12 ms·

City-dweller here. I was on the public transport bandwagon. Then summer 2020 came and I realized the buses were at limited capacity, Uber and Lyft drivers were

• throwaway123x2 5y ago
  I feel you. I was about to sell my car right as the pandemic started but now I'm glad I didn't. Uber/Lyft quickly went out of the range of using for ordinary everyday things post-pandemic.
• nostromo 5y ago
  Folks that support American urbanism have been set back decades. Smaller apartments in dense, walkable neighborhoods have been pretty miserable places to live for over a year now. The bargain was that you don’t need a house with a yard when you can have an apartment surrounded by parks, restaurants, and bars; that you don’t need a car when you have transit; that you don’t need a home office… Then all of that was taken away in a heartbeat with little regard to its effectiveness. Suddenly owning a house and a car were critically important again. It’s going to take a long time for people to come back.
  • spookthesunset 5y ago
    Yup. In a fit of hysteria and panic, we destroyed a decade of urbanization. Oh yeah, and we completely f’d over our kids. Like, shamefully so. History will harshly judge the people who pushed these public policies.
    • yakz 5y ago
      There may have been blunders with the policies, but if we're talking about history judging things harshly... I think it's far more likely that the massive disinformation campaigns, irrational and willful non-compliance with reasonable safety measures, and cowardice when faced with the need for vaccination that will get the brunt of it.
      • spookthesunset 5y ago
        So in your argument, even smart well intentioned people who disagree with these public policies are spreading misinformation? You are asserting that everybody who disagrees is wrong and harmful to society, correct? Because I don’t think that such a thing promotes healthy, much needed dialog. The idea that any criticism or skepticism of the core tenants of the last year and a half of public policy is misinformed ramblings of crazy people…
        • lloydgrossman 5y ago
          >So in your argument, even smart well intentioned people who disagree with these public policies are spreading misinformation? You are asserting that everybody who disagrees is wrong and harmful to society, correct? Whereas you're asserting that it's impossible for smart people to spread disinformation?
        • jerry1979 5y ago
          I find it fairly easy to find specific bad information campaigns promoted by smart people. For example, those two doctors in Bakersfield California created misleading arguments using bad math [0]. [0] https://www.dailynews.com/2020/04/28/california-doctors-with-dubious-covid-conclusions-debunked/ https://www.dailynews.com/2020/04/28/california-doctors-with...
          • spookthesunset 5y ago
            Meanwhile the media is full of anecdotes about kids dying and people saying “I regret not taking covid seriously” and stuff like that. Then you have that Dr. Ding guy on Twitter spreading fear and panic. Is that not dangerous misinformation?
    • nonameiguess 5y ago
      I guess you're talking more generally, but this specific problem of car shortages is due to chip shortages. It doesn't have anything to do with any public policy measures. Factories may shut down briefly overseas, but the enormous demand surge for other electronics is the biggest culprit.
    • kevingadd 5y ago
      What part of it is hysteria and panic? Over 600k people died in the US alone.
      • spookthesunset 5y ago
        That doesn’t mean any of what we did helped. It could have made things much, much worse.
        • r00fus 5y ago
          [citation needed] You can see effectiveness of response based on various states and regions that responded differently.
          • spookthesunset 5y ago
            Turns out somebody took public, government source data and tried to compare regions. Good luck telling regions apart. https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/ https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/ Nope, the restrictions really didn’t do anything at all.
            • NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
              holy shit.
            • adjkant 5y ago
              I see 5 cherry picked examples without considerations of many factors. All of this ignoring the clear trend we see in current deaths with Delta. Just two basic things the charts don't consider: 1. If people followed mask mandates in states (e.g. Alabama vs Florida) 2. Population density and disease spread models (e.g. comparing Montana and Idaho felt like a reach, California vs Nevada doesn't consider spread in major cities vs how many major cities there are in each) We absolutely should study this later, but some of these restrictions were little to no cost. Let's not lump them all together. Wearing a mask indoors vs if your kid can go to school or not are two very different value equations that may merit different answers of "if a restriction is worth it"
    • nostromo 5y ago
      I don't know if I fully subscribe to this view, but a friend of mine pointed out that the age of our leadership (President, Senate, Congress, Governors...) are all very old. They are the ones most at risk, and that may have biased their response towards harsh restrictions for people at low risk. As a thought experiment, what if the pandemic mostly hurt 20-somethings? Would our old leaders stop everything to prevent transmission of that disease? Or would young people be told to suck it up? Or would they have asked 20-somethings to just stay home while everyone else went about their business? I'm not sure...
