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Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

wtp1saac
207 replies
1d22h

Strong Towns has called a good amount of attention to the mandatory parking requirements in many cities (and shockingly, many downtowns). Thankfully, it seems a fair number of cities are removing such restrictions, but hopefully it becomes more widespread.

In general I hope the US can urbanize, the older I get the more I realize it’s not really enjoyable living in this country. I don’t think I want hyper dense, but having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. More places to meet people too, there’s so few third places. And not needing to drive would be a really big convenience.

(To be clear, I doubt most of the US will urbanize given the rural nature of a lot of it, but I hope at least bigger cities can move in that direction)

coldpie
65 replies
1d22h

having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice.

We're at a critical juncture here in the Twin Cities. The state DOT needs to re-build the interstate that cuts right through the entire metro area (I-94) for the first time since it was first built 50 years ago. There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and replace it with a street. This would be amazing, the area around I-94 is, as you'd expect, quite unpleasant to be in. It's noisy, dirty, and dangerous. The interstate is infamous for being one of those roads that was planned to run through and destroy working class and Black neighborhoods in the 50s and 60s[1], and removing it would go some way to regaining what had been room for people to live. I think it's a bit of a longshot, but dang, I would love to see the cities recover that space for the people who actually live here, not just those who are driving through it. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I'm really hoping we don't blow it by just rebuilding the stupid thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_94_in_Minnesota#His...

seanmcdirmid
56 replies
1d21h

There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and replace it with a street.

I'm afraid that this would wind up like Vancouver, which lacks freeways through the city and has pretty bad traffic as a result. Better maybe to tunnel it under if possible? That works well for Seattle, although we still have I5 to contend with that divides the downtown from Capitol Hill (there is talk of lidding the entire freeway through downtown).

sfpotter
30 replies
1d20h

Creating I-5 was really contentious at the time. It destroyed neighborhoods. My family has lived in the area for several generations and my parents can attest to this.

Lidding it would be great, but removing it would be better. There are loads of people who live in the suburbs north and south of Seattle and expect to be able to drive 20-30 miles each way day-in-day-out to commute. If the city continues to grow, this simply isn't tenable in the long run, because you can't grow highway capacity forever; they would no longer be able to do this, which would be good. Just rip the band-aid off.

seanmcdirmid
29 replies
1d20h

The only thing worse than having I5 is not having I5. There really isn't enough north-south corridors to replace it (15th, 99, east/west lake...really that's it), given that I5 is close to the water and a huge hill as it comes in across from UW. It is already non-viable to expect a 20-30 minute commute into the city.

We saw what happened when the Palestine supporters blocked off I5 a few weeks ago...on a weekend without a rush hour, people were stuck in traffic for hours.

uoaei
19 replies
1d20h

Can you articulate a cogent reason why people need to cross the city on such a thoroughfare just to live their lives?

seanmcdirmid
17 replies
1d20h

You are located in the north of the city and need to get somewhere south of the city, or vice versa.

You only have a few roads to do that east or west of Lake Washington. In most cases, people aren't going to downtown Seattle, downtown Seattle is just in the way.

uoaei
16 replies
1d20h

Why are those services not available in the north of the city? This is as much a planning issue as traffic is.

seanmcdirmid
5 replies
1d20h

I think it has to do with the way the city grew out north and south, with the city itself as a chokepoint (since it is surrounded by water otherwise). Common reasons people need to go from north seattle to south seattle: IKEA, Southcenter, Seatac. I'm sure there are reasons for people to go north as well, but I have a harder time thinking of them (other than that they went south and now have to come back north).

com2kid
4 replies
1d19h

There is some really great African food up north just outside the city. :-D Likewise along the northern parts of Aurora you can get some really great Korean food. (Also not strictly in the city limits).

Parks, lots of parks.

The only decent real "spas" I've found are all up north (Again, Shoreline, just outside of the city)

Ballard and Fremont are both big draws.

UW, kind of a biggie.

seanmcdirmid
2 replies
1d19h

Federal Way has good Korean food also (well, along with lots of Koreans). Frankly, you'll find Asian communities south, east and north, with the high end in the east, the middle end in the north, and lots of value in the south.

Schools are better in the north, which is why we chose Ballard rather than Beacon Hill. The reason I don't think about North Seattle so much is because I live here, I guess (and getting places isn't so hard if I'm not crossing Seattle).

sfpotter
1 replies
1d19h

It sounds like you are already set up for I-5 getting obliterated.

If you only go to the south end for Ikea, Southcenter, and Seatac, how often do you really need to do those things? It's not like it becomes impossible to drive there, it just takes a little longer. Frankly, traffic in Seattle just isn't that bad compared to other major cities. I just checked the traffic from Ballard to Ikea, and it's 45 minutes on 99... I-5 isn't even the ideal route right now.

Of course I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit here, but you also have to weigh this against just how much additional real estate would come available if I-5 was gone. I don't think people's need for driving convenience actually stacks up that strongly against all the other positive considerations.

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
1d19h

Whenever I-5 is blocked off, 99 will be a mess, so its not like I can just say "oh, not my problem because I can avoid using it." You have to think about the traffic between Vancouver BC and Portland Oregon, it has to go somewhere, and 405 is even worse than I5 most of the time.

Tagbert
0 replies
1d4h

Sure, and those are one reason why those of us who live on the south side might drive though the city to the north side.

ndriscoll
5 replies
1d17h

Maybe it doesn't make sense to have duplicated services for the city. I grew up in Tucson. There's a zoo, but it wouldn't really make sense to have 2 zoos. Likewise with the Sonoran Desert Museum. There are also unique locations to visit. There's 1 Titan Missile Museum. There's 1 Old Tucson Studios. There's 1 Biosphere 2. They are spread out on opposite ends of the city. There are a bunch of hiking spots that are all different, and people don't want to go to the same one over and over.

Then you have things like the air force base or the university. They're important for the economy so you may work at or near them, but for the most part you don't really want to live directly adjacent to them. Fighter jets are very, very loud all day long (my mom lived where you could see the runway right behind her house when I was a teenager), and the military is known to dump very nasty chemicals for their training exercises. University students throw parties, and there's more crime in the area. For a few years, I lived a little over 2 miles from the university, and I had my bike stolen out of my backyard. In the further out part of town where I grew up, that was completely unheard of. Some of the downtown parks are mostly full of homeless adults. The parks where I grew up were mostly full of kids/teenagers.

So there's reasons why you might want to live within a ~30 minute drive of a denser area with services or work, but without having to actually live near a dense area. And your day-to-day services are already spread across most of the city, so you don't need to travel for those. I get the impression that many cities have a similar dynamic.

bluGill
4 replies
1d3h

Why does it have to be a 30 minute drive? Why not a 30 minute transit ride? (if transit cannot provide a 30 minute ride that is a fixable problem)

ndriscoll
1 replies
1d1h

Generally cars are going to be faster (it's point-to-point with no stops to let people on/off), or equivalently, they have greater range for the same time. If your goal is to physically remove yourself from downtown, they let you go a bit further. Also you don't have to deal with someone leaving their mac-and-cheese meal to stink up the bus. Getting away from such unpleasantries is kind of the point.

muffinman26
0 replies
21h7m

Once you take in to account traffic, transit can definitely be faster than cars. A subway that bypasses traffic entirely, or even a bus using HOV lanes, can easily outpace a car, especially if it's an express bus (fewer stops) and services are centrally located.

I've worked at places where it could take 20 minutes to get out of the parking garage when a bus stop was less than a 5 minute walk, on-boarding/off-boarding was super fast (a pre-pay kiosk meant people didn't stop to pay when they got on), and I could be all the way home in less than 20 minutes.

Brusco_RF
1 replies
19h6m

Go look at a map of Tucson. Look at where the Titan II missile museum is, then look where Biosphere 2 is. Now tell me how much it would cost to build public transit between those two locations, and how many people would take it.

Trailheads are fundamentally incompatible with transit. They might be philosophical opposites. A trailhead accessible by rail is a trailhead I don't want to be at.

Not everywhere in the world is exactly the same. Stop trying to force a top-down solution that works in Europe on a geographically massive city like Tucson

sfpotter
0 replies
18h28m

Totally wrong. Transit != rail. There are amazing trailheads that are easily accessible from downtown Seoul by a reasonably short busride (e.g. Bukhansan national park). The fact that buses run to these trailheads does absolutely nothing to diminish them. In fact, they enhance them, because they make it possible to through-hike! Eat your heart out, personal automobile.

resonantjacket5
2 replies
1d19h

I think it has to do with the way the city grew out north and south, with the city itself as a chokepoint (since it is surrounded by water otherwise). Common reasons people need to go from north seattle to south seattle: IKEA, Southcenter, Seatac.

I'm sure there are reasons for people to go north as well, but I have a harder time thinking of them (other than that they went south and now have to come back north).

@sean To reach UW, northgate (well it's demolished just ice skating for now lol), ballard and fremont; granted this is a bit optional, uvillage is nice to visit as well.

Also I find it a bit interesting you have a harder time thinking of interesting stuff in north seattle, I am actually sometimes annoyed having to drive north past downtown seattle to reach north seattle. I didn't really think about it but yeah ikea/southcenter are relatively easy for me to reach. :)

@uoaei Anyways regarding planning itself. Seattle is actually actively planning their next community plan, one of the items called out is whether to allow more 'urban villages' which have shops and other amenities.

For malls, Northgate should have been the north seattle mall but it's currently being redeveloped. There's U village but it's a bit high end. The other alternative of Alderwood mall isn't too bad to get to by driving but during peak traffic can be quite slow.

https://www.seattle.gov/opcd/one-seattle-plan

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
1d19h

I live in Ballard, so maybe I just got used to everything up here. We don't usually need to drive unless we go somewhere far away (if anything downtown, just take the D line).

buildsjets
0 replies
1d13h

Light Rail to Lynnwood will be open by September of this year, which gets you to within 2 miles of Alderwood Mall. Light Rail to Alderwood? 2040, suckers.

com2kid
0 replies
1d19h

Seattle is a narrow city bordered by water on the west and the east, so a lot of its expansion has happened along the north/south axis.

If I want to buy furniture, I need to go either to the far north or far south of the city to a suburb just outside the city limits (cheaper land).

Culturally, lots of food can only be found in certain areas of the city, which means north/south traveling.

In regards to services overall, obscene land prices means that not much new is being built that isn't owned by large corporations, so we are pretty much stuck with what we have, and what we have is rather quickly disappearing.

mitthrowaway2
0 replies
1d11h

Because nobody knows how to build a train, it's a mystery.

sfpotter
4 replies
1d20h

There are no major highways through Manhattan. The city is better for it.

Drive around the lake if you need to get past the city.

aidenn0
1 replies
1d11h

How do you get from the GW bridge to the Cross-Bronx Expressway if there are no major highways through Manhattan?

mathgeek
0 replies
1d6h

278 also runs through Manhattan. I assume the previous poster really means something that excludes Randalls Island and the Heights.

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
1d20h

I used to commute from westchester county into midtown, and there were definitely parkways in, although I never needed to go all the way down to Manhattan itself. I would usually try to take the train though (often not possible given how westchester county is poorly connected to train stations).

Tagbert
0 replies
1d4h

Because 405 is already a a crowded route that becomes bogged down during rush hour(s). Your choices are pretty much sound, city, lake, city, or mountains if you are looking for a route through Seattle.

resonantjacket5
2 replies
1d19h

It's actually a bit interesting to see WSDOT's plan for i-5.

For capacity they aren't expanding I-5 directly, but expanding i-405 and sr167 instead for people trying to go past Seattle.

For i-5 within Seattle area, there are some 2030s plans to convert the hov lanes to toll lanes and reconfiguring the reversible express lane system. * I-5 Managed Lanes: SR 16 to Pierce/ King County Line * I-5 Managed Lanes: Pierce/ King County Line to I-405 * I-5 Managed Lanes: I-405 to US 2

https://www.psrc.org/media/4840

seanmcdirmid
1 replies
1d19h

I don't see that working out. I405 is often worse than I5, it is just as bottlenecked as I5 is, and there isn't much room to expand it especially when it runs right up next to the water.

I feel sorry for anyone who has to actually do that commute. It was horrible when I was living in Bothell and attending UW 30 years ago.

resonantjacket5
0 replies
1d17h

They are constructing it right now the expansion between bellevue to renton.

https://wsdot.wa.gov/construction-planning/search-projects/i...

The bellevue to lynnwood section was already 'expanded' a decade ago though as one can tell, it still has traffic. They're opting to increase the tolls now.

mc32
0 replies
1d14h

I think Boeing threatened to pull out of Seattle if WSDOT did not improve freeways, some years ago -getting stuff in and out of Everett is really important to them. If I-5 was torn down and only left with surface streets, what's left of Boeing would pull out and go to Kansas or some place.

avianlyric
6 replies
1d20h

How does a freeway through a city improve traffic in a city vs building a freeway around a city (no need to bother with the expense of tunnelling under).

Cars on a freeway are either headed to your city as a destination, in which case the speed at which you deliver them into the city doesn’t make much difference, they’re always going to cause traffic when they leave the freeway. Or the cars are headed through the city, in which I would assume most of them would be just as happy to go around the city as go through it.

So if you get to pick between through and around, why would any sane city choose to put the freeway through your city? You’re just bringing noise and pollution into your city, putting a huge great impassable scar through your city, and forcing the people who live to drive everywhere because the freeway slice up the city into segments that you move between in a car.

seanmcdirmid
2 replies
1d19h

You can't build a freeway around Seattle unless you plan to make it float. Well, there is 405, but that is way around (and is its own chokepoint on the east side). Vancouver has much of the same problem with hills and water making it act as a choke point. I'm not sure how the Twin Cities compares.

dghlsakjg
1 replies
1d12h

There’s the trans Canada highway that skirts around Vancouver. It’s the fastest route by far whether you are going into the city or through it.

The I5 meanwhile turns into the 99 on the Canadian side of the border, and goes right through the city. It’s a nightmare since it is officially a highway, but in reality just a surface street in the city.

fragmede
0 replies
1d12h

101 in sf is the same way. it's a highway not a freeway, but it's just a city street that goes across the city.

eropple
2 replies
1d19h

The highway under Boston has turned out to be one of the better solutions that the area could've had, I think. It doesn't mean that the highway that goes around (I-95) is unused, or even underused, but I-93/the former Central Artery going underground has allowed some really important revitalization of parts of the city while also giving pretty direct and (outside of the worst part of rush hour) quick access to most of Boston and Cambridge by car.

As forward-looking as much of the area is, we weren't getting away with "less car", and I don't think most places will today either.

kelnos
0 replies
1d19h

I was thinking about this too. I've never lived in Boston, but have visited often enough over the past 20-25 years. While the Big Dig was an awful, wasteful, corrupt project, the results -- IMO -- make it all worth it. Moving all those highways underground made quite a few areas much more livable than before.

fragmede
0 replies
1d19h

less car means ebike and scooters which are a viable option these days

kredd
5 replies
1d19h

I live in Vancouver, and absolutely love how we didn’t go with the freeway idea. And traffic will suck anyways, might as well let the locals enjoy the walks and life instead.

seanmcdirmid
4 replies
1d19h

If you search for Stroads, you inevitably bring up Vancouver. You've just swapped one evil for another. I can't imagine walking along a stroad being very nice.

https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2014/03/12/metro-vancouver-str...

kelnos
1 replies
1d19h

Stroads aren't inevitable when you get rid of elevated highways. They're just yet another result of poor urban planning.

