8 ms·

I think anti-car activists would do great to mod SimCity to have realistic parking lots.

davidw 3y ago
I don't think many people are truly anti-car activists. Just that we need to redimension their absolute centrality to so many policies and budgets. I'm involved in pro-housing politics and it's just amazing how many people are like "well, ok, sure, people need a place to live and all, but let's think FIRST about where to store the automobiles. If that works out, then I guess we can build some housing". They don't say it quite like that, but it's the general idea. Cities should be about people first and foremost. Places for them to live and do business. Cars are pretty convenient for some things, and many people want one...fine. But base the decisions around people first and then work out spaces for the cars.
- amanaplanacanal 3y ago
  It’s mostly because of zoning. If you separate retail from offices from housing, you force people to have cars to get around. Which then requires large parking lots and wide roads to deal with all the cars, in a big feedback loop. Those who can’t drive (about a third of the population are too young, too old, or disabled) are just forced to make do. Not to mention how difficult it is for the poor. Owning a car is really expensive for those living on very little money. I feel like fixing zoning would at least make possible fixing the rest.
  - causality0 3y ago
    Don't forget the socialization of costs that comes in the forms of cities crippling their traffic flow for the sake of dedicating half their road surface to people parking on it instead of driving on it. I love cars but a street covered in unmoving automobiles is an intensely perverse sight.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    You're not gonna get rid of the need to commute. Once people start forming families, "live next to work" is likely to be very unrealistic for one of the people involved, assuming they both work. One person gets a new job across town and the other doesn't? Setting aside whether or not most people would want to move anytime that happened, there's no longer a single answer. Start throwing kids in the mix and it gets even trickier. Gotta balance the schools in there, and the effect that moving would have on them, etc. Reduce the need for shopping and entertainment commuting and build more transit so that more routs have practical non-car options and you reduce the need for traffic and parking, but that's realistically an incredibly expensive proposition for many cities. You need a really really really built out transit network to enable something close to point to point commuting in under an hour across a large city. (And traffic and parking becoming crippling things for a city are issues small cities often mostly duck by their nature of being small...) It's a sort of "we all need to commit to changing our environment systematically for decades" problem.
    - davidw 3y ago
      > incredibly expensive proposition for many cities I lived in Italy for a number of years. It is a poorer country than the United States in a lot of ways, and yet they manage this quite well. It still comes back to zoning and parking: by allowing denser development, you can plan transit routes that serve a lot more people, some of whom don't even own an automobile.
      - majormajor 3y ago
        The largest cities in Italy are quite a bit smaller than the largest cities in the US, so it's a very different situation. Rome's metro area is about 4.3 million people. San Antonio's is about 2.6 million. San Antonio also has far more relaxed car-based commutes than the Bay Area or LA as a result. If you dropped Rome's three subway lines in San Antonio you wouldn't get rid of that many car trips, especially since the city being smaller and less dense than the really big cities in the US makes the car trips that much easier in the first place.
        3y ago
  - AlanSE 3y ago
    I hope/believe that we are near a tipping point. There is a very large and very substantial neighborhood premium based on what's around it, but the zoning is the same everywhere so the competition was legally restricted to greenways, sidewalks, parks, and HOA facilities. Even in the suburban US, it is a VERY desirable feature to be within walking distance of a park where young children can play. This has created a strange effect, where people (let's be honest, affluent people) accumulate a collection of aspirational wheeled items - strollers, bikes, weird electric skateboard-like things, and other wheeled things for the kids. These are coupled local government parks and spaces where people can ride a bike JUST FOR FUN. I mean it very seriously that greenways outright avoid any turns that might be useful for economic life. Riding bikes on the roads is mostly for the true anti-car zealots. I've been ready to buy a house for few years, but I've realized I'm no longer happy with the whole package. I want to realistically be able to walk or bike to get a dinner, coffee, or groceries. Yet, city centers (in the south for sure) tend to offer the most dangerous roads for doing this, and unhealthy environment, and poor social atmosphere. I'm sensing that there are more people on the sidelines (who have remove jobs, after all) who are ready to buy into better neighborhoods. These people may not be willing to give up their cars, but there is negotiating space, and it is relevant that these are people who have economic clout to force the issue.
    - lazyasciiart 3y ago
      Riding bikes on the road, even in the US, is mostly for the poorest workers. It is most visibly for the committed exercise or competitive cyclists, and it is vanishingly infrequently but looms large in the public imagination for the "true anti-car zealots". https://www.vox.com/2014/7/9/5883823/its-not-just-hipsters-on-bikes-cycling-is-most-popular-for-poor-people https://www.vox.com/2014/7/9/5883823/its-not-just-hipsters-o...