      • jimt1234 5y ago
        Do you remember the initial response to AIDS? There's your answer. (AIDS was originally attributed to only gays and sexually promiscuous people. Best case, leadership simply ignored it. Worst case, innocent victims were attacked [read the Wikipedia article for "Ryan Wayne White"].)
        • Consultant32452 5y ago
          Fauci ran our response to AIDS too. He held back treatments for years expecting a vaccine. The Dallas Buyers Club is a good dramatization of what people were going through. There's also some clips of him warning people not to have casual contact with gays (he says people with AIDS).
      • ransom1538 5y ago
        "As a thought experiment, what if the pandemic mostly hurt 20-somethings?" This happened [1]. They told young people to go ** themselves. People had school, people went to eat, people carried on with jobs, NO government checks sent out. Deaths: 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States. "Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old" https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n...
      • dougmwne 5y ago
        I am sure I know the answer. The old men would have asked the young to die. It has happened during every war since the beginning of history.
  • teakettle42 5y ago
    Should it come back? I feel like this succinctly demonstrated the innate flaws in urbanism, rather than being a novel, isolated failure mode for an otherwise robust ideal of how people should live.
    • yaomtc 5y ago
      > innate flaws in urbanism Care to elaborate?
      • teakettle42 5y ago
        Essentially, flaws that are unique to and induced by scale and consolidation. Outside of the current pandemic, those problems range from the rent-seeking consolidation of housing ownership into very few hands, to the elimination of forms of self-reliance that create healthy community — instead shifting those responsibilities to government and large institutions. Scale also requires more top-down centralized control and regulation in order to function at all.
        • kfarr 5y ago
          The issues you stated could be suburban or even rural issues, not just urban issues. In other words I think you might be conflating the difference between an agrarian economy with a modern economy with specialization, not urban vs rural.
      • Nasrudith 5y ago
        I saw a different explanation. Cities are inheriently high density and make things used enmasse as much as possible and inevitably leads to more contact among others. This is unfortunately also a good way for pandemics to travel. The isolation highlighted how little they owned spacewise. Now that is a spectrum and we are all dependent on others but they are at the high end. The low end is "compound in the middle of the wilderness which is dependent indirectly for there to be wilderness unused for them to DYI everything". The issue will hopefully wind up rare but there is no great certainty in these matters.
      • 5y ago
  • odyssey7 5y ago
    I doubt it. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Assuming the pandemic does end, we’ll see greater appreciation for these things.
    • fedreserved 5y ago
      What doesn't break you makes you stronger. What if a larger chunk then normal gets broken by these experiences. The new wrinkle to this pandemic are the influx of the middle and upper classes to the broken segment at a larger percentage then normal. For those who have never faced true struggle or failure , it can be a larger impact on their psyche to those who have lived with and struggled through adversity coming out the other side
  • yardie 5y ago
    I don't think urbanism has been affected that much. In my neck of the woods (SE Florida) urbanism didn't lose a beat. Rental apartments in my neighborhood are leasing at above asking. There were a few months where the city felt abandoned, property values were down, and leases were offering signing bonuses. It's done a 180, or 360 now, city property values are climbing. New construction is way up, even with the high cost of labor and material, and shops and bars are working with the new normal. My city has taken advantage of decreased traffic to institute popular pedestrian projects that were unpopular to commuters.
    • dv_dt 5y ago
      The opposite happened in some Southern California areas. Some popular restaurant streets were closed to car traffic, and the restaurants added outdoor eating spaces. This happened in Santa Barbara and Ventura. It looks like the areas are at least considering keeping that change even post covid. Anyone living near those areas had an improved walkable neighborhood. Also I don’t think anyone living near a park lost use of those parks.
  • rco8786 5y ago
    > It’s going to take a long time for people to come back. The numbers don't really bear this out. Rents are as high as ever and inventory is largely back to pre-covid in the major cities where the life you're describing exists.
    • ls612 5y ago
      It depends on what people take away from this year. There seems to be little chance of any distancing restrictions returning in the US for covid so the market is being driven by how much people believe this has set a precedent which will be regularly repeated
  • valeness 5y ago
    Nothing about the pandemic made my apartment a miserable place to live. It was alaways a miserable place to live. * There is no bike parking available, so 2 bikes occupy a large portion of my living space * The sidewalks outside my apartment are small and in a state of disrepair * Intersections are cyclist and pedestrian hostile making it hard to go anywhere without it being a stressful experience * The landlord refuses to fix my A/C when it's 118 degrees farenheit outside, meaning it is often 92F inside the apartment (And no, citing the municipal code that says this illegal does nothing and nobody has the energy to hire a lawyer right now) * The bus stop has been in disrepair to the point where it was recently just removed altogether meaning I have to walk a mile to get to the next one. * The next nearest bus stop has no shade or place to sit * I can't mount my TV to the wall or make any changes to make the small space more comfortable (like hanging shelves or mounting hooks) I want nothing more than effective urban living, but I have yet to see it. So from my perspective, I'm not sure what was really "lost" during the pandemic that wasn't already broken. Also, since I see some replies mentioning it, I would rather my parents ad grandparents be alive than have any of the above be fixed. So I'd be careful to judge too harshly and gain some perspective about "strict" measures to curb the spread of the pandemic.
