Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/sep/18/paradise-life-spanish-city-banned-cars-pontevedra

by antr • 8 years ago

1240 679 8 years ago

fredley• 8 years ago

Pedestrianisation works well in European cities, especially small ones. It's quite common here in the UK, often there are strict time limits on when delivieries can be made, e.g. 6-8am when barriers are open to let vehicles in and out.

However this model just does not work in the US, outside of very few places. US cities are designed for cars, and without major redevelopment everything's just too far apart - even within the context of a single street - for this to make sense. If you had electric scooters or something though...

adrianN11• 8 years ago

Internalize the cost of parking, drop mandatory parking minimums and change zoning to allows for reasonable density. Wait a few decades and cities probably won't be as car centric as they are now.

betterunix2• 8 years ago

It took major redevelopment for many US cities to become car-centric, so I am not seeing why we could not do another redevelopment to create pedestrian-friendly cities.

MrEfficiency• 8 years ago

so I am not seeing why we could not do another redevelopment to create pedestrian-friendly cities.

We have 2 local cities that made themselves bike friendly. Property values are going up in that area.

However, the people living there were already 10%ers.

Its cool to see lots of bike lanes and walkers, but they also managed to price the people that cant afford cars out.

claydavisss5• 8 years ago

It hasn't happened because most in the US don't need or even want to live in pedestrian focused cities.

Americans tend to live in detached single family homes.

Americans tend to want space between themselves and their neighbors.

Americans do not see their cars as liabilities.

Most people don't live in SF/NYC and/or don't read StrongTowns

Replacing American suburbia would cost $100 Trillion dollars. More suburbia is being created every day, far outpacing investment in "New Urbanism".

In America, when your city/suburb becomes blighted, you can move.

tetromino_• 8 years ago

there are strict time limits on when delivieries can be made, e.g. 6-8am when barriers are open to let vehicles in and out.

That is nuts.

That means a plumber, electrician, home appliance deliveryman, mover, etc. can only handle one job requiring a vehicle per day. He will have to charge 3-4 times more for his services than someone working in an area where it's feasible to finish 3-4 jobs in a workday. The costs are of course passed on to the customers. Is their car-less life worth living in a pigsty that they can't fix up because laws force contractors to charge exorbitant fees?

That means any business will want a dedicated vehicle to haul what they need in the 6-8 am window. This is not just grossly economically inefficient (no outsourcing delivery to third parties), it results in more vehicles sitting idle during the day, using up parking space!

And that means moving is a nightmare. Moving a two-bedroom apartment worth of stuff into or out of a truck is, realistically, at least a four hour job. That means a cross-town move that could be done in one workday with sane laws will take at least four workdays (two to load the truck, two to unload) in your crazy UK town. Imagine the costs. How is it moral for you to shackle your people to the land by making relocation unaffordable?

aembleton• 8 years ago

I don't know of any residential areas that have these sorts of restrictions. Its generally in shopping areas. Businesses have to schedule deliveries for these time slots.

pjc504• 8 years ago

When you look into the details of these things you'll nearly always find that there are enough exemptions to make it work. If it was genuinely unliveable people wouldn't live there. People have managed to live in Venice for centuries despite it being physically impossible to get motor vehicles around the centre.

https://www.eco-business.com/news/how-a-city-in-spain-got-ri...

"In fact, in most streets there are no physical barriers to keep the cars out. Vehicles making deliveries or locals heading to private garages can still circulate in most places.

“What we did is to create loops to keep people from driving through the city,” Lores explains. “If you enter by the south, you leave by the south.”

The goal of this strategy, which is complemented by severe parking restrictions in all of the central area, is to get rid of what Pontevedra officials call “unnecessary traffic”.

Balero• 8 years ago

It works quite well with none of these issues.

The 6-8am window is for large deliveries. There is normally a retractable barrier for emergency usage (police/ambulance etc) and for minimal day access (I don't know how this is managed, but I have seen vehicles have to turn around and leave, where others, normally with a business inside get access).

Another common way is to have a central pedestrian only section, but with vehicle access through the 'back streets' behind. The pedestrian street is normally a great deal larger than the (often one way) back streets, and again has retractable bollards for maintenance, event vehicles and emergency vehicles. These back streets also give access to underground/aboveground parking for residents in flats. I would love to see this model used to some extent in residential areas. Some of my favorite times are when a street is closed to traffic for a street party.

In practice it works very well, at least in a large number of towns and cities in the UK. It's about finding the correct roads and spaces to limit and disallow motor vehicles on.

CydeWeys3• 8 years ago

You're being unrealistic.

I live in a large apartment development in Manhattan that is pedestrian-friendly and decidedly vehicle-unfriendly. You can't drive a car to the front of my building. And yet it works, very well.

I moved in with my girlfriend recently. You know how that worked? The movers she hired drove as near as possible, and simply pushed her stuff on dollies the rest of the way to the building. No big deal. Yeah, it took a little bit longer, but nowhere near as bad as the 4-day move you're hyperbolically claiming. And that side of the move was actually better than the other side, since she was moving out of a fourth floor walkup. Even though the truck could park almost directly in front of that building, it turns out it's harder to carry stuff down many flights of stairs than it is to push it on wheels across a flat surface and then up an elevator.

I moved from another building within my complex, and I accomplished my entire move simply by pushing my stuff on a dolly, without even having to hire movers. I've never before had a vehicle-less move even be an option, but it was in this situation.

As for repairmen, you know how they work? They get around on bicycles. You can carry a surprising amount of stuff on a bicycle, including all the tools you'd need for >95% of repairs. The plumbers ride around on bikes with a toolbox, plungers, and a snake, for example. For appliance delivery, they use tiny little vehicles that are basically a pick-up truck version of a golf cart. These vehicles don't go fast and the drivers yield to pedestrians, and you see them on pedestrian paths (and don't feel unsafe about it).

Every problem that you're bringing up is already solved in the many different areas that are pedestrianized and prohibit vehicle traffic. It's a failure of imagination to think that these problems are unsolvable. When your city is dense enough, a plumber/electrician can easily support him/herself on just jobs that are within a 10 minute walking radius, with the tools that can be pushed on a handcart or fit on a bicycle. Vehicles aren't necessary. It's actually more efficient for these professions, because in the suburbs it's typical to drive for up to an hour to get to a jobsite! So much wasted time spent just getting somewhere!

tim333• 8 years ago

You could make quite a lot of money by building mixed use retail/residential where the car parks are now.

montenegrohugo3• 8 years ago

This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward.

Cities get bigger and denser, and wasting a big % of land on parking spaces, roads, intersections and accepting a horrible air quality (that reduces citizen life spans and health quality) and noise pollution just does not make any sense anymore. Carse are effective in less dense regions, but in modern cities other solutions have to be found. Mass transit, biking lanes, electro-scooters, (elevated)-footpaths are the way to go. Maybe even electric ridesharing.

But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society.

I know european cities are much more pedestrian friendly & that US cities in general are more oriented towards the car lifestyle, but as said previously, this needs to change. It is a big cultural and infrastructure change over a longer timespan, but it is achievable.

Of course change always requires some sacrifice, and I imagine the car-drivers in above mentioned article must have been plenty pissed at the beginning. But they paved over the streets, made the inner city pedestrian only, and now they are better for it. Of course this is a very small town and these changes do not scale up as easily as one would like, and much more complex projects will have to be designed for bigger cities. But it is doable (see initiatives in e.g. Madrid, Munich & most of the netherlands) and "only" requires some long-term commitment. But we all know how good politicians are at that (what's global warming??).

I want to finish this comment with a call to engage in democracy. Make your opinion heard, loudly, go to the voting polls, participate in your local council, actually engage in politics. Because if you do not, no significant change will be made any time soon.

TomMarius6• 8 years ago

On top of other issues, most of Europe also enjoys a 4-season year - meaning that a bike or scooter is safely and comfortably usable around half of a year, definitely not more.

pjc504• 8 years ago

That's very subjective, quite a lot of people do that year round in a lot of European cities. Certainly it's viable in southern Europe where it rarely snows.

thecopy• 8 years ago

When i lived in Uppsala, Sweden i biked all year around.

exDM69• 8 years ago

I live in an European city 60 degrees northern latitude, and the bicycle season is more like 9 months out of the year. That can be extended to 10-11 months with a bit of clothing/gear and bicycling the whole year is not impossible either (but most people who do have a separate winter bike).

I used to do 15+15 km bike ride to work and back almost every day for 9 months out of the year. Sadly I can't do that any more as I moved farther away from work.

There might be days of bad weather where other means of transportation is more convenient, but that's the case all year around.

For motorcycles/scooters the season is shorter because you can't get (affordable) insurance.

ajuc2• 8 years ago

Biking in autumn is perfectly comfortable. You are just wearing more clothes (which you would wear anyway if you're outside). It's not like people never leave their houses in USA, right?

Biking in the winter is fine too, as long as there's no snow (and the snow is usually only 1-2 months, depending on the location).

And some people do drive in the winter too (but that is harder and most don't).

gerardnll• 8 years ago

Hahaha you’re definitely wrong. 3/4 if not all year, bike and sure, motorcycle is factible. (Spain and I’m sure the half of Europe)

Angostura• 8 years ago

I have a 30 minute cycle to work in London suburbs and cycled every day last year. There were about 4 days when it was unpleasantly cold.

Mediterraneo10• 8 years ago

Cities in the Nordic countries have bike paths that are kept clear of snow and are used for commuting year-round. People know that there is a way to dress to be comfortable cycling even when winter comes.

eliseumds• 8 years ago

I used to bike every month of the year in Berlin.

Freak_NL• 8 years ago

Please send a note to the Dutch (and the Germans, the Danish, the French, the Belgians, …) to tell them to stop riding their bicycles in the midst of winter.

In the past five years there was one day when I couldn't cycle to work due to black ice covering most of the roads, and even that resolved itself in the afternoon. Snow just means you need a bit more dexterity than usual.

As for comfort; proper clothing means you are pretty much comfortable most of the time.

elvecinodeabajo• 8 years ago

Here's a fact: Pontevedra and the area surrounding is famous in Spain for really rainy winters and springs. Pontevedra city is facing directly to the sea.

8xde0wcNwpslOw3• 8 years ago

Around here (this site I mean), the majority opinion doesn't find any problem at all with sleet and snow and cycling.

The odd thing about this is how the biking paths around here (a city 60N) still remain relatively empty for a long time in the winter. It almost confuses me, but not really :-)

hesk2• 8 years ago

Unless there's ice on the road, I ride my bike year-round in Berlin.

dathinab2• 8 years ago

That really depends on the level of comfort you want to have when riding a bike. A lot of people do still use a bike in winter (through I can't recommend it), through even if you don't do so, using it for 5/8 of a year is quite doable.

simias2• 8 years ago

I ride a motorcycle year long in Paris, it's definitely not comfortable during the harshest winter days but with proper gear it's definitely doable. Spring and Autumn is fine, you just need waterproof gear for rainy days. At lower speeds and with exercise keeping you warm riding a bicycle is probably even less of an issue.

Sure, on rainy or super cold days it's not like it's as comfortable as a car but you'd have to pay me to drive a car around Paris or any big european city at rush hour.

lagadu3• 8 years ago

Your post is how I can tell you've never been to Copenhagen during the winter. Bicycles are used year-round no matter the weather. There's a saying here that roughly translates to "there's no bad weather, only improper clothing".

Keyframe2• 8 years ago

One of the culture shocks from Europe to US (California) was that there are places where you can't do shit without a car. Like, no place place to walk along the street to get from point A to B.

hannasanarion2• 8 years ago

It's because of the geography. Southern California and Arizona especially were impossible to live in until after Air Conditioning became cheap and widespread in the 1950s. At that time, modernism in architecture and city planning was at its peak: build it big, build it simple, and build it for cars.

Tor32• 8 years ago

I was visiting a customer site near Miami, some years ago. I opted for not renting a car, I could easily go to the customer's site by taxi. But then some components got stuck in customs, and I had to stay the weekend. It turned out that the hotel was its own enclave if you didn't have a car! I couldn't walk to the shopping mall, or a nearby restaurant, I tried everything. Just couldn't get there. It was like being in a Kafka novel. Nightmarish, and utterly unnecessary.

strictnein3• 8 years ago

California is the ultimate example of car dependency. There are many, many other places to live in the US that aren't like that.

dmos622• 8 years ago

Seconded, Ghent in belgium is also pretty cool car-wise. It has so-called pedestrian-centric planning. For example, the city centre may not be entered with a car, only by foot, bicycle or public transport. It's great.

