5 ms·

> I think roads lie at the heart of every city builder. It’s the fabric on which cities are built. To paraphrase the article, this is what urban planners have

• kqr 8mo ago
  I had never considered there is a difference between the two words, but Wikipedia backs it up: > The word street is still sometimes used informally as a synonym for road, but city residents and urban planners draw a significant modern distinction: a road's main function is transportation, while streets facilitate public interaction. Even with this clarification, though, I think you unfairly characterise the quote from the article. Modern society has an insane demand for transportation. Roads – the medium on which we transport things – are the fabric on which cities are built. Not just inside the cities, but the vast network of roads outside the city, that feed it. Before the 1900s, we weren't able to build cities far from water because of their demand for transportation. We can today, and it is only because of roads we are able to do that.
  • trinari 8mo ago
    I hope the water comes to the city through a pipe and not with trucks on roads.
    • fenykep 8mo ago
      I believe they have referred to the transportation possibilities the water allows rather than the possibility to transport water (which was possible at scale way earlier)
      • direwolf20 8mo ago
        We finally have water–powered cars?
  • rob74 8mo ago
    Yeah, maybe I'm overly pedantic, but the author is also overly pedantic about the curvatures of streets/roads in games, so... :) But, to continue with the pedantry: the Romans already built cities far from (navigable) water. There have been roads since antiquity, then since the mid 19th century it was first the railways that made it easy to transport passengers and goods over large distances. The current version of roads being the main/only form of transportation only came about in the 1950s.
  • spacedcowboy 8mo ago
    I think American society is very much road-focussed, having lived there for a couple of decades. I think UK (and European in general) society is very much street-focussed. A lot of that comes down to geography - the UK is a high-density population compared to the USA but the impact on our lives is significant. In the US, I would drive everywhere. Literally everywhere - to the shops, to the library, to the beach, everywhere. Yesterday I took my son to his archery practice, we walked along the coast road for about 20 minutes, and picked up a "Mr Whippy" 99er ice-cream (yes, even in the cold weather) along the walk back. It was pleasant, and healthier.
    • direwolf20 8mo ago
      USA cities are low density because they are road–focused
      • retired 8mo ago
        The United States emerged during a period of abundant frontier land, which normalized the idea that ordinary people could own large, independent plots. This contrasted sharply with Europe’s older, land-constrained settlement patterns. That early culture of space and ownership later interacted with industrialization, the automobile, and government policy to produce the low-density development that characterizes much of the U.S. today.
        • gwbas1c 8mo ago
          When you go into the Northeast, a lot of narrower roads were planned for slow-moving horse-drawn carts.
          • hollerith 8mo ago
            Horse-drawn carts are not any narrower than cars are, and many place (e.g., the Marina District of San Francisco) designed in the horse era have very wide streets.
  • fastasucan 8mo ago
    >Modern society has an insane demand for transportation. Roads – the medium on which we transport things Why do you say it like roads are the only option? Its even far from the most effective option. You mean rails?
    • deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    • retired 8mo ago
      Railroads are roads.
      • spacechild1 8mo ago
        Only by name.
    • red-iron-pine 8mo ago
      rail-roads is in the name mon ami
      • spacechild1 8mo ago
        Not in other languages. In German, for example, it would very weird to think of railroads (Bahn/Eisenbahn/Bahnstrecke) as roads (Straßen). Would you also claim that a hedgehog is a pig?
        • BobaFloutist 8mo ago
          But autobahn is a road, no?
          • spacechild1 8mo ago
            Yes, but "Bahn" actually means "track", "path" or "lane". "Bahn" in the sense of "railroad" is an abbreviation of "Eisenbahn" (literal translation: "iron tracks"). So "Autobahn" has nothing to do with railroad, it just means "car track".
