Slashdot Mirror
Creating Car Free Cities
Silas writes "CarFree.com is a great site that "proposes a delightful solution to the vexing problem of urban automobiles." The site presents a fascinating, detailed proposal for a major city (1 million people in 100 square miles) that doesn't require the use of cars. This isn't a new concept; a lot of the ideas are modeled off of major car free cities in Europe (like Venice)." The page on Morocco is fascinating.
Sponsored by Segway and Amazon.com. Remember, buy a Segway and go car free!
Here is where i see the future !
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
Anything is better than the car-clogged cities we have today. Small trips have big cap fares as it takes longer to get there. I tried walking from one hotel to another in Las Vegas, I thought I was going to die from inhaling all of that pollution. At least Las Vegas is moving in the right direction with mono-rails (yes, MonoRail!)
If only NYC and others followed with some awesome inovations.
--------
Free your mind.
I was under the impression this is exactly what the Segway HT was designed to accomplish. Cleaning up cars obviously means much less pollution.
It's a great concept in general- people would be more likely to walk to where they had to go, rather than drive half a mile to the store to pick up the ice cream and chocolate syrup.
Maybe 5 years ago, I would've agreed with this, but now I don't. To me, it seems the main reason of "banning cars" is to make the environment cleaner. But with these new fuel cell cars and electric/gas hybrids, cars will be emission free soon. This idea doesn't really do it for me.
When you don't have a leg to stand on, don't even get up.
Using the latest state of the art in city simulations, something like Sim City 4. Build the city, and see how well it does! Save the game and let us play with the results.
here is another alternative http://www.arcosanti.org/ Arcosanti designed by the world famous artchitect - Paolo Soleri - actaully exists :)
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
sPh
I think for a true car-free city to work, it has to be reasonably compact.
Take for example Tokyo and New York City. The actual amount of land used in the center city is quite small, small enough that walking or using a mass-transit system becomes quite viable.
You definitely cannot do that in Los Angeles, that's to be sure--it's so spread out that you'll need exorbitant amounts of money to build a mass transit system the cover the whole Los Angeles Basin.
Note that in the case of London, England, the Underground subway system got there first before motor vehicle traffic because London HAD to build something to alleviate the horrible street-level traffic of horse-drawn carriages of various types in the late 19th Century immediately. That's why the Underground travels all over the London metro area--in fact, the Underground helped develop a number of London suburbs!
Cars keep getting in the way of my Jeep and the pickup trucks of my friends.
Hydrogen baby! The fuel of today.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
The biggest problem with non-car methods of transportation is that it is very expensive to build.
All it takes to move via car is a relatively flat piece of land. If it's paved, all the better, although this is expensive as well (a mile of 4 lane highway costs millions). At least roads are (relatively) cheap to repair... you grind off the old surface, and re-cover the base.
Most non-car solutions involve rail, which is also expensive. Unfortunately, as a city expands, you'd need more and more interchanges, as well as 'feeder rails'. That's a hellacious amount of infrastructure.
Looking at one of the proposed architectures, the spoke-like arrangements, just seems to be comparisons to the cube/squared principle in biology. Perhaps the cities will have a small max size?
Of course, if people use a Segway, bike or (gasp) walk, a lot of this doesn't matter. At 6'5" and 280, I can't use a segway, so t'hell with 'em.
Besides, until 'rocket launcher' is an option, why bother?
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
I can see maybe designing a city to be car-free, but it seems like it would be next to impossible to convert a typical city to such. Consider:
1) People like cars. Tell them they can't use thier cars anymore, and you're liable to be voted out of office.
2) If you get rid of cars, you have to have an alternative system of transportation in place. Unfortunately, the only place to PUT that system will many times be where the roads are now. Result: you can't build the system until the cars are gone, and you can't get rid of the cars until the system is ready!
Twenties Retirement
I mean here it is, 5:00 on a Friday and his webserver just melted into a pile of slag.
Er, sorry dude.
I did have to make some lifestyle choices to make this happen: I choose to work downtown and chose to live close enough to walk, bike, skate or unicycle there.
The inefficient use of land and the liberal use of asphalt has turned America into a sterile hell of one 8 lane road after another. I understand that many Europeans are envious of our road system but the envy is misplaced when you have to drive way out to get anywhere or--even worse--you have to sit in traffic for 30 minutes to move four miles. That is reality in South Florida and southern California. I don't think everyone needs a car but the political structure here doesn't want to entertain the concept of public transportation. It's a dirty word or a social program at best.
Laws are for people with no friends.
they killed the public transport system in Los Angeles in the 30s, 40s and 50s for that exact purpose: force every person to need to own a car.
Boulder is big into trying to dissuade people from driving cars and to use public transit or other means of getting around. People, bicycles, and other man-powered (or small engine-powered) vehicles have the right-of-way and will use and abuse this fact at any opportunity, walking in front of moving cars and riding against red lights. This causes nasty traffic jams, accidents, and generally pisses people off. The roads are quite cozy and not accomodating to any sort of car larger than a Honda Civic, like my pickup truck.
