The future is dense, walkable cities.

[JohnEngelman]

Many people would like to live in cities, but the housing costs are too high. Cities need lots and lots of affordable, high density housing within walking distances to public transportation hubs.

 

[Bray123]

Dense walkable cites are not the future, they are the past. It's what existed before transportation was available, when people had to walk to work. They also kept pigs and chickens in the yard and grew vegetables.

Then there were trains & busses and the commuter was born, living in the suburbs away from the stink of tanneries and breweries.

As soon as it was possible, people voted with their cars and shunned mass transportation. Strap-hanging crushed against a variety of sweaty armpits was no-one's aspiration. Asking people to go back to those days is a fine ideal but it's never going to happen. The future has been defined by Covid; working from home is what people want, fast & reliable internet has proved it can be done. It's been years since I went into a town center except for a very specialised purpose, there are no shops there worth the car parking fee. In fact, my local town looks derelict with all the boarded up shops.

If the planners reversed the policies of the last 50 years and banned out-of-town malls with their cheap rents and free car parks, to force people back to town it might have some effect but it'd be swimming against the tide.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Dense walkable cites are not the future, they are the past. It's what existed before transportation was available, when people had to walk to work. They also kept pigs and chickens in the yard and grew vegetables.

Then there were trains & busses and the commuter was born, living in the suburbs away from the stink of tanneries and breweries.

As soon as it was possible, people voted with their cars and shunned mass transportation. Strap-hanging crushed against a variety of sweaty armpits was no-one's aspiration. Asking people to go back to those days is a fine ideal but it's never going to happen. The future has been defined by Covid; working from home is what people want, fast & reliable internet has proved it can be done. It's been years since I went into a town center except for a very specialised purpose, there are no shops there worth the car parking fee. In fact, my local town looks derelict with all the boarded up shops.

If the planners reversed the policies of the last 50 years and banned out-of-town malls with their cheap rents and free car parks, to force people back to town it might have some effect but it'd be swimming against the tide.

It’s amusing when someone tries to pretend that people don’t choose to live in cities now. The truth is city living is so popular that demand has caused the price of city real estate to skyrocket.

I live in a small US city (187,000 population) and the downtown is lively with people throughout the day and evening. There are more than 40 restaurants, 2 concert halls, movie theaters, museums, galleries and assorted shops. There are events almost every weekend. A 1-bedroom condo downtown costs about $500,000, and larger ones can be up to $2 million.

If your local town or city is derelict, then you must live in a desperately poor place.

 

[Bray123]

It’s amusing when someone tries to pretend that people don’t choose to live in cities now. The truth is city living is so popular that demand has caused the price of city real estate to skyrocket.

I live in a small US city (187,000 population) and the downtown is lively with people throughout the day and evening. There are more than 40 restaurants, 2 concert halls, movie theaters, museums, galleries and assorted shops. There are events almost every weekend. A 1-bedroom condo downtown costs about $500,000, and larger ones can be up to $2 million.

If your local town or city is derelict, then you must live in a desperately poor place.

It's reasonably prosperous as an area, but all the stores are in malls out of town. There are loads of food outlets still there and phone shops of course. Then there are charity shops. At least we have zero gun crime; our police have never shot anyone in their entire history.

 

[BabyBoomer50s]

Dense walkable cites are not the future, they are the past. It's what existed before transportation was available, when people had to walk to work. They also kept pigs and chickens in the yard and grew vegetables.

Then there were trains & busses and the commuter was born, living in the suburbs away from the stink of tanneries and breweries.

As soon as it was possible, people voted with their cars and shunned mass transportation. Strap-hanging crushed against a variety of sweaty armpits was no-one's aspiration. Asking people to go back to those days is a fine ideal but it's never going to happen. The future has been defined by Covid; working from home is what people want, fast & reliable internet has proved it can be done. It's been years since I went into a town center except for a very specialised purpose, there are no shops there worth the car parking fee. In fact, my local town looks derelict with all the boarded up shops.

If the planners reversed the policies of the last 50 years and banned out-of-town malls with their cheap rents and free car parks, to force people back to town it might have some effect but it'd be swimming against the tide.

Cities have existed for thousands of years. Density is a defining characteristic. They have sidewalks with crosswalks that make them walkable. Some cities have pedestrian only sections of downtown districts. Private vehicles are a key part of city life. That is the past, present, and future of cities.

 

[wizzard426]

Live in a shitty? Ahahahahahahahahaha!

 

[dmallord]

Cities have existed for thousands of years. Density is a defining characteristic. They have sidewalks with crosswalks that make them walkable. Some cities have pedestrian only sections of downtown districts. Private vehicles are a key part of city life. That is the past, present, and future of cities.

