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Presumably the parent has something more drastic in mind, like leveling every city and replanning it around bikes and extending public transit to every rural co

Presumably the parent has something more drastic in mind, like leveling every city and replanning it around bikes and extending public transit to every rural community. Basically treat every place like a dense urban area or force people to move into dense urban areas. At least those are the common, facile alternatives presented by the anti-car side of these debates. It's just urban chauvinism.

afarrell 5y ago
Faced with an overwhelming problem, is is tempting to seek simple solutions which would boil the ocean. Personally, I’d prioritize suboptimal solutions which prevent a rise in ocean temperatures.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Maybe I'm not very clever, but it's hard to guess what you're driving at here.
  - afarrell 5y ago
    1. An argument (that others are also making) that we need to be willing to accept partial solutions. 2. A pun.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Yes, I understand that. I'm not sure which is the "partial solution" in this scenario, EVs?
kmeisthax 5y ago
I've never heard an anti-car person call for public transit in the sticks. It doesn't seem viable to me[0], and I'm pretty anti-car as is. Most people live in cities or suburbs now and I don't see that changing anytime soon - so it doesn't really make sense to disrupt the lives of people living in rural areas. While "make everything dense again" is kind of the end-goal, the way we get there isn't so much by "forcing" people to move into dense urban areas. At least, not unless you consider markets to be a form of coercion, in which case everything is "forced" all of the time and I have no argument for you. What happens is that we stop overplanning zoning codes, let commercial and residential zones mix, and allow the market to do it's job rather than just lining the pockets of whoever bought into the neighborhood 30 years ago. As to your point about urban chauvinism, I do want to point out that while New Urbanism (the thing you're talking about) is really prevalent in urban spaces, so are NIMBYs. It's not so much "everyone should live like us"; it's an argument between people who want city centers to actually be cities and people who still think mixed-use land is the path to crack-era Manhattan. Dense urban spaces are already so desirable now that pretty much every formerly-cheap neighborhood has been gentrified to the hilt. If more people want to live in a dense urban area, then why shouldn't the housing market be allowed to cater to that desire and expand the urban core outwards or upwards? [0] Though I may be wrong about this. Part of the reason why Amtrak still exists in it's current form is because it's a de-facto subsidy from Acela[1] riders to rural towns with no airport links. [1] Me: Mom, can I have a Shinkansen? Mom: No, we have a Shinkansen at home. Shinkansen at home: acela.jpg
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  > I've never heard an anti-car person call for public transit in the sticks. I don't think anti-car people call for rural public transit as much as they ignore rural, suburban, and exurban areas altogether. They call for "banning cars" (or drastically reducing them) without articulating how this would actually work outside of dense cities. > While "make everything dense again" is kind of the end-goal, the way we get there isn't so much by "forcing" people to move into dense urban areas. At least, not unless you consider markets to be a form of coercion, in which case everything is "forced" all of the time and I have no argument for you. What happens is that we stop overplanning zoning codes, let commercial and residential zones mix, and allow the market to do it's job rather than just lining the pockets of whoever bought into the neighborhood 30 years ago. I'm kind of fine with this (I like walkable neighborhoods!). I would like more mixing of residential and commercial (more, smaller shops), but I think it's a foregone conclusion that this would result in the kind of dramatically increased density that makes European-style public transit ubiquitous (a lot of people like space, and there's a lot of it in the US). I certainly don't think that's going to happen on a time scale that allows us to skip EVs while meeting climate targets like the OP suggests. > As to your point about urban chauvinism, I do want to point out that while New Urbanism (the thing you're talking about) is really prevalent in urban spaces, so are NIMBYs. It's not so much "everyone should live like us"; it's an argument between people who want city centers to actually be cities and people who still think mixed-use land is the path to crack-era Manhattan. I'm not sure what New Urbanism is, but I would be fine with urban people quibbling about how urban spaces should look (I live in a major US city); however, this debate isn't scoped exclusively to cities. > Dense urban spaces are already so desirable now that pretty much every formerly-cheap neighborhood has been gentrified to the hilt. If more people want to live in a dense urban area, then why shouldn't the housing market be allowed to cater to that desire and expand the urban core outwards or upwards? I don't think this is true except perhaps in NYC or the Bay Area. But in general I don't think anyone has a problem with the concept of expanding urban density (although there's surely some NIMBYism from people who don't want their suburb to be the target of urban expansion).