I would love to live in an auto-free town, riding my bike and using monorails or whatever transport the city provides. But trying to adapt existing cities to this mindset is asking for nothing but trouble.
--Chag
The biggest problem I have found with these types of advocacy groups is that no one is proposing sensible plans for transitioning away from car-centric urban development.
I am all for living car-free, (In fact I have gone out of my way to organize my life so I only drive about once a week), but the fact of the matter is that we are currently saddled with ugly, sprawling, single-use zoned cities. With the possible exception of places in China, nobody is building large metropolitan areas from the ground up. What we really need are feasible intermediate steps to gradually eliminate the sprawl and the dependency on cars.
Intermediate steps need to have both the short term benefits as well as moving cities towards the goal of reducing auto-dependence.
Ever try and ride a bike with 10 bags of groceries? I agree that people waste fuel and cause more pollution by taking cars for short trips but sometimes you just need the carrying capacity.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Too bad they don't address the cultural barriers to car-free cities in the United States. Cars represent freedom here, plain and simple. Until that mindset changes, we won't have a car-free city for all the urban planning in the world. Can you even imagine something as benign as London's new car toll happening in Los Angeles or New York? People would scream bloody murder. Granted, there's a geographic component to consider as well; our cities are larger and more sprawling than in Europe or elsewhere.
On the Discovery Channel there is a show called Extreme Engineering. It looks like Japan is going to have some really cool designs to fix the growing population and urbran sprawl. One design is called Sky City which is a city in a building
... have you?
I remember the first time my dad took me there. I was 11 or 12 years old. It was falling apart faster than they were building it. It was an interesting walk albeit risky due to the delapidated nature and lack of any kind of safety barriers. This was roughly 23 years ago.
All these years later not much has changed. The web site makes it look a lot nicer than it really is.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
It depends if you want to primarily: A) Reduce traffic B) Pollution A) Requires alternative transport, infrastructure change, and, most importantly, attitude change. B) Simply requires better cars. Implementing method A to solve problem B is like using a hammer to swat a fly. Both problems will have to be solved technically rather than socialogically. We humans are a stubborn bunch.
\\ Mitch
Cars provided an incredible service that cannot be matched by public transportation. A truly modern and environmentally designed city that respects the rights of its citizens must keep an individual mode of transportation. Now, the key to this is that this does not mean a car. For example you can use personal transit systems (PRTs) which provide service very similar to your own car. That is, you are the only person in it and it takes you from point A to point B. Such systems run on rails or dedicated lines, and are computed controlled, which allow for much faster speeds (up to 150 mph).
These systems are actually cheap to build if you consider that road space would be freed and can be sold to private parties by the city. Think about it, selling two lanes of 5th Avenue in New York back to businesses would pay for the entire system in Manhattan.
...is that it is based on the assumption that you can get everyone to agree on the same thing. I think it's safe to say that, unless you are ready to brainwash everyone or legislate them to the point of living in a mental prison then, it's never going to work.
I think we can all remember the end-result of that last great Utopian experiment known as the U.S.S.R.
-- Galen Rhodes grhodes@the-chatter-box.com Journal: http://journal.the-chatter-box.com/users/grhodes "Consistency
Not with the government in the auto industry's back pocket...
i've gone over 800 miles on a segway ht and was able to give up a car and save quite a bit of $ per month. the city of seattle (where i live) has a fleet of segway hts, and after a year long study they're going to double the fleet. the hardest part is the cultural issues, having a car is what everyone does. there will be many posts here that poke fun of my transportation choices, but i also use a bicycle, public transit and car pools, so it's all about choices and having them...something we should all encourage.
first 800 miles
info on city of seattle
and interview i did with the city of seattle
cheers,
pt
Car's aren't perfect but they are the most economically efficient solution for most places. The main problem with cars is that most governments have decided not to improve the roads when improvements are needed. When they do improve them they do stupid things like the Big Dig in Boston. Trains are wildly expensive for anything but the most densely populated cities. Segway's are too slow to handle long distance travel. Cars are versitile, quick, efficient, and do their job well.
The problem with getting rid of cars is that I want a back yard. The bigger the better. Most people don't want to live on top of one another in big buildings with no place for their kids to play. A world without cars is a world where everyone needs to be packed in on top of each other so that mass transit can work. I don't like that idea.
If the roads are too crouded, build bigger roads. It's not a hard conept. Why do people think they're doing something clever by not building roads when they should (I live in New Hampshire, north of Boston where commuting is horrible.) We waste thousands of man-hours of time every day, waste tons of gas, increase pollution and make thousands of peoples lives more stressful. It's not celever!
