'For me, this is paradise': life in the Spanish city that banned cars - Sensationalist Headlines

From a technological standpoint, EVs and self-driving AI are a lot more complex than proper urban planning. One thing I'm noticing in threads about US urban design is that US posters often go back and forth between discussing about what currently is and what is better. My point is in response to proboardslol, who argues that cities designed around cars are better, a stance I'm arguing against. You seem to agree that cities centered around public transportation are better designed. So my point isn't aimed at you. Your argument is that it's very complicated to change existing cities to be more efficient regarding transportation. I obviously agree, but you'll have to find a way to do it eventually, because suburban living is unsustainable, with or without EVs.

My argument or rather, different perspective to this is from the fact I live in a massively spread out area of the world. Just two weeks ago I took a work trip 600km away from here, to do a job that had me going from small town to small town. Fundamentally this doesn’t work without a car. I can’t rely on busses for that, and there won’t be trains to such far flung areas with any regularity. Sure if you live in the downtown core you can bus, walk, or train anywhere in it, but if you’re not in it, you’re looking at huge travel times for small distances. We just had an article on FP I believe, about how people were running to work instead of taking the train in Washington DC because the trains and busses are slower than running to work. Yeah that’s not an indictment of the system, it’s of the city, but it’s an example how just saying the problems are easy isn’t always true. I feel like Europe is a tiny place compared to even my province, Paris to London is less time and distance than from here to my farthest flung office. The perspective we have exists for a reason

Sure, if you live in or make a trip to a town or rural area it's impractical to use public transportation, and there's no fault in using a car for that (though you should carpool if possible). But proboardslol was praising the suburbs-city system, which is a different thing altogether. When it comes to cities themselves, the size of the country doesn't matter. US cities are huge medium-low density sprawls by design, not because of any geographical constraint.

Sim City (an interview) Geoff Manaugh: While you were making those measurements of different real-world cities, did you discover any surprising patterns or spatial relationships? Librande: Yes, definitely. I think the biggest one was the parking lots. When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don’t think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots. Manaugh: You would be making SimParkingLot, rather than SimCity. Librande: [laughs] Exactly. So what we do in the game is that we just imagine they are underground. We do have parking lots in the game, and we do try to scale them—so, if you have a little grocery store, we’ll put six or seven parking spots on the side, and, if you have a big convention center or a big pro stadium, they’ll have what seem like really big lots—but they’re nowhere near what a real grocery store or pro stadium would have. We had to do the best we could do and still make the game look attractive.

just think, every day in Delhi or Beijing is a great smog day, but 10x worse

Cities Skylines does a similar thing where cars just disappear when a pedestrian arrives at their destination if there's no parking available. There are mods that remove that and they end up exactly how he describes: lots of parking lots and parking garages. Example: https://i.redd.it/ua2wa6d6srwz.jpg

So you rely on your mechanic, parking space and most important: traffic. Kind of shortsighted.

this is also the game where you can design a 1 way highway to your industrial zone from residential area and then the workers magically teleport back home after work as there is no route back via the highway... unless they fixed this flawed game

I have read about how planning cities with care in mind with freeways and highways etc. has been the worse for city planning and that we should get as far away from that as possible, but I can't think of how else we could get around with cars. Really really really good trams or trains perhaps? But how do you design that for urban sprawl?

Most older European cities were of course originally planned centuries before the word automobile even existed; that is how everyone got around without cars. But it also means that the only feasible cities where something like what this thread is about can happen, are those particular European cities. Or very modern cities designed deliberately against cars. I can’t remember if there’s particular names for the kind of planning, but yeah you have that European design of a city where everything important all happens in a central location, but even as the city expands outwards, it doesn’t take anyone that long to walk from their home on the outskirts straight to everything in the city centre. Compare that to newer planning philosophies, especially since the automobile became a thing, where everything important is carefully planned are spread about everywhere most likely in order to better distribute traffic and reduce congestion.

50s and 60s 'get the car in the city' is generally considered the worst idea that did the most damage to modern infrastructure by most city planners. Thank God they didnt get all of the trams back then. We still have a lot

I mean I guess it works if you encourage people to just live in the city and never need to leave for any reason. On the other hand, only wealthy people can live in cities anyway. I don't think that's something we can shape without totalitarianism.

As far as Ive seen from different discussions and podcasts the solution to improving US cities is better public transport and increasing density. That would solve accesibility in existing neighbourhoods as well as bigger density would allow for local businesses to flourish, letting people eat and shop locally instead of driving somewhere. Suburbs are terrible because you are stuck there, you dont have any other option except driving. Not much local business because of low density.

I'm glad the trollies still run in Philly, it makes getting into Philly 1 billion times easier than driving.

I live in the Houston metro area and a car is an absolute must if you want any sort of mobility. They got busses downtown and a light rail that was an afterthought, but the mass transit here is shit if you want to get anywhere else. Hell, Uber doesn't even service my area. If I want to take a bus downtown I have to drive 20 minutes to a bus depot. There's just a ton of American cities where busses were the only mass transit option, and then the city grew too large to have complete coverage. Iirc the focus on road transit was heavily lobbied by the automotive industry. Trying to shoehorn in a good train system now is also a pain in the ass. Imagine London with no trains or subway, and the buses primarily went around the center of town. Save for a few long distance connectors. That's what Houston is like.

