29 ms·

How do you fix a stroad?

306 points by milkytron 5y ago

cafard 5y ago
"you'll be fighting all these strip mall tenants and owners who are making a living mining the public investment in roadway capacity for their own gain." The gall of these people. I, in contrast, ride public transportation down a publicly maintained street to a workplace where I earn a salary. No mining here.
- eumenides1 5y ago
  Strip mall tenants will put up a fight, you won't. Might makes right.
lelandbatey 5y ago
I love that this highlights an oft-missed truth about Urbanism and shifting our urban landscape: this is going to take a long time. It's going to take many decades, and it's going to require waiting for individual human beings to literally die before we get to start making the changes we want to make. I mean, unless we can get someone really excited about this into federal office in which case it _might_ be possible to do what we did in the US with the interstate system but in reverse, but that'd require a pretty different political landscape than the one we're in now, I suspect.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  If only our nation were able to pass some sort of "infrastructure bill". No, I mean one that actually did what it said on the tin.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    It's not just (or maybe even primarily) about money. As is indicated in the first part of the OP, changing things means changing things that a lot of people are fine with, affecting many businesses, causing a lot of disruption, etc. I'd be fine with more walkable areas but it's not just about spending money.
    - danny_codes 5y ago
      IMO this is a question of ignorance. Most Americans simply don't understand that there are (far superior) alternatives to car-dependent suburbia. It's just not on their radar. Hopefully channels like "Not Just Bikes" and our own social dissemination of the walk/bike/transit oriented urban development model will allow more Americans to understand what they're missing. Once enough people in a given urban area realize what they could have, perhaps the political will to improve will materialize.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        I don't much care for suburbs and like cities only in moderation. I prefer the country within striking distance of a large city. I'm perfectly aware of what an urban environment is like--I've lived in both Cambridge and NYC--and while there are things I like about it (I'm staying in one this week) it's not something I want full-time.
        danny_codes 5y ago
        Seeing as those are both American cities, it's not surprising you don't like it. Even our best cities are pretty disappointing when compared to what Europe and Asia have to offer.
- wilkommen 5y ago
  I think a true shift towards Urbanism in our cities may be only possible if there's a whole lot of money in it for somebody with political leverage. But who? I'm not sure. Real estate developers? They're already making money hand over fist building our cities in the shitty car-centric way. When the US made its shift to car-centricity with the interstate highway system, there was a ton of money in it for oil companies, and car companies. Who "wins" when we shift our building patterns towards Urbanism? Aside from everyone who gets to live there, of course. I feel like big political changes like this don't happen unless someone who stands to gain is busy lobbying to make it happen. And I don't know what, if any, entity stands to gain a lot from building pedestrian-friendly, dense, beautiful cities.
  - _dain_ 5y ago
    >Who "wins" when we shift our building patterns towards Urbanism? Aside from everyone who gets to live there, of course. I feel like big political changes like this don't happen unless someone who stands to gain is busy lobbying to make it happen. And I don't know what, if any, entity stands to gain a lot from building pedestrian-friendly, dense, beautiful cities. You may be interested in a policy the UK government is considering: https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Strong-Suburbs.pdf https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Strong-Subu... The idea is to let small groups of residents (a single street) vote to loosen planning restrictions in specific ways, allowing for incremental intensification of suburbs.
    - wilkommen 5y ago
      From that proposal: "The housing crisis is often presented as a zero-sum conflict. More houses must be built to avoid rising homelessness, falling home ownership, and wider economic stagnation. But they can only be built by forcing them through against the will of local people, either by imposing high-rise on our historic centres, or by concreting over our countryside with more suburban housing estates. On this analysis, the interests of those who already own homes are fundamentally opposed to the interests of those who do not, and policy is simply a matter of choosing which interest group will triumph over the other. This analysis is profoundly mistaken. The appearance of opposed interests is the result of a defective system, which excludes existing communities from the benefits of development while imposing on them its adverse effects. If existing communities are allowed to control the form of development and to share in the benefits that it brings, they can become enthusiastic supporters." I like it. I do hope it is possible for communities to become enthusiastic supporters.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  this is going to take a long time.' The present world changes fast, when it changes. When someones says "this will take decades", I usually interpret that as "this isn't happening, there's nothing making it happen, only people talking".
  - jrumbut 5y ago
    The discussion is the first 20 years of the 25 year process.
- peregren 5y ago
  I used to agree that these things take a long time, but since the pandemic my local council in Ireland has acted very quickly to build excellent bike infrastructure and curtail car access to village spaces [1]. Many roads got changed to one-way, to make way for segregated bike lanes. Pre-pandemic, there was dallying for years over building this stuff, but now its there, and the world hasn't imploded for motorists, and local businesses and residents are 99% very happy. Of course when local government doesn't have the will it won't happen, but if they do, it can happen very quickly. [1] https://www.dlrcoco.ie/en/civic-amenities-urban-design/dlr-coastal-mobility-route https://www.dlrcoco.ie/en/civic-amenities-urban-design/dlr-c...
  - rob74 5y ago
    Yes, the pandemic has accelerated this, but everyone involved needs to be open for the possibility from the beginning. Here in Germany when someone proposes something like this there is a storm of protest from small businesses: "what we are already on the brink of bankruptcy with everyone ordering stuff online or going to supermarkets with huge parking lots and now you want to cut us off from our customers do you want to kill us off completely?!?!" (because everyone knows real customers come in cars, pedestrians and cyclists obviously don't have the money to afford a car, so they can't afford anything else either).
    - cycomanic 5y ago
      I've written about this on a similar post previously. The town I grew up in in Germany (Lüneburg for those familiar with Germany), turned some of the central city into a pedastrian mall about 30-40 years ago. I still remember the local newspaper being full of angry letters from local businesses complaining that this would be the death of the city centre, everyone would go shopping at the big malls on the outside of town which will soon pop up etc.. In reality the exact opposite happened the city centre is packed with people, the city is immensely popular with tourists who come from all over and many of the big "shopping centres " outside of town disappeared. At the moment there are discussions on expending the pedestrian zones further and the same arguments are being made by businesses, it is as if nobody learned anything.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  The US is pretty fucked, but if at the non federal level some government can start issuing a fuck ton of bonds and do interesting things, we can see more change. A basic horseshit politics in the US is to act like nothing is possible without controlling government (super-majorities if needed) at all levels. We must work around that, because it will not happen reliably. Might need states to start seceding too. ---- Also recommend reading some post-Keynesian things about big projects such as http://jwmason.org/slackwire/climate-policy-from-a-keynesian-perspective/ http://jwmason.org/slackwire/climate-policy-from-a-keynesian... The neat idea is that the extra work from rapid change makes a society richer, not poorer. (There is old "oil spills increases GDP" memes on this front.) The flip side is > Today’s neoliberal macroeconomic model depends on limiting economic growth as a way of managing distributional conflicts. I.e. the stagnation serves a purpose of making labor not too needed and thus pliant. (We get a little tighter labor markets now, and good things because of it.) The upshot is that if you can score some "against the odds" political victories doing more rapid denser develop development, you will get not only the increased "real" efficiency from better land utilization (and all the other good health, beauty, etc.) benefits, but also extra growth from the expenditures needed to retool things. Build subway, build a bunch of public housing, increase area population by a few million. This stuff is less ridiculous than it sounds.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Cultural-scale planning and prediction are hard. Things move slowly and gradually until they suddenly don't. Much of the infrastructure presently dominant in the US dates to 1960/1970, and depending on where specifically you were in the country before then, things changed in a pretty major way with the birth of the Interstate Highway System (1960s), urban flight and suburban development (1950s), WWII (1940s), the Great Depression (1930s), and the first really big mechanisation and electrification drive (1910s--1920s). Starting somewhere around 1960--1970, things levelled off. No major wars, no major economic disruptions, and for the most part no major new landscape-transforming technological inventions. (For those looking to criticise, note the key word major, which is not a synonym for any.) I'd argue that things began shifting by 2001 with 9/11, the 2007--8 global financial crisis, the 2016 election, mobile + social + algorithmic Internet hitting critical mass, and since late 2019, the COVID-19 global pandemic, now entering its third year. Climate change impacts are also likely to be felt increasingly, with Blade Runner skies over much of the West Coast of the US being one interesting sign that the future has arrived. Transformational change is a bit like going broke: it happens slowly at first, then suddenly.
