[HN Gopher] Barcelona-style "superblocks" could make cities gree...
___________________________________________________________________
Barcelona-style "superblocks" could make cities greener and less
car-centric
Author : grzm
Score : 142 points
Date : 2022-10-20 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.anthropocenemagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.anthropocenemagazine.org)
| yrgulation wrote:
| Yeah, except you know, barcelona's traffic is horrible.
| stoplying1 wrote:
| Oh no, you in your multi-ton vehicle have to wait for
| significantly denser traffic flows? Oh no!
| yrgulation wrote:
| Assuming that i am in favour of cars in cities is plain
| wrong. Barcelona still having traffic means public transport
| is not great, even if it looks good, and the so called
| superblocks are not of much help either. I am for solving
| traffic and pollution issues but not following barcelonas
| example.
| RobertoG wrote:
| Not worse that before and, anyway, who cares? This is about
| making people lives better not improving car traffic. Two goals
| that, in my opinion, are in opposition.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Point is they havent made people's lives easier since so many
| still need to drive cars. Barcelona is anything but a good
| example of how things should be.
| danuker wrote:
| Citation needed, for all three of your claims.
| yrgulation wrote:
| I am citing myself as i've been there for a while and its
| absolutely horrible.
| danuker wrote:
| Google public transport directions show me it's 2x as
| slower than cars, but 4x faster than walking from the
| airport to Sargada Familia.
|
| In my city in Romania, public transport is about the same
| speed as walking. So I'd say Barcelona has great public
| transport, based on this limited analysis.
|
| Hence, citations neede. What exactly was bad? Did you
| only try driving?
| yrgulation wrote:
| I mean compared to romania, particularly to poorly
| managed cities such as cluj napoca indeed barceona's
| public transport is a blessing. But unfortunately locals
| dont commute to sagrada familia on a daily basis.
| Commuting to and from el prat or other office areas is a
| nightmare, as is reaching to smaller businesses around
| town. Pulling out stats without actually having been
| there is misleading as you risk thinking everyone is a
| tourist taking trains to attractions on the regular,
| which is what most public transport was designed for -
| its basically their economy so naturally it will be
| biased towards that.
| danuker wrote:
| Fair point.
|
| From El Prat to where, do you think would be a fair
| analysis?
| RobertoG wrote:
| El Prat is not Barcelona, and, still, you have train,
| metro, public and private bus as an option to arrive from
| downtown.
|
| The idea that public transport has been designed for
| tourists is preposterous. The network of public transport
| extend far away from the touristic places.
|
| Most tourist, and most expats in my experience (I'm
| thinking in those that don't bother to learn any local
| language), stay in three or four neighborhoods and think
| that that's the city and get their impressions from those
| few areas.
|
| That's the reason you always hear the same histories:
| pickpockets (stealing from tourists), dirty (drunk
| tourist peeing in the streets), etc
| RobertoG wrote:
| The point is totally wrong.
|
| Most people that live on those areas are pretty happy with
| the changes, and people that is just passing around those
| areas are pretty happy too.
|
| By the way, you don't need a car if you live and work in
| Barcelona. In fact, most people that own a car don't use it
| if they are moving inside the city.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Issue tho is that barcelona has plenty of satellite towns
| and villages, so your comment proves my point. What i
| want is an actual solution that takes people out of their
| cars in a meaningful way, not just hippies that have no
| other choice due to poverty. Proper public transport is
| in everyone's interest.
| RobertoG wrote:
| I fail to see how my comment proves your point and I fail
| to see how this comment improves your previous argument.
| Daishiman wrote:
| The point isn't to make it easier for traffic.
| xwkd wrote:
| My assumption is that if you are ideologically opposed to
| private vehicular transportation, then you see this as a good
| incentive not to own a car.
|
| I think things like this are a funny marriage of utopian and
| tyrannical daydreams.
| RobertoG wrote:
| The idea that you can drive your car to my street, generating
| noise and contamination and park it there using space, where
| the kids could be playing, just because you can't be bothered
| to take a bus is kind of tyrannical too, in my opinion. And
| it has nothing of utopian.
| stoplying1 wrote:
| "we want to prioritize walking over huge single occupancy
| vehicles that kill the environment and instead invest in
| public infra" is tyrannical? Oh man, I don't even know where
| to begin. I'm sorry, if I'm not misunderstanding it's just
| hilarious.
| cammikebrown wrote:
| Why would you ever drive in such a city? The public transit is
| fantastic.
| polskibus wrote:
| Actually the metro is horrible in the summer, as if there was
| no ventilation.
| betaby wrote:
| Which line exactly? Visited Barcelona in august - don't
| remember ventilation issues.
| stoplying1 wrote:
| Yeah, I was there in the height of the heatwave 3 years
| ago. Walking and transit was fine.
| ErneX wrote:
| Old lines mostly, like the 1 (red)
| weatherlight wrote:
| The Barcelona Metro is fine. I used it all summer with no
| issue, trains come ever 4 minutes and the each car is
| ventilated and air-conditioned
| [deleted]
| fdfaz wrote:
| RobertoG wrote:
| Public transport in Barcelona sucks? Man, you have high
| standards.
