Syt's Pictorial Collection of Stuff and Things (image heavy)

[Josquius]

Rather more (on my phone so very bleh)



Everyone is 10 minutes from a station. Mixture of express and local trains to give full access to everyone whilst at the same time minimising how long it takes to travel long distances.


And hey. The best house in the world is no good if it takes you forever to get there and there's no town centre to go to for leisure time.

[Maladict]

I never said Britain had it right either. We are one of the worst in Europe, especially when you consider how much we threw away to get here.

So we should aim for this:



So very compact.

Bad example, Paris is a really compact city for its size.

[Maladict]

Rather more (on my phone so very bleh)

Christaller would be proud.

[Sheilbh]

It's interesting watching a discussion about car usage between Europeans and Americans. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine who'd just moved to Chicago from London. He was being interviewed for a job and they asked if it was possible for him to come into the office for a face-to-face interview. (This was 25 years ago, so video conferencing wasn't really available.) He said sure! He was going to be in New York in the next couple of weeks and he would just "pop over" to Chicago for the interview. His plan was to drive there with a friend for a "couple of days" because that sounded fun anyway. Then he mapped it. Then he priced flights. Then he priced the train and looked at train schedules.

It never occurred to him that even though the map shows Chicago as only "this far" from New York, it would amount to 1000 miles (~1600km).

Distance in the US (and Canada, to an extent, though most of their cities are packed along the border) is not comparable to European distances. Even cities are spread out for the most part, compared to Paris, London, Rome.

So trying to say that the US wastes time/energy on cars is almost silly. Unless one stays completely within a city - and not all cities have good public transit - cars are essential. One can get by in some cities without a problem, but for most Americans, it's just not optional.

People keep mentioning the US despite the fact I said I wasn't really talking about big places

My point is the reason cars are not optional for people is because we have constructed a society that is based on and revolves around access to cars. If we make different decisions, we get a different result.

[Tamas]

I think you have it mixed up. We created a society to which car is the optimal answer.

[grumbler]

I would agree that crs in big cities created the very problem they were designed to solve:  lack of freedom to easily get from point A to point B.

Different solutions would have required different priorities.  Technology in the form of self-driving cars which can be pooled rather than individually owned may change that solution, though.  We can hope.

[The Brain]

Jesus. Is that the ending of a Teletubbies gangbang?

[Razgovory]

Your conclusion doesn't match the rest of the post there.
American cities being so horribly spread out is not the natural way they must be. Pre war they were far more compact and along a similar scale to European cities. With public transport.
Instead of following this more efficient path America instead lead the pack in the disasterous mid 20th century trend of car focused urban design.

Uh, no.  Most American cities were not compact like European cities.  Most American cities were platted out in a grid well before much building started.  Land was cheap so spreading out made economic sense.  Most European cities were not planned out so streets and buildings were just put where ever.

Keep in mind that cars replaced something much dirtier and less efficient: Horses. Pre-automobile cities required significant infrastructure to feed, stable, and maintain horses.  Horse waste is a also a problem.  In pre-automobile cities the streets were covered in horse shit.

[Josquius]

That's not a city you're talking about, it's a county.
Horses were a few steps behind cars. They were already on the way out with trams.
In actual cities not many people bar the very wealthy had a horse (and carriage and driver)  in the way people have a car today.

[garbon]

Rather more (on my phone so very bleh)



Everyone is 10 minutes from a station. Mixture of express and local trains to give full access to everyone whilst at the same time minimising how long it takes to travel long distances.


And hey. The best house in the world is no good if it takes you forever to get there and there's no town centre to go to for leisure time.

Why would someone be bothered about a town center?

[Josquius]

]

Why would someone be bothered about a town center?

Some people like other people, concerts, clubs, restaurants, etc...

[garbon]

]

Why would someone be bothered about a town center?

Some people like other people, concerts, clubs, restaurants, etc...

Those things don't have to all be in one location.

[Josquius]

]

Why would someone be bothered about a town center?

Some people like other people, concerts, clubs, restaurants, etc...

Those things don't have to all be in one location.

They are far more effective when they are.
Not to mention the prospect of encouraging drink driving.

[garbon]

Don't see why that needs to be the case. Seems they would be better spread out, less crowding.

Also, perhaps people shouldn't aim to get blotto when going out.

[Razgovory]

That's not a city you're talking about, it's a county.
Horses were a few steps behind cars. They were already on the way out with trams.
In actual cities not many people bar the very wealthy had a horse (and carriage and driver)  in the way people have a car today.

No, I'm describing cities in the US.  Cities in the US were not like cities in Europe.

Trams were pulled by horses.  Horses were by no means restricted to the wealthy in the US.  The average American was much wealthier than his European cousins and horses more common.  Now people didn't own horses the same way people owned cars but they were common.  If you ran a business you needed something to move goods from the train station or dock to your establishment.  That meant horses.

Something else that should be considered is that many American cities didn't become large until after cars were invented.  Denver is a midsized American city.  It has 600k people today.  In 1880 it had 35k.  Phoenix has 1.6 million.  In 1880 it had 1.7 thousand.