- asah 5y ago
  3 words: Manhattan bike lanes. They're everywhere now even the bridges, the ebike messengers own the streets and slowed down the cars, Lyft bought citibike stop you don't need another app, so it's now a joy to bike NYC, even as a tourist. Really.
jimmaswell 5y ago
I find the premise questionable that stroads are bad. Give a stroad good sidewalks, crosswalks with signs that light up when you hit a button, and a bike path and everybody is well-served. That or just let car people (majority) have these areas that are good for cars and let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere.
- andbberger 5y ago
  it's not people are anti-car as much as they are pro-human. the majority of people (in the states) would not be car people if they had alternatives. stroads are hostile to anyone not in a car. making pedestrians hit a beg button to cross street is just reinforcing that they are trespassing on land that is not for them.
  - calt 5y ago
    > making pedestrians hit a beg button to cross street is just reinforcing that they are trespassing on land that is not for them. I love this quote.
  - jimmaswell 5y ago
    They have right of way regardless but the flashing sign increases safety. Are turn signals a "beg button"?
    - andbberger 5y ago
      I dare you to cross a stroad without waiting for the pedestrian phase. Turn signals are not beg buttons.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    I once ran across the observation that the amount 'jay walking' that occurs on a street is an indication of how much that street is pedestrian-friendly. More criss-crossing means people feel safer just moseying over to the other side.
  - 5y ago
joe_the_user 5y ago
Overall, it seems simpler to say that malls, not stroads are the problem. Malls will never be pedestrian friendly. Mall will never be aesthetically pleasant. Roads going by malls are usually stroads and might be made somewhat better. But that's such a trivial question compared to the pox that is mall urban organization that I really don't care.
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  A big, climate controlled, pedestrian-only space packed full of different kinds of shops isn't pedestrian-friendly? Give me a break. On the subjective side I think a lot of them look pretty nice.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    American malls are islands. Europes malls tend to be hearts of networks
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      Australia has both, we have the multi level island malls surrounded by mega roads, and then inner CBD retails streets which are surrounded by high density residential and office space which are actually great for pedestrian access as you can easily get from your current location to the area.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      There are (or were) malls in central business districts, say in downtown San Francisco or Chicago. These often have flagship stores, and frequently serve business travellers and tourists (in-country and international). There are definitely more outlying malls away from downtowns. Both have been suffering badly for years, and more so during the COVID pandemic.
      - rdtwo 5y ago
        Seattle used to have a decent downtown mall area but I think a combination of high rents, low traffic, general lawlessness and Covid has kind of destroyed that. Where I was really impressed in Europe is when malls or store complexes were on major subway hubs and stations. People could do their shopping on the way home without ever having to drive.
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
As a fun note, I immediately recognized the location of this stroad pictured. I live relatively close to it. There's been a lot of new development there recently. They just redeveloped a large chunk of the area including launching a major Costco and an Amazon Fresh. I would honestly say it's a pretty healthy travel thoroughfare. It gets backed up during rush hour, but even interstates do here, so that's not unusual.
- pcmoney 5y ago
  How is it walking or biking? Or is it only healthy if you’re in a couple thousand pound armored living room on wheels?
  - geoffcline 5y ago
    the nice thing about southern Texas is that we don't have to worry about walking/biking, not gonna happen in 105 degrees. I'm so much more comfortable in here compared to Seattle. Car AC is great for my allergies, and I'm no longer a sweaty mess.
    - pcmoney 5y ago
      Ya most Texans are pretty soft ;)
    - seer 5y ago
      To be honest 40C is quite doable, as long as you have shade (trees) water features (lakes/rivers) and a distance of a couple of km - I’ve cycled like that for fun, not just to get to a destination. Now I would never do that on such an asphalt desert of course, a car is way more comfortable, the question remains why would you turn a lush greenery (as I’d imagine a texan climate could be) into something you’re only comfortable crossing in heavy and expensive survival gear. Especially if living in that gear leads to all the allergies you’ve mentioned. Where I live if I wanted to cycle the worst would be snow followed by cycles of thawing and freezing, which leaves the routes a miserable mess, so I have to fire up my trusty corolla, but apart from that (20% of the time) I prefer biking for sure. And I live in the shithole of the european union, the poorest of the member states, and am constantly amazed how much better the city planning is here, even with all of its flaws. For example a UK colleague when visiting sent a picture how he got lost in a wilderness forest, on his way on foot from the downtown hotel to the office, since the capital itself is littered with small pockets of lush (and I mean really lush) greenery. I can’t imagine what great things could be accomplished if you had the resources of a place like texas… You could make your city be so great, people go there as a tourist just to enjoy being there, and not for the novelty.
bee_rider 5y ago
"Stroad" seems to be a recently popularized by strongtowns. I'm curious if anyone has actually managed to measure this sort of thing? My suspicion is that it "stroads" are essentially to-wide streets, and it should be possible to find research indicating that streets should be narrower, because widening them causes people to drive too fast. I was only able to find the following, coverage, though: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/05/27/compelling-evidence-t https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/05/27/compelling-evidence-t... https://thecityfix.com/blog/bigger-isnt-always-better-narrow https://thecityfix.com/blog/bigger-isnt-always-better-narrow... They both seem to fundamentally go back to a single conference paper, "Narrower Lanes, Safer Streets." I don't know those blogs, and a single conference paper is -- I mean the paper is probably good but, hard to build a case on just one paper. What is up with this? Computer engineers produce reams and reams of papers. Where are the civ.Es hiding their secrets? edit: changed slightly, original text seemed unintentionally dismissive.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  the argument is that streets and roads serve fundamentally different purposes and thus have different design goals, and stroads do both and thus fail at both. Roads are for transit, getting cars a long distance between interest points, and streets are for navigating within a point of interest like a neighbourhood. Roads want to optimise for higher cruising speed and streets are to optimise for parking, mixed-use with pedestrians and cyclists, etc. You can't combine these things - it's not a measurement divide but a categorical one. it is a made up word, but all words are made up.
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    I get the idea, and I'm in favor of removing stroads. I think it would be more compelling if it was backed up by some data. Finding actual data on stroads is basically impossible because it is not a term-of-art as far as I can tell.
    - takk309 5y ago
      Try the terms "road diet" and "traffic calming", they will yeild more results. While not exactly the same concept, they are terms that have been in use within the industry for much longer.
istorical 5y ago
For those that want context on stroads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM&t=1s
trinovantes 5y ago
The Not Just Bikes youtube channel was quite the rabbit hole. It has convinced me that I really hate North American car-centric cities. It's a shame there's basically no country in the anglosphere designed for pedestrians like most European countries.
- ReaLNero 5y ago
  If you draw the line at country, sure. But America is huge compared to European nation-states. NYC is very public transportation-oriented. The Northeast corridor Amtrak line also is a big boon!
  - quadrangle 5y ago
    but NYC and Amtrak aren't dramatically better than Toronto and Canadian rail issues that NotJustBikes constantly bashes as pathetically mediocre compared to the Netherlands. The U.S. definitely has a range of insanely-awful to decent-enough with small now-premium-priced pockets of great bits (which are almost always pre-car neighborhoods that somehow were spared destruction).
  - dougmwne 5y ago
    The itty-bitty bits of America that have any kind of walkable community are incredibly expensive. It’s basically the equivalent of avoiding mediocre American factory food by doing all your shopping at Whole Foods. Why does it have to be a rare luxury to taste what the Europeans have in overflowing abundance?
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      Organic carrots at Whole Foods in NYC are about $1/lb which is slightly less than the average price in France. Food is VERY cheap in the US.
    - arsome 5y ago
      Because what they have flowing in abundance is a loss in many other ways. Public transit is a generally a worse experience in all but the most urban of places, and even then there's often enough problems that make it significantly less desirable. Biking in the winter? Doable, but also pretty miserable in much of the world. People like personal transportation and big detached houses with yards. Car-centric cities are the price we pay for these things. Personally I think it's worth the trade-off, I would have spent the same money on my 2000sqft house as a <400sqft apartment, and having kids and a dog would have been entirely impractical.
