38 ms·

If we want a shift to walking, we need to prioritize dignity

• gnabgib 2y ago
  Discussion a year ago (608 points, 688 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36920622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36920622
• Log_out_ 2y ago
  Pedestrians are after thoughts and hsve to constsntly pull on resources to get ahead. Could have cameras or learning systens that adapt to the flow of crowds. But the world is mot designed for pedestrian peasants.
  • shiroiushi 2y ago
    I wish I could pass a law that forbids politicians from driving or riding in personal automobiles as long as they're in office: they can walk, take public transit, ride a bicycle, or take an airplane (in coach class).
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • sofixa 2y ago
    > But the world is mot designed for pedestrian peasants. Fortunately, small parts of the world, mostly centralised around anglophone North America and a few other "developing/developed rapidly in an age where cars seemed like the best thing since sliced bread, so everyone else was left behind" countries. And for the latter category, countries like Sri Lanka or Taiwan, it's still usually not as egregious as in anglophone North America because sometimes there are leftovers from before when everyone used to have to walk; not everything was bulldozed like it was in US and Canada. (Probably just because they had less time at destroying everything to remake it for cars). But in a lot of the world, pedestrians are taken into account, and often even prioritised for.
    • the_sleaze_ 2y ago
      I believe that early on there was heavy influence to build highways and suburbs to support the burgeoning US auto industry. It really makes no sense otherwise, from a planning perspective. The infrastructure alone to support sewer, gas and electric makes absolutely no sense with such low density residential.
  • impossiblefork 2y ago
    I'm not sure it's actually the rich and powerful necessarily drive much. Of course, there are car obsessed rich people who enjoy driving. I know some Swedish entrepreneurs who are like that, but I also know similarly successful people who never decided to get a driver's license and who lived in Gothenburg and take the tram everywhere. I think the car is a middle class thing, but then peasants were upper middle class, but I assume that's not what you meant.
    • thaumasiotes 2y ago
      > but then peasants were upper middle class Maybe in a modern context. In the terminology of the time peasants were lower class. The middle class was merchants, and "middle" referred to their social status, not their economic status - it would be unsurprising for members of the middle class to be much richer than members of the upper class.
      • impossiblefork 2y ago
        No. Farmers were respectable landowners who had employees themselves. They were seen as the foundation society stood on and contrasted with the landless and the rich.
        • defrost 2y ago
          The word used was "peasant", in English usage: A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants existed: non-free slaves, semi-free serfs, and free tenants. ~ wikipedia a poor smallholder or agricultural labourer of low social status (chiefly in historical use or with reference to subsistence farming in poorer countries). ~ Oxford Dictionary So .. limited land ownership (if any) and almost always a rent paying tenant.
          • impossiblefork 2y ago
• whatindaheck 2y ago
  Tangentially related but I saw some similar comments in the original thread [0] so hopefully this is alright. How does one move to Europe? Or how does one begin the process? I’m an average engineer and only speak English. Clearly I’m not the type of immigrant counties would love to welcome in. Where does one start? For clarity, countries like Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Estonia highly appeal to me. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36920622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36920622
  • coding123 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • mort96 2y ago
      Luckily, that's not correct :)
      • coding123 2y ago
        mostly true https://www.reddit.com/r/IHateOhio/comments/q7zflp/a_map_of_who_hates_which_states_the_most/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IHateOhio/comments/q7zflp/a_map_of_...
  • usrnm 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • huimang 2y ago
    Many places have digital nomad visas, like Estonia for example. https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/nomadvisa/ https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/nomadvisa/ right now you only speak english, but you can surely allocate some time to start learning the local language. it's long-term marathon, not a sprint.
  • not_your_vase 2y ago
    If you have no other idea (like reversing the EU->US immigration steps), just born there. It worked for me.
• hostein 2y ago
  Agreed. But this is an easy fix. Except it isn't because it's a matter of character and manpower and only then is it about money. Cities would gladly implement ideas, just create websites with & for proposals, let the neighborhoods know, get volunteers, demand social and corporate social responsibility, plan and organize potential development projects, in some cases we'd have to wait a year or or two or three for some official approval and a construction company to find a free spot but this really isn't a problem to which the solution requires more than a naive beginners mind set and consistency.
• TomK32 2y ago
  GCN, a cycling channel, just released a video on the car-centric thinking that we all have been forced into over the past century https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_4GZnGl55c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_4GZnGl55c It took me years go get into a thinking that mobility should be the priority, not cars. Once you do this mental step you can think about who needs mobility but for whatever reason cannot use a car (too young, too old, drunk, etc) and how streets and cities need to be redesigned to slow down cars to make them safer for what many call an indicator for a good cycling infrastructure: women (with kids) on bicycles.
  • globular-toast 2y ago
    It's a great video and better than the article imo. Any talk about walking or cycling that doesn't talk about cars is completely missing the main reason people don't want to do those things. The video talks about "motonormativity", a phenomenon where even people who don't drive will defend and justify car usage. Cars need to get out of town centres. Roads need to be redesigned to put pedestrians first and motorists last. Unfortunately you can't just make big changes these days so any attempts use the boiling the frog approach. Tiny changes that will take decades to get anywhere. For example, in the UK now pedestrians have priority at T junctions. This is the law. Good luck exercising that priority, though. It would be much easier without the type of junction shown in that video.
    • TomK32 2y ago
      It is a long process, it was in the Netherlands (where it started with campaigns about the number of children killed by drivers (others might say cars, but there's a person driving the car) but will be faster for every other city. I envy Paris for the massive change in a quick time, here in Austria is a fight street after street with cars still cutting through the old town.