    - BobbyTables2 3y ago
      I think the lifestyle you desire can be had somewhat near downtown areas of large cities in the South. However, areas tend to quickly flip-flop between gentrified and not. Things within walking distance may be slightly limited. Worse, this is really just for the 20-30s crowd or childless crowd. As soon as you have kid(s), you’ll probably find this unsuitable (school quality/location, 3 floor townhouse design, etc). If you went to college and grad school and then moved out there, you might only have 5 years of this… For the better schools in a more solidly middle class area, one easily ends up in a suburb. And if one desires a house less than 20yrs old, one learns about unknown communities formerly believed to be in remote reaches beyond the boundaries of known civilization… (I jest but they are way out from the city center!) And remote jobs aren’t a panacea. If one has kids in school, they can’t just uproot their family and move to a rural mountain town across the country on a whim. I’ve also always been vexed that I can’t live near where I work. Aside from years of long commutes, the distance caused me to largely miss out on after-hours social events. Almost felt like a foreigner next to the people who lived closer.
- iso1631 3y ago
  In the UK we build houses without enough parking and the whole area becomes horrendous. The idea I get from reading about US "pro housing" people is that if you don't provide parking, people will still have a car and still park. In reality in the UK every patch of open space, including pavements (sidewalks) become car storage facilities. housing estates with 4 bed houses with just 1 car parking space (plus a garage which nobody users to store a car) end up with 1 or 2 cars parked on the pavement in addition to the drive, houses in towns converted to HMOs (house of multiple occupancy, because professionals can't really afford a 1 bed flat in the UK) with 4 adults in mean 4 cars parked on the roads.
  - davidw 3y ago
    What is 'horrendous' is people not having a place to live. Cars parked here and there is not great, but it's not nearly as bad as not having enough housing. I've heard that UK zoning and land use is perhaps even worse than the US.
  - lazyasciiart 3y ago
    In the US they become places to live in a tent until the police destroy your tent and you live in a similar spot on the pavement two blocks away without a tent.
  - dabeeeenster 3y ago
    Total nonsense. New builds in the UK have ample parking.
    - iso1631 3y ago
      No, they don't. Planing permission typically allows a 4 bed with 2 parking spaces, but one is a garage, meaning it's 1 usable parking space. Given that the only way you can afford a house is to have at least 2 workers, that leaves either 2 cars or public transit. Public transit in the UK is far better than the US but is still not good enough for most people. With increasing numbers of children staying with their parents past education, you end up with 3 or 4 commuters per house.
  - 3y ago
- coding123 3y ago
  I think it's not just about storing the vehicles, it's also about making your life miserable in a 2 hour commute going to a 3 hour commute. There IS more space in the united states, believe it or not.
  - davidw 3y ago
    Since there is more space, you'd expect that the market would allocate more of it for parking where needs be and that you don't need the government dictating parking minimums. Also, not all space is equal: even in the US, well-connected space with lots of amenities like the downtowns of cities is not infinite.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      The market allocates only as much as users can bear, which is about epsilon above the line of "for average user, the parking situation is so bad and unbearable that they chose to go without the service". Anything above it is money left on the table.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        That's assuming there is a monopoly on providing parking spaces. Zoning notwithstanding, anyone can build a parking structure and rent or sell parking spaces. Tenants can choose whether to pay more for an apartment that includes parking or less for one that doesn't. The total cost of a housing unit with parking wouldn't be be more than it is now because the cost of constructing a housing unit with parking wouldn't be more than it is now. It would just cause units without parking to become available. Which would tend to increase housing availability, which would tend to lower prices including for units with parking. Because the people who want the parking spaces wouldn't have to bid against people who just want housing and don't need parking.
        IX-103 3y ago
        Fun fact - the city near me has a new zoning rule that limits the total number of parking spots in the city to something close to the current number of parking spots. If you want to build an apartment with parking, type find to need to tear down something with parking first. So they're tearing down shopping centers, movie theaters, and grocery stores just so they can build apartments with parking. I have no idea where the people living nearby that don't have cars will buy food, but at least the new luxury apartments will have parking.
- wizofaus 3y ago
  > and many people want one Perhaps that's the main problem. If we were more content to share them they'd be far less of a need for so much parking space (and possibly even road space). I haven't owned a car in 15 years, at least partly because I've been happy to accept there's generally one available within the household to use when I need it.