pcmoney 5y ago
Has anyone ever put a picture of a stroad up as art/instagram etc like you see with downtown NYC, Paris, small european villages, shanghai, rural mountain towns, old downtowns in America etc? Of course not. It is the McDonald’s of city planning. Cheap, ugly, bad for you but also shockingly expensive once the medical/infrastructure maintenance bill comes due. Its the overweight, white trash, lower back tattoo of aesthetics. WTF is wrong with us?! Lets stop building ugly shit. Lets leave a legacy. Lets build things of substance and utility that inspires, encourages, and serves the people who use it.
- vegetablepotpie 5y ago
  That was spicy. I like the message; the analogies are alienating for some people. I agree that we should be focusing on the long term costs of our decisions.
- rcpt 5y ago
  People unironically put up photos of the Painted Ladies and their stroad all the time
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    In what way are the painted ladies on a stroad? Steiner is a 2 lane street with parking and I think like a <25 mph speed limit. Most of it has bike lanes (although the particular piece in front of the ladies doesn't, or at least didn't until recently). It's very much a street, although it could be a better street.
  - seized 5y ago
    Based on the page in the OP, the SF Painted Ladies are about as opposite of a stroad as possible.... No strip malls, giant park across the street, houses all around, low speed limit, characteristic narrow SF street/road... How does that fit the graphic in the OPs link?
  - jquery 5y ago
    Could you share such a picture? All the Painted Ladies photos I’ve seen feature a small community street with a top speed of 25mph.
chupchap 5y ago
I feel like almost all roads I see in a dense Indian city like Mumbai is a stroad. I don't think a distinct classification of a road and street as defined by strong towns can be made in a city that has heavy occupancy and pre-existing development. Then looking at a state like Kerala that is so urbanised and heavily populated I have seen a lot of houses with gates opening up into a national highway. How can anyone fix that when there is no land to expand on or extend?
- Symbiote 5y ago
  I don't know how it would be fixed, but in the west it would simply be forbidden to build a house driveway onto a highway. If the road is being upgraded into a highway, they would alter the driveway so it no longer connects to the highway: a service/access/frontage road, or some other route.
  - sumedh 5y ago
    > it would simply be forbidden to build a house driveway onto a highway. Sometimes the house comes first and then the highway is built later.
- freddie_mercury 5y ago
  It sounds exactly like Ho Chi Minh City here in Vietnam. The solution isn't hard -- the government uses imminent domain, takes a few metres of land on each side, and compensates existing owners.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    That's usually pretty hard. I guess it depends on your city. But imminent domain can take decades if done with a lot of community backlash.
    - gameman144 5y ago
      Not trying to nitpick, but just a heads-up that the term is " eminent domain" (I know it's a pet-peeve when people don't correct me if I'm saying something wrong, but feel free to ignore me if you don't care).
Animats 5y ago
The Strong Towns people want to go back to 1950s midwestern America - small towns strung out along roads, with farms in between. What were all those small towns for? They were built, mostly, as service centers for the surrounding farms. Today, only 1% of the workforce works on farms, and they can get their stuff from Amazon and Walmart. The need for most of those towns is gone. So they're decaying and disappearing.[1] That's the problem. The Strong Towns vision no longer matches what people do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Uni...
- wetpaws 5y ago
  Tokyo is not a small town by any measure, and neither is the most of Europe.
  - Animats 5y ago
    Tokyo does not look like the ideal in the article, of small towns strung out along roads.
    - danny_codes 5y ago
      I'm not sure where you got this model. It's not that small towns are strung out along roads. Rather, the town itself becomes a nexus for walk/bike-ability. Instead of every trip to the grocery store, movie theater, and gym being taken by car, the vast majority of trips are taken by walking or biking. This isn't to say there aren't cars in town: on the contrary, roads exist, ideally going around heavily trafficked areas. This lets the roads focus on being roads (getting people from place to place) and the streets focus on being streets (allowing people to walk, bike, and "experience the world", in the parlance of "Not Just Bikes". Of course, the next town over (let's say it's 20 miles away) will be "down the road", with a both a road and a train connecting them.
  - foobiekr 5y ago
    I'm so confused by the idea that Tokyo is somehow bike-centric. Perhaps there's another Tokyo somewhere in Japan that is not a subway-and-taxi centric metropolitan area where bikes are rarely seen. It's a pedestrian-friendly city, though, I'll give you that.
dghughes 5y ago
My city just installed three roundabouts each about 500m from each. Three in a row on a four land (two each way) road. I'm all for roundabouts but it looks a mess. Some of the outer lanes end too without any sign to indicate that it ends. Stroads are designed by busybodies who are given too much money. I used to be able to go over a small bridge that's over a small stream and turn left to get to my aunt's house. The bridge is now 10m higher has four lanes. Plus I have to drive 2km down the road go through two roundabouts come back the way I came just to get back to where I would have turned left in the old days.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Drive over the meridian, gouge the greenway, and leave tire streaks repeatedly. Then have a friend take pictures and start bugging your local politicians about the lack of consistent access. Have them make the point that paying to continually clean up after people will cost more than putting in a comfortable number of access openings. They'll be able to fix it and look like they're saving the city money at the same time, everybody wins.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    Like a desire path for cars! Tired of having to drive around the local park? Just drive through it, the council will get the hint!
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      We need that road... think of the children!
    - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
      The Texas off-ramp.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    The problem with that is that the bad changes were likely made in part because "people are stupid and we need to save them from themselves" and giving them the bird like you suggest may make them double down.
aeharding 5y ago
I highly recommend the film "Together we cycle" for those that are interested in learning about the Netherlands' struggle with car dependency in the 20th century.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Why do you need to “fix” a stroad? Not everyone wants to live in a young bicyclist’s idealistic utopia. The reason people like high speed roads is that it saves time, and time matters. Biking and public transit are both slow compared to cars, and most people like the convenience cars offer. The point to point nature of driving, the faster travel speeds, the protection from weather, the capacity for people/cargo, and so on are a massive quality of life boost. Most people, particularly as they age into their late 20s/early 30s and start families, like having more space. It is useful for them to have the higher quality of life you get from a large home with a yard, but with fast access to areas with shops and restaurants. Having businesses and parking immediately accessible from high speed roads gives you that.
- ragebol 5y ago
  Point is that stroads don't give you that fast travel, because of all the traffic that needs getting in and off. The alternative of having a dedicated through-travel road with streets on the sides to access actual destinations does allow both fast travel and easy access to destinations.
- Scott_Sanderson 5y ago
  You should check out the NJB you tube links. Stroads aren't fast for car travel. If you want a fast road, design for that. Stroad design gives you the worst of both worlds: slow and terrible for anything other than driving/parking.
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    I've seen these videos (they've been repeatedly brought up in other similar discussions), and I just am not convinced. It doesn't match my reality across several cities and states, where "stroads" seem totally fine and functional.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  > The reason people like high speed roads is that it saves time, and time matters. Biking and public transit are both slow compared to cars *Cities build streets primarily around cars* You: Look! Cars are more convenient!! This isn't some iron law of the universe, that cars are faster even for basic errands happens because we choose to make it that way. When I was living on the outskirts of Munich, many short trips to grocery stores and the like would take a similar amount of time for biking and driving, because they design their streets and roads for cars AND bikes AND walking, not mainly just cars like in the US.
readonthegoapp 5y ago
That is a pretty ridiculous term, imo. First, it sounds horrible to say. Second, what is a 'strong road'? Or a 'street road'? The intended definition says something about ideally moving cars as quickly as possible, and making roads and streets economically viable in terms of 'value capture'. I guess that's all well and good if you're a capitalist and primarily care about those things. If, on the other hand, you care about making places where people actually want to live, and transport systems that allow human flourishing, you're not likely to gain an understanding of how that can be done by paying attention to only, or primarily, economics and what 'the market wants'. Generally speaking, the last thing you should do if you want to fix roads and towns, America's in particular, but a lot of The West, is to make sure you never listen to anything a trained urban planner says. They literally helped destroy our world, and now they're trying to incrementalism away some of their crimes, but only if they control the 'value capture'.
