7 ms·

Wait, author contrasts speed of development in China with a criticism of urban renewal in America without even addressing property rights in China? Those ultra

by et-al 2y ago

Wait, author contrasts speed of development in China with a criticism of urban renewal in America without even addressing property rights in China? Those ultra modern subways and apartments of Chengdu didn't happen without many families being displaced. Not to defend urban renewal, but if it had focused on railways instead of highways, I wonder if we'd be as negative today. For me, the fundamental issue is the highways that divided cities and split the populace between those who can afford cars and those who can't.

panick21_ 2y ago
If it had focused on railways instead of highways we wouldn't see it as that negative, because rail lines already existed and widening that would have little impact. And rail is incredibly more efficient, you need very little space to transport a gigantic amount of people. This is especially true for interchanges, highway interchanges are freaking gigantic. Railway interchanges are cooperatively tiny. For railway you wouldn't need nearly as much removal, and a railway is far, far easier to cross then a highway. You can start with at grade crossings early on and then overtime add grade separation. Grade separation is much cheaper for a railway. Or you can build the whole railway above or below grade quite reasonably. This rail line here can beat most giant US urban highways, Zürich Switzerland: https://ibb.co/sv8tzYK https://ibb.co/sv8tzYK With cut and cover, you can pretty cheaply build a railway and then build new building above, where the same people who live there before can live. > For me, the fundamental issue is the highways that divided cities and split the populace between those who can afford cars and those who can't. So by that logic it good to build highways, as long as the government also makes sure that everybody has a car? If everybody can use the least space and energy efficient method to get around, surely we have great solution.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > And rail is incredibly more efficient, you need very little space to transport a gigantic amount of people. I'd also like to note that overall capacity is sensitive to how big each train is and how fast it moves etc. There are certain lingering, er, unserious yet overhyped proposals out there for systems using many low-capacity pods, but because you need some sort of safe separation between them it tanks the capacity. (Unless you run them in an unsafe way that will eventually kill thousands of people in compound pile-ups.)
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    Of course, Im talking about actual trains that exist. Not some random pod system based on power point slides. The point is a railline can handle lots of people. If it does depends on it being used in a reasonable way.
- philwelch 2y ago
  > And rail is incredibly more efficient, you need very little space to transport a gigantic amount of people. Assuming everyone is going the same place at the same time.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    > Assuming everyone is going the same place at the same time. Commuting.
    - philwelch 2y ago
      What about it? Not everyone goes to work at the same place at the same time unless you’re talking about a literal company town, and if we still had those, they probably wouldn’t let you own a car.
      - BytesAndGears 2y ago
        No, but having a strong network of trains, trams, and buses makes it easy to get from one place to another regardless of where you’re going. You only get those crappy “the city has one train that runs once an hour” in some US cities It’s how nearly all of my coworkers commute, even though we live in different cities and leave at vastly different times
    - HDThoreaun 2y ago
      Commuting = everyone going to the same place at the same time is only true in 2 American cities. And even then only for a portion of the population.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    No assuming you have a transportation system that actually makes sense. Trains have these things, called 'stops' and then different people get in or out depending on what journy they are on. The train stations should be connected by walking, biking, trams (basically trains), subways (also trains) and buses. And car dropoff too. Maybe some parking. Hirarchy, that how you create an efficent system from anywhere to anywhere. Fast intercity trains, regional trains, S-Bahn, Trams and so on. It works great an I assure you not everybody works in the same place, and somehow trains are still very well used. Today on my day off into the mountains Im gone take an trolly bus, then an electric regional train and then a disel bus into the mointains. With lots of stuff I have to carry. Its perfectly fine. At anytime I can check an app, tell it where I want to go and I almost certainly have reasonable connection within the next 15 min. So maybe instead of snark, you could actually learn something about tansportation engineering. If you want to see what single rail corridor can do in a city, check out Münich S-Bahn for example. And then do the math on how large a highway would have to be.
- 7speter 2y ago
  Have fun foodshopping via railway.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - OfficeChad 2y ago
    [dead]
  - blurb4969 2y ago
    why not build shops near residential areas in a walkable distance?
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  > you need very little space to transport a gigantic amount of people But you need to force people go to the same destination. And quit shopping or getting their children to school or do sightseeing.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - anamax 2y ago
      > This is the S1 in Berlin The vast majority of people in the US do not live in places that are at all comparable to Berlin, or NYC for that matter. > Shopping should be local, Which means that you're limited to what's popular enough in your local area. And, it usually leads to small stores, which are inherently less efficient and thus more expensive. > The US model of consolidating all schools into superschools and the move them deep into the subburbs surounded by parking lots is literally the worst. Suburbs have schools because suburbs have lots of kids. FWIW, there is a tendency for folks to move from cities to suburbs when they have kids. That said, city kids go to city schools. Yes, there is some "city schools are so horrible that we'll let some city kids go elsewhere" but it's [1] in the noise and [2] caused by crappy city schools/govts, not urban design. Crappy city govts cause lots of problems, not just crappy schools, but if those govts could be easily fixed, it would have happened. (FWIW, almost all of those crappy city govts have been super-majority Democrat for decades.) > Sightseeing, how else would you go sightseeing if not with the train. I dont get it. Would any place you want to go to be just full of parking lots? No. You're assuming that every place you go sightseeing has lots of people. That might be true in Europe, but it's not true in the US.
      - panick21_ 2y ago