| advisedwang wrote:
| Having a bad experience when you are in a car is an natural
| result of mass-transit/walking oriented cities. By focusing on
| non-car transport, you are going to end up sacrificing things
| that are good for car tansport. In fact logically car must be
| the worse experience if we're expecting folks to make other
| choices.
| ars wrote:
| And yet, somehow not a single city has managed to make public
| transport _better_ than a car.
|
| The only thing they've managed is to make car transport
| worse, and then public transport seems better by comparison.
|
| Why are we devoting so much energy to making people unhappy?
| caust1c wrote:
| Notwithstanding the obvious subjectivity of such a
| perspective, presumably you haven't been to NYC, Tokyo,
| Taipei, London, or basically any modern metro outside
| America?
| ars wrote:
| Oh I have, I've visited, and I've even lived in those
| places and gone without a car.
|
| No more. Public transport is horrible, and I'll never
| again agree to live in a place without private transport.
| It doesn't have to be a car - but it needs to be
| exclusively under my control, and it needs to be close to
| my front door.
|
| And I don't care that I'm getting non-stop downvotes for
| my posts in this thread, someone needs to speak to
| reality rather than utopian dreams. I don't care about
| the votes, but it's prettyu uncool that downvoted posts
| are greyed out and hard to read - aren't downvotes meant
| for offtopic messages? Or is the goal to have a uniform
| hivemind?
| guhidalg wrote:
| Public transport is not horrible, but sure you can have
| other alternative forms of transportation like bicycles,
| scooters, long boards, segways, horses, etc... The cities
| that permit non-car modes of transport are nicer to visit
| and live in.
|
| I think in theory I agree with you. I would _prefer_
| private transportation, but if I was stuck between
| private car and public transit, I would pick public
| transit because the alternative of sitting in a car
| commuting every day is dreadful compared to the few
| thousand steps I could get from walking to/from public
| transit.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > "The cities that permit non-car modes of transport are
| nicer to visit and live in."
|
| Doesn't literally every city permit non-car modes of
| transport?
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Paris, Madrid and Manhattan aren't utopias, you just
| don't need a car to get around the majority of the city.
| Metro, bus and walking/biking can get you almost
| everywhere.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| What's your opinion about bicycles in cities? They're
| under your control and very close to your front door.
| maksimur wrote:
| The problem is the attitude and not the message. That's
| mostly the reason why you're getting downvoted. I myself
| don't agree with you but didn't downvote. Just a heads
| up.
| WitCanStain wrote:
| Why do you think public transport is horrible in
| comparison to cars? Do you feel that e.g. the
| environmental or cost benefits of public transport are
| outweighed by whatever cars have going for them?
| josephcsible wrote:
| Public transit takes longer, is less reliable, doesn't
| let you leave when you want, is often dirty, is harder or
| impossible to bring a lot of stuff on, and is more likely
| that you'll end up a victim of a crime on it than while
| driving.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > It doesn't have to be a car - but it needs to be
| exclusively under my control, and it needs to be close to
| my front door.
|
| Sounds like you should give bicycles a try.
|
| Or unironically, any last-mile foldable vehicle that you
| can bring with you on public transportation. Will solve
| most of your issues.
| dasloop wrote:
| Using what metric? Taking into account externalities?
| Taking into account the price of the car, maintenance and
| insurance?
| monksy wrote:
| Most German cities make public transit a lot easier than
| driving cars and figuring out parking. Their stations are
| serious, and their alignment with other transportation
| systems (bus and ice) are very serious.
|
| If you're going to compare random mostly unused point to
| point, that's not what public transit is for.(That is
| something a car or taxi is needed for)
| okaram wrote:
| Maybe no city has managed to make public transport better
| than a car _in every circumstance_ , but many times public
| transport is better. In fact, nobody would take public
| transport if it wasn't better _for them_.
|
| In cities where public transport sucks less, there's more
| circumstances where it is better, and so more people use
| them.
| sveme wrote:
| You know, there are peopling living in these blocks with
| their kids. So you have at least two parties to consider:
| people trying to get from A to B and people living where
| people travel from A to B. In Barcelona and many other
| places many have decided, that by making life for people
| going from A to B via car a bit more miserable, people
| living in these places will have a significant improvement
| of their living conditions.
|
| I'm really looking forward to superblocks being established
| in my district in Munich. It would be so nice if my kids
| and their friends could play in front of my appartment
| house without parked and moving cars everywhere.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > not a single city has managed to make public transport
| better than a car.
|
| Public transit is better than a car in a pretty large chunk
| of NYC.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| In NYC a car is definitely more trouble than it's worth for
| a lot of us. I think the same is probably true in cities
| with a well functioning train system.
| ars wrote:
| The number of car owners in NYC tells me that this isn't
| true.
|
| If even in NYC people still want a car, even with all the
| trouble, what does that tell you about public transport?
