I dunno. I’ve been to all of those European cities and they were nice to visit for a week as a tourist but the density along with everything that goes with it: noise, smells, crowds etc were always a reminder that I only want to be there on a brief visit. I’m my suburban city, I simply hop in my vehicle and can be anywhere I want in 3-15 minutes.
A well designed city makes most errands faster on foot than in a car.
Even when cars are prioritized, traffic makes even the smallest errands a problem eventually; roads simply don't scale.
And cars are by far the loudest thing about cities at almost all times. They make the very air hostile with pollution and heat. And, worst of all:
> I simply hop in my vehicle and can be anywhere I want in 3-15 minutes
You do this at the direct expense of everyone else in your city. You make the streets unwalkable and the city unlivable. You are insulated from the sounds and dangers that you are creating around you. (I'm just using you as an example, I don't actually blame you for taking the only option you've been given.)
IMO the default mode of transport should be scooters. They don't take all that much space than a person(unlike car) but (like car) can move far faster
The infrastructure is all here already. They pollute less (ICE) and the no pollution electric ones are far more affordable than EVs. Like 4 of them fit in one parking space. They have storage space for some small groceries too.
Sadly winter and rain sucks.. i guess at least for rain those scooters with roofs could cover that.
Yeah. Screw scooters. People riding those don’t care about pedestrians. I’ve been knocked out by one of those things. They’re more dangerous than cars. Cars at least move on designated roads while scooters just zip past pedestrians and can come from anywhere at any time.
Context… You can fit well more than 4 kick scooters in a parking space. And kick scooters don’t have internal combustion engines. And motor scooters usually have a storage bin under the seat big enough for a helmet or two, or two bags of groceries.
Are you riding a scooter for your day to day errands? How do you deal with being stuck in the 5pm traffic under 90F sun? How do you ride it when you're a bit unwell (flu, cold)? What do you do with your helmet, boots and protective gear when you go to a restaurant?
The whole point is if we prioritize transport other than cars, we don't have to sit for hours in 90 degree heat. We walk, take the bus/subway, or bike, scooter, etc.
This doesn't even require everybody to live in a city... I'm outside DC and just moment from my front door, I see plenty of opportunities to make transit better and reduce car usage... I'm 1.5 miles from a subway station, but it's impossible to walk to without crossing 1 or more 6 lane roads. There are bike lanes that lead nowhere (literally end a few blocks before the local school then start a few blocks after, then stop before the local shopping center, then start again after). They just built an expensive bike path/running trail as part of an interstate project but they put it right beside the highway - who wants to walk/run/bike 4' from trucks belching diesel fumes and with dangerous sound levels? They could have built the bike path on the other side of the sound wall, but didn't.
> Are you riding a scooter for your day to day errands?
I was driving bicycle for ~10 years and most weather. Scooter would be upgrade.
> How do you deal with being stuck in the 5pm traffic under 90F sun?
You wouldn't if you removed 3/4 of cars and replace them with scooters
> How do you ride it when you're a bit unwell (flu, cold)?
You take a bus. Do you also drive car if you feel terrible ? It's not very safe....
>What do you do with your helmet, boots and protective gear when you go to a restaurant?
I'd imagine if that much traffic moved to scooters the city businesses would accommodate. At least for helmet they often just fit under scooter's seat.
I like scooters on an aesthetic level, but I don't know if it's true that they pollute less: my understanding is that most scooters use relatively dirty two-stroke engines, and that much of SE Asia's urban air pollution can be correlated to heavy scooter use.
They used to be 2-strokes. Probably still are in many parts Asia and Africa.
But, in the US and EU, new scooters are (almost?) all 4-stroke today due to emissions regulations. Many are fuel injected for the same reason. I'm not sure if they're required to have catalysts - but that's a fairly simple fix (for new models).
The default should be walking, the default should never be having to buy a product and drag a product around with you and needing two arms, two eyes, a sense of balance and constant concentration while using it so that you don't injure others with your product, it's as wrong-headed as designing everywhere to need stilts or designing everything to be hot so you need to wear oven gloves all the time. Places and things should serve humans as far as possible, not humans serving capitalism's need to sell things. (And 50 people in a bus fit in ~four car spaces and aren't getting wet in winter).
Saying "we should arrange these two buildings far enough apart so that people have to cycle, because I don't like walking" is not compelling. Strive to arrange them close enough to walk (or wheelchair) because that maximises accessibility to the most people. If people can afford to - and want to - cycle on top of that base, no problem. But don't make cycling or driving or owning a Cessna the default.
The point is that driving should not be required to live a full life, and in fact it's much more pleasant to live without cars everywhere.
The goal of driving is to get from point A to point B. But when point A and point B are a 5 minute walk, why drive at all? Well, in America we designed our cities and suburbs to make the distance between A and B as large as possible. But we didn't have to do that!
It can be but you have to make your choice of housing location priority number one. Then worry about employment, raising a family, etc. Not easy at all which is why so few do it.
