7 ms·

I'm a huge believer in the superiority of walkable cities (the single main reason I left the U.S since outside NYC they don't exist in the U.S), but superblocks

I'm a huge believer in the superiority of walkable cities (the single main reason I left the U.S since outside NYC they don't exist in the U.S), but superblocks aren't my favorite approach. To me it makes everywhere look the same and kind of boring. I prefer how they do it in Asian cities like Seoul and Tokyo where they just have a lot of pedestrian streets and multistory buildings. Virtually every major European city is walkable, and I find it significantly more interesting to walk through cities like London or Paris than the boring grid superblocks of Barcelona (though I still like Barcelona).

halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
Chicago is decently walkable? From the Loop you have South Loop/Chinatown, Fulton Market/West Loop and River North/Gold Cost/LP/Wrigley. NYC is obviously walkable but walkable within boroughs. Nobody is walking from Midtown to LIC or Chinatown to BK?
- jrockway 4y ago
  Chicago definitely uses a lot of ground space for surface parking; used to live in the South Loop, and the grocery store in that area is just all parking. There is also an irritating walk across a railroad yard if you want to go to Whole Foods. You really have to bike and not walk to cover the distance. I biked a ton when I lived in Chicago; the distances were just long enough that walking was a pain but biking was trivial. In NYC, there are plenty of places exactly like Chicago. Not everywhere is a walker's paradise, and even in areas that are, car traffic is a dominating part of your life. NYC is great, but I am very jealous of Barcelona and even Paris. Very excited about congestion charging.
- baby 4y ago
  Chicago is definitely one of the most walkable cities in the US. Not really walkable compared to a European city though.
eigenspace 4y ago
I think this is a really common misconception around Barcelona's superblocks. When people hear "Barcelona superblock", I think they're thinking of the individual city blocks which to be fair, are already huge and modular. (this is at least the confusion I originally had) The idea with superblocks, is to take a cluster of city blocks and not allow through traffic in that block, instead guiding that traffic to flow around the perimeter of that cluster. Nothing here requires the city blocks to be built or look the way Barcelona's city blocks are built and look. All that's required is changes to the roads, and to try and encourage each cluster of blocks to have a mostly self sufficient set of amenities like a grocery store, cafe, etc. In unicode art, if □ is a city Block surrounded by roads (-- and |) being used by traffic, |_| ‾|□|‾ ‾|‾|‾ then a 3x3 area of these blocks would look like _|_|_|_|_ |□|□|□| ‾|□̅|□̅|□̅|‾ ‾|□̅|□̅|□̅|‾ ‾|‾|‾|‾|‾ However, a superblock would look like this: _|_|_|_|_ |□ □ □| ‾|□ □ □|‾ ‾|□ □ □|‾ ‾|‾|‾|‾|‾ where the inside area is not easily accessible to car traffic. The structure of the block □ itself, doesn't actually matter.
- majormajor 4y ago
  The US has lots of "self sufficient" (in that you can live in walking distance and do all your retail, grocery, cafes on foot) micro-areas like that. They're called more like "mixed use malls," though. So yeah, that's not exactly what a "superblock" is - because very few of them exist without parking. Doing both parking + easily walkable gets expensive. Getting rid of the parking doesn't work because I've never seen one of them "self sufficient" to the point of most people not having to commute (either to there for those who work there or from there for those who live there). Even if you find a job and a place to live in the same superblock, people are gonna (a) want to have options to leave that job in the future and (b) know people outside of those blocks. All that to say: if the superblocks don't solve the need-for-a-car problem, they aren't gonna do much for the traffic or car-centric problem. And a mall surrounded by parking garages isn't exactly the walkable old European city people are wanting. So we're back to needing transit first. And then if you have the transit, do you need the superblocks - lots of walkable cities with streets open to cars.
  - 4y ago
TulliusCicero 4y ago
> To me it makes everywhere look the same and kind of boring. You're misunderstanding what a superblock is. The blocks in Barcelona that look the same predate superblocks. The idea of a superblock -- making an NxN grid of blocks impermeable to through car traffic, basically -- could still be done in other cities with more irregular block patterns. It would be a little more complicated, of course, but it'd still be doable.
iancmceachern 4y ago
SF is very walkable also. It also helps that its relatively small area wise compare to other large cities. Edited to correct typo
- presentation 4y ago
  Lived there for many years, it's about as good as you'll get in the west coast (setting a terribly low bar here), but still not in the same league or even universe as Tokyo (where I've moved to and the commenter mentioned). All of SoMA is dominated by huge, high-speed pedestrian hostile thoroughfares; trains only go through one corridor so most of the city is excluded from connectivity (Muni is horribly slow and unreliable so you can't actually depend on it in daily life), not to mention the slow frequency, ear-splitting volume and noxious odors; affordability is downright awful so anyone middle-class couldn't experience it; and the whole city is filthy and dangerous so if you aren't a 20-something able-bodied large male walking in the middle of the day who ideally isn't a minority, you can't really make use of the freedom anyway (and even if you are crazy people will still try to pick fights with you for no reason... yeah never again). In SF's defense the bike-share more or less works given how tiny the city is. But don't ride your own bike or it'll be stolen in a week...
gernb 4y ago
I agree. I didn't find Barcelona superblocks appealing at all. All the cities you named felt much better for walking than Barcelona

halfmatthalfcat 4y ago

Chicago is decently walkable? From the Loop you have South Loop/Chinatown, Fulton Market/West Loop and River North/Gold Cost/LP/Wrigley. NYC is obviously walkable but walkable within boroughs. Nobody is walking from Midtown to LIC or Chinatown to BK?