- Aloha 5y ago
  I think you nailed this on the head. I like stroads, there is a place for them. I like streets, and I like roads and highways too, I drive everywhere because my workplace is 10 miles from my house. While a walkable neighborhood sounds great, I still gotta drive to work - and even with hub and spoke transit, it's a 15 min car ride or and hour and a half by transit. (I'm lucky, a transit line down a freeway could leave me as little as 45 min from the office) We keep talking about these neighborhoods without considering that. They're for other people to live in. I'd live closer to work, but then I'd spend an extra N dollars a month, and no residential neighborhood will have an office for 300 in it, and I'll still want a car. I think we need dense place for those who like living there, and suburban ones for those who don't - plus stuff in between. I'm in the "those who don't" category. I hope to own a single family home on a quiet street someday.
  - ItsMonkk 5y ago
    > I think we need dense place for those who like living there, and suburban ones for those who don't - plus stuff in between. We agree. And this is a key point made by Not Just Bikes / StrongTowns - when you have exclusively Stroad infrastructure and Single Family Homes, even those who prefer to drive and live in those homes are worse off. You need single family homes. You need bike lanes. You need multi-family homes. You need mid-rises. You need mixed-development. You need transit. We need all kinds.
caturopath 5y ago
I'll just leave this here https://www.google.com/search?q=%22sprawl+repair+manual%22&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=%22sprawl+repair+manual%22&t... https://smile.amazon.com/Sprawl-Repair-Manual-Galina-Tachieva/dp/1597267325 https://smile.amazon.com/Sprawl-Repair-Manual-Galina-Tachiev...
w0mbat 5y ago
I have a house in Sunnyvale, California a few blocks from El Camino Real. It's the ultimate stroad, hundreds of miles long and lined with thriving businesses and I love it. It's getting really quite clean and quiet now a ridiculous proportion of traffic around here is Teslas.
- fingerlocks 5y ago
  I used to travel regularly to my company’s satellite office in Sunnyvale. My hotel was less than a mile away, so I walked the 20 minutes instead of opting for a rental car. Because that’s what I do in Seattle. I’m certain that I was the only pedestrian around for miles.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Take it from someone who grew up in Santa Clara: El Camino Real fucking sucks. Now, many businesses along El Camino Real are great, don't get me wrong. But the road itself is miserable. When we lived in Sunnyvale there was a bigass Korean market literally across the street from us; we'd only drive there, despite it being, again, directly across the street, because that's how painful and dangerous-feeling it was to cross by foot. This is not a problem we ever had while living in Munich.
  - mcv 5y ago
    > we'd only drive there, despite it being, again, directly across the street That is just bizarre. And it's important to understand how inefficient this is to need a car to cross the street; you need parking space on this side, parking space on the other side, you need to get on and off the stroad, causing wear, interfering with and slowing down the other traffic, which is mostly through traffic that's not interested at all in your house or that Korean market. It's unbelievably inefficient. It's much more efficient if through traffic is separated from local traffic, if you can walk to the store, if stores are close to each other with one central parking space from which you can easily reach them all, and if people only use cars for trips that intrinsically require a car.
    - 5y ago
cycomanic 5y ago
It's interesting how more city planning articles are making their way to HN. I've just been to the Nobel week dialogues yesterday discussing the city of the future (https://www.nobelprize.org/events/nobel-week-dialogue/Gothenburg-2021 https://www.nobelprize.org/events/nobel-week-dialogue/Gothen...). For those who have not heard of them, the Nobel week dialogues are discussions, talks with some of the leading experts on a given topic together with Nobel prize winners who have often worked on the same topic since winning the prize. It's a free event, held in either Gothenburg or Stockholm. On the 9th of December every year. But the great thing is that since the pandemic they have started to live stream the event so everyone from around the world can join. I highly recommend everyone to check it out, it is not often that you can see 5 or more nobel prize winners in one place.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Municipal planning has broad mass market appeal and is easy to bikeshed. It's not hard to see why HN loves it.
rvba 5y ago
Roads without public transport are a nightmare - nowhere to park. Those stroads at least allow to park.
- milkytron 5y ago
  Roads should not have destinations on them, they should be a connection between two destinations. Streets are an example of a destination, with businesses, homes, etc. Streets can have parking nearby.
Kiro 5y ago
It's funny. As someone who has never been to the US stroads are what define the American urban landscape for me and what I want to experience. They feel really exotic. It's like being in an American movie or TV show.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Are you thinking of actual stroads or rather simply the large american roads? US roads definitely have a cool factor to them but American stroads are awful and really not something you want to experience. I remember taking a two hour walk in Irvine a decade ago. Walking in a straight line, palm trees in the middle of the stroad to separate the ten lanes, walking, walking... Nothing changing around me other than the names of the shops. I didn't fully understand what made me feel so uneasy and what made the whole thing so surreal. I realized years later what i had experienced then. It was not a good experience. I had little room to walk, almost died three times. I eventually hitchhiked and was picked up by a car, the woman who picked me up had two kids in the back and as soon as I hopped in the front seat, closed the door and said thank you, she said "and don't you try anything, I have a gun". The whole trip left me with a horrible taste in my mouth that can only be rivaled by marmite.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    It's actual stroads that stand out to Europeans. The excessively-wide, long, straight roads with an enormous lit-up business sign every 200-500m. "Motel 6", "Firestone", "Tire Center", then an American flag as big as a house[1]. In TV and films, they're not clogged with traffic, and they don't show it takes 10 minutes of driving to visit 3 shops. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3524597,-121.981251,3a,75y,281.01h,87.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMn1XUZOykf7K5ktoueGBBQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3524597,-121.981251,3a,75y,2...
- mcv 5y ago
  I used to be impressed by these massive American roads too, but I understand much better now why they exist and how impractical they really are.
- 5y ago
timwaagh 5y ago
It's pretty simple. Sacrifice a lane to become a street or parallelweg as we call them here. Put a solid barrier in between the street and road portions. Have access points to the road only indirectly on sidestreets. This is how we 'stroad' in the Netherlands. Of course if you design in this manner from the ground up the result is prettier but it should be perfectly adequate.
paganel 5y ago
> Slow traffic; prioritize human movement over auto mobility; This will most probably bring extra gentrification plus damn the businesses that might need that extra road-traffic for recurring clients. Bicycle-ing in a downtown-ish area is mostly done by people like us (yuppies, more or less), the person who has to get tho his/her job at Walmart or at a logistics center at 5-6AM doesn't have time for this, and after his/her job is done most probably doesn't have the energy for taking a bike-ride just for pleasure. The same goes for walking.
- CanceledAccount 5y ago
  Redesigning infrastructure always produces winners and losers. Slowing down traffic will always make someone’s commute longer. Unfortunately, making these decisions is hard but necessary, because the trade offs are worth it. Gentrification is when a place becomes more desirable to live. It’s caused by people enjoying themselves. Gentrification is wealth creation. If housing prices rise too much, you can build more housing. It’s something to be desired, not avoided.
  - vanderZwan 5y ago
    > Gentrification is when a place becomes more desirable to live. Yes, but the real problem here is that this term is also used to discuss an overlapping but different thing: the poor and otherwise vulnerable parts of society being displaced by raising rent. There should be two words to describe these things to ensure we don't talk past each other. Anyway, the displacement issue is a problem solved by ensuring affordable housing through various means, not by ensuring the housing stays affordable due the location being a terrible place to live (as you already mentioned, I'm just putting it in the other "gentrification" context).
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    > Gentrification is when a place becomes more desirable to live. It’s caused by people enjoying themselves Absolutely not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
throwawaygal7 5y ago
To me, a generation that is too busy to buy groceries in the store or buy goods at a physical store in general does not strike me as one to push for walkable cities. Half the urbanites I know get gassed just walking for a coffee.
- villasv 5y ago
  This has always been the drama of urbanism. Only a minority is pushing for it, while the rest furiously resist thanks to years of car-centric propaganda (and vested interests).
  - throwawaygal7 5y ago
    To me, I think if this generation had to choose between same day delivery and walkable neighborhoods they're going for the former. Maybe that's a false dichotomy
    - milkytron 5y ago
      This generation is a lot of people, and who is to say they can't have both? Same day delivery becomes easier in densely populated areas, and densely populated areas tend to be more walkable.
chkaloon 5y ago
All of Anchorage AK that isn't a freeway is a stroad it seems.
bradknowles 5y ago
WTF is a “stroad”, and why would anyone care?