        > The vast majority of people in the US do not live in places that are at all comparable to Berlin, or NYC for that matter. I was illustrating that trains can stop in multiple places. And this is true in lower density places too. For example here in Switzerland you have mountains, and trains go along the valley. There are plenty of good examples of train in lower density areas. And they use many of the same principles. I used to live next to a Unisco World Heritage site that has a train threw it and the train stopped at most villages many that only have a few 1000 people. Here a video that shows how things can work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T8cYJCFbno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T8cYJCFbno > Which means that you're limited to what's popular enough in your local area. And, it usually leads to small stores, which are inherently less efficient and thus more expensive. Yeah because US supermarkets are famous for their wide selection of very diverse products from all over the world. Its not like what those stores are actually full of are like 500 different breakfast cereals from the same 2 companies. Small stores being less efficient is only true if you only look at the store itself. If you look at the overall system they are more efficient. The lower prices some of these super stores offer are because they just externalize to costs to local infrastructure and local government. The reality is taking in more people from a large amounts of subburbs isn't going to radically derisive the product portfolio. The reality is 95%+ of your daily needs can easily be served from a reasonably sized local market. Here those kinds of small stores have their own cheese, meat, fish and fresh bread section. I rather go to such a store here then these superstores that I have been to in the US. > Suburbs have schools because suburbs have lots of kids. FWIW, there is a tendency for folks to move from cities to suburbs when they have kids. I'm not against school in the subburbs. My point was, and this is a historical fact. School got massively bigger and less local. You can have many smaller schools in the subburbs as well. But because of 'efficiency' things were consolidated into these mega schools. Meaning the avg travel distance to schools went up a huge amount, meaning far fewer kids could walk or cycle. And because of that it was also incredibly dangerous for kids to do that so it basically forced everybody to take the car. Its a complete desaster in terms of everything from efficiency to health. And it has not actually made providing education cheaper or better. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/school-car-lines-buses-biking/675345/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/school-car... > [1] in the noise Cities aren't load, cars are loud. It being loud is literally an urban design issue. > [2] caused by crappy city schools/govts They are crappy partly because of the general attitude towards city and how transportation funding and school financing works in the US. Again that is an urban design issue. > Crappy city govts cause lots of problems, not just crappy schools, but if those govts could be easily fixed, it would have happened. What a great attitude to have. Society can never ever improve. If it could improve it would have already improved. We are all doomed. The West is going to shit. Balblabla. Its just literally and factually wrong. https://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2023/03/then-now-and-later.png https://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2023/03/then-now-... Cities and human systems always evolve. There are lots of places in the US where things are improving as well. > No. > You're assuming that every place you go sightseeing has lots of people. That might be true in Europe, but it's not true in the US. You simply can't deny that lots of places that are famous for sightseeing have lots of cars and lots of parking. Sure not every place has it, but plenty do. And guess what, its the places that actually have the most people going to. I'm sure you can go to some place in Alaska that is beautiful, but that that not where most people actually go on vacation. And its not where most ultra individualistic US car users drive their cars too. Where people actually drive too, is almost always a well prepared place connected to a highway with lots of parking provided. Its a simple fact that lots of beautiful places that we currently reach with trains or bus would be much, much worse if there was no public transport to it.
philwelch 2y ago
If by “divided cities” you’re referring to the physical disruption of highway construction, the same effect happened with railroads. That’s where the expression, “the wrong side of the tracks” comes from. Also, the expression “getting railroaded” was coined by farmers to refer to the low prices they were getting paid for their produce by the railroads, who had established themselves as a monopsony by dominating freight. The construction of highways led to competition from trucks, which took away the ability of railroads to dictate low prices to farmers. But setting aside old idioms, American cities were already shaped by the construction of railroads in the 19th century. They were certainly reshaped by the interstate highways but that was always going to be more disruptive than any sort of growth or improvement to the railroad network because it was a newer mode of infrastructure.
HDThoreaun 2y ago
Railroads would still split cities. The reality is that American cities need highways. We have too much space relative to our population and our cultural focus on individualism mean that people will always prefer single family homes. Those cant exist without cars and people with cars need to be able to commute. The displacement was tragic but Im not if it couldve been done much better. If we're going to build the highways going through poor areas makes sense, eminent domain is much cheaper.
- diordiderot 2y ago
  > The reality is that American cities need highways. Not through the middle of them. > people will always prefer single family homes. Millenials and genZ prefer walkable neighborhoods and public transit. edit: pre-50s america had much more dense walkable urbanism. Just more distributed. There were many more '2nd cities'
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    Source? Most millennials live in the suburbs as far as I know.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    Millennials and Gen Z make do with what they can afford.
    - 7speter 2y ago
      This. It’s rather funny, because I observe among my peers, who are millenials, that if they can’t have a thing (cars, houses), then no one should have them.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
DeathArrow 2y ago
> split the populace between those who can afford cars and those who can't. So you can't afford a car but you can afford a house?
- cuSetanta 2y ago
  If I had to choose I would probably choose a place to live over a car. Be that renting or a mortgage. I am however a European, so perhaps less in love with cars than some cultures.
- Mawr 2y ago
  "In 2023, it cost $12,182 a year, or $1,015 a month, to own and operate a new car, according to AAA.[5]" [1] Seems plausible for 1k a month to be the tipping point. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/car-ownership-statistics/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/car-ownership-s...
sidewndr46 2y ago
Are you talking about passenger railways? Everywhere I've lived in the US has had a railway running right through town. It's one of the few things the government can't just seem to reroute. But it is always freight rail
- et-al 2y ago
  I was actually referencing public transit, but (poorly) chose to write "railways" last night because it rhymed with highways.
- emj 2y ago
  If you use your railways for passenger trains it is quite common to reroute the railways around towns to get higher speeds. Which has drawbacks and advantages. As a tourist I do not like it.
rufus_foreman 2y ago
>> Wait, author contrasts speed of development in China with a criticism of urban renewal in America without even addressing property rights in China? Those ultra modern subways and apartments of Chengdu didn't happen without many families being displaced Why are there "nail houses" (see https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china-nail-houses-in-pictures-property-development https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china...) in China but not the US? In almost all of those examples, a similar property owner in the US would have been forced to give up their property under imminent domain.
- erik_seaberg 2y ago
  (it's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain)
  - rufus_foreman 2y ago
    Oops.