    • Hugsun 2y ago
      I don't think it's fair to compare the article to the GCN video. Strongtowns has been advocating against all the issues mentioned in the GCN video for years. This article is just making one argument that aligns with the broader idea of urbanism. It's not meant as a general introduction to the movement like the video.
• kmarc 2y ago
  While taking a walk near downtown Austin, TX, a police car stopped next to me and the officers started asking weird questions. Including if I know where I am at, where I go, or is there someone who could help me with these apparent struggles in my life. It took me a couple awkward minutes to realize that I'm the only one standing on my feet and not sitting in a car wherever I was looking. I apologized (???) and told them I was heading to a museum, bc I'm a visitor here and that's what we do right? I added a colleague's address and assured them that I'm not "confused", and will take an Uber now. This was simply unbelievable in my world; for the next week I observed my colleague, whenever they took me out, or went to somewhere: we never walked outside. From the building to the parking lot, from the destination parking lot to the resto and vice versa. Today, of course, I know that there are walkable cities too, I enjoy walking from my Chicago hotel to the office building :-) every single time I enjoy my US visits, but after a couple weeks I can't wait to get back to my 98% car free European life.
  • nonameiguess 2y ago
    I've been seeing this top comment for days now as this thread seems to never die and I can't help but finally say something because this and associated similar comments are utterly bizarre to me. I've lived in Texas about 15 years now, first at Fort Hood, spending quite a bit of time in Austin, and I've lived in Dallas for the past decade. I live very near downtown, so there's that, but I walk all over the place and always have. I didn't even have a car for about 6 years and only finally bought one because I was going through foster care licensing and you needed to have the ability to drive a kid somewhere without relying on external assistance. Even at 3 AM, I'm not the only person out walking. I have never once been stopped by police. I go through "dangerous" neighborhood, through places near homeless encampments. I tweaked my groin while running a few weeks ago when I was 8 miles from my house and walked all the way back from Highland Park, though Uptown, Downtown, and the Cedars to get back to my house. To be clear, walking in Dallas sucks. Sidewalks randomly end. There is construction everywhere. Oak Lawn this morning had both sidewalks closed, each with a sign saying to use the other sidewalk. Drivers pay absolutely no attention and never look for pedestrians. But it is nonetheless possible and feasible to walk around and no one has ever looked at me funny for doing it. Yes, it is also often triple digit fahrenheit heat in the afternoons, but that is well within the human survivable zone, and as long as you aren't going somewhere that you can't be covered in sweat, you'll be fine. Also, I live about two miles from the main museum district in Dallas, and I walk whenever I go to a museum, and the streets there are completely filled with pedestrians. Even if you drive from out of the area, you're still not gonna park right next to the entrance. Some have their own parking lots. Some don't. The parks in the area do not. Plenty of drivers still park pretty far away. So it's particularly weird that someone would stop you on your way to a museum.
• Terr_ 2y ago
  At the risk of stirring a pot... Where's the boundary between "nicer for walking" versus "can't pay for it unless population/income gentrifies"? There are certainly low-cost ways of changing things and not-doing-dumb-stuff, but the list does contain some things like extra-streetlamps and maintained sidewalk trees and buildings with natural stone exteriors etc., which adds up.
  • fmobus 2y ago
    Well, if you want to analyze _that_, you need to take the huge infrastructure costs of suburban sprawl too. Every new cookie cutter suburban subdivision requires tons of asphalt, miles of pipes for water and sewage, and the cost in most cases gets [subsided by the denser parts of the city]<https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/6/stop-subsidizing-suburban-development-charge-it-what-it-costs https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/6/stop-subsidizin...>. Suburbia is not only unhealthy, it's also insolvent.
    • Terr_ 2y ago
      The article asserts that the "dignity" design elements are a "bigger factor" than density. So it sounds like the author believes those measures are practical/possible in existing areas.
      • fmobus 2y ago
        Sure, but your argument is "building those things will add up in cost" ignores the already huge cost of maintaining all the asphalt and car infrastructure. Planting trees is relatively cheap.
• ars 2y ago
  "Have you ever had a friend return from a vacation and gush about how great it was to walk in the place they’d visited? “You can walk everywhere! To a café, to the store. It was amazing!”" What is amazing about walking I have no idea. That sounds utterly horrible - to be in a place where everything is so close together that you can walk to everything? Space, humans need space. Ugh, I'm getting nauseated just thinking about it. And yes, I've been in places like that, I've tried them out, and they were as unpleasant as I expected. I tested it, I went to NY using only public transportation, and it was the most horrible time I've ever had being away from home. Never again! Never! My feet hurt, my back hurt, without a car I had nowhere to leave my stuff, so I had to carry everything with me, or make the long trek to my hotel (NY banned AirBNB, so hotels are far away from where I wanted to be). It was truly an absolutely miserable experience, and sitting in traffic, or hunting for a parking space is a billion times better. I've tried NY with a car before then, but I was told you don't need a car in NY - so I tried it! And they are wrong. Public transport is ALWAYS worse than a car, it's slower, much slower, it's less convenient because they only run during popular hours, it's more expensive than renting a car because you have to supplement with Uber. I don't know why I keep trying this no-car stuff, but I did, I tried Washington DC with and without a car. (I went for 2 days, one without a car, the second day with.) A car is better. MUCH MUCH better, and cheaper too, even paying for parking.
  • guitarlimeo 2y ago
    Interesting! I have the exact opposite view, hunting for a parking space or sitting in traffic is billion times worse than walking or sitting in public transport. When you are driving, you must be alert, you can't just phase out to some youtube video the same way you can do while riding public transport. Also walking is the most natural thing to us humans, it shouldn't hurt and it won't if you do it regularly. I don't mean no offense, but have you considered that you drive too much or don't get exercise otherwise if walking hurts so bad?
