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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29149 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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I recently found an interesting post about the driving/transit+walking divide that I'd like to discuss some here: If We Want a Shift to Walking, We Need to Prioritize Dignity.

The basic point that this article makes is that a good and necessary measure as to whether people would actually want to walk somewhere looks like so:

If you were driving past and saw a friend walking or rolling there [on a sidewalk], what would your first thought be:

  1. “Oh, no, Henry’s car must have broken down! I better offer him a ride.”

  2. “Oh, looks like Henry’s out for a walk! I should text him later.”

I would like to use this to assert that: For 99% of modern-day American cities that are not currently pedestrian-friendly, there is no reasonable change that will ever make them so.

The problem is that, once you build a city to be car-friendly in the modern American style, with 3-4+ lane arterial surface roads and expressways everywhere and all businesses having massive parking lots that are virtually never full, the structure of your city is fundamentally unwalkable. You can toss in some sidewalks and buses, but you'll never create a landscape where people actually want to walk places. Not that literally nobody will ever walk anywhere, but where people who have money and status and can afford to keep cars will actively choose to walk and take busses to places instead of driving.

Here's a link to a Google Street View of a random road in a random medium-small city in America. It's actually fairly urban compared to the surrounding region, but I'm pretty sure nobody who has any alternatives chooses to walk there. And in fact, there aren't any pedestrians visible on that road in Street View. You can create some paths to walk on, but you can't duct-tape making walking dignified and respectable onto a region where it isn't already.

IMO, the majority of attempts to make walkable neighborhoods in non-walkable regions are not particularly useful. Usually, they're in residential areas, and you can maybe make that one neighborhood walkable, and create one little walkable urban square with some restaurants, coffee shops, light retail, a bar or two, etc. But you're not going to be able to create an area where a successful person can access everything they want to be able to do regularly with walking and transit, because they can't get anywhere but that one little urban square easily. Not saying that they aren't pleasant or that people living there don't like them, but they're never going to lead to a region or society where people choose not to have cars.

You can stop subsidizing cars and low density and it would result in denser cities where most people still drive everywhere. Then, after it became much denser, people would gradually start walking, things would move around to accomodate this, and it would become more walkable.

Can you clarify exactly what you mean by "subsidizing cars"? I can't think of any way we're doing that which would be a quick-fix to stop.

The most direct way we're "subsidizing cars" is by requiring large parking lots on every business in most cities. We could stop that, but it's exactly the problem I'm talking about - there are tens of thousands of already-built lots with them in every city, with millions invested in each one. You can't change it without spending millions more per lot on demolishing and reconstructing everything, and whoever did it first would be at a massive disadvantage.

Drivers don't have to pay for roads, street parking is underpriced, zoning by-laws require excess parking. You could require drivers to pay for these things and then they'd use them less, and then they'd start disappearing.

Drivers are paying for roads through various taxes, including on fuel, tires, and registrations. It probably doesn't fully cover the cost of road construction and maintenance, but I've never heard of a transit system that charged fees high enough to cover the costs of construction, maintenance, and operation. Since both types of systems are effectively subsidized, there's only an ideological difference between which one is preferred. Parking is true, but has the issues that I cited, which you haven't provided any accounting for.

If you forced these things, which effectively just mean drastically higher charges with no other changes in the short term, you would be voted out of office in any type of democracy. If you intend do to it anyways, then you are practicing authoritarianism, not democracy. You would effectively be making every single resident's life much worse for the decades it would take to actually reconstruct everything.

It's subsidized compared to walking and biking or just not travelling as much.

The problem is that, once you build a city to be car-friendly in the modern American style, with 3-4+ lane arterial surface roads and expressways everywhere and all businesses having massive parking lots that are virtually never full, the structure of your city is fundamentally unwalkable. You can toss in some sidewalks and buses, but you'll never create a landscape where people actually want to walk places. Not that literally nobody will ever walk anywhere, but where people who have money and status and can afford to keep cars will actively choose to walk and take busses to places instead of driving.

Slightly dezoning the suburbs won't eliminate car trips altogether, but it will greatly reduce their number. For example, here's a random suburban block that is roughly 10 minutes across. It has an elementary school, a church, a tiny park with a very sad-looking playground, some apartments next to the collector road and a few garage businesses.

It needs a few more playgrounds (at least one in each quadrant so that kids can go there unsupervised), a grocery store, a middle school, a bar or a café. Four such blocks can share some denser commercial space along the collector road with shops and offices, a high school, maybe a community center. Now people have destinations to walk to. Without destinations, there's no need for dignified walking. Yes, it's not a 15-minute city, it's still designed so that you have to commute to work unless you work in one of the local businesses, but now your children can walk or bike to school, you can walk to the store to buy groceries or a bar of soap, you can share a pint or a coffee with the people you go to church with.

I would like to use this to assert that: For 99% of modern-day American cities that are not currently pedestrian-friendly, there is no reasonable change that will ever make them so.

There are lots of reasonable changes that would make them so. Better yet, many of them can be implemented incrementally, so it's not like you need to do them all in one go. That's not the problem.

The problem is that a car-centric society has a ton of costs sunk into car infrastructure on both a personal and social level, and investing in car-related infrastructure is a bit of a rachet. Even a city where you don't need a car for 90% of trips is a city where you need a car for 10% of trips, which is another way of saying you need a car. And since a car is mostly fixed costs for the individual, once you've got it there's a lot of incentive to prefer the perpetuation and expansion of car-centric policies.

I live in a country where every city is as walkable as it gets, if only because the vast majority of their denizens don't own or are unable to afford a car.

I still dislike walking and value the inherent freedom provided by a personal vehicle. You try riding a bus or a train when it's fucking hot, especially when they're not air-conditioned by default. Or during rush hour when the only reason I'm not sniffing smelly armpits is because I'm so tall that they have to be subject to mine instead.

