The future is dense, walkable cities.

[AlexBailey]

By the same token what you posted here applies directly to you. But you can't handle people with a differing opinion so your only hope is to attempt to silent dissent. Yeah, not going to work. I'll post my opinion here and you don't have to like it.

Keep on living in your world of delusion.

I'm not trying to silence you, I just wish you wouldn't be such an asshole.

 

[TrailerHitch]

I'm not trying to silence you, I just wish you wouldn't be such an asshole.

I only appear to be an asshole to you because once again you can't stand a differing opinion. The fact that you lied about what I said is proof of that. Add to that I simply won't let you get away with your Bull Shit and propaganda without countering it and you flip your shit. Too bad sonny, learn to debate, not pontificate, and you may actually make a cogent point.

 

[Fuzzy1975]

I'm not trying to silence you, I just wish you wouldn't be such an asshole.

While he is being an asshole,he also wants to silence you....talk about being two faced...

NO THEY WON'T! The moderators here are 100% USELESS.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

have you been to Europe? City politics do not function outside of the city. Look closely at a map and you will see thousands of villages. How do you suppose one would travel through hill and dale to other villages? Your idea is ok if you only live on one patch of ground and nowhere else. Also the concept of land ownership in America differs vastly from European nations and how those villages are plotted. Any way you slice it your arguement of everyone existing shoulder to shoulder doesnt fit the reality of movement. Unless restricting movement is your goal. If so, this goal also includes a plethora of restrictions that will require dictatorship and jackboot enforcement. Changes and refinements need to be considered but this plan has been seen before. The ones pushing never included themselves as part of the restricted class.

Cars are fine as rural transportation, but they wreck cities. Just like it’s silly to expect farmers to ride the bus, it’s silly to build cities where the only way to get across town is driving.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

"The way forward is to redirect public spending on car infrastructure to buses and trains"

And only go where they go, when they go. And in order to do this, taxes will become very heavy and complete govt control. And it will ultimately be... not so great. Right now people leaving (due to high crime, costs, taxes) cities is a threat to the city because of the taxes not collected. It will require govt control over every aspect. Only the fascists(Mussolini) claimed to have had the trains run on time. Amtrak is a failure.

Amtrak is a failure because instead of improving our trains, we spent buckets of money on the Interstate system. Driving is so heavily subsidized in the U.S. that most people don’t even notice it anymore. For example, every day I see private cars parked for free on public streets. Free street parking is a government subsidy of driving.

 

[TrailerHitch]

Amtrak is a failure because instead of improving our trains, we spent buckets of money on the Interstate system. Driving is so heavily subsidized in the U.S. that most people don’t even notice it anymore. For example, every day I see private cars parked for free on public streets. Free street parking is a government subsidy of driving.

One of the greatest problems with public transit whether busses or trains is the lack of personal space. What do I mean? When I used to ride the bus into downtown Madison to go to college there were always people on the bus that were loud and acting like idiots. One guy in particular would hang on the ceiling handrails and make sounds like a gorilla. I found it incredibly annoying but it was easy to see it terrified women and the elderly on the bus. Another time my family and I traveled to Washington DC on Amtrak and there was some idiot trying to hit on all the women that had no one else with them. He finally sat down about 2 seats away and proceeded in a very loud voice to talk about mud bogging in his lifted 4 wheel drive pick up truck for the better part of 4 hours.

What is my point? People don't want to be annoyed or terrified by other passengers acting like idiots on public transportation. Solve that problem and maybe ridership will improve.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

One of the greatest problems with public transit whether busses or trains is the lack of personal space. What do I mean? When I used to ride the bus into downtown Madison to go to college there were always people on the bus that were loud and acting like idiots. One guy in particular would hang on the ceiling handrails and make sounds like a gorilla. I found it incredibly annoying but it was easy to see it terrified women and the elderly on the bus. Another time my family and I traveled to Washington DC on Amtrak and there was some idiot trying to hit on all the women that had no one else with them. He finally sat down about 2 seats away and proceeded in a very loud voice to talk about mud bogging in his lifted 4 wheel drive pick up truck for the better part of 4 hours.

What is my point? People don't want to be annoyed or terrified by other passengers acting like idiots on public transportation. Solve that problem and maybe ridership will improve.

Loud passengers on public transit are annoying, but driving is much more likely to get you killed.

 

[TrailerHitch]

Loud passengers on public transit are annoying, but driving is much more likely to get you killed.

Frankly, after 49 years of driving I'll take that chance.

 

[LeeKee]

Amtrak is a failure because instead of improving our trains, we spent buckets of money on the Interstate system. Driving is so heavily subsidized in the U.S. that most people don’t even notice it anymore. For example, every day I see private cars parked for free on public streets. Free street parking is a government subsidy of driving.

