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For me the most important issue that needs to be solved right now is the increasing urban sprawl and the car dependent neighborhoods. It causes social isolation

For me the most important issue that needs to be solved right now is the increasing urban sprawl and the car dependent neighborhoods. It causes social isolation. Maintaining infrastructure like roads and electricity, is causing a strain on the economy for local municipalities. Not to mention the disastrous effect car based transportation has on the environment. I am a fullstack developer living in Norway. Last year I registered the Norwegian branch of the Architectural Uproar as a not for profit organization. With the support from paying members, I have been able to go on tour to most of the major cities in Norway. We organize large meetings were we discuss architecture and city planning with politicians, architects and property developers on stage. I am strongly inspired by Create Streets in UK and Strong Towns in the US. I want to improve people’s quality of life, help saving the planet and make Norway beautiful again while doing it. https://arkitekturopproret.no https://arkitekturopproret.no edit: typos

dazzlefruit 2y ago
That's the kind of projects I love to see. Actually socially useful :) Keep it up!
- thomasfl 2y ago
  Thank's a lot! So far the project haven't paid off much. But that is not the most important goal. It is about making something really useful for people. In this case nice cities and neighbourhoods.
XzAeRosho 2y ago
Interesting! As a fullstack developer, how did you even landed on such projects? Are you even using your SW Engineering skills in this? I really want to know more how are you able to lead an urbanism and architecture project with, supposedly, no formal backgrounds. Are you partnered with other people in this endeavour?
- thomasfl 2y ago
  I am not alone. Our website is made by the man who created the CSS standard while at CERN, Håkon Wium Lie. https://arkitekturopproret.no https://arkitekturopproret.no Most of the social media activities is done by a couple of fellows who is really into digital marketing. We are a team of 5 people working mostly for free now. I have no formal training in architecture or urban design. I am just a nerd who used to love playing SimCity and read Astérix comic books. Paul Graham have always focused on finding real problems and making people happy. Car dependent housing projects and bad architecture is making peoples lives miserable. It needs to be fixed.
  - phkahler 2y ago
    >> I have no formal training in architecture or urban design. Same, but I do get caught thinking about how inefficient our roads are in the US and what might be done about that. I've worked in the auto industry a lot and when calculating fuel efficiency (MPG) there is a "urban drive cycle" and a highway one that are used. The average speed on the urban cycle is a hair under 20 mph, which seems absurd because our typical speed limit outside of neighborhoods is 45mph or even 50. So I started timing my drives around town and measuring on a map... Turns out 3 minutes per mile is about right for expected drive times. The main culprit is intersections, stop lights, and left turns. You seem interested in eliminating cars, which I can appreciate but I spend my time trying to figure out how to make traffic flow more efficiently and how those layouts might be retrofitted onto the grid of roads we have. There are not easy problems.
    - blactuary 2y ago
      The way to make traffic flow more efficiently is to get a bunch of cars off of the road. More and better public transit with dedicated space, protected bike lanes, roundabouts, traffic calming
      - phkahler 2y ago
        >> The way to make traffic flow more efficiently is to get a bunch of cars off of the road. No. I mean yeah, but no. Rural areas are the only place where traffic is low enough to meaningfully improve flow. We should be able to improve traffic flow and MPG without eliminating vehicles. IMHO bike lanes are kind of stupid because putting bikes right next to car traffic is stupid. Same for sidewalks. Separating pedestrian traffic from car and truck traffic would obviously be safer.
randomdata 2y ago
> It causes social isolation. What is it about suburbs in particular that causes social isolation?
- kaicianflone 2y ago
  No third places
  - kaicianflone 2y ago
    https://theweek.com/culture-life/third-places-disappearing https://theweek.com/culture-life/third-places-disappearing
    - randomdata 2y ago
      Are they disappearing, or are they actually becoming more prevalent, dividing the population and leaving few people around to support each third space? A third place needs to more than a place – it also needs people. I can think of 10s, maybe even hundreds, of third paces I could theoretically go to within a short distance. None of them particularly appealing, though, because they don't have enough people to create an engaging environment. If these third places consolidated their efforts, seeing most of them disappear to focus on one third place, there is a much greater chance that the single community would thrive. Combined, it could be huge, but so long as they each try to go at it alone...
- iambateman 2y ago
  The default suburban life leads toward a comfortable kind of solitary confinement. Someone who lives in a “single family home” equipped with air conditioning, a privacy fence, a big screen TV, a garage door opener, and the internet will tend toward isolation because all of those technologies make aloneness easier. The reader may point out that many people are isolated in big cities too. This is true – if an adult has decided to be alone, they can be. But in the city, one's lack of social connection is more often felt whereas a suburban home can diminish the effect, like ibuprofen taken for a headache.
siamese_puff 2y ago
My partner and I discuss this a lot and I hate that no one in the US realizes how detrimental urban sprawl is. How did you learn to understand non-profit organization work like this?
- blululu 2y ago
  An apartment in a major us city costs >4x per more per square foot than the adjacent suburban sprawl. Clearly a lot of people realize the value and are willing to take the financial hit to have it.
  - rmbyrro 2y ago
    Is it value, though, that they perceive? Or is the necessity to be in that location that drives prices up? If that's the case, that necessity might not have positive causes either...
    - kragen 2y ago
      What could be more valuable than satisfying a necessity? Your question presupposes some kind of opposition that makes me think you are using words with definitions at odds with the ones I know.