  • sagarm 2y ago
    If walking makes you hurt that much, you might want to talk to your doctor.
• countWSS 2y ago
  The Elephant in the Room that author ignores: Streets smell, and smelling them by walking a few km, cars and various chemicals are far more annoying than in a closed window car. If they were serious about walkable cities, the streets should be pleasant to walk. Evidently this isn't the case even in Europe and even less likely elsewhere, where smelly diesel engines, motorcycles and garbage have a significant odor problem.
  • fleg 2y ago
    It's not streets that smell, it's the cars. And you're right - nobody enjoys having a walk near a street with heavy car traffic. That's why in Europe a lot of streets in the city centers are designed in a way to discourage driving, providing ring roads and public transport options instead.
  • _xiaz 2y ago
    I have no idea where you've been in europe, but speaking for southern germany specifically this is bullshit
    • inferiorhuman 2y ago
      Today, I drove a stretch of interstate that runs next to a sewage treatment plant. Yes, it smelled as bad as you'd imagine even inside the car.
      • Ekaros 2y ago
        Only times I really remember smells is driving in countryside when farmers have used more natural fertilizers... Rest of the time have not really noticed issues. But then again I suppose being pedestrian or cyclist in those areas would not help that one...
        • inferiorhuman 2y ago
          Well this stretch smells pretty bad inside a car. As it's an interstate there aren't many pedestrians, but there are plenty of businesses.
• blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Why would I want a shift to walking? Cars give me fast transportation on my own schedule and let me have far more access to things than just walking or walking plus public transit.
  • cbeach 2y ago
    Exactly. And cars are essential for many journeys, and for normal family life in many out-of-town regions. Yet so many people on forums like this live in metropolitan bubbles and have no idea why cars might be necessary. There’s a lot of ideological opposition to motorists at the moment and it needs to stop, because the proposed “solutions” to motoring are zero-sum and in some cases downright hostile
    • sagarm 2y ago
      Cities have a limited amount of space, and a disproportionate amount of it is allocated to drivers. It's fine to choose to live in a car dependent suburbs; but don't be surprised when urbanites want to prevent fast through traffic just like suburbanites do. They're not obligated to design their neighborhood for your convenience.
      • trgn 2y ago
        This is my biggest gripe in the US. it's not the cars per se. it's that sub/ex-urbanites want to change the city to conform to their values. keep your car, i don't care, drive everywhere, but don't trash up the city just for your convenience. Let a thousand flowers bloom. cars for the fur trappers, but beautiful, calm pedestrian environments for the urbanites.
        • tech_ken 2y ago
          > it's that sub/ex-urbanites want to change the city to conform to their values. keep your car, i don't care, drive everywhere, but don't trash up the city just for your convenience. Agree with the sentiment but IMO suburbs and car-centric cities are basically mutually defining. Suburbanites didn't change the city to suit their preferences, the city changing is what enables the existance of the suburbs. Suburbs can't sustain themselves alone, they lack the density and zoning to allow their citizens to productively work. The whole design concept is to give you place to live outside the city (away from the poor or minorities) while simultaneously making it as convenient as possible for you to commute into it with your personal vehicle. The end result is a system which generates wealth in a diverse urban area, and then exports much of it to the wealthy and exclusive suburbs. To make a city difficult to commute into by car breaks the whole system, since it deprives the outer suburbs of their revenue source; the people who live there (which typically includes the elite political class in charge of planning) will fight tooth and nail to prevent that.
• ryukoposting 2y ago
  Maybe this sounds idiotic, but I've started playing chicken with drivers. If it's a crosswalk with no pedestrian signals, as long as they've made eye contact with me, I just go. Hit me. You won't.
  • vehemenz 2y ago
    This is standard protocol in most cities. It's not that novel.
    • roughly 2y ago
      Note that this works everywhere but Boston. I visit every once in a while for family or work and every time it takes me a day and a couple close calls to adjust.
      • recursive 2y ago
        I wonder if it would help if you had a wagon full of cinder blocks with you.
    • ryukoposting 2y ago
      When I told my wife-to-be this, she told me I'm insane! And she grew up in one of the biggest cities in the US. There's a couple other commenters expressing the same sentiment.
  • bigstrat2003 2y ago
    That is idiotic because you're vastly increasing your risk of injury. And for what? To make some point? I don't see how you benefit from that increased risk you are taking on.
    • recursive 2y ago
      > And for what? To make some point? For me, it's more about the cumulative mental energy required to get somewhere. If I walked maximally defensively, that would put me in a certain state of mind. It would expend some of the limited focus that I have in a day. Much in the same way that I don't always read all of the EULA before clicking "I Agree". It's easy to blame someone for skipping through after it goes bad. But the amount of energy and discipline it takes to maintain that when the environment is stacked against you is impractical. So whatever. Just hit me if you have to. I have no illusion that I'm making a noble point. I just don't have the energy.
• kkfx 2y ago
  The issue is not about walking vs using some transport tool, but what's needed to support people only walking. There are many who state dense 15'-cities are eco-friendly because people move without polluting, but no considerations seems to exists about how many others pollute much to supply anything needed by the eco-friendly pedestrians and IMVHO and experience (as a former big city resident now living on mountains) the answer is WAY TOO MUCH, meaning the "eco friendly walkable cities" are not eco friendly AT ALL and they are also unsustainable since they can't evolve without rebuild witch consume much more and demand much big effort than spread areas of small buildings who can be re-built and evolved one at a time issueless for all the others. Strong Towns should start to consider that their model is not those of the modern cities but the one of the older villages, witch due to tech changes is now the model of spread areas. There is no strong-walkable-town possible in the modern world, only polluting monsters, modern Fordlandias doomed to fails like the original, take Neom, Arkadag, Innopolis, Prospera, Telosa, ... as good examples. Than start to ask who profit from them, and you'll see the big financial capitalism behind the (dollar/stereotypical toxic waste leaking from rusty barrels) green fog.