Amtrak failed because its mismanaged. Example -$7 hamburger sold, but it cost amtrak $13. Its ran backwards, with the mindset of "who cares, its govt" If it, or any other govt agency were to operate within the confines of fiscal responsibility, they always fail. Also, It cannot be expected to advocate govt run health care, education, transportation, retirement, business, regulate banking, housing and see opposition to this control as the fascist.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

Amtrak failed because its mismanaged. Example -$7 hamburger sold, but it cost amtrak $13. It’s ran backwards, with the mindset of "who cares, its govt" If it, or any other govt agency were to operate within the confines of fiscal responsibility, they always fail. Also, It cannot be expected to advocate govt run health care, education, transportation, retirement, business, regulate banking, housing and see opposition to this control as the fascist.

The interstate system isn’t run for a profit. Why should the national passenger rail system be any different?

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

Measure HLA is up for a vote in the March 5th election in LA (which is also the Presidential primary).

The local measure would force city officials to actually implement the city's Mobility Plan 2035, which is a 2015 plan created by the department of transportation to reduce congestion and make LA more walkable.

Although MP2035 has wide public support, the LADOT regularly ignores it, doing things like spending money earmarked for repairing sidewalks and building bike lanes to widen streets and add more on-street parking.

The "yes on HLA" campaign has focused on how many pedestrians are killed by drivers in the city every year . More traffic-calming measures and wider protected bike lanes should reduce the carnage.

Hopefully LA will be a safer, more walkable city in the near future.

 

[dmallord]

This is going to take some thought - at 86 I have little time to design a city of the future. However, I see undoing two centuries of finding the American dream of a wife, two kids, and a car with a dog and cat in the yard will be difficult to undo. People like their yards. Stacking people close together in high-rises would cut down the travel I suppose, but then you have no space to call your own.

How do you take cities of millions of spread-out people and start over building from the inside out? Who gives up their lands to start over like that?

 

[dmallord]

I asked asked my friend, Chat GPT to cite an American planner - he told me this story:

One prominent American city planner known for his innovative urban design is Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted is renowned for his work in landscape architecture and urban planning, particularly for his design of Central Park in New York City. While he is not a contemporary planner, his designs continue to influence urban planning practices today.
Olmsted's design for Central Park, completed in the mid-19th century, exemplifies his approach to creating large, naturalistic urban parks that provide recreational opportunities, promote public health, and serve as democratic spaces for all residents. Some key elements of Olmsted's design for Central Park include:

1. Naturalistic Landscapes: Olmsted sought to create a sense of natural beauty within an urban setting by incorporating meandering paths, lush vegetation, and scenic vistas. His design preserved and enhanced existing natural features such as rock outcroppings, woodlands, and bodies of water.
2. Recreational Amenities: Central Park includes a variety of recreational facilities and attractions, including playgrounds, ball fields, boating lakes, and skating rinks. These amenities provide opportunities for outdoor recreation and leisure activities for people of all ages and backgrounds.
3. Pathway Networks: Olmsted designed a network of pathways and trails that traverse the park, allowing visitors to explore its various landscapes and attractions on foot, bicycle, or horse-drawn carriage. These pathways are carefully integrated into the natural topography of the park, creating a sense of discovery and adventure.
4. Social Spaces: Central Park includes numerous social gathering spaces, such as the Bethesda Terrace and the Great Lawn, where people can come together for picnics, concerts, and other communal activities. These spaces foster a sense of community and connection among park users.
5. Accessibility: Olmsted prioritized accessibility in his design, ensuring that Central Park could be easily accessed and enjoyed by people from all walks of life. His design includes multiple entrances and pathways that provide equitable access to different areas of the park, regardless of socioeconomic status or physical ability.

Overall, Frederick Law Olmsted's design for Central Park represents a groundbreaking example of landscape architecture and urban planning that continues to inspire designers and planners around the world. His emphasis on preserving natural beauty, promoting recreation and social interaction, and ensuring accessibility for all remains relevant to contemporary approaches to urban design.

I've never been to New York and have no idea how people experience this park's benefits. Nor do I have any idea how many people it is designed to accommodate or how they get there. I suppose you incorporate this into other city redesigns by demolishing inner city infrastructure and make it a central hub area. Then what's next? How do you get the buildings that have to be included to accommodate all those people, their work environments, entertainment, food services, etc? Any one have a cost to build a city?

