Re:Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back fr...
by ethanbond on Saturday August 06, 2016 @10:17PM
(#12240761)
I appreciate your interesting stance on this, but you're missing my point. I am not saying "ban cars and everything is fixed." I am saying "we will not fix our cities as long as we continue to invest in cars."
The best way I can think of to get people to divest from cars in a fair, gradual, legal, cheap, and realistic way is to eliminate parking over time.
Re:Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back fr...
by barrkel on Sunday August 07, 2016 @09:10AM
(#12241980)
Did you even read what I said? I directly refuted your argument! Your suggestion is both politically difficult and would damage cities by decreasing the very thing that makes them cities: the time proximity between people!
Re:Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back fr...
by vasilipupkin on Sunday August 07, 2016 @10:13AM
(#12242130)
You don't have to eliminate parking at all to achieve this. All you have to do is shift city taxation towards taxing parking more in relative terms. Encourage people to use existing public transportation more
Re:Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back fr...
by mamon on Sunday August 07, 2016 @11:44AM
(#12242378)
>> All you have to do is shift city taxation towards taxing parking more
And that's exactly what's wrong with this idea: in a democratic society such taxation changes would be temoporary at best - people would just vote for politicians that would change it back during the next elections.
On the other hand, gradualy increasing quality of public transportation by investing more money in it would be something that noone would protest against, and once public transportation is equaly or more convenient than car travel people would switch on their own.
Re:Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back fr...
by vasilipupkin on Sunday August 07, 2016 @04:30PM
(#12243513)
People are not stupid, they are often uninformed. Politicians' job is to advocate for good policies in a way that people understand and support
IMO the "solution" is necessarily holistic and incremental. Create a fast intra-city link, and you've effectively increased the density of the two areas joined by the link. If you think about space in terms of time required to go from point A to point B using a given subset of transport methods[1], fast point-to-point links warp space and cause it to overlap. Density is the lifeblood of cities, just as lack of density is what hollows out cities. Increased density means employees and consumers can live closer to businesses and entertainment. Increase the density enough, and private transport isn't required as much.
Anti-car policies aren't going to increase this time-to-destination-as-a-measure-of-space density much. In fact, without something to replace them, they will decrease effective density.
[1] See e.g. https://petertrotman.com/special/london-underground-travel-t...