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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

It's a lot easier for Europe to go carless than the USA. They have better intra-city public transit for one. Also, most (all?) of their major cities laid out their grids before the invention of the car.

In the USA, even older cities had all but their city centers designed around cars, and if you look at the top 10 cities, 7 of the 10 saw >90% of their road construction after the invention of the car.

That being said, I don't understand why new cities in the US aren't being planned around being carless. I guess it's just so engrained in our culture that it will be hard to overcome?

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Unfortunately “new cities” develop in places where everyone is used to driving, so it takes a lot to overcome a car centric culture.

I live in a college town in a rural area. The transition to public transportation happens when parking becomes expensive or impractical (such as at the university) so people park and ride on a bus.

But that still requires cars. Frankly cars have value that’s hard to replace when there’s a disperse population. Which maybe is the real problem in the US: there’s a culture around “I want my own land”. It pervades even in progressive circles...

How many such "new cities" are there really? Car culture wasn't a thing until the 1950s and I can't think of a single metropolitan city that was founded after that.

I think one of the problems in discussing cities is the hazy meaning of "city" that different people have in mind. Many (most?) people who live in cities aren't in the biggest ones, and the dynamics are different eg when bikeable-distance suburban housing is affordable, and distances inside the urban area are walkable.

There are lots of new cities, or at least cities that were founded or built substantially after the invention of the car. Irvine, CA, for example began construction in the 60s and incorporated in the 70s (and now has more than 250K people making it a top 100 city by population). The town I grew up in only incorporated in 1982 (and most every house was built in the 70s to 90s).

Also the city of Mountain House is a planned community for 20,000 that started construction in 2001.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_House,_San_Joaquin_...

There’s not really “new cities” in the sense of someone establishing a new town. There’s just smaller towns growing into small cities, small cities growing to mid-sized, etc...

The problem is those places start car dependent and the US is such that we have a lot of land and there’s not a lot of incentive to urbanize. We want our 40 acres and a mule, with a big fence around our land, and a big sign that says “no trespassing” then we want to drive our cars to get to common areas

I think there's a growing realization that designing around car traffic is a losing proposition going forward. There's still a lot of political inertia to overcome, but we're starting to see bills liks SB50 (legislating to build housing around mass transit) be proposed and get traction.

> In the USA, even older cities had all but their city centers designed around cars, and if you look at the top 10 cities, 7 of the 10 saw >90% of their road construction after the invention of the car.

I feel like this can be spun as a positive, every street is 3 lanes wide + parking on both sides. So much room to convert for more pedestrian and micromobility space – in European cities it's often either/or.

Often the zoning codes specify a minimum number of parking lots per housing unit. Some cities are removing the requirement in some areas, like Buffalo: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/01/buffalo-is-first-to-r...

we build new cities next to existing cities. very few cities spring up in the middle of nowhere. if you want to connect back to the original town, say mountain house to oakland, you’ll drive in to oakland. or drive to bart and bart in. it’s not realistic that everyone lives close enough to public transit that they can bike or walk or bus to it. a big draw of living out of the most populated areas is having your own house and land somewhere quiet. and this is definitely engrained in our culture, it’s the american dream to own your own home

Are there any new cities in the US?

There are lots of new cities, or at least cities that were founded or built substantially after the invention of the car. Irvine, CA, for example began construction in the 60s and incorporated in the 70s. The town I grew up in only incorporated in 1982 (and most every house was built in the 70s to 90s.

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