I enjoyed Musk's Boring Company's presentation, where they talk about some problems with transportation today and present some solutions, with emphasis on transportation within city borders [0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwX9G38vdCE

montenegrohugo3• 8 years ago

Yeah, underground transportation is definitely one solution that can help solve the transportation problem. The Boring Company seems to be more US focused, so maybe it can help with the "bigger" challenges that the US is facing in de-caring their cities.

CaptainZapp• 8 years ago

In addition Ghent must have the most awesome bars and pubs per m2 in Europe with an absolute abundant collection of premium Belgium beers.

masklinn2• 8 years ago

Seconded, Ghent in belgium is also pretty cool car-wise. It has so-called pedestrian-centric planning. For example, the city centre may not be entered with a car, only by foot, bicycle or public transport. It's great.

Louvain La Neuve (in french-speaking belgium) has an interesting take on this: the entire city is on a concrete slab, topside is entirely pedestrian, and underslab hosts car streets and parkings.

akudha• 8 years ago

In at least one smaller city I lived in the US, there weren't even sidewalks. The town was built for cars only. Even in bigger cities like NY where there are bike lanes at least in some places, there is some level of looking down on cyclists from drivers and cab drivers. It is going to take a massive mindset change to reduce dependence on cars.

randcraw4• 8 years ago

Or $10/gallon gasoline.

skh4• 8 years ago

I lived for a while in Berlin. Coming back to the U.S. the first thing I noticed were too many billboards and ugly parking lots. Each store has its own parking lot. Largely underused. No nice paths to traverse the bleak endless parking lot landscape. It’s ugly and wasteful. It’s hostile to pedestrians and discourages people from going outside to just wander. Even in relatively walkable communities like the one I live in have far fewer people out and about. An endless stream of cars going from one ugly parking lot to the another. I wish I could move to Europe permanently.

mantas• 8 years ago

And then Berlin is rather car-friendly by Euro standards..

moneytide13• 8 years ago

It’s hostile to pedestrians and discourages people from going outside to just wander

This is a good point. The leisurely stroll is practically nonexistent in my city. I'm in a more rural setting, but there is still a well-defined city hub. It just feels awkward walking down the sidewalk when people are zooming by at 35mph+.

The result is sidewalk cut offs, which is inconvenient to me as a biker. There are frequently plants starting to take over because no one cares to use the walks.

Makes sense that people gradually prefer to spend their free time with Netflix, video games, or in a gym.

rqs• 8 years ago

Just a side question: Did you also happen to found that you're more likely to going into a store when walk by it compare to drive by? (assuming you can park your car right at the spot and no charge)

Avalaxy2• 8 years ago

The "hostile to pedestrians" is a feeling I get in many countries. When I'm walking somewhere I often have to walk at the side of the road where cars drive at least 50 km/hr and often honk at me or drive by dangerously close. It always makes me feel like I'm doing something illegal, or wrong.

Razengan2• 8 years ago

I wish I could move to Europe permanently.

This is the "Vote with your wallet" at the international civic level.

It may not have been very convenient or practical in the past but it seems to be becoming an increasingly accessible option, at least for first-world people.

Move to the places whose ideals align with yours, and help them develop those, if you can't convince your current home to adopt them.

fudgy73• 8 years ago

totally agree, but a question for you and others - what's the point | what's going to happen | why is so much $$ being put into autonomous vehicles?

montenegrohugo3• 8 years ago

In relation to the transportation-problem being discussed, autonomous vehicles are much better than normal privately owned cars because (in theory) they do not need any parking, at least not in premium inner city ground. They can just drive away and park somewhere where they aren't disturbing anyone, and come back when needed. Alternatively, if they are part of a car sharing service, the % of time the car is not being used and is therefore a wasted resource is going down. A normal car is only being used for what, 5-10% of the day? the rest of the time it is a completely wasted resource. If a car is not owned by an individual but by a group of consumers, a much smaller amount of cars is needed to satisfy transportation needs for the entire group.

Of course, even though they have these two advantages, they will still pollute(if not electric, and even so because they must transport more mass than say a scooter, and the electricity still needs to be generated at an external power plant) and create noise pollution and they also need to use traffic lanes and road-infrastructure.

noelwelsh2• 8 years ago

I'm not very excited by autonomous cars, at least for short-trip personal transport, as I don't think they're solving the real problem which is to not need cars in the first place.

However it's far far easier for commercial companies to invest $billions in them than it is for governments to invest $billions in the infrastructure to make cars redundant. Look at the bitching and moaning that happens whenever a new train line is proposed.

agumonkey4• 8 years ago

I also think there's a cultural relativism (pardon the anecdotal neologism~) factor. 100 years ago, moving people with a loaded trunk 100miles an hour was heaven. It became an obvious axiom of modern life that "further faster" was always good. To an extent I even think high speed internet is related to that (you can be everywhere without even moving).

But I realized that going fast you forget what's near, and you forget what time can feel. Walking around you discover places you didn't know, you spend time in the forest, on a hill. You're not rushing to go from A to B. Maybe "time density" will have a come back.

adrianN11• 8 years ago

Maybe you only don't feel rushed while walking because you only walk when you have time?

mymythisisthis2• 8 years ago

Until the 1950s most heavy things were moved by water.

I still can't believe how much I can pack into a canoe, probably as much as I can into a pick-up truck. Running down a lake or river, with a canoe, is even a smoother ride than a car on a regular road.

The first passenger trains were actually designed to move people from the city to the countryside. Once they achieved regular service people figured they can commute into the city, and started to live in the country.

rimliu3• 8 years ago

It's not about speed it is about freedom.

koolba• 8 years ago

In cities sure, but there’s plenty of us who do not want to live in cities. Heck, I don’t even want to live within eye sight of neighbors, stores, or really anything else except some pristine woods. That’s not possible without a car.

_Codemonkeyism5• 8 years ago

Amen.

adrianN11• 8 years ago

There won't be many pristine woods left if everybody lives like you though.

dagw• 8 years ago

Sure there are always going to be people like us who want an 'archaic' life style which require an archaic mode of transportation, but the world shouldn't be optimizing for these people, and I see nothing wrong with making these people pay extra for the externalizes their lifestyles impose.

collyw4• 8 years ago

Get a horse.

People managed without cars for the vast majority of human existence.

gaius7• 8 years ago

privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society

For people with a very limited lifestyle restricted to a few city blocks perhaps this is true. But the majority of people do not live that way and have use cases for cars that you have not considered in your analysis.

change always requires some sacrifice,

By other people, funnily enough

adrianN11• 8 years ago

I don't have a car but my life is not restricted to a few city blocks. I either ride a bike or take public transport (or both!) to get where I want to go.

maaaats4• 8 years ago

The point would be to get rid of the reasons people need cars. By rethinking urban planning, infrastructure, public transportation etc.

francisofascii3• 8 years ago

Most use cases are solvable with bikes, strollers, buses, and perhaps car rentals outside the city limits.

Shorel• 8 years ago

It's good to have a car and use it for long trips - or whenever you want to.

It is not good to need a car and having to use it every day for several hours.

yodsanklai3• 8 years ago

This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward.

It's not limited to the US. Even in Europe (at least in France where I live), we have a lot of protests whenever there are measures against cars. A few days ago, there was a no-car day in Paris, you could see people on social medias extremely angry.

Sharlin7• 8 years ago

Cars are the ultimate tragedy of the commons. People want to use cars but at the same time don’t want the negative externalities caused by everyone else using cars too – congestion, noise, pollution, road surface erosion. Because that selfish individualistic viewpoint gets us nowhere, a coordinated approach is needed.

claydavisss5• 8 years ago

I want to finish this comment with a call to engage in democracy. Make your opinion heard, loudly, go to the voting polls, participate in your local council, actually engage in politics

in the Bay Area, they tend to vote for more and better roads (but tend not to get them)

alkonaut6• 8 years ago

cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward

Inside cities that is. One must remember that a lot of the people that move around in a city every day don't live in the city. And for many of them a car is a requirement anyway. For me the car is a sunk cost - I have it for the rare times I need it (I don't need it to go into the city), but buying/maintaining/insuring it is mostly a fixed cost, meaning that the marginal cost of each mile driven is very very small. I wouldn't mind if my city was made car free tomorrow - but I still wouldn't drive any less.

meguest• 8 years ago

This is normal for people who work in London and live in the commuter belt around it. Most of these people have a car but walk to the station, or drive to the station, and then take a train into London. Once in London these people then take the tube, buses, bikes or walk to get around.

The car still gets used outside work to get groceries, pick up kids from schools and of course at the weekends.

Sharlin7• 8 years ago

Many suburbanites, however, have the entitled attitude that cities should accommodate their car trips to dense areas at the expense of people actually living there. Often their mindset is that cities are strictly where people go instead of where people live. In the US this mentality is exarcebated by the white flight and the decay of inner cities, but does also exist in Europe.

screye• 8 years ago

Won't something like rental cars make more sense in such a case ?

jayess• 8 years ago

My medium-sized city made its main retail street pedestrian-only in the 80s. It quickly died and nearly all stores went out of business. The road was re-opened to traffic and now the area is booming.

One size doesn't fit all. What is your personal preference may not be others' prefereces.

Making a blanket statement like cars "are not effective in today's society" is profoundly off base.

oftenwrong4• 8 years ago

There is an "activation energy" to walkability. If you drop pedestrian-only development into a car-dependent area, nobody is going to visit.

Personal preference is largely a reflection of the status quo, and in the US the status quo heavily sculpted by federal policy that has favoured car-oriented development for 60+ years.

keeganjw• 8 years ago

Interestingly enough, my medium-sized city made its main retail street pedestrian-only in the 80s and it is booming. There's no way they'd ever allow cars on it again. People love it. Our downtown is fairly dense and has three universities nearby. They built two parking garages next to it to give people a place to park and they seems to operate close to capacity most of the time. So it has these things going for it.

7952• 8 years ago

The irony is that malls are always built indoors without cars. I think it depends on the type of retail, and what they want.

pcmonk• 8 years ago

How do you do this with kids? Suppose you're taking three kids to an event or a climbing gym or whatever and it's further than walking distance. Can biking be made safe enough, or if it's further, is it reasonable for them to bring them on the metro? What if it's three kids ages 5 and under?

This is an honest question. I live in a city with public transport now and I much prefer it for myself, but when I think of how I was brought up it's hard to imagine that working without a car.

S4M• 8 years ago

I have two kids (now 8 and 4 years old). I don't own a car. We never had any issue bringing them with us in public transport (bus, metro or train). We live in Barcelona.

noelwelsh2• 8 years ago

I took my kids around in a bike trailer for the first seven or so years of their life. I didn't do this exclusively---we had a car and often used it, but the majority of places I wanted to get to I could reach by bike and bike journeys were 100% to 5% depending on the location. Now they are old enough to ride their own bikes. This was in the fairly bike unfriendly city of Birmingham, UK. (Birmingham bought into car culture in 1960s and is slowly recovering.)

Better to look at cities that are better adopters of bikes, such as Copenhagen. There just about everyone is on or in a bike, including many children. They love their cargo bikes over there. See https://triobike.com/ and http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle-culture/copenhagen...

Xylakant• 8 years ago

I don't own a car in Berlin and I either take public transport or a cargo bike. Any long-john style cargo bike can fit 2 kids at least, most three-wheeled models easily fit up to 4.

astura4• 8 years ago

I find this question very bizarre, what's the hell is wrong with riding a bus with kids? Why is it "more difficult" or any different from just riding the metro yourself? I rode the bus regularly from birth until 7 or 8 when my parents bought a second car and still rode sporadically with family or baby sitters from 7 or 8 until I was a teenager. I started riding again by myself or with friends as a teenager to go places and also rode the bus to work until I bought a car at 17. Riding with children is exactly the same as riding by yourself, except you have children next to you. Children under five usually ride for free too, at least they did in my city.

As far as sticking kids on bikes, you got many options:

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/01/oregon...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3SP1Y98KhQ

https://www.survivalistboards.com/showpost.php?p=3482606&pos...

lagadu3• 8 years ago

Just take them on the metro/bus/light rail? I think I'm misunderstanding something in your question...

brightball2• 8 years ago

I don't think cars are going anywhere for a while, but I'm very interested to see all of the alternative fuel options that show up eventually (CNG, Hydrogen and Electric so far).

I currently drive a Volt...and it's wonderful. Chevy is really missing out on a lot of potential free press by not putting a bigger emphasis on it. I went from spending over $400 / month on gas to about $20 / month. You get the ability to cut such a huge amount of gas usage without the need for any additional infrastructure to support them like pure-electrics that are out there.

