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> I don't personally have a single friend in North America or Europe to whom it would be a "reasonable alternative" to travel on highways (where it is prohibite

> I don't personally have a single friend in North America or Europe to whom it would be a "reasonable alternative" to travel on highways (where it is prohibited) by bike or bus and invest maybe 90 minutes to simply get to the closest grocery store and then be able to Right. That’s like calling water wet. Of course we live this way, we designed our cities to make us live this way… I’m not sure what you’re talking about w.r.t Europe. Even if you have friends that drive everywhere that just is not how most people live day-to-day.

bennysomething 5y ago
Best thing about living in older European cities is they don't have this stupid zoning, they mixed commercial and housing because that's how people chose to live before planners got invented after ww2. Now planners are patting themselves on the back for recently inventing the 20 minute community, Which is exactly the same thing. My one major thing I want in life is to never ever live in a suburban development with zero to do except drive to places.
- smusamashah 5y ago
  And I thought it's only software UI designers who like to watch the world burn.
- jltsiren 5y ago
  Urban planning is probably as old as cities. Based on my limited experience, European planners just focus more on actual planning than mere zoning. When an area is being (re)developed, the planners try to figure out many of the details. How should be public transport and parking organized? Where are the walking and biking routes? Where should the parks and commercial spaces be? And so on. Older European cities are not as much organically grown as planned and replanned over centuries.
  - bennysomething 5y ago
    You might be right, but there was an interesting thing on BBC radio 4 s few years ago, an British architect who grew up in Lebanon explained that he thought the UK should bin it's planners completely as all that had been built post ww2 when that arm of government was created, was monstrosities or at best only allow the equivalent of music's James blunt records. Not great but at least boring and acceptible.
- toyg 5y ago
  > before planners got invented after ww2. I mean, I don't disagree on the overall point, but one could do with reading up on people like Haussmann: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eug%C3%A8ne_Haussmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eug%C3%A8ne_Haussmann
  - bennysomething 5y ago
    You are very right. What I said was sort of incorrect. I'm referring to this in the UK: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_and_Country_Planning_Act_1947 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_and_Country_Planning_Ac... In particular it means that owning land does not automatically allow you to build on it.
- letitbeirie 5y ago
  Lack of zoning is one element of the equation but having developed before the car is pretty crucial too. Houston, TX has no zoning laws to speak of but because most of its growth happened in the last century, it grew outwards instead of upwards.
silverpepsi 5y ago
>Of course we live this way, we designed our cities to make us live this way… I feel like you're almost making a moral statement there, it doesn't have the nuance I think exists. 1) You have people like my parents, siblings, and friends in the Midwest. The idea of living somewhere where they don't have the practical privacy of living on a farm literally horrifies them. I can't convince them otherwise, I've tried. They view me as simply "weird". Literally no hope, but maybe you can convince their kids. 2) You have people like me who love the energy, convenience, and stimulation of high density living but still end up driving and having a car because the cost differential is just way too extreme to logically justify living where I want to. There's a mystery to me in it. I spent time in Bangkok and Shanghai and why does it seem really easy to rent a centrally located place in a quality tall building, as if it's just normal, and without a prices that seems insanely disproportionate to other life expenses? Yet in the US, it's very rare. There's not enough demand? Labor costs are too high? Laws like building hight limits in the US prevent it? I've heard there are taboos in Europe for high buildings as well. I think there is also an element of culturally dictated space demands that comes into play. You can have these nice dense places in Bangkok because people will see 300 SQ ft and still rent it. In the US people told me I was brave for trying to survive by myself in "only" 500 SQ ft. They could never "stand not even being able to breathe". You won't have an easy time changing people's minds about this. Personally I'm willing to live in 150sq ft if I'm at the heart of the fun.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  > I spent time in Bangkok and Shanghai and why does it seem really easy to rent a centrally located place in a quality tall building, as if it's just normal, and without a prices that seems insanely disproportionate to other life expenses? Yet in the US, it's very rare. There's not enough demand? Labor costs are too high? Laws like building hight limits in the US prevent it? There aren’t enough of them because in huge swaths of the country it’s illegal to build anything denser than a single-family home. There’s plenty of demand for it, there’s just not enough supply. Doesn’t even have to be high-rises, in most places it’s illegal to build the sort of mid-rises that are everywhere in European cities. EDIT: Oh, and it’s also usually illegal to put a business in a residential area, which forces things further apart and forces people to drive to get to anything.
TacticalCoder 5y ago
> I’m not sure what you’re talking about w.r.t Europe. Even if you have friends that drive everywhere that just is not how most people live day-to-day. I'm european and I've lived in several european countries. It's definitely how a huge percentage of the european population lives day to day. Not even 40% of the european population lives in cities. 30% is towns + suburb and 30% is countryside/seaside/mountain/rural. That's 60% right there where car is the de facto daily way of moving. And even in cities like Brussels or Paris you have those who do use their car on a daily basis, for short trips (like going to drop/pick the kids at school a few kilometers away). Insane statistics (x% of all car trips in Brussels are for less than y kilometers with both x and y being very low: although I forgot the numbers). I guess it depends on who your friends are but around me, in the various place I've lived in Europe, the car is totally king.
- ericmay 5y ago
  Ah ok. I didn’t realize Europe was built like places like Houston, LA, and Atlanta and everybody took cars everywhere, they did the whole 2hr car commute to the office, and they didn’t walk to the grocery store in their neighborhood and instead they all got in their big SUVs (which they own at least 2 of of course) to the local grocery store about a mile away with the huge parking lot. It’s a small wonder that Europeans can even afford to do this, given how expensive gas is compared to America.
  - toyg 5y ago
    "Europe" is much less homogeneous, from an urban-planning perspective, than the US. We have medieval cities with narrow streets, like Barcelona or Firenze, mixed with '70s developments, suburban dormitories, megalopolis like London and Paris, and so on. So depending on who you ask, you will get a very different picture of their habits around transportation. Undoubtedly, you Americans drive more and longer than we do; but we still drive some, and have a similar issue with choosing our development models post-1980. But undoubtedly, ditching cars would be significantly easier for us than it would be for you.
- jjav 5y ago
  I've never lived in Europe but have family in three European countries, two major famous cities. All of them drive to work every day.

