7 ms·

I love these little “reveals” of “secret architecture”. A lot of cities have them: the Minneapolis Skyway; underground cities in Toronto, Atlanta, Houston, Chic

• kspacewalk2 1y ago
  Cities in Europe and Asia that are actually healthy, and have rejected car culture, don't have these tunnel thingies. Instead of moving pedestrian traffic away from streets, they improve their streets to make them friendly to pedestrians. The idea that climate issues necessitate this kind of divorce from the outdoors would be a strange concept indeed to people in Barcelona and Helsinki alike. This is in fact a classic, 80s-90s North American car-infested big city band-aid. Leave the streets for the cars, leave the tiny sidewalks for the homeless and the trash, connect office buildings and plazas with pathways so the nine-to-fives can drive or subway in, go for their lunch or whatever, then drive/subway out without meeting the poors (because who else lives downtown anyway?) Et voila! Who needs to make downtowns actually liveable after all.
  • mattkrause 1y ago
    Eh... Montreal is a lot less temperate (in both directions!) than Barcelona and Helsinki. Having a way to get out of ±35º weather really does make the city more livable.
    • kspacewalk2 1y ago
      Okay, Madrid and Oulu are a lot less temperate in one direction than Montreal. There's nothing particularly scary or extreme about the climate of any major North American city. All weather-related excuses why those cities cannot be made less car-dependent are, to put simply, fucking bullshit excuses and just that.
      • gamblor956 1y ago
        There's nothing particularly scary or extreme about the climate of any major North American city. Except for sub-zero temperatures. And regular 100+ degree temperatures. And tornadoes. And derechos. And hurricanes. And a bunch of other weather phenomena that doesn't happen regularly in Europe. All weather-related excuses why those cities cannot be made less car-dependent are, to put simply, fucking bullshit excuses and just that. Spoken like someone who doesn't understand how weather, people, or cities work.
        • kspacewalk2 1y ago
          Are we using derechos and tornadoes as excuses for car dependence? Well, that's something new if nothing else. There are dozens and dozens of cities, big medium and even small, all over Europe, which have some combination of sub-zero temperatures, regular 100+ degree temperatures, lots of snow, lots of rain, lots of hills, and every other imaginable geography-related carbrains excuse in existence in North America. They bike, walk and take transit all the same. All bullshit excuses, all demonstrably so. The reason North America is car dependent is by conscious choice and by design, and absolutely nothing else whatsoever.
          • esseph 1y ago
            US is very big. Lots of places to go. Need a car to get around, can't fly everywhere. Trains don't go everywhere, because it doesn't make economic sense. Hm. Stuck with cars.
            • kspacewalk2 1y ago
  • tomjakubowski 1y ago
    Downtown LA's elevated pedestrian plazas on Bunker Hill, as depicted in the movie Her, are a great example of this. Office workers drive in, park in an underground garage below a skyscraper, take the elevator up to work, and walk around a multi-block radius to grab lunch, all without ever stepping foot on a city street.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      The Shinagawa District (where my company's headquarters were, in Tokyo) has a big raised district, connecting a bunch of skyscrapers, stores, and even a major train station. I suspect that there are several others (like Shinjuku), but I didn't really spend much time, in those areas (Tokyo is really big).
      • SapporoChris 1y ago
        Shinjuku underground walkways are vast enough to connect to Nishi-Shinjuku, Seibu-Shinjuku and Tochomae stations. Of course the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building can be walked to underground from Shinjuku station.
  • FredPret 1y ago
    > The idea that climate issues necessitate this kind of divorce from the outdoors would be a strange concept indeed to people in Barcelona and Helsinki alike. Try going for a walk outside in downtown Toronto on both the hottest and coldest days. If you're not in good health and appropriately dressed, you could suffer heatstroke on the hot day and simply die on the cold day. > the poors (because who else lives downtown anyway? You should talk about what you know instead of trying to come up with ways to hate something more than you already do.
    • kspacewalk2 1y ago
      >Try going for a walk outside in downtown Toronto on both the hottest and coldest days. I've done so many times on both the hottest and the coldest days, in Toronto. I've also been poor in Toronto and lived downtown, so you're right! Let's stick to what I know. It's always funny to read these wild exaggerations about our climate, and I suspect it's the same in other parts of the world. Yes, you could very occasionally suffer heatstroke or die of cold if you venture outside. Such are the generally defined, weather-related dangers of leaving your house. Somehow the millions of people who live in Toronto and move about downtown without patronizing the half-deserted and confusing PATH maze manage just fine. I encourage you to actually visit downtown Toronto or talk to someone who lives there to see just how they somehow manage to barely eke out a subsistence living for the 9 months of the year that the Damocles' sword of Extreme Weather sort of hangs menacingly over them.
      • FredPret 1y ago
        Lived in various spots in downtown TO for nearly a decade. The climate alone easily justifies building pedestrian tunnels. You come across as one of those car-hating fanatics who'll zero in on literally anything about North American cities, blaming everything you don't like on Evil Car Culture. I've lived in Europe and in North America, in both places with and without a car. Car + N.A. is the most convenient and comfortable combination, by a very long way, even if you're stuck in a condo in the gridlocked downtown Toronto as I was.
        • 1y ago
  • gamblor956 1y ago
    It regularly gets below zero in Chicago and Toronto. Europe is generally warmer than Canada and the northern U.S. Without these underground tunnels, there would be no pedestrians during months of the year, and no amount of "improving their streets" would change that.
