8 ms·

Funny thing is, making cities more green isn't even _that_ difficult. I see above conversations on living closer to nature, or mountains vs parks - but the vast

Funny thing is, making cities more green isn't even _that_ difficult. I see above conversations on living closer to nature, or mountains vs parks - but the vast majority of time spent is walking and driving in the cities. So it seems a no-brainer that before everything else, before thinking about taking a 2 hour drive to hike, or making the time for a weekly visit to the park, we should first make sure the places people actually walk through and live in every day are as green as possible. There is no one solution, of course, since at the very least climates and budgets can be wildly different, but a good start is making sure every street has a green canopy above, starting with the largest. After that, take every space you can and put something living on it.

diob 4y ago
This is part of why I love visiting Japan, so much nature scattered throughout otherwise urban areas. Lot's of other places in the world like it as well. Makes me jealous since I love in the concrete wasteland that is Phoenix.
- ema 4y ago
  Take a stroll around the intersection of north Randolph road and north 14th street. Randomly stumbled upon this when I was visiting Phoenix and it was a nice surprise. Overall I would say that concrete wasteland is a bit too harsh, at least the parts I walked through had a decent amount of vegetation here and there.
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  Hey fellow Phoenician! I actually have a different experience in Arizona. The masterplan communities here are great at prioritizing community space. My neighborhood is connected by an interior park-like trail that twists and winds for 22miles. Most houses are within 2 blocks of an entrance to the trail system, and there are two separate k-12 schools attached to the trails so kiddos can ride their scooters/bikes to school in the morning. There’s also some of the best hiking in the world around here. The camelback ridge line is awesome, a bunch of abandoned mines with surrounding settlements to go explore, etc. and it’s only 45minutes to the rim where, thanks to the jump in elevation, you start seeing more green.
  - diob 4y ago
    Lucky! I'm happy to have my house given the real estate situation these days, but I'm definitely in a "poorer" area :) Can't get anywhere green / nature without some sort of car. Part of the reason I am jealous of these other countries is there isn't as much of a divide between who gets the nice / and who is relegated to the commuting "concrete wasteland" as I phrased it. There's a strong sense of community / wanting everyone to have access. I'd love for our cities to start investing in the same way so everyone can reap the benefits (which I think are numerous, it has crazy dividends and life long impacts). Hard to push that here though.
- piva00 4y ago
  Sweden is pretty similar, lots and lots of nature with urban areas scattered on it. Stockholm, as an example, does it very well: a dense but small city-centre with lots of parks and greenery with the remaining sprawl outside the centre being scattered urban areas in the middle of the green with great public transportation connections.
  - amarant 4y ago
    Stockholm is almost cheating though, with all the water flowing through the city. What's impressive though is that Stockholm manages to keep (most of) that water clean, and you can go swimming in the city center, without ever visiting a swimming pool!
vishnugupta 4y ago
> making cities more green isn't even _that_ difficult. On the contrary it takes quite a bit of effort to keep the nature at bay. Neglect a corner of your house and next thing you notices small ecosystem developing full with small grass, mold, insects and what not. When Indian cities were locked down for a few months all sorts of birds and animals started appearing in the neighborhood.
- radlad 4y ago
  > Neglect a corner of your house and next thing you notices small ecosystem developing full with small grass, mold, insects and what not. When Indian cities were locked down for a few months all sorts of birds and animals started appearing in the neighborhood. Is this a downside or a positive?
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    Mold in your house is a health risk, so yeah nah, any life in the house is best left as intentional, potted plants and the like.
- woeh 4y ago
  Where I live, the city encourages citizens to make tiny gardens against the facades off their building. If you request them, the municipality will pop out some tiles from the sidewalk and supply the soil. The idea is that citizens themselves are then responsible for the gardening, and as you say "keeping nature at bay". The city has become prettier because of it.
  - pif 4y ago
    Very nice, where is it?
  - Loughla 4y ago
    >the municipality will pop out some tiles from the sidewalk Where do you walk, then?
lordnacho 4y ago