bennysomething 5y ago

Best thing about living in older European cities is they don't have this stupid zoning, they mixed commercial and housing because that's how people chose to live before planners got invented after ww2. Now planners are patting themselves on the back for recently inventing the 20 minute community, Which is exactly the same thing. My one major thing I want in life is to never ever live in a suburban development with zero to do except drive to places.

smusamashah 5y ago
And I thought it's only software UI designers who like to watch the world burn.
jltsiren 5y ago
Urban planning is probably as old as cities. Based on my limited experience, European planners just focus more on actual planning than mere zoning. When an area is being (re)developed, the planners try to figure out many of the details. How should be public transport and parking organized? Where are the walking and biking routes? Where should the parks and commercial spaces be? And so on. Older European cities are not as much organically grown as planned and replanned over centuries.
- bennysomething 5y ago
  You might be right, but there was an interesting thing on BBC radio 4 s few years ago, an British architect who grew up in Lebanon explained that he thought the UK should bin it's planners completely as all that had been built post ww2 when that arm of government was created, was monstrosities or at best only allow the equivalent of music's James blunt records. Not great but at least boring and acceptible.
toyg 5y ago
> before planners got invented after ww2. I mean, I don't disagree on the overall point, but one could do with reading up on people like Haussmann: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eug%C3%A8ne_Haussmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eug%C3%A8ne_Haussmann
- bennysomething 5y ago
  You are very right. What I said was sort of incorrect. I'm referring to this in the UK: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_and_Country_Planning_Act_1947 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_and_Country_Planning_Ac... In particular it means that owning land does not automatically allow you to build on it.
letitbeirie 5y ago
Lack of zoning is one element of the equation but having developed before the car is pretty crucial too. Houston, TX has no zoning laws to speak of but because most of its growth happened in the last century, it grew outwards instead of upwards.

