4 ms·
We should build a "car-free" city just to see how well it will go. * Large percentage of city is green. * Most of the city is mixed retail+residential. * Lot
by abdullahkhalids 3y ago
We should build a "car-free" city just to see how well it will go.
* Large percentage of city is green.
* Most of the city is mixed retail+residential.
* Lots of 3-5 story residential buildings to have appropriate density.
* Streets have a single one-way car lane + two bike lanes + two walking paths + green space.
* Bigger roads are 1+1 lane, and primarily used by buses, commercial vehicles, emergency vehicles and people with mobility disabilities.
* The city should not be much bigger than 10km x 10 km. That's enough for 0.5-1 million people, while small enough that a regular person can cycle end-to-end.
* High-speed train access to nearby cities.
Since, this is a new city people who looove cars don't have to move there. So nothing for them to complain about.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoIsn't Saudi Arabia planning to do this with NEOM? It might still out to be a pink elephant, but if they get it done... Having lived in Beijing that really exceeds 3-5 story density, but also has huge ring roads combined with lots of bicycles, buses, HSR to nearby cities, and a huge expansive subway, you can still be screwed even if you have all of that (not sure if getting rid of the roads would make it better).
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoNEOM seems to be an ecological disaster. "The Line", its major residential component, is a city that is 100 km x 200m. A block of concrete and glass placed right in the middle of the dessert. Its going to completely disrupt migratory patterns and ecosystems in a much larger area than a normal circular/square city.
- wizofaus 3y ago> We should build a "car-free" city just to see how well it will go. Fairly sure we were doing exactly that for most of the last 9000 years or so. Anyway, it's hard to see how it will solve or prove anything - the vast majority of us aren't going to move to greenfield cities. We already have plenty of towns and cities around the world (not many in the US, granted) that have managed to strike a reasonable balance between car-usage and other forms of getting around, at a "human" scale. The primary challenge is ensuring future urban development follows that path rather than continuing the same trends of excessive devotion to cars-above-all that we've witnessed in many cities over the last 70 or 80 years.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoTo me the ideal balance is the type of cars I have specified in my comment. And I know there are many others like me. We just want our own community. The others can do what they want.
- mateusz_ 3y agoYou can check how it works in Amsterdam
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoUnless you can import Amsterdam's weather and geography, it's not relevant to dissimilar locations.
- wizofaus 3y agoA city like LA has the perfect weather and geography for being virtually car-free. I don't think that's the issue... (I've also visited cities that would seem to be poorly suited weather/geography-wise for extensive use of walking/bicycles etc., but it happens anyway: Hamburg is notoriously rainy and windy for much of the year but something like 75% of transportation is car-free, and SF is frequently ranked as one of the US's most bike-friendly cities, despite its hilly terrain. There are even papers written about it: https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/AT4RRDTCGMVF3TJJHUJK/full https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/AT4RRDTCGMVF3TJJHUJK/ful...)
- mateusz_ 3y agoGood thing that people from Helsinki didn't knew that they have to import NL weather to have good bike infra
- plmpsu 3y agoSounds like Utrecht.