And make it bicycle friendly. People like nature but they also like and need exercise. There's a number of European cities that have made huge leaps in recent years beautifying themselves while allowing more people to bike every day.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > And make it bicycle friendly. People like nature but they also like and need exercise. even better, make them walkable.
  - theK 4y ago
    This! I love going mountain biking but commuting on a bike does not fit well with my person. And I t’s not missing bike lanes that are the problem with commuting, it is the numerous other issues a bike commute introduces to your life that are so often overseen. Cities must become walkable first again to succeed, making them bike friendly only pushes traffic problems a few years away… 5min walking through a park + 5-10 minutes in high speed, transport that is the future
    - zoover2020 4y ago
      Why not both?! Cycling and walking aren't mutually exclusive
      - Tade0 4y ago
        Personally I don't enjoy cyclists zipping around me on the sidewalk and cycle paths require space, so to me they sort of are. Of course you can remove roads to create cycle paths, but there's a point at which this starts to affect public transport and services - after all it's not just cars that use the roads.
      - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
        IMO they do not compete, but they are almost orthogonal problems. Walkability is an harder problem to solve than biking in modern car centric cities. Bikes can easily use repurposed space from existing roads, walking lanes solve no problem if things are not at walkable distance.
QuikAccount 4y ago
The problem with making cities green, like the problem with everything else, is terrible city design. There is quite a bit of greenery where I live and it is all anxiety inducing because it is planted near intersections and cutting off line of sight so you can't see pedestrians well or oncoming traffic. There are certain areas that have these wonderful bushes, too bad they opted for those bushes instead of sidewalks but hey, who cares about pedestrians am I right?
- pif 4y ago
  > it is planted near intersections and cutting off line of sight You've just described a wonderful and very intelligent form of traffic calming.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    When done well, yes, it calms traffic. But random trees or bushes at an intersection on an otherwise wide open road isn’t a good idea.
  - QuikAccount 4y ago
    They aren't calming when I can't see shit when pulling out into an intersection and turning.
  - riversflow 4y ago
    I guess its wonderful if you like killing people. Reducing visibility around corners is unsafe in the US, far too many people will drive the same and just take a chance that its all clear, I know of a couple people who died that way. I’ve seen this sort of thing work in London, so my theory is that traffic calming only works if you don’t treat vehicular manslaughter as akin to petty theft or even less as we do in the US. Good luck changing that, way too many people operate a vehicle everyday for them to want to take on that liability. Also young men are going to continue to drive with a devil may care attitude. Traffic calming measures in a motorist society like the US, in my observation, ironically cause much more aggressiveness on the road, and to me are the transportation equivalent of hostile architecture.
nicbou 4y ago
Europe does this much better. It's not so difficult to find yourself on a quieter, greener path just on your way to work. The countryside has a network of footpaths that connect everything. Wherever I am in Europe, I can count on a quiet evening walk. Berlin is outstanding for this. Wherever you are, it's easy to escape loud traffic and sit in a green, public space. Some have cafés and Biergarten in them. I find returning to Canada difficult because there is no way to escape loud roads. There's no path along the fields, forests or rivers. If you want to walk in nature, you have to drive to it.
- bakuninsbart 4y ago
  Berlin is better than most other places I've lived, but there is still so much room to improve. In my (sub-)district, pedestrians, cyclists, bars and trees share around 30% of the space on the street, while an additional 40% is parking and the last 30% is driving. The thing is, only around 35% of households here even own a car, and the vast majority of those probably just have it as a convenience. Public transport is quite good, and Berlin is super flat, so also really good for cycling. Very slowly things are moving in the right direction, but it is a constant fight against a loud minority and old local and federal rules favoring cars above all.
  - nicbou 4y ago
    Like you said, things are improving. There is a slow move towards wide bike lanes and pedestrianised neighborhoods. I love where things are going!