silverpepsi 5y ago

>Of course we live this way, we designed our cities to make us live this way… I feel like you're almost making a moral statement there, it doesn't have the nuance I think exists. 1) You have people like my parents, siblings, and friends in the Midwest. The idea of living somewhere where they don't have the practical privacy of living on a farm literally horrifies them. I can't convince them otherwise, I've tried. They view me as simply "weird". Literally no hope, but maybe you can convince their kids. 2) You have people like me who love the energy, convenience, and stimulation of high density living but still end up driving and having a car because the cost differential is just way too extreme to logically justify living where I want to. There's a mystery to me in it. I spent time in Bangkok and Shanghai and why does it seem really easy to rent a centrally located place in a quality tall building, as if it's just normal, and without a prices that seems insanely disproportionate to other life expenses? Yet in the US, it's very rare. There's not enough demand? Labor costs are too high? Laws like building hight limits in the US prevent it? I've heard there are taboos in Europe for high buildings as well. I think there is also an element of culturally dictated space demands that comes into play. You can have these nice dense places in Bangkok because people will see 300 SQ ft and still rent it. In the US people told me I was brave for trying to survive by myself in "only" 500 SQ ft. They could never "stand not even being able to breathe". You won't have an easy time changing people's minds about this. Personally I'm willing to live in 150sq ft if I'm at the heart of the fun.

ryukafalz 5y ago
> I spent time in Bangkok and Shanghai and why does it seem really easy to rent a centrally located place in a quality tall building, as if it's just normal, and without a prices that seems insanely disproportionate to other life expenses? Yet in the US, it's very rare. There's not enough demand? Labor costs are too high? Laws like building hight limits in the US prevent it? There aren’t enough of them because in huge swaths of the country it’s illegal to build anything denser than a single-family home. There’s plenty of demand for it, there’s just not enough supply. Doesn’t even have to be high-rises, in most places it’s illegal to build the sort of mid-rises that are everywhere in European cities. EDIT: Oh, and it’s also usually illegal to put a business in a residential area, which forces things further apart and forces people to drive to get to anything.

TacticalCoder 5y ago

> I’m not sure what you’re talking about w.r.t Europe. Even if you have friends that drive everywhere that just is not how most people live day-to-day. I'm european and I've lived in several european countries. It's definitely how a huge percentage of the european population lives day to day. Not even 40% of the european population lives in cities. 30% is towns + suburb and 30% is countryside/seaside/mountain/rural. That's 60% right there where car is the de facto daily way of moving. And even in cities like Brussels or Paris you have those who do use their car on a daily basis, for short trips (like going to drop/pick the kids at school a few kilometers away). Insane statistics (x% of all car trips in Brussels are for less than y kilometers with both x and y being very low: although I forgot the numbers). I guess it depends on who your friends are but around me, in the various place I've lived in Europe, the car is totally king.

ericmay 5y ago
Ah ok. I didn’t realize Europe was built like places like Houston, LA, and Atlanta and everybody took cars everywhere, they did the whole 2hr car commute to the office, and they didn’t walk to the grocery store in their neighborhood and instead they all got in their big SUVs (which they own at least 2 of of course) to the local grocery store about a mile away with the huge parking lot. It’s a small wonder that Europeans can even afford to do this, given how expensive gas is compared to America.
- toyg 5y ago
  "Europe" is much less homogeneous, from an urban-planning perspective, than the US. We have medieval cities with narrow streets, like Barcelona or Firenze, mixed with '70s developments, suburban dormitories, megalopolis like London and Paris, and so on. So depending on who you ask, you will get a very different picture of their habits around transportation. Undoubtedly, you Americans drive more and longer than we do; but we still drive some, and have a similar issue with choosing our development models post-1980. But undoubtedly, ditching cars would be significantly easier for us than it would be for you.
jjav 5y ago
I've never lived in Europe but have family in three European countries, two major famous cities. All of them drive to work every day.