306 points by milkytron 5y ago

"you'll be fighting all these strip mall tenants and owners who are making a living mining the public investment in roadway capacity for their own gain." The gall of these people. I, in contrast, ride public transportation down a publicly maintained street to a workplace where I earn a salary. No mining here.

eumenides1 5y ago
Strip mall tenants will put up a fight, you won't. Might makes right.

lelandbatey 5y ago

I love that this highlights an oft-missed truth about Urbanism and shifting our urban landscape: this is going to take a long time. It's going to take many decades, and it's going to require waiting for individual human beings to literally die before we get to start making the changes we want to make. I mean, unless we can get someone really excited about this into federal office in which case it _might_ be possible to do what we did in the US with the interstate system but in reverse, but that'd require a pretty different political landscape than the one we're in now, I suspect.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fennecfoxen 5y ago
If only our nation were able to pass some sort of "infrastructure bill". No, I mean one that actually did what it said on the tin.
- ghaff 5y ago
  It's not just (or maybe even primarily) about money. As is indicated in the first part of the OP, changing things means changing things that a lot of people are fine with, affecting many businesses, causing a lot of disruption, etc. I'd be fine with more walkable areas but it's not just about spending money.
  - danny_codes 5y ago
    IMO this is a question of ignorance. Most Americans simply don't understand that there are (far superior) alternatives to car-dependent suburbia. It's just not on their radar. Hopefully channels like "Not Just Bikes" and our own social dissemination of the walk/bike/transit oriented urban development model will allow more Americans to understand what they're missing. Once enough people in a given urban area realize what they could have, perhaps the political will to improve will materialize.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I don't much care for suburbs and like cities only in moderation. I prefer the country within striking distance of a large city. I'm perfectly aware of what an urban environment is like--I've lived in both Cambridge and NYC--and while there are things I like about it (I'm staying in one this week) it's not something I want full-time.
      - danny_codes 5y ago
        Seeing as those are both American cities, it's not surprising you don't like it. Even our best cities are pretty disappointing when compared to what Europe and Asia have to offer.
wilkommen 5y ago
I think a true shift towards Urbanism in our cities may be only possible if there's a whole lot of money in it for somebody with political leverage. But who? I'm not sure. Real estate developers? They're already making money hand over fist building our cities in the shitty car-centric way. When the US made its shift to car-centricity with the interstate highway system, there was a ton of money in it for oil companies, and car companies. Who "wins" when we shift our building patterns towards Urbanism? Aside from everyone who gets to live there, of course. I feel like big political changes like this don't happen unless someone who stands to gain is busy lobbying to make it happen. And I don't know what, if any, entity stands to gain a lot from building pedestrian-friendly, dense, beautiful cities.
- _dain_ 5y ago
  >Who "wins" when we shift our building patterns towards Urbanism? Aside from everyone who gets to live there, of course. I feel like big political changes like this don't happen unless someone who stands to gain is busy lobbying to make it happen. And I don't know what, if any, entity stands to gain a lot from building pedestrian-friendly, dense, beautiful cities. You may be interested in a policy the UK government is considering: https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Strong-Suburbs.pdf https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Strong-Subu... The idea is to let small groups of residents (a single street) vote to loosen planning restrictions in specific ways, allowing for incremental intensification of suburbs.
  - wilkommen 5y ago
    From that proposal: "The housing crisis is often presented as a zero-sum conflict. More houses must be built to avoid rising homelessness, falling home ownership, and wider economic stagnation. But they can only be built by forcing them through against the will of local people, either by imposing high-rise on our historic centres, or by concreting over our countryside with more suburban housing estates. On this analysis, the interests of those who already own homes are fundamentally opposed to the interests of those who do not, and policy is simply a matter of choosing which interest group will triumph over the other. This analysis is profoundly mistaken. The appearance of opposed interests is the result of a defective system, which excludes existing communities from the benefits of development while imposing on them its adverse effects. If existing communities are allowed to control the form of development and to share in the benefits that it brings, they can become enthusiastic supporters." I like it. I do hope it is possible for communities to become enthusiastic supporters.
joe_the_user 5y ago
this is going to take a long time.' The present world changes fast, when it changes. When someones says "this will take decades", I usually interpret that as "this isn't happening, there's nothing making it happen, only people talking".
- jrumbut 5y ago
  The discussion is the first 20 years of the 25 year process.
peregren 5y ago
I used to agree that these things take a long time, but since the pandemic my local council in Ireland has acted very quickly to build excellent bike infrastructure and curtail car access to village spaces [1]. Many roads got changed to one-way, to make way for segregated bike lanes. Pre-pandemic, there was dallying for years over building this stuff, but now its there, and the world hasn't imploded for motorists, and local businesses and residents are 99% very happy. Of course when local government doesn't have the will it won't happen, but if they do, it can happen very quickly. [1] https://www.dlrcoco.ie/en/civic-amenities-urban-design/dlr-coastal-mobility-route https://www.dlrcoco.ie/en/civic-amenities-urban-design/dlr-c...
- rob74 5y ago
  Yes, the pandemic has accelerated this, but everyone involved needs to be open for the possibility from the beginning. Here in Germany when someone proposes something like this there is a storm of protest from small businesses: "what we are already on the brink of bankruptcy with everyone ordering stuff online or going to supermarkets with huge parking lots and now you want to cut us off from our customers do you want to kill us off completely?!?!" (because everyone knows real customers come in cars, pedestrians and cyclists obviously don't have the money to afford a car, so they can't afford anything else either).
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    I've written about this on a similar post previously. The town I grew up in in Germany (Lüneburg for those familiar with Germany), turned some of the central city into a pedastrian mall about 30-40 years ago. I still remember the local newspaper being full of angry letters from local businesses complaining that this would be the death of the city centre, everyone would go shopping at the big malls on the outside of town which will soon pop up etc.. In reality the exact opposite happened the city centre is packed with people, the city is immensely popular with tourists who come from all over and many of the big "shopping centres " outside of town disappeared. At the moment there are discussions on expending the pedestrian zones further and the same arguments are being made by businesses, it is as if nobody learned anything.
Ericson2314 5y ago
The US is pretty fucked, but if at the non federal level some government can start issuing a fuck ton of bonds and do interesting things, we can see more change. A basic horseshit politics in the US is to act like nothing is possible without controlling government (super-majorities if needed) at all levels. We must work around that, because it will not happen reliably. Might need states to start seceding too. ---- Also recommend reading some post-Keynesian things about big projects such as http://jwmason.org/slackwire/climate-policy-from-a-keynesian-perspective/ http://jwmason.org/slackwire/climate-policy-from-a-keynesian... The neat idea is that the extra work from rapid change makes a society richer, not poorer. (There is old "oil spills increases GDP" memes on this front.) The flip side is > Today’s neoliberal macroeconomic model depends on limiting economic growth as a way of managing distributional conflicts. I.e. the stagnation serves a purpose of making labor not too needed and thus pliant. (We get a little tighter labor markets now, and good things because of it.) The upshot is that if you can score some "against the odds" political victories doing more rapid denser develop development, you will get not only the increased "real" efficiency from better land utilization (and all the other good health, beauty, etc.) benefits, but also extra growth from the expenditures needed to retool things. Build subway, build a bunch of public housing, increase area population by a few million. This stuff is less ridiculous than it sounds.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Cultural-scale planning and prediction are hard. Things move slowly and gradually until they suddenly don't. Much of the infrastructure presently dominant in the US dates to 1960/1970, and depending on where specifically you were in the country before then, things changed in a pretty major way with the birth of the Interstate Highway System (1960s), urban flight and suburban development (1950s), WWII (1940s), the Great Depression (1930s), and the first really big mechanisation and electrification drive (1910s--1920s). Starting somewhere around 1960--1970, things levelled off. No major wars, no major economic disruptions, and for the most part no major new landscape-transforming technological inventions. (For those looking to criticise, note the key word major, which is not a synonym for any.) I'd argue that things began shifting by 2001 with 9/11, the 2007--8 global financial crisis, the 2016 election, mobile + social + algorithmic Internet hitting critical mass, and since late 2019, the COVID-19 global pandemic, now entering its third year. Climate change impacts are also likely to be felt increasingly, with Blade Runner skies over much of the West Coast of the US being one interesting sign that the future has arrived. Transformational change is a bit like going broke: it happens slowly at first, then suddenly.
asah 5y ago
3 words: Manhattan bike lanes. They're everywhere now even the bridges, the ebike messengers own the streets and slowed down the cars, Lyft bought citibike stop you don't need another app, so it's now a joy to bike NYC, even as a tourist. Really.