My guess is that when clean energy is used to produce fuel cells, a lot of the conversations around the negative impact of cars in general will dry up.

tudelo• 8 years ago

How the hell did you spend 400 a month on gas?!?!?!

_pmf_• 8 years ago

This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing

This might be shocking to you, but I'd like to get to work in 15 minutes instead of in 45 minutes while suffering the bodily odeurs of a hundred co-travelers, overlaid with the subtle smell of my wagon having been used as a urinal for a decade, thank you very much.

lagadu3• 8 years ago

This is pretty funny because in most situations public transport is a significantly faster means of getting to work than cars are over here.

dionidium• 8 years ago

But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society.

They pretty clearly weren't effective in the old cities, either, at least in the U.S., since we had to more or less raze them and move everybody to the suburbs to make cars work.

CapricornNoble5• 8 years ago

There ARE some great suggestions in the article, namely underground parking, roundabouts instead of stop lights, and banning street parking. Now, to YOUR points:

"Mass transit": Shared and claustrophobic space with other travelers. "Biking lanes": Requires exposure to the elements. Depending on where you live this is already a non-starter if you don't want to arrive at your destination drenched in sweat. "electro-scooters": I've been on one of these in Vietnam. Doesn't carry 2 adults well and has the same weather problems as the peddle-powered version. "Elevated footpaths": I live in an urban conglomerate in Asia with ~1.1 million people. A typical day of running errands can easily rack up ~50+km of driving because of the distances between either people I know or businesses carrying niche products. There's no way in Hell I'm covering that ground on foot, in 34deg C weather with 90% humidity.

The city in the article is (1) miniscule at ~85,000 people and 15-20km across at its widest and (2) possesses a pretty mild climate. All of the transportation assets you propose as "solutions" are fine....if you live in California or a similar "Mediterranean climate". Most humans don't.

"But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society."

Why so quick to jump to sweeping, society-altering prognostications based on conclusions which you yourself recognize as applicable to a small-scale and optimal use case?

Your suggested alternative transport means all severely restrict your freedom of movement compared to a private automobile as they come with range and/or comfort compromises. They would shrink the options of citizens for long-distance ground travel as well (say goodbye to road trips).

"Of course this is a very small town and these changes do not scale up as easily as one would like"

Yes, and given that 22% of humanity lives in urban areas of 1 million+ [1] and 40% of humanity in cities over 100,000 [2], it might be premature to call people to political action to hasten the death of the automobile when you don't have a solution that scales well.

[1]https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.URB.MCTY.TL.ZS?view=... <br> [2]http://www.newgeography.com/content/005933-world-urban-areas...

anthk3• 8 years ago

Pontevedra mild climate? MediteWHAT? Please, take a map of Spain and comment again. Spain among Portugal is what you see when you cross over the Atlantic from the US.

Pontevedra is in Galicia, northern Spain. Here it rains like UK, and even worse. No Sun except a very few weeks a year.

Not all Spain is sunny, and not all the US is like California, Texas or Florida. You would freeze in Castille or Aragon in Winter. You would pray to see the sunlight in Asturias, Galicia or any region of the Bay of Biscay.

pron• 8 years ago

It is a big cultural and infrastructure change over a longer timespan, but it is achievable.

Yes, but there's also a geographical difference. Countries in Europe are rather small, and a long history has restricted some land use. In many areas of the US land was almost a non-issue, so people settled more sparsely, and even cities became sprawls (e.g. Houston, LA).

jorgemf2• 8 years ago

Free resources shouldn't be an excuse to use them wisely.

I get your point, but it is not a good reason why we cannot do things better.

adamc• 8 years ago

Distances in a lot of the US (I live in Texas) are such that I don't see cars disappearing. What might happen is more short-term renting of cars.

But a lot of American cities were built around the automobile, so they would need a lot of changes to function in a post-automobile world. That makes such a transition much less likely. I think it would work better in older, East Coast and mid-western cities that largely predate the automobile.

AlwaysRock• 8 years ago

I live in Chicago and I only NEED a car once or twice a year. I walk to work. I can walk to the blue or red line trains which will get me just about anywhere else I need. There are a few grocery stores on my walk home from work. There's great coffee shops and restaurants near me.

I uber home when it's late and I've been drinking but that's really the only time I'm in a car.

I know I've got a somewhat special situation as I chose my apartment based on it's walk ability. However I've lived in other parks of the city and I had similar a similar experience. It just took a little longer to get places sometimes.

I believe eventually cars will be a shared service. Automated cars that will arrive whenever I need one. That will be the day.

Y_Y• 8 years ago

Carse are effective in less dense regions, but in modern cities other solutions have to be found.

"In Scottish geography, a Carse (the modern form of older Scots kerse) is an area of fertile, low-lying (typically alluvial) land occupying certain Scottish river valleys,[1] such as that of the River Forth."

I am forced to agree.

strictnein3• 8 years ago

This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward.

You're really looking at this from a very narrow mindset. It isn't going into the city that a lot of Americans really want and need cars, it's heading out of the city.

This may be shocking to people with a European upbringing, but when you have a vast country with lots of open space and beautiful nature, it's super awesome and amazingly freeing to just go wherever you want to on a whim. Wake up Saturday morning - let's head up to that state park with the cool water falls and hike around for the day. 10 minutes later you're on the road and an hour or two later you're surrounded by nature. Real nature too, not some small 10 acre park somewhere.

There's real freedom in being able to go where you want, when you want. It's not just a "convenience" thing.

fergie• 8 years ago

There are several European countries with a lower population density than the US, and places like Norway and Finland are _much_ more sparsely populated

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

collyw4• 8 years ago

Do you honestly think we can't do that in Europe?

zeitg3ist• 8 years ago

I mean, I live in Europe and I can do the same thing... or do you think Europeans don’t have national parks and never take car trips? OP was criticizing cars as a daily method of transportation inside cities.

newshorts2• 8 years ago

Try going to Yosemite on the weekend from the Bay Area.

If you want to see the endgame for cars as a primary means of transportation check out San Francisco.

We tried to go to Tahoe one weekend and gave up after waiting in line to get on the bay bridge for 2 hours and moving only 2 blocks.

Another time it literally took 10 hours to return from a ski trip and it’s supposed to be a 3 hour drive.

We don’t go anywhere in California now. If we want to ski, we fly out of state.

The problem is cars don’t scale.

crikli• 8 years ago

"But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society."

Don't assume that every place is like the place you know. Visit the US, particularly the Midwest, and you'll come to understand why privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are the only solution to this particular transportation problem. The major cities are too dispersed with countless small population centers between them for any kind other kind of transportation to provide a feasible solution. It's not a matter of "engaging in democracy."

revx• 8 years ago

It seems that the city in this article strikes a great balance - parking on the periphery for people who commute in, but the city center is car-free. The same could work for the US midwest. You drive to the edge of Chicago and then take an (improved) subway in, for example.

shoguning• 8 years ago

The design and density of cities will change even in the Midwest. Inter-city transport can and will change.

From Wikipedia: "There was a dense system of inter-city railways in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but after the decline of passenger railroad in North America in the 1960s, the inter-city lines decreased greatly and today the system is far less dense."

Wisconsin used to have inter-city rail servicing most/all of its population centers and even many of the smaller towns: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3701p.rr006200/?r=0.514,0.298,...

Yes, today cars are the default, but that took a long time. Things will continue to change and it's hard to predict exactly how.

NPMaxwell4• 8 years ago

There is a huge difference between cities that have done most of their growth after 1940, when cars have been common, and cities that developed their physical structures before the car. The car-oriented physical structure has to be retrofitted for walking -- streets narrowed or replaced with housing, shopping, and offices.

_hardwaregeek• 8 years ago

A lot of the traditional American lifestyle doesn't make much sense anymore. A large house with a lawn is incredibly wasteful, in terms of heating, water consumption and emissions. I can't even imagine the amount of water wasted to grow a rectangle of grass, regardless of temperature, aridity and general climate. Like it or not, the future for efficient living is cities.

ryanwaggoner3• 8 years ago

This may be shocking to people with a European upbringing, but western Europeans own more cars per capita than Americans: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/it...

Your overall point is correct about how car-centric cities are in the USA vs Europe, but just wanted to point this out.

refurb• 8 years ago

For all this talk of how the US is so car-centric, every European city I've visited is absolutely packed with cars and the parking is worse than SF.

Based on how people talk about the EU, I thought it would be different, but it looks about the same as the US to me.

xae342• 8 years ago

Here’s a picture comparing the amount of space required for cars:

https://www.bicycles.net.au/2012/09/cycling-promotion-fund-r...

sbjustin2• 8 years ago

The biggest problem with your argument is that you're talking about "cities" only and ignoring the rest of the country. Cities make up 3.5% of the US land: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-33....

I like the idea of large cities improving their public transportation systems and having parking lots on the outskirts but it doesn't make financial sense in the smaller size cities. There are lots of people like me that live in a small down and commute into a city (60k people). I'd love better public transportation but it only makes financial sense in the "downtown" areas.

kyleblarson• 8 years ago

"But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society." I live in a remote mountain town in the North Cascades mountains and am approximately 80 miles from the closest stoplight. Obviously we rely on cars and trucks. It is wonderful place, and an additional benefit is that sanctimonious city dwellers who make comments like this are nowhere to be found.

bllguo• 8 years ago

Why are you so hostile? It is eminently clear in OP's comment that we are talking about transportation in cities. Even if it wasn't, you could give OP the benefit of the doubt.

AmericanChopper• 8 years ago

But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem

Private vehicle ownership isn’t about solving society’s transportation issue. As far as consumers are concerned, a car is one of the most significant and life changing purchases they’ll ever make. It gives them far more than just a solution to a ‘transport problem’, it provides the freedom to pretty much go anywhere and do anything at any time. If your idea is ‘convince people they don’t actually want cars’, then your idea is going to fail.

stronglikedan• 8 years ago

cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward.

Sure they do, just not in all situations. I'm all for walkable city centers, downtowns, parks and such, but I also very much love to drive my car. I'm happy to vote for more pedestrian/public-transport friendly metropolitan areas (and do), as long as there's also non-metro areas for me to live on my privately owned land and drive my privately owned car as I please.

rnatkins2• 8 years ago

How can it be that private property – the car – occupies the public space?

Regardless of what you think of this policy, this is the level of reasoning of a 14 year old.

boobsbr5• 8 years ago

How can it be that private property - the bicycle/the scooter - occupies the public space?

rnatkins2• 8 years ago

How can it be that private property - my own body - occupies the public space?

dao-3• 8 years ago

Curious. Where are those massive bicycle and scooter dedicated roads and parking spaces that occupy our cities?

adrianN11• 8 years ago

Free parking is not a human right.

chrisper• 8 years ago

Neither is having side walks, trash cans, benches,...

michaelbuckbee• 8 years ago

I feel like we should be charitable on the actual wording of the statement as the speaker is being quoted in their non native language.

I read this as more that we can't just default to subsidising private cars in a public space. Roads, parking and other infrastructure that de facto subsidize and encourage private car usage but which often are considered "free".

dexen3• 8 years ago

The problem isn't the wording, it's the hare-brained idea that public and private shouldn't mix and cooperate. Flip the statement, make it about education - "How can it be that private benefit – the education – is financed by the public money?" - to clearly see the implications.

We finance the baseline of education/transportation infrastructure from public funds because we believe that improves productivity, and performance of civic duties in a democracy across the board. Purely privately owned education/transportation is politically contentious for various reasons, right? Enclosure of the commons, economic inequality, limited avenues for upward mobility and all that, right?

Lastly, a pedestrian on city-founded sidewalks is "a private citizen occupying public space" just as well. There's no moral qualitative difference between an individual pedestrian, an individual on a bicycle, an individual in a car [1], or a group of individuals in a tram or bus. We can argue about occupancy and all that, but that's just quantitative difference of maybe an order of magnitude at worst. The use of public space should should primarily support the main activities of the general public.

[1] pollution from ICEs aside, but we're on track to fix that permanently.

gaius7• 8 years ago

Roads, parking and other infrastructure that de facto subsidize and encourage private car usage but which often are considered "free".

Taxes on fuel raise £50Bn/year for the exchequer, which is double the amount spent by the government on all transportation of all kinds. No one considers it to be “free”, and in fact drivers subsidise everything else.

cf141q53252• 8 years ago

“The city is the perfect size for pedestrianisation,” says local architect Rogelio Carballo Soler. “You can cross the entire city in 25 minutes.