|
| And I'm speaking from experience here - I have a ton of
| friends in NYC who all started without a car "who needs
| it", and over time every single one bought a car because
| it's simply too hard without it.
|
| NYC is simply too dense, people need space, there's no
| reason to jam them all in small homes with little space.
| Although I suppose some people like that.
| darkarmani wrote:
| > The number of car owners in NYC tells me that this
| isn't true.
|
| What is the number of car owners compared to all NYC
| residents? Of course, there will always be car owners and
| starting with a population in the millions is going to
| make that number appear large.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| I'm also speaking from experience. Anecdotally I know a
| couple people with cars and both are kinda deep in
| Queens. In a pinch I can rent, but 95% of the time the
| subway works. In some cases a cab/uber is a time saver or
| helps move something heavy. Parking is expensive, or
| you're spending a lot of time looking for a spot. Time is
| money.
|
| What exactly is "too hard" without a car in NYC?
|
| Check out this sweet map: https://edc.nyc/article/new-
| yorkers-and-their-cars
| weatherlight wrote:
| As someone who lives part time in Barcelona and NYC, and
| who is from NYC, the people who end up "Needing a car"
| usually live deep in Queens, or Staten Island. For those
| who are lucky to have a place where there's parking, they
| use their vehicles to basically escape the city, not to
| drive around inside the city.
|
| (I don't own a car in either city)
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Only 22% of people in Manhattan own a car, and that's
| inflated by a weird swath of the Upper East Side. Most
| car owner in NYC live nowhere near the subway.
| civilized wrote:
| > Why are we devoting so much energy to making people
| unhappy?
|
| No one is spending any effort to make anyone unhappy. This
| is about giving a slightly less enormous amount of
| consideration to people who want to drive everywhere, so
| that more consideration can be given to those who are
| willing to use other modes of transport.
| reidjs wrote:
| Just from personal experience, but NYC, SF, and many
| European cities are cheaper and faster to navigate without
| a car from within the city. Sometimes it depends where
| you're going within the city, though, for example outer
| brooklyn to outer queens will be faster via car, but
| williamsburg to midtown manhattan you'd be insane to drive
| during rush hour.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I have that experience too
|
| Even people from right outside those cities have such a
| wildly skewed perspective
|
| "Traffic and parking is so bad!"
|
| Have you consider moving to the city
|
| "Traffic and parking would be worse!"
|
| You don't drive if you are already inside it
|
| _cue confused worldview shaking look_
| josephcsible wrote:
| > You don't drive if you are already inside it
|
| People occasionally want to go to places other than the
| city where they live.
| qaq wrote:
| as compared to ?
| tfrutuoso wrote:
| Someone's been playing too much cyberpunk.
| didip wrote:
| Anecdotally, I agree with this approach.
|
| Downtown San Jose is a lot more vibrant whenever they shutdown
| streets for special events.
| kibwen wrote:
| Same here, in Boston I randomly stumbled upon a street shut
| down along the entire length of the Back Bay, not for any
| particular event or anything, and it was like a spontaneous
| mile-long carnival. Washington Street at the heart of downtown
| has been car-free for as long as I've been here. Over in
| Cambridge they shut down the major road along the river every
| weekend in the summer and it's a delightful time to go for a
| bike ride or just hang out on the riverfront without the
| constant noise of cars.
| ghaff wrote:
| Newbury Street was already a pretty narrow, notoriously
| parking unfriendly street--with a lot of stores/restaurants--
| so selectively making a street like that pedestrian only
| makes a lot of sense. Minimal impact from a traffic and
| parking perspective and a win for pedestrians. It also
| directly connects to parks.
|
| Shutting down (a small section of) Memorial Drive on Sundays
| in the summer also seems like a win. There's a parallel road
| on the other side of the river that can pretty much
| substitute at a lower traffic time, but you almost certainly
| wouldn't want to cut that capacity at rush hour on a weekday
| when both sides of the river are already horrible in terms of
| traffic capacity.
| ars wrote:
| Something that works when implemented infrequently tells you
| very little about implementing it permanently.
|
| If a couple times a year I don't have car access to my home,
| I'll be just fine. If you did that permanently I'd be pretty
| unhappy.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| Except it's been implemented / studied for decades in
| European cities, and in many American cities for the last two
| years. Also, road closures aren't shutting down residential
| access, just allowing more foot traffic in light commercial
| downtown areas.
| 01100011 wrote:
| So you're saying special events, which are intended to attract
| crowds, are more vibrant when times when there is no special
| event? Perhaps we should just schedule never ending special
| events? This deserves more study...
| danenania wrote:
| There are plenty of places where streets are made pedestrian-
| only once per week, or even multiple days per week, for
| farmer's markets, flea markets, etc. and they reliably bring
| a crowd.
|
| In a way, getting rid of cars _is_ the special event:
| increased foot traffic, food vendors, outdoor seating, and
| other events like markets and live music tend to follow on
| naturally.
|
| Apart from pedestrian streets, you also see this in well-
| integrated urban parks and plazas like Union Square,
| Washington Square, or Bryant Park in NYC.