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
1d18h

Yes, they aren't. But my position is that what Vancouver has (world famous stroads) is worse than if they buried a freeway through town instead.

If someone suggests deleting I5 through Seattle and replacing it with Vancouver-like Stroads, I'm going to vote against them as fast as possible.

kredd
0 replies
1d17h

Oh, I totally agree about the stroads, I wish we could somehow make them disappear, alas impossible. They’re doing an ok job densifying some parts of them, so it’s less dead at least.

brabel
0 replies
1d6h

Ah, Sydney, Australia, has the same issue :D specially Parramatta Rd which goes from the CBD to the Western Suburbs[1]... because there were many "influential" people living in that area, they never managed to get a permit to make a freeway there... I didn't know there was a name for that.

https://www.google.se/maps/@-33.8710314,151.1203316,3a,75y,2...

stefan_
2 replies
1d21h

All cities will forever have "bad traffic". Car transport capacity is plain abysmal.

mitthrowaway2
1 replies
1d11h

Tokyo's traffic is pretty reasonable, actually. It's quite surprising. I rarely encounter a traffic light where all the cars don't make it through, unless there's construction.

This is probably because train transport capacity is prodigious, and driving is expensive.

shiroiuma
0 replies
1d11h

That's exactly it. Almost no one actually drives anywhere: most of the cars are taxis, and most of the rest of the vehicles are commercial (e.g. cargo trucks). When most of the people outside are taking a train, walking, or riding a bicycle, there aren't too many cars on the roads and consequently there isn't much traffic. The busiest places I see are near logistics centers, with lots of truck traffic coming and going.

Also, driving isn't expensive in Tokyo at all, it's actually free except on the toll highways. What's expensive is parking: with few places to park, and it being expensive to rent a parking space in your apartment, it's not that affordable or practical to drive. People also aren't allowed to own cars unless they have a place to park them, so we don't have the problem of car owners fighting over scarce street parking like many other cities.

mb7733
2 replies
1d20h

Honestly, having lived in Vancouver as well as many cities that _do_ have highways running right through town, I didn't miss that in Vancouver at all. Traffic will suck both ways, and at least Vancouver avoids having ugly, loud highways along its waterfront and through most of its downtown.

Definitely, the best case for cars is to have fast highways that bypass the city, but there isn't a lot of room with that given Vancouver's geography, so it's a lesser-of-two-evils. Beyond cars, public transit and cycling provide a better solution in my opinion anyway.

Regardless... the biggest traffic pain point in downtown Vancouver is the 3-lane (total) Lions Gate bridge.

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
1d15h

One of the reason I passed on a townhome in Wallingford with a really good view was because of the tire noise on the ship canal bridge. I’m not sure the other bridge is any better though. A tunnel under it all would be ideal.

Whenever I visit Vancouver, I find the traffic horrible compared to Seattle. It’s like…no I don’t want to drive here (to be fair, I don’t want to drive downtown Seattle either, but there is so much more going on in downtown Vancouver that it’s hard to avoid).

coldpie
0 replies
1d20h

Gotcha covered here in the twin cities -- we already have north and south bypasses in I-494 and I-694. Now we have an opportunity to get I-94 out of the middle of the metro.

_whiteCaps_
1 replies
1d21h

I love that Vancouver doesn't have a freeway through the city - but they've also got a relatively good transit system. IIRC it's the equivalent of 26 lanes for cars.

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
1d20h

Vancouver has some horrible stroads to make up for its lack of freeways. I wouldn't call it very nice, more like dystopian.

uoaei
0 replies
1d20h

Bad traffic is a good catalyst for spurring local commercial development, assuming zoning and other bureaucratic measures don't hamper the situation entirely.

trimethylpurine
0 replies
1d19h

I was just driving around in Seattle and couldn't help but notice everywhere I went was just a few miles away but it took 20-30 minutes because there was no highway in between. I have to wonder if that reduces or increases emissions. I suspect it's the latter since you have more cars running longer and stop/starting more often.

kelnos
0 replies
1d19h

Traffic will suck in a city that isn't designed to discourage people from driving. It doesn't matter if there is an elevated highway running through it or not; traffic is going to suck.

Invest in transit and make it easier for people to get around without cars; that's the only way to solve traffic. Building more roads (and widening existing roads) just induces more demand.

dghlsakjg
0 replies
1d12h

You completely leave out that the trans-Canada highway has a six lane bridge, and a train bridge less than 5 miles east of the downtown peninsula, and there was a conscious decision to not route the freeway through the peninsula.

Any freeway through Vancouver would have to cut through all of east Vancouver and then the downtown core then Stanley park, and they would have to completely rebuild the lionsgate bridge since it is only three lanes total, and then tear out a huge portion of the residential neighborhood on the other side of the bridge.

Why in the world would Vancouver, which is on a much narrower strip of land want to do what Seattle did and divide their city in half so people can get to Whistler 15 minutes faster.

hobs
2 replies
1d21h

I live in the twin cities and I had no idea that was even on anyone's mind, I love the idea.

coldpie
1 replies
1d21h

Please, please (please) contact everyone you can think of to support the idea. MnDOT has contact info on the Rethinking I-94 page[1], tell your city council rep, your county commissioner, your mayor, your state legislators, the governor. Tell your friends and neighbors. It's so easy to just fall back and do the same thing we've always done; making a change is really hard and we need to show that there is support for it.

[1] https://talk.dot.state.mn.us/rethinking-i94 The official term for the proposal to remove the freeway is "at-grade alternatives".

hobs
0 replies
1d20h

I will do this thing you say.

avisser
2 replies
1d20h

I-81 through Syracuse NY is being torn down. There is already a bypass, I-481 that loops around the city to the East to connect with I-90.

Very similar story - the highway divides Syracuse University from the poor Black neighborhoods. It's a scar through the middle of town.

I'm very excited to see how the city heals around it.

yawgmoth
0 replies
1d5h

I-375, along the northeast of downtown Detroit, MI, is being replaced with a boulevard.

coldpie
0 replies
1d19h

Congrats, that's huge!

jnwatson
0 replies
1d10h

Houston is about to remove the Pierce Elevated, a section of I-45 that separates Downtown from midtown. This is a very big deal.

brabel
0 replies
1d6h

This article[1] shows multiple cities that have done that, many in the USA. It seems that in every single case, it was always a very good thing for the city.

[1] https://www.archdaily.com/800155/6-cities-that-have-transfor...

stronglikedan
46 replies
1d22h

The US is urbanized...if you want it. There are plenty of places where people that enjoy living in urban areas can do so. However, to me, that sounds like an unenjoyable hellscape. Been there, done that. The beauty of the US is that people have choices, and aren't pigeonholed into someone else's idea of "enjoyable".

marssaxman
17 replies
1d22h

There really are not plenty of places in the US where you can live a good, urban, non-car-oriented life, and you can tell that is true because the ones which do exist tend to be very expensive, showing that they are in high demand. You clearly do not desire an urban lifestyle, and I won't try to change your mind about that, but those of us who do want urban living generally don't find that our choices are either plentiful or affordable.

trimethylpurine
13 replies
1d19h

I think it's because urbanites keep getting suckered into letting builders do "condensed affordable housing" under the false premise that more housing means cheaper housing. Obviously that would only be true if the units were owned by competitors. Where one contractor owns all the units they set the prices, and they have no reason to make them "affordable." Just condensed.

trimethylpurine
8 replies
1d11h

For the downvoters, nice of you to hope I'm wrong but unfortunately: https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-and-w...

Honestly who is downvoting this anyway? Do you work for big contractors or just like unaffordable housing as long as it's condensed? Evil much?

mlsu
3 replies
1d8h

This is entirely unrelated to the presence or lack of housing in urban areas.

If anything, a monopolistic landlord would like to expand and build more apartments, to extract a higher volume of above-market rent.

trimethylpurine
2 replies
20h7m

You appear to be paraphrasing me. Did you get a bunch of downvotes? Or was this not related to my comment?

tekknik
1 replies
4h16m

You shouldn’t worry about downvotes on HN, many here are biased and are looking for reconfirmation of their beliefs rather than discourse.

trimethylpurine
0 replies
2h28m

I'd like to not worry about it, but it then prevents me from posting. The suggestion is to then stop posting and move on, which I fear allows the washing of dialogue and kindles political approaches that further the damage we're doing to society and the environment through corporate influence. If you, as a developer, feel good about your job helping corporations inflate rent prices, you're not going to look for another job. If you can clearly see that your employer is destroying society, you're very much likely not going to be willing to stick around. Maybe that's doesn't matter in most cases, but clearly big tech employees have influenced government contracts, etc.

marssaxman
3 replies
1d2h

I did not downvote your comment but I certainly thought about it; between your contemptuous attitude toward people whose preferences differ from your own, and the way your ire over the scandal you're alluding to has blinded you to basic principles of economics, your remark added more noise than signal to the discussion.

trimethylpurine
0 replies
1d1h

Which part of my commentary is contemptuous? I pointed out why I think housing is expensive in the city, based on my experience voting against it.

trimethylpurine
0 replies
19h42m

Well since you didn't answer, I'll give you my thoughts for your benefit. Reading back, I think you're projecting. I welcome you to reflect on your behavior as it well meets your own criticisms. Here are examples:

contemptuous attitude toward people whose preferences differ from your own

I appear to be welcoming the dialogue, and as I read back, you appear to be downvoting to ensure others won't see the dialogue (downvoting prevents people from replying). This is worse than name calling. It's literally contemptuous. And worse, you're accusing me of your crime.

and the way your ire over the scandal

I hope you can cite where I did that, otherwise this also is contemptuous. How would you know if I'm angry? Is it because you hear my words in your head in an angry voice? There's a rule about that on HN.

blinded you to basic principles of economics

Me and Congress? It sounds like you might be missing something that Congress and I are aware of. Can you admit that or would that require you to have a better attitude toward people with a differing preference from your own?

Remark added more noise than signal to the discussion

Is that because it doesn't align with your world view? If that's not why I'll be glad to consider your defense to this point. I hope it will include some honest reason for not wanting to hear other people's opinion, so much so that you would downvote them for sharing it.

Overall, the irony in just this one comment is largely incriminating in regard to HN rules, and in regard to your own aspirations of yourself, I would assume, given the strict expectations you've set out for me.

tekknik
0 replies
4h19m

between your contemptuous attitude toward people whose preferences differ from your own

it would be great if everybody on HN felt the same, unfortunately this is quite commonplace. read threads on any EV post for instance.

recursive
1 replies
1d18h

they have no reason to make them "affordable."

The money they make is {rent} × {units rented}. The reason they don't set rent to $1billion is that they will rent zero of them. I think this shows that they do have a reason to lower prices, at least at some range.

trimethylpurine
0 replies
1d11h

Sure so long as the assumption is that they aren't cheating. But apparently Congress thinks they are. Hence the lawsuits.

adrianN
1 replies
1d12h

Supply and demand would like to have a word with you.

trimethylpurine
0 replies
1d11h

Congress would like to have a word with contractors about "supply and demand."

https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-and-w...

dheera
2 replies
1d19h

Not to mention safe urban areas. Most US urban areas are relatively high crime, and even if you don't encounter actual crime you are made to feel unsafe by a bunch of drug addicts in hoodies who yell racial slurs and other creepy dudes who approach you unsolicited, in contrast to urban areas of e.g. East Asia which tend to be extremely safe.

Boston is about the only city in the US that I feel mildly safe walking around the downtown at night.

nerdkid93
1 replies
1d

relatively high crime

You mention crime in regards to safety within a city, but there is a study floating around Twitter that factors in traffic fatalities in suburban and rural areas, and the dangers of cars make suburbs and rural areas MORE dangerous that urban areas! Take a look at this article detailing urban vs rural deaths: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-in-rural-a...

tekknik
0 replies
4h21m

well that’s clearly flawed. i certainly don’t buy SF being safer than literally any rural area.

bertil
15 replies
1d20h

The most common criticism I hear against cities is that they are loud. Cities aren't loud; cars are loud.

You experienced a bad compromise of having high density of a city and the high car ownership of suburbia. Like a "stroad," a road that is trying to be a street, it doesn't work.

Try to spend a week in a place with walkable density and no cars: Amsterdam, Oslo, or closer to US, Disney Land.

SoftTalker
7 replies
1d19h

Cars aren't that loud. Trucks, buses, and trains are loud, and that is what you have a lot of in urban areas.

fragmede
3 replies
1d18h

Thing is, we can build better buildings that are more resistant to noise pollution, regardless of the source. If I can't hear my neighbors, then I can totally ignore them. Which makes it livable.

dns_snek
2 replies
1d17h

The problem with this is that it reinforces the notion that you "live" inside and only go outside when you need to get somewhere. How are you ever going to enjoy a nice street-side cup of coffee in peace? Or take a walk around your neighborhood? Or engage in any outdoor social activity?

If you allow the outside to be unpleasant, then people are increasingly going to stay inside which has negative societal ramifications.

fragmede
1 replies
19h44m

I think we can agree that not being woken up by your neighbors drunkenly blasting music at 3am is preferable to the alternative. But people should be able to live their lives and if they want to celebrate a big win at work or whatever, as long as it doesn't bother me, who am I to say they shouldn't at 3am on a Wednesday? Yes the outside needs to be nice as well, but we have to live together, and the best way is for me to be unable to hear them.

The outside needs to be nice, but making inside unpleasant doesn't accomplish that.

tekknik
0 replies
4h5m

The outside needs to be nice, but making inside unpleasant doesn't accomplish that.

ignoring the problem outside exacerbates the issue and eventually leads to an undesirable outside. don’t live with broken windows.

mitthrowaway2
2 replies
1d11h

Unless they're made badly, trains are very quiet! They sneak up on you. Cars, trucks, motorbikes, and construction sites are loud.

bluGill
1 replies
1d3h

Diesel trains are loud and shake the ground. electric trains are quiet and can sneak up on you.

SoftTalker
0 replies
1d

Have you ever lived near the "el" in Chicago?

dns_snek
4 replies
1d18h

Practically none of those sources of noise pollution apply to modern urban areas. How many blacksmiths do you have working on your street today?

We've driven out nature, we don't have livestock or any animals other than rats and a few birds, we don't transport cargo on carts with wood & metal wheels, we don't live in industrial areas that produce noise pollution, we have laws governing loud music and such.

