6 ms·

Amsterdam works because it's a very flat and very dense city. I bet there are potential candidates in the States, but not as common as you would find in Europe.

Amsterdam works because it's a very flat and very dense city. I bet there are potential candidates in the States, but not as common as you would find in Europe. About the density, everything is just closer together over here. Public transportation is well-built and trains work great for anything further than that. Cars are mandatory by design in the US.

OrangeMango 7y ago
Amsterdam works because the residents and the government want it to work. You can find any number of cities with similar attributes such as flatness, density, etc. that do not have the same desires and thus do not have the same success.
CalRobert 7y ago
"everything is just closer together over here." It's not "just" close together like it happened. The US has made it illegal to build human-scale dense neighbourhoods for 50% years. Parking minimums, density restrictions, street width minimums, LOS (level of service) planning, etc. all combined to make the US an unwalkable, uncyclable, unenjoyable place to be a human. As a reward the US gets about 35,000 people a year killed by drivers, and many many more indirectly through lung disease, cancer, obesity, etc. as well as parents terrified to let their kids ride a bike. Lots of free parking though. This is a fantastic series illustrating the effect of urban design policy in the US https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvUByM-fZk&t=346s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvUByM-fZk&t=346s
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >It's not "just" close together like it happened Development gets done in whatever way makes best use of the available resources at the time. The overwhelming majority of the cities and towns in Europe were built out before transportation over land was slow and expensive so you had dense town centers surrounded by farmland and dense cities surrounded by even more farmland so to avoid spending precious resources on transportation. The practical limits on transportation constrained development. By comparison huge portions of the US were built out after the advent the automobile (often tearing down and building over places that were previously more densely developed) and being geographically large there was always more land to build into so you got sprawling development because overcoming distance was fast and cheap. The way we have more or less not built any infrastructure since the 20th century despite increasing population (and increasing clustering of the population in urban areas) is starting to catch up and incentive density but it will take time and policy sticks/carrots if you want it to happen faster than it organically would. So yes, Europe to a large extent did win the lottery in that regard though they didn't know it at the time.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    > Development gets done in whatever way makes best use of the available resources at the time. Can you explain what you mean? I’m having trouble squaring that with my model of developers, which is that they try to make money, not make efficient use of resources. Are you talking about Europe specifically? I live in America.
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      Efficient use of resources is one of the main ways to make money!
      - antepodius 7y ago
        On a micro-scale, yes, but if there's an incentive to externalise costs that that's what'll happen, even that course of action in aggregate reduces everyone's profits. Tragedy of the commons.
        BurningFrog 7y ago
        True, but we have a lot of experience with designing legal frameworks and property rights that align individual and aggregate incentives.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - fooblitzky 7y ago
    It's not all historical accident. The US also bought into a vision of an auto-centric future that featured multi-lane highways right through downtown neighborhoods. This vision was pushed by specific people, notably Robert Moses[1], who advocated strongly for highway systems over public transport, and who succeeded in having a number of dense urban neighborhoods demolished to make way for highways. There was also the General Motors street car conspiracy[2], which saw car companies buy up privatized public transit only to run it into the ground. The fight against this future being imposed is also fascinating reading, particularly the work of Jane Jacobs[3]. She correctly saw past the hyperbole to the unfortunate consequences, fought against the vision but lost. The reason not much infrastructure is being built these days is simply that cities are running out of money and credit. Every road built comes with a price tag for building it, and an ongoing price tag for maintaining it. The building price was so often done on credit (bonds), but the maintenance price is usually not considered. Given that roads bring in basically zero income for a city, every road built comes with an obligation for the city but no way to pay for it. In the past credit was issued on the assumption that future growth would somehow provide some payback, but after 50 years cities have hit the growth limits and still not seen any payback. Strong Towns[4] is an excellent book on the subject. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp... [3] https://shelterforce.org/2016/05/10/jane-jacobs-defender-of-cities-and-their-people/ https://shelterforce.org/2016/05/10/jane-jacobs-defender-of-... [4] https://www.strongtowns.org/book https://www.strongtowns.org/book
dublinben 7y ago
>Cars are mandatory by design in the US. This is the heart of what needs to change in the US. World-class bike cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen were just as car-centric in the 20th century as any American city. It took decades of deliberate, systematic change to make what they are today. This is just as possible for American cities as it was for their foreign peers. >everything is just closer together over here To this point, human-scale cities with fewer cars directly enable closer and denser habitats. Cars are a direct impediment to more livable cities. If you remove the cars, all of a sudden you have more space for people.