    • yarcob 5y ago
      I don't know how people move into appartments where they aren't allowed to drill holes in the wall. This would make an appartement unusable for me. Unanchored furniture is extremely risky and kills infants every year. Yeah, there's a risk that you might drill into a pipe. In the last 20 years that happened to me once, and it was annoying, since it cost 200€ to have the pipe fixed, but it's not really a big deal.
      • vmception 5y ago
        You can drill holes, you just have to fill them in when you leave and consider losing a portion of your deposit. Not really that big of a deal.
    • sizzle 5y ago
      You can withhold rent and put it in an escrow account and get a hotel room until your landlord provides a habitable environment regarding the broken AC, at least that was the case for me in California. They can’t evict you over this and will lose in court, of course look up your state laws as they vary by state.
  • jayess 5y ago
    My husband and I bought a house precisely for this reason. We had lived in downtown apartments for the past 15 years but couldn't take being so cooped up anymore. I LOVE the extra space and my own yard. I miss being in a high-rise, but I love my house even more.
  • brailsafe 5y ago
    Meh, I disagree, except for that it would be nice to have better access to a car right now. I could buy one if I had an income, but I'd only do so reluctantly. Living in a rainforest-like climate in Vancouver, I couldn't be happier. Ya, I could use a little more space than my studio. Ya, it sucked so bad when the pandemic hit, but much much less so than in suburban areas. I still only walk 2 mins to a bar or where I buy groceries. Transit is the same. Mountains aren't far etc.. To say urbanites have been set back decades is ridiculous. That said, idk about living right downtown, but I've always hated it anyway because it's a boring landscape with boring people.
  • oops 5y ago
    I spent the pandemic in a tiny apartment. Did laundry in the tub for a while (no w/d). Finding space to hang sheets to dry was a fun challenge. Quickly developed an appreciation for easy to wash and hard-to-stink-up items like singlets. Not going to lie, the laundry part sucked. But that is not inherent to urbanism. Most apartments can be updated to have a w/d. Many can be updated to have outdoor space. The parks are still there. From my perspective, the bargain you describe still exists and it was never critically important to own a house or car. Still in the city and not leaving any time soon. To each their own!
  • SavantIdiot 5y ago
    On the plus side, single-family zoning laws are being dismantled on the west coast. This will lead to people demanding more transit since there won't be any parking. Of course, the only transit available will be busses because most cities/burbs are so poorly thought out that there is no room for light rail. But i'd love to see more bus routes and frequent schedules where I live. The cost is crazy: $5 one way to go from my house to the city center, once per hour, and no times per hour at night. That's gotta change.
  • chronofar 5y ago
    I don't know I think it depends on the particulars of the area. Things didn't shut down everywhere, and having a car wasn't so necessary when everyone was working from home. In addition being in a high density area preserved some camaraderie and togetherness in a period of universal isolation, and being able to get out and walk around in the immediate area was a great way to fight cabin fever. In other words, by my estimation the urban ideal continued to be advantageous for different reasons during the pandemic, though I can certainly picture other urban centers that would have been a much worse experience, in particular those with stricter mandates and poor weather (which is a truly isolating scenario).
  • mayankkaizen 5y ago
    You talk about US and I, as an Indian, realized during this pandemic that you must have a car no matter what. In last 12 years I never felt the need to buy a car so strongly as I did in last year.
• vultour 5y ago
  Shocking price of gas? I’m in Europe and have hoped for gas prices to climb at least 10x since I was in high school. We have a relatively good public transport system yet the last 5-10 years have seen insane car ownership growth and even the small town my parents live in is now jammed with cars every morning. Everyone should not own a car, it’s unsustainable both for the planet and for the road system.
  • simonklitj 5y ago
    Don’t you suppose public transportation costs would skyrocket with 10x the gas prices? Imagine 15 euros for a liter. Holy yikes. Of course, electric vehicles would be a part of a cheaper solution.
    • isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y ago
      Public transportation around me is one of the earliest adopters of EVs.
    • namdnay 5y ago
      public utilities don't usually pay taxes on gas
      • simonklitj 5y ago
        Which, in Washington state, saves them 0.5$ a gallon. Still 3.29 or something, then. I think busses get 3 miles to the gallon. That's like a dollar per mile, still.