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    I will throw Rome here, often overlooked when talking about this stuff, but Rome has the widest green area in Europe, parks, gardens, reserves, green areas in general cover more than 65% of the total surface, totaling 85,000 hectares (~850 km2). In Berlin in comparison only 30% of the city area is green spaces and woodland, totaling ~260km2. One of the reasons why Berlin population is 1.2 times larger than Rome, even though the surface of the city is only 70% of the Italian Capitol.
blenderdt 4y ago
This is why I like the work of †Christopher Alexander so much. He doesn't only point out that our cities are bad for us but also gives solutions. For example moving parking space and roads to the back of the shops and create a green walking area in the front of the shops.
ogig 4y ago
I've been involved in the design of a green neighborhood in my city [1][2]. We spent quite some time taking in account as much considerations for sustainability and integration with the environment. It wasn't easy, at all. The hardest part, still fully unsolved, is operating with current legislation and outdated city planning rules. Those normatives revolve around high density and cheap development. Nature takes space and efficient buildings are expensive so housing constructors will have a hard time buying into the green zone. Efficient city planning is not easy, and requires well intended coordination on many fronts. On the other side I'm personally convinced closeness to nature is a life saver on many aspects so renewing those policies is a battle worth having. [1] https://arquitectura-sostenible.es/el-barrio-multiecologico-de-lugo-pionero-en-espana-y-referencia-en-la-union-europea/ https://arquitectura-sostenible.es/el-barrio-multiecologico-... [2] http://concellodelugo.gal/es/actuaciones/proyecto-lugobiodinamico http://concellodelugo.gal/es/actuaciones/proyecto-lugobiodin...
- baby-yoda 4y ago
  > The hardest part, still fully unsolved, is operating with current legislation and outdated city planning rules. Those normatives revolve around high density and cheap development. Nature takes space and efficient buildings are expensive so housing constructors will have a hard time buying into the green zone. where i live there is constant discussion of "we need high density housing" and this is exactly what comes to mind. eventually this would end up with something like soviet style block housing, which doesn't seem so well received around the world. not to mention this style of housing is very constrictive in terms of lifestyle - maximum 2 child family with minimal space for hobbies/interests, limited sunlight, high noise pollution, etc. this city in Estonia [0] for example, is somewhat pleasing to look at from a birds eye view and seems to check the boxes for having green space but i wonder about the range of residents' experiences. [0] - https://www.traveller.ee/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/8522207e5e2ba5ba20b01e0686a111fa.jpg https://www.traveller.ee/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/852...
  - supergarfield 4y ago
    You can do high density without block housing! Many European cities are good examples of this. Paris, for instance, has very high density because it's packed with mid-rise (~7-8 floors) buildings[1]. Another good example is the section of Manhattan between Midtown and Lower Manhattan, which is also primarily mid-rise and very dense. Apart from that I do think it's true that block housing separated by large parks (as shown in your picture) doesn't work well; it's discussed in e.g. Jacob's _The Death and Life of Great American Cities_. [1]: https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6238/5b71/3e4b/31a8/5c00/0049/slideshow/rodrigo-kugnharski-pdWc5wm1STw-unsplash.jpg?1647860579 https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6238/5b71/3e4b/31a8/5...
ajuc 4y ago
This is one benefit of commieblocks nobody's talking about. They lead to green cities. This is how commieblock districts of my city look like: https://spoldzielnialsm.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Obecnie_3_800.jpg https://spoldzielnialsm.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Obecni... https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ud9-Z0UHVHg/W7-qUjfNT9I/AAAAAAAAiME/gyl2o6EGVXgI9ahveeSH7PZ9OdrlOWvvQCLcBGAs/s1600/2018.05.27.%2BLublin%252C%2BLSM%2Bz%2Bdrona-2.jpg https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ud9-Z0UHVHg/W7-qUjfNT9I/AAAAAAAAi... Modern car-centric districts are much worse, and single houses districts are car-centric concrete hell in comparison.
- jll29 4y ago
  Living alone or in small families also means a lot of space for not a lot of people. In Berlin (which has been mentioned above as a very green city) there are also many communities of people that live together despite not being in a family or relationship. Such flatshares/apartment sharing is more ecologically sustainable because one kitchen can serve 3-4 people that would otherwise have to buy their own kitchen and appliances. Personally, I would not mind sharing a TV (barely use one) or washing machine or garden with more people, but the way western society works in terms of building defaults is biased towards individualism not community building.
