Abolish the system that caused it.Originally posted by Samminn
Abolish the system that caused it.
Don't forget, too, that when automobiles were first available for public sale in a reasonable quantity, they were considered to be a *GODSEND* because they were looked upon as the ideal solution to the most terrible urban pollution problem of the day, that being horse manure.
Also, how different would the USA be today had the USSupremes gone the other way in Acme Realty Co. Ltd v City of Euclid, OH (1924)?
Mike
Are you implying some sort of an anarchic free market system that would lead urban development?
Anarchic and free market is redundant. If we have a free market system bringing us our food there's no reason we can't have one building our cities.
I am not saying that I don’t agree with you. In fact I am excited to move to a place that I can walk almost everywhere. (Other than to work, the ski hill, the golf course, my parents house, the GF’s parents’ house, and similar)
My only question is specifically what system are you thinking about abolishing? If we abolished cars, I would never be able to make to my parents house, the ski hills, or to work.
We have what we have and an instantaneous change would destroy many industrialized nations. I think that something like what you would like to see could not only be done, but would be very possible. We just need to reduce the amount of money we spend on the repairing of roads and start converting them to rail. But it would be a very long process and most of the public in the world would be phenomenally outraged.
When compassion exceeds logic for too long, chaos will ensue. - Unknown
MichaelSkis, I agree, convert the major roads into rail and the majority of people could take advantage of it. It is astonishing to see budgets for road construction and maintenance. Cars have been virtually unchanged since when? The 50's? I think there are some positives to the higher gas prices, but change doesn't always feel good at first. Hopefully, we'll see some better forms of transportation out of all of this. The sad thing is planning ahead could have made things a lot better of a transition.
One thing that must be kept in the forefront is that roads do not equate to cars. Roads pre-date the automobile by centruries. Roads are not just used for the movement of cars. They are VERY important for bicycle travel (in fact the good roads movement grew out of bicyclists in the late 1800's). Buses use roads, and most importantly, frieght is carried over roads with increased frequency. Without roads, all trading would be severely hampered and this would cause disruptions both in the manufacturing (supply) and retail sectors (demand) of the economies.
Therefore, roads are important to the state or nation. These cannot be treated as strictly a vonveyance for the modern automobile, and a logical network of freeways, arterials, collectors and local streets are essential to the movement of people and goods. This was true way before cars were invented, and will be true until we become George Jetson.
We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes - Fr Gabriel Richard 1805
You missed the point of the thread. Cars aren't the problem. They do their job quite well and have achieved a high level of design quality and maturity. The problem are the streets. The streets have been constantly devolving for a hundred years, and the problem for that is not cars. Cars don't build streets. People build streets. People organized into a system.
The system that produces cars is the free market. It wasn't always like that through the past 100 years, in fact many countries protected their national car industries against competition. They had crappy cars as a consequence, but lately globalization has made car the market hyper-competitive and quality has increased exponentially.
The system that produces the streets is the state enterprise. They are run not as a for-profit business but as a political cooperative, if not an outright unaccountable bureaucracy. They are thus not behaving competitively and ignore market demand. They are highly corruptible. They can't determine value. They ignore advice from urban planners.
There is only one realistic solution to the problem of the streets. Use the same system that brings us our cars to bring us our streets.
"We" need to do this and "we" need to do that. Do you realize who "we" is? It is not you, it is not me. It is entrenched bureaucracies following their own purposes, and these bureaucracies aren't going to change. The California DOT is not going to suddenly have a change of heart about building more freeways. It exists for only one purpose, to spend taxes on building freeways, never mind if the price is not worth it or if the highway is not needed at all. That's why the system is not working.We have what we have and an instantaneous change would destroy many industrialized nations. I think that something like what you would like to see could not only be done, but would be very possible. We just need to reduce the amount of money we spend on the repairing of roads and start converting them to rail. But it would be a very long process and most of the public in the world would be phenomenally outraged.
Roads are important, as you mentioned, for the transport of people and goods. So are rails, as far as that goes. Limited-access freeways, however, are a manifestation of an atypical period in time where energy was cheap and abundant and the riches created by such a system were channeled into providing fast, private automobile and commercial access to distant places. Freeways didn't exist in any form prior to the early 20th century and will cease to exist in their current state within the 21st, mainly because their maintenance and upgrade obligations will be far too expensive for an energy-strapped nation to deal with.