by et-al 2y ago

panick21_ 2y ago

If it had focused on railways instead of highways we wouldn't see it as that negative, because rail lines already existed and widening that would have little impact. And rail is incredibly more efficient, you need very little space to transport a gigantic amount of people. This is especially true for interchanges, highway interchanges are freaking gigantic. Railway interchanges are cooperatively tiny. For railway you wouldn't need nearly as much removal, and a railway is far, far easier to cross then a highway. You can start with at grade crossings early on and then overtime add grade separation. Grade separation is much cheaper for a railway. Or you can build the whole railway above or below grade quite reasonably. This rail line here can beat most giant US urban highways, Zürich Switzerland: https://ibb.co/sv8tzYK https://ibb.co/sv8tzYK With cut and cover, you can pretty cheaply build a railway and then build new building above, where the same people who live there before can live. > For me, the fundamental issue is the highways that divided cities and split the populace between those who can afford cars and those who can't. So by that logic it good to build highways, as long as the government also makes sure that everybody has a car? If everybody can use the least space and energy efficient method to get around, surely we have great solution.

Terr_ 2y ago
> And rail is incredibly more efficient, you need very little space to transport a gigantic amount of people. I'd also like to note that overall capacity is sensitive to how big each train is and how fast it moves etc. There are certain lingering, er, unserious yet overhyped proposals out there for systems using many low-capacity pods, but because you need some sort of safe separation between them it tanks the capacity. (Unless you run them in an unsafe way that will eventually kill thousands of people in compound pile-ups.)
- panick21_ 2y ago
  Of course, Im talking about actual trains that exist. Not some random pod system based on power point slides. The point is a railline can handle lots of people. If it does depends on it being used in a reasonable way.
philwelch 2y ago
> And rail is incredibly more efficient, you need very little space to transport a gigantic amount of people. Assuming everyone is going the same place at the same time.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > Assuming everyone is going the same place at the same time. Commuting.
  - philwelch 2y ago
    What about it? Not everyone goes to work at the same place at the same time unless you’re talking about a literal company town, and if we still had those, they probably wouldn’t let you own a car.
    - BytesAndGears 2y ago
      No, but having a strong network of trains, trams, and buses makes it easy to get from one place to another regardless of where you’re going. You only get those crappy “the city has one train that runs once an hour” in some US cities It’s how nearly all of my coworkers commute, even though we live in different cities and leave at vastly different times
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    Commuting = everyone going to the same place at the same time is only true in 2 American cities. And even then only for a portion of the population.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  No assuming you have a transportation system that actually makes sense. Trains have these things, called 'stops' and then different people get in or out depending on what journy they are on. The train stations should be connected by walking, biking, trams (basically trains), subways (also trains) and buses. And car dropoff too. Maybe some parking. Hirarchy, that how you create an efficent system from anywhere to anywhere. Fast intercity trains, regional trains, S-Bahn, Trams and so on. It works great an I assure you not everybody works in the same place, and somehow trains are still very well used. Today on my day off into the mountains Im gone take an trolly bus, then an electric regional train and then a disel bus into the mointains. With lots of stuff I have to carry. Its perfectly fine. At anytime I can check an app, tell it where I want to go and I almost certainly have reasonable connection within the next 15 min. So maybe instead of snark, you could actually learn something about tansportation engineering. If you want to see what single rail corridor can do in a city, check out Münich S-Bahn for example. And then do the math on how large a highway would have to be.
7speter 2y ago
Have fun foodshopping via railway.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  [flagged]
- OfficeChad 2y ago
  [dead]
- blurb4969 2y ago
  why not build shops near residential areas in a walkable distance?
DeathArrow 2y ago
> you need very little space to transport a gigantic amount of people But you need to force people go to the same destination. And quit shopping or getting their children to school or do sightseeing.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - anamax 2y ago