  • kdmccormick 2y ago
    > the answer is WAY TOO MUCH, meaning the "eco friendly walkable cities" are not eco friendly AT ALL and they are also unsustainable since they can't evolve without rebuild witch consume much more and demand much big effort than spread areas of small buildings who can be re-built and evolved one at a time issueless for all the others. This is absolutely inane. Destroying and rebuilding is the opposite of eco-friendly. Building to last is eco-friendly. Those tightly-packed brick and stone buildings in dense walkable cities last longer and also tend to have less need for AC, since they were designed before that existed. And their use does evolve, from meeting places, to storefronts, to family housing, to condos... old buildings can do it all. Cookie-cutter suburban homes are the exact opposite. Expendable, inefficient, and inflexible.
  • dweinus 2y ago
    Citation very much needed. For each person living rurally or suburbanly, the per-capita footprint is bigger in terms of land, roads, building materials, facilities, shipping, HVAC, and transportation. The supply problem you mention gets worse in rural environments, not better, because you need to distribute goods across large areas. Here's some data too: https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-carbon-emissions-new-research-149332 https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-ca...
• vehemenz 2y ago
  The headline is a bit misleading compared to the article. Everybody already cares about dignity but only at the expense of everyone else. We need to prioritize dignity for pedestrians at the expense of drivers. Everyone in Yukons and F150s are already using, at least in their minds, what they think is a dignified mode of transportation. Excluding cities for the wealthy (there's no dignity for the poor anyway), most cities in the US are not livable without a car. Affording a car, particularly a new one, earns one some degree of dignity. Furthermore, drivers living in poorly planned-cities spend lots of time in their cars and have chosen larger cars where they feel comfortable and safe.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • mbs159 2y ago
    > chosen larger cars where they feel comfortable and safe. Larger cars do have a higher chance of roll-over and are much more dangerous to pedestrians (especially children due to a enormous blind spot near the front of the car) and drivers in smaller cars. Driving what is essentially a consumer tank and calling it comfortable and safe is a dangerous line of thinking, and the casualty numbers show it.
• Always42 2y ago
  As someone who has biked in Minnesota winters as part of a commute, it sucks. I don't want cars taken away. I run to get my exercise. My commute to work is short. I don't sit in traffic most days.
  • oblio 2y ago
    Isn't that a strawman? Nobody wants to take cars away, not even in the most extreme countries. What they generally do is they want people to have comparable options until some folks just give up their cars and pocket the savings, accepting the discomfort caused by the constant lack of a car.
    • JoshTriplett 2y ago
      > Nobody wants to take cars away In a lot of these discussions, people do often comment denigrating people who drive and acting as if they must walk/bike/etc and there's something wrong with them if they don't want to, without considering whether the tradeoffs make sense for them or not. Those kinds of comments alienate people. Giving people options would be great. Making a balance would be great. Separating car and pedestrian infrastructure would be great. Massively reducing pedestrian fatalities is incredibly important. All of those things would be much easier to advocate for and enact without those kinds of comments.
      • oblio 2y ago
        > In a lot of these discussions, people do often comment denigrating people who drive and acting as if they must walk/bike/etc and there's something wrong with them if they don't want to, without considering whether the tradeoffs make sense for them or not. Those kinds of comments alienate people. The amount of in-real life hostility from the car driver community is 1000x but car drivers don't realize it. Hostility on the roads themselves, hostility to ANY proposal that would reduce the number of lanes (to dedicate to buses, cycling, sidewalks, etc). So it's kind of understandable why there's so much pent-up anger.
        • 2y ago
• its_ethan 2y ago
  These posts always feel like people are fetishizing some "utopia" where everyone should want to live in an imaginary fully walkable, meticulously maintained, pristine city. The comparisons of like a 2 square mile section of the nicest parts of a European city to areas of the rural US that have land areas larger than many European countries feels... at best, idealism run afoul.
  • mbs159 2y ago
    Curious to know, have you ever lived in a walkable European city, like Amsterdam? If not, then on what are you basing your assumptions on?
  • oblio 2y ago
    The examples in the article are from the Minneapolis metro area... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopkins,_Minnesota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopkins,_Minnesota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northfield,_Minnesota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northfield,_Minnesota None of those are rural, they're suburban. And frankly, even your rural non-homestead areas could use some redesigning. Now you make it unsafe walk in what are basically villages, the quintessential walkable settlements that we've invented back in prehistory.
    • its_ethan 2y ago
      I'm quite familiar with Minneapolis, and you're right it is fairly suburban - but suburbs are a phenomenon of the world after the invention of the car. Car ownership rates in suburbs are incredibly high, like 90%+ in most suburban areas (https://newgeography.com/files/job-access_03.png https://newgeography.com/files/job-access_03.png). Minneapolis has a ~98% rate of car ownership, and places like Hopkins and Northfield were designed knowing that most of their citizens live far enough away from places like schools/grocery stores/movie theaters/offices/etc that they will need a car anyway. And this isn't like a chicken or egg thing where people aren't walking because it's not nice to walk. The car came first, and then the suburb (as we know them) came second. These places were designed for cars. We're talking about 20-30+ min walks each way to get from most homes to the nearest "commercial area". Even if it was the walkable utopian dream of tree lined sidewalks and pedestrian-centric intersections, it won't change the fact that the vast majority of people would not choose to walk, and so it makes sense that these places are optimized for the way people actually get around.
