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>In short, walk or take a tram to your parked car if you need to drive it to the next town. What does that have to do with what I said? Without allowing vehic

>In short, walk or take a tram to your parked car if you need to drive it to the next town. What does that have to do with what I said? Without allowing vehicles on roads (and the jaywalking laws that came with it), deliveries to the high-density places where people live , or to city centers, would be limited to what can be drawn on a horse and carriage. Those laws specifically benefited those people who live without cars. The high-density car-free life you dream of would never have been possible had your "no-brainer" alternative been adopted - you can't transport that much goods, that quickly, and that often, and that reliably with horses alone.

munk-a 3y ago
I have no objection to commercial delivery vehicles, mass transit vehicles or emergency vehicles - I solely object to personal vehicles being assumed to have a right to directly access to every store front in a city. If we shifted out cultural view to looking at these vehicles as borrowing the public space of streets - instead of viewing streets as zones prohibited to pedestrians we'd probably all live longer lives without compromising on our deliveries. You can also look at European cities to see how last-mile deliveries to addresses that aren't on car-width roads are handled with cargo and motor bikes.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > You can also look at European cities to see how last-mile deliveries to addresses that aren't on car-width roads are handled with cargo and motor bikes. High-density living requires much more cargo space than motorbikes can handle. Just moving into the area alone requires an automobile (you're not moving 3 beds, 5 couches and everything else on cargo bikes). hundreds of thousands of eggs, loaves of bread and litres of milk alone is delivered in a large high-density metro per day. you aren't going to fit 100k cargo bikes into the train station. My point is not that we need to keep autos, my point is that the high-density living we have now would not have been possible if automobiles were not allowed on roads. We're lucky that it was allowed, because it enabled a rate of progress that would never have been possible without it.
adrianN 3y ago
You realize that high-density car-free cities existed for thousands of years before cars were invented?
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > You realize that high-density car-free cities existed for thousands of years before cars were invented? Not at the scale we commonly have now. If you have any links to a 2000 year old skyscraper, now would be a good time to post it.
  - adrianN 3y ago
    Global population wasn't at the scale we have right now either. However, London had several million inhabitants in the late nineteenth century, before any cars were around.
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      > Global population wasn't at the scale we have right now either. Yes. Because technology like the automobile was not around to support the high-density living that we enjoy now. > However, London had several million inhabitants in the late nineteenth century, before any cars were around. Nowhere nearly as dense as we want to live now. And that wasn't thousands of years ago either. My point is that, without the automobile, high density populations could not be supported.
      - adrianN 3y ago
        You're moving goalposts across continents if a car free city with several million inhabitants doesn't qualify as dense car-free living.
        lelanthran 3y ago
        I don't think so. I started the thread with: >>>> We all benefited, yourself included, from having those early laws on the books. then reinforced with >>> The high-density car-free life you dream of would never have been possible then reinforced, again, with >> Because technology like the automobile was not around to support the high-density living that we enjoy now. I thought I was being clear that I was referring to the dense car-free cities we now enjoy, or we expect to have, not overcrowded and unsanitary slums[1]. So you claiming that a dense car-free city is possible is irrelevant to "the car free city we now enjoy", because the car-free cities we now enjoy does not have millions of people living in overcrowded and unsanitary slums. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_London#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_London#19th_century: > While the city grew wealthy as Britain's holdings expanded, 19th-century London was also a city of poverty, where millions lived in overcrowded and unsanitary slums.

munk-a 3y ago

I have no objection to commercial delivery vehicles, mass transit vehicles or emergency vehicles - I solely object to personal vehicles being assumed to have a right to directly access to every store front in a city. If we shifted out cultural view to looking at these vehicles as borrowing the public space of streets - instead of viewing streets as zones prohibited to pedestrians we'd probably all live longer lives without compromising on our deliveries. You can also look at European cities to see how last-mile deliveries to addresses that aren't on car-width roads are handled with cargo and motor bikes.

lelanthran 3y ago
> You can also look at European cities to see how last-mile deliveries to addresses that aren't on car-width roads are handled with cargo and motor bikes. High-density living requires much more cargo space than motorbikes can handle. Just moving into the area alone requires an automobile (you're not moving 3 beds, 5 couches and everything else on cargo bikes). hundreds of thousands of eggs, loaves of bread and litres of milk alone is delivered in a large high-density metro per day. you aren't going to fit 100k cargo bikes into the train station. My point is not that we need to keep autos, my point is that the high-density living we have now would not have been possible if automobiles were not allowed on roads. We're lucky that it was allowed, because it enabled a rate of progress that would never have been possible without it.

adrianN 3y ago

You realize that high-density car-free cities existed for thousands of years before cars were invented?

lelanthran 3y ago
> You realize that high-density car-free cities existed for thousands of years before cars were invented? Not at the scale we commonly have now. If you have any links to a 2000 year old skyscraper, now would be a good time to post it.
- adrianN 3y ago
  Global population wasn't at the scale we have right now either. However, London had several million inhabitants in the late nineteenth century, before any cars were around.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > Global population wasn't at the scale we have right now either. Yes. Because technology like the automobile was not around to support the high-density living that we enjoy now. > However, London had several million inhabitants in the late nineteenth century, before any cars were around. Nowhere nearly as dense as we want to live now. And that wasn't thousands of years ago either. My point is that, without the automobile, high density populations could not be supported.
    - adrianN 3y ago
      You're moving goalposts across continents if a car free city with several million inhabitants doesn't qualify as dense car-free living.
      - lelanthran 3y ago
        I don't think so. I started the thread with: >>>> We all benefited, yourself included, from having those early laws on the books. then reinforced with >>> The high-density car-free life you dream of would never have been possible then reinforced, again, with >> Because technology like the automobile was not around to support the high-density living that we enjoy now. I thought I was being clear that I was referring to the dense car-free cities we now enjoy, or we expect to have, not overcrowded and unsanitary slums[1]. So you claiming that a dense car-free city is possible is irrelevant to "the car free city we now enjoy", because the car-free cities we now enjoy does not have millions of people living in overcrowded and unsanitary slums. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_London#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_London#19th_century: > While the city grew wealthy as Britain's holdings expanded, 19th-century London was also a city of poverty, where millions lived in overcrowded and unsanitary slums.