    > This is the S1 in Berlin The vast majority of people in the US do not live in places that are at all comparable to Berlin, or NYC for that matter. > Shopping should be local, Which means that you're limited to what's popular enough in your local area. And, it usually leads to small stores, which are inherently less efficient and thus more expensive. > The US model of consolidating all schools into superschools and the move them deep into the subburbs surounded by parking lots is literally the worst. Suburbs have schools because suburbs have lots of kids. FWIW, there is a tendency for folks to move from cities to suburbs when they have kids. That said, city kids go to city schools. Yes, there is some "city schools are so horrible that we'll let some city kids go elsewhere" but it's [1] in the noise and [2] caused by crappy city schools/govts, not urban design. Crappy city govts cause lots of problems, not just crappy schools, but if those govts could be easily fixed, it would have happened. (FWIW, almost all of those crappy city govts have been super-majority Democrat for decades.) > Sightseeing, how else would you go sightseeing if not with the train. I dont get it. Would any place you want to go to be just full of parking lots? No. You're assuming that every place you go sightseeing has lots of people. That might be true in Europe, but it's not true in the US.
    - panick21_ 2y ago
      > The vast majority of people in the US do not live in places that are at all comparable to Berlin, or NYC for that matter. I was illustrating that trains can stop in multiple places. And this is true in lower density places too. For example here in Switzerland you have mountains, and trains go along the valley. There are plenty of good examples of train in lower density areas. And they use many of the same principles. I used to live next to a Unisco World Heritage site that has a train threw it and the train stopped at most villages many that only have a few 1000 people. Here a video that shows how things can work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T8cYJCFbno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T8cYJCFbno > Which means that you're limited to what's popular enough in your local area. And, it usually leads to small stores, which are inherently less efficient and thus more expensive. Yeah because US supermarkets are famous for their wide selection of very diverse products from all over the world. Its not like what those stores are actually full of are like 500 different breakfast cereals from the same 2 companies. Small stores being less efficient is only true if you only look at the store itself. If you look at the overall system they are more efficient. The lower prices some of these super stores offer are because they just externalize to costs to local infrastructure and local government. The reality is taking in more people from a large amounts of subburbs isn't going to radically derisive the product portfolio. The reality is 95%+ of your daily needs can easily be served from a reasonably sized local market. Here those kinds of small stores have their own cheese, meat, fish and fresh bread section. I rather go to such a store here then these superstores that I have been to in the US. > Suburbs have schools because suburbs have lots of kids. FWIW, there is a tendency for folks to move from cities to suburbs when they have kids. I'm not against school in the subburbs. My point was, and this is a historical fact. School got massively bigger and less local. You can have many smaller schools in the subburbs as well. But because of 'efficiency' things were consolidated into these mega schools. Meaning the avg travel distance to schools went up a huge amount, meaning far fewer kids could walk or cycle. And because of that it was also incredibly dangerous for kids to do that so it basically forced everybody to take the car. Its a complete desaster in terms of everything from efficiency to health. And it has not actually made providing education cheaper or better. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/school-car-lines-buses-biking/675345/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/school-car... > [1] in the noise Cities aren't load, cars are loud. It being loud is literally an urban design issue. > [2] caused by crappy city schools/govts They are crappy partly because of the general attitude towards city and how transportation funding and school financing works in the US. Again that is an urban design issue. > Crappy city govts cause lots of problems, not just crappy schools, but if those govts could be easily fixed, it would have happened. What a great attitude to have. Society can never ever improve. If it could improve it would have already improved. We are all doomed. The West is going to shit. Balblabla. Its just literally and factually wrong. https://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2023/03/then-now-and-later.png https://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2023/03/then-now-... Cities and human systems always evolve. There are lots of places in the US where things are improving as well. > No. > You're assuming that every place you go sightseeing has lots of people. That might be true in Europe, but it's not true in the US. You simply can't deny that lots of places that are famous for sightseeing have lots of cars and lots of parking. Sure not every place has it, but plenty do. And guess what, its the places that actually have the most people going to. I'm sure you can go to some place in Alaska that is beautiful, but that that not where most people actually go on vacation. And its not where most ultra individualistic US car users drive their cars too. Where people actually drive too, is almost always a well prepared place connected to a highway with lots of parking provided. Its a simple fact that lots of beautiful places that we currently reach with trains or bus would be much, much worse if there was no public transport to it.