Above all, we have high quality windows now which block out almost everything but the loudest noises, usually those produced by cars.

aidenn0
3 replies
1d11h

I stayed in a hotel in a city recently. I wish the cars were the loudest thing. There was an ice-skating rink blasting music until after midnight and then a jackhammer at 6am. Needless to say, I didn't sleep well.

dns_snek
2 replies
1d8h

I get that, there are always going to be outliers, but "cars" are the right answer to the noise pollution question for the vast majority of the population. Construction is a valid one too, but that one is unavoidable except for all the car infrastructure.

tekknik
0 replies
4h7m

I used to travel to SF regularly, including after the removal of cars from market street. Additionally, i stayed on market street because of the ease of access to the offices i needed to go to. if cars are in fact the problem, how come market street is still loud enough today, with no cars, at 2 AM, to bleed enough sound through a double pane window with dense curtains?

cars are not the problem. anybody with any experience in life knows the more stuff and people you cram in a small area, the more noise (an heat for all you climate changers)

aidenn0
0 replies
2h1m

It might be better to differentiate between chronic and acute sources of noise. Traffic contributes mostly to chronic noise.

voussoir
0 replies
1d17h

Cities aren't loud; cars are loud

Here's the Not Just Bikes video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8

HEmanZ
7 replies
1d21h

Do you have experience living in any variety of urban areas in first world countries outside of the US? Have you been to many cities in the US? I don’t think you can possibly have done either of these and still think the US has any urbanism. And literally all most moderate urbanists ask for is “please lower regulations so that the free market can build what some of us want and I can actually have a choice.”

shiroiuma
6 replies
1d16h

Do you have experience living in any variety of urban areas in first world countries outside of the US?

The vast, vast majority of Americans have never even been outside the US (except maybe to Canada, and possibly Mexican tourist spots), let alone lived outside the US in a first-world country, and this includes the OP and most people on HN. It's why reading comments on urbanism on forums like this is both entertaining (because it's so wrong and US-centric) and depressing.

sebastos
3 replies
1d13h

Most Americans on hackernews have never been outside of the US? That strikes me as a near impossibility. Evidence?

jhbadger
2 replies
1d6h

There are only 160 million US passports in circulation (out of a population of 330 million. So roughly half. Of course HN people tend to be middle class or higher so they'd more likely be in that 50%. But still, the US is huge (roughly the size of Europe (Europe is approximately 10,180,000 sq km, while United States is approximately 9,833,517 sq km). There's plenty of places to go in the US without needing to go elsewhere. And look at the tiny passport numbers in the 1990s! That's because before 9/11 you didn't need one to go to Canada or Mexico if you had other identification (like a driver's license) showing you were from the US. I've heard that you can still go to Canada that way if you drive rather than fly, but I haven't tried it.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-...

tekknik
0 replies
4h11m

There are only 160 million US passports in circulation (out of a population of 330 million. So roughly half

vast, vast majority have never left the US

how does 1/2 of the population having a passport equate to the “vast, vast majority” having never traveled? How does this logic connect?

bluGill
0 replies
1d3h

Until about 20 years ago you didn't need a passport to travel to Mexico or Canada. And passports only last 10 years so it is possible some have traveled outside the US in the past, but no longer have a passport.

tekknik
0 replies
4h14m

The vast, vast majority of Americans have never even been outside the US (except maybe to Canada, and possibly Mexican tourist spots)

That sounds made up on the spot, and borderline xenophobic. Data please.

sgu999
0 replies
1d9h

because it's so wrong and US-centric

I'm reading these threads from my walkable town in western Europe for the same reason ;D

erikaww
1 replies
1d22h

I think you got it backwards. Cities now only build these subury sfh highway parking lot hellscapes and ban anything remotely dense

So everyone is pigeonholed into something you want

tekknik
0 replies
3h58m

density can be hugely detrimental to climate change if the city isn’t built in a green way, which no US city currently is and will likely not be in your lifetime. under the guise that your desire to live in a highly dense climate wasteland, by 2035 we should require either everybody move away from city centers, or require cities be zero emission.

your decisions are affecting me, isn’t that the norm now?

tekknik
0 replies
4h23m

The beauty of the US is that people have choices, and aren't pigeonholed into someone else's idea of "enjoyable".

For now, not to long ago the left seemed adamant about forcing everyone into sprawling concrete jungles. I give it a few more years at most before they’re back at it pushing to cancel cars and force people to move to high rises.

jamil7
0 replies
1d21h

The beauty of the US is that people have choices

This is backwards, you’ve got no choices in a lot of US cities other than to drive.

travoc
37 replies
1d22h

Parking minimums are required by cities because underparked development projects dump their parking problems on the surrounding neighborhoods. These types of externalities shouldn't just be hand-waved away in the name of "urbanization." The lack of parking creates real problems for residents, police and businesses in growing cities every day.

an_ko
8 replies
1d22h

Major European cities with no such minimum parking requirements do fine. They have public transport and bike infrastructure, so many people in dense urban areas don't need cars.

whydoyoucare
7 replies
1d21h

I bet no one in major European cities requires to bike like ten miles each way. The point is the size of American cities is vastly different to European ones, so what works that side of Atlantic rarely translates "as-is" here.

(I am disappointed about this oft thrown around comparison, since my city reduced one lane on several major roads and created bike paths. Sadly, we now have major traffic jams and hardly any utilization of the bike path. Turns out someone on the city council wanted to turn it into Denmark)

nerdbert
3 replies
1d21h

I bet no one in major European cities requires to bike like ten miles each way.

I am in Amsterdam, and lots of people bike 15km each way, including many students at the high schools my children attend.

ses1984
1 replies
1d20h

Part of the problem is in america if you want to bike that far, you probably have to take some route designed for cars. It’s very stressful and in many cases very risky.

Local climate is a problem, too. It’s not fun to bike to work some days when it’s very hot and humid, and then in the other half of the year, deal with freezing rain.

shiroiuma
0 replies
1d16h

This is a valid comment. Many times, when the US makes "cycling infrastructure" (scare-quotes intended), it's just awful: painted lines on a busy, dangerous road, or at best a path immediately parallel to such a monstrosity. Little wonder people don't want to ride a bike next to a bunch of giant SUVs speeding at 75mph.

And it is true the weather in many US cities tends to be less mild than in Amsterdam, but that can be worked around with proper clothing.

Aerroon
0 replies
1d8h

Doesn't Amsterdam have pretty mild winters though? Or does the ground become covered in glass ice with large amounts of snow regularly?

I think winter makes a huge difference in how bikeable a city can really be. Western Europe tends to be mild on that front.

lmm
0 replies
1d19h

I bet no one in major European cities requires to bike like ten miles each way.

15km is on the outer edge of normal (my bike commute was 11km). But yeah, we can build more densely because we don't require massive amounts of car storage everywhere in the city. The best time to start densifying was 20 years ago, but the second-best time is now.

my city reduced one lane on several major roads and created bike paths. Sadly, we now have major traffic jams and hardly any utilization of the bike path.

Try counting how many humans use the traffic lane and the bike path per hour. You might be surprised.

enaaem
0 replies
1d11h

The idea is that most of the time you don’t need travel 10 miles and if you have to, public transport will cover you. I live in Amsterdam, and I can do all basic errands within a 10 min walk and in around 10 min cycling I have access to endless amount of shops, restaurants and museums.

adrianN
0 replies
1d12h

If it's too far to bike or the weather is lousy you can always take public transport. Bikeable cities are easy to cover with public transport.

J_Shelby_J
8 replies
1d22h

You're talking about city owned and maintained on-street parking.

I think we can agree that the sane thing to do is charge for it and let the market set the price. If home owners or developers want to build their own on-site parking, they're welcome to. Personally, I'm sick of having four parking spots in my garage tacked to my rent despite being a one car household.

Or did I misunderstand, and you feel on-street free parking should be paid for by tax payers? I have to disagree. I pay for my own parking. And people like me generate more tax revenue for the city because it costs less to service density, so I'm also funding on-street parking. I don't think that's fair. We should not be subsidizing car dependency. If you want to drive, pay for it yourself.

bagels
7 replies
1d21h

If your neighborhood or development is the one with no parking and you are not in a walk-able city, you are trading dollars for the stressful situation of trying to figure out where to park, getting in to conflicts with neighbors over parking, and getting your car crashed in to or vandalized. I tried it, I didn't like it.

coldpie
5 replies
1d21h

So how do you get from a non-walkable city to a walkable city? We can't remove parking minimums because everyone needs a car because it's not walkable. But we can't take out the parking lots, because no one walks, because there's too many parking lots between the places people want to go. And we can't put in dedicated bus lanes, because that would reduce parking, which we need because buses are too slow. How do we break the cycle?

PeterisP
1 replies
1d11h

You can slowly, gradually reduce parking minimums.

bluGill
0 replies
1d3h

It doesn't need to be slow. Private developers are not stupid - they know when their customers arrive by car and thus demand parking so they have incentive to figure out how much parking they need. As people switch to other modes of arriving they will decide that the parking isn't needed and eventually worth tearing up for something else. (but this assumes you provide those other options - if transit remains terrible people will drive and need the parking)

teejays
0 replies
1d20h

Pretty much sums up the problem imho.

shiroiuma
0 replies
1d16h

For me, it was pretty simple: I packed up and moved to a walkable city (which meant leaving the US). The only way you're going to get a walkable city out of a non-walkable US city is to completely change the zoning laws, eliminate the free parking and making driving horribly inconvenient and expensive, then go through a cycle of death and rebirth as the city largely dies out and then gets revitalized a couple decades later. I don't want to wait for this process, and I don't even see any serious action this way anywhere yet; I'll be dead of old age before there's a decent number of walkable cities in the US.

crq-yml
0 replies
1d15h

Here is what I see taking shape across a number of cities:

1. A big micromobility boom. This describes a number of phenomena: the e-bikes are perhaps the most visible since they add a lot of power to a bike commute and make it easier to justify doing big distances by bike. But equally, the docked bikeshares have found a foothold in many places big and small, and those help extend transit range quite a bit while creating an institutional platform for bike-friendly streets: the bikeshare services will always lobby for whatever makes them the best option.

2. The "unbundled car". This is something Tony Seba uses in his discussions on disruption: the car bundled a large number of services into one solution: "get in the car and drive." Many of those solutions have transitioned to online, delivery, etc. So the car's raison d'etre is diminished today and diminishing further as we develop more alternatives.

3. The future rebundling of transport as a service. The first step in this was the reshuffling of taxi/delivery drivers to gig economy labor. This was probably too early and too reliant on zero interest rates, but one of the things that always courted investment in these businesses was that robotics could take over and perform self-driving. And while it's still not an evenly distributed phenomenon, Waymo exists. I have it on my phone. Waymo itself may not be the last word in how self-driving tech is deployed, but the tech will increasingly realign "cars" with "transit" by lowering the cost of professional vehicle operation. In the current US market, there's been a shortage of bus drivers, and scheduling them is a large pain point for deploying transit. You can't drop driver quality because of the liability involved in operating huge vehicles. Private autos have gotten away with a legal hack that normalizes poor driving by making the individual an owner-operator and blaming them for their inevitable failures. So the economics will work out that cars and fixed-route mass transit are still competitive, but you will get more mobility per dollar invested by adding self-drive to your transit system, because then high-quality driving and scheduling scales and you can flood the streets with both big and small transit vehicles. Therefore, in the future, city buses will run more frequently on more routes and at later hours.

mlsu
0 replies
1d8h

Everything you are describing can be solved by paying for parking. Even in the busiest areas of a downtown American city, you can find a monthly parking lot that will rent you a secure parking spot that is truly yours.

Of course, it won't be free -- it will cost what it should cost, market rate.

apendleton
7 replies
1d21h

This is solvable with parking permit programs. Make street parking in those surrounding neighborhoods resident-only. And then people considering living in the "underparked" neighborhood who need parking will have no alternative but to select units that include parking, or live in another neighborhood (and if enough people opt not to live there, developers will include more parking to satisfy demand). This is a problem regular markets can fix: governments don't need to require developers to meet (or often, exceed!) what people actually want.

nradov
5 replies
1d21h

Where do guests park when they come to visit?

alexanderchr
1 replies
1d20h

Where I’ve lived it’s usually been solved by letting anyone park there for a higher fee. Residents get to park at a big discount or for free.

Or you can hand out guest passes to residents.

nradov
0 replies
1d16h

So then the city has to issue parking passes plus guest passes, and then actually enforce them. Seems totally impractical for all but the densest cities.

jjav
0 replies
1d10h

Where do guests park when they come to visit?

This is indeed one of the biggest problems with such parking permit scheme.

What happens is the resident needs to move their car to the street (possibly driving around for a long while to find a spot) so the guest can park on their driveway. It's a pain for everyone involved. And you better never have a party where more than a couple people visit at once.

FooBarBizBazz
0 replies
1d19h

Where I saw this, households would generally pay for a 2hr guest permit (maximum one per household, or maybe two) that they lend visitors to display in their windshield, and if someone needs to stay longer, then you pay for a temporary two-day guest permit at the parking office. Either way, the permit is used for street parking. Finding a spot can be a minor adventure but is usually doable. You may have to walk a block. If someone is visiting for longer then they probably need to pay for a spot in a parking garage, or just -- fly in and leave the car at home.

Ekaros
0 replies
1d11h

They don't. It so simple. Or they walk or bike whole distance.

I think after we have fixed the car parking, we really should start looking into those bikes and ban them from street parking.

jjav
0 replies
1d10h

(and if enough people opt not to live there, developers will include more parking to satisfy demand)

Factories that produce widgets can pretty quickly adjust the specs to changing demand. Houses don't work on that schedule.

If enough people want to buy a house but they need parking but those units don't exist, there is no way for developers to just change what's there to satisfy demand. That'll be a multi-decade effort.

xnx
4 replies
1d22h

The market is better at solving this problem than central planning.

candiddevmike
3 replies
1d22h

Not when it comes to ADA requirements...

yardie
0 replies
1d22h

Oddly enough, the ADA laws were written in a way to use the free market. The government can't force you to be ADA compliant. Instead, it relies on lawyers and their disabled clients to sue you into compliance. An entire cottage industry of law firms who specialize in ADA compliance have sprung up since the law's inception.

epistasis
0 replies
1d20h

ADA requirements are outside of the planning sphere though.

In fact, that ADA requirements came from laws from the federal government rather than from urban planning is pretty good evidence that the market (ie democratic legislation) is better at this than centralized planners of urban areas.

davidw
0 replies
1d19h

Having a few ADA parking spots is fine and a drop in the bucket compared to the wasted space from all that mandated parking.

Also, people with disabilities tend to drive less than those without them.

jimberlage
2 replies
1d13h

I’ve lived in areas with this parking problem in multiple cities for over a decade now.

I can confidently say, I don’t care about this problem at all. Parking further up the street from my house is a small, small, small price to pay for the benefits of being walking distance from interesting things.

jmward01
1 replies
1d13h

Exactly. Pretty much every argument I see against removing parking boils down to 'The city gets denser with more nice things to the point I can't drive my SUV there any more!' A lack of parking is a symptom of a thriving location, not a problem. A real solution is more transit and more transit oriented development. Removing parking is a start through.

bluGill
0 replies
1d3h

A lack of parking is a symptom of a thriving location, not a problem.

This is false. I've seen many downtowns that are not thriving and lack parking. They do okay for the midday luck crowd, but they are empty by 6pm as everyone has gone to the suburbs.