  - siamese_puff 2y ago
    If you define “bigness” of my house as being more value than living next to all my friends in a very walkable city with tons of things to do at any time I want where I don’t need to ever drive my car then sure. Personally, I’ll take my $500k condo in my very amazing city that is 1000sq ft over a 3500sq ft empty house that is 2 miles from the nearest grocery store.
SamWhited 2y ago
There's a quote from Bill McKibben's forward to "Creating Cohousing" by Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett that I think about every time someone brings this up (it's about the U.S., but it applies to lots of other places and you may recognize your own countries development model here too, or not): "For fifty years, our economic mission in America, at its core, has been to build bigger houses farther apart from each other. And boy have we succeeded: a nation of starter castles for entry-level monarchs, built at such remove one from the next that the car is unavoidable." You're a person after my own heart; thanks for working towards a more connected world!
- flir 2y ago
  That's a nice quote. Evocative. Is it possible to support the goal of vibrant, interconnected communities, to understand all their advantages, but still want to live at least a quarter-mile away from the nearest human? Asking for a friend...
  - pchristensen 2y ago
    It's totally fine to do that. Most "urbanist advocates" just want to make other options legal so the quarter-mile away isn't the only choice.
  - SamWhited 2y ago
    yah, absolutely; like I said in another post, small towns near where I grew up are frequently that way. You enjoy the city vibe you live in the apartments or houses right off the square. You don't, you live on one of the outlying farms (and even those in one case that I can think of have small neighborhood establishments; they all use the same farmers machine shop to fix stuff in one case, or there's a random coffee shop/pub way out that the surrounding places frequent, etc.) and when you go into town to go to the hardware store or the grocery or whatever you still have lots of opportunities for chance encounters because of the mixed zoning and way everything is built fairly close (so sure you have to drive to get to town, but then once you're there you walk around, do errands, stop in for a coffee, etc. without having to think about how you're going to get around as much). As opposed to the actual town that I grew up in nearby where everything is spread way the hell out and you have to go on a giant 5 lane highway to get to walmart on one side of town and the hardware store on the other and 30 minutes in another direction to get to a coffee shop, etc.
cbeach 2y ago
I never felt more isolated and lonelier than when I was in a dense urban environment and reliant on dirty, unreliable, often unsafe public transport to get around. If I ever blew my nose after travelling on the London Underground, the tissue would be black with brake dust and other pollutants from that awful environment. If I tried to cycle, I'd be stuck behind diesel busses for much of my journey, breathing in their pollution and slowed down. And obviously, cycling is completely impractical for many people, or if carrying luggage or passengers. Living in a countryside town where I have the freedom and flexibility granted by my car has opened up a world of better possibilities - travelling to any part of the coast with my family. Doing bulk shops. Carrying heavy loads etc. Driving regularly to my parents, avoiding excruciatingly long journies on public transport. Having a car has made family life possible in ways that public transport does not, and cannot achieve. > We organize large meetings were we discuss architecture and city planning with politicians, architects and property developers on stage. I would prefer that politicians, architects and property developers minded their own business and let me choose the mode of transport (an electric car) that works best for me, my family and the environment. I don't want to live in a dense, grey, impersonal urban cluster. I want to be surrounded by countryside and have the freedom to roam. I don't think I'm alone in that.
- hbak 2y ago
  Can def echo that sentiment in London, how do you avoid the commute? Work from home? Found a job outside of London? Job opportunity/pay inequality is often the biggest constraint for most people.
- siamese_puff 2y ago
  No offense, but this statement seems like an ignorant lack of understanding around the issues with the growing problems around urban sprawl and the issues it causes environmentally or otherwise. No one is going to take your countryside home from you, but it’s worth educating yourself on the issues.
  - cbeach 2y ago
    Surprising that my personal account, all of which is a truthful reflection of my own lived experiences in both urban and countryside settings, is considered "ignorant." I'd be interested to explore the reasons and/or psychology behind your judgement.
kfarr 2y ago
I love this! There is similar inspiration in the US with non-profits such as KidSafeSF [1] in San Francisco or Families for Safe Streets [2]. I also have a fullstack background and have taken an approach to work on the street design software itself. Although AutoCAD is used by professionals, it's overkill for most street design projects and difficult for laypeople to use. I've been hacking away at a project called 3DStreet [3] to make street design easier for anyone -- like a figma for street design. Still in its early days. Happy to collaborate with your org, we do group sessions to help folks learn street design to influence local government to make positive changes. [1] https://kidsafesf.com/ https://kidsafesf.com/ [2] https://www.familiesforsafestreets.org/ https://www.familiesforsafestreets.org/ [3] https://3dstreet.com/ https://3dstreet.com/
- thomasfl 2y ago
  OP here. I tried out 3dstreet. It is a great idea. Simplified web based 3D editors of all kind, is the future for making people involved in city planning and architecture.
triwats 2y ago
This is amazing as a prospect and something that I massively support. Kudos!
mdnahas 2y ago
I’m helping a YIMBY group in Austin, Texas. In the USA, we’ve tied the legal right of what you can build to the land. So, a housing shortage causes land prices to skyrocket. We need to break those connections (height limits, unit limits, floor area limits, etc.) to bring urban prices back to reasonable values. Then, people who want denser, walkable, social neighborhoods can create them. I do data analysis for the group, on land prices and politics. (E.g., campaign donors). If anyone has questions, reach out to me at hackernews@mike.nahasmail.com https://aura-atx.org/ https://aura-atx.org/