Did you not read the first paragraph? Roads are not just used by drivers. they are used by bicyclsts, transit, pedestrians as a way to connect. The assumption should not be made that road = car.
Vehicles can always be made more fuel efficient. Cars in the mid-80s got much better gas milage than cars today do. With the push towards newer fuels such as E-85, hydrogen, natural gas, there is less of a need for oil, and the supply curve could well put the SOV around for a long time to come.
There are state highways in Michigan where the bcycles, horses and walkers far outweigh the autos by 50,000 to one (okay its an extreme case, but it proves my point).
I would agree with you on your final point though. We need to find a more equitable way of financing road travel or we will be doomed. The gas tax don't cut it any longer, and the introduction of hybrid and alt fuels shifts the burden nearly enitely to gasoline powered vehicles, while a hydrogen powered vehicle would use the road for free. Bikes and pedestrians have always benefited from these investments (well except for on roads where you would be crazy to walk in due to volumes!)
We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes - Fr Gabriel Richard 1805
Perhaps you're missing my point. I'm not arguing that roads aren't multi-modal. Rather, I'm pointing out that limited-access highways, where pedestrians and bicyclists are often prohibited, are luxuries of a unique energy-rich era of time and aren't necessary for the proper functioning of a civilization. They may be important to the civilization that we've created, but that's another matter. Roads, on the other hand, are necessary for a democratic society to function properly, as you well pointed out. Though I'd rather not turn this into a semantics argument (it seems as though I already have), I'd rather not see freeways viewed as something absolutely as "necessary" as roads, because they simply aren't.
True, and VMT have doubled since the 1980s as well, meaning we're worse off than we thought. That's the problem. Make fuel cheaper, or cars more efficient, and people somewhere will drive more.
From where you summon this supreme optimism in the markets, I'll never know. Hydrogen is not a fuel, it is an energy carrier. It is chiefly produced from natural gas, a real problem that I'll discuss in a moment. E-85 is a joke, it takes more fossil fuel energy (in the form of natural gas fertilizers and diesel-powered farm equipment, not to mention the water needs) to produce 1 gallon of ethanol than the energy one can get from that gallon. After all, ethanol is a third less energy-dense than gasoline, meaning mileage will be worse, not better. You might as well just burn the natural gas directly in your automobile. But wait, the supply of natural gas may have already reached its apex in North America and costly LNG terminals to handle imports have yet to be built, one of the reasons natural gas has been off the price charts in the past year.
Even if the market were to implement an average fuel economy of 50 MPG over the next 10 years (which is quite optimistic, IMHO, unless we just start importing Euro diesels), increased VMT (the sprawling of exurbia) and demand from east Asia should be expected to eat up any overall energy savings quite quickly. And, lest we not forget, the United States has been in oil production decline since 1970, meaning we import more oil each and every year to make up for existing and rising consumption rates. And we know what foreign policy, uhh..."issues" occur with that type of arrangement.
It proves no point, as far as I am concerned. I was never in disagreeance that roads were important for society to function properly. But, they have to be multi-modal, which roads are. By definition, freeways are not.
Yep.
Well I'm not a planner (maybe in the future though) but if I'm able to comment...Good points by all, and interesting idea from Jaws. It is true that a city that isn't as dependent on the automobile and doesn't face many of the ills created by autos tends to be more pleasant and pleasurable. I dont think autos should be done away with, they definitely have a place and need, but cities in general would be better if most people could walk, bike or take public transport to work/school, and to get groceries, etc. an use autos for pleasure though.
The only thing is that I'm not so sure the move to the suburbs (and it seems far more increasingly the exurbs) is not necessarily an economic decision as much as a cultural one. It's true that people often times dont have much an option in these things since it is financially impossible for most people to move to Manhattan, Paris, etc. However, for example, it is fairly possible to say move to (certain parts of) Brooklyn, where you can live a pretty nice urban lifestyle for not terribly too much money, have access to some pretty good schools etc. Yet (hundreds of) thousands more people prefer to move to the exurbs every year than to the still-available nice urban areas. This isn't to say I'm discounting what Jaws said.