• dr_dshiv 2y ago
  Moved to Amsterdam for the luxury of not having a car. After the 4th kid, my wife wanted a car for road trips. We never need it.
• dh2022 2y ago
  Am I the only one who thinks this title is a bit click-baity? What does shade, engagement, and separation from car traffic have to do with dignity?
  • 8organicbits 2y ago
    When the environment a walker needs to travel is hostile, unsafe, or uncomfortable for them it lacks dignity. A more respectfully planned urban environment gives walkers safety, comfort, and enjoyment.
    • dh2022 2y ago
      With this logic anything impacts dignity. Making everything a micro-aggression is en-vogue these days, so go it makes sense to have click-bait titles.
  • supertrope 2y ago
    In high status areas the local government and landlords are much more likely to plant street trees to ensure dismounted people can comfortably walk. In neglected areas there are less trees and the sidewalk is crumbling or abruptly ends. If SUVs are speeding along at 54 MPH right next to the sidewalk, their wind hits you, their noise hits you, and some asshole drivers intentionally drive over puddles in an attempt to splash pedestrians.
    • dh2022 2y ago
      The wind and the noise are afront to your dignity? Thanks for the laugh!!!
• CollinEMac 2y ago
  This is a real problem that's hard to describe. Walking around the US (excluding large cities) just makes you feel like a jackass. It shouldn't matter but it does.
• ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure that I've seen this before. Maybe not the same exact post, but one similar enough to be a match. It's spot-on. However, I submit that, as software/hardware/tech engineers, it behooves us to add User Dignity as a fairly important axis; just as important as Security and Usability. Lot more difficult to define, though. For me, and the software that I write, it's absolutely crucial, and I will spend many hours, refining what appears to be perfectly functional UI, to enhance the Dignity of those using it; especially technophobes. In my case, I write software for my Community, and I deal with the users of my software on a daily basis. Very few of them have the slightest inkling of what I do. It's "Some stuff with iPhones. I dunno." To be fair, they often don't offer me, or my work, too much Dignity, but that's not their job. It is mine. A perfect example is error handling. Microsoft Windows is notorious for its obscure, jargonistic error messages. Many users quake in fear at triggering one of them. I have found that the best way to give the users some Dignity, when an error occurs, is to make sure that the error doesn't occur, in the first place. That can be a tough ask, but good affordance design, doing things like disabling UI paths that won't result in success, smoothly failing (as opposed to crashing, or triggering an error alert that isn't actually necessary to anyone but the IT HelpDesk person), and avoiding the use of jargon, in our displays, are a good way to get this. I just went through a year and a half of wrestling with a designer, on an app that has been shipping since January. A lot of the stuff that I wanted, wrt to usability, affordances, etc., didn't make the cut. Some of my concerns were probably overblown, but a number were not. The users are having difficulty in exactly the places I thought they would. They are also surprising me. Help screens and whatnot, are pretty much worthless. I have a feature in the app, where, if you long-press on any element, a popover appears, with the accessibility label as the title, and the accessibility hint, as the text. You basically get focused, directly-relevant help, for any element of the screen, and it also helps us to make sure that vision-impaired accessibility is handled. No one uses it. Ah, well... I actually have a great deal of love and Respect for the users of my software. I do my best to make sure that the software I write helps them to solve their problems, achieve their goals, and not impact their self-respect and Dignity.
• gspencley 2y ago
  > Have you ever had a friend return from a vacation and gush about how great it was to walk in the place they’d visited? “You can walk everywhere! To a café, to the store. It was amazing!” Honestly, no. I live in a medium sized city in southern Ontario, about a 3 1/2 - 4 hour drive from Toronto. I just came back from spending a week in Toronto and although everything was walking distance, and we did walk everywhere, the week-long stay was not at all enjoyable. There are people who love big cities. They love being able to walk everywhere, they love the "excitement" and the ability to experience a wide and diverse range of activities and food etc. And then there are us introverts who find it extremely uncomfortable to be in places that are so crowded. I enjoy walking as a solitary activity. I'm not lazy, I'm not averse to doing physical activity. But I really really really dislike walking anywhere that has a sizeable population density. I've heard that in the USA / Canada, the average "personal space bubble" that people find comfortable is around 1.5 feet. For me it's closer to 6 feet. I find that trying to navigate busy sidewalks is overwhelming and anxiety-inducing. I've heard a lot of city-loving younger people talk about the pains of owning a vehicle. I didn't get my driver's license until my early to mid 20s. At the time I had a young family of 4 (my wife and I plus two small children) and, although I might be biased because I live in a built-for-cars North American city, getting our first vehicle gave us so much freedom and independence that it was life-changing in a positive way. I realize that if all amenities had been within walking distance then maybe not having a car wouldn't have been such a hindrance, but when I think back to being in downtown Toronto recently, I couldn't imagine navigating that population density nightmare while also pushing a double-stroller. To me, and maybe this is more psychological / emotional than logical ... but a car is my personal isolation bubble that gives me much needed personal space while travelling. Though I also must admit that leaving the house is a special occasion for me. So yeah, I'm not typical and city-life is just not for me.
  • wakamoleguy 2y ago
    Walkability isn't just important in big cities; you can have it in smaller towns, too. I live in the suburbs of a large city, but my town has a small "main street" area with shops and restaurants that I love to walk to. I also have the anxiety around crowds (especially post-pandemic), and my town is the perfect balance of freedom to walk places and space to breathe. When I think about walkable vacation spots, I don't only think of cities either. I think of small beach towns where even though it isn't populous, things are close enough together to explore on foot. So I guess one question I'd pose is: if you could have that personal space without the car, would you still prefer the car and why? And given the negative externalities of the car, are there other ways those needs could be solved?