| thethethethe wrote:
| I'm pretty sure these "never ending special events" are
| called pedestrian streets which have been studied and to my
| understanding and are quite productive commercial areas and
| are very pleasent to be in
| D13Fd wrote:
| Sounds great. But good luck implementing it within the legal
| framework that exists in most nations, for existing cities. Plus
| this analysis fails to account for the environmental cost of
| tearing down existing structures and constructing the new ones.
| It's really only applicable if you are planning a new city with
| strong central control and sparse existing structures.
| diordiderot wrote:
| No tearing anything down. If you have a grid city just ban non
| emergency / public service traffic at the center of 3x3
| intersection
|
| o--o--o
|
| |. |. |
|
| o--x--o
|
| |. |. |
|
| o--o--o
| IshKebab wrote:
| I dunno, isn't this how you end up with Milton Keynes?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ilikeitdark wrote:
| I'm living in Barcelona, I don't own a car (and hopefully never
| will need to) and I'm a fan of getting rid of cars in downtown
| areas. But there are few downsides. Horrible pollution while they
| are making them, due to street closures (I'm right next to a new
| one under construction and I've never experienced air pollution
| this bad in my 20 years here. It's horrible walking my kids to
| school. And it will be a 9 month construction job). Also once the
| superblocks are built, crime increases (no traffic ie witnesses)
| and rents increase (pedestrian friendly area!). This has happened
| in other superblock areas near me.
| msla wrote:
| > I'm a fan of getting rid of cars in downtown areas.
|
| I have two questions:
|
| Do emergency services count as cars?
|
| Do people who have to take call to provide emergency medical
| care still get to use cars?
| housingisaright wrote:
| cars or other vehicles required to provide services
| prohibited. The aim is to make people use other modes of
| transportation than their cars in these areas.
| ghaff wrote:
| Pedestrian areas basically always allow vehicles for
| emergency services, deliveries, tradespeople, etc. where
| practical. And there can actually be a fair number of
| vehicles especially at certain times of the day.
| diordiderot wrote:
| > Do emergency services count as cars?
|
| No
| [deleted]
| msoad wrote:
| I'm not sure if chopped corners area a required feature of
| Super Blocks but man those are annoying zebra lines... You have
| to walk 10 meters more to use the zebra line on each
| intersection!
| RobertoG wrote:
| I assume you are talking about L'Eixample. That's the
| original design of that specific neighborhood and have
| nothing to do with the superblocks thing.
| Swizec wrote:
| Scramble intersections can fix this. Let _all_ pedestrians in
| every direction go first, then coordinate cars, then back to
| pedestrians.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble
|
| And I thought 2nd paragraph from Wikipedia offers an
| interesting insight on cultural priorities:
|
| > It was first used in Canada and the United States in the
| late 1940s, but it later fell out of favor with traffic
| engineers there, as it was seen as prioritizing flow of
| pedestrians over flow of car traffic. Its benefits for
| pedestrian amenity and safety have led to new examples being
| installed in many countries in recent years
| scrumbledober wrote:
| I think they still do, but they at least used to have this
| in the SF Financial District, it was always fun walking out
| to lunch with hordes of people all crossing the street
| whichever way they wanted, including diagonally through the
| intersection.
| jlmorton wrote:
| They really need to put down some "suggested path"
| markings.
| FpUser wrote:
| We have this type of intersection in Toronto, Canada. Yonge
| & Bloor I think.
| RobertoG wrote:
| Crime increase and rents increase? That's some surprising
| finding. What are those superblocks where that happened
| exactly? And where is the 9 month construction job?
| dirtyid wrote:
| Wonder how much of rent increase is attributed to airbnb.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I wonder if the crime increases in absolute numbers, but goes
| down per capita. This phenomenon frequently gives cities a
| bad rep, even though you might actually be safer.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I can definitely see rents increase. A walkable city is one
| where you don't need a car (you only need to rent one if you
| go on a road trip or you can fly/bus to wherever you like)
| NOR car insurance. Given that, if you're an apartment
| management company, and your prospective tenants have an
| extra $100-500 a month in change, would you or would you not
| raise rents, given the demand for an apartment in a walkable
| city is huge?
| Atsuii wrote:
| Given the state of rent prices globally in western
| countries I really have to question if the increases you're
| seeing are attributed to 'superblocks' or just general
| inflation. If the rent is increasing due to 'superblocks'
| it's going to be because people prefer living within them
| rather than traditional blocks, hence they can command more
| rent, not because there is suddenly spare change that was
| once spent on a car.
|
| Also I don't think pollution is specific to this type of
| construction. Any type of full scale construction in urban
| environments causes terrible pollution and pest issues for
| the adjacent blocks.
| jeffalyanak wrote:
| I guess the surprise comes from the fact that there's a lot
| of supply as well.
| lmm wrote:
| It's the idea of both at once that's implausible. Making it
| more walkable would gentrify it and raise rents? Sure, I
| can see that. But the idea that this would also somehow
| increase crime? Pedestrians are much more able to see or
| intervene in a crime than drivers are.
| frontiersummit wrote:
| Superblocks seem like they would be super-fun for a 24-year-old
| single or someone visiting on holiday, but would be a
| logistical nightmare for a young family. Is this so? or am I a
| frog stuck in a car-dependency well?
| diordiderot wrote:
| Great for young families.
|
| Some superblocks sometimes have parks or playgrounds, you
| never have to worry about your kids getting run over or
| thrown in the back of a van, more people hang out outside
| because it isn't sulfery or loud.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Helps to not have harsh winters as well.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Building and maintaining good infrastructure can easily
| overcome bad weather though:
| https://torontoist.com/2017/02/what-toronto-can-learn-
| about-...