  • troupo 8mo ago
    > Modern society has an insane demand for transportation. Roads – the medium on which we transport things – are the fabric on which cities are built. Not just inside the cities, but the vast network of roads outside the city, that feed it. This is a very American point of view IMO. Cities are built on streets first and foremost. Otherwise you end up with strip malls separated by endless swaths of car parks. As for transportation, we have to separate cargo from people, and inner city from inter-city. For people inside the city you have multi-modal transport options. Walking, biking, busses, trams, subways, commuter trains, taxis, individual cars, ferries. For intercity people you have trains, planes, boats, busses, individual cars. Most inner city cargo can be handled by smaller trucks going from warehouses to specific places in the city. And for smaller cargo like mail I've even seen small scooters and cargo bikes. For inter-city you once again have multi-modal transport (depending on the city). Trucks, rail, cargo planes, boats. Even the US was built on railways, not on roads. Roads are the "backbone of cities" only if you make them one, as the US has done
  • bluGill 8mo ago
    Slight correction: It was the 1830s when the railroad arrived that we started to be able to build cities far from navigable water. (navigable is important - if your water can only support small boats your city will be smaller than if it can support large ships). Trucks in the 1900s allow the same thing, and have enough advantages that we would use them for smaller cities, but large cities are still going to get rail transportation. And water transport is still powerful enough that the largest cities still likely need it even though it isn't a strict requirement.
  • S3verin 8mo ago
    Roads are important for a good transportation infrastructure. However, cities in north america are overreliant on them. In European cities public transit is also important and in my opinion even more important than roads. Cars are not useful in cities compared to public transit / bikes / walking if the city is designed for humans and not cars. ( and yes, you still need roads for delivery and people who sometimes have to transport heavy things).
    • bluGill 8mo ago
      There is a lot more than people to move around a city. Transit is more visible and yes europe does well there - but freight is less visible and europe isn't doing as well there.
  • cogman10 8mo ago
    > Before the 1900s, we weren't able to build cities far from water because of their demand for transportation. Incorrect. In the 1800s the train took off as a primary form of transportation. By 1869, we'd completed the first intercontinental railway in the US which ultimately opened up the economy between the east and west. Sears flourished as a company because of the train. It wasn't roads which ultimately opened up mass transport, it was rail. It wasn't until the 1950s that rail was ultimately de-prioritized and roads were prioritized.
• flomo 8mo ago
  I will just say the Streets of San Francisco were almost all built by civil engineering principles, even those from the 19th century. If you want some sim SF or NYC, this guy is on the right track by not having fakey roads.
• Ef996 8mo ago
  Yep, good point. I am myself a huge fan of livable oriented infrastructure (bike lanes, pedestrian paths, public transportation) but the hard truth is that roads were initially designed for carriages and later for cars. A though I recurrently have is how would a city designed from scratch by a civilization that uses only bikes and walking look like?
  • vladms 8mo ago
    Why should you use only bikes and walking? Cars/trucks have a role to play, it's just not the most efficient to move the majority of the people from one point to another. Simple examples: ambulances, firefighters, police, cranes.
    • Ef996 8mo ago
      True. I mostly meant not personal vehicles, so jut buses, trams etc. I supposed emergency services will use those dedicated lanes. or maybe civilization is so advanced those will be served via flying only. Idk just since fiction thinking.
  • phatskat 8mo ago
    Roads as in? I recall hearing once (with no current source nor desire to research) that most city streets were originally at least _used_ with pedestrians in mind. Whether they were created for carriages or not, the advent of the automobile really messed up a lot of how people primarily used streets
• wongarsu 8mo ago
  The same insights still hold true for streets and paths. Of course a single human or even bicycle can move with fewer constraints than a car, but a stream of humans won't. When we design pedestrian infrastructure with sharp corners people either cut through on the inside, creating desire paths on unpaved surface, or the inside section that lies on the paved path but outside the circle-section-path becomes a low-traffic zone, a place where people sit down or put up food carts or whatever In remembering that cities are not roads alone, but also streets, paths and tracks, there is a lot of potential for this approach to building all of them
• BrtByte 8mo ago
  Urban planners lose sleep over stroads for very good reasons but from a simulation and tooling perspective, streets still need a shared geometric backbone
  • laci37 8mo ago
    I don't think that much is shared between streets and roads. Roads need all the details about curvature in the article so car traffic flows efficiently. Compare that to the beautiful but narrow streets of a Mediterranean town. Buildings are rarely parallel, angles are odd, but everything is on a human scale, and it just feels good to walk around.