4 ms·

That’s obnoxious. Cars and vehicles are necessary for many people and many purposes and cities should not use this crisis as a Trojan horse to force changes has

That’s obnoxious. Cars and vehicles are necessary for many people and many purposes and cities should not use this crisis as a Trojan horse to force changes hastily. Deploying furniture to make it permanent sounds like the doing of a renegade cycle club and not everyday people, however.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
That street runs both ways. Car culture is already amazingly pushy and obnoxious in the degree to which it makes life difficult for pedestrians, cyclists, etc.
- throwawaysea 7y ago
  I find this type of anti car narrative to be disingenuous, because it doesn’t pass a sanity check of the common sense reality around us. Pedestrians are not impeded in getting around as long as sidewalks or enough roadside space is available. And cyclists are an exceedingly small minority in most places compared to car drivers. That’s because cars are the fastest and most convenient way to travel from point a to point b. They are faster than bicycles, lack the wait time of public transit, are protected from the elements, and let you move goods and family around. Almost nobody who has a family would want to lug their children around in bicycles - spare me the cherry picked example of Amsterdam. As for which culture is pushy and obnoxious: the roads were funded by taxpayers’ money for the purpose of vehicular traffic. Commandeering it for a thin minority with the luxury of time to burn is pushy and obnoxious. Not the other way.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    First, there is a lot of development that falls under what I call "Fuck you pedestrian" development. It's not uncommon for intersections in big cities to require a pedestrian to cross all three ways to get to the other side or walk a block to cross at all. I've been to strip malls where fencing forced pedestrians to walk the long way around, following the same route and going through the same entrance as a car, instead of providing a small gap in the fence to save them many steps. Second, streets that prioritize cars are generally wider and push development farther apart. This makes errands on foot longer than they have to be. Third, I've lived without a car for more than a decade. Cars are faster on the open road over long distances. They aren't necessarily faster for running errands in town, assuming you can shop reasonably close to home. I have many times experienced this. I leave on foot and someone else goes in their car and we get there about the same time because they have to stop at traffic lights, etc. Fourth, Amsterdam isn't "cherry picked." It was intentionally designed to be bicycle friendly by people who chose to make that a priority, which is why it is. The US has chosen other design priorities. Unsurprisingly, we've gotten different results. I'm not being disingenuous. I've lived without a car for more than a decade and I wanted to be an urban planner at one time, so I've read plenty of stuff pertinent to the subject. People who love cars in the US saying that car culture is the norm and is proper and the right thing and other people need to quit their whining is not unlike white Americans acting like people of color are just whiny crybabies and racism isn't real. The fact that you like cars and car culture works for you doesn't on the face of it prove that other people with other lifestyles don't find it amazingly inconvenient and obnoxiously so. It's just usually not worth saying because most people don't want to hear it and won't really listen. They will just double down on their existing prejudice, which is, itself, an obnoxious thing to deal with.
    - stevesimmons 7y ago
      Amsterdam promoted cars and was very bike-unfriendly from the 1920s to the 1970s. It took a lot of concerted campaigning to get Dutch politicians and urban designers to start prioritising bikes again. Here is a newspaper story about the changes: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...
      - DoreenMichele 7y ago
        Yes, I'm aware -- though many people are not. So thanks for adding that info to the conversation.
pietrovismara 7y ago
Nah. People have all the right to refuse car smog and the dangers and troubles derived by having car traffic. Our generation is the generation that will have to stop using cars, whatever the sacrifice it takes is. Remote working, better public transportations financed by taxes on private transportation, there are plenty of ways to do this without disrupting anyone's life, but since governments aren't stepping up fast enough, citizens have to take the initiative.
- throwawaysea 7y ago
  You’re pretending as if cars don’t give you a lot of benefits but they do. Outside of ultra dense gridlocked cities like NYC, cars free you to get a lot more done on any given day than you could otherwise. They give you time, which you can’t acquire easily.
yrro 7y ago
In my opinion those who thoughtlessly leave their unused motor vehicles blocking up the side of the road (or worse, the pavenemnts!) are the renegades.
anigbrowl 7y ago
People who live there or are servicing residents (deliveries etc) still have access, it's only through traffic that's disallowed. This is unlikely to add more than a few blocks to your journey.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