I do the same thing, except i buy food for maybe 1 or 2 days, and fucking 10 minutes of travel to a store is absolutely nothing.

As soon as you would leave my college campus you were greeted with an ugly ass sprawl of parking lots, massive roads, and all kinds of stores and restaurants. Making any sort of grocery run was a real pain without a car or a buddy who was willing to give you a ride. The whole place made it necessary to own a car if you wanted to not overspend on campus food or actually check out some sights. I really do wish there was more stuff like what's in the article here in the US. I don't know if we're thinking of the same things, but there's transit oriented development and smart growth which focus on centralizing important stuff so that you can easily walk or take public transport to it.

In Lisbon as long as your car has classic plates you can still get around; that's how I do it since I drive a classic.

Yeah that's correct, there was a huge push to replace trains with buses, and with the economic boom nearly anyone could get a car and a nice home on the outskirts of the city. Now that leaves us with a modern problem, too many cars, too much traffic, and the transportation around the city is awful. Ontop of that cities are having problems with housing costs, so living outside the city isn't a luxury, it's necessary; which means a car to reach the city is also necessary since no bus service is extremely limited or non-existent, and don't even think about trains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lD7VqQbrEw

In terms of quality of life, I've totally flipped over the past few years from preferring cars to preferring nice comfortable spaces with good public transport. I feel like cars should be stored efficiently, off street, even if it means your car is a 3 minute walk away to an area residential car park instead of outside on the street. You shouldn't need it every day, the vast majority of a city should be so well connected that the car is pointless. You should only need it for going off the grid, to rural or less developed areas. Honestly living in well curated, social, pedestrian cities feels amazing compared to a grid sprawl. I can't really go back now. It really does make you feel human.

It's 10 minutes by bike, and I don't want to be going to the store every day. I heard this was a difference between Europeans and Americans: Europeans shop for like 2 days max and Americans shop for a week or two at a time. I haven't gone grocery shopping in at least a week at this point and I'm pretty much good for another week rn. I go shopping when my freezer is empty

I wish we had a nice rail system. I'd be able to visit friends who are two hours away (of continual urban sprawl) without having to come up with places to stay. Or go to bars downtown without having to find parking or pay an expensive Uber or get a place to stay. A healthy rail system sounds so good for getting out.

2 days max? That sounds like a pain in the ass. I don't know who told you that, but nobody I know does this. I do it once a week and I go on foot/by bus. If the issue is that your bags are too heavy, you can use a caddie. 2 weeks though? I'm not sure how one would do that, some meat may go back before then.

Meat goes in the freezer when it gets home and I defrost it before cooking

Lmao, you serious? I mean ten minutes by bike to the closest super market i fairly far, but how about: A) Go more often than once every two weeks so you can actually bike on your bike on the way home B) Get saddle bags if you don't want to do option A I can see situations where a bike simply doesn't cut it, but in this case you're obviously just being lazy.

a) I don't want to be going to the grocery store every day, or even more than once a week. I've got shit to do b) I eventually stole a basket from the grocery store and tied it to my bike to carry stuff, and I brought a backpack with me But, thankfully, I no longer live in the city and even when I did I eventually got a car. Not to mention, when I was on my bike I had literally ONE store to choose from. With a car, I had lots of different places to choose from, so I wasn't limited to the crappy ghetto kroger anymore; I could go to the whole foods or the wegmans, or the non-crappy-ghetto Kroger, or one of a few Asian grocery stores. I had so much more choice when I got a car Plus, I could go home to see my parents on the weekends if I wanted without having to pay the cost of a train ticket. I could go ANYWHERE with a car. Biking and PT just means you're stuck in the city unless you want to pay a high price to get out. I mean, I definitely think we need to invest more in PT, but NOTHING compares to the convenience of a car.

I really wish my city were like this. I lived a 30 minute walk away from my university and chose to walk it every day. Naturally walking though a city you end up crossing a lot of roads, something that makes the journey take much longer and poses a fair risk. Of the four years I spent there I can recall at least three times a driver ran a red light and nearly killed me. It's also just shitty to feel like you're unimportant because you're a pedestrian. There's no infrastructure like pedestrianisation to speak of. If the city were totally pedestrianised I could cycle to uni in a fraction of the time without fear of being killed.

There're a few big cities here that restrict car circulation heavily on certain days or have turned the city centre into pedestrian zones, which makes a lot of people butthurt because MUH RIGHTS TO USE CAR. Public transportation here is perfectly alright, some trains/buses could pass by more frequently or have less delays but its perfectly serviceable. There's also zones designed for cyclists which I use a lot but there should be more funding towards making public transport better Shame the USA seems to have a car addiction problem and everything is so far away + designed with cars in mind because city planners love to eat car manufacturer ass, I guess. I've been in Chicago and everything is so gigantic in comparison to Europe, the whole city is as big as 2/3 cities from my area and the closest Target from where I was staying was half an hour away. The CTA was a lifesaver tho, but in a lot of areas like the outskirts and residential areas where L stops were few and far between you're fucked if you don't have a car, lots of people need them for their jobs and a lot of employers might just not hire you altogether if you don't have one

Yeah nothing compares to the convenience of a car, I'm just saying that I think you're being lazy. Obviously there are restrictions on what you can do with a bike alone, that's really no revelation.