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Once the environment is safe for kids you don't have to do as
| many logistics for your children.
|
| You might be interested in this "Not Just Bikes" video about
| raising kids in non car dependent places:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw
|
| or this one about kids who bike to school in a group for
| safety: https://bikeportland.org/2022/10/13/portlands-bike-
| bus-featu...
| xapata wrote:
| You are stuck in a car-dependency well.
|
| As the parent of a young child, I wish very much for more
| car-free space around my house. Otherwise I need to pack her
| in the car to get some running-around space.
| andrepd wrote:
| > Also once the superblocks are built, crime increases (no
| traffic ie witnesses)
|
| No offense but this sounds like a classic reactionary anti-bike
| cliche, so would you mind sharing some sources?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I envy you a bit. Living in an urban residential area i'm just
| now getting to the end of 2.5 years of poorly managed
| construction by the private landlord next to my own home. I got
| to the point of initiating legal action before they decided to
| cash out their investment and sell the property to a charitable
| foundation, who have been far easier to deal with.
|
| I do feel you on the problems, but the idea of the construction
| job being complete in only a 9 month timeframe sounds like a
| luxury.
| rongopo wrote:
| Regularity in high density is also a problem. You better think of
| fractal densities than of same densities across all blocks.
|
| Source: https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/12/525/2019/
| wolpoli wrote:
| It would be much simpler creating a walkable area as part of a
| large scale urban renewal/redevelopment project than trying to
| retrofit an existing area. I wonder why there is so much focus on
| transforming an existing area. People should all want to
| buy/invest/rent in these areas designed with walking, biking, and
| expanded green space in mind.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Real estate value in cities rises because of scarcity and
| demand which then makes any sort of redesign prohibitively
| expensive. Instead we opt for half-assed approaches like ADUs
| to provide increased density with substandard units in areas
| that aren't capable of handling the increased density.
|
| A better approach, if we could muster the political will, would
| be to raise the large amounts of capital needed to transform
| large swaths of low-density suburbia into a comprehensively
| planned neighborhood. Otherwise, short of bombing the US back
| to the stone age and starting again, we will be trapped by the
| layouts of the 20th century.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Transit oriented development is a good solution as well.
|
| Build bus rapid transit and train lines and remove height
| restrictions 500m in every direction of each station
| mawise wrote:
| There's a cool approach called Transit Oriented
| Development[1]. You build a corridor of public-transit, and
| rezone the area around the corridor for higher density. Then
| it becomes economically viable for developers to build higher
| density in those areas and the urban infill can occur more
| organically.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit-
| oriented_development
| [deleted]
| YawningAngel wrote:
| You can't just go build such things in most major cities, all
| the available land is already developed
| jalk wrote:
| Where were you when the cities were altered to be more car
| friendly. Those car owners should just have moved to some place
| where their cars didn't bother others /s
| ars wrote:
| No thank you.
|
| They want to somehow have every single person in a 3 block radius
| park on the perimeter of that area? And this is somehow supposed
| to make things better?
|
| I also have zero interest in walking 2 blocks to my car when I
| need it, nor do I want to carry my items that far from my car.
|
| I especially like: "or reducing the number of parking spaces or
| the number of traffic lanes, for example--actions that might
| catalyze bigger, more permanent changes in the future."
|
| Yes, let's make people miserable now, because it might possibly
| make some change later.
|
| The concept of _first_ make things better seems to have escaped
| them.
|
| I'm really tired of anti-car advocates that have just a single
| idea: Make people too miserable to use a car, and maybe then
| there will be less cars.
|
| Making people miserable is not a viable strategy.
| integrale wrote:
| The current strategy most places is effectively make people too
| miserable _not_ to own a car. The idea here is to give those
| who would prefer not to depend on one (i.e., don't own one or
| have one they don't need to use all the time) a pleasant life,
| subject to less of the negative side effects of cars.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| > walking 2 blocks to my car
|
| It's worth remembering that this two block walk is much more
| pleasant in a superblock: you're not fighting cars along the
| way.
| the_af wrote:
| That, and also 2 blocks is a ridiculously short distance.
|
| I can't help but form a terrible impression of anyone not
| willing to walk two _goddamn_ blocks to their car. Even
| carrying bags or whatever. It 's a short walk!
| Gigachad wrote:
| Americans live in a world of drive through ATMs and
| electric scooters in Walmart. Suggesting people walk at all
| is apparently unthinkable.