- DropInIn 3y ago
  I'm anticar. Most people are too negligent/inept to safely operate them and there is genuinely no need for private vehicles if adequate infrastructure is put in place. More people die due to automobiles every year than from cigarette induced cancer, and that's without addressing the elephant in the room of misattribution to second hand smoke that which is actually/more reasonably explained by chronic car emission exposure (take a look at that stuff, it's insane). We don't actually need cars, people just Want them too kuch to do the right things to protect our children.
- JeremyNT 3y ago
  > I'm involved in pro-housing politics and it's just amazing how many people are like "well, ok, sure, people need a place to live and all, but let's think FIRST about where to store the automobiles. If that works out, then I guess we can build some housing". Out in the real world, as we have constructed it, this is (sadly) pretty reasonable. It's a chicken and egg problem. If you limit the market for an apartment to people who are willing to waste an extra hour to make bus transfers and/or those who are willing to risk their lives cycling on deadly stroads, you're going to have a much smaller pool of potential renters.
cscurmudgeon 3y ago
Why not go all the way to the source of the problem to make it realistic? E.g., NIMBYism https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-states-legislation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-st...
- spencerchubb 3y ago
  And the root cause of NIMBYism is the public goods dilemma. Everyone would benefit if more housing were built, but nobody wants more built near their land. The solution is not as simple as "Just stop electing NIMBYs!" because NIMBYism is a Nash equilibrium.
  - PpEY4fu85hkQpn 3y ago
    > nobody wants more built near their land Absolute nonsense.
    - spencerchubb 3y ago
      Why is it nonsense? The existence of NIMBYs proves the statement that people don't want houses built near them. Perhaps I was being hyperbolic with the word "nobody", but the point stands.
      - PpEY4fu85hkQpn 3y ago
        And now do the same for the existence of YIMBYs and see why your comment is absolute nonsense.
  - babyshake 3y ago
    Perhaps the only solution then is to build in everybody's backyard. "Why don't we build over there instead of here" is more difficult to argue when the same construction is happening everywhere.
  - andrewjl 3y ago
    > Everyone would benefit if more housing were built, but nobody wants more built near their land. Letting land owners build on land they already own with fewer restrictions solves this problem. If it's a matter of aesthetics or "neighborhood character" and not a matter of habitability as defined by the housing code, then why should the wants of whoever owns land that happens to be nearby factor in?

I don't think many people are truly anti-car activists. Just that we need to redimension their absolute centrality to so many policies and budgets. I'm involved in pro-housing politics and it's just amazing how many people are like "well, ok, sure, people need a place to live and all, but let's think FIRST about where to store the automobiles. If that works out, then I guess we can build some housing". They don't say it quite like that, but it's the general idea. Cities should be about people first and foremost. Places for them to live and do business. Cars are pretty convenient for some things, and many people want one...fine. But base the decisions around people first and then work out spaces for the cars.

amanaplanacanal 3y ago
It’s mostly because of zoning. If you separate retail from offices from housing, you force people to have cars to get around. Which then requires large parking lots and wide roads to deal with all the cars, in a big feedback loop. Those who can’t drive (about a third of the population are too young, too old, or disabled) are just forced to make do. Not to mention how difficult it is for the poor. Owning a car is really expensive for those living on very little money. I feel like fixing zoning would at least make possible fixing the rest.
- causality0 3y ago
  Don't forget the socialization of costs that comes in the forms of cities crippling their traffic flow for the sake of dedicating half their road surface to people parking on it instead of driving on it. I love cars but a street covered in unmoving automobiles is an intensely perverse sight.
- majormajor 3y ago
  You're not gonna get rid of the need to commute. Once people start forming families, "live next to work" is likely to be very unrealistic for one of the people involved, assuming they both work. One person gets a new job across town and the other doesn't? Setting aside whether or not most people would want to move anytime that happened, there's no longer a single answer. Start throwing kids in the mix and it gets even trickier. Gotta balance the schools in there, and the effect that moving would have on them, etc. Reduce the need for shopping and entertainment commuting and build more transit so that more routs have practical non-car options and you reduce the need for traffic and parking, but that's realistically an incredibly expensive proposition for many cities. You need a really really really built out transit network to enable something close to point to point commuting in under an hour across a large city. (And traffic and parking becoming crippling things for a city are issues small cities often mostly duck by their nature of being small...) It's a sort of "we all need to commit to changing our environment systematically for decades" problem.
