The future is dense, walkable cities.

[Fuzzy1975]

What blue cities have you been to lately?

I was in Baltimore last week and had a great time. We have friends there and went out every night. A very underrated blue city. Wasn’t mugged or harassed or anything of course.

In December we went to Nashville. Another great time. A really fun blue city.

I’m 62 years old and I’ve never been mugged, assaulted or had any of those kind of problems in my entire life. Not once.

The world simply isn’t as scary as you think it is. Don’t let delusional paranoia erode your enjoyment of life.

wrongway and his fellow followers live in world of fear. It's seems that is all they know. FEAR.

 

[TrailerHitch]

Moving to a climate of your choice is a common adaptation. And now there's global climate change, so Tennessee's former climate is moving north to my state. That is too late to prevent the rust damage on my truck, so I may feel a little salty about that.

I still don't want to live in a dense urban environment. I prefer my little 6 acre slice of heaven out in the boonies. Far from the maddening noise of city life.

 

[TrailerHitch]

What blue cities have you been to lately?

I was in Baltimore last week and had a great time. We have friends there and went out every night. A very underrated blue city. Wasn’t mugged or harassed or anything of course.

In December we went to Nashville. Another great time. A really fun blue city.

I’m 62 years old and I’ve never been mugged, assaulted or had any of those kind of problems in my entire life. Not once.

The world simply isn’t as scary as you think it is. Don’t let delusional paranoia erode your enjoyment of life.

Yet you didn't go to Memphis...I wonder why. No not really. A very blue city with a serious crime problem.

 

[Lazaran]

Consider what’s happening in LA right now. There are lots of high-density areas where you don’t need a car—Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Culver City, Santa Monica—stitch them together with train lines and bike paths, and support developing other pockets of walkability between them, and in a few decades you’ve turned LA into a 15-minute city without rebuilding it from scratch.

That ^ makes sense.

I wouldn’t say that equates to the future being dense, walkable cities as I imagined your thread title was suggesting…

but that would be mostly my fault:

The wholesale, nationwide adoption of 3-4 story multi-family centralized housing projects with various services located in the ground floor, and the wholesale, nationwide abandonment of single family dwellings / suburbs, and a move away from personal vehicle ownership to mass transit, walking and biking, was what I imagined you were suggesting: All my comments should be viewed through that lens.



Although, I believe all of the above could be required / mandatory due to the climate change related loss of arable land and habitable real estate.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Yet you didn't go to Memphis...I wonder why. No not really. A very blue city with a serious crime problem.

I’ll admit I haven’t been to every single blue city recently. I don’t have any reason to go to Memphis. I’m sure it’s just as underrated as Baltimore.

 

[TrailerHitch]

I’ll admit I haven’t been to every single blue city recently. I don’t have any reason to go to Memphis. I’m sure it’s just as underrated as Baltimore.

Actually if you were on that side of the state and didn't go see Graceland you aren't much of a tourist.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Actually if you were on that side of the state and didn't go see Graceland you aren't much of a tourist.

I wasn’t “on that side of the state”. I was in Nashville, in the middle of the state. Memphis is 210 miles from Nashville.

Tennessee is big.

 

[Fuzzy1975]

I wasn’t “on that side of the state”. I was in Nashville, in the middle of the state. Memphis is 210 miles from Nashville.

Tennessee is big.

Hitch lives there, you'd think he'd know that, right?

 

[MajorRewrite]

Hitch lives there, you'd think he'd know that, right?

I had to look up the exact distance on google maps, but I knew it was a long way.

 

[TrailerHitch]

Actually where I live is considered middle Tennessee and I'm 100 miles east of Nashville. But since you are a visitor I wouldn't expect you to know Tennessee's geography.

 

[Fuzzy1975]

Actually where I live is considered middle Tennessee and I'm 100 miles east of Nashville. But since you are a visitor I wouldn't expect you to know Tennessee's geography.

Hitch, you just did.

Actually if you were on that side of the state and didn't go see Graceland you aren't much of a tourist.

You're not getting any better at this....

 

[coati]

Tennessee attracts a lot of northerners, like Hitch, because it has relatively cheap land.

It also has a long history of right-wing politics. I had to live there for a while, and was so grateful when I finally was able to leave. Never had an impulse to move back to the South after that experience.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Actually where I live is considered middle Tennessee and I'm 100 miles east of Nashville. But since you are a visitor I wouldn't expect you to know Tennessee's geography.

Aren’t you the same guy who wondered why I didn’t visit Memphis while in Nashville? Yeah, you’re a Tennessee geography whiz kid.

It’s amusing how the right wing nuts have all adopted Trump’s “never admit you’re wrong” motto.

And Nashville is officially in middle Tennessee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Tennessee

 

[Lazaran]

Aren’t you the same guy who wondered why I didn’t visit Memphis while in Nashville? Yeah, you’re a Tennessee geography whiz kid.

It’s amusing how the right wing nuts have all adopted Trump’s “never admit you’re wrong” motto.

And Nashville is officially in middle Tennessee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Tennessee

Hitch made the point that you were "technically" on that side of the state, so you could "easily” have swung by Graceland (210 miles away).

 

[Cool88]

Car suburbs were a failed experiment from the last century. Forcing people to drive everywhere was great for the oil and car industries, but private cars turned out to be an ecological disaster, not to mention the fact that many American cities were gutted to build car infrastructure. Entire neighborhoods were razed to build highways and parking lots.

The way forward is to redirect public spending on car infrastructure to buses and trains. Convert lanes that are currently used for on-street parking into dedicated bus and bike routes. Bring back streetcars. Impose heavy penalties on careless drivers who kill pedestrians.

It will take decades to undo the damage that the private car has done to American cities, but European and Japanese cities can be used as models for how we can get rid of traffic and make our cities easier to get around in.

