4 ms·

I'm not sure this claim makes sense. Yes, _if you're committed to driving everywhere_, then fewer parking spaces when you arrive at your destination may make yo

by abeppu 3y ago

I'm not sure this claim makes sense. Yes, _if you're committed to driving everywhere_, then fewer parking spaces when you arrive at your destination may make you spend time looking for parking. But in the alternate world where we didn't design for cars first, you'd be more used to other forms of transit, and a lot of things would be closer together. In our universe, where most businesses are surrounded by large parking lots, whole cities get sprawled out and everyone's travel times are inflated (regardless of mode of travel).

giantg2 3y ago
"But in the alternate world where we didn't design for cars first, you'd be more used to other forms of transit, and a lot of things would be closer together." You don't need an alternate world as you can just look at history. Then we would have to consider why the people chose to adopt and promote cars to bring us into this age.
- orwin 3y ago
  Because marketing works, companies like selling stuff (shared laundromat in the basement? Are you communist?) and because government likes selling dreams even if those turn to nightmare.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > Because marketing works, companies like selling stuff (shared laundromat in the basement? Are you communist?) and because government likes selling dreams even if those turn to nightmare. Come on, dude. A suburban home with a yard isn't a "nightmare," they're actually very desirable to a lot of people. They market themselves. Of course, there's a set of wannabe central planners that dislike that preference because it conflicts with their "vision" for how the plebs should live, so they try to deny that truth.
    - abeppu 3y ago
      I think the house and the yard aren't the nightmare, but the miles of cookie cutter housing developments attached to arterials studded with strip malls are. And those are the communities which were invented and built by central planning, by people saying: "these businesses all need to meet a large parking minimum, and these areas are _only_ allowed to be single family homes, and this other area can _only_ be commercial, and these arterials will then need to have 45 mph speed limits so drivers can get from their homes to the store in a reasonable period, and since they're going fast the lanes should be wide so I guess we won't have room for a bike lane, and only one side of the street can have a sidewalk, and hey what do you know, that really fits with our intention to not put crosswalks except at those intersections every 1/2 mile ...". Suburbs don't happen without planning, and don't pretend it's only city-dwellers that have a vision for what society should look like. The design of the suburb _coerces_ people to drive by threatening the lives of cyclists and pedestrians, and invariably having poor or slow public transit.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - tivert 3y ago
        > I think the house and the yard aren't the nightmare, but the miles of cookie cutter housing developments attached to arterials studded with strip malls is. Those aren't nightmares either. Or rather, they're only nightmares if your idea of a nightmare is "alternatives to urban living exist." Also the selective use of "cookie cutter" as a pejorative is interesting. Everything is cookie cutter, especially dense urban development (e.g. all the rail-adjacent apartment complexes I've seen built in the last decade or two). But of course it's only a problem when we're talking about the trendy-to-hate suburbs. Almost all those other requirements you complain about follow directly from a desire to live in a quiet neighborhood, and the rest are almost certainly a function of traditional American excessive cost-cutting (e.g. the sidewalks on one side, which are not universal). If people didn't actually want to live in quiet neighborhoods, they'd have stayed in the cities. > Suburbs don't happen without planning, and don't pretend it's only city-dwellers that have a vision for what society should look like. You missed my point: suburbs are desirable, but your urban advocate central planners lie and claim they aren't (e.g. they're "nightmares," people only moved there because of "marketing", etc. that have been repeated in this thread).
  - giantg2 3y ago
    People do have legitimate reasons for wanting stuff. It's not like marketing makes people want things.
tivert 3y ago
> But in the alternate world where we didn't design for cars first, you'd be more used to other forms of transit, and a lot of things would be closer together. That was the second alternate universe scenario. You can make different tradeoffs, and that's one of them. I for one, would not prefer either of the alternate-universe tradeoffs I mentioned, and I know I'm not alone or even unusual in that preference.

by abeppu 3y ago

giantg2 3y ago

"But in the alternate world where we didn't design for cars first, you'd be more used to other forms of transit, and a lot of things would be closer together." You don't need an alternate world as you can just look at history. Then we would have to consider why the people chose to adopt and promote cars to bring us into this age.

orwin 3y ago
Because marketing works, companies like selling stuff (shared laundromat in the basement? Are you communist?) and because government likes selling dreams even if those turn to nightmare.
- tivert 3y ago
  > Because marketing works, companies like selling stuff (shared laundromat in the basement? Are you communist?) and because government likes selling dreams even if those turn to nightmare. Come on, dude. A suburban home with a yard isn't a "nightmare," they're actually very desirable to a lot of people. They market themselves. Of course, there's a set of wannabe central planners that dislike that preference because it conflicts with their "vision" for how the plebs should live, so they try to deny that truth.
  - abeppu 3y ago
    I think the house and the yard aren't the nightmare, but the miles of cookie cutter housing developments attached to arterials studded with strip malls are. And those are the communities which were invented and built by central planning, by people saying: "these businesses all need to meet a large parking minimum, and these areas are _only_ allowed to be single family homes, and this other area can _only_ be commercial, and these arterials will then need to have 45 mph speed limits so drivers can get from their homes to the store in a reasonable period, and since they're going fast the lanes should be wide so I guess we won't have room for a bike lane, and only one side of the street can have a sidewalk, and hey what do you know, that really fits with our intention to not put crosswalks except at those intersections every 1/2 mile ...". Suburbs don't happen without planning, and don't pretend it's only city-dwellers that have a vision for what society should look like. The design of the suburb _coerces_ people to drive by threatening the lives of cyclists and pedestrians, and invariably having poor or slow public transit.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - tivert 3y ago
      > I think the house and the yard aren't the nightmare, but the miles of cookie cutter housing developments attached to arterials studded with strip malls is. Those aren't nightmares either. Or rather, they're only nightmares if your idea of a nightmare is "alternatives to urban living exist." Also the selective use of "cookie cutter" as a pejorative is interesting. Everything is cookie cutter, especially dense urban development (e.g. all the rail-adjacent apartment complexes I've seen built in the last decade or two). But of course it's only a problem when we're talking about the trendy-to-hate suburbs. Almost all those other requirements you complain about follow directly from a desire to live in a quiet neighborhood, and the rest are almost certainly a function of traditional American excessive cost-cutting (e.g. the sidewalks on one side, which are not universal). If people didn't actually want to live in quiet neighborhoods, they'd have stayed in the cities. > Suburbs don't happen without planning, and don't pretend it's only city-dwellers that have a vision for what society should look like. You missed my point: suburbs are desirable, but your urban advocate central planners lie and claim they aren't (e.g. they're "nightmares," people only moved there because of "marketing", etc. that have been repeated in this thread).
- giantg2 3y ago
  People do have legitimate reasons for wanting stuff. It's not like marketing makes people want things.

tivert 3y ago

> But in the alternate world where we didn't design for cars first, you'd be more used to other forms of transit, and a lot of things would be closer together. That was the second alternate universe scenario. You can make different tradeoffs, and that's one of them. I for one, would not prefer either of the alternate-universe tradeoffs I mentioned, and I know I'm not alone or even unusual in that preference.