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
I don't think simulating cities is actually as easy as it sounds. It was only a few years ago that we reached the capability to simulate traffic in cities over a day or so. The actual growth of a city over years could take some big doing, or dumbing down of the simulation detail.
Here's the info on the traffic sim:
Los Alamos gains corporate partner for traffic simulation
Incidently, here's an interesting if not mildly amusing 'amatuer' traffic analysis:
Traffic Waves
And a more thorough site on better driving (which is actually pretty sweet- this should be required reading for drivers):
Big City Driver
Happy trails,
Jason
What people fail to realize is that car free cities might soon have a serious violence problem.
Without the most popular mean of overcompensation for, ahem, insufficiencies, more and more people will turn to what were until now secondary means: guns and wife beatings.
We need to figure out a solution to this problem before we take this big step. Perhaps padded shoes or somesuch.
No sig
Oh, please. I recently moved from a small town to a large city(Memphis), which is heavily car-dependent. I must say that I had much more individual freedom back home, where I could walk or ride my bike to the stores, and the traffic was light if I wanted to take my car.
Now, the city I live in pretty much forces me to ride my car everywhere. The geography is such that everything is spread out, so it is impractical to ride a bike, not to mention the fact that the roads are not safe to ride in.
I think that if you want to reduce car usage, you should try to make cities smaller, which makes accomodating pedestrians and bikes easier. Of corse you still need cars for long trips, but one should not have to use one just for everyday tasks. Being forced to use a car is no more free than being forced not to use one.
Consider all the human labor and parts, each part built of resources harvested from the environment. Each hour translating into time you spend working to support that car. Consider the sum cost of your car / insurance / fuel / registration / parking tickets in a year. You WORK to support that. Wouldn't you rather be free of that?
Consider all the NOISE that comes off a freeway, as well as the fact that tar / asphault highways must be MAINTAINED. If you live in a city, think about how many times you've suffered the noise from a jackhammer. Think of all the times they've torn out a road to fix a pipe, and then replaced the road with something worse than you had in the first place.
Consider the environmental eyesore that a TEXACO / CHEVRON / SHELL station is. Try to remember what the country looked like before the drivethrough convenience store. You used to be able to walk to those places. Now our cities are half parking, guessing 5% auto maintenace commerce, roadside billboards. Where's the soul?
If you've been victimized by them (i have), consider the involuntary stress / tightening of your jaw muscles when you see a parking enforcer. Ever had your car hostile-towed?
How about car breakins / vandalism / theft? Been there, suffered that.
Been to a bar lately? Had to get home lately?
Consider the sound of a heavy delivery truck in reverse (beep beep beep). Now scale that to the number of times you hear it. Live in a real city? Ouch.
If you live in a snowy area, think of how it is, scraping ice off your windshield in the morning, and hoping your car battery didn't die. And if it did, paying the tower, or buying a replacement battery.
AND, finally, think of all the money you give to the auto and insurance industries. They ARE the same folks who make tanks and HUM-V's. And, yes, they ARE corporate lobbyists. So when you get a lame war, or when the trolley system in your city gets dismantled, remember whose money was used to give them that political power. It was yours.
I'm sure there's more, but that should press the best buttons.
Think b4 you drive.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
OK, I can't RTFA, the host name doesn't even resolve, but...
I guess car free would be OK, as long as:
a. Nobody ever wants to go anywhere public transit doesn't go (another city? countryside?)
b. There's some way to get 50lbs of groceries plus other assorted, bulky, items, to within 10ft of my door while also transporting my wife, two kids and a great-grandparent.
Good luck.
sig fault
But what many people overlook is that a large fraction of the cars are taxis and limousines. And taxis are fairly affordable.
You can get by without a car in NYC because you can just flag down a cab any time, day or night. Widespread availability of taxis is an important part of a city free of (personal) automobiles. If other cities had a taxicab system as good as that in NYC, far fewer people would need cars. As a bonus, it is politically and practically much easier to convert taxi fleets to new standards (natural gas, hydrogen, electricity) than personal automobiles.
Ever try and ride a bike with 10 bags of groceries? I agree that people waste fuel and cause more pollution by taking cars for short trips but sometimes you just need the carrying capacity.
...
Why do you need 10 bags of groceries? Do you have 15 children, or something? My shopping consists of mostly fresh vegetables, fish, and dairy, which I walk to the local farmers' market 2-3 times a week to get. That way, it's fresher, and never more than could fit in a basket.
Since I bike to work, the only thing I ever use my car for is going "specialty" shopping, usually for things like cat litter, which is a bit too heavy for carrying. If only there was some sort of a website from which I could order these things, and have them delivered right to my house
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
Everyone could live near work, but few are willing to change their lifestyle. There are a few things that would have to change from today's norm, including adapting to slightly smaller houses, much smaller yards, etc. Think of row housing, with enough yard for a small garden, and you get the idea. It would be much more sustainable, but most people want a freestanding house in the 'burbs, with a big driveway, and lots of useless lawn.