I spent a decent chunk of time in London, which is certainly one of the cities lauded for the quality of its public transport. Even then, as a poor bastard who had to catch the bus or board the metro to get most places, I didn't enjoy the amount of walking it took to get from pickup and drop-off points to where I actually wanted to go. That's leaving aside things like transporting a week's worth of groceries.

I am cognizant of the inherent tradeoffs that come with building car-friendly cities and I still prefer that over shank's pony, which is as obsolete as any other horse.

Hmm, I should really get around to getting my driver's license, I let my learner's lapse at least 2 times because I was too lazy to finish the course.

I still dislike walking and value the inherent freedom provided by a personal vehicle. You try riding a bus or a train when it's fucking hot, especially when they're not air-conditioned by default. Or during rush hour when the only reason I'm not sniffing smelly armpits is because I'm so tall that they have to be subject to mine instead.

How much of not wanting to walk really does come directly from the local weather approximating Satan's armpit though? This constraint obviously applies to Southern American cities as well, but walking in my Northern locale is almost always reasonably comfortable. Well, I guess the winter isn't exactly "comfortable", but a decent parka makes it perfectly acceptable.

I drive plenty, but I do generally prefer walking or biking, even if it takes a little longer. I'm confident that I would not feel this way if a typical day was 37C and thoroughly humid.

I hiked around London and Manchester in the midst of autumn and winter, and I didn't particularly like it.

I'd much rather have had a car, but those cost $$ even compared to how expensive I found the local public transit.

shank's pony

This is not a substantitve response, but it has been decades since I've heard that phrase. You brought a smile to my day, sir.

Given that I've been on the phone with a depressed best friend and a depressed girlfriend, I'm glad I made someone smile haha.

walks rides off into the sunset

Walkability and car culture are topics that come up pretty often here, so I figure I'll chip in my two cents: I spent last year living without a car or bike in what is, so near as I can tell, a "walkable city" here in the US. I had two grocery stores within a 10 minute walk; medical clinics, banks, and restaraunts within a 20 minute walk; and a robust public transit system for anything further away. Basically, any part of the city was accessible within a ~30 minute trip. I did have to wait at crosswalks for some destinations, but most of these spots could be easily reached without having to deal with a single car.

Despite this, I severely disliked it. The summers were brutally hot, the winters were brutally cold and snowy, and as a result any excursion outside was uncomfortable. Carrying groceries was a chore, and carrying more than a few days' of groceries was more or less out of the question entirely, which in turn necessitated extra trips to the grocery store. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of trips I took to banks, clinics, or other essential services, and the slew of restaraunts and nightlife available were simply not worth the trip. None of it was unbearable and I was able to make it all work well enough; that said, it made every task beyond the comforts of my home that much more unpleasant and undesirable.

Part of this is due to the fact that I'm a natural hermit, and my idea of a nice night involves staying home with a good book or an entertaining movie; part of it is due to the fact that I'm a country mouse by birth, and I vastly prefer solitude and open spaces to cramped urban offerings. But the fact remains: 99 times out of 100, I would prefer to travel by car to do my work, play, and chores, and this preference would remain regardless of how many amenities are on tap, how much "dignity" is afforded me, or how great the distances involved are (with exception, of course: if the grocery store were next door, then it would be stupid to take a car, but any city block so dense as to have everything I might need would also be so dense that I would despise living there).

As it stands, the car-centric system we have does an adequate job of meeting my preferences (and, I think, the preferences of a sizable portion of the population). I can enjoy both the peace of rural living and the amenities and services of a large city. Any extra expense that I might cost society by living where I do is amply met by the increased gas taxes and costs I pay, and that's a trade I'm happy to make. There seems to be very little acknowledgement of this point of view, so I'd like to make it clear that there are, in fact, people for whom daily walking is less preferable than daily driving.

You can do micro vehicles like golf carts that travel only 15-20 mph, which are small and cheap because they need less padding for deceleration. They can even have mounted temperature control systems. Since road capacity is proportional to road width, and golf carts use about half a lane's width, they can have a much higher capacity, and also much smaller parking.

The problem is that a golf cart is a low-security vehicle and the point of US car-dependent suburbs is to exclude judgment-proof defendants by excluding anyone who cannot afford a 20-year mortgage or maintain a $5,000 piece of capital equipment. Any attempt to build a city that excludes judgment-proof by other means will be deemed to have disparate impact, and even if it could be done the mechanisms won't hold intergenerationally.

I'm a bit of a broken record at this point, but also: bicycles.

You're a bit more exposed to the elements on a bike compared to a golf cart, but you don't need a garage, they take up individual levels of space, and having a non-electrical fallback is important.

Another minor downside of golf carts is they're quite the injury / death machines relative to their use. Those tend to cluster around children too, not too much different than ATVs. Existing greenway infrastructure can't support golf-carts, and they exist in an uncanny valley between cars and bikes/pedestrians.

Walking is fucking slow. Excruciatingly so. I'm amazed at how long it takes for me to walk from one subdivision to another via a greenway connected directly to both. Quite frankly, trying to make a "walkable city" with arguably one of the top five fattest and laziest societies on the planet is a pipe dream, wegovy or not.

The bottom line is that a solution that excludes vehicles isn't a real solution at all. I've loved being in golf-cart-only spaces (generally near beaches).

Glad you brought up golf cart cities because I think that is the best of all worlds.

I think the reason it hasn't been done yet is not because of a conspiracy to keep the poors out, but simply because of network effects. All the infrastructure is already built for cars. To get to the better state of golf cart cities will require massive switching costs.

If we had golf cart cities, it would be pretty easy to add secure storage compartments into them. And, I'll be honest, I don't feel that my car is that secure when I park it in Seattle. In fact, a golf cart might be superior since when I get robbed I won't have to replace my auto glass. Although I do agree that I wouldn't feel comfortable driving my golf cart in, let's say, the South Side of Chicago.

The Villages, Florida is an interesting place. It's possibly America's fastest growing city, err CDP. A mere mobile home park in the 1980s, it had a few thousands residents in the 1990s, and now has over 80,000.