philwelch 2y ago

If by “divided cities” you’re referring to the physical disruption of highway construction, the same effect happened with railroads. That’s where the expression, “the wrong side of the tracks” comes from. Also, the expression “getting railroaded” was coined by farmers to refer to the low prices they were getting paid for their produce by the railroads, who had established themselves as a monopsony by dominating freight. The construction of highways led to competition from trucks, which took away the ability of railroads to dictate low prices to farmers. But setting aside old idioms, American cities were already shaped by the construction of railroads in the 19th century. They were certainly reshaped by the interstate highways but that was always going to be more disruptive than any sort of growth or improvement to the railroad network because it was a newer mode of infrastructure.

HDThoreaun 2y ago

Railroads would still split cities. The reality is that American cities need highways. We have too much space relative to our population and our cultural focus on individualism mean that people will always prefer single family homes. Those cant exist without cars and people with cars need to be able to commute. The displacement was tragic but Im not if it couldve been done much better. If we're going to build the highways going through poor areas makes sense, eminent domain is much cheaper.

diordiderot 2y ago
> The reality is that American cities need highways. Not through the middle of them. > people will always prefer single family homes. Millenials and genZ prefer walkable neighborhoods and public transit. edit: pre-50s america had much more dense walkable urbanism. Just more distributed. There were many more '2nd cities'
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  Source? Most millennials live in the suburbs as far as I know.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Millennials and Gen Z make do with what they can afford.
  - 7speter 2y ago
    This. It’s rather funny, because I observe among my peers, who are millenials, that if they can’t have a thing (cars, houses), then no one should have them.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

DeathArrow 2y ago

> split the populace between those who can afford cars and those who can't. So you can't afford a car but you can afford a house?

cuSetanta 2y ago
If I had to choose I would probably choose a place to live over a car. Be that renting or a mortgage. I am however a European, so perhaps less in love with cars than some cultures.
Mawr 2y ago
"In 2023, it cost $12,182 a year, or $1,015 a month, to own and operate a new car, according to AAA.[5]" [1] Seems plausible for 1k a month to be the tipping point. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/car-ownership-statistics/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/car-ownership-s...

sidewndr46 2y ago

Are you talking about passenger railways? Everywhere I've lived in the US has had a railway running right through town. It's one of the few things the government can't just seem to reroute. But it is always freight rail

et-al 2y ago
I was actually referencing public transit, but (poorly) chose to write "railways" last night because it rhymed with highways.
emj 2y ago
If you use your railways for passenger trains it is quite common to reroute the railways around towns to get higher speeds. Which has drawbacks and advantages. As a tourist I do not like it.

rufus_foreman 2y ago

>> Wait, author contrasts speed of development in China with a criticism of urban renewal in America without even addressing property rights in China? Those ultra modern subways and apartments of Chengdu didn't happen without many families being displaced Why are there "nail houses" (see https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china-nail-houses-in-pictures-property-development https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china...) in China but not the US? In almost all of those examples, a similar property owner in the US would have been forced to give up their property under imminent domain.

erik_seaberg 2y ago
(it's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain)
- rufus_foreman 2y ago
  Oops.