Re:Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back fr...
by superuser2 on Sunday August 07, 2016 @04:42PM
(#12243563)
Indeed it can and should. Leaving people stranded in places where things are far apart with neither parking nor adequate transit is not a viable way to do it, though.
In Chicago it is actually faster to commute by public transit from the suburbs ~20 miles away then from the neighborhoods ~8 miles away because the commuter rail service (Metra) is so much better than the urban transit service (CTA).
We've already had shitty mobility for multiple generations. We can and should build transit much more quickly than we are today, and we could if we were actually willing to commit to redesigning our cities.
People want to live in walkable towns and cities. People have done so, happily, for much, much longer than cars have existed. Set aside the environmental and economic concerns: studies of show that walkable communities are much more conducive to human happiness. The world of freeways and suburbs that we live in isn't a natural human pattern of development; it's a futuristic dream from the 1950's that turned into a nightmarish reality. Half a century of irrational exuberance over the invention of the automobile is a mistake that can and should be rectified.