4 ms·

Quite interestingly, the social aspects of urban sprawl was completely left out when designing post WW2 cities. When people think about beautiful cities, they

by donjoe 6y ago

Quite interestingly, the social aspects of urban sprawl was completely left out when designing post WW2 cities. When people think about beautiful cities, they would mention Venice or Paris or Rome. All these cities were built for 'foot traffic' which still works perfectly fine nowadays. In those cities, the elderly and children do have an environment to move around by themselves and socialize freely. When it comes to planning cities for people, it is worth checking out Prof. Jan Gehl: https://youtu.be/9_x5Hor2MP8 https://youtu.be/9_x5Hor2MP8

LoSboccacc 6y ago
> still works perfectly fine nowadays. Rome is all but working perfectly fine, with commuter traffic locked almost daily by the tiniest fender bender happening on the highway around it Venice is likewise a mess, situation was so bas they built an highway to go around the existing highway that corrected it to the nearby areas, and the lack of easy mobility in the city center is fuelling a severe living cost inflation
- ramshorns 6y ago
  That sounds like a car problem, not a problem with cities built for foot traffic.
  - LoSboccacc 6y ago
    and how are you supposed to go to work on foot? neither the job nor the house market is flexible enough, especially now that airbnb 'disrupted' traditional renting in touristic cities.
    - donjoe 6y ago
      Yah, bcs all new structures built post WW2 were built for cars and not for people people move at 3mph, not 60mph. Rome could have invested in public transport instead of building highways. No one would be stuck in traffic. Instead, they used public space for cars. The old parts of the city though which are walkable work perfectly fine. Venice does have great ferry service and traffic in the city is almost non-existent due to lack of cars.
      - LoSboccacc 6y ago
        so what's the alternative? build houses right on top of factories? pact stile mass transit with strict worker<>factory allocation? there's zero chance mass transit can accommodate people's needs, even if you somehow solve the shopping issue with local markets and fixed item prices, the job<>house graph will always look like a fractal set of overlapping stars. cars is one of the most important social equalizer of this and last century. it allows people from basically all social status to move themselves, their family and their belongings at any time in full autonomy, enabling them to find houses and jobs in the most economical and convenient places. private cars win over public transit because it's a better product. the only way for public transit to compete is to mandate laws to make cars comparatively a worse product, which is fundamentally anticompetitive - once public transit become monopolistic, once the company owns a tract, they can abuse their position deciding pricing and timetables. even in traffic, private cars offer a better experience: people are in their own space, under a roof from start to finish, with their preferred temperature and away from both obnoxious or influenced people. forcing mass transit trough legislation will surely have some short term benefits, but also: - more class divide between the richs, that will always be able to afford a car, and the poors who won't - massive gentrification of well connected areas, while the poors get pushed out to where service is of less quality - dependency of the poors to expensive third party services on any occasion they need to move themselves or their goods across a non serviced destination. rentals is not an option: rentals need a credit card, and guess who don't own one? - dependency on public transit times. have an unusual work shift or need to visit parents? get prepared to wait in the open under the cold or rain. need to get your child out of school in a down hour because he's suddenly ill? too bad, transit only gives peak service at peak hours. of course there's situation where mass transit gets convenient, like large cities where a significant percentage of the population shares the same source/destination points, at which point people will use it naturally on their own. opposing private transit is going to destroy an important achievement of modern society, the car has been a great economical equalizer and still is. market, after all, need customer flexibility not to be captured. pollution is something to be solved with more efficient cars and better technology all around. it'd be like discovering tomorrow that soap pollutes: some will want to force everyone to smell, some will create a better soap.
- cyberdrunk 6y ago
  Many/most flats in those cute old European cities have windows directly over a street. You can have cars making noise and pollution literally within 5-10 meters of your window. This is bad for physical and mental health. Soviet-style housing planning is a good middle ground. There, most flats can enjoy silence (you only hear cars that belong to your neighbors and no passer-bys) and still the districts are planned for walkability and public transport.
  - donjoe 6y ago
    This is not a problem of houses built that way since the were built pre-car times to allow max light into apartments. The streets back then were also a social aspect of life where we met people and could interact with each other. Then came a time we handed over streets to parking spots and some folks driving at 50km/h and faster. Social aspects have been gone. We should not build our apts for cars and align to them. If cars are loud and noisy and destroy our social life, we should focus on solving the car problem and not trying to build around cars.
    - cyberdrunk 6y ago
      > This is not a problem of houses built that way since the were built pre-car times to allow max light into apartments Not the case in most of Europe IMO. The apartment buildings were built along very narrow streets to either fit inside perimeter of city walls or (later) because real estate was expensive. Due to narrowness of roads, these apartments are not very well lit and are depressing (you can't see the sky through the window, only the building across the street). Here in Poland, it basically wasn't until central urban planning by communists until we had cities which are livable, car or no car. This is reflected in real estate pries, where apartments in the old, historic buildings can be cheaper (despite often being right in the city centers) than in the (much denser) soviet conglomerates. > Then came a time we handed over streets to parking spots and some folks driving at 50km/h and faster. Social aspects have been gone. Even cars at 30 km/h make plenty of noise (when accelerating to that speed). I'm not sure what you mean by "social aspects" of streets?
      - 6y ago

