I'm not sure we have convincing evidence of that. We do have evidence that people aren't wildly reproducing in almost every advanced economy, though.

vorpalhex 7y ago

Even in Japan, which has wonderful public transportation and was actually a joy to navigate, there are cars everywhere and frequently there are times when you need a car or your ability to get to places outside of the cities becomes expensive and takes a long time if it's possible at all.

benrbray 7y ago
Living in/around Tokyo, I had the exact opposite experience. Cars, trains, pedestrians, and bicyclists are in near-perfect balance. For the most part, people live within walking or biking distance of a train station that takes them to work. Around each station is a cluster of shops and restaurants. Commercial traffic is well-separated from places where people live, meaning that on neighborhood streets there are virtually no cars. And the result? Children playing. Kindergartners walking themselves to school. Birds chirping. Green spaces. Peace and quiet. All in the middle of one of the world's largest cities. Outside of Tokyo, the balance is slightly more in favor of cars, but the country's extensive train system means you don't need to own a car to get yourself there. It's easy enough to rent a car locally for a few days when you really need one. Cheaper too compared to the cost of purchasing a car and paying for insurance, parking, maintenance, etc..
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  Agreed. Additionally: All of my co-workers had a car, but they only used them a few times a month except for the couple of coworkers who had hobbies that took them out into rural areas. And there were buses everywhere. You could take transit from the middle of Tokyo to that onsen in the middle of nowhere. It wouldn't be convenient or fast, but it could be done and we did it all the time. You just had to be careful with your scheduling and have something to read on the bus or someone to chat with. Nobody used their cars to get groceries. The 7-11 on the corner is crazily well-stocked with reasonable prices, and the grocery store is by the train station you walk to and from every day.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    I absolutely miss the 7-11s (and other convenience stores) from Japan. I was shocked at how well stocked they were and how high the food quality was.

telchar 7y ago

Parking lots at the border is, in my opinion, much better than parking garages in the center. At least that way the city streets won't be clogged by people coming from out of town. After they get to the city they don't need the cars, so leave them at the edge.

sdenton4 7y ago
And there's (3 times the change in radius) more space to put the parking lots at the edge... That seems fine!
- dashundchen 7y ago
  With lower costs to acquire and build in these areas to begin with, freeing up space to build and densify the core (lowering real estate costs there).

electricviolet 7y ago

Honestly I'd be fine with a model where city centers are primarily pedestrian and there are big parking garages on the borders of those areas. Less parking space would be needed overall since each residence and business wouldn't need it's own set of parking spaces that aren't always in use.

benrbray 7y ago

America is certainly decades (if not centuries) behind in public transportation. However, these CityLab articles are doing a great thing by highlighting our unhealthy dependence on cars and making it a part of everyday conversation. If we're ever going to change we need to start by agreeing there is a problem and discussing realistic solutions. I don't quite understand your point about the "technological and class divide" widen[ing]. Good public transportation (as in places like Japan) drastically reduces the cost of moving around the city/country. In the United States, for most people, owning a car (an expensive up-front cost with expensive monthly payments) is a prerequisite to finding and keeping a job. Public transportation adds to our social safety net.

FussyZeus 7y ago
> America is certainly decades (if not centuries) behind in public transportation. However, these CityLab articles are doing a great thing by highlighting our unhealthy dependence on cars and making it a part of everyday conversation. If we're ever going to change we need to start by agreeing there is a problem and discussing realistic solutions. Then let's discuss some realistic solutions: Outside of densely populated metros, public transportation is a wash. In my area, small-ish city, we have pretty solid mass transit options but it's still a massive pain in the ass because you end up scheduling your entire day around the bus schedule. And if the bus isn't running when you might need to run an errand out? Oh fuckin well. People parade around mass transit like it's the end all be all of great things we can do, and being a liberal around most things, I wish that was true. But even the stories about Japan's awesome mass transit make me cringe; stuck in a train for 45 minutes each way? Pass. The hardest conceivable pass. You know what my commute is? I get in my car and drive from my suburb to a business park. It takes 10 bloody minutes. Even driving my pickup truck, I use roughly 30 gallons of fuel every three weeks. When I want to run errands, or pop out for lunch, or whatever, I can walk outside and use my vehicle. It's there all the time, 24 hours a day. No app required. No booking required. Certainly no waiting on someone to drive over and get me. There is simply no mass transit option that can equate this, end of. I'm not saying there aren't improvements to be made and I'm certainly not saying that all mass transit is bad; but to put forward mass transit as a realistic option to get rid of cars, you look like a complete fool to anyone who doesn't live in a city. Pie in the sky fucking nonsense.

skocznymroczny 7y ago

Even having public transport doesn't mean the car is useless. Public transport fails if you have a lot of groceries to deliver, or some big products. Also public transport often takes much longer than a car, because it's stopping at every little stop, while a car can go directly, or even take a shortcut in some cases.

