3 ms·

Cities were demolished to accommodate cars in the past, I see no reason why such a retrofit would be impossible in the other direction. There is some potential

by occz 4y ago

Cities were demolished to accommodate cars in the past, I see no reason why such a retrofit would be impossible in the other direction. There is some potential in reduction by moving jobs to WFH when possible, but this is not mutually exclusive with migrating to energy efficient means of transportation and urban development. Hence, I don't think it's relevant in the discussion.

hot_gril 4y ago
In what way were they demolished? Cars allow for urban sprawl. People now have homes in places where they rely on cars to get to work. I also have a theory that widespread WFH makes dense cities obsolete. Dense cities seem to originate from big money appearing somewhere and everyone building around it, eventually reaching the typical situation where the highest-paid can afford to live there and everyone else commutes in and out. If the housing, roads, or public transit are expanded, more people come and saturate them again, because the commute is worth the pay. (If it's just roads, such commutes are super polluting.) But when the execs and higher-paid workers don't need to be there in person, it dominoes. There's no extra money to be made providing physical goods/services in that area, and no incentive for such a forced commute or crammed living quarters. Physical laborers end up working locally, and more isolated, less dense, lower-income but lower-cost-of-living cities form. I used to work in SF and observe these things closely, and now I'm watching what happens as many of the techies leave.
- occz 4y ago
  >In what way were they demolished? Cars allow for urban sprawl. People now have homes in places where they rely on cars to get to work. Highway construction demolished a lot of neighbourhoods in cities. In the U.S, the demolished neighborhoods were also disproportionately low-income and majority non-white neighborhoods. >I also have a theory that widespread WFH makes dense cities obsolete. Dense cities seem to originate from big money appearing somewhere and everyone building around it, eventually reaching the typical situation where the highest-paid can afford to live there and everyone else commutes in and out. If the housing, roads, or public transit are expanded, more people come and saturate them again, because the commute is worth the pay. (If it's just roads, such commutes are super polluting.) But when the execs and higher-paid workers don't need to be there in person, it dominoes. There's no extra money to be made providing physical goods/services in that area, and no incentive for such a forced commute or crammed living quarters. Physical laborers end up working locally, and more isolated, less dense, lower-income but lower-cost-of-living cities form. This is only really true if work is the only reason someone would live in a dense city, and it's not. Cities are a thing because they allow for economies of scale in all things, be that culture, dating, transportation or otherwise. This efficiency is somewhat obscured by a plethora of reasons right now - car-oriented infrastructure subsidised by people not utilizing that infrastructure is one of the higher ones on the list.
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    > Highway construction demolished a lot of neighbourhoods in cities. In the U.S, the demolished neighborhoods were also disproportionately low-income and majority non-white neighborhoods. The space a highway or other road takes up is nowhere close to the space it allows to inhabited, though. LA County is the perfect example of an area that has grown via roads to become non-viable for trains. It's just too spread out. Without the roads, tons of households would be cut off from jobs they commute to, again the low-income ones. I'm not justifying the original construction of the highways, just saying what would happen if we went back. > This is only really true if work is the only reason someone would live in a dense city, and it's not. Cities are a thing because they allow for economies of scale in all things, be that culture, dating, transportation or otherwise. Regular cities make sense for that. You get two of each kind of business in proximity, and most people are good with that. Dense cities go beyond that point and get to where less scalable resources become strained, like housing. It's a clear sign when people are commuting from outside that something is wrong. Yes, some people still prefer the excitement, but usually just the young and single. SF pre and post tech boom, and during/after 2020, gives you an idea of how many people are just there for the work.
- Xylakant 4y ago
  > In what way were they demolished? Cars allow for urban sprawl. People now have homes in places where they rely on cars to get to work. Local example: There were plans in the 1950 to have a highway cross through Berlin Kreuzberg (The A106, today Oranienstraße for the locals). Part of those plans were put in motion, the buildings around Kottbusser Tor date back to those ideas. Massive local protests put a stop to that. More recent example from Berlin: the current extension of the A100. You can find enough examples of highways cutting through existing neighborhoods in the US if you look around a little. To cite [1] “ Planners of the interstate highway system, which began to take shape after the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, routed some highways directly, and sometimes purposefully, through Black and brown communities. In some instances, the government took homes by eminent domain.” [1] https://text.npr.org/984784455 https://text.npr.org/984784455
  - rapnie 4y ago
    Utrecht in The Netherlands is a good example of reconstruction. Where a 12-lane motorway through the city center - created in the seventies - was removed to restore a canal that existed for hundreds of years, since the birth of the city. It is such an enormous improvement, now that the project is finished. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/utrecht-restores-historic-canal-made-into-motorway-in-1970s https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/utrecht-restor...
- astura 4y ago
  >In what way were they demolished? See: the cross Bronx expressway On a personal note: in the 1970s an entire city block of very old homes in my city was taken via eminent domain to make room for a parking garage.
throwaway894345 4y ago
At a minimum, because there is very little political appetite for it (apart from left-wing urban professionals) in large part because it’s an insanely inefficient way to meet climate goals (compared with building out clean energy sources and electrifying fossil fuel applications like cars), but also because it’s insanely invasive (it requires pushing everyone into a lifestyle they don’t want).