Since the 1990s it has been a master-planned community which consists of retirement homes surrounding several "villages". Apparently you can drive your golf carts lots of places there. Also, the Villages requires that 80% of the residents be at least 55 years old, and people under 19 are forbidden entirely. The golf carts seem to work there. In a "vibrant" urban core I agree it could be more problematic.

What do you do in the winter though?

Small golf-cart like cars exists in europe, for example this brand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_(marque)

If we had golf cart cities, it would be pretty easy to add secure storage compartments into them. And, I'll be honest, I don't feel that my car is that secure when I park it in Seattle. In fact, a golf cart might be superior since when I get robbed I won't have to replace my auto glass.

The general problem is that they are so light that thieves just take the whole thing.

Smart is a proper car, just a very compact one. There are even smaller four-wheel vehicles that are classified as quadricycles:

The problem is that a golf cart is a low-security vehicle

For better or worse, I think one of the less-prominent reasons that cars are so popular is that they're just big enough to be hard to walk off with. Bikes, and to a lesser extent motorcycles, are forced to depend on locks, which for better or worse are pretty universally inadequate if left unattended for hours. An angle grinder or bolt cutters aren't regulated equipment, but tow trucks are harder to conceal and use illicitly: as far as I can tell, most car theft involves taking the car under its own power.

From a cursory look at Facebook Marketplace, another problem is that golf carts are kind of expensive. A decent used one seems to run about $3000, and they can cost over $10,000 for a new one. That's a lot of money for a vehicle that's useless anywhere the speed limit is more than 25MPH. $10,000 will get you a decent used car.

If you're already spending thousands of dollars plus a car-sized space to store the thing, you might as well just get a compact car that can go on any road in most-likely air-conditioned comfort.

I could see going from being a 2 car household to 1 car + 1 golf cart if I lived somewhere like that. I'm looking now though and the $10k ones are mostly 2 seaters so to haul kids around you'd need a bigger one so now you're in the $15k-$20k range. I'm really confused what makes these things so expensive.

One nice thing I've seen is that you don't need a drivers license so older kids can have some independence.

I'd imagine insurance is quite a bit cheaper too.

I'm really confused what makes these things so expensive.

They're very much status symbols. Neighborhoods with a bunch of Carts rolling around are affluent.

The author makes a good point but there's something they're missing. The way I would put it is that walking or biking are low-status activities in many places by design. This comment from HN puts it well:

Even a lot of the anti-cycling stance comes down to, “What am I, poor?” When you are using transportation infrastructure that’s designed with contempt for you, you know, and you don’t want to be there.

The contempt in the design is, I think, on purpose. Perhaps not explicitly, in a saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud way, but it's a very important implicit goal that I'm sure planners understand. Constituents know that accessible public transport and cheap housing within pleasant walking distance to amenities will lead to people taking advantage of those things. People the constituents don't want around.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that all of the negative aspects of American (sub)urban design post-1950 are basically compensation for not being able to exclude undesirables explicitly.

  1. Car-dependence excludes poor people. The above article illustrates one facet of this, making walking low-status.
  2. Zoning codes exclude poor people. Houses must be a certain size, putting a price floor on them and pricing poor people out. Housing must be far from stores, forcing car dependence.
  3. HOA rules about renting exclude people who aren't conscientious. People who can't hold a steady job in one place, people in and out of prison, people who don't have the credit history to get a mortgage, just can't live in HOA-controlled neighborhoods.

The trouble is, of course, that poor feckless criminals are in fact bad for a neighborhood. If you'd like an extreme example, here's a video of Philadelphia. Would you want to take a walk or ride a bike there? There are wide accessible sidewalks, lots of bike lanes, tons of public transit, and high density. What's not to love?

It's clear that higher density and less car-dependence would be more efficient in some senses: less fossil fuel consumption, less time wasted commuting, and less land consumed by development, for example. It's also clear that there is value in excluding certain people from public spaces. In the extreme, if violent felons are allowed free reign, society as we know it couldn't function. In the less extreme, being less exclusive means more low-level harassment and petty crime and fewer positive-sum interactions among people. Exclusivity eventually reaches diminishing returns, but there's clearly some level at which excluding people is worth it.

Figuring out the right policies that maximize utility between these competing concerns requires taking a hard look at why basically anything is valuable. Why do fossil fuels and carbon emissions matter? Why does it matter whether vulnerable people can walk safely outside at night? As EAs have discovered over and over, people do not in general try to maximize utility. Most day-to-day decisions related to topics like this are for status signaling. Everyone wants their own lifestyle to be the one treated with dignity and privilege.

The problem with the built environment treating pedestrians with dignity is making sure it doesn't assign inappropriate dignity or status to the wrong people. Any system that assigns inappropriate status is going to be instinctively rejected by voters. If everyone is expected to walk and take public transit, there still must be practical ways for average-status people to exclude low-status people and to differentiate themselves from them. One way would be to use exclusive transit (think corporate shuttles). Make the public transit slow and impractical. Or make transit expensive, especially as a high fixed cost imposing a barrier to entry to non-conscientious people (a $500/year membership, but ride free). It's much harder to make pedestrian facilities exclusive without authoritarian policing such as curfews and id checks. To be practical it has to be combined with measures that make it hard to get to the walkable area in the first place.

Assigning inappropriate dignity and status is the core of the problem with many urbanist ideas, this included.

make transit expensive, especially as a high fixed cost imposing a barrier to entry to non-conscientious people

That sounds like it would be a pretty valuable thing...$500/year sounds like it might honestly be fairly generous for the average transit user. They're going to work 200 days/year, taking 400 trips...so it'd be $1.25/trip. Maybe have some kind of sweat equity program for the "deserving poor"/students/basically the kinds of people that can't afford $500 cash but also aren't aggressive fucked up mentally ill hobos. Accumulate 50 or 100 or whatever volunteer hours with (agency) picking up trash or building houses with Habitat for Humanity or whatever and you've got your pass for the year. The goal is basically to keep the hobos out, at least the ones that aren't able to be decently well-behaved and wear clean clothes. In some cities - Seattle, c. 2015 comes to mind - there are people that are homeless by choice, living in tents on the street and sometimes selling handicrafts. These people were wearing clean clothes and could hold civil conversations with you. They're just eccentrics; I wouldn't mind riding the bus with them...although I'd appreciate it if they didn't bring their samurai swords and whatnot with them on the bus, or at least concealed them.