Lack of parking is a feature of thriving locations as well, but it isn't an indicator.

_dain_
0 replies
1d22h

This is the stated justification but it doesn't really correspond with reality. The specific values chosen for parking requirements are based on nothing at all, literally just copypasted from other cities or made up out of thin air. They are overestimates in almost all cases.

Besides, even if you mandate parking, it's an absurdity to mandate free parking.

Steltek
0 replies
1d21h

Vastly outweighed by the problems of parking minimums:

* Increased housing costs

* Decreased housing supply

* Increased air pollution

* Increased traffic

* Increased noise pollution

* Increased water pollution, stormwater usage

* Decrease in community and neighborhood cohesion

If a person feels they need parking, they can pay for it. They don't need society to force parking to be made available to everyone, whether they want it or not.

Comma2976
0 replies
1d22h

I doubt that.

7thaccount
14 replies
1d22h

Fayetteville Arkansas was one of the first towns to remove the mandatory parking restrictions and a ton of abandoned downtown buildings quickly became restaurants. They were absolutely right.

0xcde4c3db
13 replies
1d19h

My jaw hit the floor when I learned that some cities actually apply parking minimums to redevelopment of downtown properties and not just stuff like new surburban strip malls, to the point that some projects have bought adjacent buildings and demolished them in favor of parking lots. Maybe it's true that the r/fuckcars crowd likes to throw the term "carbrain" around a little too freely, but this kind of ass-backward policy makes me think we really do suffer from a self-destructive mind virus.

bsder
12 replies
1d18h

It's not always ass-backward.

People forget that one of the reasons why the malls became so popular and helped collapse the old downtowns was, you guessed it, lack of free parking.

With malls, you could come into a boundary and spend a significant amount of time in a walkable arena with lots of different stores. You knew there would always be parking except possibly at Christmas.

Downtown? Not so much. And you probably had to pay for parking. And carry quarters for the meter. And risk getting parking tickets. etc.

Malls were what all the anti-car people supposedly promise will happen when you remove cars. And yet, I know of no malls that ever gained residence areas within walking distance. Which seemingly, would have prevented the malls from collapsing.

The anti-car brigade has yet to demonstrate why that should be different today.

0xcde4c3db
3 replies
1d17h

But, in turn, "within walking distance" is exactly what is rendered impossible by a system in which every significant center of economic activity is required to have square miles of parking around it. It's sort of like a social form of obesity; it's clearly not quite as poisonous as the most vocal detractors say, but the sheer bulk does make it harder to move in what we might consider an optimal way.

Also, for what it's worth, you're citing "carry quarters" as some kind of dystopic microaggression to an elder millennial who was absolutely fucking thrilled to share a roll of quarters with his dad when we went to the local game store and crushed Sengoku on the nearest Neo Geo cabinet.

bsder
2 replies
1d16h

Also, for what it's worth, you're citing "carry quarters" as some kind of dystopic microaggression

Uh, yeah, it actually WAS. Quarters were a non-trivial amount of currency (a little under a gallon of gas) back when downtowns still existed and parking meters took them.

There is a reason why "meter maids" were hated so much.

neilkk
1 replies
23h35m

The youngest person who was able to drive when gas was a quarter dollar a gallon is now in their early nineties.

tekknik
0 replies
4h31m

Absolutely not, I’m at least 1/2 that age and remember has being $0.35/gal around when I started driving.

cableshaft
2 replies
1d12h

Malls were what all the anti-car people supposedly promise will happen when you remove cars. And yet, I know of no malls that ever gained residence areas within walking distance.

One of the malls near me, about 5 years ago they tore up a good chunk (like a third) of its massive parking lot and turned it into an apartment complex. It now butts up almost directly against the mall.

So at least there's one.

bluGill
0 replies
1d3h

There is a failing mall (A larger mall was built not very far away so there is no reason for this one to exist anymore) near me that proposed to do that, but the city refused to make the needed zoning change.

ascagnel_
0 replies
1d11h

The mall in Voorhees, NJ (a Philadelphia suburb) added some housing and support businesses within a close radius, and it turned a near-dead mall into a thriving space.

JoshTriplett
2 replies
1d9h

Which seemingly, would have prevented the malls from collapsing.

I don't think nearby residence areas would have prevented malls from collapsing.

Online shopping made them largely obsolete as a place to actually shop, with many going bankrupt and others hanging on by a thread. Then a global pandemic cut some of the remaining threads.

tekknik
0 replies
4h27m

Online shopping made them largely obsolete

Eh, after some lost packages, dealing with USPS for claims, wanting to touch the product before purchasing, and easier returns, I find myself returning to brick and mortar lately.

bluGill
0 replies
1d3h

This is a common narrative, but malls are overall doing just fine. A few are failing all the time - enough that you can cherry pick many examples to make it appear the case. Most failing malls though are close to some other mall that is doing okay - or in some cases both malls are doing bad as there never was a reason for the second to be built.

jjav
0 replies
1d10h

People forget that one of the reasons why the malls became so popular and helped collapse the old downtowns was, you guessed it, lack of free parking.

Yes, I witnessed this first-hand in the neighborhood where I went to school.

Very vibrant walkable downtown full of shops and restaurants but also tons of street parking. Then one year government wanted more money so they put up parking meters and pushed up the rates to a point most people couldn't afford it (it was a low income area).

Now ~20 years later? The whole downtown is boarded up abandoned shops, just a couple liquor stores remain open. Very sad. All the shops that could move, moved to the malls.

JambalayaJim
0 replies
23h51m

And yet, I know of no malls that ever gained residence areas within walking distance

How is that even possible?

Here in the Greater Toronto Area, practically every large mall has at least a few high rises. Some malls are even constructing residential units directly on top of the mall. Even a larger strip mall will generally have some medium sized apartment buildings nearby.

Downtown Mississauga has dozens of high rises up now right next to its biggest mall. Those buildings have completely changed the city's skyline.

J_Shelby_J
11 replies
1d22h

It should decrease housing costs as well. The rules in my area are two spots per bedroom - mandatory. But my building is in uptown Dallas and the main draw to the area is that people work in the area and walk to work. So many people don't own cars or are only a one home house hold.

And because it's a highrise parking spots are expensive. Like $50k+ each. And that goes directly to the price of housing in rents.

Meanwhile, even at the busiest our garage is more than half empty. What a waste.

D magazine even used a picture of my garage in their article: https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2021/12/the-city-of-da...

Swizec
8 replies
1d22h

The rules in my area are two spots per bedroom - mandatory

Wait am I reading this right that a 3-bedroom family home would come with space for six cars? How many families have 6 cars that's insane O.O

Sounds like a regulation someone long ago thought would for sure prevent anyone from building anything. No way they actually wanted that much residential parking ...

jrockway
6 replies
1d22h

I don't think there's a good one-size-fits-all rule. A 3 bedroom unit could be 3 couples living together and splitting the rent, or it could be 1 family, or it could just be 1 person who wants an office and a gym. The rule should probably be "1 space for car owned", like when you go to buy a car, you have to prove that you have a place to park it.

apendleton
4 replies
1d21h

Just restrict who can park on the street. Then if people want to park a car, they'll need a residence with a space, and if there's demand for residences with parking spaces, developers will build them, minimums or not. The issue with minimums is that they require building spaces above and beyond demand, but markets should do just fine at making sure demand is met, as long as there are barriers to externalizing it.

seanmcdirmid
1 replies
1d20h

In Japan you have to vouch that you have a parking space for your car. I think a similar rule would work for the states. However, it will cause a huge tension between the parking spot haves and parking spot have nots, without adequate equality will be seen (rightfully so) as a move to limit cars among those who can't afford parking spots for them.

For better or worse, the USA has basically made a contract with its people that "you have the right to a car, and because of that, we will provide really sucky public transit." That contract has to change before we start aggressively taking cars out of the system.

shiroiuma
0 replies
1d11h

You don't have to "vouch" that you have a parking space, you have to prove it. The police will actually come to your home and measure your parking space to make sure it's big enough for the model of car you want to buy.

I can't imagine Americans submitting to a law like this.

jjav
1 replies
1d10h

if there's demand for residences with parking spaces, developers will build them

That's somewhat optimistic. In the absence of rules, developers will maximize their profit above all else. Apartment units are far more profitable than parking, so they'll just build the maximum units with no parking.

I lived in such a neighborhood once. Result is 50 unit buildings with 4 parking spots. And the result of that? People driving around the blocks for hours looking for parking, fights breaking out over parking, cars constantly vandalized for taking over "their" spot. It was not fun.

JambalayaJim
0 replies
1d

Why isn’t a parking space specifically attached to a residence than bought it? That’s the reason for the fights right there.

Letting the developer maximize profits also lets residents choose residences without parking spots, to save money.

jjav
0 replies
1d10h

The rule should probably be "1 space for car owned", like when you go to buy a car, you have to prove that you have a place to park it.

That doesn't provide any guidance to the builder though, so what should they build?

J_Shelby_J
0 replies
1d21h

Mandatory parking minimums in American are insane.

The rules for them are a joke and just made up at random with little justification for them other than trust us bro.

Climatetown has a good, if long, video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNXFHpUhu8

bsder
1 replies
1d18h

Meanwhile, even at the busiest our garage is more than half empty.

Unfortunately, that sounds like the spaces are close to being properly priced in the market?

Getting more utilization would require the price come down, and the price decrease may not increase the overall revenue immediately.

You would need cheaper nearby parking in order to force the price down. If there is no cheaper parking nearby, then the market is at the clearing price.

JambalayaJim
0 replies
1d

The price of a car itself is significant, there may well be zero utilization in an area where residents simply don’t own cars.

tomcar288
3 replies
1d20h

you don't necessarily need to urbanize. just make things more walkable. Instead of having 1 large library or grocery store the size of a theme park, have 10 smaller ones in walking distance instead.

marssaxman
0 replies
1d20h

That's what functional urbanization looks like! From where I live in central Seattle, there are four grocery stores within ten minutes' walk. They all have parking lots, but I rarely use them; instead of buying a lot of groceries at once, it's easier to pop on by every day or two and just carry a bag home. There are no skyscrapers here, it's all townhouses and low-rise apartment buildings, but that's all we need - if we could fill the city limits with neighborhoods like this, there'd be no need for any more sprawl.

dfxm12
0 replies
1d19h

Without sufficient density, these things don't make money (or the municipality doesn't have the tax revenue to keep them open). You can't "just" make things more walkable. You also need enough people to raise money to maintain sidewalks, buy stuff at stores, work in the area, etc.

bluGill
0 replies
1d20h

I prefer the metric is an 8 year old should be able to get to the library alone. I don't are if they take the bus, walk, or ride a bike - but they need to be able to get there alone. This is a proxy for safety of various transport modes, available routes, and community attitude toward kids being out alone.

kelnos
3 replies
1d19h

I'm so torn as to what I want my future living situation to be.

I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey and Maryland, spent a little time in my 20s in the denser-than-suburbs suburbia of the Bay Area, and then the past 14 years in San Francisco proper. More recently I've been spending 1-1.5 months at a time living out in "rural" parts of Truckee, CA.

I just don't know anymore. In San Francisco I live within a few minutes' walk of two dozen or so useful businesses (corner store, grocery, bakery, butcher, restaurants, bars, etc.), and everything I need to live I can get by walking no more than a half hour. I hate driving and love this.

In Truckee, the closest convenience store is a 40-minute walk, and all the other necessities are at least a 10-minute drive. On the other hand, I'm a light sleeper, and the intense darkness (moonlight, at most, only!) and quiet in Truckee was wonderful for restfulness. In SF we live near a Muni bus depot, where they clean buses well past midnight every night. I can mostly -- but not entirely -- get darkness with blackout blinds, but it's really not the same.

I definitely don't want to go back to the suburbs, but that sort of thing -- with much better city planning than most (all?) US suburbs have -- has potential to give me quiet and darkness, but the ability to walk everywhere I need to go.

Ultimately, though, what drives where I want to live is where my friends are. As I get older, I find it harder and harder to make new, close friends. Moving to a new place where I don't know anyone sounds like torture to me.

sgu999
1 replies
1d9h

This is what bothers me the most with the car-centric mindset so many people have. You have to choose in-between being car free in a very dense area or car dependent in a rural area. In reality small towns can be just compact enough to allow many small businesses to thrive, as it's the case in other developed countries. Malls are the main source of problems...

tekknik
0 replies
4h24m

Small towns don’t typically have malls. Small towns are more on the order of “oh we just got a walmart”. I think you’re conflating small towns with mid to large towns or small cities.

bluGill
0 replies
1d3h

Where you live is a compromise. If we had Star Trek style teleportation I might be interested in living on the moon, or Mars. Like you I find that friends (and family!) are the biggest reason to not move - I can make new friends but it is hard.

There are advantage and disadvantages to living everywhere in the world. You soon learn to enjoy the things that are possible where you are and not get into the things difficult/impossible.

Vt71fcAqt7
3 replies
1d19h

Have you considered moving to an urban area?

Mawr
2 replies
1d17h

Have you considered paying the full cost of living in a non-urban area via taxes?

Vt71fcAqt7
1 replies
1d14h

I haven't considered that. Do you have any data surrounding tax increase on urbanites caused by suburbanites? (If I understand your point.)

Tactician_mark
0 replies
1d6h

Here's an infographic from Sustainable Prosperity: https://i.imgur.com/2rgkaOZ.jpeg

That's just one area in Halifax, but the idea is that higher population densities require less infrastructure per person. Less road, power line, water/sewer pipe, etc. However, low density houses usually pay less in property taxes per unit area than high density, meaning that increased infrastructure cost is coupled with a considerable tax break.

UtopiaPunk
3 replies
1d22h

I think urbanizing core metro areas is actually key to protecting rural areas.

I was sitting in a coffee shop in a small town and I overheard a conversation next to me. Two elderly men were talking, and one of them made a comment to the effect of, "I like a rural town, so I try to vote to keep it that way." Two or three decades ago, this town really was a small farming town, but the population is growing and the town is changing. It's not becoming a city, though, not by any means! As the city (somewhat) nearby is becoming more expensive, the suburban sprawl is, well sprawling. The small rural town is transforming into a suburb of the city.

I would agree that this is a negative change for the small town, and I would argue that the solution is to urbanize the nearby city. There should be much more housing, and it should be much more affordable to live in the city. As it stands, many people want to live in that city, but find the housing prices unaffordable. So these people make a compromise between how much they are willing to pay on housing vs how long they are willing to travel (almost always by car) into the city. I count myself in this group.

Urban areas and rural areas complement one another, and there's pros and cons to living in either kind of place. However, post-WWII styled suburbs are, in my opinion, a net negative.

jacoblambda
1 replies
1d21h

I think urbanizing core metro areas is actually key to protecting rural areas.

It really is. Some subruban and rual places are starting to get this as well. A common theme among the ones that get it is to provide density bonuses (i.e. if you allocate large blocks of conservation space, you can build more densely). The result is that you get the same overall density in an area but the people are living much closer together and not sprawling out and building over the natural environment.

I personally think most of them are too conservative with their approaches (often setting upper limits on density even with the bonuses) but the general approach of "build dense to limit the impact on rural spaces" is progress.