- sailfast 7y ago
  If you could afford a large house with a yard, a few minutes drive from a walkable downtown, would you want to be told that instead of building that home you have to live in a dense downtown because you cannot build your house with a yard to preserve farmland and promote 'walkability'? Would you want someone to tell you that your choices are limited because your city prefers "human scale" instead of whatever you prefer on the market that is totally doable? While I acknowledge that in the United States the culture is extremely car-centric and that must change, some of that is history / culture / lobbying but a lot of it is because not all of us have the good fortune to be Dutch. As a result, housing choices and preferences are much different. Making a more bike-centric culture starts with a number of things, not just bike lanes and denser cities. The city as a whole has to want it, first, and then continue to prove out the concept that bike-friendly can still be business friendly. (See: the old saw that "if my people can't park they won't shop here") Note: I'm in favor of denser cities, but I also acknowledge that it removes choice and it's not just my opinion that matters. Also, I can't afford a house in Amsterdam.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    Thing is, we have more rules forcing people to be low density than we do forcing people to be high density (in the US). So we have, indeed, removed choice - from those wishing to be in a compact area. To give just one example of these many, many, many rules, I just spoke with an architect about changes to my house and one of the rules is I need at least 2.4 metres of basically dead space where I meet the road because it's assumed I'll be sitting there in a car looking left and right before exiting. Saying "nah I ride a bike so I'm going to put a hedge up there" isn't an option. "house with a yard, a few minutes drive from a walkable downtown," Problem is that every time you drive to that downtown you make it a bit less walkable by virtue of bringing your car. In effect, everyone there is paying a little bit of their quality of life for your parking. Sometimes, this makes sense (having a place for ambulances is good), but sometimes you end up with a tragedy of the commons.
cambalache 7y ago
American exceptionalism is a blessing and a curse. It gave the whole world the Internet, reaching the moon and the microwaves oven, among many other things, but at the same time, it is used as facile excuse to avoid any kind of change: -Cheap high-speed Internet-> It won't work in America because... -Universal health care -> It won't work in America because... - Mandatory vacations -> It won't work in America because...
- majormajor 7y ago
  How did American exceptionalism, specifically, give the world anything? Would people not have invented things if they didn't believe that America was magically special?
  - cambalache 7y ago
    Internet and reaching the moon would have not happened for many many many years if not for the US (this from a guy who is pretty stingy with his compliments to America). This only was possible due to the unique combination the US had of high income, high investment on science/technology, large population and a generally optimistic attitude towards technology. No other country in post WW2 had all those qualities (the closest being Japan). So yeah, by all that account we have to thank America exceptionalism for that.
    - majormajor 7y ago
      America and "American exceptionalism" as a mindset/ideology are very different things, though. The form of "American exceptionalism" that seems to be most common today is one of "we are uniquely important and many rules don't apply to us in the same way they would others, because of [various usually underlying differences like "freedom"/"democracy"/religious dominion/destiny]." The difference between "we're going to reach the moon because we're special" and "let's spin up this massive program to do it in response to discovering that another nation might be dangerously ahead of us."
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    So, I'm not exactly a booster for the US, but having lived outside it for a while I really miss the can-do attitude and (even misplaced) optimism. I'm really sorry for the cliche but after you've been in a place where tall-poppy syndrome is _real_, trying to have some business success is called "notions", and making a mistake like a failed startup is considered some sort of personality disorder, it is, in fact, something I really miss about the US.
zip1234 7y ago
Amsterdam is far windier than people realize though. Wind makes for more difficult cycling.
the_gastropod 7y ago
> Amsterdam works because it's a very flat It's also super-windy. Places that have massively adopted cycling rarely have the best environmental conditions for it. Minneapolis, for example, has some of the highest bike commuting numbers in the U.S., despite it's high snowfall and frigid temperatures. We're pretty good at making excuses, and "grass is greener"-ing places that make it work. > ... very dense city Chicken/egg scenario here. U.S. cities are sprawling because cars both require it and make it possible.
- grecy 7y ago
  Exactly. Whitehorse in the Yukon has the highest number of bike commuters per capita in Canada despite the -40 winters. PS it's like a different planet riding you bike around in those temperatures!
- zip1234 7y ago
  What is interesting to me is that cycling technology really didn't come about until cars came. The first reasonably safe bikes were from the 1880s-90s and the car came in 1886. I wonder what would have happened had the cycling tech of today been around for awhile before cars?