Look at Moscow or hell, any other large European capital. There is large population of "undesirables" generally immigrants working low-paying jobs and it doesn't make public transport impossible or limited to poor people. If incompetent corrupt autocracy i. e. Russia can do this than Americans sure can.

Look at Moscow or hell, any other large European capital. There is large population of "undesirables" generally immigrants working low-paying jobs and it doesn't make public transport impossible or limited to poor people.

These are not the undesirables most Americans are worried about. They are talking about drug users, mentally sick homeless and chronically unemployed petty and not-so-petty criminals. Yes, they might mind immigrants working low-paying jobs that rent a single apartment for the whole squad next to theirs, but now when they have to share a public space with them.

What puzzles me is that Sioux Falls, which someone posted upthread, is not full of undesirables that hostile architecture is supposed to keep separate from the upstanding folk. It's 87% White (historically cis-Hajnal White), only 11.8% of the population live below the poverty line. It has cold winters, so the craziest ones should freeze to death, but they aren't so cold you can't walk outside. In other words, it's not Atlanta. And yet it's a typical American sprawl.

Does Russia not have lots of mentally ill criminals and heavy drug users, or do they all die off in winter?

I just moved, but the district I formerly lived in, which is served by light rail, has a certain spot where the local winos/druggies (most likely not homeless due to local strong "house the homeless" -policies, but still, those policies can't help you fully if you fall into the substance hole) tend to congregate. They're loud and belligerent, but also usually easy to avoid if one wishes.

Yet, you almost never see them on light rail. The trams only sparsely have ticket inspectors or other staff, so it can't be due to them removing the winos. However, on the other hand, why would they need to travel? They have their buddies right there on the spot and can spend the whole day there if they wish. Why would they need to move around?

I suspect that if you have a strong policy of cities shooing around similar populations whenever they congregate, or otherwise making their life difficult, they'll eventually congregate on public transport, since they need it to move around to look for new locations and since it's harder to remove them from there than from other places (at the very least you'd often have to wait for the next station).

The former usually do. Heavy drug users overdose, and the general public isn't known for having bleeding hearts. If you try to inject or huff or whatever in a public space that is not a complete ghetto, the cops will be happy to arrest you, they have a quota to fulfil.

And yet it's a typical American sprawl.

All these materialist/structural/systemic arguments have become just a bit too tiresome for me, and I have 2 words for them: rationalizing culture.

OTOH, if the mass transit enjoyers think that means they get to do a victory lap they need to take a seat. Culture is hard to transplant, and I'm afraid that means when it comes to dealing with homeless schizos and running public transport, you're the incompetent ones, not the Russians.

It's also clear that there is value in excluding certain people from public spaces. In the extreme, if violent felons are allowed free reign, society as we know it couldn't function.

All the US has to do is send the problem people to prison or otherwise relocate them. It really isn't that hard. There's no rule of the universe that demands open-air drug markets and massive colonies of rowdy homeless shitting up the richest cities in the world. In the Philadelphia video there are all these people saying 'it was never like this under Communism' or 'even in El Salvedor people had their dignity'... This is an American problem that America can choose to solve.

Is it really a huge strain on a $26 trillion economy to build some more prisons, especially considering the gain in rehabilitating urban centres? Combating two great powers on the other side of the world is easy - but laying down some cement and cubicles is hard? Or if prisons are too hard, they could try caning. Singapore knows a lot about running safe cities and combating drugs, the US should try copying their notes.

If everyone is expected to walk and take public transit, there still must be practical ways for average-status people to exclude low-status people

I've used public transport for over a decade in Australia, there are plenty of people wearing suits on the bus. We simply don't have a systemic problem with our public transport system being a playground for illicit drug users because we choose to suppress it.

All the US has to do is send the problem people to prison

Is it really a huge strain on a $26 trillion economy to build some more prisons

America already has more prisons than the countries which don't have these problems - the problem is that you guys need more and better cops to make sure that the right people are in those prisons for the right reasons. (Right reasons is particularly important, because it generates an impact by deterrence as well as incapacitation).

caning

I honestly think that beating/flogging petty criminals and then releasing them would be better than the jail/prison revolving door that petty criminals wind up in. People that fuck up once or twice learn not to do that and can go back to work reasonably fast; even the hardened criminals at least don't spend a bunch of time in Criminal School.

Is it really a huge strain on a $26 trillion economy to build some more prisons, especially considering the gain in rehabilitating urban centres? Combating two great powers on the other side of the world is easy - but laying down some cement and cubicles is hard? Or if prisons are too hard, they could try caning. Singapore knows a lot about running safe cities and combating drugs, the US should try copying their notes.

Those things are extremely hard, harder than going to the Moon, not because of resource constraints, but because of political opposition.

Car-dependence excludes poor people.

It does not. This is America; even the poor drive.

The cops can safely pull them over and have their car towed for having expired tags and driving on a suspended license, if they dare to drive outside poortown. Can't do that to bus riders without getting accused of racial profiling.

This is technically possible, but do you actually know of an American city not overrun with beat-up altimas flapping paper tags and weaving across 4-lane interstates?

The poor are persistently able to drive here without being molested by the cops. Which, despite how much it sucks for everyone else, is admittedly a requirement for living in an American society.

Then I recommend these hypothetical poors keep their registration and license active.

Then I recommend these hypothetical poors keep their registration and license active.

Tsk, tsk, that's voter suppression.

There are walking cities in the US. They are dense and thus, very expensive. Plus they tend to be in more temperate areas, making them more expensive (because of the nice weather).

Not everyone can/wants to live that way.