• jklinger410 2y ago
  Unfortunately, dignity for the citizen is fundamentally at odds with the way the United States is structured.
• noodlesUK 2y ago
  I think one of the key points that is often not understood widely is that car-centric infrastructure causes things to be spaced so much farther apart (with unpleasant empty tarmac) than necessary. If every building is surrounded by a border of 15 meters of roads, that significantly expands the distances that a person needs to travel to get anywhere. This further prioritises cars and drives demand and cultural norms. I don't think we should be trying to get away from cars altogether by any means, but I think we should seriously consider banning them almost entirely from city centres. There's still a need for emergency vehicles and goods to be transported within the city, so we would still need some roads, but we could eliminate a considerable number of lanes.
  • nonameiguess 2y ago
    I live in Dallas city center and I can only think of two roads that have more than a single lane in each direction. Banning passenger vehicles may still make plenty of sense for other reasons, to reduce pollution, noise, congestion, make it safer for pedestrians. And a few streets have actually shut down to vehicle traffic in the past decade. But I don't know what you're imagining about space. The roads we have aren't going anywhere. Aside from emergency vehicles, trucks still need to get in to make deliveries, and they require more space than passenger vehicles. The intercity bus station and both metro transit transfer centers are also in the city center, so seemingly you need room for buses, which also require more space than passenger vehicles. The water and sewer mains also run under the roads and need to have some minimum circumference to allow the throughput to supply a city center. Even if we somehow managed to eliminate roads, I'm still not sure I get what you're imagining. Are we going to tear down all of the existing buildings and replace them with buildings that have 7 meter wider bases? That would take decades and render the city mostly unusable while it was happening. There would also need to be room for trucks to bring in construction material and remove waste.
  • eweise 2y ago
    More people live in the suburbs than city centers. That's where the real problem is. I don't have any problem walking around the streets of SF.
• joeisaveggie 2y ago
  [flagged]
• BrandoElFollito 2y ago
  When I traveled for the first time to the US ca. 1997 (from France) I decided to go for a walk. A police car stopped to ask me what was going on. They were surprised I went for a walk (despite the fact that there was a sidewalk, although empty). It was a semi industrial (company buildings), semi hotel, semi mall, semi houses kind of place. And, suddenly, the pavement stopped without any reason.
• honkycat 2y ago
  We can talk about this forever, but it's a waste of time. Nobody is listening and nobody is making any real effort to combat car culture. And the right wing, always eager to lap up whatever slop corporate american serves them, has chosen this as a culture war issue. "15 minute cities... but where will I park muh truck??" The dumb-fucks with their emotional support trucks have won. We've paved over the whole fucking country and all of the road construction and automobile businesses are laughing their way to the bank. Every time we try to fix something, the chuds start crying about "but muh traffic" and it gets canned. They don't want to actually pay their own fucking way, through tolls or gas taxes or taxes on their asinine vehicles. They want to take our money and use it on roads. It's dead. The middle class is dead. The country is dead. Progress is dead. Try to enjoy yourself for the next 30 years before the Great American Desert reaches Chicago.
  • lotsoweiners 2y ago
    Well when you are hostile towards the other side telling them how what they like needs to be “fixed” then what do you expect?
  • maerF0x0 2y ago
    People need to spend less time crying about it, and more time making what they want to happen, happen. I've said for a long time that Millenials and genz should give the middle finger to previous generations and refuse to buy their realestate for the going rate. Instead we need to build communities and cities in the middle of nowhere that embody our values (and economics). Or we can wait another 30 or so years for them to die and leave it to the next generation(s)
    • lotsoweiners 2y ago
      > I've said for a long time that Millenials and genz should give the middle finger to previous generations and refuse to buy their realestate Unfortunately there aren’t generational meetings where your plan can be voted on. Also, plenty of millennials and Gen z own property and would gladly buy more once prices drop from you refusing to buy.
• anovikov 2y ago
  I think it's not happening because it's a chicken and egg problem. To have where to realistically walk, to have some stuff you want reachable on foot, you need to have a high population density. When everyone drives, people want, and get, lower population density because it gives them more personal space, lowers crime, makes kids safer, and cost of living lower. Sure it destroys the sense of community and makes everyone obese, but that comes slowly and so it's not what people consciously prioritise. Thus building good pedestrian infra in a low-density community built for driving won't give much benefit: most places people need to go to will be too far for walking anyway. And pushing people to higher density will mean pushing them to ghettos because everyone who can afford, lives in those car-centric, low-density, safer places.
  • Moldoteck 2y ago
    First steps would be ditching zoning, parking minimums and maybe favourable tax for businesses set at first floors of multistory buildings. This way you give space for development and gradually density will improve
    • anovikov 2y ago
      But you also need to find people willing to live like that vs suburbs where they feel safer and have larger plots of land. In Europe they had no choice basically.
      • stonogo 2y ago
        People are willing to live like that everywhere. Even in tiny towns with one main street, that main street will have mixed-use commercial under residential. Suburbs with large plots are the most profitable possible mode for a land developer -- construction costs are cheap, all they have to worry about is drainage. Suburbs will never go away; they happen by default. That's why the parent comment mentioned tax benefits for mixed-use development.
        • Moldoteck 2y ago
• DoubleDerper 2y ago
  Fire and EMS demands have more impact on our built environment than I see in these comments. Some of this is direct from land use regulations. Some of this is from political influence of Fire depts. It's only recently that people are waking up to how the regulatory requirements of staircase design in multi-family buildings for the ostensible purpose of evacuation impact the look and feel of US cities. Same for street widths. You will rarely find support from fire depts. for compact and connected streets.
