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Please update your views of European urbanism (browsing Google's aerial photos should be enough). Urban sprawl is the defining key of the last 50 years. Here i

by wott 5y ago

Please update your views of European urbanism (browsing Google's aerial photos should be enough). Urban sprawl is the defining key of the last 50 years. Here is a starting point, miles and miles away from the historical centre of Toulouse: https://www.google.fr/maps/@43.537841,1.2268468,2639m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=fr https://www.google.fr/maps/@43.537841,1.2268468,2639m/data=!... Now it is not only happening around cities, around big towns, around small towns, it also happens at unprecedented speed around the tiniest villages. A site that puts side by side aerials from now and from before urban sprawl: https://remonterletemps.ign.fr/comparer/basic?x=1.212446&y=42.884138&z=17&layer1=ORTHOIMAGERY.ORTHOPHOTOS&layer2=ORTHOIMAGERY.ORTHOPHOTOS.1950-1965&mode=doubleMap https://remonterletemps.ign.fr/comparer/basic?x=1.212446&y=4... Back in huge cities. The city of Paris is much less populated than one century ago. Now it represents only 1/6th of the population of its urban area, an ogre which has swallowed almost 2000 municipalities (two thousand!). Elsewhere in the country, you see urban areas from cities multiple dozens of miles apart joining in a continuous sprawl. Heck, even in my deep and remote area disconnected from any city or even town, there is now 5 miles of sprawl joining the 3 villages of the valley in continuous strips along the roads; before the sprawl, population of my municipality was 50% higher, and yet 80-90% of the now occupied space was free.

arghwhat 5y ago
Urban sprawl is not a problem, and neither is a little country-side car dependence. The problem with total car dependence arises when you only create "big", pedestrian unfriendly shopping "stroads" that are 6 lanes wide, where even going to the adjacent store is a car trip, and crossing the road takes unreasonably long or is flat out impossible on foot. In these places, driving is your only option even if you can see the store you want to visit from where you live. This is in stark contrast to the highly trafficated European cities, which are car friendly. Take Copenhagen for example. There are of course 6-lane arterial roads going through in various directions, but stores are back-to-back and the destination is rarely ever the arterial road itself. If you're going outside peak hours you might be able to find some street parking down some side street, but otherwise you'll have to locate one of the low-footprint multi-story parking basements/garages and then join the pedestrians from there. In less densely populated cities (say, Lyngby), some shopping areas might have a shared 40-car parking lot associated - not a parking lot for hundreds of cars per store. Should you live out on the countryside and want to go to the city (say, for shopping), you might use a car to get to a central parking area and then join the pedestrians for the actual access - the dense shopping streets are pedestrian-only anyway. People in the outer city are more likely to just use a bicycle or take public transportation, as it's usually faster, cheaper and more convenient - especially for restaurant visits or party, as you might want to drink alcohol. The TL;DR is "car friendly != car dependent". This applies to most European cities I've seen.

by wott 5y ago

arghwhat 5y ago

Urban sprawl is not a problem, and neither is a little country-side car dependence. The problem with total car dependence arises when you only create "big", pedestrian unfriendly shopping "stroads" that are 6 lanes wide, where even going to the adjacent store is a car trip, and crossing the road takes unreasonably long or is flat out impossible on foot. In these places, driving is your only option even if you can see the store you want to visit from where you live. This is in stark contrast to the highly trafficated European cities, which are car friendly. Take Copenhagen for example. There are of course 6-lane arterial roads going through in various directions, but stores are back-to-back and the destination is rarely ever the arterial road itself. If you're going outside peak hours you might be able to find some street parking down some side street, but otherwise you'll have to locate one of the low-footprint multi-story parking basements/garages and then join the pedestrians from there. In less densely populated cities (say, Lyngby), some shopping areas might have a shared 40-car parking lot associated - not a parking lot for hundreds of cars per store. Should you live out on the countryside and want to go to the city (say, for shopping), you might use a car to get to a central parking area and then join the pedestrians for the actual access - the dense shopping streets are pedestrian-only anyway. People in the outer city are more likely to just use a bicycle or take public transportation, as it's usually faster, cheaper and more convenient - especially for restaurant visits or party, as you might want to drink alcohol. The TL;DR is "car friendly != car dependent". This applies to most European cities I've seen.