- jotm 4y ago
  We had trees on the main streets in my home city. Then they "modernized" it, widened the roads and cut the trees (even though there was still enough space for them, or at least newly planted ones!). Now it looks pretty shit (just imo), and it's hellish in summer - no shade, hot as hell, the buildings with their new windows and white finishes are blinding. I used to love walking there, now I avoid them.
- Asooka 4y ago
  Yeah, the Soviets and central planning get a lot of deserved flak, but as someone who grew in that part of the world, I hold that they got high density urban planning right. Not the execution, of course - the endemic corruption saw to that, all those buildings need a lot of repairs and upkeep, but the plan was sound. You have small quiet commercial buildings on the ground floor and every district has basic amenities within walking distance, with large communal green spaces. Sadly we're now trying to do everything the American way, i.e. the way 80s-90s America is presented by TV. You can look at a new building and pinpoint which sitcom served as inspiration. Picture perfect buildings being plopped on the outskirts of the city with frankly absurd connections to the roads around them. Residential-only buildings being built right to the edge of the road and cannibalising all the green space. New roads cutting right across old footpaths with no way to cross them. At least there's a little bit less corruption and a bit more freedom.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I think there's a lot that the people that actually live there can do. When I think of American housing, it's either big dense cities, or suburbs. The suburbs are all... bland, a concrete driveway and grass. All very low maintenance. If those were to do some gardening - plant a tree, some bushes, flower perks, longer grasses, etc - you already will get a much nicer place to live. And in the cities, people can do things like hanging baskets out of windowsills, or potted plants out the door. And of course things inside the house. I will acknowledge though that this is from a position of privilege, we have a lively plant and flower industry in my country and hundreds of garden centers around the country.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  The crazy thing is grass lawns are HIGH maintenance. It’s effectively an economic signal - “look at me, I have time and money to maintain this useless patch of grass!” It’s much easier to plant a mix of greens - clover, grasses, etc (effectively pasture seed blend). Requires less water, less mowing, and much less fertilizer.
toshk 4y ago
I was walking in Glasgow, everything felt grey, bland and depressive. At some point I realized they have zero trees in the streets. Also means no bird sounds in the background, no green leaves adding some colors to the concrete, no blossoming in the spring. Being in a city where every street is filled with trees I realized how big of an impact it is. It is however not "easy", the old big trees you want, destroy your streets, branches fall in storms, sometimes even whole trees fall over.
- cameronh90 4y ago
  This is similar to the feeling I get when I travel from London to Manchester. While I know London isn't everyone's cup of tea, it has a ton of parks, trees and nature compared to many other cities, and it's usually quick to dip away from the bustle into a relatively quiet oasis. You're rarely more than a 5 minute walk away from a small park.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Sydney takes this to another level, being lots of parks and lots of suburbia (which unfortunately means more car reliance, but there is a lot of green space). Even lots of beaches and a national park! I imagine a lot of it is “topographically forced” by the harbour / rivers intruding everywhere.
pharmakom 4y ago
Good luck trying to reallocate space from motor transport to greenery. Few things have mobilised a loud minority quite like it in London.
fillskills 4y ago
At HealingGardens.co we are bringing people closer to nature. We served 1400 customers so far in 1 year and plan to do more. Actively looking for a cofounder who can develop full stack. If interested, please email abhi@healinggardens.co
throwaway894345 4y ago
It’s tedious to take a 2 hour drive to go hiking, but it’s basically impossible for most of us to make our cities considerably greener. Obviously if it were a realistic possibility, I would be all for it, but for most of us it depends on factors well outside of our control and anyway it would be a decades-long initiative.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
themeiguoren 4y ago
This is great as long as you aren’t fighting your local environment. So much green has no place in desert cities where water tables are plummeting. (Looking at you, Vegas and Phoenix)

