Fried_out_Kombi[meme] You can tell a lot about a society by how they allocate space
craftyindividual
baseless_discourseI think these are used to called “streets”, now roads are streets…
That looks so pleasant but seems like a nightmare if you have to go long distances to somewhere specific.
Getting groceries would also probably be a pain. You would have to probably get a wagon or something.
YuumiI’ve seen come crazy people on bikes man, surely that can be used
But then you've got people on bikes trying to dodge pedestrians.
generally places with high enough population density for streets have grocery stores often enough so you rarely have to walk more than 5-10 mins to get there so you dont have to buy enough food for a week on one go
e-raticYep, when people say that they're imagining their 3 mile drive commute to the shop being replaced by walking when that's not all that would change
Exactly. No one’s advocating that walking be a drop-in replacement for all our driving trips. What this community wants is neighborhoods dense and walkable enough that you don’t have to travel 3 miles just to get groceries. Or if you do, there ought to at least be a high-quality bike path and/or public transit to get you there and back. Car-oriented urban design just needlessly spreads things out and needlessly segregates uses. Neighborhoods should be denser and mixed-use.
Walk short distances on quiet, low-stress streets, having chance encounters with friends and neighbors? I can see why people are afraid of this nightmarish hellscape! /s
Seriously, I do sort of understand. Decades of isolation and media brainwashing has made Americans literally terrified of each other. We have a huge loneliness epidemic, and research finds that those sort of loose, community ties are what would best fix it. Yet, we refuse, and cower behind the wheel of our Suburban Assault Vehicles.
Seriously, I do sort of understand. Decades of isolation and media brainwashing has made Americans literally terrified of each other. We have a huge loneliness epidemic, and research finds that those sort of loose, community ties are what would best fix it. Yet, we refuse, and cower behind the wheel of our Suburban Assault Vehicles.
Honestly, I suspect this is a large part of why cities tend to be so socially liberal. When you have to exist in the same space as people of all manner of different skin tones, appearances, lifestyles, religions, etc., you eventually realize that they’re all just normal people wanting to live out their lives, get groceries, get to school/work, etc.
It’s when you’re isolated away from everyone and everyone that paranoia kicks in. When you live in suburbia, your house starts to feel like a fortress that needs to be protected from everyone, and anyone on the street starts to seem a threat. But when you live in a city, the abundance of people on the streets becomes a source of safety – hard to commit crime when there are so many potential witnesses! There’s a reason crime statistically congregates in places like under freeway overpasses and in dark alleyways and other places with few pedestrians – crime doesn’t like witnesses.
Parking lots. Don’t forget parking lots! A large proportion of assaults happen in parking lots because there are no witnesses around to help.
For convenience, the wagon could be motorized. Perhaps even have a nice, comfy seat or two.
Convenient for whom? Ever hear of the Tragedy of the Commons?
Is that the one about the guy who was so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians to create life?
That guy had a motorized wagon?!
diprount_tomatoThat’s just a fat people scooter
I’m in a fairly dense, walkable neighborhood with grocery stores within a 5-minute walk of me. Stopping by a few times a week and carrying the groceries is very feasible. Else, I sometimes go to another grocery store that’s like a 10-minute bike ride away for certain items, and plenty of people just put pannier bags on their bikes for grocery shopping. I also see plenty of people with wagons for groceries in my neighborhood.
I walk about 15-20 minutes 1 way to my grocer about twice a week and much prefer it over driving and buying in bulk. Carrying my grocceries home helps prevent me from over spending and buying junk foods and I end up eating more fresh produce and animal products than processed foods. The walk is also great for my physical and mental health.
Less waste too. You buy only what you need, not what you might need
only if you are in bad fitness and adjusted to sitting around and driving all the time
stephfinitelyThere would still be roads just not everywhere. The roads would connect communities and since these community would be built around walking you would just take public transport.
Can’t you walk for like 10 minutes to get stuff?
I can, but the 40t truck that delivers the groceries to the store might have problems.
BombOmOmIs the truck supposed to drive down the walkway with the pedestrians? That seems fucking terrible.
I have been on roads like that in Asia in urban areas. Basically mopeds are the answer to every “well what if I have to move a lot of stuff or get somewhere fast” question. It isn’t a perfect solution but it is a decent one.
oce 🐆If you have to go long distances, in modern countries, you take a train. Groceries are at a walkable distance, you can go 2 or 3 times a week easily, on the way back from work for example. Also tape water is drinkable there so you don’t need to carry heavy luxury plastic wrapped water.
Found the American :)
They used to be. And then people decided carriages were more convenient than walking. And then people decided cars were more convenient than carriages.
People didn’t really decide, an upper class was able to afford automobiles, they hit tons of people in the streets, they worked together with politicians and automakers to push to make streets for the cars for safety, and invented the term jaywalking. The people who owned cars decided streets belonged to them and through mass production and suburban development, they have become completely normalized.
I wonder, were population centers large enough to be considered “busy” before domesticated horses and carriages were around?
At the peak of the Roman empire, the city of Rome had at least one million inhabitants, a total not equaled again in Europe until the 19th century.
That number is usually considered to be way too high fwiw. At 1,000,000, it would have a population density of over 72,000 per square kilometer. Manila is the densest city in the world today at about 43,000 per square kilometer.