OrangeMango 7y ago

Amsterdam works because the residents and the government want it to work. You can find any number of cities with similar attributes such as flatness, density, etc. that do not have the same desires and thus do not have the same success.

CalRobert 7y ago

"everything is just closer together over here." It's not "just" close together like it happened. The US has made it illegal to build human-scale dense neighbourhoods for 50% years. Parking minimums, density restrictions, street width minimums, LOS (level of service) planning, etc. all combined to make the US an unwalkable, uncyclable, unenjoyable place to be a human. As a reward the US gets about 35,000 people a year killed by drivers, and many many more indirectly through lung disease, cancer, obesity, etc. as well as parents terrified to let their kids ride a bike. Lots of free parking though. This is a fantastic series illustrating the effect of urban design policy in the US https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvUByM-fZk&t=346s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvUByM-fZk&t=346s

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>It's not "just" close together like it happened Development gets done in whatever way makes best use of the available resources at the time. The overwhelming majority of the cities and towns in Europe were built out before transportation over land was slow and expensive so you had dense town centers surrounded by farmland and dense cities surrounded by even more farmland so to avoid spending precious resources on transportation. The practical limits on transportation constrained development. By comparison huge portions of the US were built out after the advent the automobile (often tearing down and building over places that were previously more densely developed) and being geographically large there was always more land to build into so you got sprawling development because overcoming distance was fast and cheap. The way we have more or less not built any infrastructure since the 20th century despite increasing population (and increasing clustering of the population in urban areas) is starting to catch up and incentive density but it will take time and policy sticks/carrots if you want it to happen faster than it organically would. So yes, Europe to a large extent did win the lottery in that regard though they didn't know it at the time.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  > Development gets done in whatever way makes best use of the available resources at the time. Can you explain what you mean? I’m having trouble squaring that with my model of developers, which is that they try to make money, not make efficient use of resources. Are you talking about Europe specifically? I live in America.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    Efficient use of resources is one of the main ways to make money!
    - antepodius 7y ago
      On a micro-scale, yes, but if there's an incentive to externalise costs that that's what'll happen, even that course of action in aggregate reduces everyone's profits. Tragedy of the commons.
      - BurningFrog 7y ago
        True, but we have a lot of experience with designing legal frameworks and property rights that align individual and aggregate incentives.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- fooblitzky 7y ago
  It's not all historical accident. The US also bought into a vision of an auto-centric future that featured multi-lane highways right through downtown neighborhoods. This vision was pushed by specific people, notably Robert Moses[1], who advocated strongly for highway systems over public transport, and who succeeded in having a number of dense urban neighborhoods demolished to make way for highways. There was also the General Motors street car conspiracy[2], which saw car companies buy up privatized public transit only to run it into the ground. The fight against this future being imposed is also fascinating reading, particularly the work of Jane Jacobs[3]. She correctly saw past the hyperbole to the unfortunate consequences, fought against the vision but lost. The reason not much infrastructure is being built these days is simply that cities are running out of money and credit. Every road built comes with a price tag for building it, and an ongoing price tag for maintaining it. The building price was so often done on credit (bonds), but the maintenance price is usually not considered. Given that roads bring in basically zero income for a city, every road built comes with an obligation for the city but no way to pay for it. In the past credit was issued on the assumption that future growth would somehow provide some payback, but after 50 years cities have hit the growth limits and still not seen any payback. Strong Towns[4] is an excellent book on the subject. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp... [3] https://shelterforce.org/2016/05/10/jane-jacobs-defender-of-cities-and-their-people/ https://shelterforce.org/2016/05/10/jane-jacobs-defender-of-... [4] https://www.strongtowns.org/book https://www.strongtowns.org/book

dublinben 7y ago

>Cars are mandatory by design in the US. This is the heart of what needs to change in the US. World-class bike cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen were just as car-centric in the 20th century as any American city. It took decades of deliberate, systematic change to make what they are today. This is just as possible for American cities as it was for their foreign peers. >everything is just closer together over here To this point, human-scale cities with fewer cars directly enable closer and denser habitats. Cars are a direct impediment to more livable cities. If you remove the cars, all of a sudden you have more space for people.