  - davidw 3y ago
    > incredibly expensive proposition for many cities I lived in Italy for a number of years. It is a poorer country than the United States in a lot of ways, and yet they manage this quite well. It still comes back to zoning and parking: by allowing denser development, you can plan transit routes that serve a lot more people, some of whom don't even own an automobile.
    - majormajor 3y ago
      The largest cities in Italy are quite a bit smaller than the largest cities in the US, so it's a very different situation. Rome's metro area is about 4.3 million people. San Antonio's is about 2.6 million. San Antonio also has far more relaxed car-based commutes than the Bay Area or LA as a result. If you dropped Rome's three subway lines in San Antonio you wouldn't get rid of that many car trips, especially since the city being smaller and less dense than the really big cities in the US makes the car trips that much easier in the first place.
      - 3y ago
- AlanSE 3y ago
  I hope/believe that we are near a tipping point. There is a very large and very substantial neighborhood premium based on what's around it, but the zoning is the same everywhere so the competition was legally restricted to greenways, sidewalks, parks, and HOA facilities. Even in the suburban US, it is a VERY desirable feature to be within walking distance of a park where young children can play. This has created a strange effect, where people (let's be honest, affluent people) accumulate a collection of aspirational wheeled items - strollers, bikes, weird electric skateboard-like things, and other wheeled things for the kids. These are coupled local government parks and spaces where people can ride a bike JUST FOR FUN. I mean it very seriously that greenways outright avoid any turns that might be useful for economic life. Riding bikes on the roads is mostly for the true anti-car zealots. I've been ready to buy a house for few years, but I've realized I'm no longer happy with the whole package. I want to realistically be able to walk or bike to get a dinner, coffee, or groceries. Yet, city centers (in the south for sure) tend to offer the most dangerous roads for doing this, and unhealthy environment, and poor social atmosphere. I'm sensing that there are more people on the sidelines (who have remove jobs, after all) who are ready to buy into better neighborhoods. These people may not be willing to give up their cars, but there is negotiating space, and it is relevant that these are people who have economic clout to force the issue.
  - lazyasciiart 3y ago
    Riding bikes on the road, even in the US, is mostly for the poorest workers. It is most visibly for the committed exercise or competitive cyclists, and it is vanishingly infrequently but looms large in the public imagination for the "true anti-car zealots". https://www.vox.com/2014/7/9/5883823/its-not-just-hipsters-on-bikes-cycling-is-most-popular-for-poor-people https://www.vox.com/2014/7/9/5883823/its-not-just-hipsters-o...
  - BobbyTables2 3y ago
    I think the lifestyle you desire can be had somewhat near downtown areas of large cities in the South. However, areas tend to quickly flip-flop between gentrified and not. Things within walking distance may be slightly limited. Worse, this is really just for the 20-30s crowd or childless crowd. As soon as you have kid(s), you’ll probably find this unsuitable (school quality/location, 3 floor townhouse design, etc). If you went to college and grad school and then moved out there, you might only have 5 years of this… For the better schools in a more solidly middle class area, one easily ends up in a suburb. And if one desires a house less than 20yrs old, one learns about unknown communities formerly believed to be in remote reaches beyond the boundaries of known civilization… (I jest but they are way out from the city center!) And remote jobs aren’t a panacea. If one has kids in school, they can’t just uproot their family and move to a rural mountain town across the country on a whim. I’ve also always been vexed that I can’t live near where I work. Aside from years of long commutes, the distance caused me to largely miss out on after-hours social events. Almost felt like a foreigner next to the people who lived closer.
iso1631 3y ago
In the UK we build houses without enough parking and the whole area becomes horrendous. The idea I get from reading about US "pro housing" people is that if you don't provide parking, people will still have a car and still park. In reality in the UK every patch of open space, including pavements (sidewalks) become car storage facilities. housing estates with 4 bed houses with just 1 car parking space (plus a garage which nobody users to store a car) end up with 1 or 2 cars parked on the pavement in addition to the drive, houses in towns converted to HMOs (house of multiple occupancy, because professionals can't really afford a 1 bed flat in the UK) with 4 adults in mean 4 cars parked on the roads.
- davidw 3y ago
  What is 'horrendous' is people not having a place to live. Cars parked here and there is not great, but it's not nearly as bad as not having enough housing. I've heard that UK zoning and land use is perhaps even worse than the US.
- lazyasciiart 3y ago
  In the US they become places to live in a tent until the police destroy your tent and you live in a similar spot on the pavement two blocks away without a tent.
- dabeeeenster 3y ago
  Total nonsense. New builds in the UK have ample parking.