We need to Prioritize Dignity

Why do you think you're in the position to change people? Some people like having a house in the suburbs... Have you every actually been to the US? It's kind of a big place...

I'll be honest; In the city I live in, there has been many attempts to make it more walk-able. They have all been heavy handed (locals complaining have been labeled deplorable adjacent), expensive, made traffic much worse, and have had little impact on anyone actually walking or taking mass transit.

You can have a car dependent city without it being as inefficient as most North American suburbs are. There is no reason for so much space to be dedicated roads and parking. There's no reason for things to be so far apart. There's no reason for all the traffic to be concentrated along a few arteries and for the rest of the road network to be a maze. Fixing these problems would make cities more walkable and even more drivable, without sacrificing anything that people who like cars and space like.

You don't have to do what the urban planners in my city are doing, which is making the transportation infrastructure as hostile as possible to cars while doing very little to make it more walkable or making public transit usable.

There is no reason for so much space to be dedicated roads and parking.

So people can travel large distances? So they don't have to live in a super dense environment. So you can have things like trucking (and general logistics) ...

You just said there's no reason for roads. You realize no one is going to take you seriously, outside of your bubble

I'll be honest; In the city I live in, there has been many attempts to make it more walk-able. They have all been heavy handed (locals complaining have been labeled deplorable adjacent), expensive, made traffic much worse, and have had little impact on anyone actually walking or taking mass transit.

I know a lot of amateur urban planners will never acknowledge this, but a car is the most pleasant, efficient way to get anywhere more than a few blocks away. You're not going to get 99% of people out their cars unless you actively make driving unfeasible.

a car is the most pleasant, efficient way to get anywhere more than a few blocks away

A car is the most pleasant, efficient way to get anywhere more than a few blocks away if everything is designed around the assumption of everyone going everywhere with a car, such as surrounding everything with huge parking lots and stroads. Otherwise it can be a lot easier to take a train or metro a couple stops than worry about where to park.

I don't think you're getting my point at all. I never said I wanted to change anybody - I posted that specifically against that position because nobody can change people. My point is that you cannot change a non-walkable area into a walkable one. I specifically said "IMO, the majority of attempts to make walkable neighborhoods in non-walkable regions are not particularly useful."

Sioux Falls, South Dakota, being decently north and quite far inland, faces significantly greater temperature extremes than a coastal city does. A not-drivable city in its location would be pretty miserable from, oh, November through March.

Potential counterarguments I'm aware of include "being cold is good, actually" (it builds character, as Calvin's Dad doth say) or "then we shouldn't let people live in places like South Dakota, anyway." But I don't expect either of them to find much purchase with the current residents.

That may be another good factor. I've never been to Sioux Falls specifically, so I don't know what people there think about the winter weather. Presumably the people currently living in Sioux Falls are happy enough with what that currently entails, though I've heard anecdotes suggesting that the residents of nearby Minneapolis seem oddly comfortable in sub-freezing weather. Most people don't like sudden radical lifestyle changes, so I doubt they would be happy if we were to magic Manhattan into the same geographical location and they had to live there. But it doesn't seem that implausible that we could find a population of Americans who can live with needing to physically carry every crumb of their food all the way home even in the 6 degrees F lows that Google says it has there. Could we find 200k of them and convince them to live there? That, I don't know.

"Presumably the people currently living in Sioux Falls are happy enough with what that currently entails".

From a local:

I'm not happy with the weather, but it is what it is. Living in Fort Collins, Colorado was quite pleasant in comparison. Less extreme seasonal temperatures, much less snow buildup across the winter months, a bit less windy.

This thread is entertaining. I never realized how unusual it is to experience >100°F and <0°F temperatures in the same place the same year. I knew Siberia was cold and the Sahara was hot, and that large bodies of water help stabilize temperatures, but I didn't realize how much seasonal variation could...vary.

I grew up walking/jogging 1-3 miles through negative temps, wind, and snow just to go to a friend's house (protip: face away from the wind, walk backwards/sideways if need be). Alternatively, sweating through >90°F/32°C. I recommend jogging in the sun and walking in the shade.

And I felt lucky: Hearing Dad talk about "walking beans" under the Kansas sun for hours on end, my 15 minute jaunts to visit friends seemed like nothing.

apologies for this turning into a diary entry but I'll hit post anyway

even in the 6 degrees F lows that Google says it has there

I don't think this is right. From the NOAA National weather service data portal, selecting Sioux Falls Area > Monthly summarized data > 2000-2023 > min temp > daily minimum, the mean minimum is -19°F with a max annual minimum of -5°F. Personally I draw the line for walking at 0°F. To me that's the point where a good hat and jacket aren't enough anymore. In sub 0°F conditions frostbite (or at least frostnip) is a real concern with any real time outdoors. I personal don't want to have to slather petroleum jelly all over my face in order to go buy some groceries.

Mmm interesting, I wonder why Google was so wrong. Insert rant on how Google search results have gotten a lot worse in the last few years. That being the actual minimum outdoor temperature would indeed make living a walkable life there non-viable for all but the hardiest souls.

Sioux Falls

So it seems that sioux falls is on the same lattitude (even slightly southern) than Belgrade, Sofia, Somewhere between Firenze and Rome (firenze is away from coasts), between Valliadolid and Madrid and quite a bit southern than Beijing.

All of those are quite not miserable during the winter even if there is often snow in the Balkans and subzero C. And people both drive, use transport and walk during the winter. And lets not even start on the germany, poland, ukraine and russian cities.

  • -17

Europe and the US are very different climate wise. North America is a larger landmass and there is nothing like the gulf stream in the Pacific that makes the far northern latitudes in Europe very mild.

The northern plains often get winter weather that's cold enough that they no longer need to differentiate between F and C (the lines cross at -40 and don't have substantial differences after about -30C).

The northern US is much more like eastern Russia than any part of Europe.

Last week, Sioux Falls specifically hit 100F (37C); for most of January 2023, you were near or below freezing, with 15-20 mph winds. And the last couple years have been relatively mild: 2020 sucked. By contrast, Belgrade, Sofia City.