This seems to be the key point why it works.

boobsbr5• 8 years ago

25 minutes on foot? It's more of a village than a city.

jcelerier• 8 years ago

25 minutes on foot? It's more of a village than a city.

you can walk from side to side of Paris in a tad more than one hour with a good rhythm, and two hours if you take it normally.

fabatka• 8 years ago

Are you familiar with the saying "In Europe 100 miles is a long way, In the US 100 years is a long time"?

pjc504• 8 years ago

It's the old town area only, of a city of 80,000 people.

loriverkutya2• 8 years ago

with 80 000 people living there, it is not a village

compcoffee• 8 years ago

And let's not forget temperate climate, without snow/freezing cold or excessive heat.

ssharp• 8 years ago

Skyway?

anthk3• 8 years ago

That's fucking Galicia, it rains a lot, and for sure it can have cold winters because of the Atlantic wind.

oriol16• 8 years ago

What piques my interest is why on earth has Pontevedra a Citibank office

switch007• 8 years ago

Must be an old photo: Citibank retail exited Europe in 2014 (Citibank España was sold to Banco Popular in 2014)

jimmybot• 8 years ago

If you're interested in "walking" around yourself, here's the streetview: https://goo.gl/maps/gxHkcvg4LWB2

village-idiot2• 8 years ago

If it weren’t for the massive culture shock and difficulty, I’d live in Munich. I love the quiet city center.

ofrzeta• 8 years ago

There's actually only one street with no cars (Kaufinger Str.) and lots of traffic around on the Altstadtring and such. It's far from a city without cars, to the contrary. Also you'd need to be able to afford the rent.

_Codemonkeyism5• 8 years ago

Working in the center of Berlin, I wish Berlin would do the same. There is a hospital near, and a constant load noise level from ambulances. Without cars, those could be much much quieter, but traffic increased, cars got more soundproof and people hear loud music, so ambulances became loader all the time. Noise kills people.

freediver• 8 years ago

First thing I noticed when moved to SF Bay Area from Europe was “God, Los Gatos would be so beautiful if the main street was a pedestrian area.” Then went actively searching for one and found a little stretch at Santana Row in San Jose, if you can call 30 meters of blocked off street pedestrian area.

But even dense populated cities like SF dont have a pedestrian zone. It is one of the rare things I miss quality of life wise.

mymythisisthis2• 8 years ago

I agree. I think that there is a transition point where slow moving cars and people can intermingle. A third option, a hybrid.

TomK322• 8 years ago

In my city, Linz in Austria, only a small part is pedestrian, and even then the main-line of the 4 (actually 2+2) tram lines is cutting right through it. I wish they'd extend the pedestrian area and add that second tram line overground rather than underground as the current political fantasies look like.

Anyways, from that article, if you have a change in a city's government, change is a lot more likely to happen. If only there were some time-limitations on mayor posts and the council.

Tade0• 8 years ago

Population: 82.5k - obviously cars have no business driving through such a place.

I spend a good chunk of the year in Bologna, Italy. The city centre there is a roughly ~4km^2 Zona Traffico Limitato - an area in which only certain vehicles are allowed during certain hours. Pretty much every city in Italy has such a zone and 4km^2 to me seems to be the ideal size for it.

That being said I know a few people who live in the centre and judging by their experiences, I wouldn't want to move there. It's so densely packed that noise bounces off the walls effectively amplifying itself. Also there are no residential waste bins so if you miss trash day during the summer your organic waste turns into an unholy bag of stink.

Walkable cities are a nice concept, but one has to watch out for one perverse incentive that is created along the way: pack everything as densely as possible.

dathinab2• 8 years ago

I thing "banning" cars in a Town/City work well for smaller cities, through you still might want to have some time frame in which e.g. trucks can bring new goods to super markets, fire fighter etc.

For larger cities I think it would still be possible to have many "no-car" isles, paired with good public transportation available for anyone at "any" place (which can be done today by e.g. using this small and _slow_ self-driving mini buses to connect the home/side streets with the underground trains, regular trains and potentially normal sized buses, you just need to deploy enough of them with a good rout planing algorithm and a smartphone app, through it might be slightly expensive).

eloycoto7• 8 years ago

Hi,

Van and trucks can enter the city the first time in the morning, so things are ok, and there are no problems for that.

The city itself is a "round island", so cars can go close to the estuary and be close to the city, so get into city center takes less than 15 minutes.

dsfyu404ed5• 8 years ago

and there are no problems for that.

Forcing all deliveries to happen in the early morning sounds like a massive pain in the butt.

For example: Forcing a lunch/dinner restaurant to have people there early to deal with inventory or delivering inventory to a diner during breakfast rush are both far from ideal.

Any industry that routinely has to get materials (e.g. skilled trades) delivered will be inconvenienced by not being able to take delivery during mid-morning or after lunch, this can unnecessarily stretch out jobs (and cost more $$).

I guess if the only industries in your city are white collar or tourism it's fine.

Better to just not allow noncommercial vehicles during certain times.

thales_m2• 8 years ago

What about people who live inside city limits but work elsewhere? For example, I currently reside in Washington, DC but work about 30 min away. There is no public transportation to my work. At night, I park in a garage but there are others who park on the street and commute out of the city every morning.

boobsbr5• 8 years ago

You're out of luck, the sentiment in this thread is you should just ride a bike.

maaaats4• 8 years ago

This would solve itself if cars were banned. Either you would have to find a more practical place to live, the city add public transportation to the work, you find a new place to work, the work moving offices etc.

It's only a problem because you decide things has to be exactly like they are. But with other constraints the society would have landed on an other configuration.

CapricornNoble5• 8 years ago

Every solution in your second sentence either costs businesses money or costs your workforce money.

What is your solution for your economy when BOTH decide to relocate to an administrative region that DOESN'T ban cars?

I've considered other places to live in Asia, namely Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. I found that used Japanese sports cars (I own several) were all prohibitively expensive to import/register in each. The crazy-low "total cost of ownership" for automobiles is one of several reasons that Japan is my primary base of operations/residence.

thales_m2• 8 years ago

Your're right, I am looking at it through a self-centered perspective. But I think a lot of people would do the same. If you banned cars, considering how long it takes for decent public transportation to roll out in the US, you would be incentivizing people to live elsewhere. My job and work location are fixed so the only option would be to move out of the city or suffer through a miserable commute. I guess people like me would suffer and those that spend all or most of their time inside city limits would benefit.

Grangar• 8 years ago

Demand better public transportation?

pjc504• 8 years ago

Part of making this work would have to include rolling out enough public transport.

francisofascii3• 8 years ago

If this actually happened, buses would be common. And companies would move to a location on a bus line. If not and you needed a car, here is what you would do. Metro, bike, or bus to the city limit. Then pick up your Zip Car or pick up your private car in a garage.

pasta• 8 years ago

It's also possible to design cities for both people and cars. The trick is to separate them.

For example a shopping street where no cars are allowed could have parking lots at the back of the shops. So trucks can supply the shops and customers can pickup large goods with their car.

Another method is what we call in Dutch a 'Cauliflower-neighbourhood'. The closer a road comes to the place were people live, the smaller they become. And speed limits will go down as well. The limits most of the time go from 50km/h to 30km/h to 15 or even 5km/h.

eloycoto7• 8 years ago

Hi!

I'm living in one of the closes villages around Pontevedra, I'm heabilly use the city, and I'm doing some remote job for an SF startup.

If you have questions, I'm happy to help and provide feedback.

yAnonymous2• 8 years ago

What do people do who have to commute to the city for work?

What do you do when you have to buy a few boxes of beer for a party that are too heavy to carry?

How do emergency services work?

eloycoto7• 8 years ago

1) There are a few types: - Working in the city center --> Walking mainly. - Working outside of the city --> Cars/bus

The city that has banned the cars is the city centre, but is a round island, so in 10-25 min walk, there are parking slots, where you can drive from.

2) Shopping trolley, instead of buying a lot one day, you ended that each day you pick up a few things. (And this is great, 15 min day walking)

3) All the emergency services can go to the city centre, so cars are banned, but if you have an event or emergency cars can get into, here is the common sense rule.

And there is a benefit here, kids are in the street, and due a lot of kids in the street, that moves the street from unsafe, to full of #know people, that make things super safe.

archi422• 8 years ago

I recently saw a delivery service for that kind of stuff (kind of "Bier Taxi") using small electric vehicles in our 180k city. Scaling this to a "local grocery mail order service" could be a nice business model for a car-free city: Supporting local businesses AND avoiding having to carry 5 crates of beverages for the next party.

I think Rewe (a supermarket chain) is doing something like this in (parts of) Germany; but I believe they use gas-driven cars.

Is there something like that in your city?

dsiegel2275• 8 years ago

Hey, I'm taking my family next year on a 10 day trip through Galicia, and was considering spending some time around Combarro, Pontevedra, etc. Can I get your thoughts and opinions on places to stay, things to do in that area? siegel dot darren at gmail

nobody2712• 8 years ago

I walk to the grocery store most days. It seems to kill several birds with one stone:

- unwind after work

- get exercise

- get outside

- time to think

You would think it would be a lot more popular but it's not. It seems more like there must be something wrong with you if you walk on a daily basis lol. ... societal norms I guess.

claydavisss5• 8 years ago

Come back when you are seventy and tell us if you still enjoy cycling with forty pounds of groceries

This entire thread is predicated on building cities for young single men

Uberphallus• 8 years ago

When you have things at walk distance you don't need to buy 40 pounds of groceries. That's a US suburban problem.

cf141q53252• 8 years ago

70 year old people are exactly those who already walk to the next shop multiple times a week. You should keep in mind that this article is from Europe. Its walking short distances and even shorter shopping lists.

nobody2712• 8 years ago

If all you're getting is dinner that's only a couple pounds tops. But I walk. Cycling wouldn't be difficult at all.

kaybe• 8 years ago

I am not sure you should be driving a car at seventy if you're not able to ride a bike anymore despite a livetime of experience. (and you can get bikes for various disabilities, yes)

TheCoelacanth3• 8 years ago

Elderly people are often helped the most this type of change. People who can no longer drive can still get around by other means. My grandfather had a tricycle that he rode for many years after he became incapable of driving a car.

adrianN11• 8 years ago

My mother is seventy one and rides a cargo tricycle to the supermarket. She can't drive so in an American city she would have to order her groceries, I guess.

Cthulhu_• 8 years ago

Most cities in the Netherlands have a car-free inner city or shopping streets, no need to idolize this particular one. Going from a congested city to a car-free one is a good move though.

Interestingly, while Amsterdam's historic inner city is fully open to cars, you don't really see much of them - in part because it's just not practical, in part because parking is very expensive.

nrjames• 8 years ago

Raleigh converted Fayetteville Street to pedestrian only back in 1977. It ended up killing all of the businesses there.

https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/163829/

The city reopened it to traffic, however, and "revitalized" the area, resulting in a booming downtown economy:

https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning-...

I love pedestrian districts in cities. Copenhagen comes to mind. However, pedestrian district plans need to be considered carefully, else they backfire.

hyperpape2• 8 years ago

True, though I don’t know if it would have the same effect today. There’s 5000 people living downtown today, which is very new.

When I go downtown, I usually don’t park on Fayetteville, I usually park a few blocks away and walk.

ghaff10• 8 years ago

I don't know the history of the mall in Raleigh but I suspect at least part of the issue was that, at the time, downtown Raleigh probably wasn't a place a lot of people wanted to walk around. As you say, there are a lot more people (and companies) downtown today and more upscale restaurants, bars, etc. Though, even today, like a lot of smaller cities that have had something of a renaissance, most of the places the average upscale professional would want to walk to are in a fairly small area.

vbuwivbiu• 8 years ago

1977

dsfyu404ed5• 8 years ago

The area was closed to vehicular traffic in 1977. The article about possibly replacing the pedestrian mall is 1997. Construction began in 2005. The area reopened to vehicular and pedestrian traffic in mid 2006. The article about the results and other cities considering the same is 2007.

All of which is in TFA[1] the person you're replying to linked

[1] https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning-...

I'm not sure if it's what you intended but implying the whole thing is from 1977 is misleading.

dsfyu404ed5• 8 years ago

My city did this with bike lanes. Most of the housing isn't within easily walk able distance from downtown and the city is where a lot of people from surrounding towns go to buy things. All the downtown businesses that weathered the recession got rewarded with all their customers decided to spend their money at the businesses a mile away that had readily available parking. Grade A city planning right there. /s

simonsarris• 8 years ago

Church st in Burlington VT partially closed to cars starting in 1980 (based on Stroget in Copenhagen) and ongoing into 2005 with more and more blocks carved out for pedestrians only. It has been very successful.