diob 4y ago

This is part of why I love visiting Japan, so much nature scattered throughout otherwise urban areas. Lot's of other places in the world like it as well. Makes me jealous since I love in the concrete wasteland that is Phoenix.

ema 4y ago
Take a stroll around the intersection of north Randolph road and north 14th street. Randomly stumbled upon this when I was visiting Phoenix and it was a nice surprise. Overall I would say that concrete wasteland is a bit too harsh, at least the parts I walked through had a decent amount of vegetation here and there.
r3trohack3r 4y ago
Hey fellow Phoenician! I actually have a different experience in Arizona. The masterplan communities here are great at prioritizing community space. My neighborhood is connected by an interior park-like trail that twists and winds for 22miles. Most houses are within 2 blocks of an entrance to the trail system, and there are two separate k-12 schools attached to the trails so kiddos can ride their scooters/bikes to school in the morning. There’s also some of the best hiking in the world around here. The camelback ridge line is awesome, a bunch of abandoned mines with surrounding settlements to go explore, etc. and it’s only 45minutes to the rim where, thanks to the jump in elevation, you start seeing more green.
- diob 4y ago
  Lucky! I'm happy to have my house given the real estate situation these days, but I'm definitely in a "poorer" area :) Can't get anywhere green / nature without some sort of car. Part of the reason I am jealous of these other countries is there isn't as much of a divide between who gets the nice / and who is relegated to the commuting "concrete wasteland" as I phrased it. There's a strong sense of community / wanting everyone to have access. I'd love for our cities to start investing in the same way so everyone can reap the benefits (which I think are numerous, it has crazy dividends and life long impacts). Hard to push that here though.
piva00 4y ago
Sweden is pretty similar, lots and lots of nature with urban areas scattered on it. Stockholm, as an example, does it very well: a dense but small city-centre with lots of parks and greenery with the remaining sprawl outside the centre being scattered urban areas in the middle of the green with great public transportation connections.
- amarant 4y ago
  Stockholm is almost cheating though, with all the water flowing through the city. What's impressive though is that Stockholm manages to keep (most of) that water clean, and you can go swimming in the city center, without ever visiting a swimming pool!

vishnugupta 4y ago

> making cities more green isn't even _that_ difficult. On the contrary it takes quite a bit of effort to keep the nature at bay. Neglect a corner of your house and next thing you notices small ecosystem developing full with small grass, mold, insects and what not. When Indian cities were locked down for a few months all sorts of birds and animals started appearing in the neighborhood.

radlad 4y ago
> Neglect a corner of your house and next thing you notices small ecosystem developing full with small grass, mold, insects and what not. When Indian cities were locked down for a few months all sorts of birds and animals started appearing in the neighborhood. Is this a downside or a positive?
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  Mold in your house is a health risk, so yeah nah, any life in the house is best left as intentional, potted plants and the like.
woeh 4y ago
Where I live, the city encourages citizens to make tiny gardens against the facades off their building. If you request them, the municipality will pop out some tiles from the sidewalk and supply the soil. The idea is that citizens themselves are then responsible for the gardening, and as you say "keeping nature at bay". The city has become prettier because of it.
- pif 4y ago
  Very nice, where is it?
- Loughla 4y ago
  >the municipality will pop out some tiles from the sidewalk Where do you walk, then?