afarrell 5y ago

Faced with an overwhelming problem, is is tempting to seek simple solutions which would boil the ocean. Personally, I’d prioritize suboptimal solutions which prevent a rise in ocean temperatures.

throwaway894345 5y ago
Maybe I'm not very clever, but it's hard to guess what you're driving at here.
- afarrell 5y ago
  1. An argument (that others are also making) that we need to be willing to accept partial solutions. 2. A pun.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Yes, I understand that. I'm not sure which is the "partial solution" in this scenario, EVs?

kmeisthax 5y ago

I've never heard an anti-car person call for public transit in the sticks. It doesn't seem viable to me[0], and I'm pretty anti-car as is. Most people live in cities or suburbs now and I don't see that changing anytime soon - so it doesn't really make sense to disrupt the lives of people living in rural areas. While "make everything dense again" is kind of the end-goal, the way we get there isn't so much by "forcing" people to move into dense urban areas. At least, not unless you consider markets to be a form of coercion, in which case everything is "forced" all of the time and I have no argument for you. What happens is that we stop overplanning zoning codes, let commercial and residential zones mix, and allow the market to do it's job rather than just lining the pockets of whoever bought into the neighborhood 30 years ago. As to your point about urban chauvinism, I do want to point out that while New Urbanism (the thing you're talking about) is really prevalent in urban spaces, so are NIMBYs. It's not so much "everyone should live like us"; it's an argument between people who want city centers to actually be cities and people who still think mixed-use land is the path to crack-era Manhattan. Dense urban spaces are already so desirable now that pretty much every formerly-cheap neighborhood has been gentrified to the hilt. If more people want to live in a dense urban area, then why shouldn't the housing market be allowed to cater to that desire and expand the urban core outwards or upwards? [0] Though I may be wrong about this. Part of the reason why Amtrak still exists in it's current form is because it's a de-facto subsidy from Acela[1] riders to rural towns with no airport links. [1] Me: Mom, can I have a Shinkansen? Mom: No, we have a Shinkansen at home. Shinkansen at home: acela.jpg

throwaway894345 5y ago
> I've never heard an anti-car person call for public transit in the sticks. I don't think anti-car people call for rural public transit as much as they ignore rural, suburban, and exurban areas altogether. They call for "banning cars" (or drastically reducing them) without articulating how this would actually work outside of dense cities. > While "make everything dense again" is kind of the end-goal, the way we get there isn't so much by "forcing" people to move into dense urban areas. At least, not unless you consider markets to be a form of coercion, in which case everything is "forced" all of the time and I have no argument for you. What happens is that we stop overplanning zoning codes, let commercial and residential zones mix, and allow the market to do it's job rather than just lining the pockets of whoever bought into the neighborhood 30 years ago. I'm kind of fine with this (I like walkable neighborhoods!). I would like more mixing of residential and commercial (more, smaller shops), but I think it's a foregone conclusion that this would result in the kind of dramatically increased density that makes European-style public transit ubiquitous (a lot of people like space, and there's a lot of it in the US). I certainly don't think that's going to happen on a time scale that allows us to skip EVs while meeting climate targets like the OP suggests. > As to your point about urban chauvinism, I do want to point out that while New Urbanism (the thing you're talking about) is really prevalent in urban spaces, so are NIMBYs. It's not so much "everyone should live like us"; it's an argument between people who want city centers to actually be cities and people who still think mixed-use land is the path to crack-era Manhattan. I'm not sure what New Urbanism is, but I would be fine with urban people quibbling about how urban spaces should look (I live in a major US city); however, this debate isn't scoped exclusively to cities. > Dense urban spaces are already so desirable now that pretty much every formerly-cheap neighborhood has been gentrified to the hilt. If more people want to live in a dense urban area, then why shouldn't the housing market be allowed to cater to that desire and expand the urban core outwards or upwards? I don't think this is true except perhaps in NYC or the Bay Area. But in general I don't think anyone has a problem with the concept of expanding urban density (although there's surely some NIMBYism from people who don't want their suburb to be the target of urban expansion).