4 ms·
Lol, have you been to the Midwest? In small and medium sized cites there downtowns are often dead, including the small city I grew up in. All of them easily acc
by dsomers 5y ago
Lol, have you been to the Midwest? In small and medium sized cites there downtowns are often dead, including the small city I grew up in. All of them easily accessible by car. Dead city centres in North America more have to do with the post war experiment of subsidizing inefficient sprawling car dependent suburbs. If you want to actually understand this read more from the advocacy group Strong Towns[0] they also have a great YouTube channel. Now compare small Midwest cities to small cities in the Netherlands like Leiden or Haarlem and you’ll see limiting traffic from downtowns has little to do with how well they do economically.
[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/ https://www.strongtowns.org/
- api 5y agoThat’s not as true as it used to be, but I don’t disagree with the wider point.
- dsomers 5y agoI agree it’s improving from the 90s, but when I go back to the Midwest from Western Europe, the difference is dramatic simply in the number of people downtown in public spaces for cites with the same population.
- api 5y agoThat’s an extreme comparison! I bet only a few US cities would approach what you see in Berlin or Paris.
- dsomers 5y agoI’m not talking about Berlin or Paris. I’m taking about small European cities I’m familiar with that have vibrant walkable downtowns. Off the top of my head, Leiden Netherlands, Haarlem Netherlands, Peacara Italy, or Zug Switzerland.
- frosted-flakes 5y agoIf you ban cars they will be even more dead.
- dsomers 5y agoNot true. Go to Leiden Netherlands and see how economically vibrant a small city can become if it incentives efficient land use and limits traffic in city centre in favour of pedestrian paths an public transit.
- j4yav 5y agoNice to see my town mentioned! I hope we remove even more of the current traffic roads in the center, it is great.
- frosted-flakes 5y agoThe Unites States is not the Netherlands. If the downtown is already dying, banning cars will finish it off.
- ben-schaaf 5y agoIt certainly isn't any more, but before the 70s the Netherlands was looking at America when it came to modern infrastructure. Lots of cars, huge roads, pedestrian hostile intersections, massive amounts of and ridiculous highways (Just look at this crazy thing: https://mobile.twitter.com/notjustbikes/status/1176840020751241216 https://mobile.twitter.com/notjustbikes/status/1176840020751...). It didn't kill the downtown in the Netherlands and they were in much the same position.
- Griffinsauce 5y agoI think you're overselling Leiden as an example of this here, isn't traffic blocked from just one main shopping street and one other (steenstraat) made somewhat hard to access? I'm not sure I would say the latter change, which was recent-ish, made a big difference versus just the general cleanup of the inner city (better train station, spruced up Beestenmarkt square etc).