jimmaswell 5y ago

I find the premise questionable that stroads are bad. Give a stroad good sidewalks, crosswalks with signs that light up when you hit a button, and a bike path and everybody is well-served. That or just let car people (majority) have these areas that are good for cars and let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere.

andbberger 5y ago
it's not people are anti-car as much as they are pro-human. the majority of people (in the states) would not be car people if they had alternatives. stroads are hostile to anyone not in a car. making pedestrians hit a beg button to cross street is just reinforcing that they are trespassing on land that is not for them.
- calt 5y ago
  > making pedestrians hit a beg button to cross street is just reinforcing that they are trespassing on land that is not for them. I love this quote.
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  They have right of way regardless but the flashing sign increases safety. Are turn signals a "beg button"?
  - andbberger 5y ago
    I dare you to cross a stroad without waiting for the pedestrian phase. Turn signals are not beg buttons.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  I once ran across the observation that the amount 'jay walking' that occurs on a street is an indication of how much that street is pedestrian-friendly. More criss-crossing means people feel safer just moseying over to the other side.
- 5y ago

joe_the_user 5y ago

Overall, it seems simpler to say that malls, not stroads are the problem. Malls will never be pedestrian friendly. Mall will never be aesthetically pleasant. Roads going by malls are usually stroads and might be made somewhat better. But that's such a trivial question compared to the pox that is mall urban organization that I really don't care.

jimmaswell 5y ago
A big, climate controlled, pedestrian-only space packed full of different kinds of shops isn't pedestrian-friendly? Give me a break. On the subjective side I think a lot of them look pretty nice.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  American malls are islands. Europes malls tend to be hearts of networks
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    Australia has both, we have the multi level island malls surrounded by mega roads, and then inner CBD retails streets which are surrounded by high density residential and office space which are actually great for pedestrian access as you can easily get from your current location to the area.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    There are (or were) malls in central business districts, say in downtown San Francisco or Chicago. These often have flagship stores, and frequently serve business travellers and tourists (in-country and international). There are definitely more outlying malls away from downtowns. Both have been suffering badly for years, and more so during the COVID pandemic.
    - rdtwo 5y ago
      Seattle used to have a decent downtown mall area but I think a combination of high rents, low traffic, general lawlessness and Covid has kind of destroyed that. Where I was really impressed in Europe is when malls or store complexes were on major subway hubs and stations. People could do their shopping on the way home without ever having to drive.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

As a fun note, I immediately recognized the location of this stroad pictured. I live relatively close to it. There's been a lot of new development there recently. They just redeveloped a large chunk of the area including launching a major Costco and an Amazon Fresh. I would honestly say it's a pretty healthy travel thoroughfare. It gets backed up during rush hour, but even interstates do here, so that's not unusual.

pcmoney 5y ago
How is it walking or biking? Or is it only healthy if you’re in a couple thousand pound armored living room on wheels?
- geoffcline 5y ago
  the nice thing about southern Texas is that we don't have to worry about walking/biking, not gonna happen in 105 degrees. I'm so much more comfortable in here compared to Seattle. Car AC is great for my allergies, and I'm no longer a sweaty mess.
  - pcmoney 5y ago
    Ya most Texans are pretty soft ;)
  - seer 5y ago
    To be honest 40C is quite doable, as long as you have shade (trees) water features (lakes/rivers) and a distance of a couple of km - I’ve cycled like that for fun, not just to get to a destination. Now I would never do that on such an asphalt desert of course, a car is way more comfortable, the question remains why would you turn a lush greenery (as I’d imagine a texan climate could be) into something you’re only comfortable crossing in heavy and expensive survival gear. Especially if living in that gear leads to all the allergies you’ve mentioned. Where I live if I wanted to cycle the worst would be snow followed by cycles of thawing and freezing, which leaves the routes a miserable mess, so I have to fire up my trusty corolla, but apart from that (20% of the time) I prefer biking for sure. And I live in the shithole of the european union, the poorest of the member states, and am constantly amazed how much better the city planning is here, even with all of its flaws. For example a UK colleague when visiting sent a picture how he got lost in a wilderness forest, on his way on foot from the downtown hotel to the office, since the capital itself is littered with small pockets of lush (and I mean really lush) greenery. I can’t imagine what great things could be accomplished if you had the resources of a place like texas… You could make your city be so great, people go there as a tourist just to enjoy being there, and not for the novelty.

bee_rider 5y ago

"Stroad" seems to be a recently popularized by strongtowns. I'm curious if anyone has actually managed to measure this sort of thing? My suspicion is that it "stroads" are essentially to-wide streets, and it should be possible to find research indicating that streets should be narrower, because widening them causes people to drive too fast. I was only able to find the following, coverage, though: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/05/27/compelling-evidence-t https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/05/27/compelling-evidence-t... https://thecityfix.com/blog/bigger-isnt-always-better-narrow https://thecityfix.com/blog/bigger-isnt-always-better-narrow... They both seem to fundamentally go back to a single conference paper, "Narrower Lanes, Safer Streets." I don't know those blogs, and a single conference paper is -- I mean the paper is probably good but, hard to build a case on just one paper. What is up with this? Computer engineers produce reams and reams of papers. Where are the civ.Es hiding their secrets? edit: changed slightly, original text seemed unintentionally dismissive.

beaconstudios 5y ago
the argument is that streets and roads serve fundamentally different purposes and thus have different design goals, and stroads do both and thus fail at both. Roads are for transit, getting cars a long distance between interest points, and streets are for navigating within a point of interest like a neighbourhood. Roads want to optimise for higher cruising speed and streets are to optimise for parking, mixed-use with pedestrians and cyclists, etc. You can't combine these things - it's not a measurement divide but a categorical one. it is a made up word, but all words are made up.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  I get the idea, and I'm in favor of removing stroads. I think it would be more compelling if it was backed up by some data. Finding actual data on stroads is basically impossible because it is not a term-of-art as far as I can tell.
  - takk309 5y ago
    Try the terms "road diet" and "traffic calming", they will yeild more results. While not exactly the same concept, they are terms that have been in use within the industry for much longer.

istorical 5y ago

For those that want context on stroads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM&t=1s

trinovantes 5y ago

The Not Just Bikes youtube channel was quite the rabbit hole. It has convinced me that I really hate North American car-centric cities. It's a shame there's basically no country in the anglosphere designed for pedestrians like most European countries.

ReaLNero 5y ago
If you draw the line at country, sure. But America is huge compared to European nation-states. NYC is very public transportation-oriented. The Northeast corridor Amtrak line also is a big boon!
- quadrangle 5y ago
  but NYC and Amtrak aren't dramatically better than Toronto and Canadian rail issues that NotJustBikes constantly bashes as pathetically mediocre compared to the Netherlands. The U.S. definitely has a range of insanely-awful to decent-enough with small now-premium-priced pockets of great bits (which are almost always pre-car neighborhoods that somehow were spared destruction).
- dougmwne 5y ago
  The itty-bitty bits of America that have any kind of walkable community are incredibly expensive. It’s basically the equivalent of avoiding mediocre American factory food by doing all your shopping at Whole Foods. Why does it have to be a rare luxury to taste what the Europeans have in overflowing abundance?
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    Organic carrots at Whole Foods in NYC are about $1/lb which is slightly less than the average price in France. Food is VERY cheap in the US.
  - arsome 5y ago
    Because what they have flowing in abundance is a loss in many other ways. Public transit is a generally a worse experience in all but the most urban of places, and even then there's often enough problems that make it significantly less desirable. Biking in the winter? Doable, but also pretty miserable in much of the world. People like personal transportation and big detached houses with yards. Car-centric cities are the price we pay for these things. Personally I think it's worth the trade-off, I would have spent the same money on my 2000sqft house as a <400sqft apartment, and having kids and a dog would have been entirely impractical.