Why did it work, when Raleigh failed? What needs to be "considered carefully", exactly?

(The large college nearby definitely helps in VT's case. But what else?)

https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/

https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/about/history

peller• 8 years ago

I don't know anything about the Raleigh project but some other thoughts on maybe why Church St works:

- Burlington is the biggest city in VT, and being on Lake Champlain and relatively close to the best ski areas in the state, it attracts a lot of tourists year round

- A ton of local businesses downtown, urban/residential neighborhoods are also very close

- A fair amount of parking (multiple parking garages, nearby on-street parking and parking lots)

- There's City Hall Park, and the town promotes the 'culture', e.g. allowing street vendors and performers, and with the recentish ban on smoking, it's pushed most of the bums into the alleys/side streets

munk-a2• 8 years ago

I'd attribute a large portion of church street's success to zoning policies, the city has kept that street focused on small business to avoid that common american experience of walking by a walmart for twenty minutes... the north end of the street was more sparse in terms of doorways and always was more empty, but the center and southern end were vibrant.

So I think the key to trying to do this is to encourage small business to minimize the feet/door so that there is a reasonable variety of services available.

gascan4• 8 years ago

Just speculating, but looking at the photos from Fayetteville, it was totally car-scale. Sure, it was pedestrian-only, but just look at the pictures of the locale. Huge buildings, long distances, wide street.

This is not the best example but the first to pop to mind- compare to Pearl Street Mall, in Boulder, which seems to be doing well:

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0180565,-105.2792529,3a,75y,...

Which, just skimming, looks to be laid out similar to Church Street.

miketuritzin• 8 years ago

You could also make the argument that opening city centers to cars should be considered carefully, and that is also true. It just happens to be the current default almost everywhere.

davidw• 8 years ago

The town I'm from, Eugene, Oregon, did this too.

They later reopened it, but put in roads that let cars through, but very slowly. Seems to be a good compromise.

Closing a road entirely is probably something you should do once you're at such a level of pedestrian traffic that the car lanes are impeding pedestrians, which isn't terribly common in US cities. However, making areas where people don't drive fast is absolutely a win.

andys6272• 8 years ago

Good compromise considering where we’re at in the us.

kristjansson• 8 years ago

There’s something to be said for joint car/pedestrian spaces as a permanent situation. Pike St outside of Pike Place market and Hanover St in the North End of Boston come to mind. Both are nominally streets, and cars attempt to drive them, but the speeds are slow enough, and there are enough pedestrians that both are on relatively equal footing. Cars are cautious of the pedestrians, and pedestrians weave around the cars, everyone has their choice of mode of transport.

randcraw4• 8 years ago

Same thing happened in Kalamazoo, MI back about 1978.

The city center closed part of the main street to cars when a four story enclosed mall of boutique stores was built. Within five years most of the mall and nearby stores were dying.

This was partly due to the growth of a pair of large enclosed malls 5 miles away which sucked business elsewhere. But I think most of the problem was that shoppers don't wants to walk outdoors in the long Michigan Winter. They needed to somehow enclose the pedestrian piazza to minimize peoples' exposure to the elements, but that wasn't in the budget.

rootusrootus8• 8 years ago

Heh, enclose the pedestrian piazza to minimize exposure to the weather, thereby creating what we usually call a 'shopping mall.' Ah the irony that would be.

mlinksva• 8 years ago

Downtown pedestrian malls were tried in many US cities and mostly failed. They were an attempt to make downtown retail competitive with suburban mall retail, by the former emulating the latter, after the former was already failing. They only worked when other things were in place that made lots of people walking downtown utilitarian, like adjacent universities, tourist attractions, and dense connected residential. Few people wished to drive and park near downtown for a quasi-mall shopping experience, apparently. Lots has been written about this, but one overview: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/revisiting_pedestrian_malls_scmi...

mschuetz• 8 years ago

As a counter example, Vienna largely converted its second major shopping street, Mariahilfer Straße, to a mostly pedestrian + bike zone, with parts of it also shared space with cars, though they do not have priority over pedestrians. Gets very crowded during core shopping hours, so much that biking there is rather difficult. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Wien_07_...

First one was Kärntner Straße / Graben, which is pedestrians only.

https://www.streifzugmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/AM...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Vienna%2...

I'm looking forward to more streets getting closed off to cars. Way too much space is reserved for cars already.

nedt2• 8 years ago

Actually you need people in the city to not depend on cars. Public transport, cycle lanes and a reason to stay in the city centre like good restaurants, cafes, some festivals. Just closing a street to cars might just make everyone drive around and miss it. Also don‘t let big shopping malls be build at the outside of the city with huge parking areas. Create parks instead.

kevstev2• 8 years ago

Contrary to that anecdote, Jersey City (across the Hudson river from Manhattan), created a no-car zone near one of its busier subway stops and what was once a dead-zone after 8pm is now an extremely vibrant place filled with bars, restaurants and shops.

Proximity to mass transit and having density that already discourages driving helps.

notyourday3• 8 years ago

It has nothing to do with car free streets and everything to do with the Jersey City being on the other side from Manhattan with rents being 50% or lower than the rents in Manhattan and Jersey city being accessible by PATH.

dsfyu404ed5• 8 years ago

pedestrianised all 300,000 sq m of the medieval centre

It's a lot less impressive when you realize that they just banned cars from the area that was optimized for foot traffic anyway. Good on them for not trying to go to far and force people to walk/bike in areas designed for cars.

"while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges."

Tangent: This is probably the most European quote ever. Roman senators, medieval lords, members of parliament, Napoleon, the Kaiser, etc, etc. could have all said this.

And the same shopkeepers who complain are the ones who have survived in spite of the crisis

Surviving in spite of the crisis does not make the crisis fun or necessary. It took a lot of boarded up shops before my city took away the bike lanes and put back the on-street parking (no, the failed businesses did not coincide with the recession if anyone was wondering). You gotta do what works even if it's not what fits your political objectives. If an area of the city was designed for pedestrians that's probably what will work best there. If an area of the city was designed for cars then that's probably what will work best there. It's a disservice to taxpayers to use their money to jam a square peg in a round hole or vise-versa.

The works were all financed locally and received no aid from regional or central government.

Good on them for not asking for a handout.

JetSetWilly• 8 years ago

"while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges."

There's nothing European about it, despite the fantasy of Europe being comfortable with dictatorships. Driving a car is also a privilege in the US - try driving one without your state-sanctioned license to do so and you will discover that.

By the way, Members of Parliament are democratically elected so I am not sure how they fit in with the rest of the motley crew.

elcapitan4• 8 years ago

One of the most interesting experiences in my life was visiting Tel Aviv on Yom Kippur. On that day all car traffic is prohibited (also TV stations are offline etc). It was absolutely amazing. Tel Aviv is a city with large roads and usually extremely busy. On that day, cyclists ride over the highway, kids play on the streets. I never felt that directly before how invasive the normal car situation is.

Here's a photo https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2015/09/F141003...

chadash2• 8 years ago

Just to clarify, there is no law that I know of prohibiting car traffic on yom kippur in Tel Aviv. However, since this is the most important holiday of the year, even many Israelis who don't celebrate other holidays will celebrate this one. I believe that virtually all businesses are closed that day, even those that don't close on other Jewish holidays (again, not illegal to operate, but customary). So in practice, few people will be driving that day/night.

elcapitan4• 8 years ago

Thanks for the clarification! Strong moral code though, I haven't seen one non-official car that day.

Double_a_92• 8 years ago

What about hotels? E.g. if somebody wants to visit especially for that holiday.

mendelk• 8 years ago

FYI in case you weren't aware, Yom Kippur is celebrated tonight / tomorrow this year.

elcapitan4• 8 years ago

I'm aware :)

tomc1985• 8 years ago

Reminds me of walking the Bijlmermeer near HVA in Amsterdam on a Sunday morning. No cars, no people, no traffic, absolutely empty streets. The only sound was that of the wind streaming through steel canyons, and my footsteps. A positively divine experience

icebraining• 8 years ago

Brussels had a car-free Sunday last year, it was fantastic. Cars are like sugar, something great that we massively abuse.

stevenwoo• 8 years ago

It seems to be an annual event now?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2018/sep/16/car-fr... https://www.brussels.be/mobility-week-and-car-free-sunday-20...

jimmaswell8• 8 years ago

Kids can play anywhere else when cars are on the road. What's so attractive about playing on a big patch of hard material that gets so hot in the summer you can't touch it without burning yourself? What's wrong with parks and people's yards? I never understood the pining for the days of playing on streets.

7dare• 8 years ago

It's about reclaiming the space -- playing near a road is noisy, smelly and dangerous for kids.

"Outside" has become synonymous with car traffic, which is why children playing on the road feels so refreshing

jf• 8 years ago

you can't touch it without burning yourself

That's why I wore shoes or rode a bike when I played in the streets.

I grew up in places with small yards and no parks nearby. The street is where we'd ride our bikes, have water balloon fights, play roller hockey, etc.

DoreenMichele• 8 years ago

When I played baseball growing up, the street was level and hard and so on. The backyard with grass had a steep hill and poor traction, etc. The street in front of my house made a much better baseball field than my steeply sloped, grassy and uneven backyard.

Yet, it was right in front of my house, so I could use the bathroom, get a snack and remained under the watchful eye of my mother, unlike, say, some distant park with a proper baseball field.

anoplus• 8 years ago

Its amazing how divided Israel culture is yet the idea of having no cars for one day is totally embraced by anyone. Gives me a feeling of how polluted my daily life is with noise and gas.

Fun fact: today is Yom Kippur.

rospaya• 8 years ago

How accessible is Tel Aviv for pedestrians? I'm visiting soon and wonder how complicated it will be without a car.

elcapitan4• 8 years ago

The main parts are well accessible. There are some districts which are very car-centric, but the "old" part is well walkable. Or you can rent a bike, as I did.

bluGill• 8 years ago

Many cities in the US have banned cars from a significant number of Downtown Streets. We call them skyways for the most part, though sometimes they are underground. It works well, keeps cars out of the way of people. It also makes for a nice environment to walk around.

Our zoning is such that those streets close at night, and I wouldn't recommend them in the late hours before they are officially closed.

jfroma• 8 years ago

There is a pedestrian city in my province (Córdoba, Argentina) called La Cumbrecita. You leave your car in the entrance to the city in a parking lot and you can walk the entire town.

First time I visit there made me wonder why not all towns aren't pedestrian like this. I mean most towns have nice sidewalks and are walkable but why not just banning cars. In addition to having less noise I can imagine plenty of other benefits.

[La Cumbrecita] is completely pedestrian and reminiscent of the small German towns of the fifteenth century. One can hike up through the town (and then down) to the waterfall, a truly paradisiacal experience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cumbrecita

helios893• 8 years ago

I have a fantasy that once a year a major US cities (think Manhattan) ban private cars for a day. Public Transit, and emergency vehicles pass as normal.

erkken• 8 years ago

Cars have to some extent led us through part of the industrial revolution. However, it's my belief that cars, except from polluting the environment and destroying our cities - makes people unhappy and sad.

Visiting LA this summer, I knew I was in for a car heavy metropolis but this... I can't understand why people waste so much time of their precious life (usually alone which also greatly worsen the problem) - locked in a car.

Coming to the topic of the autonomous car revolution, which I frankly do not understand. Sometimes it feels like the ambition is to end up as the humans in WALL-E. What kind of life is that?

Ps. Coming from Europe, I crossed US by bicycle a few years ago, from NY to US. People say it's a country to be seen through a car, but I argue it's to be seen on a bike.

avgDev• 8 years ago

I was born in Europe and lived there for 14 years before moving to US. I went there recently.

I also recently visited LA.....

Most people I know from smaller cities in Poland own cars or would love to own a car but simply cannot afford it as gas is really expensive, so are cars compared to incomes. When I visited I rented a car which allowed me to see so many things all over the country. I would not able to visit so many locations without a car.

Same goes for LA, renting a car allowed me to travel from LA to San Diego on a relatively short trip.

In NY over 50% households are car-free. In Chicago about 30% of households are car-free. People travel to cities for various reasons, often they don't do it daily.

My wife traveled to school by train in city of chicago for one year, then she switched to driving her car, she saved a lot of time on her commute, and didn't have to deal with weirdos on the trains at night.