I live 25km from work, and commute via bike and bus. It takes about twice as long as a car, but I don't get to work frustrated from the traffic. Five or ten years from now, I expect that my next house will be closer to work, smaller, and better designed. Many poeple I know expect to keep upsizing to ever-larger houses on more land, further from work. Most environmental problems are not someone else's fault, they result from decisions we make every day, magnified by millions or billions of people.
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
Without the cars, there would be plenty of people on the sidewalk and it would be safer.
I truly pity people so lazy as you. What an awful thing life must be, feeling so dependent on a machine to do anything or go anywhere. I don't have a car, I've never had a car, and I have never felt any difficulty in getting to the "fun" neighborhoods wherever I've lived. Actually I usually get there faster than my car-owning friends since the bike is always faster and the subway often is.
People get sick from exposure to germs, not from being outside. Aside from the seriously infirm, you won't find a doctor alive who would tell you that it's unhealthy to go for reasonable walks in cold weather.
Hell, I bike all winter ever year, through snow and all, and I can't remember the last time I had a cold.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Hahaha! Wow, that's hilarious. First, before anyone responds to this guy, check his sig. At this point, the "kook alert" bell should be ringing.
Leftists don't hate individualism, you dummy. They just don't like selfishness - actions that are taken at the expense and harm of others.
Everyone, including lefty types, like the freedom cars bring, but for some, the associated costs are very high. It would be nice to alleviate some of those costs (pollution, congestion, poor urban design) by coming up with something better.
Europeans, in your mind, are no doubt hateful lefties with few redeeming qualities. I recommend you visit, oh, say, Amsterdam sometime. What you'll find are plenty of horrible, socialist, know-it-all, (etc. - all the other name-calling you resorted to) people using an excellent, freedom-enhancing transit system in the city centre, and driving all around in their cars outside of there. Central Amsterdam has great air quality; "bad traffic" is when there are five cars stopped at a light. No one seems to be on their way to the gulag - that would be the U.S., if you happen to be a pot-smoker - and it's safe to say people are pretty individualistic there. The tram and train system is safe, convenient, cheap, and very quick.
As for your absurd assessment of environmentalism - no ideology, not even yours, ever trumps science. Remember that.
My idea for a "perfect" urban and sub-urabn living space would be to have higher density living spaces - smaller houses would be a start - with less "backyard" space. However, every few blocks would have greenspace to share with a bigger park not too far away.
I would also eliminate as much as possible the notion of the driveway and make people walk a bit farther to their cars. One big parking lot for everyone. It makes for more enjoyable greenspace. Yes, this does make moving almost impossible so someone has to figure that one out.
Mass transit would be easily accessible - light rail for instance - reasonably close to the living space.
The major problem here though, IMO, is that strip malls and convienice stores are robbing small businesses of their chance to make money. Small businesses would be forced to moved within the cities and not stay in the suburbs. Where I live in the suburbs strip-malls with Business Depots, large electronics chains etc, where I'd rather shop at local businesses - and I have to go well out of my way.
In the real world, it also takes insurance, traffic police, highway patrols, traffic courts, road cleaning, snow removal, over- and under-passes, gas stations, refineries, planning offices, car junkyards, emergency roadside assistance, fast-responding emergency medical services, helicopters, traffic surveillance, traffic computers,and on and on. Many of those costs are much lower or non-existent for public transportation, and you do pay for them, through taxes, fees, association memberships, auto and medical insurance, etc., expenses you may not associate with cars but expenses that are nevertheless very real.
And those are only direct, easily quantifiable costs. When you add in costs for maintaining a presence in the Persian Gulf, for respiratory diseases caused by pollution, for lost productivity due to traffic jams, for ecological damage from paving over large parts of the country, and other such effects, the costs are even worse.
As an exercise, just total up what you pay in terms of gas, insurance, license fees, interest, amortized purchase price, amortized disposal fees, and other car related expenses per year. I think you'll be surprised how expensive driving it, and that only accounts for a fraction of the costs mentioned above.
Oh, by the way, I don't know whether you are in good shape or not, but if you drive less, chances are you would also be in better shape than you are now (and save on medical bills, too).
Man, if this is your sig, then I'm really sorry for saying this, but you're an idiot.
.sig is about the "AIDS==HIV" hypothesis being the largest medical fraud in human history. And thanks for the ad hominem; it's evidential of the sucky quality of your argument.
Actually, my
It looks like you're saying cars don't harm the environment.
You are assuming a point in dispute which this claim.
Cars do harm the environment, and they do pollute.
The first claim is not applicable, the second claim is true.
In big cities like Los Angeles, you're lucky if you can see the hills 1/4 mile away from you. The smog is so thick on some days everything is grey, almost like an overcast day. I don't live in LA, but the few times I've visited, it sure made me glad that I live in Washington.