sailfast 7y ago
If you could afford a large house with a yard, a few minutes drive from a walkable downtown, would you want to be told that instead of building that home you have to live in a dense downtown because you cannot build your house with a yard to preserve farmland and promote 'walkability'? Would you want someone to tell you that your choices are limited because your city prefers "human scale" instead of whatever you prefer on the market that is totally doable? While I acknowledge that in the United States the culture is extremely car-centric and that must change, some of that is history / culture / lobbying but a lot of it is because not all of us have the good fortune to be Dutch. As a result, housing choices and preferences are much different. Making a more bike-centric culture starts with a number of things, not just bike lanes and denser cities. The city as a whole has to want it, first, and then continue to prove out the concept that bike-friendly can still be business friendly. (See: the old saw that "if my people can't park they won't shop here") Note: I'm in favor of denser cities, but I also acknowledge that it removes choice and it's not just my opinion that matters. Also, I can't afford a house in Amsterdam.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  Thing is, we have more rules forcing people to be low density than we do forcing people to be high density (in the US). So we have, indeed, removed choice - from those wishing to be in a compact area. To give just one example of these many, many, many rules, I just spoke with an architect about changes to my house and one of the rules is I need at least 2.4 metres of basically dead space where I meet the road because it's assumed I'll be sitting there in a car looking left and right before exiting. Saying "nah I ride a bike so I'm going to put a hedge up there" isn't an option. "house with a yard, a few minutes drive from a walkable downtown," Problem is that every time you drive to that downtown you make it a bit less walkable by virtue of bringing your car. In effect, everyone there is paying a little bit of their quality of life for your parking. Sometimes, this makes sense (having a place for ambulances is good), but sometimes you end up with a tragedy of the commons.

cambalache 7y ago

American exceptionalism is a blessing and a curse. It gave the whole world the Internet, reaching the moon and the microwaves oven, among many other things, but at the same time, it is used as facile excuse to avoid any kind of change: -Cheap high-speed Internet-> It won't work in America because... -Universal health care -> It won't work in America because... - Mandatory vacations -> It won't work in America because...

majormajor 7y ago
How did American exceptionalism, specifically, give the world anything? Would people not have invented things if they didn't believe that America was magically special?
- cambalache 7y ago
  Internet and reaching the moon would have not happened for many many many years if not for the US (this from a guy who is pretty stingy with his compliments to America). This only was possible due to the unique combination the US had of high income, high investment on science/technology, large population and a generally optimistic attitude towards technology. No other country in post WW2 had all those qualities (the closest being Japan). So yeah, by all that account we have to thank America exceptionalism for that.
  - majormajor 7y ago
    America and "American exceptionalism" as a mindset/ideology are very different things, though. The form of "American exceptionalism" that seems to be most common today is one of "we are uniquely important and many rules don't apply to us in the same way they would others, because of [various usually underlying differences like "freedom"/"democracy"/religious dominion/destiny]." The difference between "we're going to reach the moon because we're special" and "let's spin up this massive program to do it in response to discovering that another nation might be dangerously ahead of us."
- CalRobert 7y ago
  So, I'm not exactly a booster for the US, but having lived outside it for a while I really miss the can-do attitude and (even misplaced) optimism. I'm really sorry for the cliche but after you've been in a place where tall-poppy syndrome is _real_, trying to have some business success is called "notions", and making a mistake like a failed startup is considered some sort of personality disorder, it is, in fact, something I really miss about the US.

zip1234 7y ago

Amsterdam is far windier than people realize though. Wind makes for more difficult cycling.

the_gastropod 7y ago

> Amsterdam works because it's a very flat It's also super-windy. Places that have massively adopted cycling rarely have the best environmental conditions for it. Minneapolis, for example, has some of the highest bike commuting numbers in the U.S., despite it's high snowfall and frigid temperatures. We're pretty good at making excuses, and "grass is greener"-ing places that make it work. > ... very dense city Chicken/egg scenario here. U.S. cities are sprawling because cars both require it and make it possible.

grecy 7y ago
Exactly. Whitehorse in the Yukon has the highest number of bike commuters per capita in Canada despite the -40 winters. PS it's like a different planet riding you bike around in those temperatures!
zip1234 7y ago
What is interesting to me is that cycling technology really didn't come about until cars came. The first reasonably safe bikes were from the 1880s-90s and the car came in 1886. I wonder what would have happened had the cycling tech of today been around for awhile before cars?