4 ms·

Density is fundamentally incompatible with car-friendly cities and a large amount of road. In general, the denser a city becomes, the more people will go by foo

by lblume 1y ago

Density is fundamentally incompatible with car-friendly cities and a large amount of road. In general, the denser a city becomes, the more people will go by foot, cycle, or use public transport, especially in Europe.

ehnto 1y ago
Roads take up an enormous amount of space, as does parking. We could capture significant real estate opportunities back from roads in cities that have multi-lane roads going through the CBD (mine has like a dozen criss crossing it). It wouldn't be an overnight thing, but close off a block of road, rezone it and sell it off, you'll get a bunch of new high density buildings that are walkable (since any roads going through will have to be narrow)
- mantas 1y ago
  And then you get business parks on the outskirts of the city. Because otherwise both employees and visitors complain about parking. Which makes cheaper suburbs more compelling. And some people living downtown driving to workplaces in outskirts of the city. At least that’s what is happening in my whereabouts. I remember when I was kid downtown was prime location for regular shopping and doing daily business. Now all of that moved to big box stores along major traffic arteries. Nowadays downtown is just a tourist trap with super expensive boutiques. I still go there to take a walk once a year or so, but besides that there’s no reason to there anymore for vast majority of people. But suburbs life is flourishing… With shops and services that are needed for every day life. Cheap and good eateries. Even casual entertainment is moving away from the city core. All in all, not sure if it’s good or bad. I couldn’t afford living in downtown even in old era. And now I can live comfy life in suburbs. Not helping much to lower total amount of traffic though.
mantas 1y ago
Oh it is. You get traffic jams and that’s not exactly car-friendly. But still people drive. On top of that, walking on a sidewalk when a bus pass close by is much more interesting than a car passing. And then there’s all the commercial traffic that is necessary to serve a dense city. And many cities, especially here in Europe, are dense enough to need some mode of transit. Especially with workplaces concentrated either in office parks or industrial districts by the city. But not multi million megapolies that warrant a sweet metro system. And that’s where cars shine. Although after living in one of the largest cities on earth with a very nice train system… there’s still plenty of traffic. And people still drive. Especially those who can’t afford living in city core and end up in cheaper more remote locations.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  If traffic in a city was mostly busses and trucks you'd only need two lanes for them and the walking experience could get a lot nicer.
  - mantas 1y ago
    You’d still have massive metal boxes passing you. On top of that, that’d likely mean highways torn up and replaced by narrow streets. Which would mean more traffic closer to people on sidewalks. The reverse of this happened here in backwaters of Eastern Europe. Before there was no city bypasses and in-city highways. Traffic was tenfold smaller because there were much much fewer private vehicles. But most of it was busses, lorries and so on. Long distance driving was done through downtowns. Nowadays there’s much more private traffic. But there’re bypasses routing away a lot of long distance traffic. A lot of city traffic is on isolated motor-only streets. Of course they waste space. But at the same time people don’t walk along those streets so big portion of traffic is not passing by anybody’s shoulder.
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      > You’d still have massive metal boxes passing you. With more distance. > On top of that, that’d likely mean highways torn up and replaced by narrow streets. Which would mean more traffic closer to people on sidewalks. I'm not suggesting that. You can leave the limited access roads alone for now.
      - mantas 1y ago
        Why more distance? Streets wouldn’t get wider. Rather if you try to dense-up the city, streets will go narrower. Besides complete hellholes like 80s US from the famous parking lot pictures, when trying to dense up the city, wide major streets would go first being built up. At least here there massive parking lots to just build on exist mostly on the outskirts. There’s no point in building on them. Going closer to downtown, lots of underground parking with private property on top. Some multi-floor private garages that cost a lot of money to build and unlikely to get torn down any time soon, especially if street parking was gone making it even bigger deficit. If you remove street parking, there won’t be space to fit in anything meaningful without rebuilding stuff around it. Which is not gonna happen in meaningful scale in sane timespan.

by lblume 1y ago

ehnto 1y ago

Roads take up an enormous amount of space, as does parking. We could capture significant real estate opportunities back from roads in cities that have multi-lane roads going through the CBD (mine has like a dozen criss crossing it). It wouldn't be an overnight thing, but close off a block of road, rezone it and sell it off, you'll get a bunch of new high density buildings that are walkable (since any roads going through will have to be narrow)

mantas 1y ago
And then you get business parks on the outskirts of the city. Because otherwise both employees and visitors complain about parking. Which makes cheaper suburbs more compelling. And some people living downtown driving to workplaces in outskirts of the city. At least that’s what is happening in my whereabouts. I remember when I was kid downtown was prime location for regular shopping and doing daily business. Now all of that moved to big box stores along major traffic arteries. Nowadays downtown is just a tourist trap with super expensive boutiques. I still go there to take a walk once a year or so, but besides that there’s no reason to there anymore for vast majority of people. But suburbs life is flourishing… With shops and services that are needed for every day life. Cheap and good eateries. Even casual entertainment is moving away from the city core. All in all, not sure if it’s good or bad. I couldn’t afford living in downtown even in old era. And now I can live comfy life in suburbs. Not helping much to lower total amount of traffic though.

mantas 1y ago

Oh it is. You get traffic jams and that’s not exactly car-friendly. But still people drive. On top of that, walking on a sidewalk when a bus pass close by is much more interesting than a car passing. And then there’s all the commercial traffic that is necessary to serve a dense city. And many cities, especially here in Europe, are dense enough to need some mode of transit. Especially with workplaces concentrated either in office parks or industrial districts by the city. But not multi million megapolies that warrant a sweet metro system. And that’s where cars shine. Although after living in one of the largest cities on earth with a very nice train system… there’s still plenty of traffic. And people still drive. Especially those who can’t afford living in city core and end up in cheaper more remote locations.

Dylan16807 1y ago
If traffic in a city was mostly busses and trucks you'd only need two lanes for them and the walking experience could get a lot nicer.
- mantas 1y ago
  You’d still have massive metal boxes passing you. On top of that, that’d likely mean highways torn up and replaced by narrow streets. Which would mean more traffic closer to people on sidewalks. The reverse of this happened here in backwaters of Eastern Europe. Before there was no city bypasses and in-city highways. Traffic was tenfold smaller because there were much much fewer private vehicles. But most of it was busses, lorries and so on. Long distance driving was done through downtowns. Nowadays there’s much more private traffic. But there’re bypasses routing away a lot of long distance traffic. A lot of city traffic is on isolated motor-only streets. Of course they waste space. But at the same time people don’t walk along those streets so big portion of traffic is not passing by anybody’s shoulder.
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    > You’d still have massive metal boxes passing you. With more distance. > On top of that, that’d likely mean highways torn up and replaced by narrow streets. Which would mean more traffic closer to people on sidewalks. I'm not suggesting that. You can leave the limited access roads alone for now.
    - mantas 1y ago
      Why more distance? Streets wouldn’t get wider. Rather if you try to dense-up the city, streets will go narrower. Besides complete hellholes like 80s US from the famous parking lot pictures, when trying to dense up the city, wide major streets would go first being built up. At least here there massive parking lots to just build on exist mostly on the outskirts. There’s no point in building on them. Going closer to downtown, lots of underground parking with private property on top. Some multi-floor private garages that cost a lot of money to build and unlikely to get torn down any time soon, especially if street parking was gone making it even bigger deficit. If you remove street parking, there won’t be space to fit in anything meaningful without rebuilding stuff around it. Which is not gonna happen in meaningful scale in sane timespan.