It’s even less likely when you consider they didn’t have any sort of high rises and a third of the city was dedicated to parks and public buildings.
At the peak of the Roman empire, the city of Rome had at least one million inhabitants, a total not equaled again in Europe until the 19th century.
And then people demanded lots of paved raceways for their cars, which filled up, and made things dangerous for everybody, and worthwhile places far apart, and most of the drivers angry and miserable. Now, the world is on fire, mental health and social cohesion has gone to shit, and all those paved raceways are falling apart because nobody can afford to fix them.
But, yeah, the first part of that story is cute.
That sounds like an exaggeration.
Aye, it does sound that way until you start digging into it. The traffic congestion, the road rage, and the rising rate of traffic fatalities are just obvious.
Think about it more, and work-from-home is still a big fight after the pandemic because people hate commuting. It’s pretty obvious when looking around out on the road; driving does not make drivers happy on the whole. The world is literally on fire; we had weeks of air-quality alerts around here because of record-breaking Canadian wildfires. Driving everywhere cuts off interactions with other people, the “weak ties” in a community that we now know are essential to countering the loneliness epidemic. In fact, the opioid epidemic is related, because opioids simulate the same brain receptors as social connectedness. And, of course, American infrastructure consistently gets failing grades because we don’t maintain it. We would, but state and municipal budgets are straining under the burden.
I’m short, there’s tons of justification to “fuck cars”, if you look. There’s lots more than what I’ve mentioned here.
Oh how nice you can rub it in you can walk great distances without pain or having to carry anything heavy in any of those photos. The world is against those with disabilities.
Many people can’t drive because of disabilities either, and cars make spaces much less safe for many people with certain disabilities as well. For example, my sister dealt with random spells of vertigo for a while, and thus her driver’s license was suspended as a result. Car dependency made life significantly harder for her once she was no longer able to drive because of it. The one thing that ended up being a lifesaver for her was an e-bike, as it could handle the steep hills in her neighborhood and get her to the nearest grocery store a few miles away. Even with that, her neighborhood still has almost no bike infrastructure, which make biking to the store much more hostile than it should or could be.
Similarly, there are plenty of people who can’t walk or bike very far and can’t safely drive (like elderly people) for whom public transit is a great option – provided we as a society choose to build enough public transit to serve them, of course.
Point is, the only transit system that can serve everyone is a multi-modal one, where there is bicycling, walking, public transit, etc. all layered together.
No one here is against disabled people using small motorized vehicles to go around. You don’t need to carry stuff that doesn’t fit in a backpack 99% of the time. I don’t see how the car solves the bathroom issue, we have public toilets and commerces with toilets here.
Car culture pushes people far from their work with no alternative, that’s what we fight precisely.
Car culture pushes people far from their work with no alternative, that’s what we fight precisely.
Walking is slow and you can’t bring stuff with you. Keep the roads, but provide better public transport and tax big pickup trucks and SUVs
Wdym? These streets are driveable, you just have to go slowly and through limited areas
That sounds like the worst of both worlds
Well, that’s what those “walkable streets” are
Surprise, the world isn’t all glitter and unicorns
It’s not, it’s how roadway heirachy is supposed to work. You have slow pedestrian streets which are places you go, and high speed, grade separated roads which connect them along with biking and walking paths. Streets still need car access, but not fast and not as thoroughfares.
What the US has done is merged this into the stroad, which doesn’t work for anyone.
Urbanism’s whole point is the relative slowness of walking. Cargo can be escalated through hand, bag, backpack, cart, disassembly, re-acquisition.
you can’t bring stuff with you.
Pockets, bags, carts. You can take even more stuff walking than on public transit.
They are in every place that isn’t America, at least in the city centers
Clearly never been to the Middle East
Arabian cities are all artificial and opulent, and probably designed in accordance to American standards.
Okay, but its not only American cities. I think part of it is experiencing population growth simultaneously with wealth at the same time as cars being around
Must have missed them the last time I was in Frankfurt.
Fuck cobblestone.
This comment was written by the bycicle gang.
I’m wondering if they feel as horrible on a fully suspended bike. I’m also commenting something just because.
They maybe feel less horrible, but the vibration screws up your bike.
It also sucks for those of us with bad ankles and knees. Almost as bad as sand. All I see on those pictures is pain.
They are also extremely slippery when wet or frozen. So add a lawsuit to the pain as well.
Default_DefectYeah, looking at one of those is making ankle hurt.
There are workarounds to get cobblestone streets to work. In Groningen, Netherlands, I’ve seen cozy cobblestone streets which had a 50cm (1½ feet?) wide and very even brick strip in the center for bicycles. Looks and works great and it is an easy retrofit for historic cobblestone.
YES YES YES YES!
I walk in the middle of the road everyday to confuse ans annoy car drivers.
Free the streets!
People make fun of the “new towns” planned and built by post-war socialist governments in the UK, but I spent some delivering leaflets in Stevenage recently and it’s honestly heaven for pedestrians.
There are roads for cars, but they all connect to the back of homes. The front of each house leads into a wide pedestrian / cycle path, and the paths connect via tunnels underneath the roads. I would walk hours each day delivering leaflets and never see a car.