| the_af wrote:
| > _I also have zero interest in walking 2 blocks to my car when
| I need it, nor do I want to carry my items that far from my
| car._
|
| Wow. Two blocks is _nothing_. To me this reads as someone
| complaining they cannot drive a car from their kitchen to their
| bedroom.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Two blocks is nothing... until you have a car that's fully-
| laden with heavy/bulky cargo.
| vvillena wrote:
| So... unload, then park? That's how you would do it
| anywhere you don't have an assigned parking place.
| the_af wrote:
| In some specific cases, I agree. But life should not be
| optimized for specific and unusual cases.
|
| I've transported bulky cargo further than two blocks, by
| the way. I'd rather suffer in those cases, but keep the
| streets relatively free of cars for the more common cases,
| like pedestrian quality of life.
| AlunAlun wrote:
| I suggest, respectfully, that you make an effort to understand
| the wider context before you make such an aggressive comment.
|
| Many people in BCN do not own a car. If they do own one, it is
| used almost exclusively for getting out of the city at
| weekends. For journeys within the city, the public transport
| system is excellent, and the climate lends itself to walking,
| cycling, and scooters. As such, parking two blocks away is not
| much of an issue.
|
| Finally, as a resident you are still allowed to drive within
| the superillas to access your building's car park, if it has
| one, and also for loading/unloading.
|
| The superillas were controversial at first but now they are
| very popular the people who live within them.
| standardUser wrote:
| I'm really tired of motorists decimating our environment and
| wasting 40,000 human lives every year. But I guess we have
| different values. For example, having my car less than two
| blocks from me has almost no value in my view. Maintaining a
| livable planet and saving human live tends to have a lot of
| value in my view.
| lcpriest wrote:
| It's 1.35m people globally per year and millions more with
| life altering injuries.
| bluescrn wrote:
| But how many lives are saved each year by the internal
| combustion engine (or it's electric successors)?
|
| Not just emergency services - more mundane things like,
| getting food and care to the elderly, getting workers and
| tools where they need to be to maintain infrastructure,
| produce food, and much more.
| bluescrn wrote:
| I'm really sick of city-dwellers telling the rest of us how
| to live.
|
| Yes, many city-dwellers can live without a car. But not
| everyone lives in a city, or has any desire to live in a city
| (especially during a time of decline and perpetual crisis of
| one form or another)
|
| Those who wage such vitriolic war on the car rarely consider
| small towns and rural areas, where public transport isn't
| efficient/practical, where no car often means no job.
| dylan-m wrote:
| Living outside a city doesn't mean you get to roar through
| it in your SUV and park a step away from your destination.
| A city has a lot of important services, but it is also a
| place where people live, and those people get to make
| choices that put their community first.
|
| But while we're on the topic of rural areas having terrible
| public transportation, I think that's a really important
| one. Switzerland has a smaller rural-urban divide (which is
| really where this whole "war on cars" thing comes in), in
| part because it is actually practical to move between rural
| and urban spaces on a regular basis. That isn't because the
| cities are more driveable, or because they build a highway
| through Bern: it's because they invested in public transit
| that actually works. This kind of talk benefits _everyone_.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| isn't it about "cities" and "urban design" though? so does
| not apply elsewhere. Not sure why you are feeling this way
| in this thread.
| [deleted]
| monksy wrote:
| There are parking paces on the corners. (They cut the corners
| so it's not completely square)
| ars wrote:
| Then come up with a better way to get people where they need
| to go.
|
| Making things worse for car owners isn't the right strategy.
|
| And BTW, public transport is not good enough, not even in
| places like NY, you need something better.
| standardUser wrote:
| Europe figured this out a generation or two ago. Visit
| Barcelona or Amsterdam or Copenhagen. Also, I live in NY
| and public transit here is certainly good enough. Where did
| you get the idea it is not?
| necrotic_comp wrote:
| NY's public transit is not great. It works, but it's dirty,
| slow and unreliable.
| standardUser wrote:
| I use it constantly, never notice the dirtiness (dirty
| compared to what?), rarely have to deal with late trains
| and it moves a hell of a lot faster than _cars_ a lot of
| the time. There 's plenty of routes where I don't even
| bother looking at driving directions/Uber because I know
| that no car can possibly beat the train.
|
| I'd guess you've lived in NY for a long time and have
| forgotten (or never had to suffer through) how bad public
| transit is in most US cities.
| weatherlight wrote:
| NYC subway system is dirty, lol. I love it, but it's old
| and dirty. (I live part time in Barcelona and the rest of
| the time here in NYC. The BCN Metro is very clean by
| comparison.
| the_af wrote:
| Public transport seems to be top notch in Europe.
|
| Walking is also nice for shorter distances. Or bikes.
| stoplying1 wrote:
| Oh my god, is this these even serious? NY transit is bad so
| all public transit is bad. Holy s*t fellow Americans, LEAVE
| THE COUNTRY FOR A FEW DAYS.
