5 ms·

While I hope you're right, I think this is possibly not something we'll see in our lifetime. To completely give up your car you'd have to put in place systems

While I hope you're right, I think this is possibly not something we'll see in our lifetime. To completely give up your car you'd have to put in place systems that allow you to function without it in all aspects of life. From suburban planning to doing your shopping. The amount of work needed is staggering. It took us a long time to see the damage of car culture, and it will take decades, if not longer, to change it.

CalRobert 4y ago
Yes, and the US is a lost cause at this point, but other places might be able to manage it. I'm not actually saying that people shouldn't ever be able to drive, just that it should be reasonable for people to need cars rarely and be able to rent them for those occasions where they do.
ben_w 4y ago
Depends where you live. USA, given what I've seen in the four months total I've been there? Perhaps as you say, though allowing one home on a street to be converted into a convenience store[0], would make a big difference even there. But here in Berlin, I already have such a city: a 15 minute walk gives me a railway station, 22 stops for the metro and the bus, at least a dozen sit down restaurants and cafes, 17 supermarkets plus IDK how many corner shops, and both a construction store and a large home electronics store. Try to do that today in Davis CA, and the closest you can manage is about half that and even then you're limited to one of Aggie Village, Old East, Old North, or on top of one of the shops or restaurants. Most of it has roads too wide to be a safe pedestrian option — I tried, I didn't feel safe, and it was relatively good compared to the other places I visited in the US! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convenience_store https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convenience_store
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  > But here in Berlin, I already have such a city How many people more can we fit in such Berlin?
  - jobs_throwaway 4y ago
    An absolute metric shitton. If you made Berlin (today at ~4k people / sq km) the same density as Paris (today at ~20k people / sq km), you could add nearly 15m residents.
    - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
      Where would they live? I hear that Berlin is having housing problems.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        Mainly because we're not building houses fast enough right now. Although, I'm not even sure how much of a problem the city really has even then, it's kind of difficult to match up given the attitudes to renting here are like the attitudes to buying in the UK, and all the follow-on consequences of that. However, "build millions of affordable houses really fast with almost no money" is something that this city, indeed the whole country and several adjacent countries, have done when they had to, so housing definitely isn't an insurmountable problem. We're still regularly digging up the unexploded bombs from the same bombing runs that made rebuilding (with no money) necessary, but that's a local issue, you don't get so much of that in Washington or Mississippi. Or indeed (the original) Cambridge.
        rad_gruchalski 4y ago
        How green is all that construction? How expensive is it to build all those green buildings? It’s not a tricky question, I assure you, having just finished a six months investigation on rent/buy and renovate/build in Germany.
        ben_w 4y ago
        > How green is all that construction? How expensive is it to build all those green buildings? Wildly indeterminate on both questions because at that scale it is primarily a function of government rules and interventions rather than personal actions — just consider how much money people actually had when half the city was built. But that also goes both ways, because a single building doesn't need to care about most of the infrastructure — sure, the site needs to have utility connections and a road, but you personally neither need to nor care to make the decisions about the capacity of the nearby sewage farm/high voltage power lines, or if there are enough schools/hospital beds/police stations, or if the Autobahn and Eisenbahn have enough capacity to supply the supermarkets. I know it can be done cheap because of how little money there was when most of it was first put together, and that other much poorer nations also do many of these things. But exactly how cheap? Exactly how green? I don't know if your investigation was professional or personal, but either way I suspect you have more to tell me than vice-versa.

CalRobert 4y ago

Yes, and the US is a lost cause at this point, but other places might be able to manage it. I'm not actually saying that people shouldn't ever be able to drive, just that it should be reasonable for people to need cars rarely and be able to rent them for those occasions where they do.

ben_w 4y ago

Depends where you live. USA, given what I've seen in the four months total I've been there? Perhaps as you say, though allowing one home on a street to be converted into a convenience store[0], would make a big difference even there. But here in Berlin, I already have such a city: a 15 minute walk gives me a railway station, 22 stops for the metro and the bus, at least a dozen sit down restaurants and cafes, 17 supermarkets plus IDK how many corner shops, and both a construction store and a large home electronics store. Try to do that today in Davis CA, and the closest you can manage is about half that and even then you're limited to one of Aggie Village, Old East, Old North, or on top of one of the shops or restaurants. Most of it has roads too wide to be a safe pedestrian option — I tried, I didn't feel safe, and it was relatively good compared to the other places I visited in the US! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convenience_store https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convenience_store

rad_gruchalski 4y ago
> But here in Berlin, I already have such a city How many people more can we fit in such Berlin?
- jobs_throwaway 4y ago
  An absolute metric shitton. If you made Berlin (today at ~4k people / sq km) the same density as Paris (today at ~20k people / sq km), you could add nearly 15m residents.
  - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    Where would they live? I hear that Berlin is having housing problems.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Mainly because we're not building houses fast enough right now. Although, I'm not even sure how much of a problem the city really has even then, it's kind of difficult to match up given the attitudes to renting here are like the attitudes to buying in the UK, and all the follow-on consequences of that. However, "build millions of affordable houses really fast with almost no money" is something that this city, indeed the whole country and several adjacent countries, have done when they had to, so housing definitely isn't an insurmountable problem. We're still regularly digging up the unexploded bombs from the same bombing runs that made rebuilding (with no money) necessary, but that's a local issue, you don't get so much of that in Washington or Mississippi. Or indeed (the original) Cambridge.
      - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
        How green is all that construction? How expensive is it to build all those green buildings? It’s not a tricky question, I assure you, having just finished a six months investigation on rent/buy and renovate/build in Germany.
        ben_w 4y ago
        > How green is all that construction? How expensive is it to build all those green buildings? Wildly indeterminate on both questions because at that scale it is primarily a function of government rules and interventions rather than personal actions — just consider how much money people actually had when half the city was built. But that also goes both ways, because a single building doesn't need to care about most of the infrastructure — sure, the site needs to have utility connections and a road, but you personally neither need to nor care to make the decisions about the capacity of the nearby sewage farm/high voltage power lines, or if there are enough schools/hospital beds/police stations, or if the Autobahn and Eisenbahn have enough capacity to supply the supermarkets. I know it can be done cheap because of how little money there was when most of it was first put together, and that other much poorer nations also do many of these things. But exactly how cheap? Exactly how green? I don't know if your investigation was professional or personal, but either way I suspect you have more to tell me than vice-versa.