lordnacho 4y ago

And make it bicycle friendly. People like nature but they also like and need exercise. There's a number of European cities that have made huge leaps in recent years beautifying themselves while allowing more people to bike every day.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> And make it bicycle friendly. People like nature but they also like and need exercise. even better, make them walkable.
- theK 4y ago
  This! I love going mountain biking but commuting on a bike does not fit well with my person. And I t’s not missing bike lanes that are the problem with commuting, it is the numerous other issues a bike commute introduces to your life that are so often overseen. Cities must become walkable first again to succeed, making them bike friendly only pushes traffic problems a few years away… 5min walking through a park + 5-10 minutes in high speed, transport that is the future
  - zoover2020 4y ago
    Why not both?! Cycling and walking aren't mutually exclusive
    - Tade0 4y ago
      Personally I don't enjoy cyclists zipping around me on the sidewalk and cycle paths require space, so to me they sort of are. Of course you can remove roads to create cycle paths, but there's a point at which this starts to affect public transport and services - after all it's not just cars that use the roads.
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      IMO they do not compete, but they are almost orthogonal problems. Walkability is an harder problem to solve than biking in modern car centric cities. Bikes can easily use repurposed space from existing roads, walking lanes solve no problem if things are not at walkable distance.

QuikAccount 4y ago

The problem with making cities green, like the problem with everything else, is terrible city design. There is quite a bit of greenery where I live and it is all anxiety inducing because it is planted near intersections and cutting off line of sight so you can't see pedestrians well or oncoming traffic. There are certain areas that have these wonderful bushes, too bad they opted for those bushes instead of sidewalks but hey, who cares about pedestrians am I right?

pif 4y ago
> it is planted near intersections and cutting off line of sight You've just described a wonderful and very intelligent form of traffic calming.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  When done well, yes, it calms traffic. But random trees or bushes at an intersection on an otherwise wide open road isn’t a good idea.
- QuikAccount 4y ago
  They aren't calming when I can't see shit when pulling out into an intersection and turning.
- riversflow 4y ago
  I guess its wonderful if you like killing people. Reducing visibility around corners is unsafe in the US, far too many people will drive the same and just take a chance that its all clear, I know of a couple people who died that way. I’ve seen this sort of thing work in London, so my theory is that traffic calming only works if you don’t treat vehicular manslaughter as akin to petty theft or even less as we do in the US. Good luck changing that, way too many people operate a vehicle everyday for them to want to take on that liability. Also young men are going to continue to drive with a devil may care attitude. Traffic calming measures in a motorist society like the US, in my observation, ironically cause much more aggressiveness on the road, and to me are the transportation equivalent of hostile architecture.

nicbou 4y ago

Europe does this much better. It's not so difficult to find yourself on a quieter, greener path just on your way to work. The countryside has a network of footpaths that connect everything. Wherever I am in Europe, I can count on a quiet evening walk. Berlin is outstanding for this. Wherever you are, it's easy to escape loud traffic and sit in a green, public space. Some have cafés and Biergarten in them. I find returning to Canada difficult because there is no way to escape loud roads. There's no path along the fields, forests or rivers. If you want to walk in nature, you have to drive to it.

bakuninsbart 4y ago
Berlin is better than most other places I've lived, but there is still so much room to improve. In my (sub-)district, pedestrians, cyclists, bars and trees share around 30% of the space on the street, while an additional 40% is parking and the last 30% is driving. The thing is, only around 35% of households here even own a car, and the vast majority of those probably just have it as a convenience. Public transport is quite good, and Berlin is super flat, so also really good for cycling. Very slowly things are moving in the right direction, but it is a constant fight against a loud minority and old local and federal rules favoring cars above all.
- nicbou 4y ago
  Like you said, things are improving. There is a slow move towards wide bike lanes and pedestrianised neighborhoods. I love where things are going!
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  I will throw Rome here, often overlooked when talking about this stuff, but Rome has the widest green area in Europe, parks, gardens, reserves, green areas in general cover more than 65% of the total surface, totaling 85,000 hectares (~850 km2). In Berlin in comparison only 30% of the city area is green spaces and woodland, totaling ~260km2. One of the reasons why Berlin population is 1.2 times larger than Rome, even though the surface of the city is only 70% of the Italian Capitol.