Cars are here to stay. Some people drive less by utilizing services like amazon but then amazon needs to deliver packages, but, I guess that still minimizes fuel consumption as things are delivered in a more efficient way.

CalRobert3• 8 years ago

Not sure what your situation is but there are a fair number of options for people who are decent programmers to move to Europe permanently..

xxpor• 8 years ago

It's hard to justify when you could potentially be looking at a 50% pay cut. That's the only reason I haven't moved myself.

lexs• 8 years ago

Do you actually get anything out of that 50% more pay? Thinking about higher rent, healthcare etc.

azamatms• 8 years ago

I think what stops most people is the 50% paycut compared to US salaries

I'd move to Berlin in a heartbeat if it weren't for that

Avalaxy2• 8 years ago

It's not a fair comparison though. Yes, the salary is lower, but you can free or almost free healthcare, you get many vacation days, you get vacation money (at least in the netherlands), you get paid time off when sick, more job stability, unemployment benefits, etc.

donretag• 8 years ago

I wish that were the case for all of Europe. I am willing to take the pay cut, but there are no real opportunities in southern Europe and if there are, the pay cut tends to be around 75%.

dvdhnt2• 8 years ago

My wife and I want to move to Europe from the U.S., however, while I do have 5+ years of experience, I haven't finished my degree...

CalRobert3• 8 years ago

Some things to check out:

* Dutch American Friendship Treaty (self employ in the Netherlands)

* Working Holiday visa Irealnd (one year and have to be within a year of school or in school, but if you get a job that sponsors you can stay)

* Germany. Germany is just supposed to be a relatively easy place to get a visa, comparatively. Be sure to look up blue cards.

* Ancestry. Got any history in a European country? Start looking at grandparents' birth certs

Also, a lot of people have mentioned pay. It's true, pay is lower in Europe - in tech. OTOH in other fields there's less of a disparity, or it's higher here. My wife does not work in tech and makes more here (or did before she decided to stay home with our kid).

In Ireland, at least, a normal dev would make very roughly 60(ish), someone versed in ML, etc. closer to 90, and to get to six figures you'd need te be fairly senior. Jobs posted on http://irishtechcommunity.slack.com/ recently have been everything from 40k (junior) to 150k (senior at FB). It's more common to include ranges in job postings here.

Europe is big though and salaries are MUCH different in Portugal than in, say, Finland.

In some places (Norway), you can just look them up - https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239

I would have recommended Ireland in the past but now, if you're interested, you'd be wise to steer clear of Dublin. Housing has gotten really scarce, but worse than just being expensive it's just really hard to actually _get_ (no surprise given that rent control is bad policy).

If I were looking myself right now the top of my list would be Utrecht, because I love cities where my kid can cycle to school and not die.

skh4• 8 years ago

I'm a mathematician and I have done programming professionally but it just doesn’t interest me. My training in pure math got me focused on showing something can be done or that a solution exists. When I think of a software project I think of course it can be done and lose interest.

There are a zillion things that can go wrong in software development and problems arise that require creative solutions. That’s the engineering part I suppose. But I have no interest in it. I’m stuck being a teacher at a community college. It’d be great if my job, in its current form, could be found in Germany or Switzerland but I’m stuck where I’m at.

My wife is a physician and she’s not doing residency over again just to live in Europe.

dang2• 8 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18014466 and marked it off-topic.

(There was nothing wrong with this comment, but the discussion it led to is extremely well trodden.)

machisuji• 8 years ago

I'd love to live in a city like this. I spent a couple of days in Dublin and it was just crazy how loud, crowded and congested with cars and buses the city is. Was not really pleasant walking through the city.

anjc• 8 years ago

This may be nice in a sunny seaside tourist city, but any pedestrianised towns I've been to in the UK are barren, dull, and frankly scary once the sun starts to set.

dmix2• 8 years ago

Once all cars become electric this will solve one of the biggest problems. Then once they become self-driving the other 25% of noise (honking, sirens, etc) would be significantly reduced.

aerique• 8 years ago

You'd still have the visual pollution of cars

jimmaswell8• 8 years ago

You can thank exacting regulations with the goal of safety/etc for modern calls all looking samey and generally ugly. I feel like there must be ways to give more leeway to aesthetic design without compromising what's truly necessary in terms of safety and economy.

pouetpouet• 8 years ago

Half of the problem with cars is a geometric one, they take up too much space. They give rise to sprawl and thus increase the demand for cars in a vicious cycle. Them being electric or self driving will not solve that.

dmix2• 8 years ago

Still, noise is a major factor. Just take the mayor's comments from the article and the opening sentence:

In Pontevedra, the usual soundtrack of a Spanish city has been replaced by the tweeting of birds and the chatter of humans
“Listen,” says the mayor, opening the windows of his office. From the street below rises the sound of human voices.

Noise is the #1 problem with cars. Walkability and space issues via parking are #2.

djrogers2• 8 years ago

If we can reduce the incidence of accidents with autonomous vehicles, they can be much much smaller...

jimmaswell8• 8 years ago

I've been thinking, what if a city replaced vehicles with electric golf carts, atvs, scooters, and the like? I think that could work out pretty well.

sebringj5• 8 years ago

I don't know why this didn't occur to me but in San Juan Capistrano, CA, I enjoy that place so much with my kids because of the fairly large area where cars have to have very slow speed limit or no cars allowed at all and pure walking which was far better even. There is such freedom allowing your children to laugh and play and walk on their own pace without worrying they'll be run over and having to strictly hold their hand near each cross walk where cars zip by at instant collision death speeds. I could hear the birds too. Was calming and slows the perception of time so you can actually relax.

francisofascii3• 8 years ago

Exactly. Walking with young kids is so stressful. All that kids want to do is run ahead, and I keep having to yell at them to stop, wait. You can never be at ease.

enriquto• 8 years ago

A city with fast cars running around is the least human-friendly environment that we have built on purpose.

People often complain about hostile or "anti-human" architecture [1], but those are silly details. The sad tragedy is building the whole city around the needs of cars.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture

technofiend2• 8 years ago

There is a gated neighborhood of large, well appointed homes near Rice University in Houston.* They open up every once in a while for tours, particularly at Christmas. More than once kids or adults raised there have mentioned being able to just play in the street as one of their fondest memories of the place. In car-centric Houston their experience is rare if not exactly unique.

*1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadyside,_Houston

komali22• 8 years ago

Ex-Houstonian here: down there we worship and give sacrifice to the motor gods. We'll build massive multi million dollar freeway interchanges[0] as monument to our gods.

No place for busses. Our attempt at public transit was a slow tram that runs up and down main street through dozens of intersections, pushing any hapless motorist not expecting a train on the fucking road it encounters out of the way.

So when rice closes off the gates, it is like a little paradise. I disagree that it's "not unique," I can't think of a single other place in tbe entirety of Houston (a city so wide that it can take two hours to drive across if you go corner to corner, in non-rush-hour) where you get to experience that.

[0]https://goo.gl/images/ZYJfEo

wahern5• 8 years ago

This is why I like theme parks.[1] It's sad because in America we've largely relegated what should be a normal living environment to fascimiles of imaginary places.

Actually, I live in San Francisco and the "downtowns" of each neighborhood do allow kids some freedom away from their parents (e.g. to dart in and out of stores and restaurants without waiting for the parent), but it's limited to a single block unless you want to risk being run over. Hit-and-runs occur here regularly, unfortunately, because the city is just barely pedestrian friendly enough that pedestrians feel comfortable, but not friendly enough that cars are actually forced to slow down (e.g. streets too wide). If car and pedestrian are not both carefully paying attention, accidents happen.

[1] My wife doesn't like theme parks. But where she's from you never let kids out of sight, regardless, so they offer little respite for her.

sebringj5• 8 years ago

I think there is a big difference though. Theme parks are super over crowded and you end up having sore feet and wait in long lines all day and still having to hold on to your kids of fear of losing them in the crowd. I guess its still better than fear of death.

GauntletWizard• 8 years ago

The area your talking about, where there's little places where kids can play: it's called the Suburbs. Growing up in the suburbs, cars went slow enough that we could play in the street. The neighborhood grocery was about two miles away and we could walk or ride our bikes, and we had plenty of friends houses along the route should we need to stop. There's not the density of little shops that you might find in SF, but as a kid you don't need that density (I don't need it as an adult; the suburbs I live in have a nice downtown, but if I need serious shopping, I have Amazon)

Suburbs, much reviled here, are the answer to all of the density problems that people are complaining about. Mass transit works with commuter rail. There's no argument except prestige to stay in the city.

corey_moncure• 8 years ago

"It's sad because in America we've largely relegated what should be a normal living environment to fascimiles of imaginary places."

This is deep and very quotable. It's one of the things I love the most about living outside the USA, when I'm able to do so-- not relying on my car to get literally everywhere. My happiness and quality of life feel so much higher. I know for sure it affects my waist line.

mycellium• 8 years ago

I grew up in San Juan and my parents still live there. What areas have cars been banned or limited?

sebringj5• 8 years ago

There is a nice place by the train station where you park and can walk into the little shops. The general speed limit is much lower than in LA and noise is much reduced. "Banned" is the wrong word. There are no roads in that area after you walk past the station but there is a parking structure by the theatre. I think in general, places like The Grove and and Irvine Outdoor Mall are like that in that you can walk freely but they still feel busy and overly commercialized because they are malls. I particularly liked the calmer area of San Juan downtown.

jimmaswell8• 8 years ago

Being able to drive places feels much more like freedom to me than having to walk everywhere. As a kid I literally never walked into the road because I knew it was dangerous, so maybe that's just a problem of communicating the risk properly.

arbitrary_name• 8 years ago

This is an almost uniquely American point of view.

To obtain this freedom you must : 1. Get a license and learn to drive 2. Buy or lease a large, rarely utilised machine 3. Keep it maintained 4. Keep it fuelled 5. Ensure your tax dollars are spent on enormous infrastructure projects 6. Continue paying for the maintenance of said infrastructure 7. Undergo the significant risk of getting in a vehicle, and impose higher risks on all those around you 8. Pollute the air around you with fumes 9. Warp the development of all living spaces around you to suit your convenience, regardless of cost or benefit

Your freedom sounds like my tyranny.

JaggerFoo• 8 years ago

What area of SJC are you talking about?

I go there quite often and would like to see this for myself. Especially the area where no cars are allowed.

Cheers

sebringj5• 8 years ago

"No cars allowed" possibly service vehicles to the shops? But I never see cars and looks like they are never supposed to drive there. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/ZOOMARS,+31791+Los+Rios+St,+... See near Zoomars and Regency Theaters as the start of it where you park then you can walk past the station and go to the coffee shop and go to the restaurants etc there are never cars in there or any traffic

Barjak• 8 years ago

People don’t like being told they can’t drive wherever they want, but Lores says that while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges.

This strikes me as the fundamental issue.

wahern5• 8 years ago

Modern discourse about "rights" has become twisted. Some day we need to realize that one person's right is another person's prohibition. A society needs to choose its rights wisely lest the unintended consequences result in less overall freedom.

In a healthy civil society legally enshrined rights are less important because you can trust that everybody's freedom will be maximized, at least to a first-order approximation. In unhealthy societies legal rights are often cold comfort.

gascan4• 8 years ago

IMO as we accumulated more and more "rights", the concept became diluted. We went from the bedrock negative rights of freedom of speech, travel, etc, then to positive rights, and then people started applying the concept of "rights" to what I would consider "entitlements".

HillaryBriss• 8 years ago

Some day we need to realize that one person's right is another person's prohibition.

In college a professor told us "You can't grant a right without taking one away." In recent decades, the US trend seems to have been toward more individual rights and fewer community/state rights.

komali22• 8 years ago

Some day we need to realize that one person's right is another person's prohibition.

I take slight issue with that - for example, what prohibition on males was there when women were given the right to vote? I suppose one could argue the male vote was diluted but realistically no pain would be felt.

I say this because oftentimes for social services arguments, conservatives will ask me "well who's gonna pay for it," which I can often answer with "literally nobody. You are generating property value for yourself by housing homeless / increasing the value of your currency by educating disenfranchised youth / whatever."

8xde0wcNwpslOw3• 8 years ago

Applies to a lot of things though. Just think what else you could replace the first part with, and whether it qualifies as an argument at all.

bogomipz4• 8 years ago

Indeed and I think a further manifestation of this "privilege" is the constant honking of the horn by drivers at the slightest reduction in their speed or movement.

Not only do they want to drive wherever they want but they seem to feel entitled to take out their frustration on anyone they want. The noise pollution that invariably accompanies traffic seems to really only penalize pedestrians, the very people who aren't contributing to the traffic problems.