Have you been to South Dakota? Like, seriously...

So it seems that sioux falls is on the same lattitude

Things like jets streams exist. Perhaps weigh their argument on their points before hand-waving it away?

"Follow us and be no more miserable than the Balkans" does not to me appear to be an enticing argument.

Mostly-jokes aside, latitude is far from the end-all-be-all. I am thinking particularly of the fact that South Dakota holds the North American pole of inaccessibility. Distance inland matters a whole lot in terms of getting away from the moderating effects of the ocean; I can tell you from personal experience that more-northerly Seattle's winters are much milder than more-southerly Fargo's, and (not from personal experience) that more-northerly Reykjavik is vastly milder than more-southerly Yakutsk.

Locations in the US are colder than corresponding locations at the same latitude in Europe because the European locations benefit from warm air coming from the Mediterranean.

They are, but even in cold American cities it's rare that it's so cold that walking or cycling become impractical. Like, a few days a year rare--certainly similar to the frequency with which snowfall makes cars impractical in those same cities.

Your mean a selection of mild West Coast cities? What about the Midwest? There are American cities where it is not rare for walking to be impractical.

No, I mean places like Chicago, Denver, and New York. Like I said, snowfall sometimes makes driving impractical in those places as well.

Not only does the warm air from the Mediterranean make Europe warmer, but the Great Plains and Midwest regularly have the continental polar air masse push south and bring sustained below 0°F temperatures. Many parts of the Middle of the US are consistently colder than coastal Canada. The mean minimum annual temperature in Sioux Falls is -19.2°F (-28.4°C), the mean minimum annual temperature in Belgrade is 14.7°F (-9°C). From personal experience, there is a big difference between -19.2°F and 14.7°F.

Any time I read these walking/car theories I am reminded of God-Emperor Leto II's method for controlling the population: Transit control. In his empire, Leto only allowed 3 types of transportation: 1) Walking; 2) Thopters; 3) Interstellar Heighliners.

We’re talking about a guy whose ultimate choice of personal transport was a hover sled. Maybe he just had bad taste.

The three-mode transportation system once peculiar to Arrakis (that is, on foot with heavy loads relegated to suspensorborne pallets; in the air via ornithopter; or off-planet by Guild transport) is coming to dominate more and more planets of the Empire. Ix is the primary exception.

We attribute this in part to planetary devolution into sedentary and static life-styles. And partly it is the attempt to copy the pattern of Arrakis. The generalized aversion to things Ixian plays no small part in this trend. There is also the fact that the Fish Speakers promote this pattern to reduce their work in maintaining order.

I have to say, I wasn't expecting Frank Herbert of all people to predict fifteen minutes cities.

Well Frank was very interesting

I recently found an interesting post about the driving/transit+walking divide that I'd like to discuss some here: If We Want a Shift to Walking, We Need to Prioritize Dignity.

The short version of that being that pedestrians are special snowflakes who won't walk unless the built environment is just right. Meanwhile, looking at your Sioux Falls shot, the issue isn't so much "dignity" as scale. Well, that, and the fact that no one wants to walk to car dealerships. The blocks are about 0.5 mile x 1 mile. If you want to have a pancake breakfast and then head over to pick up your new handgun, that's over a 20 minute walk. It's not a matter of dignity or respect. Making the walk nicer isn't going to make it take less time.

While I lean towards defending the car culture side in the overall debate, I think I'd soften that a bit. See how much the car drivers moan when they have to wade into an environment that actually does favor pedestrians and transit at a large scale, like Manhattan. Are the car drivers special snowflakes who hate to drive unless they have massive free parking lots everywhere, lots of wide-open 45mph multilane roads, and very few pesky pedestrians who have a tendency to go every which way on a whim?

I'd say more neutrally that the desires of drivers and pedestrians are fundamentally at odds with each other. A large-scale environment that's great for walking, like good enough that Sam the Stockbroker in Manhattan, who makes enough to keep a BMW in a private garage, chooses to walk and take the train to his job anyways because it's easier and better, will inevitably be bad for cars, due to expensive and scarce parking, slow and narrow streets, and pedestrians going every which way. Meanwhile, if it's great for driving, it will suck for walking, because of the huge parking lots, huge distances between things, and narrow and poorly maintained sidewalks with intimidating high-speed car traffic only a few feet away. My overall point is more that any environment that favors one or the other cannot be changed to be the other way without basically demolishing the entire city and rebuilding everything differently.

See how much the car drivers moan when they have to wade into an environment that actually does favor pedestrians and transit at a large scale, like Manhattan. Are the car drivers special snowflakes who hate to drive unless they have massive free parking lots everywhere, lots of wide-open 45mph multilane roads, and very few pesky pedestrians who have a tendency to go every which way on a whim?

You have to work very hard to make cars worse than walking and transit. And despite all the effort Manhattan puts into that, it's still full of cars, so the answer to your question is "no".

Are the car drivers special snowflakes who hate to drive unless they have massive free parking lots everywhere, lots of wide-open 45mph multilane roads, and very few pesky pedestrians who have a tendency to go every which way on a whim?

Car drivers dont want to go to Manhattan at all. No one doe, really. They are forced to because its a place with concentrated economic opportunities.

No one doe, really

Hm, I don't know. I hear that there are certain cultural advantages to going into Manhattan. Theater and art and live music and comedy, for example.

And, in addition to the current Hollywood releases, here is a list of movies playing in Manhattan (a Tuesday, btw):

20 Days in Mariupol
Afire
Antichrist
Avanti!
Biosphere
Bobi Wine: The People's President
Close to Vermeer
Contempt (le Mepris)
Earth Mama
El Agua
Ghost in the Shell
Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd
I Was Born, But...
I Vitelloni Kokomo City
Lakota Nation vs. United States
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Love & Basketball
Out Of Sight
Past Lives
Persona
Revoir Paris Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahaani
Showgirls
Shrapnel Sympathy for the Devil
The Lost Weekend
The Rules of the Game
The Flowers Of St. Francis
The Spirit Of St. Louis
The Unknown Country
The Beasts
The Mother and the Whore
The Wicker Man
The Lesson
Theater Camp
Umberto Eco: A Library Of The World
Walid War Pony

We Need To Talk About Kevin

While We Watched
You Hurt My Feelings

Sure that is a bit interesting. How many of those people going to Manhattan for a movie/play both drive a car there AND complain incessantly about pedestrians?