You also need a minimum amount of financial comfort and stability, which, in the US, is not easy for many people. Often the poorest neighborhoods are the most car-bound.
Except driving is the only transportation option which regularly results in the death of people walking/biking outside of that car. Walking/biking/rail/bus kill virtually no one, cars kill tens of thousands annually.
Discouraging driving is a reasonable public health measure for a safer society.
Undriveable isn't bad though. We don't really get any value from driving for everyday trips over walking/biking/transit. And any decent walkable designs don't prohibit necessary driving such as delivery and emergency services, so they're not truly undriveable. It is a competition, but dying from cancer is also a form of competition. We don't always have to give both sides equal standing.
Between cities, yeah. But also trains, unlike America. And in Utrecht proper there’s multiple options for getting around that aren’t cars. The Netherlands does a great job (maybe the best) designing for multi-mode transportation, including cars.
I lived in Italy for a number of years, and it's not noisier or smellier than where I now live in Oregon. Truth be told, it was quieter because here in Bend, Oregon, there's a "parkway" that runs right through town and even though we're not at all right next to it, it's quite loud with car noises when the wind blows right (wrong).
Italy isn't perfect and I could talk about that country's problems a lot, but in terms of transportation, it was more a "right tool for the job" place than here, where we'd walk to many things, ride bikes to others, take the train occasionally, city busses some, and yes, use the car too for some stuff.
As someone who just got back from a two-week vacation in Italy, I couldn't agree more. We did sightseeing, groceries, ate out, and travelled extensively without using a car. Public transport and walking made everything easy. It's a failure of imagination in the U.S.
Right. I actually lived in Italy for a number of years without a car, and then got one. I used it sometimes, but it's such a difference from "yeah, occasionally I want to go out somewhere tough to get to without a car, for a hike" and "I literally can't do anything without an automobile", as is the case in most of the US.
For those who live in such cities (and not just visit), everything they want to do is a 3-15 minute walk, not a drive. You can get groceries, stop at a cafe, go to a doctor's appointment, and pick up your kids from school (or better yet, they can walk themselves, because their school is nearby and getting killed by speeding SUVs is not a concern) - all within a 15 minute radius. If the walk is truly too far, a metro stop is often nearby.
I have lived in the USA all my life and I've never been more than 15-20 minute walk from a grocery store of some kind.
And that's in a quite a few areas from pretty dense single-family urban to apartments to what some might call rural.
You can do it but people don't. Hell, walmart is only 30 minute walk away, but I drive most the time. Probably should get my bike fixed and easily accessible ...
I guess it spends where you live. I have done it. Used to have to walk everywhere. Auth the peak, I was walking around 14 miles a day. The walk was short like you mentioned, but I had to cross highway exists over a big hill in scorching humid heat while carrying shit. Not appealing whatsoever.
Frankly the heat is mostly why I stopped walking. I figured at first I might just be out of shape as hell, but I decided to take one today while the rain had cooled down the temperature and it was mostly pleasant. Comparatively I tried to walk the same route a few days back and gave up early because I was drenching in sweat, slunched over, could hardly see in front of me and my head was throbbing.
Infrastructure is a big thing too. When I’ve had to walk in less urban areas with little or no sidewalk, walking on grass next to the road with massive cars zipping past you is unnerving.
Ok I've done that and still hated it. I've spent weeks staying in apartments in France and Italy with a grocery store on the bottom floor, restaurants, and retail a few blocks away. Good suburbs have these things within walking distance too. It is just a much quieter, calmer walk.
I visit Amsterdam periodically for business. In the city center, where there are very few cars, there is far more noise, smells, and crowds than I would care to live with everyday.
Density of people brings those three annoyances, cars or no cars.
Not even that. I live a little outside the centre of Amsterdam (I could walk to De Wallen in probably 30 minutes comfortably.) Most residents don't go into the centre because it's a mass of tourists who haven't learnt how to walk outside of bike lanes. In my neighbourhood, there still aren't that many cars, the footpaths and bike paths are wider, and it's generally calm and quiet, and I sit on a moderately busy road, a small street off it will be much quieter still. There're a few cafes that I go to that are a bit more central, but it's still mostly outside the really busy area.
I think most people's - even a lot of Dutch people's - experience is getting off at Centraal and walking to some bar in the centre, or going through the shopping areas, and then extrapolating that to everywhere else in the city so all they imagine is that busyness.
I have. Most of them seem to be car-centric, to the point where many of my work colleagues living there don’t even have an OV card (and were shocked when I said I had one as a tourist).
Maybe you should move to the moon then, because you either have density that allows you to enjoy nice services and comforts or you live in the boonies where you need a car and perpetuate the inefficient consumption of resources.
Those are huge cities, smaller centers are heaven without being non sense absurdities of two story one family houses. Go to Lausanne, Geneva, Munich, Nice, etc.
I have no idea what it cost in Munich, but the city center undergrounded the commuter trains and the river. The river appears in Englisch Garden from under a road and is a popular surf spot on a standing wave.
