Talk:2832: Urban Planning Opinion Progression

Why does anyone want their city to be walkable? We have buses, Uber, and subways, so why walk anywhere other than to/from the station? SDSpivey (talk) 18:34, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Walking is free. It is flexible. Why would you want to take a Uber across 2 blocks of parkign to get to the next store, instead of having it right next to the one you just came from? Also it is nice for socializing, it is (quite light) exercise, and good for businesses, as you can actually "window-shop" and see what they have as you walk past and spontaniously walk into any store/restaurant/business. --Lupo (talk) 06:24, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

If you are just going across the parking lot, then it is already walkable. No further expense needed. Also, I sincerely do not know the last time I saw a store window that had any merchandise display. Perhaps that is not done in Florida. SDSpivey (talk) 06:40, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

It's a hen and egg thing. If everyone is driving, you don't need to put anything in the video, because there is noone to see it. But if the storefronts are not attractive thats one less reason to walk. And crossing a huge parking lot may in theory be walkable, but it is not really an enviroment attractive to walk through. --Lupo (talk) 09:00, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Somebody has been watching Not Just Bikes on YouTube...

Orange Pilled!!🙂 Torzsmokus (talk) 19:43, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I would be very interested in having a discussion based on the "livability" comment. If a city is a place to LIVE, then these are fair comments, assuming that travel outside the local area is minimal. But if a city is a place to WORK, like a lot of downtown areas in the Eastern US, then this doesn't hold up as well. People don't live in these areas, they just travel to them on a regular basis.

Talk about missing the forest for the trees

Agree, downtown areas SHOULD be places to work, live, shop, and play. Eastern US downtowns USED to be that way, until White Flight screwed everything up and created "car culture". It's long past due for cities to change back. - Frankie (talk) 15:59, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

You can't really blame white flight considering the same thing happened in both 'racially homogenous' cities in the U.S. and in Canada. 172.70.174.251 17:22, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

One thing that always bugs me about these discussions is that they tend to be so city-centric in thinking. Bikes simply aren't a practical mode of transportation in a lot of areas, dating back to pre-car days. I live in a rural area of the southern midwest, and "town" is a concentration of places that people in the area go to, and always has been. Only really wealthy people had houses in town, and even then they were often "Sunday Houses" where you would stay during your weekend trip to town for groceries and church BECAUSE it was such a hassle before cars. There's a "historic" (read: tourist-friendly) walkable town square in the center of many towns in my area, but these are as a rule businesses, some of which have loft apartments because the owner lived there too as some of the town's few constant residents. Even the parking lots are basically paved versions of the spaces where people would park their wagons and tie their horses back in the day, placed near things like general stores because hauling groceries for several blocks is a pain in any era. Scorpion451 (talk) 18:59, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I've never really lived in small towns on this side of the world, but this video does a pretty good job on approaching urbanism from a rural perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKRr8ymaqBM Yaygya (talk) 23:38, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

More generally, it's not really a useful, meaningful, or fair comparison between a densely populated country like the Netherlands (>1000/mi*mi) and a sparsely populated country like the USA (<100/mi*mi). All the USA's wide-open spaces are the actual physical reason we have a "car culture". It's not just people being deliberately being stupid or something. 172.71.222.237 01:24, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

People aren't evenly spread over the US though, and nobody commutes from LA to NYC. 80% of people in the US live in cities. 172.71.182.2 16:24, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Places meant for work and work alone are called 'industrial parks'. People's well-being in offices can significantly benefit from green spaces and other amenities like bars and shops.

Especially if they feel safe walking to and from those shops. --Melle (talk) 16:54, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, what impresses me the most about the Netherlands is not their neighbourhoods or city centres, it's their industrial parks. Dutch industrial parks are so much nicer it's not even funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDXB0CY2tSQ Yaygya (talk) 23:38, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

The explainxkcd explanations have gotten kinda funny, but I wanted to add that some european cities have sidewalks wider than roads, and it’s a much different experience. People like openness. 162.158.62.55 17:46, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, I do not know how to format it, however this is the citation about painted vs protected bike lanes: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214140523001056?dgcid=author Vdm (talk) 21:44, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, cities are much better place to live in without so many cars. But on the other hand, vacation without car is much more complicated, unless your idea of vacation is to get to exactly same place as everyone else. Soo ... where will all those cars go? I know, you could rent a car, but that only works if there wouldn't be times where EVERYONE suddenly needs car ... like, say, Christmas.

Also, no, bikes are not alternative to cars unless you can get shower when you arrive at work. Public transport could work, but bikes are just nice theory.

To conclude, I don't think trying to turn all cities into Amsterdam will work. -- Hkmaly (talk) 22:07, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Bikes are an incredibly helpful and useful tool for getting around. You don't even have to turn a city into Amsterdam. I live in Edmonton, which is by no means an urbanist utopia, and even getting around here, combining a bicycle with public transit makes it so much easier and faster to get around. The issue I face is lugging my bike with me, in which case a bike share service like Montréal's BIXI would help out for getting around.