blenderdt 4y ago

This is why I like the work of †Christopher Alexander so much. He doesn't only point out that our cities are bad for us but also gives solutions. For example moving parking space and roads to the back of the shops and create a green walking area in the front of the shops.

ogig 4y ago

I've been involved in the design of a green neighborhood in my city [1][2]. We spent quite some time taking in account as much considerations for sustainability and integration with the environment. It wasn't easy, at all. The hardest part, still fully unsolved, is operating with current legislation and outdated city planning rules. Those normatives revolve around high density and cheap development. Nature takes space and efficient buildings are expensive so housing constructors will have a hard time buying into the green zone. Efficient city planning is not easy, and requires well intended coordination on many fronts. On the other side I'm personally convinced closeness to nature is a life saver on many aspects so renewing those policies is a battle worth having. [1] https://arquitectura-sostenible.es/el-barrio-multiecologico-de-lugo-pionero-en-espana-y-referencia-en-la-union-europea/ https://arquitectura-sostenible.es/el-barrio-multiecologico-... [2] http://concellodelugo.gal/es/actuaciones/proyecto-lugobiodinamico http://concellodelugo.gal/es/actuaciones/proyecto-lugobiodin...

baby-yoda 4y ago
> The hardest part, still fully unsolved, is operating with current legislation and outdated city planning rules. Those normatives revolve around high density and cheap development. Nature takes space and efficient buildings are expensive so housing constructors will have a hard time buying into the green zone. where i live there is constant discussion of "we need high density housing" and this is exactly what comes to mind. eventually this would end up with something like soviet style block housing, which doesn't seem so well received around the world. not to mention this style of housing is very constrictive in terms of lifestyle - maximum 2 child family with minimal space for hobbies/interests, limited sunlight, high noise pollution, etc. this city in Estonia [0] for example, is somewhat pleasing to look at from a birds eye view and seems to check the boxes for having green space but i wonder about the range of residents' experiences. [0] - https://www.traveller.ee/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/8522207e5e2ba5ba20b01e0686a111fa.jpg https://www.traveller.ee/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/852...
- supergarfield 4y ago
  You can do high density without block housing! Many European cities are good examples of this. Paris, for instance, has very high density because it's packed with mid-rise (~7-8 floors) buildings[1]. Another good example is the section of Manhattan between Midtown and Lower Manhattan, which is also primarily mid-rise and very dense. Apart from that I do think it's true that block housing separated by large parks (as shown in your picture) doesn't work well; it's discussed in e.g. Jacob's _The Death and Life of Great American Cities_. [1]: https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6238/5b71/3e4b/31a8/5c00/0049/slideshow/rodrigo-kugnharski-pdWc5wm1STw-unsplash.jpg?1647860579 https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6238/5b71/3e4b/31a8/5...

ajuc 4y ago

This is one benefit of commieblocks nobody's talking about. They lead to green cities. This is how commieblock districts of my city look like: https://spoldzielnialsm.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Obecnie_3_800.jpg https://spoldzielnialsm.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Obecni... https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ud9-Z0UHVHg/W7-qUjfNT9I/AAAAAAAAiME/gyl2o6EGVXgI9ahveeSH7PZ9OdrlOWvvQCLcBGAs/s1600/2018.05.27.%2BLublin%252C%2BLSM%2Bz%2Bdrona-2.jpg https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ud9-Z0UHVHg/W7-qUjfNT9I/AAAAAAAAi... Modern car-centric districts are much worse, and single houses districts are car-centric concrete hell in comparison.