@BrightShinyGirl

Just a sidebar on this thought: What do you suppose cities in Gaza will look like after the landscape is bulldozed and made way for rebuilding places for those two million displaced citizens living in tents? Would a dreamer with a vision for rebuilding that twenty-five-mile-long by five-mile wide strip of land rise like a phoenix from the ashes? Could a subway system spring up out of those miles of underground tunnels? How would this small enclave create a thriving lifestyle and economy if and somehow when peace erupts out of the chaos?

 

[dmallord]

Right. No responsible building department would ever allow a building taller than a ladder can reach.

I read about how in the early days of automobiles someone predicted they would never be able to go faster than thirty miles per hour simply because the human brain wouldn’t be able to process information fast enough.

There are some human brains here that can't process thirty words per minute and you want them to be able to travel IN a vehicle over thirty miles per hour? How crazy is that?

 

[dmallord]

It’s amusing when someone tries to pretend that people don’t choose to live in cities now. The truth is city living is so popular that demand has caused the price of city real estate to skyrocket.

I live in a small US city (187,000 population) and the downtown is lively with people throughout the day and evening. There are more than 40 restaurants, 2 concert halls, movie theaters, museums, galleries and assorted shops. There are events almost every weekend. A 1-bedroom condo downtown costs about $500,000, and larger ones can be up to $2 million.

If your local town or city is derelict, then you must live in a desperately poor place.

Hurry, please provide the zip code so I can pack a bag and load up my car. I will need a place that allows for a geriatric cocker who lives with an octogenarian. The octo isn't allowed to ride a two-wheeler any longer - doctor's orders to prevent further head trauma. I need a ground floor place designed for aging-in-place near medical facilities and grocery sources that deliver.

Did you get that zipcode for me yet? I'm hearing gunshots closer to me each day. Two dead yesterday, kids.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Hurry, please provide the zip code so I can pack a bag and load up my car. I will need a place that allows for a geriatric cocker who lives with an octogenarian. The octo isn't allowed to ride a two-wheeler any longer - doctor's orders to prevent further head trauma. I need a ground floor place designed for aging-in-place near medical facilities and grocery sources that deliver.

Did you get that zipcode for me yet? I'm hearing gunshots closer to me each day. Two dead yesterday, kids.

Violent crime in the US is almost entirely either 1) drug trade related or 2) crimes of passion among friends/family. So if you’re not involved with drugs and your family/friends aren’t dangerously unhinged you should be fine.

Anyway … all of the smallish cities in this region are booming and have lively downtowns: Asheville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Lexington. They’re very popular and therefore pricey too.

 

[goldytheGoldfish]

Violent crime in the US is almost entirely drug trade related

You still have to make a choice.

 

[Rightguide]

San Francisco is a walkable city of questionable density:

San Francisco Officials Planning To Exit Downtown Offices: REPORT​

ILAN HULKOWERCONTRIBUTOR
March 18, 202410:20 AM ET


The city is not the only tenant that has soured on downtown San Francisco.

Retail and corporate businesses have fled the city and the state of California altogether due to concerns over the “safety of their employees” and bad “local business conditions” in the past few years alone.

“It just [isn’t] the same city it used to be. In the 80s and 90s, there was still something to it. People were proud of the city, and while there was crime and everything, it wasn’t that big of a worry. You could also walk down the sidewalks, as no tents were there,” Frank Russo, a business owner, told the California Globe. Nordstrom, an iconic clothing store, closed its San Francisco branch’s doors permanently back in Aug. 2023 after 35 years of business due to the crime wave in the city. In some areas of the city, crime has increased 240% in the span of one year alone.

More here on BSG's dream: https://dailycaller.com/2024/03/18/san-francisco-city-exit-downtown-offices/

San Francisco is becoming a ghost town all engineered by starry-eyed leftists. Market Street the great business center of the city is deserted. Meanwhile, armed with Prop, 47 mobs of vermin are looting the city with impunity. Much of the once Golden State has been reduced to a dystopian nightmare by the omnipresent far-left political apparatus smothering the freedoms of its law-abiding citizens.

 

[MajorRewrite]

$1 Billion Project to Replace a Mall with a Town Center

The plans for the 215-acre site, now before officials at the town of Clay, N.Y., envision “a vibrant town center … with a walkable town center, entertainment district, health and wellness campus, and premier residential community,” according to the developers.

A giant semiconductor manufacturing facility is also coming to the town of Clay. In October 2022, Micron Technology announced the construction of a memory-chip fabrication plant that will involve an investment of as much as $100 billion. The “megafab” reportedly will be the largest-ever private investment in the state of New York. Groundbreaking is expected later this year.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

San Francisco is a walkable city of questionable density:

San Francisco Officials Planning To Exit Downtown Offices: REPORT​

ILAN HULKOWERCONTRIBUTOR
March 18, 202410:20 AM ET


The city is not the only tenant that has soured on downtown San Francisco.