UtopiaPunk
0 replies
1d21h

There are some silly culture-war politics which makes reasonable discussions difficult. But also some of the politics problem is that a lot of these decisions are being made at the local town/city level. Small rural towns may try to dig in their heels and and resist urbanization (and the specific tactics involved are usually kind of bad, imo). Meanwhile, big cities often don't have strong incentives to not sprawl, at least in the US. Sprawl moves the costs of housing and transporation onto someone else (either the surrounding towns or the individuals), while the city maintains some portion of a tax base (sales tax and local businesses). Some cities have some political will to fight for these anyway, but even at the best of times, these policies have to make some harmful compromises.

I think the most promising solutions to this problem are policies from state-level governments.

ethanbond
0 replies
1d20h

Absolutely. The enemy of rural is suburbia, not urban development. Build moderate density city centers, ideally in the form of several small self-contained villages that happen to abut each other, and leave the surrounding area as legitimately rural as possible.

trimethylpurine
2 replies
1d19h

I've long suspected that this model is meant for cities to make money on DUIs. They close the public transit before the bars in almost every city across the country, and they ensure the bars are far enough away and restrictive enough that you have to drive. Then they tax the hell out of taxi services to ensure that there aren't enough cabs to take you home and rides can exceed $100 (which is a lot in most of the country by area, not population). It's zoned this way where bars and restaurants aren't near houses, in summary.

If they did it like Spain, for example, where you can just walk out of your home, sit on the street at any restaurant, and drink wine with your friends, we'd have exactly what you're describing.

But then they wouldn't be able to rake in DUI profits.

dfxm12
1 replies
1d19h

A city does not want drunk people crashing cars into infrastructure or murdering its inhabitants. They don't want to support injured people who are unable to work. They don't want these types of cases taking up the court's time. All this stuff costs a city money & they aren't inviting people to do it just in case they get caught (because the type of person who can't afford a cab home probably also can't afford to replace a downed traffic light).

Save the conspiracies for red light cameras or speed traps.

trimethylpurine
0 replies
1d19h

The above makes me think we're overestimating how much damage to infrastructure and human life is really being caused. As much as I wish you were right, the solutions are nearly free and they are right in front of our faces and being actively selected against by municipalities across the country. I'd love to hear the explanation for that.

fasthands9
2 replies
1d21h

The problem I have with the thinking in this article most of the parking lots are privately owned so saying 'tear them up and plant trees' is not something that can be implemented by the government.

If mandatory parking requirements did go down, and zoning was increased, then the people who own it would willingly put forth the effort to make the space more useful. It would also help sort out what is considered "unused" - which right now is a nebulous concept.

juujian
1 replies
1d21h

It's easy, just charge all property owners for sales surface area. It messes with lots of things, water table, flooding, generates heat. All things that create cost for a community. That's how Berlin decided to tackle the issue.

fasthands9
0 replies
1d20h

I also assume Berlin does not have high parking requirements.

For instance, this ordinance in NC says you need one parking space for every 300 sq feet of a store. So the average 30,000 sq foot grocery store would need 100 spots, at least.

Without getting rid of requirements like these the stores will not be able to remove spaces if they wanted. I very much like land value tax (which sounds similar in effect to what you are proposing) but you need the zoning flexibility first.

https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/swansboro/latest/swans...

dfxm12
1 replies
1d19h

I don’t think I want hyper dense, but having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. More places to meet people too, there’s so few third places. And not needing to drive would be a really big convenience.

What does hyper dense mean? And how is that detrimental? Tokyo meets all of your requirements, for example, but you would call that hyper dense for sure, right? The article is "about" Baltimore, MD. Does that city meet your threshold of hyper dense?

As with most things, a lot of this comes down to money. The more dense an area, the more use the things you want are used, and the more money they make, they more likely they are to thrive. The more dense an area, the bigger the tax base, the more money there is for nice things that maybe don't make money on their own.

Moldoteck
0 replies
1d3h

maybe they talk about russian style hyper dense blocks but with 0 infra that looks like hell...

al_borland
1 replies
1d9h

Parking lot requirements make sense in areas where cars are the only viable means of transportation. Removing those requirements only makes sense when other forms of transportation are provided to reduce the number of cars required to get people to the places of business.

Near me, the city is talking about removing a big parking lot and strip mall and turning it into a mixed use space, but as far as I’ve read there has been no talk of transportation. The area sits at the intersection of two stroads. It’s technically walkable, but it’s not a pleasant walk. It’s technically can be biked, but not without competing with cars for space on the road. There might be buses, but they are very infrequent and slow. Everyone I know would want to drive, as the alternatives are significantly worse than driving. If people can’t park, they simply won’t go.

I’d love to get rid of my car, but that requires the city, and region, make significant investments in public transit infrastructure. The non-car option can’t just be available for those who are willing to put in a lot of effort to avoid using a car. The non-car options need to be better than the car option. Easier, cheaper, safer, and more pleasant.

Removing parking lots makes driving worse, but doesn’t make the alternatives better.

Moldoteck
0 replies
1d3h

requirements don't make sense, numbers are pulled from thin air in the regulations so even in this case requirements should be elliminated

NoPedantsThanks
1 replies
1d17h

The problem is that the removal of parking requirements typically doesn't address the parking-lot scenario depicted here. It's often a developer handout that results in a degraded standard of living for existing residents in the neighborhood around a new development.

Let's say a developer builds a bigger, taller building than what was there previously and adds residents. If they're not required to include sufficient parking, the new cars will flood the surrounding neighborhood, and existing residents will now have no place to park. This depends on the type of neighborhood, of course, but it happened in mine in Chicago. Not being able to just come home and go inside, but rather have to drive around and around in ever-larger circles (in the winter) to look for a parking spot because some alderman got paid off by a developer to screw his constituents... that's the reality.

We're seeing this in L.A. too, where local politicians will sell out to developers and publicly excuse it by pretending that parking creates cars and cars = bad. L.A. is a giant county masquerading as a city, and it's never going to be Amsterdam (you hear this asinine comparison all the time). Pretending that people aren't going to bring cars to their residence is absurd and damaging.

But big vacant parking lots growing weeds? Hell yeah, we have those all over the place, around dying malls and boarded-up Macy's. But what did CA politicians do? Pass laws that allow developers to destroy one single-family home and build 10 units there, overriding any local zoning or review and without local ability to prevent it.

So now we're going to pave over even MORE ground and cut down MORE trees, while said malls are still sitting there. As if the place isn't hot, barren, drought-stricken, and depressing enough.

Anyway, that's what I think of when I hear "get rid of parking requirements:" corrupt sellouts.

bluGill
0 replies
1d2h

A few developers will do that. However people who need to drive will soon catch on that parking is hard in those buildings and so they will go elsewhere. This is a self correcting problem if you let it run its course.

baby
0 replies
1d14h

The grid life in the US with large roads and few commercial streets really suck imo. I dream of going back to Europe but can’t unfortunately…

e_i_pi_2
35 replies
1d21h

I'd even go a step further and set a maximum amount of parking in a given area to disincentivize driving. As an extreme example, if a mall is only allowed to have 5 parking spaces then they'll need to design around supporting public transit. So many places in the US are almost impossible to live in without owning a car - you might have bike paths if you're lucky, and in many places there aren't even sidewalks

ajsnigrutin
28 replies
1d20h

Shopping centers are a bad example for this, because if you buy stuff, you somehow have to take it home, and carrying a carton of 12 liters of milk, 2 10-packs of toilet paper, a bag of frozen stuff and shower curtain rod, all of that in your hands on a bus, is well.. a pain.

Also, at least over here, most shopping centers have underground parking.

The "historic city center" and all that crap... that I understand... noone goes there for weekly shopping, but instead people go there to hang out, drink coffee, eat, etc.... public transport works great for that. Malls, shopping centers or even larger stores? Nope.

Mawr
23 replies
1d17h

Why would anybody need to buy 12 liters of milk when the store is 5-10 mins away on foot?

Reality in a lot of european cities is fundamentally different to most of the US.

ajsnigrutin
21 replies
1d17h

Because I don't want to go to store every two days, and the prices in local small stores are higher than in a larger, discount store. I buy a pack of milk, and I'm good for a month.

PeterisP
12 replies
1d11h

In a walkable city you go by a store every time you go outside - you come back from work, you pass by a store or two where you can buy fresh groceries. This has also an impact on healthy diet, giving access to fresh goods which wouldn't possibly last a month and thus wouldn't get eaten if people drive shopping every few weeks.

ajsnigrutin
5 replies
1d5h

Yes, I could, but I don't want to. Go to store, walk around, wait in line, for what.. 1eur worth of milk? Plus you buy a bunch of other stuff that you don't need, because "it's there". I just make a list, go to the store once, fill up on 100, 150eur of stuff, and I'm done for a week or two. Stores are horrible, people are slow, they 'park' their carts in the middle of the aisle, so you have to bump into them to pass, they're too stupid to use the self-checkout lines but still use them and wait for someone to help them (scan stuff for them, instead of just using a normal line), people wait for 10 minutes in line, without realizing they'll need to pack their stuff and pay, so only after half of their stuff is scanned, they remember to take out their shopping bag, and only after they hear the price, they start searching their handbag for a wallet. Then they remember they need cigaretts too,... Delivery sucks too.. overripe bananas, bumbped apples, half-thawed frozen stuff, crushed boxes, long-lasting food just before the expiration date, etc..

Nope, weekly trip to the store minimizes all of the issues.

Moldoteck
4 replies
1d3h

in this case maybe amsterdam style will suit better your usecase? you take a 5-10 min electric bike(maybe even cargo type) trip to a discount store, you put everything in bags/cargo space and return home. Or Swiss style: discount stores usually are placed close to trams, you buy your stuff and just take a tram to your home(and since usually those have ded lanes, it's damn fast). You may be concerned about capacity(maybe you don't like to carry two big bags) - you can take a foldable luggage cart. Ofc you can also order a taxi and since you live not too far, price isn't that big if you do this once a week. You can also use your car, but with all added costs/time spent for some ppl it's not worth it. There are also services that just bring to you what you order from these big stores. There's one more thing: you could combine the two store types: daily shopping for some small stuff in nearby store could offset the need to go to a bigger store by one week

maxglute
1 replies
1d1h

IMO modifying life style for chronic car owners is nonstarter. Simple / fair incentivize is to make it justifiably expensive. Reduce street parking / op lots. If stores want car customers, they need to build parking infra onsite, either above or below grade. Expensive car elevators if they have to. Charge premium for parking costs. If they try to pass on cost to all customers instead of just drivers, then their prices will be less competitive with stores without onsite parking. Car owners have right to car, but they should pay for all of externalities, and if that works out to be expensive parking bill everytime they bulk shop then so be it.

ajsnigrutin
0 replies
22h38m

There is no 'street parking' next to shopping centers/malls, it's all organized parking lots (usually underground, below the shopping center). What kind of a shopping center requires you to park on the street?

I live in a relatively small city with a pedestrian zone "historic center", and all of the larger...ish shopping centers are outside the city center, and larger stores are on the 'edge' of the city. Both the stores and restaurants in the city center are tourist-based and so are many residential properties that are now just airbnbs causing the housing crisis to be even worse. On a rainy january afternoon (so, last week for us), the city center is dead. No toursts, noone goes there to shop, since you can go futher out with a car, noone goes there to walk around, since it's raining, so it's just a few people that work there during the day and not even them in the afternoon. I mean.. why would you go to shop there, if you can drive to the edge of the city, where you can park without issues, buy stuff and drive it home?

ajsnigrutin
1 replies
22h48m

But why? I have a car, I just drive to a shopping center with enough parking and do my business there. Why would i go out of my way to use a bike, in rain and cold or heat and sun to go to a shopping center without parking? The malls know this, that's why they have parking, usually underground.

Moldoteck
0 replies
10h56m

If malls know this, parking reqs should be eliminated so that every business decides for itself how much parking they need

JoshTriplett
4 replies
1d9h

In a walkable city you go by a store every time you go outside

I'm all for designing for walkability, but this is a case study in failing to understand audiences. If you make this not just a possibility but a requirement of walkable cities, many people won't want to live in your "walkable" cities at all.

There are much better arguments possible here. For instance, you could promote CSAs for regularly delivered farm-fresh produce, or establish efficient grocery delivery services that use one vehicle to deliver to many many customers, or other potential options that don't involve regular car trips for grocery shopping and don't involve spending an appreciable fraction of your day shopping.

nerb
1 replies
1d6h

don't involve spending an appreciable fraction of your day shopping.

if you're concerned about how your time is spent, i think you're missing a fundamental piece of the puzzle: how much time you spend driving. you could end up saving an enormous amount of time while still going out to shop more if you cut out driving and reduce the scope of your trips.

bluGill
0 replies
1d2h

Not really. People tend to have tolerance levels for commute type activities, so while cars enable going farther in the same amount of time, the time budget doesn't change. If they have a walkable city they are likely to find reason to go to a farther away store if it is still in the time budget.

mlsu
1 replies
1d8h

If you don't want to live in a walkable area boy have I got great news for you. Close your eyes and point at the map!

JoshTriplett
0 replies
1d8h

I would love to live in a walkable area. I would like people designing walkable areas to not make assumptions like "Oh, everyone will love shopping several times a week, just like I do!". (Or worse, "I don't enjoy this myself but I'm sure other people will!", which is a common failure mode.) Let's not have a false dichotomy that assumes everyone who wants to live somewhere walkable also enjoys running errands and wants to do it more often.

Aerroon
0 replies
1d7h

And those stores will be significantly more expensive to buy from while having a smaller selection of goods. It's my understanding that small stores also live off of selling less healthy stuff like alcohol, fast food etc. Some villages here lost their only store after an alcohol tax increase because the stores weren't profitable to run anymore.

imgabe
5 replies
1d11h

I guess you're getting shelf stable milk instead of fresh milk?

Milk is not supposed to last for a month.

JoshTriplett
3 replies
1d9h

Isn't modern technology grand? See also pasteurization, canning, pickling, and many many other technologies that help food last longer. Why should people care what something is "supposed to" do? Many kinds of food are "supposed to" spoil quickly, but we've gone to great lengths to overcome that.

(For clarity in case there is a nomenclature difference here, UHT milk is shelf-stable liquid milk that's entirely equivalent to any milk but lasts much longer before expiring. That's separate from things like evaporated milk or powdered milk, which are also substitutes for milk but not directly equivalent.)

bluGill
2 replies
1d2h

UHT milk does not taste like fresh milk. Sure it is safe for months, but it isn't good for months.

I once was at a farmers place - when they were done milking the cows in the morning they brought milk in from the tank for breakfast - ever since then I can't drink store bought milk as fresh milk tastes so much better. (the milk was also unpasteurized, I believe fresh was the key to taste but I'm not sure)

ajsnigrutin
0 replies
22h37m

Sure, but I mostly need milk for coffee, and sometimes for stuff like puddings, so a liter of milk either lasts a week, or I just need two liters right now for a unplanned batch of pudding/milk rice/etc. UHT is good enough for both. I don't drink milk directly.