    • jltsiren 1y ago
      Winters in Chicago and Toronto look about the same as in Helsinki. That's mild enough that the colder days are rarely an issue for pedestrians, assuming that they are willing to dress for the weather. The warmer winter days, with temperatures oscillating around freezing, are a bigger issue. Sidewalks can become dangerous without constant maintenance, as melting and freezing snow creates slippery surfaces and snow and ice fall off roofs.
      • tptacek 1y ago
        This is the first I'm hearing that cold days in Chicago are rarely an issue for pedestrians. Here's Brian Fitzpatrick: https://therealfitz.medium.com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-chicago-winter-9d65ceaa2794 https://therealfitz.medium.com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worryin... (I don't do even 1/4 of this, but then, I would almost never walk any real distance during a Chicago winter.)
        • jltsiren 1y ago
          I'm from Helsinki, where winters are longer and a bit colder than in Chicago, but we get less snow. My main takeaway from that article was that Chicagoans are more willing to tolerate disruptions due to weather. In Finland, people are generally expected to go to work/school even during a blizzard. And some then complain that their morning commute took longer than usual, because snowplows could not be everywhere at once.
          • Scoundreller 1y ago
            It’s taken quite a few public transit infrastructure improvements to make Toronto’s more reliable in snowfall. Trams used relatively unreliable trolley poles instead of pantographs until ~10 years ago. Most of the tram network “street runs”, so slow automobile traffic slows them down. Bicycle lanes become snow dumps when it snows a lot. There has at least been a more recent push to clear them of snow somewhat regularly at least instead of abandoning them entirely for maintenance. The metro/subway still runs largely above-ground. Lots of gas/electric train switch heaters installed on the regional train network but it can still fall apart in a snowstorm.
  • binsbins 1y ago
    Rebuttal to your post: 1. Many Asian cities have elevated pedestrian walkway systems. 2. Helsinki has underground pedestrian malls/tunnels. 3. Toronto's first PATH pedestrian tunnel was built before the post WW2 car culture explosion. 4. Toronto's winter cycling volumes are less than 10% that of the summer cycling volumes. Real statistics say that winter weather greatly affects people's decision on transportation mode. I have used a couple pedestrian tunnel/bridge networks extensively in frosty Canadian winter climates, I really appreciate them plus I think they are a fun way to get from place to place - being able to travel at a different layer than street-level feels refreshing/novel!
    • Frieren 1y ago
      I prefer to have better designed cities and to use of tunnels/walkways when there is no better alternative. In Asia, the walkways usually exist for wide roads that are in themselves not very friendly for the eyes, nor ears. The newest parts of Shenzhen are bare deserts with wide roads with cars and emptied of people. Their tunnels are full of restaurants, shopping malls and young people enjoying themselves. But all that is illuminated by artificial light. Not the worst kind of city, but so much worse than to have all people and activity at surface level like Paris or London. I agree, thou, that to have tunnels is an advantage during winter for cold countries. But as soon as the sun shines, I want to be outside getting as much sun and light as possible. Tunnels should not be a substitute to walkable cities but they can be a great addition.
  • minwcnt5 1y ago
    I have a slightly different take than others on this: I think the main contributor is the fact Toronto's financial district is extremely dense compared to most if not all European cities, and serviced by a highly trafficked subway line that loops around it. Many of the large office skyscrapers are built right on top of the subway, and so they naturally have a public underground connection, and usually it's a mini-mall with a food court and amenities for the office workers. Because of downtown's density these kind of just merged together into the larger PATH network. The weather is of course also a factor. It's just incredibly convenient in the winter, or even in the summer when it's muggy out, for office workers. You just hop onto the elevator during your lunch or coffee break, wearing your office clothes, no need to throw on a jacket or bring an umbrella or anything. It's just an extension of your office building basically. Toronto ALSO has healthy commercial streets all over the place that you access from street level and that DON'T connect to these tunnels. It's a very large city. The PATH tunnels are just one district.
  • bobthepanda 1y ago
    This is not true in Asia. In particular, major Japanese cities, Seoul, and Hong Kong are quite famous for extensive elevated and underground pedestrian networks. The major difference is that density is so high in these areas that they do not run into the problems encountered when implementing in North America, namely that a second level makes the street level dead.
    • ygouzerh 1y ago
      Indeed! It's as well quite needed here in Asia for still being able to walk even when the temperature is either too high (e.g Hong Kong) or too low (e.g Seoul in winter), without having to use cars all the time.
      • bobthepanda 1y ago
        Plenty in Hong Kong are not air conditioned, I think the bigger concern there are the monsoons
  • Bratmon 1y ago
    As someone from the Great Lakes region, watching Californians try to speculate about why Great Lakes cities have tunnels or elevated walkways but major Asian or European cities don't is hilarious. Come visit us in January and learn why for yourself ;)
• robin_reala 1y ago
  Your definition of “safely” probably doesn’t match, but I’ve been enjoying Geowizard’s attempt to cross greater London without walking alongside a road or canal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4476uSeTsg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4476uSeTsg8 The takeaway for me is how much parkland there actually is.
  • grues-dinner 1y ago
    London is famously technically a forest. Though for all towns and cities in the UK there is gigantic difference in the leafiness of the "nice" bits and the normal-people bits. Which is a shame because trees are a huge uplift to pretty much every measure of urban goodness except for long-term pavement maintenance costs.