4 ms·

So as a two car millennial American family that makes regular trips into our city center, we never use our cars going into the city. It's just stressful, stree

So as a two car millennial American family that makes regular trips into our city center, we never use our cars going into the city. It's just stressful, streets are narrow, parking's expensive and car-jacking and vandalism are more likely. Just makes more sense to take the bus, cheaper too when you count the cost of parking. I also like having places to walk to from my house. That said, I like having my own house with my own land. That house and land is freedom to live how I want (within reason) without worrying if the neighbors will complain about my watching The Mandalorian at 1am. A car is freedom to go wherever I want whenever I want, and I use said freedoms on a regular basis. It's also carrying capacity, instead of making multiple inefficient trips to a local market multiple times a week I can get all my family's groceries in one trip once a week. Ditto for outdoor supplies, small furniture, Christmas Trees, etc. Never mind that WFH doesn't work for a lot of jobs, and not just low-paying ones. Many good jobs require a car to get to them. So I think there's a good middle ground here. Make city centers less car friendly and denser to discourage car use, improve walking infrastructure in the suburbs (more sidewalks/bike trails that actually go places). I'm all for a wide range of options, but cars are not a universal evil. The frog is not being boiled, this is what a lot of us see as a better life. Granted there are plenty of people doing it wrong, but that's always been true.

dont__panic 4y ago
Well said. I do something similar -- I live someplace with a bit more breathing room that's bike friendly and walk friendly for some basic things, and I never take my car into any city center. > Make city centers less car friendly and denser to discourage car use, improve walking infrastructure in the suburbs (more sidewalks/bike trails). To put it a bit more concretely: Remove street parking in cities. Expand sidewalks. Build more public transit and bike infrastructure. Create light rail with parking lots outside of cities so you can get in without a car. Let people use cars as before in rural middle-of-nowhere america, and mostly the same in the suburbs (lower speed limits and build more sidewalks and connecting paths, so you can walk between neighborhoods).
- april_22 4y ago
  I love this concept made by dance a rental e-bike startup from berlin. They offer their bikes in all major cities in europe now. https://twitter.com/ericw/status/1554445703891533824 https://twitter.com/ericw/status/1554445703891533824
ericmay 4y ago
Most who discuss better urban planning and focusing on less car-only design wouldn't consider having a SFH with land (now this depends) an issue even in a city or neighborhood adjacent to a city. A quarter acre of grass? Probably not except at great cost. A deep lot with a garage? Yea that's pretty practical. Ideally you'd have a mix of SFH, condos, apartments for rent, granny flats, and other housing options so you can accommodate people in different stages of their lives and at different price points. Then of course as most would live in this mode, those who want large lots or lots of land would move further away. > It's also carrying capacity, instead of making multiple inefficient trips to a local market multiple times a week I can get all my family's groceries in one trip once a week. Ditto for outdoor supplies, small furniture, Christmas Trees, etc Is it really inefficient if it's a 10 minute walk away, or on your way home from your job? I think you'd really have to sit down on that and look at the whole context. For oddball trips like a Christmas tree you have options including delivery, but what most people would suggest is that sure you still have a car for those trips (maybe one per family instead of two) but for most activities you don't have to drive. We get stuck on edge case scenarios so much that we over-optimize for them. It's like EVs. Many are like "but what if I go on a road trip", well how often do you go on a road trip? Once/year? Weekly? If it's once/year, well, figure it out. -edit- For example, most I'd argue are envisioning something more akin to German Village in Columbus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Village Here you can see cars of course, but you can also see that many homes do in fact have deep lots which can be customized with grass, pavers, whatever you'd like. Of course