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

[Razgovory]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q5Nur642BU

This is a fairly famous film shot in San Francisco in 1906.  You see a lot of cars and horse drawn wagons.

[viper37]

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.

We already have a prototype of this in the form of pooled cars.  Since they still require a driver, the car can't drop you at your job and get someone else elsewhere, but still, the option to go without a car unless the days you really need it is there.  It does not reduce traffic by much.

We have traffic because we have standardized working hours in cities.  Try to get public transit in the opposite direction of the traffic flow at a specific hour and you are fucked.  Try living just outside the city center and using public transit on week-ends and you are fucked.

Cities are unwilling to invest in any kind of transit that would favor a neighbouring city and governments are unwilling to defend pricey inter-urban transit solutions when it's clear most people prefer to be in their own "bubble".  To make people forgo their cars to use something else, that something else has to be much more convenient.  If it takes longer and requires you to be cramped for all the duration of the trip, people won't use it.

Even with self driving cars, if the majority of people need to be at work and at school by 8:00am and need to be at the kindergarden before 17:00, you will have the same traffic problems. And having a shared car means you must trust the hygiene of the other people using the car, which is one of the reason why most people buy their own cars: to be alone in there, in your things.

[Josquius]

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.

Well I've lived in American style towns and European style ones and the difference is night and day. A thriving town centre really makes all the difference.
Network effects are very real and footfall is a huge thing people look out for when setting up this kind of business.

And you don't have to be drunk at all to fall foul of drink driving laws. Just 2 beers and you're done.

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

Which we would call a county.
When we are talking about cities we aren't talking about places officially called a city with people scattered over an area the size of a small country, we are talking about your New York, Philadelphias, etc...

Trams were pulled by horses.

At first this was common. By the time cars came in horse drawn trams were pretty much extinct. (I do wonder where the last hold ons were).

  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.

Sure. If you ran a relevant sort of business. This was a minority of people however.
In the country then absolutely horses were more common with typical Americans. There were a lot more people with their own farms in the US afterall and the frontier was still a thing.
In cities though I've seen no evidence that horses were much more common in the US.

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.

Yes. This is definitely a factor in America going all in for mid 20th century trends. Its the same for towns over here that were founded in the era and why Japan is similar. Really unfortunate combination of events.

[garbon]

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.

Besides the fact that the forum having many people who live in North America, I think it is a reasonable point to raise when suggesting a car ban. Why would people want to give up conveniences that other places would continue to have?

[Sheilbh]

Yes. This is definitely a factor in America going all in for mid 20th century trends. Its the same for towns over here that were founded in the era and why Japan is similar. Really unfortunate combination of events.

I would like to slightly caveat this with America going all in for mid-20th century trends being possibly my favourite thing about America, because I l o v e that aesthetic

[Razgovory]

Okay, I'm confused by Tyr's county/city thing.

[Josquius]

Okay, I'm confused by Tyr's county/city thing.

America throws around the title of city willy nilly. Practically any settlement can be a city. If its a strip of land full of farms and scattered clusters of houses then it isn't a city in my book.
I saw this kind of thing a lot in Japan. There's been a huge trend, especially this century, to merge towns and villages into "cities" for ease of administration despite them really just being a collection of towns scattered over hundreds of square kilometers. Perhaps more famously China has also done that a lot in modern times, effectively just counting a city as a non agricultural county.
When we are comparing cities in the US and in Europe we should try to compare like with like, comparing the true cities of each rather than semi rural areas.

[garbon]

Okay, I'm confused by Tyr's county/city thing.

America throws around the title of city willy nilly. Practically any settlement can be a city. If its a strip of land full of farms and scattered clusters of houses then it isn't a city in my book.
I saw this kind of thing a lot in Japan. There's been a huge trend, especially this century, to merge towns and villages into "cities" for ease of administration despite them really just being a collection of towns scattered over hundreds of square kilometers. Perhaps more famously China has also done that a lot in modern times, effectively just counting a city as a non agricultural county.
When we are comparing cities in the US and in Europe we should try to compare like with like, comparing the true cities of each rather than semi rural areas.

Well except that say city status in the UK isn't actually applied by specific criteria. Armagh with ~14k population is a city.

[Sheilbh]

Well except that say city status in the UK isn't actually applied by specific criteria. Armagh with ~14k population is a city.

But isn't Tyr's point it's not about the formal title but whether somewhere's an actual urban area. So yeah I think you have city status from the Medieval period if you have a Cathedral or a castle, or maybe a university? But I don't think Tyr is suggesting comparing NYC and the City of Wells

[Josquius]

Aye, just because the US doesn't do it well doesn't mean the UK is perfect. Having a cathedral this side of the reformation isn't exactly a smart way to distinguish whether somewhere is a city or not.

With modern towns and city status we have things a bit straighter. It's a very limited thing given in only exceptional circumstances. Still not great though. Metropolitan counties are probably our most sensible approach, with the addition of some larger urban areas not defined as such.

But yes. More talking about Merseyside than Liverpool and only Liverpool.

[garbon]

Let's go to something concrete. I think we can all agree Oxford is a city with 150k populace. There's also a defined city core.

And yet, without a car, unless you live in the city centre, it is pretty hard to get around. What do you envision are the steps needed to get Oxfordites out of their cars?

[PDH]

Let's go to something concrete. I think we can all agree Oxford is a city with 150k populace. There's also a defined city core.

And yet, without a car, unless you live in the city centre, it is pretty hard to get around. What do you envision are the steps needed to get Oxfordites out of their cars?

Wait, I think I know the answer to this - Drunken street shenanigans?

[Sheilbh]

And yet, without a car, unless you live in the city centre, it is pretty hard to get around. What do you envision are the steps needed to get Oxfordites out of their cars?

Vastly improved public transport, better biking and walking infrastructure, no cars in the city core (beyond the few pedestrianised streets I know about) and possibly something like that Belgian city did so you can't drive from part x of the city to part y directly, instead you have to go via the ring road.

(I hate Oxford though )

[Razgovory]

Okay, I'm confused by Tyr's county/city thing.

America throws around the title of city willy nilly. Practically any settlement can be a city. If its a strip of land full of farms and scattered clusters of houses then it isn't a city in my book.
I saw this kind of thing a lot in Japan. There's been a huge trend, especially this century, to merge towns and villages into "cities" for ease of administration despite them really just being a collection of towns scattered over hundreds of square kilometers. Perhaps more famously China has also done that a lot in modern times, effectively just counting a city as a non agricultural county.
When we are comparing cities in the US and in Europe we should try to compare like with like, comparing the true cities of each rather than semi rural areas.

What American cities do you consider farms?

[Josquius]

Okay, I'm confused by Tyr's county/city thing.

America throws around the title of city willy nilly. Practically any settlement can be a city. If its a strip of land full of farms and scattered clusters of houses then it isn't a city in my book.
I saw this kind of thing a lot in Japan. There's been a huge trend, especially this century, to merge towns and villages into "cities" for ease of administration despite them really just being a collection of towns scattered over hundreds of square kilometers. Perhaps more famously China has also done that a lot in modern times, effectively just counting a city as a non agricultural county.
When we are comparing cities in the US and in Europe we should try to compare like with like, comparing the true cities of each rather than semi rural areas.

What American cities do you consider farms?

Denver and Phoenix were the two you mentioned.