 

[dmallord]

When asked about the cost of such a plan, my friend Chat GPT whipped out this overview:

"While I can't provide exact cost estimates without detailed project plans and analysis, I can offer some general considerations for the potential costs associated with creating a city with the features described above. Keep in mind that these estimates are highly variable and depend on factors such as the size of the city, the local context, and specific design choices. Here's a breakdown:

1. Infrastructure Costs:
   • Building extensive bike infrastructure, including dedicated bike lanes, paths, and bike-sharing systems, could cost billions of dollars depending on the size and complexity of the network.
   • Developing high-quality public transportation systems, such as buses, light rail, or subways, would also require significant investment, potentially totaling billions of dollars for construction, rolling stock, and ongoing operations and maintenance.
2. Green Spaces and Public Realm:
   • Creating and maintaining abundant green spaces, parks, and pedestrian-friendly streetscapes would involve substantial costs for land acquisition, landscaping, infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance. Costs could range from millions to billions of dollars depending on the scale and quality of the amenities.
3. Smart Growth and Sustainable Design:
   • Implementing sustainable design features and infrastructure, such as green buildings, renewable energy systems, and stormwater management facilities, would entail additional upfront costs but could result in long-term savings and environmental benefits. Costs for sustainable design elements could range from millions to billions of dollars depending on the scale and scope of the project.
4. Affordable and Inclusive Housing:
   • Developing diverse housing options to accommodate residents of all income levels would require significant investment in land acquisition, construction, and infrastructure. Costs could vary widely depending on factors such as local land values, construction costs, and government subsidies or incentives. Providing affordable housing could require billions of dollars in subsidies and financing.

Overall, the total cost of creating a city with reduced traffic, vibrant public spaces, and a culture of biking and walking could easily run into the billions of dollars, potentially exceeding tens or even hundreds of billions depending on the scale and ambition of the project. Funding sources would likely include a mix of public and private investment, government grants and subsidies, and possibly innovative financing mechanisms such as public-private partnerships or municipal bonds."

Given that we can't get Republicans to pass a bill to build a border wall, I doubt the idea of building new cities or even remodeling them will ever get off the ground, given the Republican propensity to reduce the current budgets.

 

[dmallord]

High rises are scrap metal waiting to be salvaged. Without fossil fuels, the limit is five floors, with mostly ground floor businesses, the classic four over one. Without fossil fuels, we also lose cars, so there's no future at all in big suburban yards. People who must have space can be farmers. We will need more farmers, without the fuel to run farm machines. The American suburban dream of the past few decades will meet the unavoidable reality of limits, the food availability and slow pace of travel and life at mostly walking speed. City size will be limited by locally available food. Urbanites can also have some space by spending more of their lives outside, without internet or TV. They may spend some time gardening, in little yards or community gardens to raise some of their own food.

Dang, that's how I was raised out in the country some 70 years ago with vegetable patches, fruit trees, pigs, cattle, and a trip into town every month for groceries you needed but couldn't make at home. Farmers carried produce into towns and set them out on the two lane roadsides, or town parking lots at the churches or school parking lots for the townies to get fresh produce.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

This is going to take some thought - at 86 I have little time to design a city of the future. However, I see undoing two centuries of finding the American dream of a wife, two kids, and a car with a dog and cat in the yard will be difficult to undo. People like their yards. Stacking people close together in high-rises would cut down the travel I suppose, but then you have no space to call your own.

How do you take cities of millions of spread-out people and start over building from the inside out? Who gives up their lands to start over like that?

The idea isn’t to build a bunch of high-rises, but to build neighborhood with 3-4 story apartments with shops on the ground floor. Instead of being forced to own a car, most people can walk to work or take a bike or a train. It’s a more human and friendly way to live. Instead of mowing your lawn every week, you walk your dog to the park. It’s only seems alien because America has spent a century building car infrastructure instead of human-scale cities.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

I suggest looking into 15 minute cities, you'll find its all connected with the World Economic Forum, and the 2030 agenda.

Sounds great, but I'll be trying to be self sustainable and living as far away from cities and government mandating what I must do.
The behavioural change units during covid, and media really scared me.

15 minute cities scare me too.
They will become places with the elites living in luxury, driving and flying wherever they like. But the rest of us will live in ghettos , forced to obey their rules to get our free basic income.

History repeats and I imagine it will be like Rome during the time of power sharing between Cesar. Crassus and Pompey. Interestingly karma got all three in the end.

As Klaus Schwab of the WEF, likes to say, "You'll own nothing and be happy".

Who's going to own all our stuff if we don't .

The whole point of 15 minute cities is to build places where normal people can live without being forced to own a car. I’m sure the rich elites will always have their private enclaves out in the hinterlands, but regular people will live in the walkable cities where there are lots of public services and rents are lower.

 

[TastySuckToy]

The whole point of 15 minute cities is to build places where normal people can live without being forced to own a car.

You use the term 'forced', where a lot of other people would instead use the term 'allowed'.

I’m sure the rich elites will always have their private enclaves out in the hinterlands, but regular people will live in the walkable cities where there are lots of public services and rents are lower.

Someone can dress up any situation to make it sound nice: "Rent free, free food, no bills, work outside in the beautiful weather, all ya gotta do is obey your master and meet your cotton quota!"