How much of the smog is caused by cars, and how much is caused by other things? You assume that it's all due to cars, and I don't agree.
Now, call me queer
I'm a gay man, and I don't throw around that word lightly.
I'm pretty sure that oil is bad in the water supply.
Your glittering generalities do not impress me. In any case, I agree that drinking oil would be bad. How much of that oil that you mentioned is in "the water supply"?
I would pretty much say, yeah, that cars do indeed pollute.
I agree.
And since all leftists are just Star Trek watching, socialist, college students, I wouldn't worry about what they have to say.
I agree. Unfortunately, some of them happen to be in the highest offices of the most powerful nation on earth.
Because it seems that the majority of people right now
So leftist of you. "Only the majority is important. Screw the minority!"
people who once were in college, and aren't going to give up thier selfish, wanna-have-invididualism
This is where Leftists and Christians say exactly the same thing. The Christian version of what you've said is this: "People won't give up their selfish ways and turn to God". To Leftists, God is Government (or Gaea). To Christians, God is the 3-in-1. The sin for both groups is selfishness.
even though its going to destroy the planet for everyone
I know you love Gaea very much, but we're not going to destroy the planet. Even if we pollute the hell out of it, it will be "The Earth + Pollution". The Earth will not be destroyed. Yes, I lifted that from George Carlin.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
There is a major point overlooked in most (if not all) plans to ban cars from cities (or create new cities without cars in them): People ENJOY driving their cars.
:)
I simply do not want to get wet when it rains, I don't want to wait for any form of public transportation either.
Busses, subways and trains go from some point I'm not at, to a place that I do not need to go. And, usually, at a timepoint I dont need to travel.
For this luxury, I'm quite willing to sacrifice some environmental aspects, and I dont mind taking the risk of being ran over too...
Fortunately, I can choose not to live in a city like this
Just another view of all this... How many people died from terrorists last year in the world. 700ish I heard? How many people died in car accidents just in America? 50,000ish? How much money are we (our dictator Bush) spending on playing cowboys and Iragis? 75 billion I think he requested?
I know I'm stretching connections here but it's still interesting to think what could happen if we spent 75 bil$ on transportation in this country. How many lives would be saved just by improving mass transit, or better bike lanes, or just some informative commercials or billboards for all the thick-headed drivers around here.
Just pondering...
Jason
I really thought that Venice was a really inappropriate example. I've spent a couple of days there, but it seems it's not really much of a real, functioning city. All the businesses I saw there were ice cream shops, jewelry stores, little restaurants, or museums. Just touristy stuff.
As I understand it, the city of Venice is pretty much a tourist town, with modern Venice on the mainland (actually a different city, with a diifferent name that eludes me), an ugly blight of post-industrial wasteland, and a vast contrast to the gorgeous nearby Po river valley.
In summary, Venice is a very poor example of a real city without cars. I really do like the premise of this website, but Venice is a bad example. Venice is for tourists anymore, not regular people living regular lives.
All that said, I agree that wiser decisions on everyone's part can help. However, you make it sound like a point blank choice of whether to drive a car or not. In most parts of the United States it is necessary to function.
Given a choice, what transit system would you ride?
PRT systems have almost all the advantages of a car.
Every non-PRT public transit system has proven itself a failure. That is, the systems fail to attract significant percentages of commuters. And, they fail to cover operating costs by huge margins, let alone recouping capital cost.
The best public transit models available suggest that PRT systems would attract a significant percentage of commuters, cover operating costs, and eventually recoup the capital costs. It's amazing to me that no one has built such a system yet.
Then again, Atlas Shrugged. The auto industry and rail industry have a pretty entrenched interest in preventing progress. Politicians want to be able to say "it's not my fault that the transit system failed. We used proven technologies." Proven to fail, but proven nonetheless...
Support your local PRT movement.
I used to be a narrator for bad mimes. (wright)
If I remember correctly, a lot of this is because of bone head voters. For instance, the BART has had trouble getting extended down the penninsula through San Mateo to San Jose because voters in every little town along the way (Burlingame, San Mateo, Belmot, Palo Alto), etc. have to approve it. And in each town, there's some people who claim that by having a BART station in their town, it'll allow bums and degenerates from other areas easy access to their area and lower property values. So part of the reason has to fall back on the voters.
Having grown up in Brazil, I must say I was probably like most americans. Life without a car was impossible. Public transportation sucked, and maybe differently from the US, was dangerous. Going out with friends usually meant driving for at least 10 miles, usually much more. Downtown was 20 miles away.
I have been living in Paris for 4 years now. I am fortunate enough to afford living in the city centre. And I do not have a car, nor do I want one.
Don't get it wrong, Paris is far from a car free city. It is probably a car infested city. Worse than that, most Americans will find driving here close to insanity. Parking is impossible. Taxis on weekends, inexistant. Well, they do exist, but will refuse to take you anywhere. It doesn't matter. Let me tell you why...