Regarding your point on vacation, first of all, most people end up going to the same places for vacation anyway. And vacation without bringing a car can very much be done, and even at high-demand times, the places where "everyone needs a car" are places where everyone will be going anyway, at which point a train just makes more sense. About a decade ago, my family took a trip from New Delhi to Goa a decade back (around 1800 km away) and we took trains to get there. We rented a car to get around in Goa and it worked pretty well. Not saying that cars aren't useful at all, but they aren't a 100% necessity. They're most useful when you're heading somewhere that's out of the way, and I've done those sorts of trips too. Yaygya (talk) 23:38, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

"...by allowing cyclists to cycle in the streets with the cars". Allowing? Sorry, but that's a very neo-biker (or "person on a bike", rather than an actual cyclist) attitude that unfortunately seems to pervade the mindset of drivers. At least in the UK, bicycles have been 'allowed' (indeed, obliged) to ride upon the roads, as of laws as far back as 1885 and are legitimate road vehicles and also not supposed to be ridden on actual pavements(/sidewalks) where not explicitly allowed. Of course, the US has policies driven (c.f. jaywalking). But a bicycle is a road vehicle. Add extra permissive routes (in the same manner as allowing traffic of less than three tonnes over a bridge, without forcing everything within that limit to do so) but you'd be wrong to suggest, over here, that you'd have to allow cyclists to cycle in(/on) the streets. Though the modern 'MAMILs' are often as wrong about all this (and as damaging to the reputation of real cyclists) as far too many motorists are. Of course, this may not reflect the US situation (or state/township legislations), but then they were influenced by the car-lobby to create the jaywalking 'crime' as well, so I really wouldn't be surprised. 162.158.74.62 22:16, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I went to the Netherlands on vacation last month and I strongly identify with the guy waving flags and yelling "Netherlands! Netherlands! Netherlands!" in this comic. I was in Rotterdam, not Amsterdam, but I also spent a day in Enschede (near the border with Germany), and the sight was the same: bicycles everywhere, to a degree that would seem absurd anywhere else. I don't think it can be properly expressed in words; one look at the bicycle parking in Rotterdam Central Station and I was in awe that _so many bicycles_ could exist in one place. I used a bicycle to explore from The Haag to Neetle Jans and everywhere I went it was the same story; it isn't just Amsterdam, the entire country is built with bicycles as a solid and safe transportation option. --Faultline 11:32, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Speaking from the perspective of the UK, Cyclists (and I speak as one, with six decades of experience) are a complex issue. Being road vehicles (and requiring continuous at-grade surfaces, or at least smoothly transitioning slopes, whilst mounted) they need special consideration when laying out where they can go, outwith the baseline highway planning situation. And they also pose difficulties if improperly ridden in pedestrian areas, even if this is somehow due to being 'forced'(/’invited') off the roads by motorists and/or town planners that are in turn posing difficulties to them (legislatively, physically or just psychologically). In an ideal world, there would be no need for cycle lanes (on road), let alone cycle paths (split or shared pavement/sidewalk). And as it is not possible to have cycle-segregation everywhere (ignoring the question of whether forced segregation is a good policy!), I feel that attempting to take bicycles (or indeed other types of cycle!) off the road where it is easy and/or virtue-signalling makes the roads worse for cyclists everywhere else. (And also the pavements worse for pedestrians, everywhere else!)
There are (according to a quick check) 262,300 miles of paved road in the UK. Apart from the motorways (2,300 miles) and a smattering of other "no cycling" roads (often "motorway standard link roads" or major bridges), all of these are viable cycling routes. Maybe you'd not feel safe on some other routes (mostly a problem stemming from motorists, not the highways), so call it a cool quarter of a million miles. Compare with (again, a quick and unconfirmed check) the apparently 5,220 miles of traffic-free cycle paths (some 'cross country', bridleways/ex-railway/etc, others directly parallel to 'bike unfriendly/hostile/illegal' roadways) and 7,519 miles of on-road cycle lanes (paint and/or bollard-segregated, and I assume this includes bike+bus+taxi lanes and variations on that theme). Clearly, most places that you might want to cycle are not anywhere near covered by a convenient cycle-only(/dominant) path/road/lane/whatever. Even accounting for population density bias (a path-equipped city-centre can perhaps have a good few hundred thousand cyclists commuting along its copious off-street routes, whereas some remote area of equivalent road-length doesn't have more than a dozen people cycling around/through its country lanes on any given day), there's a distinct gap.
And the problem is that car drivers (myself also being one, though only four decades behind the wheel, so what would I know?) seem to start to not anticipate bicycles on the road (or horses, or tractors, or anyone also driving but not actually going at-or-above the posted speed limit, etc) and at best they are startled/annoyed when they encounter their fellow road-users in different contexts. At worst, they 'come into contention' in a rather nasty way for at least one of the parties involved.
'People on bikes' don't help when they (whether drivers themselves or not) do not obey the rules of the road, and/or footway. They give actual cyclists a bad name, make motorists less tolerant of those who actually are folling both the rights and responsibilities of cycle traffic and cause 'contention' with pedestrians on their supposedly safer routes (and road crossings), amongst other issues. The number of times I've seen someone progress rapidly down a pavement on two wheels, having to swerve round people, swerve to cross side-roads (to use the disabled-friendly drop-curbs), hop onto the road and back on again because of obstructions (curb-mounted parked cars/construction works) and all disrupting (or even causing danger to everyone else off/on the road)... Quite often, they would have been quicker and safer to have just ridden on the road with the traffic (without earphones in, they'd also be much more aware so could overtake the slower traffic legally and in full consideration).
Even worse, when there's a 'pavement biker' riding alongside a road with a clearly marked cycle lane on it. Road space reserved, but they're endangering pedestrians (and potentially themselves) needlessly. But, adding in the reckless pedestrians who do their dangerous things (walking up the central reservation of a dual-carriageway, e.g.), it just goes to show that there are unthinking individuals using every form of locomotion and travel (I could moan about thoughtless bus/train passengers, too, and don't get me started on illegal eScooters, motorbikes that may skirt the rules to some extent and possibly soms illegal variations of eBike as well). But, insofar as cycling, I'm not convinced that (partially) changing the road system to mitigate for bad drivers is really the best solution. It barely scratches that surface, it gets abused/ignored by those it may be intended for, it makes those it isn't intended for more resentful/inconsiderate as a push-back and the only obvious and tangible metric is in the press release that "Trumpton Town Council has been able to add five more miles of cyclepath..." (which probably consists of several short stretches of red tarmac is frequently intruded upon by pre-existing highway signage/lamp-posts and frequent "Cyclists Dismount" advisories, running alongside a perfectly ridable road just so long as they filled the wheel-/suspension-damaging potholes and swept the gutters once in a while).
Can you tell that I've often thought about all these issues? I could go on, or into more detail, but I reckon I've already written far too much, uninvited. 172.70.85.218 11:48, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