Invictus0• 8 years ago

The Las Vegas Strip is the antithesis of this. It's probably the only place in the world where the main downtown area is also an 8 lane highway. It's so bad that you actually cannot cross the street there, and you have to get around by walking on raised walkways above the street. Uniquely terrible urban planning.

https://odis.homeaway.com/odis/destination/2ee03d5b-c981-44d...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/La...

http://theworldisurban.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Elevat...

honkycat2• 8 years ago

I really dislike cars and being around cars. They are noisy. They ruin the air quality of a city. They take up massive amounts of space through parking that could be better used. They force the public to subsidize car owners. They kill people through both air pollution and through collisions. They dominate a city's life in an extremely unattractive way.

I base a lot of my existence around avoiding cars and living in places where I can have a pleasant walk without having to deal with traffic. To the point where I recently moved from Chicago, Illinois to Portland, Oregon because Portland is a much more pedestrian friendly city. And it shows. You walk around the city and it's actually alive and working.

In Portland, people don't have to have their children on leashes because every street isn't a 4 lane highway with constant traffic that is disrespectful to people's space. People are strolling down the streets and wandering into businesses. In Portland drivers slow down and wave you across the street instead of swerving around you at 40 miles an hour.

In Chicago a common occurrence was for a car to decide to make a red light, so they would make a turn into a crowd of pedestrians who are crossing the street and "shoot the gap" without slowing down, with maybe 3 feet of clearance on either side. People would open doors without a second thought and door bikers. Trucks would make dangerous turns into bikers and frequently kill them ( A young woman was recently killed this way, and I once had to jump off of my bike and drag it onto the sidewalk to avoid being run over ).

Cars drivers seem to enter this "magic circle" where it's fine to do dumb and extremely dangerous things because you are driving. When you are in a car, all behavior is acceptable.

Decide to teach the biker a lesson by turning into them? They won't charge you with anything.

Swerve into a crowd of pedestrians? It's fine normal behavior.

Make a blind turn into an alley and have to slam on the breaks to avoid running into a pedestrian? Totally A-OK chief! Great work!

As has been pointed out elsewhere, a lot of European cities do not have this problem. When visiting France, I went to the city of Strasbourg where they have a very nice little "park and ride" system where you park your fume-spewing, space-taking machine and park it in the PARKING AREA, instead of letting you drag it into their beautiful city.

strongtowns.org has a lot of great information about how the US road infrastructure is, to put it bluntly, a dumb and bad experiment that has failed.

snarfybarfy• 8 years ago

I really dislike cars and being around cars. They are noisy. They ruin the air quality of a city.

I guess you are not alone. Given a certain location, the singlemost important indicator of your house price is the amount of cars driving by each day.

A factor of 3 in my immediate neighborhood:

$15k per m^2 in a cul de sac vs. only a 100 meters apart $5k per m^2 next to a 4-lane road with quite some traffic.

sunshinelackof2• 8 years ago

As a kid in the early '90s the corner market, grocery store, schools from elementary to high, both jobs I had, and park were all within a 10 minute walk -- and that was in the suburbs. Cars don't need to be a requirement for daily life even in the suburbs it just requires good planning or planning at all.

closeparen• 8 years ago

It’s expected that suburbs are walkable for children and maybe even stay-at-home parents, but working members of the household usually drive to work and take the family to activities (restaurants, youth sports, shopping, other adventures) outside the walkable bubble.

ergothus• 8 years ago

For the past 50 years or so, the literal books on good design (according to the govt of the US) have specified cul-de-sacs, which offer the promise of less vehicle traffic but actually guarantee MORE traffic, because you can't have good walking paths. From a plane you can get an idea of how old an area is - old ones will have cul-de-sacs, middle-aged ones will have a fern-like structure with dead end streets that have only lines of cul-de-sacs coming off of them, and recent ones will have this fractal-like shape of cul-de-sacs of cul-de-sacs of cul-de-sacs. In those environments, nothing is walking distance (and walking paths start to become labyrinthine swirls if you actually wanted to walk them) so vehicle traffic increases.

mkl• 8 years ago

I think that problem can be avoided to some extent with paths/cycleways. Many cul-de-sacs in parts of Christchurch, New Zealand, are only cul-de-sacs for cars, and pedestrians and cyclists have a through-route. This can lead to situations where driving means covering a much greater distance, and is one of the enablers of the city's current focus on increasing bike-friendliness (the other being that it's very flat, unlike much of other NZ cities). It's still a pretty car-centric place, however.

always_good• 8 years ago

When people ask me why I like living in Mexico, this is one of the main reasons:

The other week I walked around my neighborhood in Guadalajara to do some errands. I got my knives sharpened, picked up my repaired shoes from the cobbler, some fried pumpkin seeds from the seed guy, some meat from the butcher, and then some tacos of course. All within two blocks.

andys6272• 8 years ago

Latin America absolutely destroys the US in urbanism

tomaskafka• 8 years ago

I moved to a center (pedestrian zona) of a small town in central Europe, from a country's capital, same experience here.

In a capital, I didn't do a detour on my way home to get a good bread, as it would add 15 minutes to a way home. Here it's a pleasant walk behind a corner.

tokyodude• 8 years ago

I grew up in the suburbs in Los Angeles. I lived on a cul de sac. Think the family house in ET. We played in the street all the time. That seems pretty normal for suburbia isn't it? I would ride around the block or over to the next cul-de-sac from like 4yrs old.

ummonk3• 8 years ago

Urbanists who hate cars like to tear down freeways. E.g. in SF they tore down the Embarcadero and Central freeways, instead of repairing and extending them. This of course forces more cars onto the streets, making life worse for everyone.

jrockway• 8 years ago

But to be fair, San Francisco did not even want the Embarcadero freeway and proposed a tunnel that the state nixed. When the thing collapsed in an earthquake it was a pretty easy choice to not spend money building something the city didn't even want.

You do have to agree that not having to walk under a urine-soaked freeway to get to the waterfront is an improvement to the city. The tunnel would have also been fine, of course.

quincy_daniels• 8 years ago

I would like to take this moment to advertise a project currently under development in my city:

https://beltline.org/about/the-atlanta-beltline-project/atla...

The Atlanta belt-line is mostly being built on top of old light rail line around the city. The idea, as I understand it, is to provide a pedestrian and (unfortunately) cyclists only pathway that connects many of the notable places around the city. On this pathway, there already exists a large amount of beltline and road accessible shopping/restaurants/bars. There are plans to build a large amount similarly accessible housing on the beltline as well.

I assert that this strategy is a better alternative than closing off convex sections for cities similar to Atlanta. What would define a city similar to Atlanta? One that is not very dense, with some undeveloped or neglected land in urban areas, and whose centers of social activity are decentralized. By saying the centers of social activity are decentralized, I mean to say that the major parks, stadiums, shopping developments, chic neighborhoods, and so on, are dispersed around a few mile radius of downtown. Shutting of any two square mile area to car traffic would fail to capture more than a few of these places, and cause worse traffic problems elsewhere, which is costly regardless of how you approach it.

There are some downsides to the beltline of course, mainly its cost, but you get the same opportunity for a pedestrian urban experience, without overtly turning it into a political battle.

escot• 8 years ago

Most of Golden Gate Park in SF is closed to cars every Sunday (and Saturday during summer) and it is really magical. Normally living in a city makes you feel tiny but this makes you feel like everyone is on the same level.

http://sfrecpark.org/permits-and-reservations/special-events...

efrafa• 8 years ago

In Slovakia every bigger city have pedestrian zone with no cars. Its the one of the best things you can do for city.

hulton• 8 years ago

Eliminate cars. Eliminate the options for people to be autonomous. Pack everyone into major metropolitan cities by the millions. Stop building houses. Build Up. Build condos and apartments. Eliminate the option for people to buy land because it is unsustainable and the state knows better. Sounds like a perfect dystopian society.

yohann305• 8 years ago

All of a sudden, Elon Musk's vision to have all traffic underground is a lot more sound.

I love this guy, seeing him so misunderstood makes me sad.

iaresee• 8 years ago

We were living in downtown Toronto during [the Northeast blackout of 2003](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003). It was amazing to experience the city, for several days, without the usual crush of cars and trucks and busses on the roads. Really magic couple of days I'll never forget.

breatheoften4• 8 years ago

Its insane to me how large space-wise small towns in the us (Oregon in mind as I write this) are — with a huge percentage of the real estate devoted to parking lots. Even setting aside the traffic, it’s silly to walk across these towns because businesses are separated from each other by massive parking lots.

The traffic is often amazingly inhumane. Many of the small towns in Oregon are formed on either side of the major highway which has speed limits within the town but still sees so much traffic as to be very dangerous for pedestrians.

These towns need the commercial visitors brought by the highway to survive — but the design common in Europe for this scenario is so much better. There will be a sign for an exit off the main road for the “city center” exit — there will be a single parking lot for the city center, and then comfortable walking distance to the businesses ... superior design.

Many small, especially old, towns in Europe have ancient road layouts that are too narrow and steep for cars within the town — which resulted in these car free designs for free. It’s beautiful. Parking is easy because there is only one place to do it on the outskirts — and then walk everywhere. There is no improvement for a small town to be designed otherwise in my opinion.

sunshinelackof2• 8 years ago

Even Portland and Eugene love to boast how bicycle friendly they are, but neither are really commutable by anything besides a car for most people. Which is why most cyclists are so prolific -- it's hard to be a cyclist by circumstance. Riding your bike inherently comes with crossing a dozen intersections beaming with cars that treat you like you don't belong on the road.

A solution is to level the planes of separation between types of traffic in urban areas. With pedestrians closer to cars the cars have to go slower by nature. It's antithetical to the common logic and current policy of building walking paths completely separate from roads and all of the businesses attached to them.

electricslpnsld2• 8 years ago

Even Portland and Eugene love to boast how bicycle friendly they are, but neither are really commutable by anything besides a car for most people. Which is why most cyclists are so prolific -- it's hard to be a cyclist by circumstance. Riding your bike inherently comes with crossing a dozen intersections beaming with cars that treat you like you don't belong on the road.

I commuted by bike for two years or so in Portland -- for work from North Portland to downtown across the Broadway bridge, and for fun when visiting friends all over south east -- and that wasn't my experience at all, Portland drivers were incredibly courteous to cyclists. You could take the lane when needed and no one batted an eye, people would correctly negotiate right of way with bikes at four way stops, etc.

Contrast that to Oakland where I live now where I receive death threats on a daily basis for riding in the bike lane. :)

corndoge4• 8 years ago

Cyclists really don't belong on the road. It's such an odd collective viewpoint that a vehicle which virtually always travels far below the speed limit should be allowed alongside vehicles that travel at the speed limit. I think this is because we conflate the benefits of cycling and the value of making our public infrastructure amenable to cycling with the opinion that cyclists should share highways with cars. It's simply not safe and no amount of "Share the road" stickers and driver education will compensate for that. Cyclists need their own infrastructure, bike lanes on the highways at a minimum. They don't belong mixed in with cars.

fuzzywalrus• 8 years ago

As someone who lived in Eugene and now PDX, the model I advocate is the wagon spoke. You need to ferret the people between the large spaces as the population density is that of the Ukraine which presents little in the way of the geographic challenges we have here. Get people to the perimeters and in parking garages and then make it so they're able to use alternative transport. We won't be building fast rail between Portland, Salem and Eugene but we can certainly make it so you limit the amount of driving you need to perform.

ajmurmann5• 8 years ago

Or we could do what they do in the Netherlands and physically separate bikes.

Edit: phone auto-"correct"

keelhaule• 8 years ago

Separation is good, to stop the flue :P

SketchySeaBeast2• 8 years ago

What really amazes me is the creation of new "Shopping Centres" - miles and miles of independent stores and nothing between them but parking lots. They took the mall and scaled it up so everyone gets a store, and now if I want to go to two places I have to actually drive from one to the other because it's nothing but parking lots and pedestrian hostile roads separating them - sometimes it's a two minute drive, but that's so much easier to do than try and navigate on foot it's ridiculous. You want to go to the next store over, but it's 3 lanes each way of homicidal traffic between you and it, or a 5 minute walk to get to the closest cross-walk.

throwaway8094842• 8 years ago

This is precisely what shines so much in Pontevedra (the city featured in the article) and e.g. Oviedo (another Spanish city that aggressively adopted this policy in 1991). Local shopping benefited so much from banning cars downtown. Little specialty shops and cafes blossomed vs suburban malls.