A good case for Jaws theory would be Los Angeles. For years developers were only building subdivision after subdivision, so people were only moving there. Beginning about 5 years ago developers started buying up old banks, hotels, abandoned buildings etc. in downtown LA and transforming them to lofts, condos, apartments, etc. and boom, 5 years later the area right south of Bunker Hill in Los Angeles is trendy, has an expensive/hot real estate market with lots of demand still available, and is turning into a pleasant neighborhood after years (decades?) of being ignored. Part of the pleasantness is obviously that so many people walk/bike/take public transport to work, and amenities are nearby. However, lets be real. The gains made in renewing urban cores in America (which is pretty significant from what I've seen/read) PALES in comparison to the numbers of people who continually move to ever more far-flung suburbs. For example, despite downtown LA's gains (and the gains of certain urban areas in Orange County, i.e. Fullerton, Anaheim), subdivision after subdivision continues to go up in nearby Riverside/San Bernardino counties. The reason? It's probably extremely complex. I agree with Jaws that it has to do with standard-of-living. However, I think the difficulty that enters is that people's definition of what a good standard-of-living is, is very different. Some (many, possibly most in the US) seem to prefer living in subdivisions. I really hate to go there, but I do think a lot of it is social/political issues. People still have deep racial fears. Some people would resent living anywhere near a gay village/neighborhood. For a lot of people security comes not only through physical seperation from others, but from knowing that the people around you tend to think similarly or be from a similar background. Also, people for better or worse have general stereotypes of populations. In the American mind, cities tend to = minorities + rich intellectuals. Suburbs = average American. This goes down to other aspects of life to that correlate. Average American = car, owns home. Weirdos = public transport, apartment. The perception isn't unfounded either, go to any downtown area in the US and the residents do tend to be more liberal, believe themselves to be more sophisticated, etc. Whereas the suburbs to tend to be more traditional, American. I do think we will see the revival of the America city soon. I think this will be because, as minorities (specifically blacks and hispanics) reach more economic parity with whites, the old racial divisions of suburb and city will break down. More "urban-minded" whites will (and are atm) move back into cities. However, I also think that more "suburban-minded" blacks/Hispanics will also begin to leave cities as they become financially able to do so and move to the suburbs (something you already see quite a lot of, especially in the Western US). This isn't to knock one type of lifestyle vs. the other. People have different tastes, you cant regulate that (and would you want to?). Sure the suburban lifestyle seems to be less sustainable atm, but who knows, we may develop cheap, clean hydrogen fuel-cell cars, and cheap ways to desalinate water and make electricity and the suburban lifestyle may continue forever. Who know?
Anyways, I sort of like Jaws idea. I definitely think there should be less regulations for urban building (except maybe in regards to safety). I'm not too crazy about the whole one-person owning a city thing. Someone said it would lead to a city more similar to "lifestyle centers"? If so, count me out. In my opinion those places all look like REPRODUCTONS of a real city and I feel like I'm in a Disneyland-version of some old marketplace. Plus, all our architecture would be classical or something because thats the only thing everyone would probably agree looks nice so there would be less incentive to be daring and innovative. Anyway, this post was just to state that I don't think this simply boils down to economic choice, social attitudes and taste seem to play a part.
Also, resources may be important. Notice that countries with lots of area (US, Australia) tend to have sprawl, while this is less true in small Euro countries?
Anyway, this is just the rant of someone who isn't a planner but who is very interested in cities and what not and is a close observor of the way we live. Thanks for reading.
I can't speak for Australia, but in America, people are simply paid (and paid well) to sprawl out. If your government builds thousands of miles of free roads and interstates, adheres to segregated zoning practices and backs low-rate, long-term mortgages for single-family detached homes, then sprawl is exactly what you're going to get. Go to western Europe (especially France), and see how much open space there is between cities. There's miles and miles of open farmland (also well subsidized, to be sure), dotted with little villages. Sure, there's megasprawl around the cities, but if the French really wanted to sprawl out all over the country, there's nothing standing in their way AFAIK. I hesitate to say that many parts of France are seemingly less dense than west Texas, for instance. The reason they don't sprawl as much is simple: the government's economic incentive to sprawl isn't as polished and large as here in the States.
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