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What Dutch city looks anything remotely similar to NYC? There are very good reasons to drive into NYC for many people, due to density - much more people have mu
by throwaway11460 3y ago
What Dutch city looks anything remotely similar to NYC? There are very good reasons to drive into NYC for many people, due to density - much more people have much more diverse needs, and need much more workers moving around with their equipment and much more goods.
- malermeister 3y agoThe Randstad does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randstad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randstad Density is pretty similar as well.
- throwaway11460 3y agoI don't think it looks like NYC. Density might be similar, but not the size. You can count the skyscrapers on your hands.
- malermeister 3y agoSkyscrapers do not a city make. NYC has a population of 8.8M. The Randstad has a population of 8.4M.
- throwaway11460 3y agoLook at the area. 8261 km2 of land while NYC is 300. We call both "city" but we might as well use 2 totally unrelated words given the differences. As the other commenter said, NYC metropolitan area would be more comparable - 8936 km2, 19.5M people.
- valarauko 3y agoIn that case, you should really compare it to the New York Metropolitan Area, which has over 20 million people.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoI only meant that their methods should be part of the conversation, not implemented uncritically or without being adapted to local needs. Many people in the Netherlands also need to drive and the system supports this while also offering alternatives. Many people means diverse needs indeed, so the reliance on and the defaulting of car travel runs counter to many of those needs.
- throwaway11460 3y agoThe point I was trying to make is that much more people need to drive in NYC and can't use the alternatives. Sure, I'm all for it - but the problems and solutions are of much different magnitude from anywhere in the Netherlands. People in the Netherlands made it hard to drive through their cities, which led to more people not driving. In NYC it's going to lead less people driving too, but still a massive clusterfuck on the roads that will be only worse if the solution of the Netherlands is implemented there.
- dotcoma 3y agoI’m not sure why “it can’t work here”, even if it’s what every city says. It did not work in the Netherlands either; in fact, after WW2, they imported “traffic planners”, i.e. people who want — and create! — traffic from the US, and set out to destroying their old city centers to create highways etc, until people said: enough! To a greater or lesser degree, similar solutions work in Copenhagen, and in some German cities, and are starting to work in Paris, once one of the most car-crazed cities in Europe, and in other places. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m just saying that it can be done. It sure takes a lot of work, but it can be done.
- throwaway11460 3y agoAll these cities are very different from NYC. To be clear, I'm not saying preserve the status quo. I just don't think the changes the cities you listed made have any chance to work in NYC. Most notably, all of these cities existed way before NYC and we're built with limitations of medieval technology. All the changes you mention are just rollbacks to last working state. NYC is a new city built with comparatively godlike tech applied without restraint. The NYC-style solution "I guess I'll just commute by helicopter, no problem putting another skyscraper right here" was incomprehensible to the rich people who built the European cities - they had to go a little further away if they wanted their quiet comfortable life.