dazzlefruit 2y ago

That's the kind of projects I love to see. Actually socially useful :) Keep it up!

thomasfl 2y ago
Thank's a lot! So far the project haven't paid off much. But that is not the most important goal. It is about making something really useful for people. In this case nice cities and neighbourhoods.

XzAeRosho 2y ago

Interesting! As a fullstack developer, how did you even landed on such projects? Are you even using your SW Engineering skills in this? I really want to know more how are you able to lead an urbanism and architecture project with, supposedly, no formal backgrounds. Are you partnered with other people in this endeavour?

thomasfl 2y ago
I am not alone. Our website is made by the man who created the CSS standard while at CERN, Håkon Wium Lie. https://arkitekturopproret.no https://arkitekturopproret.no Most of the social media activities is done by a couple of fellows who is really into digital marketing. We are a team of 5 people working mostly for free now. I have no formal training in architecture or urban design. I am just a nerd who used to love playing SimCity and read Astérix comic books. Paul Graham have always focused on finding real problems and making people happy. Car dependent housing projects and bad architecture is making peoples lives miserable. It needs to be fixed.
- phkahler 2y ago
  >> I have no formal training in architecture or urban design. Same, but I do get caught thinking about how inefficient our roads are in the US and what might be done about that. I've worked in the auto industry a lot and when calculating fuel efficiency (MPG) there is a "urban drive cycle" and a highway one that are used. The average speed on the urban cycle is a hair under 20 mph, which seems absurd because our typical speed limit outside of neighborhoods is 45mph or even 50. So I started timing my drives around town and measuring on a map... Turns out 3 minutes per mile is about right for expected drive times. The main culprit is intersections, stop lights, and left turns. You seem interested in eliminating cars, which I can appreciate but I spend my time trying to figure out how to make traffic flow more efficiently and how those layouts might be retrofitted onto the grid of roads we have. There are not easy problems.
  - blactuary 2y ago
    The way to make traffic flow more efficiently is to get a bunch of cars off of the road. More and better public transit with dedicated space, protected bike lanes, roundabouts, traffic calming
    - phkahler 2y ago
      >> The way to make traffic flow more efficiently is to get a bunch of cars off of the road. No. I mean yeah, but no. Rural areas are the only place where traffic is low enough to meaningfully improve flow. We should be able to improve traffic flow and MPG without eliminating vehicles. IMHO bike lanes are kind of stupid because putting bikes right next to car traffic is stupid. Same for sidewalks. Separating pedestrian traffic from car and truck traffic would obviously be safer.