  - iso1631 3y ago
    No, they don't. Planing permission typically allows a 4 bed with 2 parking spaces, but one is a garage, meaning it's 1 usable parking space. Given that the only way you can afford a house is to have at least 2 workers, that leaves either 2 cars or public transit. Public transit in the UK is far better than the US but is still not good enough for most people. With increasing numbers of children staying with their parents past education, you end up with 3 or 4 commuters per house.
- 3y ago
coding123 3y ago
I think it's not just about storing the vehicles, it's also about making your life miserable in a 2 hour commute going to a 3 hour commute. There IS more space in the united states, believe it or not.
- davidw 3y ago
  Since there is more space, you'd expect that the market would allocate more of it for parking where needs be and that you don't need the government dictating parking minimums. Also, not all space is equal: even in the US, well-connected space with lots of amenities like the downtowns of cities is not infinite.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    The market allocates only as much as users can bear, which is about epsilon above the line of "for average user, the parking situation is so bad and unbearable that they chose to go without the service". Anything above it is money left on the table.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      That's assuming there is a monopoly on providing parking spaces. Zoning notwithstanding, anyone can build a parking structure and rent or sell parking spaces. Tenants can choose whether to pay more for an apartment that includes parking or less for one that doesn't. The total cost of a housing unit with parking wouldn't be be more than it is now because the cost of constructing a housing unit with parking wouldn't be more than it is now. It would just cause units without parking to become available. Which would tend to increase housing availability, which would tend to lower prices including for units with parking. Because the people who want the parking spaces wouldn't have to bid against people who just want housing and don't need parking.
      - IX-103 3y ago
        Fun fact - the city near me has a new zoning rule that limits the total number of parking spots in the city to something close to the current number of parking spots. If you want to build an apartment with parking, type find to need to tear down something with parking first. So they're tearing down shopping centers, movie theaters, and grocery stores just so they can build apartments with parking. I have no idea where the people living nearby that don't have cars will buy food, but at least the new luxury apartments will have parking.
wizofaus 3y ago
> and many people want one Perhaps that's the main problem. If we were more content to share them they'd be far less of a need for so much parking space (and possibly even road space). I haven't owned a car in 15 years, at least partly because I've been happy to accept there's generally one available within the household to use when I need it.
DropInIn 3y ago
I'm anticar. Most people are too negligent/inept to safely operate them and there is genuinely no need for private vehicles if adequate infrastructure is put in place. More people die due to automobiles every year than from cigarette induced cancer, and that's without addressing the elephant in the room of misattribution to second hand smoke that which is actually/more reasonably explained by chronic car emission exposure (take a look at that stuff, it's insane). We don't actually need cars, people just Want them too kuch to do the right things to protect our children.
JeremyNT 3y ago
> I'm involved in pro-housing politics and it's just amazing how many people are like "well, ok, sure, people need a place to live and all, but let's think FIRST about where to store the automobiles. If that works out, then I guess we can build some housing". Out in the real world, as we have constructed it, this is (sadly) pretty reasonable. It's a chicken and egg problem. If you limit the market for an apartment to people who are willing to waste an extra hour to make bus transfers and/or those who are willing to risk their lives cycling on deadly stroads, you're going to have a much smaller pool of potential renters.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago

Why not go all the way to the source of the problem to make it realistic? E.g., NIMBYism https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-states-legislation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-st...

spencerchubb 3y ago
And the root cause of NIMBYism is the public goods dilemma. Everyone would benefit if more housing were built, but nobody wants more built near their land. The solution is not as simple as "Just stop electing NIMBYs!" because NIMBYism is a Nash equilibrium.
- PpEY4fu85hkQpn 3y ago
  > nobody wants more built near their land Absolute nonsense.
  - spencerchubb 3y ago
    Why is it nonsense? The existence of NIMBYs proves the statement that people don't want houses built near them. Perhaps I was being hyperbolic with the word "nobody", but the point stands.
    - PpEY4fu85hkQpn 3y ago
      And now do the same for the existence of YIMBYs and see why your comment is absolute nonsense.
- babyshake 3y ago
  Perhaps the only solution then is to build in everybody's backyard. "Why don't we build over there instead of here" is more difficult to argue when the same construction is happening everywhere.
- andrewjl 3y ago
  > Everyone would benefit if more housing were built, but nobody wants more built near their land. Letting land owners build on land they already own with fewer restrictions solves this problem. If it's a matter of aesthetics or "neighborhood character" and not a matter of habitability as defined by the housing code, then why should the wants of whoever owns land that happens to be nearby factor in?