The summation of the situation:
UNSPECIFIED line + SHORT distance = bicycle, walking, etc.
SPECIFIED line + SHORT distance = tram, everything in unspecified.
SPECIFIED line + LONG distance = train.
UNSPECIFIED line + LONG distance = automobile.
The most important combinations for urban planning are unspecified short and specified long which autos aren't good at. The one autos are good at is the least important. -- Andrewtheexplainer (talk) 15:43, 24 September 2023 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

In answer the the editor who asked the question in the Edit Summary, about what "SPECIFIED and UNSPECIFIED" mean: Purely from context, I believe "line" above means "route". Some routes are (or can be) established as consistently demanded (for commuting, shopping, between major hubs half a continent away, etc) and can be "specified" as schedulable service for mass transit/infrastructure (anything from viable greyhound route with suitable identifiable service stops to an airline route (requiring airports at each end) or something asking for a railway/hyperloop/road to be either maintained (because it already exists) or created (because it does not at the moment) and is worth the while for such a special consideration. There's a degree of predictability to it, because of a mix of the same people regularly needing to make the trip (e.g. commute) and/or a continual/periodic demand by new people to make that journey (e.g. touristic purposes).

An 'unspecified' route, here, would then be anything ad-hoc, at a frequency or quantity of use well below any particular reason to uphold a service or infrastructure (or coordinated compound of such facilities, like a shuttle bus to and from the station/airport to collect those flying in from afar), and would be served by such private efforts across and through whatever generic routable methodologies exist to be be exploited.

And each of those two distinctions is multiplied by (at least!) two separate distinctions, that of length. (I'd be tempted to further split into other distances. Maybe localised, district, intra-state (from a US perspective), national and international, but that'd depend on what groupings I was analusing, and obviously a train could take one from one end of a (large enough) neighbourhood to the other or across the country (with the right conenctivity, even into another one!), depending upon which train and where it stops. But the above seems sufficient, as opposed to my overthinking of it.) 162.158.74.96 22:22, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I would be weary of that "Netherlands" guy. https://what-if.xkcd.com/53/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/54/ and others 162.158.22.17 23:44, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I can't be completely sure because of the black-and-white, but I'm afraid the guy with the scull cap is holding his flags upside down. It should be a red, then a white, then a blue stripe top to bottom. It's a very understandable mistake if he visited in the last two years or so, as it has become a trend to fly the flag upside down as a protest to certain controversial government descisions.

Not my best contribution ever, but: Hup HOLLAND Hup!!