I am only 4 miles from everywhere. That is correct, Paris is a circle 8 miles in diameter. Being in the center means 4 miles from anywhere. And 2 million people live in this area ( 10 million in metropolitan area ).
I am also only 1/4 mile from a subway station. In fact, there is no place in the city much farther than that from some station. The subway goes everywhere.
So, we learn to live without a car. And the city is divided in what we call "quartiers". This means, local neighborhoods where you have everything. Supermarket, bakery, cinemas, restaurants, and everything else you need on a daily basis.
And it is so great. I still like cars, and rent them whenever I am in a travelling mood. But in the city? No point in having it. And walking is so great.
Everyone should try it once in a lifetime. For me, I learned that there is an option to car "dependant" life, and I do not want to go back...
Having people in our public spaces makes those spaces much more safe. It's idiotic how people have lobbied to have public phones and benches removed, because they encourage loitering and make the community less safe. That's bull. Loitering makes a community more safe. It's things like cars that take people out of public spaces and make a community less safe.
I'm only familiar with 2 cities - St. Louis, MO and San Diego, CA. Both of these cities have neighborhoods that could be converted to "car-free" with a minimum of hassle. In San Diego, Ocean Beach could easily keep cars out of the main strip (which i believe is Voltaire), and then slowly expand the car-free area. I would think that the residents would even be somewhat supportive of such an idea! The problem would then be getting merchandise to the local stores. This could also be done in St. Louis in The Loop (Delmar). There is really no reason why small neighborhoods couldn't do something like this.
Oh, and for all you people that are still talking about Segways - make sure to watch the next episode of American Idol, and also check out the new Britney Spears album. Those are some other products that are worthless but shiny and well-marketed.
-dbc
Some of the city-design ideas on this Carfree.com site echo those advanced over 25 years ago in the influential book A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, Sara, Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, and others. This book details a "working alternative to our present ideas about architecture, building, and planning," with over 250 specific advisories starting at the very high overview level ("Independent Regions" instead of our current nation-states) and moving in successive stages down through town design, becoming always more specific ("Mosaic of Subcultures," "Industrial Ribbon," "Nine Percent Parking," placement of food stands and bus stops), and then to low-level details of individual building design ("Sequence of Sitting Spaces," "Light on Two Sides of Every Room," very specific construction details, and "Paving With Cracks Between the Stones").
A Pattern Language is a remarkable book, the principal influence on Stewart Brand's The Whole Earth Catalog and used by the city designers for the upcoming STAR WARS GALAXIES online game. I suspect, but don't know for sure, that its "patterns" concept influenced the current mode of "design patterns" among coders. For other examples of the book's influence, and of the theorists' current work, see their Web site, especially the overview of patterns.
Suburbs beyond walking distance from work have existed for less than 100 years. Cities have existed for several thousand years. Most responses to my comment assume that just because suburbs and urban sprawl are the norm today, they cannot be changed.
Yes, and laws can be changed. Not overnight, certainly. I pointed at possible solutions, you only raise problems without attempting to resolve them. Actually, I quite like the outdoors, and would like to see less of it under asphalt. I would like to have real parks within walking distance, which are closer to the 'outdoors' than a back lawn ever could be. I don't think things will change instantly, but you have to start somewhere.While I would not care to live in a medieval city, for example, there are many factors in historical city design which could help to improve today's cities. Today's cities are socially stratified. They have lifeless centres. They are hostile to pedestrians and cyclists. People hate and fear their neighbours.
Canada, actually. A car is even more necessary here, due to colder, longer winters, and greater distances than in the US. I was trying to make the point that actions speak louder than words. That major change is the result of many small decisions. That each of us can do something if we want to see cities change.I have kids and a dog. I would rather have a quarter the yard of my current house, so long as I had:
- no useless front yard (currently 1/3 of my yard)
- minimal driveway (currently 1/6 of my yard)
- a nearby park to take the kids and dog to play, in some real open space
- zero setback zoning bylaws, so that instead of two thin side yards, I might have one usable side yard (or none at all).
I think the above would give me a better lifestyle than the typical suburb. Less maintenance of the showy, useless stuff, more time to do the things I enjoy.Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
Nobody will read this because I didn't post it in the first 12 seconds the article it up but I'll post anyways.
I'm an American from near Chicago IL, but I live in Montreal QC (that's in Canada) completely without at car. The reason I can do this is that the transit and services is setup to let me do this. The metro/bus system is reliable and affordable, and taxis are plentiful and decently priced. If I want groceries I either carry them with me or I can have them delivered to my apartment by any number of grocery stores.
At home, however...
Its HELL. You can't go anywhere without a car. Everything is spread very far apart because either it was built during the "hack and slash" all I want is land years, or because it was easier to put a super-megalo-gigantico mart. These ultra-shops are so big you almost need a car to go through them. It takes forever to get what you actually want, and the service/quality stinks.