  • rangestransform 2y ago
    AFAIK for US cities, street and intersection size are restricted by the turning circle of American fire trucks, and large cities can't buy European/Asian firetrucks due to buy america I will always take any opportunity to shit on buy america and how it hamstrings infrastructure projects for the sake of running a jobs program for flyover towns
• nyc111 2y ago
  Does this happen a lot? This was on front page one year ago today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36920622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36920622
• weweweoo 2y ago
  City centres should be built so that people naturally prefer walking/cycling/public transport over driving there. That's how many European cities are, and it works just fine. It doesn't mean anyone has to give up their car, instead people can learn to use it only where it makes sense. I would never give up my car, but I use it only for stuff where walking is not practical (visiting countryside, buying lots of groceries from a big market located in less dense area). Suburbs that have apartments with enough parking slots AND adequate public transport / cycling roads to city centre work perfectly for me.
  • oooyay 2y ago
    Portland is designed in this way. Unforunately, busses, cycling, walking, and trains are also at competition with each other in such a way that they can encourage car travel. Safety of all of those is also another relevant subject.
• blobbers 2y ago
  Does self driving cars affect how we might think of arteries and driving? I haven't seen a downtown area that only allows self drive yet. Could be narrower etc.
• CodeWriter23 2y ago
  Y’all walk all you want it’s a free country. And stop interfering with my driving.
• swagasaurus-rex 2y ago
  Instead of trying to jam squishy humans along side aluminum vehicles, why not build elevated walkways above traffic? In a city, the space between buildings can be auctioned, and the owner of that space is responsible for cleaning and policing a section of elevated plaza. The second story of each building can then be used as a storefront and events can be held in between buildings. If even a few blocks in the center of a city can be walkable above the traffic, I think it could create a popular tourist hub where people can explore the city, see events and spend money. Who foots the bill for construction, maintenance, and inspections which ought to be thorough and frequent, that’s another question I hope somebody who knows politics can answer.
• adamwong246 2y ago
  Everything about our world is designed for us to spend money. Walkers don't buy cars. People on bikes don't buy gas. Why would the overlords ever promote such anti-capitalism? That's not in their interest. More to that point, dignity is for the rich. Comfort is for the already comfortable. So, shut up, buy the landcruiser on credit and don't you dare consider otherwise.
• Optimal_Persona 2y ago
  As an SF Bay Area resident who walks/BARTs as much as possible, IME bicyclists are at least as big a threat to my safety as motorists, who at least have a license and insurance on the line if they screw up. I can't tell you how many times I've been hit or very nearly hit by entitled cyclists who don't think that traffic laws or common courtesy apply to them. Even worse since motorized bikes/scooters hit the streets...er, sidewalks in recent years.
• kredd 2y ago
  One thing I really don’t get, is what do people under the age of 16 (can’t drive yet) and over the age of 75 (get a bit too old to drive) do when they wanna just hang out? Ok, well, I know what they do, but how are people ok with being trapped within a small local zone and be depended on others? I grew up in a walkable city, would take the walk, bus, or subway home since I was 10, met up with my friends at a mall or downtown to just hang out. Now I live in a very walkable neighbourhood in Vancouver, and constantly see older people going throughout their days. And I would want the same for myself when I reach their age, rather than live in a suburban zone with no ability to see life outside of my 500m radius.
• fsckboy 2y ago
  > Have you ever had a friend return from a vacation and gush about how great it was to walk in the place they’d visited? In my adult life I have always lived in dense urban centers (precisely because I like to walk for coffee, quart of milk, etc., and have a choice of restaurants) When I return from travel after renting a car, I gush about how cool it was that I got to shop at a mall and stop at two other strip malls on my way home and load the car up with bags of supplies I never could have carried :) if people on holiday bought mayo and all they need to go with it at Costco, they might have a different memory of their walking tour. grass. greener.
• kazinator 2y ago
  If you want a shift to walking, you need to ensure that - everyone lives close to their ideal, well-paid job. - everyone lives close to an excellent school for their kids. - everyone lives close to inexpensive, well-stocked organic produce store. - everyone lives close to acres of green park space. - everyone lives close to amenities for all imaginable interests. Otherwise, some people are just gonna hop in their cars and collect their pieces of the puzzle from here and there.
  • kderbyma 2y ago
    Garden Cities.... concept is about 100 years old, maybe stop electing people who haven't even walked their constituency....
  • npteljes 2y ago
    This is kind of on the right track, but not really. The right part is that people really do respond to incentives. In fact, this is what they are doing with cars too. Cars often seem like an obvious choice, but that's because the environment is set up in a way that cars make the most sense. In South-East Asia, for example, the incentives are such that small motorbikes make a lot of sense. They are a cheap and versatile option, and navigate the chaotic traffic well. So yes, if we want a shift, we need to reorganize the environment. And the traffic options will follow. Returning to the article, this would mean to bring back walking, biking and mass transit as priority options. Because it's clear from the infrastructure design that everything else besides cars are an afterthought.
    • kazinator 2y ago
      The environment is set up the way it is because not only of the culture, not because of the politics but also mega corporations. People will agree to reorganizing the environment only if they are not the ones you have to do anything or are negatively impacted in any way. Also, massive reorganization of the living environment is really only an option for a totalitarian communist government, which decides where people going to live and everything else and they just have to take it. Ghost communities in China showed that even that doesn't always work.
