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I mean it's not just America. I do however always wonder if it is American urban planning across the world though. Taichung looks like an American city, mostly

I mean it's not just America. I do however always wonder if it is American urban planning across the world though. Taichung looks like an American city, mostly designed around cars.Taipei highways have so many twists and turns that I know it's not German, but wonder if it's American or French. German urban planning has been "modernized" and somehow it seems worse for anything but cars. But then look at Tokyo and compare that to Tehran. Both of them with an Urban commuting population upwards of 20 million. Both similar in scale, but one of them an absolute nightmare in pollution(partly due to it being located in a basin, but part of it to the constant traffic and patchwork urban planning) and compare that to the other, where even though it's hilly, a lot of people commute by ebike, there is an extremely fast and efficient public transit system, and driving at high speeds is mostly limited to certain paths/streets. The problem is what do you with the places who's urban planning was terrible? You can't just tear down all the housing and then build public transit there. And due to its design, very often the just replace it by ebikes simply isn't a viable option. So, what can we realistically do besides just complaining how shitty it was designed?

bobthepanda 4y ago
Retrofitting is always possible. It’s just not satisfying to know that it takes decades. But as an example Amsterdam started its journey in the ‘70s.
- lozenge 4y ago
  Did Amsterdam destroy low density (say, two floors) housing? I thought they just changed how they used the existing road space.
Archelaos 4y ago
> You can't just tear down all the housing and then build public transit there. Use cable cars for public transit. This technology is very adaptable and can be retrofitted relatively easily into existing urban structures.
nicoburns 4y ago
> You can't just tear down all the housing and then build public transit there You absolutely can. Of course you don't need to tear down all the housing. Just enough to retrofit a transport corridor. America already did this to build highways. Or you can replace road infrastructure with transit infrastructure. I suspect the first step might by to make (parts of) residential neighbourhoods mixed use. This wouldn't need to be done in one fell swoop. It could be as simple as allowing a single house to be converted to a commercial properties (say a grocery store).
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  It's harder to cut up a dense and mixed use neighborhood because the real estate is worth more and there will be more people and money to vote against it. Boston tried that. They were able to get the project rolling in the poorer parts of town but when they got to the slightly richer ones moneyed interests rallied the Karens and killed it (racism deserves a little credit too, rich white people hate it when you build a highway between them and poor dark people). That was half a century ago. Eventually they salvaged what they could and put a light rail line in the parts of the project that had already been done but still....
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    Isn't the problem precisely that most of the neighbourhoods aren't dense or mixed use?
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      The problem is that people won't let them densify without the underlying infrastructure but won't speculatively build infrastructure and won't build it after the fact. We've reached an impasse.
throw0101c 4y ago
> You can't just tear down all the housing and then build public transit there. It's what was done to build highways in(to) cities. At least doing it for public transit wouldn't create as large barriers between neighbourhoods, and would provide local mobility for locals.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  You don't need to tear lots of stuff down to build public transit: you just have to dig tunnels. It's not that hard. The only place where you need to really tear stuff down is at the stations, and even here much of it can be done under existing structures. This has been done in America before: DC's subway system was built mostly in the 1970s.

bobthepanda 4y ago

Retrofitting is always possible. It’s just not satisfying to know that it takes decades. But as an example Amsterdam started its journey in the ‘70s.

lozenge 4y ago
Did Amsterdam destroy low density (say, two floors) housing? I thought they just changed how they used the existing road space.

Archelaos 4y ago

> You can't just tear down all the housing and then build public transit there. Use cable cars for public transit. This technology is very adaptable and can be retrofitted relatively easily into existing urban structures.

nicoburns 4y ago

> You can't just tear down all the housing and then build public transit there You absolutely can. Of course you don't need to tear down all the housing. Just enough to retrofit a transport corridor. America already did this to build highways. Or you can replace road infrastructure with transit infrastructure. I suspect the first step might by to make (parts of) residential neighbourhoods mixed use. This wouldn't need to be done in one fell swoop. It could be as simple as allowing a single house to be converted to a commercial properties (say a grocery store).

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
It's harder to cut up a dense and mixed use neighborhood because the real estate is worth more and there will be more people and money to vote against it. Boston tried that. They were able to get the project rolling in the poorer parts of town but when they got to the slightly richer ones moneyed interests rallied the Karens and killed it (racism deserves a little credit too, rich white people hate it when you build a highway between them and poor dark people). That was half a century ago. Eventually they salvaged what they could and put a light rail line in the parts of the project that had already been done but still....
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Isn't the problem precisely that most of the neighbourhoods aren't dense or mixed use?
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    The problem is that people won't let them densify without the underlying infrastructure but won't speculatively build infrastructure and won't build it after the fact. We've reached an impasse.

throw0101c 4y ago

> You can't just tear down all the housing and then build public transit there. It's what was done to build highways in(to) cities. At least doing it for public transit wouldn't create as large barriers between neighbourhoods, and would provide local mobility for locals.

midoridensha 4y ago
You don't need to tear lots of stuff down to build public transit: you just have to dig tunnels. It's not that hard. The only place where you need to really tear stuff down is at the stations, and even here much of it can be done under existing structures. This has been done in America before: DC's subway system was built mostly in the 1970s.