JoshTriplett
0 replies
1d

I'd argue the difference between UHT milk and standard pasteurized milk is much smaller than the difference between either and fresh milk, and most people don't buy fresh milk (or want to).

But in any case, it's good that multiple options exist.

ajsnigrutin
0 replies
1d5h

UHT pasteurised milk. The one I have at home now has an expiration date in late june.

throwaway3563
0 replies
1d15h

The big box discount store (which demands that customers buy in bulk to save money, and because it is so far away from you that you can ONLY visit it once per month) is as much a product of US style suburban sprawl, as car-dependency is.

adrianN
0 replies
1d12h

Where I live the prices at local stores are pretty much the same as at the bigger stores farther away.

n_ary
0 replies
23h22m

Reality in a lot of european cities is fundamentally different to most of the US.

I am not sure about which european city you are in. Here in Germany, there are more cars than people. Infact, there is so much parking shortage that, people walk 10 minutes away to park their cars, because the streets are already full.

Also, I don't know anyone going to store daily, most people shop en-mass over the weekend, mostly Saturday afternoon. Only people I see regularly on the malls near me are just retired oma/opa but they also shop like every 4-5 days.

That being said, while at least in the city I am in, has the most connected and excellent public transport, somehow I have to take a reverse de-tour by bus on my way to work, because bus routes are not often straight forward and there are only specific limited routes I can take, unless I can find a place near some U/S-bahn station(immensely difficult these days due to housing crisis).

If I had a car, I could reduce my daily commute to work by 2.5h, but then again, I don't have strict on-site requirements, so it doesn't matter.

ryukafalz
1 replies
1d19h

The "historic city center" and all that crap... that I understand... noone goes there for weekly shopping, but instead people go there to hang out, drink coffee, eat, etc.... public transport works great for that. Malls, shopping centers or even larger stores? Nope.

When there's a lot of housing there, people sure do do their weekly shopping downtown - but it's mostly the people who live in the area. I lived in central Philadelphia for 7 years or so and when I needed groceries, I walked to one of the grocery stores in the neighborhood. I mostly wasn't carrying a ton of stuff on the train, but that's because there were shops close enough to walk to instead anyway.

(Though also, you can fit a lot of stuff in a cargo bike.)

ajsnigrutin
0 replies
1d5h

Sure, if you need some bread, you go to the local bakery and buy that.. or if you need some onions, you buy those in the local store. But here, in my (relatively small, but still...) city, if you need weekly 'supplies', you drive to larger stores and get 100, 150eur of stuff, so you don't have to go to the store every day.

djrobstep
1 replies
1d18h

I get most of my grocery shopping delivered, or I go to the supermarket in my cargo bike, dump it all in the front, and ride home. You really don't need a car for this stuff at all.

cirrrrrrus
0 replies
1d9h

I also have a cargo bike I use to get all sorts of things - from a full shopping cart to a large IKEA haul. Kids go in the trailer while the groceries are loaded in the cargo bike.

I live in Parisian suburbs and stores are all less than 10km away, I have never had trouble getting anything.

If I need something larger / heavier (say, cinder blocks and cement) I just rent a truck for two hours and get all the heavy shopping done in the time frame.

rtkwe
3 replies
1d20h

That's an ideal state but is a real chicken and egg problem, the same problem that's soft locked US cities as car centric as they are, you can't mandate away car reliance without the public transit to back it up and transit will have low ridership if it's even slightly less convenient than driving.

mkaic
2 replies
1d20h

I think underground metros, while expensive to build, solve this, because they are always more convenient compared to any traffic-ridden area. A bus can get stuck in the same traffic as the cars, and bikes taking over any significant portion of American commuting in the near-term feels laughable to me — we are quite culturally different from the Dutch :P

rtkwe
0 replies
23h58m

I would love to see metros in every reasonably sized city but it's going to run into the built in sprawl problem of US suburbs making it very expensive to run lines out to the outlying suburban areas at high enough density to make them viable. Best work around option I suppose is to build them out to the edges of the city and build a big park and ride infrastructure.

I've long thought of the issues with public transit in the majority of US cities as being trapped at a local maximum where we're forced to implement inferior solutions because we're so far into the car infrastructure getting people to abandon their suburban homes to move to a more dense less car dependent urban structure until the underlying shape of cities would adjust to denser clusters again if they ever did.

bluGill
0 replies
1d20h

Don't forget that metros can also go on elevate viaducts for much less money. Underground is the best solution for dense areas, but the elevated is enough cheaper that you can afford to run a metro a long way out into the suburbs - then those become prime real estate to rebuild to mid rises making the entire city denser (assuming zoning allows this)

bluGill
0 replies
1d20h

The problem is either you cannot get the number perfect and so you must make it too large thus doing nothing over not setting a limit at all. If the number is too low you will discover next election people who think they need to park (they may or may not be right) are mad enough to vote you out and undo things. By just not setting a limit you let every property owner decide for themselves what is right - and if they discover they are too low they can hire someone to build more parking (at their expense), while if they decide they have too many they can replace parking with something else - like another building.

angarg12
0 replies
1d19h

Be careful what you wish for, as this kind of rules can quickly have unintended consequences.

I used to live in an English town that set up maximum number of parking spaces for new homes. On paper looks good, as they were trying to incentivize public transport as you mention.

However the outcome was that single family homes were virtual unaffected, as they usually have a double garage plus driveway, while people on apartment blocks had severe parking limitations. In other words, if you were well off enough to buy a house you were gold, and the less well off people had to bear most of the burden.

lgleason
26 replies
1d22h

I like cars and spend a decent amount of time keeping my cars looking pristine. I personally prefer having more than enough parking rather than just enough. Most of the efforts to improve walkability makes it impossible to find parking when you are driving in and forces you to park in dense areas where you either have to pay a fortune to park or park in dense areas where your car is likely to get dinged by some jerk who opens their door into your car.

cassepipe
15 replies
1d22h

I get that you like your way of life (and that you are probably not given credible alternatives in your city) but please do consider the environmental and social costs of such a way of life: A car centric life is not sustainable for the planet.

You've probably seen that propaganda around here but in case you missed it, here is some documentation : https://www.strongtowns.org/

verve_rat
14 replies
1d22h

A car centric life is not sustainable for the planet.

How so? If we waved a magic wand and all cars became EVs powered by renewable energy, what would be unsustainable?

jamil7
9 replies
1d21h

The fact that they’re still vastly less efficient than mass public transport, bikes or just walking.

JoshTriplett
8 replies
1d9h

I'd love to see public transit that can go from arbitrary-point to arbitrary-point door to door in the same amount of time as a hailed EV could. I genuinely really would. I've never seen a proposal for such a system, only proposals that are less time-efficient than that.

jamil7
5 replies
1d8h

That would be one of the least efficient ways to move people at scale around a city, which just enforces the original point.

JoshTriplett
4 replies
1d8h

It's more efficient than requiring parking.

And define "efficient"? People's time and effort have value, as well, and saving time and effort is a win. If a proposed solution is "it takes longer to get from place to place, and additionally requires walking or biking", many people will rightfully consider that proposal worse.

jamil7
3 replies
1d8h

And define "efficient"?

Capacity, cost per passenger, environmental impact, space efficiency.

How does a hailed EV scale to every person in a city that needs to move around without the massive congestion problems we already see in car dominant cities?

JoshTriplett
2 replies
1d7h

Capacity, cost per passenger, environmental impact, space efficiency.

Those things certainly have value. (Environmental impact most of all, that one is actually urgent to solve.) People's time and effort also has value. We have different values for the tradeoffs between them. I care about environmental impact; let's have EVs powered by clean power, and let's have them be repairable and upgradeable so that they don't regularly become obsolete waste. I do not care about capacity or space efficiency except insofar as they indirectly cause problems like congestion and sprawl, and both of those may be possible to address in other ways (e.g. eliminating parking, which is why I didn't claim that everyone owning their own EV and most of them sitting unused most of the time is an ideal solution); neither of those is as important as people's time and effort.

There are other possible utopias, and other potential ways to handle transit. But I'm always going to start from a premise of "how can we achieve the same or better on human time and effort", rather than telling people they have to accept transportation that takes longer and doesn't actually get them directly to where they're going.

jamil7
1 replies
18h49m

Well, I feel like we probably won't agree here, but we do agree on the environmental sustainability topic and I can't personally advocate for car-centric city planning with that in mind.

I think efficiency as it's defined by urban planners and transport experts is, in my opinion, the most useful definition to use in this debate. I also didn't intend to advocate for a single mode of transportation. EVs likely have a place in a public transport network to fill gaps and/or ferry people with mobility issues. But they should exist as complementary strategies to a robust fleet of mass transit systems, bike lanes and footpaths. Again, leaning entirely on cars, even EVs, is going to eventually lead to congestion and sprawl.

But I'm always going to start from a premise of "how can we achieve the same or better on human time and effort"

Right, but this only works if only some of the population of a city travels this way. If everyone does, we're back to congestion and traffic jams, which make this mode even less efficient again.

rather than telling people they have to accept transportation that takes longer and doesn't actually get them directly to where they're going.

Have you had negative experiences with public transport? Because this isn't really the typical situation in every city. I also didn't mean to tell anyone they had to accept one form of transport. I think you'll find if you provide it, and design it well, people will use it, though.

JoshTriplett
0 replies
13h58m

I also didn't intend to advocate for a single mode of transportation.

To be clear, I don't either. And I don't want "car-centric city planning". I want "people-centric, car-integrated, transit-integrated, pedestrian-integrated city planning". What's the best solution given all of those tools that places a high value on people's time and effort and treats our current system as a bare minimum baseline that we must not do worse than.

We disagree on the proportion of transit that wants to be point-to-point EV trips, but I would advocate for using the right tool for the right job. I love long-distance train travel whenever I have the opportunity, and I've also encountered local rail systems or subway systems that work reasonably well at getting vaguely near the right place. I think public transit could adequately serve far more people than it does, and the current state of it in the US is abysmal and should be improved. I advocate against positions that claim it will work for the vast majority of people, or that people should have to accept some amount of inconvenience and use it when it's less optimal.

Right, but this only works if only some of the population of a city travels this way. If everyone does, we're back to congestion and traffic jams, which make this mode even less efficient again.

I disagree with this being an essential property, rather than being one that has arisen from many many terrible ways we do both city design and transit design. (And to be clear, that does include bad design that arises from being car-centric and in particular car-ownership-centric, rather than a people-centric design that integrates cars as well as other modes of transportation.)

Among many other bad designs that we could improve on, given the will to do so:

1) Absolutely build mass transit systems, and use them to get all the predictable non-point-to-point transportation off the roads. Make the mass transit systems free (because they literally lose money collecting fares today and would save money and time by not doing so). Make them comfortable, frequent, and un-crowded. Solve the other societal problems (e.g. insufficient housing, see (7)) that currently have the side effect of making mass transit undesirable for many.

2) We currently have systems in which cars and pedestrians ever interact, and we shouldn't. An ideal car network would be 95% invisible to people, either elevated or underground (or alternatively and more feasibly in many pre-existing urban areas, with the walkways elevated and with interconnections between buildings), completely silent, no pedestrian crossings needed (because elevated crossings or hidden roadways), and as few stops/intersections as possible. (That's before the further optimizations that would be possible if we have roadways exclusively usable by self-driving vehicles.) That makes roads faster and more efficient, and makes walking areas more pleasant.

3) We currently try to design self-driving vehicles that ever interact with non-self-driving vehicles, rather than seriously looking at what a robust and safe design could look like if it didn't have that constraint. I am skeptical that our current approaches will produce results anytime in the next decade or more; with dedicated spaces that problem becomes one of infrastructure and largely not one of technology.

4) We have parking taking up space near everywhere people want to stop, rather than designing primarily around drop-offs and pick-ups. (This is an improvement before self-driving and a much bigger one after.)

5) We have advertisements and storefronts and similar that expect people to see them from their cars, which is related to (4) and (6). Get out of car, get on escalator/elevator/stairs, be in or adjacent to the building.

6) We have huge numbers of commercial spaces that take little to no advantage of vertical space. There's (almost) no excuse for 1-2 floor stores or office buildings; that's a lot of wasted vertical space. Many people prefer suburbs for living and don't want to share walls with people; not everyone wants to live in an apartment/condo tower, nor should they have to. But that's far less of a problem for most (not all) businesses or offices, and we get much better transportation efficiency if the last leg of many journeys is an elevator.

7) We have far too little telecommuting and far too much commuting, even in recent years. And the commutes we have are too long. Allow building more housing, a lot more housing, no even more than that, until housing in every area is affordable, so that there's no premium or compromise required to live closer to work. Design taller, denser commercial areas, so that the places people work are easier to get to, and make sure there's plenty of housing in those areas as well. And ensure there's good mass-transit to those buildings, because commutes are one largely predictable bit of transportation and congestion for which we should be able to provide fast point-to-point rail. Have businesses that mandate in-person work provide most of the necessary funds, and enjoy the side effect of many businesses suddenly discovering that telecommuting is fine after all. Once commutes are largely addressed, that addresses the single biggest sources of congestion in most places.

8) Stop denigrating cars as exclusively for "people with mobility issues", and accept that they're for people who want to get directly from point A to point E without having to walk from A to B then take transit to C then take transit to D then walk to E. If a point-to-point car trip is faster than the transit network, and you can't make the transit network go that fast or be that convenient, accept that people rationally want to choose the car and you have to be better than that for people to switch. (And no, you don't get to cheat by going "well, if we make the cars slower people will have to take transit", as I've seen many try to do. Start with the premise that people should be able to get from A to E with as little time and effort as possible, and help them do so.)

That's one handful of possibilities, and I think plenty more naturally arise when you have a design that integrates many modes of transportation. Also, to forestall an obvious objection: the above is written based on planning for the future and based on substantial investment in transportation infrastructure, both of which I think are reasonable for any large-scale plan. I've frankly seen plans for mass transit that would require substantially larger investment in transportation than this, and have substantially less possibility for incremental evolution.

cassepipe
1 replies
1d8h

You don't go arbitrary to arbitrary, you make the most of the transportation system and you walk/bike the last part. Of course the city has to be designed in a way where it's not a pain.

JoshTriplett
0 replies
1d8h

You don't go arbitrary to arbitrary

Yes, I currently do. Not being able to do that is a downgrade. We can and should do better than telling people to accept a worse solution.

matsemann
1 replies
1d22h

We have mostly EVs sold in Norway the last few years. It's not been so great: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-electric-...

yCombLinks
0 replies
1d21h

The problems in this article seem to all stem from excessive subsidies for EVs causing cars to become more widespread. That's far different than in the US where cars already dominate all infrastructure. Here, a transition from ICE to EVs would be way better and more realistic.

schmorptron
0 replies
1d19h

The tires, rubber emissions account for a decent chunk of ocean pollution. https://www.thedrive.com/news/tire-dust-makes-up-the-majorit...