|
| I just freaking can NOT. Cognitive dissonance, self
| delusional and denial, what is it? Whatever it takes to
| avoid realizing how utterly stupid so many day-to-day
| aspects of American life are due to larger decisions about
| social welfare, including basic public transit.
| wombat-man wrote:
| I don't know what this guy is talking about. Subway in
| NYC has some annoyances but works pretty well most of the
| time.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Uhm, Barcelona has superb public transport. I would take
| train and metro in Barcelona over driving in...anywhere
| because driving in cities sucks.
| prvit wrote:
| > They want to somehow have every single person in a 3 block
| radius park on the perimeter of that area? And this is somehow
| supposed to make things better?
|
| Very few people in Barcelona own cars. Residents will have
| access to drop off things, but not parking.
|
| > I'm really tired of anti-car advocates that have just a
| single idea: Make people too miserable to use a car, and maybe
| then there will be less cars
|
| European cities tend to be pretty miserable places for cars by
| default, for the anti-car advocates it would generally be
| enough to stop subsidising cars.
| bombcar wrote:
| >The European Union counts 560 passenger cars per 1,000
| inhabitants on average, and some 81 commercial vehicles and
| buses.
|
| Europeans have cars hidden somewhere. I'll find where
| eventually.
| prvit wrote:
| Mostly everywhere but big cities.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| The point is that some car-friendly infrastructure does make
| the city worse for everyone not in a car, and that includes on-
| street parking, surface parking lots, wide streets, driveways
| in medium to high traffic streets, highways cutting through
| cities and a lot more.
| irusensei wrote:
| > "Study finds this it could work"
|
| > "restrict vehicle traffic to the streets on the perimeter"
| (keyword restrict, not solve)
|
| > Thread is full of opinionated people who probably never lived
| there.
|
| > ...used a computer algorithm to analyze data from the...
|
| So many red flags. I hate this kind of thing. Go ask the people
| if they like to live long term over there. I mean real people not
| some politicized whacko that happens to agree with you.
|
| I live in a post communist country near one of such similar
| places. In fact there are only 2 places in the world that have
| been designed with such planning and attention to detail. The
| aerial pic on that article actually resembles a lot the area I'm
| talking about. I've sent the picture to my brother who lives in
| the other side of the pond and he said it looks like a presidium.
| That area also has a really bad reputation.
| cajimhe wrote:
| I guess none of you live in Barcelona. This crap is sickening to
| most residents who have to deal with the chaos this city has
| become. I left after a decade living there, so I don't have to
| worry about it anymore.
| httptoolkit wrote:
| Counter example: I've lived here for most of a decade, and I'm
| a big fan of the superillas, ejes verdes, and other plans.
|
| There's definitely some short term pain from all the
| construction works, but they're making steady progress, the
| city has already become noticeably more walkable & cycleable in
| many places, and I'm quite convinced that moving away from cars
| within the city is the right direction in the long term.
| egao1980 wrote:
| USSR had implemented this idea and it worked fine while factories
| / companies were providing accommodation in the walking distance
| along with all the necessary services - schools, hospitals,
| kindergartens and shops.
|
| I doubt that it would work in a modern Capitalist society unless
| we all work from home.
| ETH_start wrote:
| USSR had chronic shortages in basic consumer goods like toilet
| paper, steadily fell behind the West in emerging technologies
| like semiconductors, and eventually went bankrupt [1], so I
| don't think you could describe anything in its centrally
| planned economy.
|
| Japan has many highly mixed neighorhoods, but unlike in the
| Soviet example, they emerge organically, because zoning
| restrictions are lax.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/28/world/big-soviet-
| budget-d...
| qaq wrote:
| As most anything else it did not work in USSR either for the
| most part.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Can't read this site on mobile because the "dismiss" button on
| the stupid email capture popup is hidden behind the fixed navbar
| so I can't click it.
|
| Why do designers do this?
| monksy wrote:
| I'm not sure that the super blocks are that great. From my
| experience they basically turned the shops, residential, and
| commercial into cookie cutter outlets from the block. You didn't
| get the unique architecture that you see in other cities,
| everything HAS to fit in that block.
|
| Additionally it felt like they were often far away from public
| transit that you needed. (The train stop may be 3 blocks away or
| better)
| httptoolkit wrote:
| It sounds like you're not talking about superblocks, you're
| just talking about the existing blocks of Eixample.
|
| The superblocks concept is that they'd be grouped together into
| 3x3 grids, by changing traffic rules and building urban
| furniture to block off streets, creating new squares and one-
| way systems. The goal being that everything would be far more
| walkable and you'd see far more local community - i.e. less of
| the cookie cutter shops you describe.
| rob74 wrote:
| At least in Barcelona, the blocks are already there and have
| been since the end of the 19th century - they are just grouping
| the blocks into superblocks where through traffic is only
| allowed on (on average) every third street and the rest are car
| free (I imagine residents can still use them).
| moffkalast wrote:
| Yeah, it may be a better idea to instead go for something
| between this and soviet style microdistricts. Slightly larger
| areas that don't have to be copy-paste fixed size units,
| roughly a 5 min walk across. Each having its own bus stop and a
| node of other utilities.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| That issue seems orthogonal to creating superblocks.