jll29 4y ago
Living alone or in small families also means a lot of space for not a lot of people. In Berlin (which has been mentioned above as a very green city) there are also many communities of people that live together despite not being in a family or relationship. Such flatshares/apartment sharing is more ecologically sustainable because one kitchen can serve 3-4 people that would otherwise have to buy their own kitchen and appliances. Personally, I would not mind sharing a TV (barely use one) or washing machine or garden with more people, but the way western society works in terms of building defaults is biased towards individualism not community building.
jotm 4y ago
We had trees on the main streets in my home city. Then they "modernized" it, widened the roads and cut the trees (even though there was still enough space for them, or at least newly planted ones!). Now it looks pretty shit (just imo), and it's hellish in summer - no shade, hot as hell, the buildings with their new windows and white finishes are blinding. I used to love walking there, now I avoid them.
Asooka 4y ago
Yeah, the Soviets and central planning get a lot of deserved flak, but as someone who grew in that part of the world, I hold that they got high density urban planning right. Not the execution, of course - the endemic corruption saw to that, all those buildings need a lot of repairs and upkeep, but the plan was sound. You have small quiet commercial buildings on the ground floor and every district has basic amenities within walking distance, with large communal green spaces. Sadly we're now trying to do everything the American way, i.e. the way 80s-90s America is presented by TV. You can look at a new building and pinpoint which sitcom served as inspiration. Picture perfect buildings being plopped on the outskirts of the city with frankly absurd connections to the roads around them. Residential-only buildings being built right to the edge of the road and cannibalising all the green space. New roads cutting right across old footpaths with no way to cross them. At least there's a little bit less corruption and a bit more freedom.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

I think there's a lot that the people that actually live there can do. When I think of American housing, it's either big dense cities, or suburbs. The suburbs are all... bland, a concrete driveway and grass. All very low maintenance. If those were to do some gardening - plant a tree, some bushes, flower perks, longer grasses, etc - you already will get a much nicer place to live. And in the cities, people can do things like hanging baskets out of windowsills, or potted plants out the door. And of course things inside the house. I will acknowledge though that this is from a position of privilege, we have a lively plant and flower industry in my country and hundreds of garden centers around the country.

alistairSH 4y ago
The crazy thing is grass lawns are HIGH maintenance. It’s effectively an economic signal - “look at me, I have time and money to maintain this useless patch of grass!” It’s much easier to plant a mix of greens - clover, grasses, etc (effectively pasture seed blend). Requires less water, less mowing, and much less fertilizer.

toshk 4y ago

I was walking in Glasgow, everything felt grey, bland and depressive. At some point I realized they have zero trees in the streets. Also means no bird sounds in the background, no green leaves adding some colors to the concrete, no blossoming in the spring. Being in a city where every street is filled with trees I realized how big of an impact it is. It is however not "easy", the old big trees you want, destroy your streets, branches fall in storms, sometimes even whole trees fall over.

cameronh90 4y ago
This is similar to the feeling I get when I travel from London to Manchester. While I know London isn't everyone's cup of tea, it has a ton of parks, trees and nature compared to many other cities, and it's usually quick to dip away from the bustle into a relatively quiet oasis. You're rarely more than a 5 minute walk away from a small park.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Sydney takes this to another level, being lots of parks and lots of suburbia (which unfortunately means more car reliance, but there is a lot of green space). Even lots of beaches and a national park! I imagine a lot of it is “topographically forced” by the harbour / rivers intruding everywhere.

pharmakom 4y ago

Good luck trying to reallocate space from motor transport to greenery. Few things have mobilised a loud minority quite like it in London.

fillskills 4y ago

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throwaway894345 4y ago

It’s tedious to take a 2 hour drive to go hiking, but it’s basically impossible for most of us to make our cities considerably greener. Obviously if it were a realistic possibility, I would be all for it, but for most of us it depends on factors well outside of our control and anyway it would be a decades-long initiative.

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themeiguoren 4y ago

This is great as long as you aren’t fighting your local environment. So much green has no place in desert cities where water tables are plummeting. (Looking at you, Vegas and Phoenix)