Still, if you solved those issues as well (and there is progress afaik?) it'd be fine. Cars are handy, and a necessity if you live somewhere rural. just keep them out of cities as much as possible, except for larger transports and emergency vehicles.

abdullahkhalids
0 replies
1d18h

It's not just energy and CO2. Roads and spread out human development disrupts ecosystems and natural water flows. They result in the death of species, plants, animals, insects. Mining the material required to build cars and infrastructure also has significant ecological impact.

Please note that less than 18% (likely around 10%) of the world's population own cars [1]. 5-10x the number of the current cars in the world, even if they are EVs, will have more than a 5-10x impact on the environment since ecological systems are non-linear in nature.

[1] https://www.motorbiscuit.com/number-car-owners-world-less-th...

underlipton
2 replies
1d22h

Good. America has over-invested in cars and car infrastructure, to the detriment of many other more deserving investments. We're upside down on our priorities when it costs a few bucks to park on land worth a few million dollars and when skilled laborers are living off of insurance payouts to fix superficial dings and dents (instead of, say, fixing failing bridges).

wirrbel
1 replies
1d22h

That investment was done to a degree that upkeep is to expensive nowadays.

shiroiuma
0 replies
1d9h

Sounds more like a white elephant than an investment. Investments are supposed to yield returns much greater than the initial cost, not cost you a fortune in continuing maintenance.

loloquwowndueo
2 replies
1d22h

Most of the efforts to improve walkability makes it impossible to find parking when you are driving

Most of the efforts to improve driveability make it impossible to walk anywhere.

the_snooze
0 replies
1d22h

Exactly. There isn't a place that's simultaneously nice for drivers and nice for everyone else. A space for cars necessarily reduces value, safety, and comfort for humans outside cars.

specialist
0 replies
1d18h

Most efforts to improve drivability also worsen drivability.

yardie
0 replies
1d21h

have to pay a fortune to park

The free market is telling you something.

pengaru
0 replies
1d22h

IME there's usually a paid option where demand for parking exists where there are no/few free options.

Your complaint is usually implicitly about a lack of free parking. Folks who insist on bringing their cars to town for dinner can foot the storage bill at a lot/garage down the street IMHO.

matsemann
0 replies
1d22h

where you either have to pay a fortune to park

That's a good thing. Cheap or free parking is just a subsidy on car usage.

epistasis
0 replies
1d22h

99% of development over the past half century has been focused on making it optimal for driving, at the expense of the ~20% of people that can not even drive. And this wasn't because the market decided to do that, it's all been mandated by law.

I think it's good to have a diversity of types of development. Just as people who don't want to drive shouldn't expect access to car-dependent environments to be easy, people in cars shouldn't expect the very few pockets of hard-won walkable environments to be optimal for driving into.

falcolas
12 replies
1d22h

I'd rather they put in an indigenous meadow. Trees are awesome, but so are open green spaces that maintain themselves.

Spivak
3 replies
1d22h

Why not both? Trees in the manner they're describing where it's just helping the forested area expand back out doesn't require human involvement either.

The selfish human reason to want trees as a natural heat regulator is I think alone worth the benefit in areas with lots of asphalt where people will be near.

7thaccount
1 replies
1d22h

Cities are hot. Cities with lots of mature trees providing shade on the sidewalks make it a lot more bearable.

falcolas
0 replies
1d22h

Merely eliminating a lot of the black heat sinks (i.e. parking lots) and replacing them with native grasses would do a lot to help keep city temperatures a touch more reasonable.

Asphalt both absorbs and radiates heat like mad.

falcolas
0 replies
1d22h

If the trees are native to the area, sure. But a tree monoculture doesn't seem to do a lot of good.

smallerfish
2 replies
1d22h

What herbivores are you going to deploy to allow the meadow to maintain itself? Going to fence them in or let them run wild in town?

In 99%+ of east coast US environments, grassland will become forest naturally (over time), even with the deer population as it is.

jacoblambda
0 replies
1d21h

Why not do controlled burns? That's historically how most grasslands and meadows that didn't support large grazing populations stayed that way.

ghaff
0 replies
1d22h

I had big meadows in front and back of my house when I moved in 25 years ago. I let about the 50-100 feet out by the road naturalize over time; the rest is cut by a tractor about once a year. The section out by the road is forest, albeit immature, at this point.

There's far more forest in New England than there was 150 years or so ago.

UtopiaPunk
2 replies
1d22h

A lot of places would benefit from more housing, too, or new business, or almost anything really. A parking lot is about the worst option possible.

We look at a large section of a land and decide that we will destroy all life on it, pave over it with asphalt (so that even the rain cannot drain into the soil), all so that large vehicles can sit there unused. It really is the lowest opinion one can have on a piece of Earth.

brewdad
1 replies
1d22h

Most surface lots you see in a city are placeholders until the owner finds a project that pencils out. Why not charge people to park there until you are ready to build that new highrise?

Vegenoid
0 replies
1d18h

From an "I own this land and want to make the most money off of it" standpoint that makes sense.

From an "I live here and want my community to be enjoyable and beautiful" standpoint it makes less sense.

dcotter
0 replies
18h34m

Serious question: Why not plant trees & shrubs & grasses in parking lots? (as in, in containers or medians). Shade the parking lot and make it less hot. Make it prettier to park in and attract birds & other wildlife. You could even charge people for the privilege of parking somewhere nice for a change.

bryanlarsen
0 replies
1d22h

Meadows or trees would be nice, but I've noticed that underused parking lots tend to be common places to build restaurants and other retail. Not as great as trees or meadows but on the other hand I'd rather the new retail goes on parking lots rather than replacing currently existing trees & meadows.

datadrivenangel
6 replies
1d22h

They (ought to) unpave the parking lot and put up a paradise!

More green spaces are good for cities.

bluGill
4 replies
1d20h

Not really. Some parks/green areas are good. However it is easy to put in more than are needed and make the city less dense which is not good for the city or your ability to do some of the things that make a city great.

UtopiaPunk
1 replies
1d18h

I mean, sure, there can be healthy debate around what is the best use for a specific piece of land. But surely anything is better than a free parking lot, right?

bluGill
0 replies
1d4h

No, too many parks is just as bad as too many parking lots, for the same reason: they force the city to sprawl. A few parks are good - and the exact amount is debatable, but the proposal to turn all parking lots into parks will create too many parks.

Everyone should have a park close to where they live. A place where kids can play and families can picnic is important to a good family life. A park is a good place for art, but it only needs to be accessible by transit as most people won't make regular visits. Many people enjoy playing volleyball, softball, or other sports, but they tend to want to play different teams so while a city should have this it should be accessible by transit but not close to everyone. There are a few variations on the above theme that I didn't mention. Once those uses are covered a city should not build more parks, instead the city needs more of the other things that make a city: places to live, work, shop, and be entertained.

specialist
0 replies
1d19h

Which cities have too many parks?

davidw
0 replies
1d19h

Figuring out where parks go is the kind of things urban planners should be doing, rather than obsessing over overspecific zoning rules and parking regulations.

Cities are best when they are allowed to gradually adapt, rather than trying to plan everything out 'just so' from the outset and being rigid about changes.

But parks are tougher to put in once the land has been used up.

quesera
0 replies
1d18h

I'm reading this thread for only one purpose, which is to find the Joni Mitchell reference. Thank you.

tomcar288
5 replies
1d20h

I think he really hit the nail on head here:

"Part of this is a result of poor planning and ordinance-making that long ago overcompensated for the wide use of automobiles. Henry Grabar, a staff writer at Slate, mentions this in a book published last year, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. ”On a national level, certainly, there’s far more parking than we need,” Grabar said in an interview. “There are at least four parking spaces for every car, meaning that the parking stock is no more than 25 percent full at any given time. And some of those cars are moving at any given time, so parking may be a good deal emptier than that.”

MichaelZuo
2 replies
1d16h

There are at least four parking spaces for every car

What's the original source for that statistic?

jbrins1
1 replies
1d3h
MichaelZuo
0 replies
1d1h

Thanks, but the linked source seems very sketchy, it never actually cites or even specifies where it got the information.

e.g. >In addition, using data from a nationwide inventory, we reach a figure of 105 million metered spaces.

It never mentions what the source of this 'nationwide inventory' is, who made it, when, etc...

nonameiguess
0 replies
1d

I'd also question how realistically anyone can estimate the number of parking spots that exist nationally, but regardless, parking space isn't exactly an elastic resource. To be able to meet peak demand, you have to overprovision, and peak demand isn't evenly spread out, so it's not like any particular neighborhood or business can just compute what percentage of land area they take up in a city and multiply that by the number of cars registered in that city. Roads are the same way for the same reason. There is far more available road area than could be taken up by all cars in the world even if they were all driving at the same time.

Even in residential areas, the rise of AirBNB is causing an accordion effect in parking availability, at least in my neighborhood. I live downtown in a place that doesn't have much in the way of garage space or driveways so the streets are heavily used for parking and there is enough space generally speaking for everyone who lives here, but come weekends and event times now that so many condos have become temporary party houses people rent so they can trash, this floods the streets with cars from out of the area and suddenly the people who actually live here have nowhere to park.

ayberk
0 replies
1d20h

I'm still reading this book, but so far it's been one of the few books I'd recommend to anyone. I try to be as stoic as possible, but contents of this book has managed to actually anger me. It makes it so clear that how much corruption and bad policies impact our lives.

bloopernova
5 replies
1d22h

Can we do the same with golf courses?

I think it was George Carlin that said put affordable housing on golf courses?

More seriously, if you have a brownfield ex industrial site, will trees etc grow ok there? Does converting brownfield sites to meadows or forests pose any risks to nearby humans?

adregan
4 replies
1d20h

Speaking of brownfield, you may (more likely not) be surprised to know that golf courses are pretty nasty places themselves. You can find soils contaminated with arsenic, mercury, and cadmium from fungicides.

So those rolling green links might not be the cheapest places to establish new housing when you include the remediation.

bloopernova
3 replies
1d20h

Oof, that's pretty bad. I did not know that. Do you happen to know if forests would help clean that soil?

Feels kind of appropriate if you could grow forest on a site for 50 to 100 years or more. Then harvest the wood with all the nasty stuff in it. Then bury all that contaminated wood somewhere deep. Then build houses on the newly clean earth.

adregan
2 replies
1d19h

You can build new soil on top of contaminated soil to bury it. Here’s a permaculture site in an old rail bed in nyc that has nasty stuff lurking beneath many layers of new soil[0].

Not really sure if trees uptake heavy metals.

0: https://youtu.be/UqyK_9iybD8?si=rx7iCjsTu1Zn6YbO

efields
1 replies
1d19h

They won’t, but certain fungi will break them down.

kardos
0 replies
1d14h

How does fungi break down the heavy metals?

mattmcknight
4 replies
1d20h

I find this sort of logic absurd. “There are at least four parking spaces for every car, meaning that the parking stock is no more than 25 percent full at any given time. And some of those cars are moving at any given time"

So, if I have a two car garage in my house, a parking spot at work, and a parking spot at the local shopping district, how else is this going to work? I can't bring my parking spot with me. The idea that we should look at per existing car utilization as any kind of indicator is ridiculous. Now, if any of those spots is never used, that may be a good indicator- but it might be because a building isn't fully leased at the moment as well.

bluGill
1 replies
1d20h

You don't have a parking spot at the local parking district. You share your spot with everyone else there. Sure you have one at home and one at work, but everything else is shared with people who use your spot when you are not there.

mattmcknight
0 replies
20h53m

Well, I do like to park when I go shopping, but it's still going to increase the ratio of spots to cars, even if 10 cars park in that spot over the course of the day. I just don't see a ratio of 4 spots per car being particularly egregious.

JambalayaJim
1 replies
23h34m

The idea is that if parking lots are built, they should be at the very least well utilized. We have a big problem of shopping centres over-building parking. For example, optimizing for everyone being able to always find a spot even at peak holiday seasons. As opposed to optimizing for having that parking lot being ~90% full for most of the day.

The fact that your home garage and work parking lot are also empty most of the time is also a huge problem. It makes cities much larger than they need to be, and serving public transit across them impossible.

mattmcknight
0 replies
5h29m

The fact that your home garage and work parking lot are also empty most of the time is also a huge problem.

I don't think it's a huge problem. My garage is part of the overall footprint of my home. My garage is under my office. It wouldn't help to have them full all of the time. Should I also have someone living in my house while I work? Or ensuring that all offices have shift work? Sure, there is a possible efficiency there, but we make certain concessions for convenience. A ratio of 4 spots per car doesn't seem obviously bad.

I do think there are some places with too much parking, but there are also plenty of places where there is not enough.

jiggliemon
4 replies
1d20h

I live on the border of an urban forest.

I’ve come to realize that urban forests double as homeless camps. My homeless camp has is rife with crime, drug over doses, violence and fire. Last month I’ve had a leaf blower stolen, my car window broken, and an explosion due to them throwing a propane tank into a camp fire.

Since they’re tucked into a forest - the city won’t take any action. The city does take action on homeless camps that are more visible. I don’t mean to conflate urban forests with homelessness. However that’s very much the case here in Austin, Tx.

xtracto
0 replies
1d16h

That was my experience when I visited to California when traveling to the USA. I remember a nice town called Santa Cruz, with really nice parks in Google Maps, but once I took a walk in one of them an it was super scary, full of tents and homeless people that seemed either drug users or just bad in their head.

sph
0 replies
1d9h

If you have homelessness problems, it is not because of urban forests, and the solution is not having as few forests and parks as possible.

aetherspawn
0 replies
1d11h

Yes agree, they recently opened up a small forest near me and yes, it’s just full of homeless people and their piles of trash and we can’t walk through it feeling safe anymore.

UtopiaPunk
0 replies
1d18h

"I don’t mean to conflate urban forests with homelessness."

"I’ve come to realize that urban forests double as homeless camps."

You typed both of these sentences in the same post. One of them needs to be removed, because they don't make sense together.

uudecoded
3 replies
1d22h

How long does it take to break even on the carbon output of asphalt demolition and haul-away vs carbon input of optimal density trees planted in the same space?

2024throwaway
1 replies
1d22h

I don't think it's fair to look at carbon output in isolation here. This would greatly help with a variety of issues such as mitigating urban heat islands, providing wildlife habitat, aiding pollinators, and just generally making the world we live in less hellish.

mikeyouse
0 replies
1d22h

It's probably a pretty favorable comparison anyway. Asphalt is almost 100% recyclable. The demolition often just involves a single bobcat and a dump truck that hauls it to the recycling plant. A commonly used number is 10kg/tree/year for the first 20 years of a tree's growth so a plot with 25 trees would remove ~250kg/year. A gallon of gas releases about 10kg of CO2, so in that 20 year period, the little plot would capture about 5,000kg of CO2 or ~500 gallons equivalent.

specialist
0 replies
1d18h

Unmaintained asphalt eventually reverts to gravel. No need to haul anything away.

Were I replacing parking lots, I'd prioritize any abandoned / under utilized lots. Just start mulching and planting.

Plant willows and maples to break up the surface. Or maybe mechanically break things up, if the best-available-science supports doing so, if you're impatient.

