3 ms·

> 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

by 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.
- davidw 3y ago
  Rome is notable for having kind of not great subway infrastructure for a major European city because, among other problems, they tend to encounter a lot of archeological stuff whenever they dig there. And I'm not even talking about major cities. Where I lived in Padova, it has approximately 200K people in the same area that about 100K people occupy here in Bend, Oregon. Padova has way better transit than Bend does even if Bend is much more well to do in many ways.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    Is Bend gripped by housing issues and traffic as much as the Bay Area or NYC or wherever? The folks I know in smaller US towns simply don't have the same concerns about parking spaces as those in high-demand, high-population, central large cities. And comparing those cities to typically-small-to-medium-size Italian cities doesn't result in very actionable practical plans.
    - davidw 3y ago
      Bend has very serious housing woes. The housing crisis, at this point, has spread out from the epicenter type places like the Bay Area. One of my best friends here got priced out and now drives in 40 minutes from a nearby town. That's bad for 1) him and his family 2) the environment 3) traffic. If you ask people on Nextdoor, they'll probably tell you there's also a traffic crisis, but it's not true.
- fragmede 3y ago
  Is San Antonio really a city? That just sounds like an endless suburb to me
- midoridensha 3y ago
  I live in Tokyo: there's over 40 million people in the greater metro area. It's the largest metro area in the world. There's hundreds of train/subway stations and most of the population gets around by public transit, along with cycling and walking. Population size isn't the problem, the problem is the way American cities were built. If you want public transit to work, you have to make cars extremely inconvenient, which means little or no parking (and the parking that exists is very expensive), high density, and zoning that allows all this.

by davidw 3y ago

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.

davidw 3y ago
Rome is notable for having kind of not great subway infrastructure for a major European city because, among other problems, they tend to encounter a lot of archeological stuff whenever they dig there. And I'm not even talking about major cities. Where I lived in Padova, it has approximately 200K people in the same area that about 100K people occupy here in Bend, Oregon. Padova has way better transit than Bend does even if Bend is much more well to do in many ways.
- majormajor 3y ago
  Is Bend gripped by housing issues and traffic as much as the Bay Area or NYC or wherever? The folks I know in smaller US towns simply don't have the same concerns about parking spaces as those in high-demand, high-population, central large cities. And comparing those cities to typically-small-to-medium-size Italian cities doesn't result in very actionable practical plans.
  - davidw 3y ago
    Bend has very serious housing woes. The housing crisis, at this point, has spread out from the epicenter type places like the Bay Area. One of my best friends here got priced out and now drives in 40 minutes from a nearby town. That's bad for 1) him and his family 2) the environment 3) traffic. If you ask people on Nextdoor, they'll probably tell you there's also a traffic crisis, but it's not true.
fragmede 3y ago
Is San Antonio really a city? That just sounds like an endless suburb to me
midoridensha 3y ago
I live in Tokyo: there's over 40 million people in the greater metro area. It's the largest metro area in the world. There's hundreds of train/subway stations and most of the population gets around by public transit, along with cycling and walking. Population size isn't the problem, the problem is the way American cities were built. If you want public transit to work, you have to make cars extremely inconvenient, which means little or no parking (and the parking that exists is very expensive), high density, and zoning that allows all this.