jrockway 4y ago
Chicago definitely uses a lot of ground space for surface parking; used to live in the South Loop, and the grocery store in that area is just all parking. There is also an irritating walk across a railroad yard if you want to go to Whole Foods. You really have to bike and not walk to cover the distance. I biked a ton when I lived in Chicago; the distances were just long enough that walking was a pain but biking was trivial. In NYC, there are plenty of places exactly like Chicago. Not everywhere is a walker's paradise, and even in areas that are, car traffic is a dominating part of your life. NYC is great, but I am very jealous of Barcelona and even Paris. Very excited about congestion charging.
baby 4y ago
Chicago is definitely one of the most walkable cities in the US. Not really walkable compared to a European city though.

eigenspace 4y ago

I think this is a really common misconception around Barcelona's superblocks. When people hear "Barcelona superblock", I think they're thinking of the individual city blocks which to be fair, are already huge and modular. (this is at least the confusion I originally had) The idea with superblocks, is to take a cluster of city blocks and not allow through traffic in that block, instead guiding that traffic to flow around the perimeter of that cluster. Nothing here requires the city blocks to be built or look the way Barcelona's city blocks are built and look. All that's required is changes to the roads, and to try and encourage each cluster of blocks to have a mostly self sufficient set of amenities like a grocery store, cafe, etc. In unicode art, if □ is a city Block surrounded by roads (-- and |) being used by traffic, |_| ‾|□|‾ ‾|‾|‾ then a 3x3 area of these blocks would look like _|_|_|_|_ |□|□|□| ‾|□̅|□̅|□̅|‾ ‾|□̅|□̅|□̅|‾ ‾|‾|‾|‾|‾ However, a superblock would look like this: _|_|_|_|_ |□ □ □| ‾|□ □ □|‾ ‾|□ □ □|‾ ‾|‾|‾|‾|‾ where the inside area is not easily accessible to car traffic. The structure of the block □ itself, doesn't actually matter.

majormajor 4y ago
The US has lots of "self sufficient" (in that you can live in walking distance and do all your retail, grocery, cafes on foot) micro-areas like that. They're called more like "mixed use malls," though. So yeah, that's not exactly what a "superblock" is - because very few of them exist without parking. Doing both parking + easily walkable gets expensive. Getting rid of the parking doesn't work because I've never seen one of them "self sufficient" to the point of most people not having to commute (either to there for those who work there or from there for those who live there). Even if you find a job and a place to live in the same superblock, people are gonna (a) want to have options to leave that job in the future and (b) know people outside of those blocks. All that to say: if the superblocks don't solve the need-for-a-car problem, they aren't gonna do much for the traffic or car-centric problem. And a mall surrounded by parking garages isn't exactly the walkable old European city people are wanting. So we're back to needing transit first. And then if you have the transit, do you need the superblocks - lots of walkable cities with streets open to cars.
- 4y ago

TulliusCicero 4y ago

> To me it makes everywhere look the same and kind of boring. You're misunderstanding what a superblock is. The blocks in Barcelona that look the same predate superblocks. The idea of a superblock -- making an NxN grid of blocks impermeable to through car traffic, basically -- could still be done in other cities with more irregular block patterns. It would be a little more complicated, of course, but it'd still be doable.

iancmceachern 4y ago

SF is very walkable also. It also helps that its relatively small area wise compare to other large cities. Edited to correct typo

presentation 4y ago
Lived there for many years, it's about as good as you'll get in the west coast (setting a terribly low bar here), but still not in the same league or even universe as Tokyo (where I've moved to and the commenter mentioned). All of SoMA is dominated by huge, high-speed pedestrian hostile thoroughfares; trains only go through one corridor so most of the city is excluded from connectivity (Muni is horribly slow and unreliable so you can't actually depend on it in daily life), not to mention the slow frequency, ear-splitting volume and noxious odors; affordability is downright awful so anyone middle-class couldn't experience it; and the whole city is filthy and dangerous so if you aren't a 20-something able-bodied large male walking in the middle of the day who ideally isn't a minority, you can't really make use of the freedom anyway (and even if you are crazy people will still try to pick fights with you for no reason... yeah never again). In SF's defense the bike-share more or less works given how tiny the city is. But don't ride your own bike or it'll be stolen in a week...

gernb 4y ago

I agree. I didn't find Barcelona superblocks appealing at all. All the cities you named felt much better for walking than Barcelona