Bonus Points: Convert planters, meridians, etc into P-Patch style community gardens. People love to garden. In my city, the wait list to join a P-Patch is years long.

ortusdux
3 replies
1d22h

I'd like to see more solar covered parking lots. Bonus points for integrated EV charging stations. They would be great in the hotter parts of the country. How much fuel/energy is spent cooling cars back down after they have sat in the sun for an hour?

1970-01-01
2 replies
1d19h

Why isn't this actually happening? Parking lots are really 2D spaces, so leveraging the unused 3rd dimension is very smart and profitable.

throwawaaarrgh
1 replies
1d12h

If it were profitable, they'd be profiting.

Parking lots are parking lots because they require low CapEx, almost no OpEx. You buy some abandoned land, raze it, asphalt it, charge $30 a day per space (at let's say 75 spaces), tow the rest (at the driver's expense). You're pulling in a little under $67k/month. Wait for a commercial developer to come buy and take it off your hands for 3x its value.

You know how much it costs to dig up the ground, install power lines, a box, then bury footings, bolt in legs, install panels, etc, 9+ feet high? For a whole parking lot? $300k-500k, minimum (that's how much it costs just to install a small fleet of EV chargers btw, that's not doing major construction over an area the size of half a football field).

How much you gonna make off these panels? A 200kW panel array generates about 480MWh/yr, which at 1MW/$40 comes out to about $19,200/year in SREC credits. PA energy price is $0.18/KWh, so 480MW is $24/hr. But you're making 80% efficiency and it's not sunny all day all year, so at even 50% usage, that's $24,960/year. Almost a third of what the parking lot makes a month. Before we talk paying back installation costs, assuming your net metering deal is perfect.

It would be cheaper to build a multi-story garage, where you'd make WAY more money.

1970-01-01
0 replies
23h21m

How much you gonna make off these panels?

You're dismissing the possibility of free EV charging attracting shoppers. Step 1 is getting people to visit your store, step 2 is getting them to buy something, and step 3 is getting them to come again. Step 1 & 3 would immediately get noticed by the corporate bean counters. The real problem I think is the up-front costs of the installation.

housebear
3 replies
1d21h

Does anyone have an idea of what it would roughly cost to purchase an unused parking lot, tear it up, dispose of the asphalt waste, re-soil, and plant 30 or so trees? Is this something some enterprising person could start a kickstarter for just as a public experiment? Is it even possible with zoning requirements or the like?

eikenberry
1 replies
1d21h

Why tear up the asphalt? Wouldn't perforating it with bigger holes cut for the trees be a lot cheaper. Tree roots grow perfectly fine under asphalt and perforation will allow for air and water to reach the soil in a more distributed manner for better growth. Seems like it would be a much cheaper option.

jackfrodo
0 replies
1d20h

Trees themselves are useful because they support biodiversity such as small mammals, insects, all the useful things along a forest floor. can't do that with asphalt.

mkoubaa
0 replies
1d20h

In time or money? You can cancel your gym membership and work on it an hour a day

osigurdson
2 replies
1d22h

You could always put together a group and purchase the land from the current owners. Once you take possession, put the land in trust, tear it up and plant trees. You could potentially recover some costs by donating to the city but there is always a chance that they would decide to change the zoning in the future.

ericcumbee
1 replies
1d22h

unless they have a purpose in mind for said property, a lot of cities are hesitant to do that. because it takes the property off the tax roll when the city accepts it.

mkoubaa
0 replies
1d21h

Yes but property values near greenery and parks are theoretically higher, right? At least in some places. It could also be beneficial for water runoff management and flood resistance to have more trees

notorandit
2 replies
1d8h

Planting trees is not trivial. Nor a green-ish solution.

1. What to plant is important as not all places/soils are the same.

2. Are you also thinking about maintenance (watering and pruning included)?

3. Are you also thinking about environmental compatibility with existing fauna and flora?

Planting trees is not trivial!

JR1427
0 replies
1d7h

I don't think the author suggested that planting trees is trivial.

It might not be trivial, but it absolutely can be done.

I think you are correct, though, that we want to avoid planting trees for the sake of it, and ending up with areas with inappropriate species devoid of much life.

Faaak
0 replies
1d6h

Well, your list is not exactly complicated.. I've planted around ~300 trees in a 4-year long restoration project.

Selecting native species needs to be done, but that's not that complicated (either by asking organizations, or by reading the recomended list by the state/country/whatever).

Maintenance is low. Sure, don't plant trees that need water every day, but that's it. Irrigate them every week the first year. Pruning ? But they're not fruit trees ?

irusensei
2 replies
1d22h

If it’s public properties then yes please. If private then hippity hoppity…

fjoireoipe
1 replies
1d22h

use eminent domain to turn it into public property?

hoppity heft property is theft

Philorandroid
0 replies
1h58m

"Just take it by force" isn't the rational answer you think it is

Ekaros
2 replies
1d11h

I say we wait until someone demonstrate area working which totally bans all types of vehicles. Only allowing ambulances and firetrucks. Absolutely nothing else, no vans, no taxis(or ridesharing). Maybe provide wheelchairs for those that need.

Keep this going at least for 10 years and see how much the people will enjoy it.

lionkor
0 replies
1d11h

In switzerland there are towns like Zermatt, Saas-Fee, Wengen and Mürren that are car-free.

abdullahkhalids
0 replies
1d11h

What a ridiculous straw-man extreme argument. When people say "car-free" they do not mean 0 cars. They mean a city where the incentive structure has been changed so driving cars is expensive and annoying, while walking or transit is easy and simple. But in such a "car-free" city, there should/can be

* emergency vehicles * other essential government vehicles like post office, garbage, etc. * commercial delivery vehicles (dozens per 1000) * taxi services (dozens per 1000) * personal vehicles for those with disabilities * personal vehicles for those who are willing to pay a lot of money+time for them (hopefully not many dozens per 1000).

You are thinking that the terminal goal is no cars. But the terminal goal is to live on Earth in a sustainable fashion so we don't destroy the only habitable ecosystem for humans. Fewer cars is a secondary goal in service of this very reasonable requirement.

xnx
1 replies
1d22h

Much easier to let farmland go wild than tear up parking lots and destroy any chance of recouping the embodied energy of asphalt for something useful. Most farmland is in support of animal agriculture (boooo) and wouldn't make economic sense if farms had to pay municipal rates for the water they use.

burkaman
0 replies
1d21h

I understand what you're saying, but it sounds like a kind of sunk cost fallacy. If a parking lot has been sitting empty for years and nobody has any plan to do anything with it, maybe it's time to tear it up. The bad decision to build it in the first place has already been made, we can't undo it by waiting and hoping. You can at least recycle the asphalt to get a bit of use out of it.

Rewilding unnecessary farmland is also a good idea. As usual in these conversations, there's no reason we can't do both.

tamimio
1 replies
1d21h

Before attacking the parking lots, fix the return to office mandates, the public transportation, downtown concepts, and physically collocated XY (shops or other) and the parking lot issue will solve itself, going after the symptoms without fixing the root cause is just moronic nonsense that will lead to at least “other” parking lots increasing their prices.

jackfrodo
0 replies
1d20h

Removing parking lots will increase public support for all of the other things you mentioned. It's easier to start with tearing out parking lots and if necessary, cap parking prices, in addition to the other decades long projects

bluGill
1 replies
1d20h

The problem I have is most cities have plenty of green parks already. In a few places they could use a new park, but in general there are far more parking lots (often 50% of a city is parking lot!) than there is need for green space. Much better is tear up a parking lot and replace it with a building that lets people do something in the city other than pretend they are in a rural area. Nothing wrong with rural areas and parks, but there is more to life than those. Put in more apartments, offices, restaurants, opera houses - all those other things that make a city great.

JambalayaJim
0 replies
23h33m

My area could very much use more green space

SoftTalker
1 replies
1d19h

In general, if you don't like how a piece of property is being used, you should buy it and then use it the way you see fit.

agent281
0 replies
1d19h

The big issue is that there are many land use regulations so you by and large can't use it as you see fit. Parking minimums are a good example of this.

trimethylpurine
0 replies
1d20h

If only 75% of spaces are empty, while sad, that seems shockingly efficient. If you have a car you need at least one place to park for each location you will ever visit with it. That means most people are only driving their cars to 4 places. Home, work, school and the grocery store? Hopefully for store owners, not all at the same time. I would have expected a lot more unused spaces in parking lots. If we have cars we should be expecting a hell of a lot of empty parking lots. Maybe cities should just require some minimum amount of plant life in the lots themselves. I'm sure customers would approve.

Also any expectation of "the demise of malls and the decline of brick-and-mortar retail" is hasty. Globally, during the pandemic, 80%+ of retail was brick and mortar [1], and it actually increased in 2021, though it appears to be correcting. Research shows consumers don't trust stores with an online only presence [2]. I think banking on that will be too little too late. We need better solutions sooner.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECOMPCTSA/

[2] https://www.kbbreview.com/6657/news/consumers-lack-trust-onl...

throwawaaarrgh
0 replies
1d12h

Baltimore has no money, ain't nobody paying for that.

In cities outside of Baltimore, where there aren't 20,000 abandoned buildings (when last I lived there), where there's a public housing shortage and a rising cost of living, they need affordable homes, not trees. I love trees but they're better for cities that don't have housing shortages, yet have the money to pay for trees.

Baltimore (and Philly, similar in some respects) has large concrete and brick deserts. But they also have large and small parks with lots of trees. That's where you get mugged after dusk (and sometimes during the day). You don't walk through Patterson Park at night.

IMO it's a privileged thing to think of first. Certain websites that cater to this kind of post don't seem to discuss civic issues from the perspective of the people who need the most help. It's more a certain kind of person who's more interested in a closer walk to the Starbucks and Trader Joe's.

silexia
0 replies
1d1h

What a dumb idea. The massive amount of fuel it would take to build and run the huge machines necessary to tear up a parking lot, then just move it to another lot of land far outstrips the benefits of a few trees. Simply let plants and trees grow up through the lot and go back to a natural state over time.

nraynaud
0 replies
1d8h

it's funny how older countries are sometimes ahead of some trends. Here in France we can ignore some local height limits to install solar pannels, it's now forbidden (in the genreal case) to toss your rainwater to the street, you have to get in back in the ground on the area it was collected, etc. But it's true that being an old country they did not really trash everything for the car, so we are not too much left with the very wide scar of a highway cutting through a downtown.

notacoward
0 replies
1d21h

"I don’t know that anyone besides Grabar is even thinking about this"

A great many people are. Urbanist Xitter (Mastodon, Threads, whatever) is very much alive and well. The closest thing to a consensus about what to do with the reclaimed space is some trees, but primarily medium-density affordable housing, ideally with retail on the bottom. Sometimes the space can be used to make room for transit, too. By making these places denser and more livable, it prevents even more trees, meadows, etc. from being cleared for more exurbs.

I'd start with Suburban Nation, move on to StrongTowns and MissingMiddle, then take it from there.

mytailorisrich
0 replies
1d22h

Trees are great to provide shade in parking lots.

I have been to parking lots covered in mature Aleppo Pines (which smell great in the heat) and from far away you couldn't really tell there was a parking lot there.

midasuni
0 replies
1d19h

Soon you’ll have to pay a dollar and a half just to see the parking lots in the parking lot museum.

megablast
0 replies
1d8h

Tear up all car parks.

lifeformed
0 replies
1d7h

Here in Taipei, most of the parking lots are built underground, and above them are green park spaces. It's great, a two-for-one deal.

kusuriya
0 replies
1d19h

heck even if we just did more trees and shade cover of parking lots it would be better for the environment all the way around, and make drivers happier so they don't have to crawl into a complete oven of a car.

kulahan
0 replies
1d10h

As of a few years ago, all parking lot sizes were effectively guesstimates, at least for a not-insignificant number of companies. iirc, the problem

Donald Shoup is an economist with a seemingly infinite hatred for our massive waste of parking. Cool ideas for how to fix it (e.g. metered parking that goes up as parking goes down, money goes to the neighborhood that's being metered directly) and he helps drive home how insane the entire thing is.

He's got some old lectures and interviews on youtube that can be pretty damn interesting, for a video of an economist talking about parking lots...

kova12
0 replies
1d22h

No P&L, no cost/reward analysis, no numbers at all. Just emotional "omg need more green". Have the author ever torn down a single parking lot? Doesn't look like that to me. Why is this article even on HN at all?

gfs
0 replies
1d23h

The book mentioned in this article (Paved Paradise) is eye-opening. I'm nearly done reading it and have a whole new perspective on the matter.

efields
0 replies
1d18h

Baltimore resident. I went to that staples for the first time a week ago and thought the parking lot was strangely huge. I don’t think an urban forest makes sense there tho.

Baltimore actually has a decent amount of forest and park per capita. The Roland park country club is becoming a public/private thing.

Getting around town without a car sucks though. There’s no growth to incentivize bigger transit projects. More busses would be nice.

I don’t think Baltimore and other hollowed out blue collar cities need trees as much as they need to enable entirely different industries. And I don’t know what those industries are! But there’s a lot of talented craftspeople here, and not enough capital to pay them.

Or we go anarcho-collectivism.

dukeofdoom
0 replies
1d18h

Money could be spent to aquire larger amounts of land on outskirts of cities ti create a larger park or forrested area.

aurizon
0 replies
1d4h

We need denser housing = low rise densification with roof terraces/gardens on impenetrable = never leak roofs with zero structural maintenance using stainless steel rebar = never corrode, but add only 2-3% to base costs. We have millions of structures failing after 30-50 years due to steel rebar corrosion. The construction industry is aware of this, but does not implement it by intent. With impending zero population growth looming in many areas, we need zero cost growth housing.

andrewstuart
0 replies
1d20h

Take all the trees, put em in a tree museum.

Charge the people, a dollar and half just to see em.

aetherspawn
0 replies
1d11h

Wow, you guys have unused parking lots? We chronically don’t have enough, anywhere.

RecycledEle
0 replies
23h11m

Parking lots are a capital investment. The vast majority of "unused" parking lots will be used if they remain in place and receive a small amount of maintenance.

Tearing up a parking lot and later building a new one is not only expensive but it does significant environmental damage.

JR1427
0 replies
1d6h

It's interesting reading the comments that are from a US perspective, where there are vast amounts of untamed land for wildlife and recreation. Many US commenters are highlighting that they would rather that cities be cities, because there is already plenty of green space outside cities.

In the UK, most land is either farmland, or built on, so urban green areas are much more important for wildlife. There is a drive in the UK to create more "green corridors" linking green areas together, but this is facing stiff competition with the drive to develop second cities.

Ripping up parking lots (car parks) and planting trees would be even more important in the UK.

HenryBemis
0 replies
1d10h

remove the unnecessary asphalt and plant some trees. Or do something constructive with this unused, paved space — new housing, a solar energy field

It's always about the money. Who will sell the land, who will buy the land, who will build the houses, who will buy the houses (for how much), and so on.

If I am a developer I don't care to make a $100k house. I prefer that there is 'some' scarcity in the market so I can be selling $300k houses instead. This 'motivational' speech is socialist-like (I like socialism but the Scandinavian one - aka capitalism with enhanced social care).

If there is money to be made, then money will be made. I am sure that these places will go down in prices enough to become 'attractive', and not a day before.