Manhattan has an awful lot of $500/month+ parking spaces for a place nobody wants to drive to. And an awful lot of $2k/month and up (way, way up) apartments for a place nobody wants to live in. The oddball hoops you have to jump through to get a rental there suggest that the number of people who very badly want to live there and are willing to pay out the nose for the privilege remain quite high.

I don't think it's that controversial of a statement to say that people who like urban spaces really like them and are willing to pay and make other sacrifices to live there (small spaces and lots of possibly annoying neighbors nearby), and people who like rural spaces also really like them and are willing to make different sacrifices to live there (nothing close by, moderate drive to get to 1 or 2 small grocery stores, hardware stores, bars, etc and maybe very long drive to get to any more or bigger of the above).

There are people who like it, a small amount. There are a greater number of people who like not having to drive to their job because it is so close. The people driving there don't want to be there at all, they wish they could magic their office to a different location not in Manhattan.

Do you actually think that there is nobody who would want to be in Manhattan, except for that it affords them opportunities to make money? I spent some time in NYC and found certain parts of Manhattan extremely appealing. Sure, I understand for that a lot of people who feel a much greater desire for space than I do, it could be unbearably crowded and restricting. For bug-men like me, though, having so many different things to do, in such a small and walkable/transit-accessible environment, Manhattan’s appeal is evident.

There is always somebody who wants something. But most people are there to collect money, yes.

Roughly 1.7 million people live in Manhattan, a great many of whom were born there and have lived there for their entire lives. They have roots there - deep social networks, connections to their local neighborhoods and communities, and to the activities offered by those communities. Is this another one of those delusional posts where a non-urbanite assumes that nobody actually likes living in cities, or feels any connection to the cities where they live?

No, I'm merely commenting on the commuters and the people who live in Manhattan because of proximity to their work. This will be the majority of people in Manhattan during business hours.

….Is a 20-minute walk seriously considered a major imposition by people? My walk to work each morning from the nearest rail transit stop is roughly that long, and I make that walk twice a day without it feeling remotely unreasonable or burdensome.

Taking a young child to daycare by walking and train and then more walking and train to get to work? No thanks. That's burdensome.

That's why daycares and primary schools are built in the residential areas in most places.

When those people are used to traveling the same distance in five minutes, yes. I've done a similar walk many times, from an apartment I lived at to my favorite bar. It really sucks to wake up and remember "Fuck, I've got to walk back to the watering hole to pick up my car.".

That said, I've never had a commute that was more than a 10 minute drive in my adult life, and my commute time is usually zero (walk out of my apartment to my car that I use for my delivery job). My sister drives an hour one way to commute to her job and I think she's insane.

Depends entirely on the climate.

I’m definitely acutely aware of that. I live in a city which is renowned for having possibly the best year-round climate in the entire country, if not the whole world. What we consider inclement weather is still better than what many cities in the U.S. experience even at their best. As I’ve looked into moving to a different part of the country, it has become increasingly clear to me how necessary car ownership would be in many of the places I’m targeting, the weather being the main reason.

I mean I don’t find it one in good weather, but I’m much hardier and in better shape than the average American(who let’s remember is obese). I do very much appreciate the option to drive inside my truck during heavy rain or temperature extremes.

Maybe part of the reason the average American is obese is because they drive everywhere, and walking 30 minutes a day would have tremendous benefit.

I don't think the exercise itself would do a lot to undo a terrible diet, but I do wonder if the convenience of a car prevents a lot of "fuck, I'm weak!" moments that might serve as wake-up calls?

I think walking 30 minutes every day would add up over time.

You're probably right, there's a lot of low hanging fruit if you're starting at zero.

Transit and walking lovers don't realize that most car-dependent Americans in the suburbs can get to most of where they want to go door-to-door in less than 20 minutes. Your total commute is probably roughly 1 hour each way, while American car commutes are generally 20-30 minutes.

Even the highest quality transit systems (Hong Kong, Japan, and the like) will struggle to get people door-to-door in less than 40 minutes. Density can address this, by putting stuff very close, but it comes with a whole bunch of other problems.

Even the highest quality transit systems (Hong Kong, Japan, and the like) will struggle to get people door-to-door in less than 40 minutes.

I think this needs to be qualified with…something. It’s clearly not true for many things like shopping, restaurants, and not necessarily true for work.

And cars would often be even slower in the same environment!

Your total commute is probably roughly 1 hour each way

That would be extremely unusual.

Transit and walking lovers don't realize that most car-dependent Americans in the suburbs can get to most of where they want to go door-to-door in less than 20 minutes

I get everything I need within 10 minutes. I haven't been more than 15 minutes from my apartment in two weeks. I walk most of the time and sometimes cycle. There is no point on being relegated to a field far out in the middle of no where and have to travel far to get places when you can live by your destination. Tokyo is absolutely massive and no car based city has ever grown to that size. Also in downtown Tokyo almost everything is available within far les than an hour.

Commute isn't the only travel. It is everything else that happens and is easily accessible.

I get everything I need within 10 minutes.

That's true because of density, not transit. Even with high frequencies, transit trips generally start at over 20 mins door to door minimum

Tokyo is absolutely massive and no car based city has ever grown to that size.

Los angeles is 18 million while Tokyo is 37 million. Tokyo is a globally unique city, but I have no reason to believe a car based megacity that size can't exist, it just doesn't already

Also in downtown Tokyo almost everything is available within far les than an hour.