The US has simply built cities that are too spread apart. For a nice urban environment you need things less spread apart, with adequate services and clean transportation.
I will only get a car again if I absolutly have to. Otherwise I will rent for vacations.
Rob
I did this in Simcity Classic with trains. I'll submit my solution (saved game) to carfree.com
Make technology so great that nobody has to leave their home. Ever. Why do we leave home as it is?
1. To go to work. Well, let's get net applications and vpns better so more people can telecommute.
2. For entertainment. DVD home theater packages prove that people will choose to stay home if the technology is good enough. So, we need holodecks at home so nobody will need to leave their home for any entertainment.
3. Food and shopping. Revive WebVan. Amazonify everything else. Deliver everything to people's homes.
4. Social reasons. Improve web video so people can interact via their computers. Less need to go out.
Do these four things. People will still need to go out every once in a while for something tangible (visit the dentist, see Yosemite for real) but you'd severely reduce traffic. And, as people got more overweight from lack of physical activity and eating all the home delivery food, they'd be physically unable to leave the home, reducing traffic further.
doing things on foot requires different approaches, that's all. when the grocery is one block away, you only buy for today and tomorrow maybe. you don't buy 12 bags of stuff. when you buy something big, you get it delivered.
it's not as hectic or as much of a hassle if you don't let it be. car scale thinking for foot scale living makes things harder than it needs to be.
m.
Obviously, both your troubles ocurred in an area known as statistically dangerous for alcohol related accidents. This is also why it is dangerous to ride a bike near churches, police stations, and airport runways.
This doesn't even take into account NYC, where it is traditionally acceptable to drive on sidewalks during rush hour, provided you honk the horn repeatedly.
I guess they'll have to strap a subwoofer to their ass so they can still walk down the street and annoy people with their lack of respect for others.
Feel sad for all the weenies that think that a honda looks so much better with fins, spoilers, stickers, neon etc...but I guess that's what body mods are for.
Well that's cool, but what if you can't afford doormen, deliveries, handymen, restaurants (most of the time), cabs, etc ?
s -tickets-may2003.pdf
I live in Houston, which is alot like Atlanta, but with much better roads. Yes, there are lots of crappy things about a motopia. There are also things that are good and bad, depending on your point of view. For example, it allow the middle class to seperate themselves fully from the lower classes, leaving most (until recently almost all) inner city neighbourhoods in Houston 99% lower class.
I do prefer cities like London with their well developed public transport and a decent population. New York is a very different story, because it has such a massive underclass. You have to ride that train with a bunch of scum and watch your back when you get off. Then, you are much more vulnerable on foot to attack, rape, and murder. No thanks.
What is the actual annual minimal cost for a car? If you can teach yourself how to fix basic problems, and buy a used for $1000 that you can probably keep going for about 2 years, that's $500/year. Insurance at a cut rate place runs _up to_ $60 if you answer the questions correctly (no tickets, no accidents, whatever the truth). That's $720 a year. Then, a liberal estimate of gas costs for a full fledged commute acorss Houston is something like $100 a month, for $1200 per year. Add in $200 a year for parts. What is the total? $3,200 per year, $260 per month.
I was unable to find a yearly total for NY, but a one year pass on London Transport, which includes tube and buses, would run you between $1000 and $2250 depending on what zones you need.
http://www.londontransport.co.uk/tfl/pdfdocs/fare
The major problem with having a car free city in the US is lack of transportation. The reason we don't have transportation is the way the cities we live in are built. The cities we live in are built the way they are cause every one has a car. Here lies the problem.
The root of the problem is we build our housing in too low a density in the US.
For transit to work there has to be a minimum number of riders for the system to work economically. To get enough riders to do that transit need a certain density of population. Also transit will normally only get riders to walk 1/4 mile to a transit top.
The problem is most Americans want conflicting things in housing. They want a big house, and they want open space. These don't sound like the conflict but they do.
Say you have 10 acres of land. If on that land you you build like most modern subdivisions do, you will build 1/4 of the land in to streets, and then 3-5 houses per acre. Most people see this and think it is great. they have a big yard and a big house and a street. But, what they don't see is that 1/4 of all our property is covered in streets. Now on top of that land getting used for streets tons of other land gets used for parking lots and freeways. Leaving nearly as much land in the US tied up in places for cars to go as places for people to go. Also, because of the low density of this housing to driver from that house to another house (or school or store) you have to drive a lot farther. The result is more cars on the streets making longer trips. People who design networks will see the problem here. In addition this method of building houses results in a very low density of people. For transit to move these people it has to make long trips and people have to walk a long way to get to it. Also because it is making long trips it takes a long time to get anywhere making transit inconvenient. Because its inconvenient no one takes it anywhere, they have to raise prices, less people take it, etc...