The point being no matter how nice or comfortable a prison is painted in theory, it's still a prison. "Rents are lower" is just a subtle way of hinting at economic shackles and keeping the poor away from the non poor.

I'm not suggesting or implying that's your perspective or vision, but situations can be seen in different light by other people.

The important question is, are people free to not live that way, or do only the rich get have their own home, back yard, privacy, a car, etc?

 

[MajorRewrite]

This is going to take some thought - at 86 I have little time to design a city of the future. However, I see undoing two centuries of finding the American dream of a wife, two kids, and a car with a dog and cat in the yard will be difficult to undo. People like their yards. Stacking people close together in high-rises would cut down the travel I suppose, but then you have no space to call your own.

How do you take cities of millions of spread-out people and start over building from the inside out? Who gives up their lands to start over like that?

New town centers have been added to suburbia all across the nation. One nice example is Waterside at Lakewood Ranch in Florida. It has restaurants, bars, shops, offices, a park, townhouses and two apartment complexes. It is connected to the surrounding neighborhoods of single-family homes by wide bike/walk paths separated from the roads. There is a weekly farmer’s market and other events.

Waterside is 100% paid for by private developers but it takes an enlightened county to issue building permits for such a place.

It’s a beautiful village center. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing dystopian about it. And as I said, these types of places are being added to suburbs in lots of regions.

https://lwrwaterside.com/waterside-place/

View attachment 2323115

 

[BabyBoomer50s]

The City of Irvine, CA was one of the early planned communities designed to integrate jobs and housing. The town is divided into “villages”, each with its own HOA, park(s), and public schools. Some have community pools. There is a mix of high density multi family housing and modest single family homes, connected by an extensive network of bike paths and walking trails. The major transportation corridors feature wide avenues with sidewalks and bike lanes.

I lived there in the 80s and early 90s and enjoyed the convenience of a shopping center within walking distance, an elementary school right down the street, and a high school less than a half mile away. My kids were preschool age back then but the proximity to public schools would have been nice if we’d stayed.

A lot of similar planned communities have been built since then all over the country. On the downside, they tend to have a sterile, generic look to them that results from large builders using a handful of floor plans and common materials, coupled with HOA standards that stress homogeneous exteriors. Other than that, they’re not bad places to live. They tend to be cleaner and safer than urban areas.

 

[BabyBoomer50s]

New town centers have been added to suburbia all across the nation. One nice example is Waterside at Lakewood Ranch in Florida. It has restaurants, bars, shops, offices, a park, townhouses and two apartment complexes. It is connected to the surrounding neighborhoods of single-family homes by wide bike/walk paths separated from the roads. There is a weekly farmer’s market and other events.

Waterside is 100% paid for by private developers but it takes an enlightened county to issue building permits for such a place.

It’s a beautiful village center. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing dystopian about it. And as I said, these types of places are being added to suburbs in lots of regions.

https://lwrwaterside.com/waterside-place/

View attachment 2323115

Looks nice. And it recognizes that roads are still necessary so that people can drive to work and other parts of the region for shopping, entertainment, and social activities.

 

[Fuzzy1975]

And it recognizes that roads are still necessary so that people can drive to work and other parts of the region

Nowhere that I've read requires the end of vehicular roads in "walkable cities".The point is to make it not necessary to have to drive for the amenities.

I was down in Toronto a little while back. My first time in about 4 years. Two observations jumped out at me almost immediately. The first was how easily non-carbon generating transportation was readily available everywhere. The second was the vehicle traffic on the roads was noticeably less than my last visit.

They were still building roads, but of the main thoroughfares, were now down to 3 lanes of vehicles, with the outside lanes now designated to bikes. I was presently surprised.

 

[BabyBoomer50s]

Nowhere that I've read requires the end of vehicular roads in "walkable cities".The point is to make it not necessary to have to drive for the amenities.

I was down in Toronto a little while back. My first time in about 4 years. Two observations jumped out at me almost immediately. The first was how easily non-carbon generating transportation was readily available everywhere. The second was the vehicle traffic on the roads was noticeably less than my last visit.

They were still building roads, but of the main thoroughfares, were now down to 3 lanes of vehicles, with the outside lanes now designated to bikes. I was presently surprised.

I agree with you but the OP says cars “wreck cities.”

 

[Fuzzy1975]

I agree with you but the OP says cars “wreck cities.”

I'm not denying what she said, but pigeons wreck cities too. Lots of things wreck cities, and for the foreseeable future vehicles will still be part of cities. That doesn't mean you can't start make cities more non carbon generating friendly. The US holds the record for having the highest percentage of obese people in the world. Maybe if they walked or road bikes more, that would change.

 

[MajorRewrite]

I agree with you but the OP says cars “wreck cities.”

Cars are a detriment to the downtowns of big cities.

But the vast majority of the world isn’t the downtowns of big cities.

Both of these statements are true.