not all homes have those (depends on socioeconomic capabilities) but you are also 5 minutes from a gigantic park with lots of green space. In German Village you have cars, many homes have off-street parking, lots of pedestrian traffic, lots of bike traffic, tons of locally owned businesses and restaurants, and community events. I think people want more of this and wonder why we can't build like this anymore. Personally I think it's because developers, the government, and automakers are all heavily incentivized against it (not necessarily out of malice). Unsurprisingly, locations that are walkable like this have the highest property values despite often having crappy schools. If they had really good k-12 schools the property values would be immense.
TylerE 4y ago
I’m having a hard time imagining traveling into a area where car-jacking is a credible threat - and yet feeling safe on public transit.
- frenchy 4y ago
  Not in the US, but I grew up in large city in a developing nation. Someone fooling with your car wasn't common, but it wouldn't be a huge surprise either. I regularly took public transit: it was cheap, plentiful, and well used. Obviously you wouldn't do anything silly like stuff a giant money-almost-falling-out wallet in your back pocket, but otherwise I felt perfectly safe.
  - pandaman 4y ago
    "Carjacking" is a violent crime involving threatening/assaulting car's owner, I suspect you are thinking of car theft judging by your phrasing.
arrosenberg 4y ago
We shouldn’t spend a dime updating suburbs unless it is to transform them into small towns with an actual main street. The design of the average suburb is impossibly inefficient, and the tax base rarely supports the cost of maintaining infrastructure.
dixie_land 4y ago
I'd take it further and argue city centers should not be for residential use to begin. Cities can be built like a huge huge shopping mall, you park outside and do your work, enjoy your shopping etc, you don't have to live there.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  No, this would be disastrous for cities. Downtown businesses depend heavily on foot traffic, and you’re going to get a lot more of that if there are people living nearby.
- Ar-Curunir 4y ago
  That’s what SF did, and now it’s a shell of what it used to be.
pkulak 4y ago
I think you're describing street-car suburbs. There are, I think, 3 of them in North America! Bad news... you're not even close to the first person to think like this, and the houses in those places are absurdly priced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
asveikau 4y ago
> It's also carrying capacity, instead of making multiple inefficient trips to a local market multiple times a week I can get all my family's groceries in one trip once a week. This is pretty weird to me. Whenever I've had exposure to a household like that, what actually happens is they buy way too much food to keep track of it, and either you eat too much or it mostly goes bad in the fridge. I find this oddly stressful, too, the feeling of wasting food or needing to use it before it goes bad. Whereas I like to plan a day at a time and be close enough to markets that I could potentially visit every day and it's part of the daily routine.
- eweise 4y ago
  Its much cheaper to load up the car at costco every couple of weeks, than go down to the corner store every day.
  - asveikau 4y ago
    I feed two kids. If I did my shopping at Costco, I can tell you the food would go bad before I had a chance to use it. I find the idea of Costco pretty stressful. I'm not necessarily talking about just corner stores either. I have several full on supermarkets in walking distance.
- TaupeRanger 4y ago
  I find your comment weird. Make 1 trip to get all of the stuff you need for an entire family in one trip per week, or make 1 trip a day to get stuff for just that day, waiting in line to checkout 5-7 times, taking up valuable time you could spend doing other things.
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    I think suburban and car-oriented grocery stores give people a skewed impression of how time-consuming it is to check out at a grocery store. If everyone is loading up their cart, the lines are going to be long because everyone has to unload it at checkout. By contrast, if most people are there for just a few things, you speed through the line if there even is one. Bonus if it has a self-scanner like this one to further speed things up, though unfortunately we don’t have any like that near me: https://youtu.be/kYHTzqHIngk https://youtu.be/kYHTzqHIngk