randomdata 2y ago

> It causes social isolation. What is it about suburbs in particular that causes social isolation?

kaicianflone 2y ago
No third places
- kaicianflone 2y ago
  https://theweek.com/culture-life/third-places-disappearing https://theweek.com/culture-life/third-places-disappearing
  - randomdata 2y ago
    Are they disappearing, or are they actually becoming more prevalent, dividing the population and leaving few people around to support each third space? A third place needs to more than a place – it also needs people. I can think of 10s, maybe even hundreds, of third paces I could theoretically go to within a short distance. None of them particularly appealing, though, because they don't have enough people to create an engaging environment. If these third places consolidated their efforts, seeing most of them disappear to focus on one third place, there is a much greater chance that the single community would thrive. Combined, it could be huge, but so long as they each try to go at it alone...
iambateman 2y ago
The default suburban life leads toward a comfortable kind of solitary confinement. Someone who lives in a “single family home” equipped with air conditioning, a privacy fence, a big screen TV, a garage door opener, and the internet will tend toward isolation because all of those technologies make aloneness easier. The reader may point out that many people are isolated in big cities too. This is true – if an adult has decided to be alone, they can be. But in the city, one's lack of social connection is more often felt whereas a suburban home can diminish the effect, like ibuprofen taken for a headache.

siamese_puff 2y ago

My partner and I discuss this a lot and I hate that no one in the US realizes how detrimental urban sprawl is. How did you learn to understand non-profit organization work like this?

blululu 2y ago
An apartment in a major us city costs >4x per more per square foot than the adjacent suburban sprawl. Clearly a lot of people realize the value and are willing to take the financial hit to have it.
- rmbyrro 2y ago
  Is it value, though, that they perceive? Or is the necessity to be in that location that drives prices up? If that's the case, that necessity might not have positive causes either...
  - kragen 2y ago
    What could be more valuable than satisfying a necessity? Your question presupposes some kind of opposition that makes me think you are using words with definitions at odds with the ones I know.
- siamese_puff 2y ago
  If you define “bigness” of my house as being more value than living next to all my friends in a very walkable city with tons of things to do at any time I want where I don’t need to ever drive my car then sure. Personally, I’ll take my $500k condo in my very amazing city that is 1000sq ft over a 3500sq ft empty house that is 2 miles from the nearest grocery store.

SamWhited 2y ago

There's a quote from Bill McKibben's forward to "Creating Cohousing" by Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett that I think about every time someone brings this up (it's about the U.S., but it applies to lots of other places and you may recognize your own countries development model here too, or not): "For fifty years, our economic mission in America, at its core, has been to build bigger houses farther apart from each other. And boy have we succeeded: a nation of starter castles for entry-level monarchs, built at such remove one from the next that the car is unavoidable." You're a person after my own heart; thanks for working towards a more connected world!