pcmoney 5y ago

Has anyone ever put a picture of a stroad up as art/instagram etc like you see with downtown NYC, Paris, small european villages, shanghai, rural mountain towns, old downtowns in America etc? Of course not. It is the McDonald’s of city planning. Cheap, ugly, bad for you but also shockingly expensive once the medical/infrastructure maintenance bill comes due. Its the overweight, white trash, lower back tattoo of aesthetics. WTF is wrong with us?! Lets stop building ugly shit. Lets leave a legacy. Lets build things of substance and utility that inspires, encourages, and serves the people who use it.

vegetablepotpie 5y ago
That was spicy. I like the message; the analogies are alienating for some people. I agree that we should be focusing on the long term costs of our decisions.
rcpt 5y ago
People unironically put up photos of the Painted Ladies and their stroad all the time
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  In what way are the painted ladies on a stroad? Steiner is a 2 lane street with parking and I think like a <25 mph speed limit. Most of it has bike lanes (although the particular piece in front of the ladies doesn't, or at least didn't until recently). It's very much a street, although it could be a better street.
- seized 5y ago
  Based on the page in the OP, the SF Painted Ladies are about as opposite of a stroad as possible.... No strip malls, giant park across the street, houses all around, low speed limit, characteristic narrow SF street/road... How does that fit the graphic in the OPs link?
- jquery 5y ago
  Could you share such a picture? All the Painted Ladies photos I’ve seen feature a small community street with a top speed of 25mph.

chupchap 5y ago

I feel like almost all roads I see in a dense Indian city like Mumbai is a stroad. I don't think a distinct classification of a road and street as defined by strong towns can be made in a city that has heavy occupancy and pre-existing development. Then looking at a state like Kerala that is so urbanised and heavily populated I have seen a lot of houses with gates opening up into a national highway. How can anyone fix that when there is no land to expand on or extend?

Symbiote 5y ago
I don't know how it would be fixed, but in the west it would simply be forbidden to build a house driveway onto a highway. If the road is being upgraded into a highway, they would alter the driveway so it no longer connects to the highway: a service/access/frontage road, or some other route.
- sumedh 5y ago
  > it would simply be forbidden to build a house driveway onto a highway. Sometimes the house comes first and then the highway is built later.
freddie_mercury 5y ago
It sounds exactly like Ho Chi Minh City here in Vietnam. The solution isn't hard -- the government uses imminent domain, takes a few metres of land on each side, and compensates existing owners.
- ehnto 5y ago
  That's usually pretty hard. I guess it depends on your city. But imminent domain can take decades if done with a lot of community backlash.
  - gameman144 5y ago
    Not trying to nitpick, but just a heads-up that the term is " eminent domain" (I know it's a pet-peeve when people don't correct me if I'm saying something wrong, but feel free to ignore me if you don't care).

Animats 5y ago

The Strong Towns people want to go back to 1950s midwestern America - small towns strung out along roads, with farms in between. What were all those small towns for? They were built, mostly, as service centers for the surrounding farms. Today, only 1% of the workforce works on farms, and they can get their stuff from Amazon and Walmart. The need for most of those towns is gone. So they're decaying and disappearing.[1] That's the problem. The Strong Towns vision no longer matches what people do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Uni...

wetpaws 5y ago
Tokyo is not a small town by any measure, and neither is the most of Europe.
- Animats 5y ago
  Tokyo does not look like the ideal in the article, of small towns strung out along roads.
  - danny_codes 5y ago
    I'm not sure where you got this model. It's not that small towns are strung out along roads. Rather, the town itself becomes a nexus for walk/bike-ability. Instead of every trip to the grocery store, movie theater, and gym being taken by car, the vast majority of trips are taken by walking or biking. This isn't to say there aren't cars in town: on the contrary, roads exist, ideally going around heavily trafficked areas. This lets the roads focus on being roads (getting people from place to place) and the streets focus on being streets (allowing people to walk, bike, and "experience the world", in the parlance of "Not Just Bikes". Of course, the next town over (let's say it's 20 miles away) will be "down the road", with a both a road and a train connecting them.
- foobiekr 5y ago
  I'm so confused by the idea that Tokyo is somehow bike-centric. Perhaps there's another Tokyo somewhere in Japan that is not a subway-and-taxi centric metropolitan area where bikes are rarely seen. It's a pedestrian-friendly city, though, I'll give you that.

dghughes 5y ago

My city just installed three roundabouts each about 500m from each. Three in a row on a four land (two each way) road. I'm all for roundabouts but it looks a mess. Some of the outer lanes end too without any sign to indicate that it ends. Stroads are designed by busybodies who are given too much money. I used to be able to go over a small bridge that's over a small stream and turn left to get to my aunt's house. The bridge is now 10m higher has four lanes. Plus I have to drive 2km down the road go through two roundabouts come back the way I came just to get back to where I would have turned left in the old days.

robbedpeter 5y ago
Drive over the meridian, gouge the greenway, and leave tire streaks repeatedly. Then have a friend take pictures and start bugging your local politicians about the lack of consistent access. Have them make the point that paying to continually clean up after people will cost more than putting in a comfortable number of access openings. They'll be able to fix it and look like they're saving the city money at the same time, everybody wins.
- ehnto 5y ago
  Like a desire path for cars! Tired of having to drive around the local park? Just drive through it, the council will get the hint!
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    We need that road... think of the children!
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    The Texas off-ramp.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  The problem with that is that the bad changes were likely made in part because "people are stupid and we need to save them from themselves" and giving them the bird like you suggest may make them double down.

aeharding 5y ago

I highly recommend the film "Together we cycle" for those that are interested in learning about the Netherlands' struggle with car dependency in the 20th century.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Why do you need to “fix” a stroad? Not everyone wants to live in a young bicyclist’s idealistic utopia. The reason people like high speed roads is that it saves time, and time matters. Biking and public transit are both slow compared to cars, and most people like the convenience cars offer. The point to point nature of driving, the faster travel speeds, the protection from weather, the capacity for people/cargo, and so on are a massive quality of life boost. Most people, particularly as they age into their late 20s/early 30s and start families, like having more space. It is useful for them to have the higher quality of life you get from a large home with a yard, but with fast access to areas with shops and restaurants. Having businesses and parking immediately accessible from high speed roads gives you that.

ragebol 5y ago
Point is that stroads don't give you that fast travel, because of all the traffic that needs getting in and off. The alternative of having a dedicated through-travel road with streets on the sides to access actual destinations does allow both fast travel and easy access to destinations.
Scott_Sanderson 5y ago
You should check out the NJB you tube links. Stroads aren't fast for car travel. If you want a fast road, design for that. Stroad design gives you the worst of both worlds: slow and terrible for anything other than driving/parking.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  I've seen these videos (they've been repeatedly brought up in other similar discussions), and I just am not convinced. It doesn't match my reality across several cities and states, where "stroads" seem totally fine and functional.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
> The reason people like high speed roads is that it saves time, and time matters. Biking and public transit are both slow compared to cars *Cities build streets primarily around cars* You: Look! Cars are more convenient!! This isn't some iron law of the universe, that cars are faster even for basic errands happens because we choose to make it that way. When I was living on the outskirts of Munich, many short trips to grocery stores and the like would take a similar amount of time for biking and driving, because they design their streets and roads for cars AND bikes AND walking, not mainly just cars like in the US.

readonthegoapp 5y ago

That is a pretty ridiculous term, imo. First, it sounds horrible to say. Second, what is a 'strong road'? Or a 'street road'? The intended definition says something about ideally moving cars as quickly as possible, and making roads and streets economically viable in terms of 'value capture'. I guess that's all well and good if you're a capitalist and primarily care about those things. If, on the other hand, you care about making places where people actually want to live, and transport systems that allow human flourishing, you're not likely to gain an understanding of how that can be done by paying attention to only, or primarily, economics and what 'the market wants'. Generally speaking, the last thing you should do if you want to fix roads and towns, America's in particular, but a lot of The West, is to make sure you never listen to anything a trained urban planner says. They literally helped destroy our world, and now they're trying to incrementalism away some of their crimes, but only if they control the 'value capture'.