|
| Superblocks just means that within a grid of NxN regular
| blocks, you limit car traffic and instead prioritize walking
| and biking. It's true that the blocks of Barcelona tend to be
| same-y looking, but that issue predates superblocks.
| RobertoG wrote:
| The description in the article about what "superblocks" are, is,
| I think, wrong.
|
| It's not a binary thing "cars" vs. "not cars at all". Inside the
| "superblocks" is possible to use the car. Is just that you can't
| go anywhere except around the super-block and you have to drive
| in a slow pace.
|
| Parking is also restricted to neighbors and short times for
| loading and unloading goods or people.
|
| All that, disincentive cars going there except for specific
| needs. Also a lot of space is take away from cars for common
| pedestrian spaces and cycling.
| johntb86 wrote:
| Is it similar to a cul de sac, then?
| RobertoG wrote:
| Yeah (but as another commenter says, a cul de sac only for
| cars, not for bicycles or walking).
|
| It's not designed for stop traffic totally, just to
| disincentivize some (most maybe?) kind of traffic. The idea
| is also make those areas kind of "independent". In the sense
| that they should have most of all necessary services. Places
| for buying your groceries, medical services, small business..
|
| Of course, in practice it's not ideal, they are still
| learning.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Cul de sacs are for street hockey.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Cul-de-sacs block _all_ through traffic, not just through
| traffic by cars. This typically makes getting around
| impractical without a car.
|
| Superblocks to my knowledge do not, you can exit anywhere on
| foot or by bike. Basically it makes getting around outside a
| car the more convenient option.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's essentially a car free zone but residents can own a car
| and get out of the area. As an outsider the space is not
| accessible by car. Which is really how it should be. We might
| not have the whole country hooked up to amazing public
| transport, but we don't need to provide car access to every
| single space.
| RobertoG wrote:
| I think that, as an outsider, you can access by car.
|
| Is just that, if you have to drive slowly, you can't park and
| you have to exit in the same place you entered, what's the
| point?
| mkr-hn wrote:
| I assume dropping someone off or picking someone up to go
| to/from somewhere outside wouldn't count as parking.
| RobertoG wrote:
| Yeah, the most clear example of that is taxis. Also less
| traffic makes easy for drivers that bring goods to the
| shops.
| [deleted]
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Barcelona remains one of my all-time favorite cities. What a
| great example for other cities to follow.
| jjcm wrote:
| What I want more than a car-less city, is a city that properly
| separates out walkability from drivability. Use the superblock
| approach, but mandate all buildings have to be the same height
| and are connected to a public skyway network like so:
| https://i.imgur.com/hYGpQp4.png
|
| You can make these roofs a proper public space rather than just
| being unused as they are today, and you don't have to worry about
| crosswalks / mixed pedestrian + car usage for roads.
| danuker wrote:
| I don't see this as particularly good. I can imagine the noise
| and fumes from below would not make the skyways fun.
| mawise wrote:
| There was a Strong Towns article recently with a similar
| exploration. Their proposal was that this is actually an
| economically viable approach for developers to rebuild an entire
| block.
|
| https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/8/9/lets-infill-a-t...
| frontiersummit wrote:
| This is already being done in a lot of places in the American
| Midwest, such as my city and the neighboring city where my
| partner lives. The form it takes is a lot less glamorous than
| Strong Towns disciples probably want:
|
| An entire block gets leveled and filled with cookie cutter
| 5-over-1s. The neighboring block also gets leveled to provide a
| giant parking lot for the residents. This happens even in city
| centers and near universities.
| robswc wrote:
| I'm always shocked at how other people live. Not in a bad way
| though... but I just do at least a handful of things weekly that
| just wouldn't work, living in a place like that.
|
| By all means tho, if people enjoy them and they 'work' then keep
| building them.
| thfuran wrote:
| What kind of things?
| robswc wrote:
| well, in the last week off the top of my head:
|
| - playing guitar with amp (yea, you can w/o but less fun
| haha)
|
| - loading up all our bikes to go to a scenic trail (getting
| cold, so also packing heavier clothes takes up space)
|
| - transported a ridiculously heavy side table, picked it up
| from friends house.
|
| - 3D printing. I suppose could be done but the fumes get
| unpleasant after awhile, best in a shed or garage.
|
| - bulk buying groceries to save money (technically my wife
| handles this but I've done it before)
|
| I'm sure I could think of a few more and I do have "edge
| cases" that come about because I just like to build things
| (usually involving PVC pipes, lol). I guess my point is that
| I just couldn't do many of these things in an apartment, I
| certainly tried ahah.
| oleganza wrote:
| Barcelona's blocks turn out to be not so cute.
|
| Traversing multiple blocks straight requires diagonal zig-zags
| eating 10% of time and you could easily lose orientation,
| especially if you jump into a shop on the corner. Also it's
| simply annoying to see your straight path ahead and having to
| wave around it and then wait on a traffic light.
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