That street runs both ways. Car culture is already amazingly pushy and obnoxious in the degree to which it makes life difficult for pedestrians, cyclists, etc.

throwawaysea 7y ago
I find this type of anti car narrative to be disingenuous, because it doesn’t pass a sanity check of the common sense reality around us. Pedestrians are not impeded in getting around as long as sidewalks or enough roadside space is available. And cyclists are an exceedingly small minority in most places compared to car drivers. That’s because cars are the fastest and most convenient way to travel from point a to point b. They are faster than bicycles, lack the wait time of public transit, are protected from the elements, and let you move goods and family around. Almost nobody who has a family would want to lug their children around in bicycles - spare me the cherry picked example of Amsterdam. As for which culture is pushy and obnoxious: the roads were funded by taxpayers’ money for the purpose of vehicular traffic. Commandeering it for a thin minority with the luxury of time to burn is pushy and obnoxious. Not the other way.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  First, there is a lot of development that falls under what I call "Fuck you pedestrian" development. It's not uncommon for intersections in big cities to require a pedestrian to cross all three ways to get to the other side or walk a block to cross at all. I've been to strip malls where fencing forced pedestrians to walk the long way around, following the same route and going through the same entrance as a car, instead of providing a small gap in the fence to save them many steps. Second, streets that prioritize cars are generally wider and push development farther apart. This makes errands on foot longer than they have to be. Third, I've lived without a car for more than a decade. Cars are faster on the open road over long distances. They aren't necessarily faster for running errands in town, assuming you can shop reasonably close to home. I have many times experienced this. I leave on foot and someone else goes in their car and we get there about the same time because they have to stop at traffic lights, etc. Fourth, Amsterdam isn't "cherry picked." It was intentionally designed to be bicycle friendly by people who chose to make that a priority, which is why it is. The US has chosen other design priorities. Unsurprisingly, we've gotten different results. I'm not being disingenuous. I've lived without a car for more than a decade and I wanted to be an urban planner at one time, so I've read plenty of stuff pertinent to the subject. People who love cars in the US saying that car culture is the norm and is proper and the right thing and other people need to quit their whining is not unlike white Americans acting like people of color are just whiny crybabies and racism isn't real. The fact that you like cars and car culture works for you doesn't on the face of it prove that other people with other lifestyles don't find it amazingly inconvenient and obnoxiously so. It's just usually not worth saying because most people don't want to hear it and won't really listen. They will just double down on their existing prejudice, which is, itself, an obnoxious thing to deal with.
  - stevesimmons 7y ago
    Amsterdam promoted cars and was very bike-unfriendly from the 1920s to the 1970s. It took a lot of concerted campaigning to get Dutch politicians and urban designers to start prioritising bikes again. Here is a newspaper story about the changes: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      Yes, I'm aware -- though many people are not. So thanks for adding that info to the conversation.

pietrovismara 7y ago

Nah. People have all the right to refuse car smog and the dangers and troubles derived by having car traffic. Our generation is the generation that will have to stop using cars, whatever the sacrifice it takes is. Remote working, better public transportations financed by taxes on private transportation, there are plenty of ways to do this without disrupting anyone's life, but since governments aren't stepping up fast enough, citizens have to take the initiative.

throwawaysea 7y ago
You’re pretending as if cars don’t give you a lot of benefits but they do. Outside of ultra dense gridlocked cities like NYC, cars free you to get a lot more done on any given day than you could otherwise. They give you time, which you can’t acquire easily.

yrro 7y ago

In my opinion those who thoughtlessly leave their unused motor vehicles blocking up the side of the road (or worse, the pavenemnts!) are the renegades.

anigbrowl 7y ago

People who live there or are servicing residents (deliveries etc) still have access, it's only through traffic that's disallowed. This is unlikely to add more than a few blocks to your journey.