4 ms·
Perhaps cities were initially planned with them in mind as opposed to in the US?
by jjulius 5y ago
Perhaps cities were initially planned with them in mind as opposed to in the US?
- bowmessage 5y agoAh, yes, all of those carefully-planned-out European cities that have been fully thought through before the first brick was laid...
- wolverine876 5y agoMany cities are planned. Paris was planned in the 19th century, after it had been around for millenia, and they tore stuff down and rebuilt it.
- HarryHirsch 5y agoIt's telling that there are people who have never experienced the result of proper town planning and conclude that town planning is an impossibility.
- bowmessage 5y agoHow so? My argument is the "initial planning" of many European cities never really happened. Plenty of planning has happened since, I'm sure!
- jjulius 5y agoRemove "initial" from my original post and my point still stands; Europe planned for them at some point, the US didn't, and what the US did - to this article's point - doesn't lend itself to adapt to these parklets so readily.
- TulliusCicero 5y agoMore likely they inadvertently ‘planned’ for them by planning wide sidewalks that could be then be partially repurposed.
- talideon 5y agoYes, in the '80s, '90s, and so on, after _decades_ of very car-centric planning. The US needs to change how it does planning and learn from the experiences of other countries that actually took steps to become less car-centric.
- supertrope 5y agoPre-car cities.
- inglor_cz 5y agoEuropean cities are a mix of unplanned and thoroughly planned. High Middle Ages in more developed places already had some municipal bureaucracy and planning offices. Take a look at Prague, for example. [0] There is a chaotic maze of medieval streets in the Old Town (around the Astronomical Clock). But the New Town to the southeast, which was founded in 1348, is already much more regular; the king who founded it had a certain vision and the street grid reflects that vision. Interestingly, a mid 14-th century grid was able to accomodate some degree of car traffic of our modern era. In case of Kraków [1], there isn't any unplanned corner of the city left, the grid in the Old Town is perfectly regular. This was designed around 1260, so a pretty old grid, but a planned city nonetheless. [0] https://goo.gl/maps/1cz13fsr5tPP52AF9 https://goo.gl/maps/1cz13fsr5tPP52AF9 [1] https://goo.gl/maps/CRkLPM9i7MRVH1aK8 https://goo.gl/maps/CRkLPM9i7MRVH1aK8
- perl4ever 5y agoObviously there are cities in the US built before cars, and a lot of Europe was rebuilt after cars existed, so quantifying the difference would be interesting. The city I live in, in the northeastern US, started with no particular plan in the 1600s, and indeed, some of the streets were too narrow for cars. In the late 1700s, a plan was laid out, whereby "the east–west streets were named for mammals while the north–south streets were named for birds". The town I was born in, was founded in the 1660s. Probably not with a plan for the next 300 years.
- ArnoVW 5y agofor those interested, I recently found this YT channel, run by a Canadian that moved around a lot and settled in the Netherlands. He goes into various urban planning issues, and breaks down some of the reasons why he thinks Dutch cities are more livable than US-ian. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A