        • namdnay 5y ago
          And that’s is the US with absurdly low gas taxes. In Europe, taxes represent more than half the price of gas
    • s0rce 5y ago
      If the price of gas increases are largely due to taxes which is sometimes the case it could be easy to simply offer rebates to public transit companies, just like you can buy diesel for farm equipment or heating without paying the road taxes.
• Cd00d 5y ago
  BEV? I'm guessing the EV is electric vehicle, but what's the B?
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    "Battery". Some people include plug-in hybrids in their definition of "EV", so "BEV" was created to exclude those.
    • TacticalCoder 5y ago
      > Some people include plug-in hybrids in their definition of "EV", so "BEV" was created to exclude those. Which is really a poorly coined term because it's not as if plug-in hybrids, many of which can do people's daily commute back and forth without ever kicking the internal combustion engine on, where finding their energy from something else than an EV battery.
• yabones 5y ago
  I've felt this as well. Before the pandemic, I lived in a small apartment in an up-and-coming part of my city. Downstairs was a very nice small grocery store, cafe, and central Asian food restaurant. I took the bus to work each day, and life was good. Now, post pandemic, the small grocery store downstairs closed, as did the cafe, and the restaurant is take-out only. The neighbourhood also suffered, with many lovely small businesses closing and crime becoming as rampant as it was a decade ago. The city also raised the bus fare ~20%. This was basically the perfect storm to drive me into a house rental, buy a cheap used car, and otherwise turn me into what I resented just a few years ago. I think this is going to be a trend for many late-twenty-somethings in north america, the regression of optimistic urbanists to begrudged suburbanites.
  • NoGravitas 5y ago
    The thing is — the suburban-sprawl lifestyle cannot, and will not continue. If we don't put a halt to it in order to provide a soft landing, climate change will put a more-or-less abrupt end to it (not everywhere at once, and not always through the same means). The regression of optimistic urbanists to begrudged suburbanites just means more resistance to doing anything to solve our collective action problem around climate change, and a better chance of getting the worst-case scenarios.
    • Consultant32452 5y ago
      I don't want to argue with you or change your mind, but I also don't want to share a country with you.
    • jayess 5y ago
      My goodness, what a bleak, authoritarian point of view with so little imagination.
      • PoignardAzur 5y ago
        "Imagination" should not be a substitute for hard numbers, and hard numbers keep telling us we're not doing enough to fix climate change, over and over again. You want bleak? Look at projections of what the planet will look like in 100 years if current trends continue.
• nonameiguess 5y ago
  I'm not sure how much this generalizes. I'm a city dweller and just gave away my car in July after basically not using it for the past five years. I can still walk to all the same places, they're open, the trains are still running, and I haven't had any trouble getting a rideshare driver to pick me up when that is needed. I imagine the impact depends heavily on localized lockdown measures, and they apparently aren't nearly as strong in Dallas as wherever you live.
• Diederich 5y ago
  > BEV might not be practical for road trip vacations, at least not right now. Taking a BEV on a road trip vacation is more tricky and requires more planning, but it's very doable. We've taken our 2017 340 mile (when new, current max range is about 327 miles) Tesla on a number of moderately long road trips. It's a bit slower and there are some places we could not have gone, but it definitely works. Keep in mind that you can charge 3-5 miles per hour on nearly any standard 120 VAC outlet. With one of our trips to the mountains, we ran a 100 foot extension cord from our cabin and had little trouble keeping up with mileage demands. More concretely, last year we moved from California to Washington state, a little more than 800 miles. Since it was in the middle of C19, we didn't want to stop over anywhere, so we had to do the drive in one day. It took us about 16 hours to drive about 820 miles, an average of more than 50 miles per hour, including charge stops. 15-20 years ago we'd do 800 mile days in about 13 hours, or an average of 61 miles per hour. The Tesla supercharger network is pretty extensive, extremely reliable and constantly growing. I don't have a sense of how widespread/reliable the other fast charging networks are, beyond various problematic stories I've come across. PS: I've seen youtube videos of people doing 12-15 amp 120 VAC charging (gaining 3-5 mile per hour) in Teslas using portable solar panels too.
• vmception 5y ago
  I also picked up a car this year, after 11 years of not owning one. Uber and Lyft still sucking so hard into this year was the catalyst. I wonder if shared rides through those apps will ever return.
• Dylan16807 5y ago
  > I was saving up for a BEV. But realized air travel is out of commission and a BEV might not be practical for road trip vacations, at least not right now. Are you expecting to want a road trip in the next year that badly? Otherwise just rent, right?