paulcole 7y ago
If you have big products or groceries to deliver or otherwise truly believe that public transportation can't meet your unique needs, you should be STRONGLY in favor of additional public transportation to reduce traffic.
katbyte 7y ago
Car share works pretty well there. Let insurance on my car lapse months ago and I’m getting buy fine without it
tomtheelder 7y ago
> Public transport fails if you have a lot of groceries to deliver, or some big products. That's commercial traffic, car-free policies are usually designed with support for commercial vehicles. It's really about eliminating private automobile traffic in city centers. If you mean going to the store to buy large items, delivery is probably the solution there. Deliveries like that can be grouped into a smaller number of larger vehicles, or done at off hours, or only on certain roads, or all sorts of different things. Car-free isn't the greatest moniker in the world. It really means eliminating private automobile traffic, not eliminating vehicles altogether. > Also public transport often takes much longer than a car, because it's stopping at every little stop, while a car can go directly, or even take a shortcut in some cases. This isn't typically true in dense urban areas with high quality transit networks. Those are the areas that are suitable for car-free. Certainly most places would suffer greatly from the elimination of cars, but those areas aren't the target.
krschultz 7y ago
Does it? I cook almost every night and managed to survive without a car for 6 years in Manhattan. Yes, you go to the grocery store more often because you can only take home what you can carry. But the grocery store was a block from my apartment, it took less time to do a round trip there on foot than anywhere I've lived in the suburbs with a car.

ogre_codes 7y ago

> the technological and class divide will only widen. Car friendly infrastructure widens the technological and class divide. They create a base state where you are required to own and maintain an expensive piece of equipment in order to be an equal member of society. You are required to have parking for those cars, both at home and at your work. Forcing people to pay thousands of dollars per year to participate in society is highly repressive.

allovernow 7y ago
>Car friendly infrastructure widens the technological and class divide. They create a base state where you are required to own and maintain an expensive piece of equipment in order to be an equal member of society. Great, so if we can't all have something, none of us should have it! Forget the fact that the vast majority of families own and benefit from personal transportation, the important thing is that we're all equal, even if the equal case is on average worse for everyone, right? >Forcing people to pay thousands of dollars per year to participate in society is highly repressive Is it also repressive to "force" people to hold down jobs to participate in society? To "force" people to commute to work? What about the fact that some people have the luxury of working from home? Should we make that illegal as well? I do not understand how people can be so focused on equality as to totally ignore the average, greater good. The nature of modern civilization is such that some degree of inequality is inevitable if one optimizes for median welfare.
- tomtheelder 7y ago
  > Great, so if we can't all have something, none of us should have it! Forget the fact that the vast majority of families own and benefit from personal transportation, the important thing is that we're all equal, even if the equal case is on average worse for everyone, right? This is entirely the opposite of what the car-free movement is trying to accomplish. Car-free is strictly concerned dense urban areas, where private automobiles pretty strictly work against the common good. They are noisy, dangerous, polluting, and fail to create efficient transportation networks. In such places, there is very good reason to believe that car-free would improve quality of life and median welfare for residents. Obviously car-free is not a realistic option in suburban, semi-urban, and rural areas. No one who is advocating car-free is suggesting we do it there. Any increase in equality that comes along with it (honestly I'm skeptical it would make much of a difference) would be purely incidental.

_jal 7y ago

One popular attack on public transportation is to tie it to class and race issues, in order to prime people to think in zero-sum, tribal terms. Another is to place the burden of solving every transportation problem upon those who would dare propose any modification to the status quo. Once you see it, it stops working so well. (More depressingly, you see this cynical strategy repeated elsewhere and repeated by people who don't actually realize what's going on.)

amwelles 7y ago

“Ban cars” is shorthand for a much bigger societal problem. It’s not an attack on a person or what they need to do to survive. These articles are about us as a whole, not the individual. This toot explains it well: https://mspsocial.net/@t54r4n1/100699058171393417 https://mspsocial.net/@t54r4n1/100699058171393417

herbstein 7y ago

Dane here. Most cities of 15k or more has what is essentially a couple of streets worth of strip mall with no cars allowed (except for deliveries). This works really well as long as there's ample parking around - which there usually is here.

notatoad 7y ago

> just create more parking lots at the border of such areas afaik, most proponents of car-free streets or dense urban development regard parking lots at the border of the dense area ("intercept parking") as a good idea to be encouraged. The point is not to wage war on cars, it's to make downtowns a safe and pleasant place to be.

tharne 7y ago

This is exactly why I left the field of urban planning. Practitioners were wildly out of touch with the way the vast majority of people lived that it rendered the field irrelevant. The job was basically a continued effort in trying to coerce people into living in pre-WWII style cities, when the fact is that most people who live in the suburbs are quite happy with the arrangement, even if 24 year-old me found the idea of suburbs distasteful.