 

[Cool88]

The idea sounds great but really not into the new world order or global high tech facism at all.
Trying to force this commie stuff on the masses this social credit slave stuff is not going to work.
Drastic action will take place and it's good thing many are not giving up their guns at all.

 

[MajorRewrite]

The suburban community of Westminster Colorado bought a failed mall and got private developers to create a downtown for a place that never had one.

Projects like this are being built across America.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

The idea sounds great but really not into the new world order or global high tech facism at all.
Trying to force this commie stuff on the masses this social credit slave stuff is not going to work.
Drastic action will take place and it's good thing many are not giving up their guns at all.

I just want a protected bike lane down Olympic Boulevard so I can ride to the shops in Century City. I don’t want to establish a New World Order.

 

[Cool88]

Check and I know about Olympic Boulevard over by Pico and the Labrea Tar Pits. I use to walk the area when I would leave my uncle's apartment from San Vicente Blvd.

 

[Lazaran]

I just want a protected bike lane down Olympic Boulevard so I can ride to the shops in Century City. I don’t want to establish a New World Order.

I live in a city with many bike lanes and I’m still leery about biking around town.

It doesn’t help that a few good biking friends have been seriously injured by distracted drivers, and another was killed.

I also had an near death experience when a driver in a pick-up truck made a sudden right turn with no blinker in front of me in the bike lane. I laid my sweet Bridgestone RB-1 racing bike down on the asphalt and escaped with some minor road rash, only avoiding sliding under the truck because I managed to reach out and grab the curb where it meets the grass. My Rb-1 only sustained minor damage to the rear derailleur, but I never rode it again.

A truly protected dedicated bike corridor with bridges would probably see me back out on the road, but I won’t share a corridor with vehicle traffic ever again.

 

[dmallord]

What blue cities have you been to lately?

I was in Baltimore last week and had a great time. We have friends there and went out every night. A very underrated blue city. Wasn’t mugged or harassed or anything of course.

In December we went to Nashville. Another great time. A really fun blue city.

I’m 62 years old and I’ve never been mugged, assaulted or had any of those kind of problems in my entire life. Not once.

The world simply isn’t as scary as you think it is. Don’t let delusional paranoia erode your enjoyment of life.

Well not to dash some cold water, but not everyone has had such a wonderful experience. I'm eighty-six now. Lived in a city for a while then moved.

• robbed at gunpoint twice - mall parking lots
• sat at a traffic light and watched through my review window as a teenager got shot dead in the street.
• Stole my car at work - once, the second time just messed up the steering trying to steal it
• Ran off the road by a truck that was fleeing police
• neighbor murdered by thieves - used his gun to kill him
• attempted forced entry to my home while I was there
• took cover under a bridge while a tornado roared over me [just a bad experience and no one's fault.]

So there is that different experience.

 

[MajorRewrite]

A truly protected dedicated bike corridor with bridges would probably see me back out on the road, but I won’t share a corridor with vehicle traffic ever again.

Protected bike paths are the way.

Wide sidewalks (10 to 12 feet wide) designed as multi-use bike/walk paths can serve the purpose in the suburbs. I saw some of those in Florida.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Well not to dash some cold water, but not everyone has had such a wonderful experience. I'm eighty-six now. Lived in a city for a while then moved.

• robbed at gunpoint twice - mall parking lots
• sat at a traffic light and watched through my review window as a teenager got shot dead in the street.
• Stole my car at work - once, the second time just messed up the steering trying to steal it
• Ran off the road by a truck that was fleeing police
• neighbor murdered by thieves - used his gun to kill him
• attempted forced entry to my home while I was there
• took cover under a bridge while a tornado roared over me [just a bad experience and no one's fault.]

So there is that different experience.

It is remarkable how experiences vary. How much of that happened in a truly urban place, and how much was in a suburban place? Home invasion is difficult in an 8th floor apartment, but not so much in a suburban house. And your road-related experiences sound like an ad for compact walkable places that minimize driving.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Oklahoma City redesigned every downtown street to make it better for pedestrians and cyclists.

https://www.cnu.org/what-we-do/build-great-places/project-180

“The team has completely transformed the fabric of downtown Oklahoma City,” says Larry Nichols, former CEO of the Devon Energy Corporation—a major employer and a partner in the project. “What was once a confused and over-scaled one-way network of downtown streets is being transformed into a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly two-way traffic system that includes 900 new on-street parking spaces, bike lanes, site furnishings and beautiful ornamental plantings.”

Oklahoma City was ranked America’s least walkable city in America by Prevention Magazine in 2008—a wake-up call for the city. Mick Cornett, mayor at the time, commissioned a walkability study of the entire downtown, one of the first in the US. The construction of a skyscraper by Devon Energy, starting in 2009, created the tax-increment finance to pay for a makeover.

“Project 180 may have invented the concept of the Downtown Lane Audit, in which each street is analyzed in terms of its number of lanes, the width of those lanes, its direction of travel, and its provision of on-street parking and bike facilities, and then redesigned to provide desired vehicle through-put while optimizing the needs of pedestrians and cyclists and improving safety for all users,” the design team notes.

What will those crazy Marxist red state people get up to next?

the one-way system was eliminated, driving lanes were cut by more than a third, lane width was reduced, the amount of on-street parking was doubled, and a network of bike facilities was introduced. More than 2,500 trees were planted to provide a continuous green canopy. Significant public spaces were renovated and created.

 

[Fuzzy1975]

Oklahoma City redesigned every downtown street to make it better for pedestrians and cyclists.

https://www.cnu.org/what-we-do/build-great-places/project-180



What will those crazy Marxist red state people get up to next?

Single payer healthcare?