dont__panic 4y ago

Well said. I do something similar -- I live someplace with a bit more breathing room that's bike friendly and walk friendly for some basic things, and I never take my car into any city center. > Make city centers less car friendly and denser to discourage car use, improve walking infrastructure in the suburbs (more sidewalks/bike trails). To put it a bit more concretely: Remove street parking in cities. Expand sidewalks. Build more public transit and bike infrastructure. Create light rail with parking lots outside of cities so you can get in without a car. Let people use cars as before in rural middle-of-nowhere america, and mostly the same in the suburbs (lower speed limits and build more sidewalks and connecting paths, so you can walk between neighborhoods).

april_22 4y ago
I love this concept made by dance a rental e-bike startup from berlin. They offer their bikes in all major cities in europe now. https://twitter.com/ericw/status/1554445703891533824 https://twitter.com/ericw/status/1554445703891533824

ericmay 4y ago

Most who discuss better urban planning and focusing on less car-only design wouldn't consider having a SFH with land (now this depends) an issue even in a city or neighborhood adjacent to a city. A quarter acre of grass? Probably not except at great cost. A deep lot with a garage? Yea that's pretty practical. Ideally you'd have a mix of SFH, condos, apartments for rent, granny flats, and other housing options so you can accommodate people in different stages of their lives and at different price points. Then of course as most would live in this mode, those who want large lots or lots of land would move further away. > It's also carrying capacity, instead of making multiple inefficient trips to a local market multiple times a week I can get all my family's groceries in one trip once a week. Ditto for outdoor supplies, small furniture, Christmas Trees, etc Is it really inefficient if it's a 10 minute walk away, or on your way home from your job? I think you'd really have to sit down on that and look at the whole context. For oddball trips like a Christmas tree you have options including delivery, but what most people would suggest is that sure you still have a car for those trips (maybe one per family instead of two) but for most activities you don't have to drive. We get stuck on edge case scenarios so much that we over-optimize for them. It's like EVs. Many are like "but what if I go on a road trip", well how often do you go on a road trip? Once/year? Weekly? If it's once/year, well, figure it out. -edit- For example, most I'd argue are envisioning something more akin to German Village in Columbus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Village Here you can see cars of course, but you can also see that many homes do in fact have deep lots which can be customized with grass, pavers, whatever you'd like. Of course not all homes have those (depends on socioeconomic capabilities) but you are also 5 minutes from a gigantic park with lots of green space. In German Village you have cars, many homes have off-street parking, lots of pedestrian traffic, lots of bike traffic, tons of locally owned businesses and restaurants, and community events. I think people want more of this and wonder why we can't build like this anymore. Personally I think it's because developers, the government, and automakers are all heavily incentivized against it (not necessarily out of malice). Unsurprisingly, locations that are walkable like this have the highest property values despite often having crappy schools. If they had really good k-12 schools the property values would be immense.

TylerE 4y ago

I’m having a hard time imagining traveling into a area where car-jacking is a credible threat - and yet feeling safe on public transit.

frenchy 4y ago
Not in the US, but I grew up in large city in a developing nation. Someone fooling with your car wasn't common, but it wouldn't be a huge surprise either. I regularly took public transit: it was cheap, plentiful, and well used. Obviously you wouldn't do anything silly like stuff a giant money-almost-falling-out wallet in your back pocket, but otherwise I felt perfectly safe.
- pandaman 4y ago
  "Carjacking" is a violent crime involving threatening/assaulting car's owner, I suspect you are thinking of car theft judging by your phrasing.

arrosenberg 4y ago

We shouldn’t spend a dime updating suburbs unless it is to transform them into small towns with an actual main street. The design of the average suburb is impossibly inefficient, and the tax base rarely supports the cost of maintaining infrastructure.

dixie_land 4y ago

I'd take it further and argue city centers should not be for residential use to begin. Cities can be built like a huge huge shopping mall, you park outside and do your work, enjoy your shopping etc, you don't have to live there.

ryukafalz 4y ago
No, this would be disastrous for cities. Downtown businesses depend heavily on foot traffic, and you’re going to get a lot more of that if there are people living nearby.
Ar-Curunir 4y ago
That’s what SF did, and now it’s a shell of what it used to be.

pkulak 4y ago

I think you're describing street-car suburbs. There are, I think, 3 of them in North America! Bad news... you're not even close to the first person to think like this, and the houses in those places are absurdly priced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

asveikau 4y ago

> It's also carrying capacity, instead of making multiple inefficient trips to a local market multiple times a week I can get all my family's groceries in one trip once a week. This is pretty weird to me. Whenever I've had exposure to a household like that, what actually happens is they buy way too much food to keep track of it, and either you eat too much or it mostly goes bad in the fridge. I find this oddly stressful, too, the feeling of wasting food or needing to use it before it goes bad. Whereas I like to plan a day at a time and be close enough to markets that I could potentially visit every day and it's part of the daily routine.

eweise 4y ago
Its much cheaper to load up the car at costco every couple of weeks, than go down to the corner store every day.
- asveikau 4y ago
  I feed two kids. If I did my shopping at Costco, I can tell you the food would go bad before I had a chance to use it. I find the idea of Costco pretty stressful. I'm not necessarily talking about just corner stores either. I have several full on supermarkets in walking distance.
TaupeRanger 4y ago
I find your comment weird. Make 1 trip to get all of the stuff you need for an entire family in one trip per week, or make 1 trip a day to get stuff for just that day, waiting in line to checkout 5-7 times, taking up valuable time you could spend doing other things.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  I think suburban and car-oriented grocery stores give people a skewed impression of how time-consuming it is to check out at a grocery store. If everyone is loading up their cart, the lines are going to be long because everyone has to unload it at checkout. By contrast, if most people are there for just a few things, you speed through the line if there even is one. Bonus if it has a self-scanner like this one to further speed things up, though unfortunately we don’t have any like that near me: https://youtu.be/kYHTzqHIngk https://youtu.be/kYHTzqHIngk