• mjevans 2y ago
  Disney World is the example that comes to mind as an environment where pedestrian movement is maximized. When it works it's still better than driving, but it's extremely tiring to walk _all day_ (at least if you're not used to it, like I'm not). Lets handwave that concern away though; if everyone walked around that much normally it wouldn't be an issue right? There are still roads, but they're mostly divided from pedestrian movement ways. Mass transit systems connect between the pedestrian optimized blocks. In at least that respect I think Disney World DID become the 'city of the future' example. That's the logical direction to move things. Oh can we also ban all the noisy cars to underground passages except between 10am and 10pm and emergency use?
• neilv 2y ago
  Most of the things the article mentions would be lovely, but I'm more concerned with much more basic aspects of walking. For example, a neighborhood in which most sidewalks are simply impassable for a wheelchair, even though it gets a high "walkability" score for Realtors to claim. (And that tree cover "dignity" the article mentions? Someone tries to do that by taking a sidewalk just wide enough for two wheelchairs to pass each other, and puts in a tree well that won't even let one wheelchair scrape by. And often the roots eventually tip up the sidewalk into a tripping hazard. And extremely frequent parking-related sign posts along that stretch as additional obstacles. With overgrown landscaping on the other side, jutting into the sidewalk already too narrow. Occasionally with surprise poison ivy/oak, scraping across your hand, arm, leg, or face. And on the bigger streets, some street work gets done, and there's briefly enough space, then, bam, bike-sharing station, with garish advertising. Then winter comes, and if you walk heavily, even with traction aids and diligence, eventually you're going to get injured by a hazard that someone else managed to create beyond normal snow and ice.) Suggestions: 1. Make the sidewalks passable. Including by wheelchairs. 2. Make traffic signals greatly increase the priority given to pedestrians. (Even consider a near-immediate Walk signal from button/sensor, with half-minute cooldown so cars can't be entirely DoS'd. If that will make traffic worse, then let traffic be worse.) 3. Eliminate dangerous noise pollution. (Like the "loud pipes save lives" modified motorcycles, one of which surprise blasted my eardrum a couple hours ago. Or a subset of the ambulance sirens, some of which I'm pretty sure are well into hearing damage decibel territory for people on the sidewalk, when the siren tries a little too hard to be heard by people sealed into cars and blasting music from their infotainment systems half a block away.) 4. Improve snow/ice management. (Don't plow streets up onto the sidewalk. If punting to property owners, actually enforce that. Also educate and enforce about not actively making surprise ice slicks on the sidewalk. Maybe, a bit like the city plows streets, also have city units go clear the numerous sidewalk stretches that property owners neglected, protecting pedestrians from crippling injury, and then later figure out the delicate politics of whether to fine/bill property owners.) 5. And only then -- after those basics of being able to move around, and not be maimed casually -- think about dignity like pleasing views, and sidewalk feng shui.
• chiggsy 2y ago
  I live in Vancouver, and I find this discussion utterly fascinating. Thank you all for sharing.
• nickfromseattle 2y ago
  I moved to Barcelona and living in a walkable city is such a life upgrade. My whole life is within the distance of a walk. The grocery store, gym, doctor, friends, restaurants, beach, movie theatre, shopping, everything. I can walk across the entire city in about an hour. Barcelona takes it a step further than just being high density with wide pedestrian streets lined with trees and outdoor seating at the expense of roads used for cars/trucks. At the end of every block on a rambla is a roundabout where people sit and hang out, with more trees. It really feels like cars are 2nd class citizens here. The mental tax of having to get into a car, navigate bad traffic and other drivers, finding parking, etc is hugely underrated. When I describe the above to people, it's easy to brush off as "not that big of a deal", but it is a big deal on general mood and wellbeing compared to what it could be if you remove those 'micro' stresses from your life. And finally, if you need to get somewhere quick, there are taxis everywhere, and the underground metro is pretty decent.
  • hombre_fatal 2y ago
    I randomly moved from Houston to Guadalajara in my 20s and until then I didn't realize that all of my disillusion with life was because I had to drive everywhere and could walk nowhere. It changed my life to realize how much better life is when you can accomplish everything within walking distance. It impacts absolutely everything. You even lose weight when you can walk to the store to buy a can of beans and one avocado for lunch instead of having to drive to the grocer once a week and store tens of thousands of calories in your house at all times for you to graze on. It also impacted my social life because I would run into friends while walking around. Or I'd see friends in a bar while walking home and go join them. I refuse to settle down somewhere where I can't walk to live. Unfortunately this rules out almost all of the US.
• travisporter 2y ago
  Meanwhile in Nashville where they literally don’t have sidewalks, this is an actual bus stop: https://maps.app.goo.gl/yRoV8TzuKHVHjaMj9?g_st=ic https://maps.app.goo.gl/yRoV8TzuKHVHjaMj9?g_st=ic
• TacticalCoder 2y ago
  > The layers are compliance, safety, and dignity. I just went back for a week to the city in which I was born (in the EU) and I was shocked to see that, in many neighborhoods, there was nobody walking on the streets anymore. The reason is not that they're taking the car more: the reason is safety. But not safety as in "I fear for my life due to the risk of a car hitting me" (btw speed has been lowered to 30 km/h aka 18 mph in the city). No. Safety as in: "My city has become a hellhole and I feel I risk getting robbed or raped if I get out at night".
• horns4lyfe 2y ago
  The issue is simple, we don’t need to belabor it. Dense city centers are more walkable, but most people can’t afford to live there, while at the same time being forced to work there. Don’t worry, Europe, you’ll get to the same point eventually with rising time prices.
• bamboozled 2y ago
  I once flew to LAX and just wanted to walk down to Santa Monica from the airport, or walk downtown. If it took 8 hours I didn’t care I just like walking and exploring. What surprised me is that you literally cannot walk away from the airport without (probably) breaking some law by the highway. I guess this night sound strange to some but it felt a bit oppressive.