Absolutely false. Here's a random example of two popular destinations near major transit hubs, taking 50 mins to 1 hour. Traveling from a less central location will take even longer. Try a few routes for yourself. https://transit.yahoo.co.jp/search/result?from=%E3%82%A2%E3%83%8B%E3%83%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88%E6%B1%A0%E8%A2%8B%E6%9C%AC%E5%BA%97&to=%E9%9B%B7%E9%96%80&fromgid=&togid=&flatlon=&tlatlon=&via=&viacode=&y=2023&m=08&d=01&hh=09&m1=4&m2=6&type=1&ticket=ic&expkind=1&userpass=1&ws=3&s=0&al=1&shin=1&ex=1&hb=1&lb=1&sr=1

Absolutely false. Here's a random example of two popular destinations near major transit hubs, taking 50 mins to 1 hour. Traveling from a less central location will take even longer. Try a few routes for yourself

The idea with a walkable city isn't that you can go to the other side of the city, it is that you don't have to. The amount of goods and services available within a short distance is more than enough and the vast selection of destinations near by provide all that is needed as well as plenty of opportunities and things to explore.

I get everything I need within 10 minutes. I haven't been more than 15 minutes from my apartment in two weeks.

That seems remarkable. Where do you live that this is possible? Even in very walkable cities, walking just takes forever. There are hills, stoplights, the need for umbrellas or boots, etc... My walk score is in the mid-90s and I'm still more likely than not to take my car somewhere every day. Even if going to one location is convenient, stringing together multiple errands would take approximately forever by foot.

In terms of commutes, you must also be quite fortunate. In the U.S. at least, the places with the longest commutes are also the places with the most transit. As of 2018, New York state was longest with 68 minutes round trip, followed by MD, NJ, MA, CA, and IL. You have to walk, wait, ride, (optionally transfer, walk, wait), then walk to your final destination. Whereas with a car you just simply drive there directly.

Even in very walkable cities, walking just takes forever.

Walkable usually goes hand in hand with cyclable no? At least in Europe this is the case. 15 minutes on a bike covers quite a lot of useful area if you're living near the city centre, even when I lived in what was considered an isolated outer suburb in an Irish city it took 20 minutes on a bike to make it into the city centre.

In the U.S. at least, the places with the longest commutes are also the places with the most transit.

I am not sure that means much. In all of those states, the vast majority of commuters drive to work. So rush hour traffic is going to drive much of that, esp since areas with large amounts of public transit are dense and have worse traffic: Major cities in the states you list also rank very high in traffic congestion.

Moreover, you seem to imply that slow commutes are caused by public transit, and hence that the same commute is faster by car. That is unlikely to be the general rule, given traffic during rush hour. People prefer to drive to work when possible; if they take public transportation, it is at least in part because in their particular case, it is more convenient than driving.

Finally, you are ignoring obvious confounding variables. Eg: Places where people use public transit the most are also places that tend to have more expensive housing. Many people with long commutes in those areas have long commutes in part because they live farther away.

you have to ... wait,

Not in places with decent systems. In NYC during weekdays, subway trains run every 6 minutes or so, which means the average wait is 3 minutes. Less time than it takes to park.

I live in a reasonably walkable university town. It is far from the most walkable city. Dentist and hair dresser are 4 blocks away. Gym 7 blocks. I have three grocery stores within 10 minutes. A bunch of restaurants within that range. By bike I have three more gyms, and about 100 stores within 10 minutes. I can go to a spa, liquor store, hockey rink, museums and a train station within 10 minutes by bike.

Not my city or my country but checkout one of my favorite cities, Frieburg: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Freiburg+im+Breisgau,+Tyskland/@47.9952955,7.8320398,14z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x47911b26560bd665:0x41f6bb7a5df57b0!8m2!3d47.9990077!4d7.8421043!16zL20vMHB0ajI?entry=ttu

There is a huge amount to do within 2-3 km of the central part.

That seems remarkable. Where do you live that this is possible?

You even mentioned one of these cities by name!

Hong Kong and Seoul and Tokyo should support such a lifestyle, work-related travel aside (depending on which area you live in and work at). I don’t have experience with mainland Chinese cities, but I’d expect most of the tier 1 cities at least to be similar. I’d also expect other large Japanese cities to be similar.

Transit and walking lovers don't realize that most car-dependent Americans in the suburbs can get to most of where they want to go door-to-door in less than 20 minutes.

No, I’m perfectly aware of that. I have ridden in cars untold numbers of times in my life, including in very suburban areas, and I have plenty of experience with how that lifestyle works out in terms of time. Transit/walking advocates simply believe that the tradeoff is totally worth adding an extra 20-30 minutes to a commute in order to access the other lifestyle benefits that come from not driving. Sure, there are a minority of very dumb and/or dishonest transit advocates who pretend like people who live anywhere outside of a major metro area have to drive an hour just to get to the grocery store, but I think the vast majority of people on all sides of the debate acknowledge that cars do in fact significantly reduce overall commute time for most people, at the expense of other considerations.

but I think the vast majority of people on all sides of the debate acknowledge that cars do in fact significantly reduce overall commute time for most people, at the expense of other considerations.

This has not been my experience at all. I think "arguments as soldiers" is the default mode, with transit supporters refusing to acknowledge any downsides such as crime, inefficiency, cost, etc...

And of course car supporters refusing to believe anyone would actually want to have a transit-based lifestyle.

People who support doing a cost/benefit analysis are rare and should be treasured.

It hit 106 outside this week. The only people walking between home and grocery are those who can’t afford to drive.

The story is probably different up north. I hear Chicago has a decent hub-and-spoke construction where that 20 minute walk buys you a lot more. Then again, I’m sure it’s miserable in December.

I think the counterpoint is that lacking an environment where people can stay in air conditioning more or less all the time, fewer people would live in DFW(which has always been this way). Obviously, that isn’t always appealing to people who want to live in DFW, but considering the only way DFW is becoming walkable is if we lose a nuclear war and have to rebuild for poor people, it’s academic anyways.

DFW?

Presumably Dallas-Fort Worth.

20 minutes to the rail, no. 20 minutes to the nearest grocery store, a lot.

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