Retail and corporate businesses have fled the city and the state of California altogether due to concerns over the “safety of their employees” and bad “local business conditions” in the past few years alone.

“It just [isn’t] the same city it used to be. In the 80s and 90s, there was still something to it. People were proud of the city, and while there was crime and everything, it wasn’t that big of a worry. You could also walk down the sidewalks, as no tents were there,” Frank Russo, a business owner, told the California Globe. Nordstrom, an iconic clothing store, closed its San Francisco branch’s doors permanently back in Aug. 2023 after 35 years of business due to the crime wave in the city. In some areas of the city, crime has increased 240% in the span of one year alone.

More here on BSG's dream: https://dailycaller.com/2024/03/18/san-francisco-city-exit-downtown-offices/

San Francisco is becoming a ghost town all engineered by starry-eyed leftists. Market Street the great business center of the city is deserted. Meanwhile, armed with Prop, 47 mobs of vermin are looting the city with impunity. Much of the once Golden State has been reduced to a dystopian nightmare by the omnipresent far-left political apparatus smothering the freedoms of its law-abiding citizens.

San Francisco is ground zero for the NIMBY vs. YIMBY battle. Although ostensibly a liberal city, decades of blocking new housing to protect the interests of owners has ruined the city's ambience.

 

[Chernosoth]

San Francisco and NYC became shitholes because they were flooded with huge amounts of money. Now the money is leaving. The wealthy and powerful initially try to avoid shitting where they eat, but that rule slips away over time.

 

[Rightguide]

San Francisco is ground zero for the NIMBY vs. YIMBY battle. Although ostensibly a liberal city, decades of blocking new housing to protect the interests of owners has ruined the city's ambience.

The city is a dysfunctional blight on the California map.

 

[Chernosoth]

The future is a mix of doing more with less and doing less with less. The current standard is doing less with more. Cities that survive will have people more free to try various solutions and do what works, without top-down bureaucratic micromanagement. The cities and all sorts of organizations that refuse to fire the hordes of bureaucrats will be out-evolved and left behind in the process of natural selection.

 

[MajorRewrite]

How a Cold, Hilly Canadian City Became a Year-Round Cycling Success Story

The average daily temperature in February is 26 degrees Fahrenheit, with overnight lows at 12 degrees. There are 12 days of precipitation (primarily snow). There’s a massive, 764-foot-high hill (locals call it a Mont) smack dab in the middle of the city. Who would go cycling in such conditions? Montrealers, and the city’s bikeshare program has the stats to prove it.

 

[BabyBoomer50s]

The future is flying cars

 

[Rightguide]

The future is flying cars

I don't think there is much of a possibility of widespread use of flying cars unless all operational and traffic controls and routes are managed by supercomputers. Without that, there will be chaos in the skies.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

The future is flying cars

Helicopters have been around since the 1940s. What makes you think they’ll be widely used in the future?

 

[TrailerHitch]

Helicopters have been around since the 1940s. What makes you think they’ll be widely used in the future?

What makes you so sure they wouldn't be?

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

What makes you so sure they wouldn't be?

Helicopters are expensive and dangerous. Bikes and trains are cheap and safe.

 

[Chernosoth]

Drones are currently the top tech in war, but they require long supply chains of electronics. The chains will break down and the Kessler syndrome will end satellite GPS. Drones will be replaced by ultralight aircraft. Their value in military reconnaissance is enough to be worth some biofuel forever, all the way through the dark age to the next civilization. So some sort of flying car will still be in our future, in small numbers.

 

[TrailerHitch]

Helicopters are expensive and dangerous. Bikes and trains are cheap and safe.

First of all, a helicopter isn't even close to what people assume a flying car would be. Secondly, you are the only person I have ever seen equate a helicopter with a flying car.

Trains are NOT cheap and that is why Amtrak is HEAVILY federally subsidized. In 2021 AMTRAK had $2.1 billion in revenue with $4.1 billion in expenses. Add to that is 2020 and 2021 AMTRAK received an additional $3.7 billion in pandemic aid. The vast majority of long distance rail routes lose money and the only truly profitable routes are in the north east. Riding the train sucks in many aspects, not running on schedule, it takes longer to get places than driving or taking a bus, and my number one complaint is getting stuck with loud mouthed assholes that won't sit down, shut up or behave. It will take a tremendous paradigm shift for rail to become close to a viable alternative to personally owned vehicles and since the government runs AMTRAK it simply won't happen soon or at all.