Aloha 5y ago
I think you nailed this on the head. I like stroads, there is a place for them. I like streets, and I like roads and highways too, I drive everywhere because my workplace is 10 miles from my house. While a walkable neighborhood sounds great, I still gotta drive to work - and even with hub and spoke transit, it's a 15 min car ride or and hour and a half by transit. (I'm lucky, a transit line down a freeway could leave me as little as 45 min from the office) We keep talking about these neighborhoods without considering that. They're for other people to live in. I'd live closer to work, but then I'd spend an extra N dollars a month, and no residential neighborhood will have an office for 300 in it, and I'll still want a car. I think we need dense place for those who like living there, and suburban ones for those who don't - plus stuff in between. I'm in the "those who don't" category. I hope to own a single family home on a quiet street someday.
- ItsMonkk 5y ago
  > I think we need dense place for those who like living there, and suburban ones for those who don't - plus stuff in between. We agree. And this is a key point made by Not Just Bikes / StrongTowns - when you have exclusively Stroad infrastructure and Single Family Homes, even those who prefer to drive and live in those homes are worse off. You need single family homes. You need bike lanes. You need multi-family homes. You need mid-rises. You need mixed-development. You need transit. We need all kinds.

caturopath 5y ago

I'll just leave this here https://www.google.com/search?q=%22sprawl+repair+manual%22&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=%22sprawl+repair+manual%22&t... https://smile.amazon.com/Sprawl-Repair-Manual-Galina-Tachieva/dp/1597267325 https://smile.amazon.com/Sprawl-Repair-Manual-Galina-Tachiev...

w0mbat 5y ago

I have a house in Sunnyvale, California a few blocks from El Camino Real. It's the ultimate stroad, hundreds of miles long and lined with thriving businesses and I love it. It's getting really quite clean and quiet now a ridiculous proportion of traffic around here is Teslas.

fingerlocks 5y ago
I used to travel regularly to my company’s satellite office in Sunnyvale. My hotel was less than a mile away, so I walked the 20 minutes instead of opting for a rental car. Because that’s what I do in Seattle. I’m certain that I was the only pedestrian around for miles.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
Take it from someone who grew up in Santa Clara: El Camino Real fucking sucks. Now, many businesses along El Camino Real are great, don't get me wrong. But the road itself is miserable. When we lived in Sunnyvale there was a bigass Korean market literally across the street from us; we'd only drive there, despite it being, again, directly across the street, because that's how painful and dangerous-feeling it was to cross by foot. This is not a problem we ever had while living in Munich.
- mcv 5y ago
  > we'd only drive there, despite it being, again, directly across the street That is just bizarre. And it's important to understand how inefficient this is to need a car to cross the street; you need parking space on this side, parking space on the other side, you need to get on and off the stroad, causing wear, interfering with and slowing down the other traffic, which is mostly through traffic that's not interested at all in your house or that Korean market. It's unbelievably inefficient. It's much more efficient if through traffic is separated from local traffic, if you can walk to the store, if stores are close to each other with one central parking space from which you can easily reach them all, and if people only use cars for trips that intrinsically require a car.
  - 5y ago

cycomanic 5y ago

It's interesting how more city planning articles are making their way to HN. I've just been to the Nobel week dialogues yesterday discussing the city of the future (https://www.nobelprize.org/events/nobel-week-dialogue/Gothenburg-2021 https://www.nobelprize.org/events/nobel-week-dialogue/Gothen...). For those who have not heard of them, the Nobel week dialogues are discussions, talks with some of the leading experts on a given topic together with Nobel prize winners who have often worked on the same topic since winning the prize. It's a free event, held in either Gothenburg or Stockholm. On the 9th of December every year. But the great thing is that since the pandemic they have started to live stream the event so everyone from around the world can join. I highly recommend everyone to check it out, it is not often that you can see 5 or more nobel prize winners in one place.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Municipal planning has broad mass market appeal and is easy to bikeshed. It's not hard to see why HN loves it.

rvba 5y ago

Roads without public transport are a nightmare - nowhere to park. Those stroads at least allow to park.

milkytron 5y ago
Roads should not have destinations on them, they should be a connection between two destinations. Streets are an example of a destination, with businesses, homes, etc. Streets can have parking nearby.

Kiro 5y ago

It's funny. As someone who has never been to the US stroads are what define the American urban landscape for me and what I want to experience. They feel really exotic. It's like being in an American movie or TV show.

scrollaway 5y ago
Are you thinking of actual stroads or rather simply the large american roads? US roads definitely have a cool factor to them but American stroads are awful and really not something you want to experience. I remember taking a two hour walk in Irvine a decade ago. Walking in a straight line, palm trees in the middle of the stroad to separate the ten lanes, walking, walking... Nothing changing around me other than the names of the shops. I didn't fully understand what made me feel so uneasy and what made the whole thing so surreal. I realized years later what i had experienced then. It was not a good experience. I had little room to walk, almost died three times. I eventually hitchhiked and was picked up by a car, the woman who picked me up had two kids in the back and as soon as I hopped in the front seat, closed the door and said thank you, she said "and don't you try anything, I have a gun". The whole trip left me with a horrible taste in my mouth that can only be rivaled by marmite.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  It's actual stroads that stand out to Europeans. The excessively-wide, long, straight roads with an enormous lit-up business sign every 200-500m. "Motel 6", "Firestone", "Tire Center", then an American flag as big as a house[1]. In TV and films, they're not clogged with traffic, and they don't show it takes 10 minutes of driving to visit 3 shops. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3524597,-121.981251,3a,75y,281.01h,87.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMn1XUZOykf7K5ktoueGBBQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3524597,-121.981251,3a,75y,2...
mcv 5y ago
I used to be impressed by these massive American roads too, but I understand much better now why they exist and how impractical they really are.
5y ago

timwaagh 5y ago

It's pretty simple. Sacrifice a lane to become a street or parallelweg as we call them here. Put a solid barrier in between the street and road portions. Have access points to the road only indirectly on sidestreets. This is how we 'stroad' in the Netherlands. Of course if you design in this manner from the ground up the result is prettier but it should be perfectly adequate.

paganel 5y ago

> Slow traffic; prioritize human movement over auto mobility; This will most probably bring extra gentrification plus damn the businesses that might need that extra road-traffic for recurring clients. Bicycle-ing in a downtown-ish area is mostly done by people like us (yuppies, more or less), the person who has to get tho his/her job at Walmart or at a logistics center at 5-6AM doesn't have time for this, and after his/her job is done most probably doesn't have the energy for taking a bike-ride just for pleasure. The same goes for walking.

CanceledAccount 5y ago
Redesigning infrastructure always produces winners and losers. Slowing down traffic will always make someone’s commute longer. Unfortunately, making these decisions is hard but necessary, because the trade offs are worth it. Gentrification is when a place becomes more desirable to live. It’s caused by people enjoying themselves. Gentrification is wealth creation. If housing prices rise too much, you can build more housing. It’s something to be desired, not avoided.
- vanderZwan 5y ago
  > Gentrification is when a place becomes more desirable to live. Yes, but the real problem here is that this term is also used to discuss an overlapping but different thing: the poor and otherwise vulnerable parts of society being displaced by raising rent. There should be two words to describe these things to ensure we don't talk past each other. Anyway, the displacement issue is a problem solved by ensuring affordable housing through various means, not by ensuring the housing stays affordable due the location being a terrible place to live (as you already mentioned, I'm just putting it in the other "gentrification" context).
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > Gentrification is when a place becomes more desirable to live. It’s caused by people enjoying themselves Absolutely not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification
- JohnWhigham 5y ago

throwawaygal7 5y ago

To me, a generation that is too busy to buy groceries in the store or buy goods at a physical store in general does not strike me as one to push for walkable cities. Half the urbanites I know get gassed just walking for a coffee.

villasv 5y ago
This has always been the drama of urbanism. Only a minority is pushing for it, while the rest furiously resist thanks to years of car-centric propaganda (and vested interests).
- throwawaygal7 5y ago
  To me, I think if this generation had to choose between same day delivery and walkable neighborhoods they're going for the former. Maybe that's a false dichotomy
  - milkytron 5y ago
    This generation is a lot of people, and who is to say they can't have both? Same day delivery becomes easier in densely populated areas, and densely populated areas tend to be more walkable.

chkaloon 5y ago

All of Anchorage AK that isn't a freeway is a stroad it seems.

bradknowles 5y ago

WTF is a “stroad”, and why would anyone care?