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I'd be happy if whoever built the road (municipality, state, etc) had civil liability for deaths and injuries, in cases where it could be shown that an inadequa

I'd be happy if whoever built the road (municipality, state, etc) had civil liability for deaths and injuries, in cases where it could be shown that an inadequate effort was made to protect pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists (nearly all roads in Canada/US, unfortunately). Maybe that could be a positive incentive for safer design from the people with the power to change the situation.

renewiltord 1y ago
Inevitably you'll have to grandfather in existing infrastructure because a lot of it is from ancient times and all you'll do is make it impossible to have a Chinatown, or a NY brownstone. So what you'll get is that almost nothing new gets developed because the cost structure makes it impossible. Everyone always thinks "why don't we make it harder to make things and that way they'll be nice" but they can't connect the dots to "but to do that we have to grandfather in the existing stuff" and from that to "nothing new will happen and all the old things will stay that way". Thing of the obvious effects, man. Come on.
- shortrounddev2 1y ago
  > Inevitably you'll have to grandfather in existing infrastructure because a lot of it is from ancient times and all you'll do is make it impossible to have a Chinatown, or a NY brownstone. So what you'll get is that almost nothing new gets developed because the cost structure makes it impossible. I don't see how that's true - if you create cities or neighborhoods which are more walkable, such as New York's Chinatown, then you'll have less civil liability than suburban car-centric infrastructure. I would think that NY style neighborhoods would be MORE incentivized
- CalRobert 1y ago
  Why couldn’t you have a China town or brownstone? If the infrastructure is unsafe for cars, don’t allow cars there.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    I mean, seems like a smart idea until you realize at least the US is a democracy (well hopefully still) and the moment you tell people they can't drive their car home they will vote you out or lynch you. So there's that. Unfortunately the answer isn't going to be telling people they can't do something. We already don't give a damn about the number of deaths we cause, so the actual answer is probably somewhere closer to attempting to educate people so eventually we won't want it.
    - CalRobert 1y ago
      Usually the problem is the locals do want traffic calming but they are overruled by suburbanites who have more power and want to force their cars in to old neighbourhoods (and then complain about parking)
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    Because you people and the sum total of the "well intentioned" regulation you peddle across the myriad of issues you peddle it render the kind of organic incremental and piecemeal development that yields those sorts of neighborhoods an economic non-starter.
    - CalRobert 1y ago
      … huh?
  - renewiltord 1y ago
    Haha, it's clearly beyond my ability to explain this to you. You're just going to have to try it and learn. But I'll give it one last try: One can only hope that you're either exceptional enough to succeed or that when you fail you understand that it wasn't because "suburbanites ruined a perfect plan because they can't imagine a blah blah blah" and learn that you're constraint solving in a democracy where other people have voices and your perfect solution needs to have graceful degradation as it makes allowances for their opinions so that it can get sufficient support to pass. If all you do is create additional liability with grandfathering in of existing designs, all you do is lead to propagation of current designs.
pixl97 1y ago
But it's not just the road. The road itself is an outcome of the buildings on it. When you have things like Super Walmarts/Targets taking up 500,000 square feet, with another 500k sqft of retail shopping surrounded by single family homes you pretty much guarantee that people have to drive there. The entire parking lot is pedestrian unfriendly from the number of cars that arrive there to the excessive heat generated in summer, especially in the southern US. It's the single family home buyer with two cars and is a registered voter that is demanding the human unfriendly architecture at this point. We are getting more integrated architecture and people seem to like it, but it doesn't replace the millions of miles of bad design we already have.

renewiltord 1y ago

Inevitably you'll have to grandfather in existing infrastructure because a lot of it is from ancient times and all you'll do is make it impossible to have a Chinatown, or a NY brownstone. So what you'll get is that almost nothing new gets developed because the cost structure makes it impossible. Everyone always thinks "why don't we make it harder to make things and that way they'll be nice" but they can't connect the dots to "but to do that we have to grandfather in the existing stuff" and from that to "nothing new will happen and all the old things will stay that way". Thing of the obvious effects, man. Come on.

shortrounddev2 1y ago
> Inevitably you'll have to grandfather in existing infrastructure because a lot of it is from ancient times and all you'll do is make it impossible to have a Chinatown, or a NY brownstone. So what you'll get is that almost nothing new gets developed because the cost structure makes it impossible. I don't see how that's true - if you create cities or neighborhoods which are more walkable, such as New York's Chinatown, then you'll have less civil liability than suburban car-centric infrastructure. I would think that NY style neighborhoods would be MORE incentivized
CalRobert 1y ago
Why couldn’t you have a China town or brownstone? If the infrastructure is unsafe for cars, don’t allow cars there.
- pixl97 1y ago
  I mean, seems like a smart idea until you realize at least the US is a democracy (well hopefully still) and the moment you tell people they can't drive their car home they will vote you out or lynch you. So there's that. Unfortunately the answer isn't going to be telling people they can't do something. We already don't give a damn about the number of deaths we cause, so the actual answer is probably somewhere closer to attempting to educate people so eventually we won't want it.
  - CalRobert 1y ago
    Usually the problem is the locals do want traffic calming but they are overruled by suburbanites who have more power and want to force their cars in to old neighbourhoods (and then complain about parking)
- potato3732842 1y ago
  Because you people and the sum total of the "well intentioned" regulation you peddle across the myriad of issues you peddle it render the kind of organic incremental and piecemeal development that yields those sorts of neighborhoods an economic non-starter.
  - CalRobert 1y ago
    … huh?
- renewiltord 1y ago
  Haha, it's clearly beyond my ability to explain this to you. You're just going to have to try it and learn. But I'll give it one last try: One can only hope that you're either exceptional enough to succeed or that when you fail you understand that it wasn't because "suburbanites ruined a perfect plan because they can't imagine a blah blah blah" and learn that you're constraint solving in a democracy where other people have voices and your perfect solution needs to have graceful degradation as it makes allowances for their opinions so that it can get sufficient support to pass. If all you do is create additional liability with grandfathering in of existing designs, all you do is lead to propagation of current designs.

pixl97 1y ago

But it's not just the road. The road itself is an outcome of the buildings on it. When you have things like Super Walmarts/Targets taking up 500,000 square feet, with another 500k sqft of retail shopping surrounded by single family homes you pretty much guarantee that people have to drive there. The entire parking lot is pedestrian unfriendly from the number of cars that arrive there to the excessive heat generated in summer, especially in the southern US. It's the single family home buyer with two cars and is a registered voter that is demanding the human unfriendly architecture at this point. We are getting more integrated architecture and people seem to like it, but it doesn't replace the millions of miles of bad design we already have.