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Comment by cscurmudgeon | Hacker News Reader

Walkable cities imply high density cities.

Unfortunately, that will never happen.

E.g., in the SF Bay Area NIMBYism is rampant and the density is laughable for such a vital geographic area. If walkable cities are not possible in the hyper-progressive futuristic Bay Area, where is it possible in the US?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-st...

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Walkable cities are already a reality in many countries in Europe. It's not rocket science and it doesn't mean you need high density. See Denmark, Netherlands etc for a few examples. Humane cities are a matter of choice, just because it doesn't exist in the US doesn't mean it's impossible.

You need to stop playing Sim City, walkable cities are a fantasy in the US. You need broad political support to basically redesign every city outside NYC and some parts of SF, Seattle, and Boston. It will never happen.

There is a constant stubborn push back of "it's impossible" while time after time different parts of the world have proven it is in fact possible. The biggest impediment to walkable cities in the US is the broken political system that makes bipartisan efforts exceedingly rare. If a politician of one party advocates for it everyone on the other side needs to throw out bullshit arguments as to why it's dumb.

I'd even argue that the only reason it currently is hard to do it in many parts of the world is just because people believe it's impossible. You need general population support to make changes.

People believe it is impossible even when the evidence is right in front of them in the form of others walking and cycling. It most definitely is an issue of social will more than anything.

It's not only been done in cities all over the world, it's very much currently in progress in many places. Seattle is expanding rail, removing single family zoning, and building higher density while expanding transit. It maybe takes a decade or two, but it's extremely doable.

Over 80% of Seattle housing land is SFH. The "expanded rail" runs to non-walkable suburbs instead of filling out Seattle. Pretend we believed there was a climate crisis and decided to stop all cars. At our current rate of transit increase and our current population increase, I think we're at centuries before we'd even have the capacity.

https://www.theurbanist.org/2018/06/01/correct-percentage-si...

0% of Seattle is zoned exclusively single family housing. Everywhere it's legal to build more than one unit per lot.

And the trains have absolutely resulted in both increased density and upzoning.

Greenwood and Phinney ridge are both "suburban" but totally walkable.

All we need to do is properly fund transit. It's not hard, it's just not cheap.

I would not consider something you can't sell separately (ADU) a "unit", which would make me disagree with your second sentence.

The light rail doesn't go to Phinney or Greenwood, but I meant Lynnwood, Shoreline, etc stops.

It's not just "not cheap", it's ruinously more costly than cars. Housing just isn't dense enough to bake it affordable.

> Humane cities are a matter of choice

The choice to have founded your city a thousand years before the invention of the automobile, maybe.

Many European cities that were rebuilt after destruction during WW2 were built in a more automobile-centric manner, because people enjoy cars.

Honestly, I would like to see someone start a new city in the US around the concept of walkability. There's so much empty land in this country, and with remote jobs there's less of a need to place a city next to existing employment centers. It would be an interesting experiment, if nothing else.

You know that we took our cities and ripped them apart to install stroads and highways, right? That the historical model of American cities was train based, spreading radially out from a port with folks riding trains into work? And we threw that away in favor of cats relatively recently?

We can choose to upzone and convert large road corridors into rail plus some road and convert some roads to bus rapid transit and some to bikes.

It's an eminently solvable problem and one that has been solved over and over again in the modern era.

> We can choose to upzone

You'll hear no arguments from me. Even the biggest cities in this country are laughably low density.

> convert some roads to bus rapid transit and some to bikes

I don't know, I used to live in one of those big cities that had an awful commute by car, with congested roads and expensive parking when you could even find one. Solo drivers still comprised the plurality of commuters, and that number only went up during my time there, despite many efforts at improving public transit.

People just don't like public transit for some reason, even when the alternative is pretty shitty. I don't imagine that it's gotten any more popular in this year, with higher rates of crime and other antisocial behavior on public transit around the country.

> one that has been solved over and over again in the modern era

Are there really good examples of cities anywhere around the world that were previously automobile-centric that became public transit-centric?

I'm of the opinion that people don't like public transit because we half fund it. So they look at it and are like, "no, why would I want more like that?"

But like, a cleaner, faster, more frequent, less crowded transit? Yes please!

Cities like Oslo, Philadelphia, Boulder, and Seattle are experiencing huge transit changes right now and seeing major increases in bike and transit ridership. Boulder, in particular, dramatically reduced single occupancy transportation.

More frequent is usually quite the problem because while the vehicles are just a matter of cost, the staff isn't.

Driving any large vehicle is a stressful job and there's always a shortage of people willing to do it.

Of course this implies that the larger the vehicle the better, so rail comes to mind, but that it turn requires infrastructure.

Overall it's a hard problem to solve.

Then how did the Europeans manage to do it? They had to. There's literally no other option for a region that doesn't have abundant oil resources.

>That the historical model of American cities was train based, spreading radially out from a port with folks riding trains into work? And we threw that away in favor of cats relatively recently?

This is quite false, unfortunately. It seems like cats have fallen out of favor in America, and now everyone is getting a dog.

Hahaha, curse typing on my phone!

I thought it was an intentional metaphor, coming from the "herding cats" line of thought.

Walkable without density => walkable only for the rich

Would love to see Europe with US levels of diversity and population still remain "walkable" without density

Most European "cities" are what would be a suburb/village in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities

The US has tons of walkable suburbs and villages.

Walkable does not imply high density. I've lived in areas that are suburban + townhouses that are totally walkable.

Were there some 5 over 1s in the commercial areas? Sure. Is that high density? Hardly.

Yeah, no one lives in high density cities any more, they’re too crowded.

Exactly. Until people in the US develop the political will for change, technologically driven improvement in cars is the best way to reduce the damage.

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