4 ms·

This will NEVER happen. People rarely listen to urban planners, no one is going to tear up their cities and reorganize them around some untested ideological ide

This will NEVER happen. People rarely listen to urban planners, no one is going to tear up their cities and reorganize them around some untested ideological idea, and finally no one is going to give up their cars -- like it or not-- they are annoying. It's much easier to just make them all electric and decarbonize grid production.

soperj 5y ago
>no one is going to tear up their cities and reorganize them around some untested ideological idea that's exactly what they did for cars in the first place.
- mlindner 5y ago
  Cars replaced horse-drawn carriages which already filled cities. Poo covered the streets of New York City. Modern US cities were designed around the horse-drawn carriage, not the car.
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  Right, but those were the motor companies behind that. IE: Concrete, spendable money. Urban planners get very little cred unfortunately. If they were smart -- the urban planners -- they would get all computational and build highly accurate models of the cities they work for that people could just go online and check out. Then planners could create new versions of the real city, testing different ideas and sharing them interactively with the public. Most planners these days seem to just say "mass transit GOOD!" and "cars BAD!", without really any substance behind it. This often doesn't really convince the public of much.
- lazide 5y ago
  Haha, that is a bit out of touch with reality unfortunately. Cars were immediately, obviously valuable to individuals - they gave people the freedom to go where they want to, with whom they wanted to, when they wanted to, and often allowed them to carry things that would otherwise be difficult to carry while doing so. Something which was otherwise very difficult to do previously. If you use public transit, it’s very difficult to go somewhere others do not want to go, or at a time when others do not want to go. You’re tied to what everyone else wants, pretty explicitly, since unpopular routes or schedules get less frequent (or no) coverage, and are expensive to run. You also can’t carry arbitrary heavy stuff since that tends to require infrastructure that is difficult to carry by hand or is not compatible with typical people on foot. Public transit is a system efficiency win, but a general loss for any outliers for individuals. And since everything is public, it adds a lot of friction if you want to go with someone who you otherwise would have issues being seen with in public, or are going somewhere/doing something you’d rather not publicize, or who struggles with crowds or similar problems (such as those with disabilities, children who are too young to self ambulate well, etc). Not unsolvable, but adds friction. Cars are (when roads aren’t completely mangled anyway), individual luxury items - because they enable a large degree of useful freedom for individuals. It’s no wonder that every economy that is able to pay for them goes crazy until it turns into a tragedy of the commons situation.

soperj 5y ago

>no one is going to tear up their cities and reorganize them around some untested ideological idea that's exactly what they did for cars in the first place.

mlindner 5y ago
Cars replaced horse-drawn carriages which already filled cities. Poo covered the streets of New York City. Modern US cities were designed around the horse-drawn carriage, not the car.
hungryforcodes 5y ago
Right, but those were the motor companies behind that. IE: Concrete, spendable money. Urban planners get very little cred unfortunately. If they were smart -- the urban planners -- they would get all computational and build highly accurate models of the cities they work for that people could just go online and check out. Then planners could create new versions of the real city, testing different ideas and sharing them interactively with the public. Most planners these days seem to just say "mass transit GOOD!" and "cars BAD!", without really any substance behind it. This often doesn't really convince the public of much.
lazide 5y ago
Haha, that is a bit out of touch with reality unfortunately. Cars were immediately, obviously valuable to individuals - they gave people the freedom to go where they want to, with whom they wanted to, when they wanted to, and often allowed them to carry things that would otherwise be difficult to carry while doing so. Something which was otherwise very difficult to do previously. If you use public transit, it’s very difficult to go somewhere others do not want to go, or at a time when others do not want to go. You’re tied to what everyone else wants, pretty explicitly, since unpopular routes or schedules get less frequent (or no) coverage, and are expensive to run. You also can’t carry arbitrary heavy stuff since that tends to require infrastructure that is difficult to carry by hand or is not compatible with typical people on foot. Public transit is a system efficiency win, but a general loss for any outliers for individuals. And since everything is public, it adds a lot of friction if you want to go with someone who you otherwise would have issues being seen with in public, or are going somewhere/doing something you’d rather not publicize, or who struggles with crowds or similar problems (such as those with disabilities, children who are too young to self ambulate well, etc). Not unsolvable, but adds friction. Cars are (when roads aren’t completely mangled anyway), individual luxury items - because they enable a large degree of useful freedom for individuals. It’s no wonder that every economy that is able to pay for them goes crazy until it turns into a tragedy of the commons situation.