by occz 4y ago

hot_gril 4y ago

In what way were they demolished? Cars allow for urban sprawl. People now have homes in places where they rely on cars to get to work. I also have a theory that widespread WFH makes dense cities obsolete. Dense cities seem to originate from big money appearing somewhere and everyone building around it, eventually reaching the typical situation where the highest-paid can afford to live there and everyone else commutes in and out. If the housing, roads, or public transit are expanded, more people come and saturate them again, because the commute is worth the pay. (If it's just roads, such commutes are super polluting.) But when the execs and higher-paid workers don't need to be there in person, it dominoes. There's no extra money to be made providing physical goods/services in that area, and no incentive for such a forced commute or crammed living quarters. Physical laborers end up working locally, and more isolated, less dense, lower-income but lower-cost-of-living cities form. I used to work in SF and observe these things closely, and now I'm watching what happens as many of the techies leave.

occz 4y ago
>In what way were they demolished? Cars allow for urban sprawl. People now have homes in places where they rely on cars to get to work. Highway construction demolished a lot of neighbourhoods in cities. In the U.S, the demolished neighborhoods were also disproportionately low-income and majority non-white neighborhoods. >I also have a theory that widespread WFH makes dense cities obsolete. Dense cities seem to originate from big money appearing somewhere and everyone building around it, eventually reaching the typical situation where the highest-paid can afford to live there and everyone else commutes in and out. If the housing, roads, or public transit are expanded, more people come and saturate them again, because the commute is worth the pay. (If it's just roads, such commutes are super polluting.) But when the execs and higher-paid workers don't need to be there in person, it dominoes. There's no extra money to be made providing physical goods/services in that area, and no incentive for such a forced commute or crammed living quarters. Physical laborers end up working locally, and more isolated, less dense, lower-income but lower-cost-of-living cities form. This is only really true if work is the only reason someone would live in a dense city, and it's not. Cities are a thing because they allow for economies of scale in all things, be that culture, dating, transportation or otherwise. This efficiency is somewhat obscured by a plethora of reasons right now - car-oriented infrastructure subsidised by people not utilizing that infrastructure is one of the higher ones on the list.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  > Highway construction demolished a lot of neighbourhoods in cities. In the U.S, the demolished neighborhoods were also disproportionately low-income and majority non-white neighborhoods. The space a highway or other road takes up is nowhere close to the space it allows to inhabited, though. LA County is the perfect example of an area that has grown via roads to become non-viable for trains. It's just too spread out. Without the roads, tons of households would be cut off from jobs they commute to, again the low-income ones. I'm not justifying the original construction of the highways, just saying what would happen if we went back. > This is only really true if work is the only reason someone would live in a dense city, and it's not. Cities are a thing because they allow for economies of scale in all things, be that culture, dating, transportation or otherwise. Regular cities make sense for that. You get two of each kind of business in proximity, and most people are good with that. Dense cities go beyond that point and get to where less scalable resources become strained, like housing. It's a clear sign when people are commuting from outside that something is wrong. Yes, some people still prefer the excitement, but usually just the young and single. SF pre and post tech boom, and during/after 2020, gives you an idea of how many people are just there for the work.
Xylakant 4y ago
> In what way were they demolished? Cars allow for urban sprawl. People now have homes in places where they rely on cars to get to work. Local example: There were plans in the 1950 to have a highway cross through Berlin Kreuzberg (The A106, today Oranienstraße for the locals). Part of those plans were put in motion, the buildings around Kottbusser Tor date back to those ideas. Massive local protests put a stop to that. More recent example from Berlin: the current extension of the A100. You can find enough examples of highways cutting through existing neighborhoods in the US if you look around a little. To cite [1] “ Planners of the interstate highway system, which began to take shape after the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, routed some highways directly, and sometimes purposefully, through Black and brown communities. In some instances, the government took homes by eminent domain.” [1] https://text.npr.org/984784455 https://text.npr.org/984784455
- rapnie 4y ago
  Utrecht in The Netherlands is a good example of reconstruction. Where a 12-lane motorway through the city center - created in the seventies - was removed to restore a canal that existed for hundreds of years, since the birth of the city. It is such an enormous improvement, now that the project is finished. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/utrecht-restores-historic-canal-made-into-motorway-in-1970s https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/utrecht-restor...
astura 4y ago
>In what way were they demolished? See: the cross Bronx expressway On a personal note: in the 1970s an entire city block of very old homes in my city was taken via eminent domain to make room for a parking garage.

throwaway894345 4y ago

At a minimum, because there is very little political appetite for it (apart from left-wing urban professionals) in large part because it’s an insanely inefficient way to meet climate goals (compared with building out clean energy sources and electrifying fossil fuel applications like cars), but also because it’s insanely invasive (it requires pushing everyone into a lifestyle they don’t want).