flir 2y ago
That's a nice quote. Evocative. Is it possible to support the goal of vibrant, interconnected communities, to understand all their advantages, but still want to live at least a quarter-mile away from the nearest human? Asking for a friend...
- pchristensen 2y ago
  It's totally fine to do that. Most "urbanist advocates" just want to make other options legal so the quarter-mile away isn't the only choice.
- SamWhited 2y ago
  yah, absolutely; like I said in another post, small towns near where I grew up are frequently that way. You enjoy the city vibe you live in the apartments or houses right off the square. You don't, you live on one of the outlying farms (and even those in one case that I can think of have small neighborhood establishments; they all use the same farmers machine shop to fix stuff in one case, or there's a random coffee shop/pub way out that the surrounding places frequent, etc.) and when you go into town to go to the hardware store or the grocery or whatever you still have lots of opportunities for chance encounters because of the mixed zoning and way everything is built fairly close (so sure you have to drive to get to town, but then once you're there you walk around, do errands, stop in for a coffee, etc. without having to think about how you're going to get around as much). As opposed to the actual town that I grew up in nearby where everything is spread way the hell out and you have to go on a giant 5 lane highway to get to walmart on one side of town and the hardware store on the other and 30 minutes in another direction to get to a coffee shop, etc.

cbeach 2y ago

I never felt more isolated and lonelier than when I was in a dense urban environment and reliant on dirty, unreliable, often unsafe public transport to get around. If I ever blew my nose after travelling on the London Underground, the tissue would be black with brake dust and other pollutants from that awful environment. If I tried to cycle, I'd be stuck behind diesel busses for much of my journey, breathing in their pollution and slowed down. And obviously, cycling is completely impractical for many people, or if carrying luggage or passengers. Living in a countryside town where I have the freedom and flexibility granted by my car has opened up a world of better possibilities - travelling to any part of the coast with my family. Doing bulk shops. Carrying heavy loads etc. Driving regularly to my parents, avoiding excruciatingly long journies on public transport. Having a car has made family life possible in ways that public transport does not, and cannot achieve. > We organize large meetings were we discuss architecture and city planning with politicians, architects and property developers on stage. I would prefer that politicians, architects and property developers minded their own business and let me choose the mode of transport (an electric car) that works best for me, my family and the environment. I don't want to live in a dense, grey, impersonal urban cluster. I want to be surrounded by countryside and have the freedom to roam. I don't think I'm alone in that.

hbak 2y ago
Can def echo that sentiment in London, how do you avoid the commute? Work from home? Found a job outside of London? Job opportunity/pay inequality is often the biggest constraint for most people.
siamese_puff 2y ago
No offense, but this statement seems like an ignorant lack of understanding around the issues with the growing problems around urban sprawl and the issues it causes environmentally or otherwise. No one is going to take your countryside home from you, but it’s worth educating yourself on the issues.
- cbeach 2y ago
  Surprising that my personal account, all of which is a truthful reflection of my own lived experiences in both urban and countryside settings, is considered "ignorant." I'd be interested to explore the reasons and/or psychology behind your judgement.

kfarr 2y ago

I love this! There is similar inspiration in the US with non-profits such as KidSafeSF [1] in San Francisco or Families for Safe Streets [2]. I also have a fullstack background and have taken an approach to work on the street design software itself. Although AutoCAD is used by professionals, it's overkill for most street design projects and difficult for laypeople to use. I've been hacking away at a project called 3DStreet [3] to make street design easier for anyone -- like a figma for street design. Still in its early days. Happy to collaborate with your org, we do group sessions to help folks learn street design to influence local government to make positive changes. [1] https://kidsafesf.com/ https://kidsafesf.com/ [2] https://www.familiesforsafestreets.org/ https://www.familiesforsafestreets.org/ [3] https://3dstreet.com/ https://3dstreet.com/

thomasfl 2y ago
OP here. I tried out 3dstreet. It is a great idea. Simplified web based 3D editors of all kind, is the future for making people involved in city planning and architecture.

triwats 2y ago

This is amazing as a prospect and something that I massively support. Kudos!

mdnahas 2y ago

I’m helping a YIMBY group in Austin, Texas. In the USA, we’ve tied the legal right of what you can build to the land. So, a housing shortage causes land prices to skyrocket. We need to break those connections (height limits, unit limits, floor area limits, etc.) to bring urban prices back to reasonable values. Then, people who want denser, walkable, social neighborhoods can create them. I do data analysis for the group, on land prices and politics. (E.g., campaign donors). If anyone has questions, reach out to me at hackernews@mike.nahasmail.com https://aura-atx.org/ https://aura-atx.org/