by donjoe 6y ago

LoSboccacc 6y ago

> still works perfectly fine nowadays. Rome is all but working perfectly fine, with commuter traffic locked almost daily by the tiniest fender bender happening on the highway around it Venice is likewise a mess, situation was so bas they built an highway to go around the existing highway that corrected it to the nearby areas, and the lack of easy mobility in the city center is fuelling a severe living cost inflation

ramshorns 6y ago
That sounds like a car problem, not a problem with cities built for foot traffic.
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  and how are you supposed to go to work on foot? neither the job nor the house market is flexible enough, especially now that airbnb 'disrupted' traditional renting in touristic cities.
  - donjoe 6y ago
    Yah, bcs all new structures built post WW2 were built for cars and not for people people move at 3mph, not 60mph. Rome could have invested in public transport instead of building highways. No one would be stuck in traffic. Instead, they used public space for cars. The old parts of the city though which are walkable work perfectly fine. Venice does have great ferry service and traffic in the city is almost non-existent due to lack of cars.
    - LoSboccacc 6y ago
      so what's the alternative? build houses right on top of factories? pact stile mass transit with strict worker<>factory allocation? there's zero chance mass transit can accommodate people's needs, even if you somehow solve the shopping issue with local markets and fixed item prices, the job<>house graph will always look like a fractal set of overlapping stars. cars is one of the most important social equalizer of this and last century. it allows people from basically all social status to move themselves, their family and their belongings at any time in full autonomy, enabling them to find houses and jobs in the most economical and convenient places. private cars win over public transit because it's a better product. the only way for public transit to compete is to mandate laws to make cars comparatively a worse product, which is fundamentally anticompetitive - once public transit become monopolistic, once the company owns a tract, they can abuse their position deciding pricing and timetables. even in traffic, private cars offer a better experience: people are in their own space, under a roof from start to finish, with their preferred temperature and away from both obnoxious or influenced people. forcing mass transit trough legislation will surely have some short term benefits, but also: - more class divide between the richs, that will always be able to afford a car, and the poors who won't - massive gentrification of well connected areas, while the poors get pushed out to where service is of less quality - dependency of the poors to expensive third party services on any occasion they need to move themselves or their goods across a non serviced destination. rentals is not an option: rentals need a credit card, and guess who don't own one? - dependency on public transit times. have an unusual work shift or need to visit parents? get prepared to wait in the open under the cold or rain. need to get your child out of school in a down hour because he's suddenly ill? too bad, transit only gives peak service at peak hours. of course there's situation where mass transit gets convenient, like large cities where a significant percentage of the population shares the same source/destination points, at which point people will use it naturally on their own. opposing private transit is going to destroy an important achievement of modern society, the car has been a great economical equalizer and still is. market, after all, need customer flexibility not to be captured. pollution is something to be solved with more efficient cars and better technology all around. it'd be like discovering tomorrow that soap pollutes: some will want to force everyone to smell, some will create a better soap.
cyberdrunk 6y ago
Many/most flats in those cute old European cities have windows directly over a street. You can have cars making noise and pollution literally within 5-10 meters of your window. This is bad for physical and mental health. Soviet-style housing planning is a good middle ground. There, most flats can enjoy silence (you only hear cars that belong to your neighbors and no passer-bys) and still the districts are planned for walkability and public transport.
- donjoe 6y ago
  This is not a problem of houses built that way since the were built pre-car times to allow max light into apartments. The streets back then were also a social aspect of life where we met people and could interact with each other. Then came a time we handed over streets to parking spots and some folks driving at 50km/h and faster. Social aspects have been gone. We should not build our apts for cars and align to them. If cars are loud and noisy and destroy our social life, we should focus on solving the car problem and not trying to build around cars.
  - cyberdrunk 6y ago
    > This is not a problem of houses built that way since the were built pre-car times to allow max light into apartments Not the case in most of Europe IMO. The apartment buildings were built along very narrow streets to either fit inside perimeter of city walls or (later) because real estate was expensive. Due to narrowness of roads, these apartments are not very well lit and are depressing (you can't see the sky through the window, only the building across the street). Here in Poland, it basically wasn't until central urban planning by communists until we had cities which are livable, car or no car. This is reflected in real estate pries, where apartments in the old, historic buildings can be cheaper (despite often being right in the city centers) than in the (much denser) soviet conglomerates. > Then came a time we handed over streets to parking spots and some folks driving at 50km/h and faster. Social aspects have been gone. Even cars at 30 km/h make plenty of noise (when accelerating to that speed). I'm not sure what you mean by "social aspects" of streets?
    - 6y ago