Sadly, I think this is only easy to accomplish in mid-sized densely-populated cities (<= 250000 inhabitants), unless there's a lot of planning and investments done.

Paradoxically, shopping associations were initially strongly opposed to implementing car-less downtown plans. Only to reckon later how wrong they were.

If I recall correctly, car-less policies were imported from Aarhus and Aalborg, where majors were experimenting with turning some main streets into pedestrian only by the late 1980s.

It's also interesting to note that both Aalborg and Oviedo tend to rank very highly in a few quality of life EU metrics [1]. I know both, and they are pretty fantastic places to work and live in. Everything is within short walking distance.

[1] http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/studies...

topmonk2• 8 years ago

I wonder, when/if autonomous taxis come about will the whole attitude of catering to cars over than pedestrians will cease.

If people don't have cars, parking won't be a problem, and walking from one store to another rather than paying for a taxi would become preferable. Then more people would have the awful experience of walking half a mile through a giant paved parking lot which would motivate people to change it.

honkycat2• 8 years ago

It's the same everywhere, I can vouch for rural Illinois.

Check out strongtowns.org, a non-profit that explores this EXACT phenomena and how it happened.

Basically, infrastructure == progress to a LOT of poorly informed communities who don't bother factoring in maintenance costs or look at the actual economics of building huge roads through their main street.

Throw in a dash of pork-barrel spending and lobbying to secure funding to build more roads for the hell of it and you have the US's current mad-max roads-to-fucking-nowhere infrastructure nightmare. It was all a big experiment where everyone but the guys getting paid to build the roads lost.

sakopov• 8 years ago

Half of Kansas City's downtown is parking lots which generally sit empty during the day. To make matters even worse, the city is constantly building mixed-use areas with retail and office space, restaurants, hotels and apartments intermixed with roads running every which way. Walking around these places is just a constant hazard.

ajmurmann5• 8 years ago

Can you explain how the mixed-use makes this worse? Not having seen it, I'd expect it to make the situation better that I have a restaurant right next to my apartment or office and don't need to get in the car.

x2202• 8 years ago

Chalk it up to the fact that almost literally every European city developed while people still traveled on horses, and nearly every American city saw 90% of its development when cars existed. If Americans already need cars because cities are so far apart and it isn't yet feasible to rely on public transportation across states and the country, why bother making cities that resemble European, pre-steam engine city layouts unless you are dealing with a city like New York or Los Angeles, where there is no practical reason to leave?

bobthepanda4• 8 years ago

It always comes back down to money. Suburbs are inherently less efficient; you need more sewage, more electric, more road, etc. to serve the same amount of people. And this is before we consider that suburban houses are much farther away and apart, much bigger spaces with more heating and AC requirement, etc. Suburbs generally don't make enough money through taxes to cover their lifecycle costs.

The first generation of suburbs is already failing as they become choked by the next generation of suburbs. Ferguson, MO was once a rich suburb of St. Louis. The suburbs of Nassau County, one of the richest US counties by median income, have been under state fiscal control since 2000.

PopsiclePete• 8 years ago

"Livability", in America, doesn't really exist as a concept. I get blank stares from most people. They all want a single-family 2000 sq. ft. home somewhere in a suburb that will doom them to be behind the wheel of a car for every little thing and see nothing abnormal about it.

In America, a city is a place where cars drive to get from business A to business B. People enter the equation only as a necessary side-effect. But fuck you if you're a pedestrian or don't have a car.

In Europe, cities exist for people. Streets are built with people in mind, businesses are placed with people in mind, infrastructure is built with people in mind.

I grew up in Europe, and the entire city was "mine" as a teenager - I could go anywhere, cheaply, quickly, and never needed a driver's license. I shopped for groceries, paid bills, hung out with friends, went to school - everything was within walking distance or a short bus ride away.

Here - I don't know how kids do it. To rely on parents to drive you to - where - shopping malls???? - to "hang out" or be doomed to watch tv/play video games all day - I'm so glad that was not my child-hood - I really think it's one reason I'm not on various anti-depressants, nor obese, nor anti-social.

I really wish someone would do a study that looked at the number of depressed/anti-social/about-to-go-on-a-shooting-spree people in a country whose only interaction with other human beings is to say "good how are you" at the clerk at the grocery aisle check-out lane or to curse at other people behind the wheel of their car while getting there.

I really believe (no evidence, just belief) that if cities in America didn't make you stressed out just for trying to get from place A to place B, or putting your life in danger by having to drive, we'd see a lot fewer problems - a lot fewer.

timonoko• 8 years ago

European cities were very much pedestrian and bike town in the 1950's. In Helsinki they proposed banning bikes from city center, because they caused traffic congestion and gave poorish image of Finland. Bike paths were kept open all year manually. I biked some 10 km to school and every single day dozens of guys had woken at 5 o'clock and shoveled and sanded narrow but adequate bike path just for me.

jaysonelliot2• 8 years ago

The one question I have, that I haven't seen answered in the article or elsewhere, is how deliveries are handled. Presumably shops and businesses in a car-free city need to get truckloads of goods or equipment moved in and out on a regular basis. How is it done?

I've always loved the idea of being able to live in a car-free city, but never quite understood how certain things would work, including garbage collection, deliveries, and emergency services, without vehicular traffic.

Or do they make exceptions for all of those? Does anyone know?

GijsjanB• 8 years ago

Where I live, the municipality is seriously looking into an out of the city distribution centre with (smaller, electric) vehicles for supplying the city centre. That doesn't make it free of cars, but it will be more efficient (not every shop needs their own supply truck, supplies can be shared).

jaysonelliot2• 8 years ago

Which city is that?

JepZ• 8 years ago

In Germany we have a similar paradise: the island Helgoland [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heligoland#Road_restrictions

anticensor2• 8 years ago

Helgoland is a tax haven, too. Only thing it lacks is an organised business district.

nayuki• 8 years ago

The article has similar sentiments on promoting walkable cities as the whole blog "Strong Towns". https://www.strongtowns.org/

plgonzalezrx8• 8 years ago

That must feel so weird, but at the same time, so quiet and peaceful.

lifeformed• 8 years ago

Are stores and restaurants able to get supplies by vehicle to restock?

jasonrhaas• 8 years ago

I really like the idea of restricting where and when people can drive their cars. In China there are policies in place that only allow to commute with your car on certain days of the week. The other days you need to use public transport or find a car pool.

A lot of Americans think that they should be able to drive and park their car when and where ever they want. This mentality needs to change if we want to continue to grow our cities sustainably.

clon• 8 years ago

I am sure it also helps tourism. I'm definitely putting this on my bucket list when going to Spain next time.

dre85• 8 years ago

I'll preface this with saying that I own two cars and in general like cars. However, I think personal motorized transportation along with industrialized animal farming are for me among the two biggest evils that arose in the last century. Cities in North America are entirely architected for the presence and convenience of cars. The mortality arising from pollution and accidents is staggering. The alienation and isolation of people as well. The cities and suburbs stretch so far out that you rarely get to see your friends unless you specifically organize something well ahead of time. Pedestrian zones with small shops are replaced with massive shopping malls.

I've always imagined a modern city with no cars, but I never knew that anyone actually had the balls to make this a reality. Kudos to this Spanish city! You can try to argue that the specifics of this city make it more amenable to being car-free, but I think that if there was enough desire, it would work anywhere. Just think if everyone paid their monthly car loan/lease into the public transportation system how incredibly functional it could be.

ansible2• 8 years ago

Seems like a good time to re-post this rant by James Howard Kunstler on what's wrong with modern USA urban planning:

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

teknico• 8 years ago

Been there recently. The peace and quiet was uncanny, it felt like my hometown half a century ago.

kenmicklas• 8 years ago

It drives me crazy seeing people claim to "just" prefer living in the car-oriented suburbs when

1) that lifestyle is vastly subsidized by economic activity generated in the cities

2) the biggest reason cities are unpleasant is (surprise) the high density of car traffic and noise!

The mass distribution of personal cars is going to go down as the greatest mistake in societal development.

sytelus• 8 years ago

So how does these car-less cities manage followings:

- Truck delivery to businesses such as large stores/shopping malls

- Ambulance, police car services

- Disabled/old people wanting to move around

If you allow any or all of above, you still need roads for vehicles only, traffic lights etc, right?

supernovae• 8 years ago

I work in the Domain of Austin Texas, it's an outdoor mall, office park and residential area that is supposed to be like a downtown 2.0 in many ways. A place for humans to "live, shop and work" according to their mantra.

In reality, it's scary to walk to whole foods to get lunch at times. Cars NEVER yield to crosswalks or pedestrians. It's so bad they have flashing LED's on the stop signs in some areas.

The domain would be beautiful if parking garages were on the exterior and everyone had to walk in. Imagine being able to walk to shops, work and dining without worrying about getting plowed down by an F150 with a "thank god for our snipers" sticker on the back.

In fact, the best couple of days at this area are the art walk days but its been a while since I've seen those. For the artwalk days, they close the streets and it's like a magic little city of everyone breathing easier, enjoying some quiet serenity and kids walking around without parents needing 100% attention.

For the price they demand to live and lease space here, it would seem serenity and peacefulness would be the best thing they could do! (and there was plenty of land at one point for exterior garages... now its just a mad dash for people to find spots across the different garages which are all too small for the big trucks texans love)

WhompingWindows• 8 years ago

I identify with that crosswalk yielding issue. In Boston they sometimes put up signs on the road surface itself, informing drivers that is ILLEGAL to not yield to pedestrians. I say "You broke the law" loudly whenever a driver doesn't yield in that situation, yet I've never seen any enforcement of this law.

Meanwhile, law enforcement is quick to sit on the highway catching those going with the flow of traffic over the speed limit, or quick to over-police non-violent drug offenses. So sad to see enforcement of the rules of the road take a back seat, especially when it comes to pedestrians, whose chosen mode of transport is beneficial and should be encouraged.

liquid153• 8 years ago

I wonder when "I don't own a car", will be the new "I don't own a TV"

Mashimo• 8 years ago

I never owned a TV or a car :)

dchichkov• 8 years ago

I wish, we could do that in the few feets of Murphy's Square in Sunnyvale. It would be so pleasant to not have hot spewing smog vehicles park, one feet from your dining table.

nos84733675859• 8 years ago

Had a quick search and didn't see anyone talking about it.

If your interested by this article you might enjoy the book 'happy city'. It's a bit one sided but looks at how cars have changed cities, and how changes can be made to make them happier.

pixelbeat__• 8 years ago

It's interesting how people's expectations and attitudes develop. I remember landing at San Diego airport and asking how I could walk the relatively short distance into the city center. I just got looks of derision and directions to the taxi rank. I did attempt to find a walkable route myself to no avail.

It's an interesting contrast to banning cars and essentially banning walking

Basketb926• 8 years ago

San Diego airport website does give some walking details that were not known by the people you met https://www.san.org/to-from/Walking-Biking

zoom6628• 8 years ago

We so so need this in Hongkong, especially in the older areas where the streets feel as narrow as a rickshaw. Public transport is excellent and ppl here so unhealthy i general they need the walking anyway! Most of the corridoor from Saiyingpun all the way to North Point at least should be car free. And pretty much all of TST through to Mongkok. More than enough metro lines and bordering causeways to move the masses in an out of the area.

woutr_be• 8 years ago

As much as I like to see a car free HK, there's still a lot of need for vehicles in those areas, banning cars, especially in HK is not the solution.

If you want people to walk more, make the city actually walk friendly, even a short walk from my apartment to the MTR station is annoying; people just randomly walk anywhere, making it impossible to enjoy walking. There's aircons leaking constantly, little newspaper stands blocking the sideways.

I really enjoy walking, but in HK it's really not that fun.

newshorts2• 8 years ago

my wife and I used to need to take vacations and drive to the mountains on the weekends just to get away from the stress of the city. Then we moved to an area where we can bike to two separate town centers and we haven’t felt the need to take a vacation in years.

We are more social and more relaxed now, and I swear it’s because we can bike to all the places we would have driven, like restaurants, movie theaters and grocery stores.

Ditching the car has been a very positive experience.

skookumchuck2• 8 years ago

It'd be so nice in downtown Seattle if a few of the streets were closed off to cars for 4 hours a day or so.

JVIDEL• 8 years ago

Why is this news? The town of General Belgrano in Argentina banned cars ages ago.

jiveturkey• 8 years ago

pedestrianised all 300,000 sq m of the medieval centre,

I'm reminded of the Isle of Sark. I thought it must be bigger but wiki says it's only 5,000 sq m.

Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

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