Now, if you look at cities where transit works, NYC, SF and most European cities houses are built differently. In all of these places houses are built much denser. Most Americans will bitch that they would feel crowded. But the result is less crowding. The reason for this is by building denser, say 15 - 20 unit per acre you now can house all those people in less space. Also because people are closer together there is less street getting built and less land dedicated to cars. You can now use that extra space for some thing like a park. Because most people are not home most of the time, building public areas results in more efficient use of that space. Some one will be using it all the time.
Now that people are closer to each other, they are also able to walk from place to place. you no longer have to walk past those huge lots, you walk past a nice small lot.
Most importantly now you have the critical mass of people required to make transit work
Now for all those people in Dallas, San Jose, and Los Angeles who say they cant survive with out cars, try traveling to another country and you will quickly learn it happen every day. All we need is to express interest in living that way and we can start building that way. Many cities are pushing very hard to get more people living in the urban core of the city. They are offering tax breaks, low interest loans and other incentives. Developers build houses the market demands. If people demand better housing that works with transit, they will get it. If a city doesn't zone in such a way to build affordable housing near jobs go down to the city planning department and tell them, they can (and will) change the zoning. Cities want to build smarter. It saves them money by decreasing the infrastructure they have to build and the area in which they have to supply services.
1 million people in 100 square miles is 2788 square feet per person, TOTAL.
Not all of that space will be available to each person, of course. Some of it MUST be reserved for roadways, or helipads, or whatever, for those times when it is absolutely critical (as in life-and-death critical) to move someone, with equipment, from point A to point B in the absolute minimum possible time. (They're called "ambulance rides to trauma centers". They happen. I've done it. It really was an emergency: I stopped breathing about the time they were rolling me through the ER doors. I woke up, in ICU, on a respirator, a full week later.)
There are still going to be requirements for hospitals. There are still going to be requirements for schools. There are still going to be requirements for entertainment venues.
ALL OF THOSE USES COME OUT OF THAT 2788 sq.ft. per person.
There are still going to be requirements to haul equipment from point A to point B. You will still need roads, and you will still need powered cargo vehicles.
It's an interesting idea, but we - and I'm talking humans here - will never change until the final hour, when the last drop of oil is squozen from its source and a concrete slab covers the last patch of grass. It is our legacy, and there's nothing to suggest we will change. For cryin' out, I live in L.A., and the number of SUV's here boggles the mind, this the most liberal state I've ever inhabited. If change requires individuals to make uncomfortable decisions, then the plan to change is doomed.
Spread a little sunshine!
You can fix it all by changing the urban planning strategy. I live in Vancouver, and you can see the success of our program. The region is bounded by an Agricultural Land Reserve, and can't grow outwards - so it can only grow by increasing density. This is achieved by "infill" - taking existing low-density lots, and filling in the gaps to increase density. The first target is the surface parking lot, followed by empty malls, brownfield industrial sites, and even upping zoning densities when lots are redeveloped.
Small steps count. Since amalgamating into a larger megacity, Toronto has forced the suburbs to build sidewalks and bikelanes, and is slowly improving the livability of the outlying regions. Vancouver's downtown is a model of urban high-density redevelopment, as the abandoned portlands and waterfront industrial sites were rebuilt into highly livable condominium towers.
So don't give up hope - lobby your municipality for better urban planning, and push out the highway engineers!
- David
Oh yeah.. your so freaking brilliant! Why, lets see.. I work in downtown Houston. I think I want to live 10 minutes away..that puts me where? In really old, EXPENSIVE housing.. or a crappy ass over priced condo. You can have your little shit box. I wanna live in a house, with an actual yard my daughter cna play in. One were I don't have to hear the street noise 24 hours a day. That means I have to travel far further than a bicycle will get me in reasonable time. Or, in fact in reasonable safety. Of course.. you're probably the jackass that rides down the two lane blacktop and holds up the real traffic (you know.. the cars the damn road was built for in the first place). Come on, what may be oh so great for you may not work at all for other people. In some instances your way may create extra headaches for people who already have enough to deal with.
A lifeless suburb? Gee.. I have neighbors I;ve known for years. People that I help out and help me out. People who we have cook outs iwth. Is that lefless? Or does lifeless mean "No chance of getting ran over 10 feet from your front door"?
As far as your "fundamental truths". Get bent. Your arrogant self-righteous opinions are not truths.
In North America the scheme for eliminating freight ways is doomed.
Too much volume. How many donkeys does it take to carry the same weight and volume as a 40 foot semi trailer.? No multiply that by six orders of magnitude.
The use of containers in shipping has eliminated billions of dollars in pilferage and cut many organized crime revenue streams off at the knees.
And if you have roads for freight, they car also carry cars...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This site makes no mention of emergencies. If someone has a heart attack does a paramedic have to switch between two subway tracks to get to him and let the poor heart attack victim die? To some extent you need cars for "regular (daily) circumstances"... not just for "special situations" like the site says.
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG