Each tile emits "journeys", which travel down transport routes connected to the tile, with a view to finding other types of tile (residential needs to find industrial and commercial, for example, but commercial IIRC needs to find only industrial). When a journey meets a junction, it randomly chooses one of the exits. The choice is not directed toward a suitable tile.
So if you make say a block of road tiles, in the shape of a square, say 4x4, any journey entering that tile usually times out (travels too far) before by chance managing to emerge from all the junctions.
As such, for example, hub-and-spoke subway systems basically do not work.
You basically need to design the transport network to specifically, and without junctions, go from a set of source tiles of a given type, to the necessary destination tiles, and that's not how real cities look, nor what you would naturally do.
I liked SC2K a lot, but in the end I had to give up on it, because of the transport system; the game couldn't be played realistically. I've not yet tried SC3K, and I don't know how transport is modeled there - hopefully better.
I think I found your problem..., trying to take a game too seriously.
I've played thousands of hours of SimCity 2000, 3000 and 4 and I treat them as what they are, incredibly fun city building sandboxes with illusory and believable but flawed simulations under the hood.
>Everyone notices the obvious built-in political bias, whatever that is. But everyone sees it from a different perspective, so nobody agrees what its real political agenda actually is. I don’t think it’s all that important, since SimCity’s political agenda pales in comparison to the political agenda in the eye of the beholder.
>Some muckety-muck architecture magazine was interviewing Will Wright about SimCity, and they asked him a question something like “which ontological urban paradigm most influenced your design of the simulator, the Exo-Hamiltonian Pattern Language Movement, or the Intra-Urban Deconstructionist Sub-Culture Hypothesis?” He replied, “I just kind of optimized for game play.”
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22062590
DonHopkins on Jan 16, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Reverse engineering course
Will Wright defined the "Simulator Effect" as how game players imagine a simulation is vastly more detailed, deep, rich, and complex than it actually is: a magical misunderstanding that you shouldn’t talk them out of. He designs games to run on two computers at once: the electronic one on the player’s desk, running his shallow tame simulation, and the biological one in the player’s head, running their deep wild imagination.
"Reverse Over-Engineering" is a desirable outcome of the Simulator Effect: what game players (and game developers trying to clone the game) do when they use their imagination to extrapolate how a game works, and totally overestimate how much work and modeling the simulator is actually doing, because they filled in the gaps with their imagination and preconceptions and assumptions, instead of realizing how many simplifications and shortcuts and illusions it actually used.
https://www.masterclass.com/classes/will-wright-teaches-game...
>There's a name for what Wright calls "the simulator effect" in the video: apophenia. There's a good GDC video on YouTube where Tynan Sylvester (the creator of RimWorld) talks about using this effect in game design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia
>Apophenia (/æpoʊˈfiːniə/) is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things. The term (German: Apophänie) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as "unmotivated seeing of connections [accompanied by] a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness". He described the early stages of delusional thought as self-referential, over-interpretations of actual sensory perceptions, as opposed to hallucinations.
RimWorld: Contrarian, Ridiculous, and Impossible Game Design Methods
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdqhHKjepiE
5 game design tips from Sims creator Will Wright
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scS3f_YSYO0
>Tip 5: On world building. As you know by now, Will's approach to creating games is all about building a coherent and compelling player experience. His games are comprised of layered systems that engage players creatively, and lead to personalized, some times unexpected outcomes. In these types of games, players will often assume that the underlying system is smarter than it actually is. This happens because there's a strong mental model in place, guiding the game design, and enhancing the player's ability to imagine a coherent context that explains all the myriad details and dynamics happening within that game experience.
>Now let's apply this to your project: What mental model are you building, and what story are you causing to unfold between your player's ears? And how does the feature set in your game or product support that story? Once you start approaching your product design that way, you'll be set up to get your customers to buy into the microworld that you're building, and start to imagine that it's richer and more detailed than it actually is.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1euehye/how_simcit...
> The water system has one very significant direct effect: the land value of any given tile drastically increases when it is watered.
Industrial development only requires a single road connected residential tile to grow off the full city's industrial demand. The same goes for Commercial. Residential will fully develop with just a single commercial tile on its road network.
It is broken in a realistic sense definitely, but it's also why I'll always play it regardless of which realistic transportation city game i'm also playing. I could never abstractly brush-in a city like I can in SC2k.
Now I don't find that interesting and much more interested to sustain a leafy suburb like one I've chosen for my kids.
Second, it's not just games. In my NYC days I was a "transit and bike lanes" guy all the way. Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" - it switched form a derogatory statement to one of understanding. There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios.
There's less "objective good" or "objective bad" in these matters than I used to think. It's more about who you optimize for.
Just imagine getting into Tokyo subway with a stroller for 2 kids. There's a reason why Tokyo fertility rate is below 1.
LGR - SimTower - PC Game Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4ToEDrhxo0
Yoot Tower: The Sequel to SimTower
On the other hand, with all the poking I've done at it over the years, I think I now have the most complete knowledge of the save file format for anyone who doesn't have access to the source code.
I do wish the subway had more elevators. But once you move beyond those early days with a stroller… I have six playground within a twenty minute walk, a giant park a few minutes away. There’s a zoo nearby, the beach (and aquarium) is less than 45 mins on the subway, there are countless museums in the city… all in all its rich in child friendly activities and child-friendly methods of reaching them.
(I’m not there with my kids yet but from talking to older parents: an understated benefit of the city is that kids are able to exercise independence much more easily. They’ll be taking the subway to and from high school, if they want to meet a friend they can just… go. Rather than rely on a parent driving them everywhere)
> Just imagine getting into Tokyo subway with a stroller for 2 kids. There's a reason why Tokyo fertility rate is below 1.
This is a glaring example of hunting for data that supports a preexisting belief, rather than basing beliefs on empirical data.
To point out how absurd this logic is, consider that it fails to consider the fertility rate of Japan as a whole outside urban areas, as well as failing to account for the many other extremely dense cities outside Japan that do have very high fertility rates.
The correlation is undeniable for any developed country, especially the US. Developing countries are a bit different they are only now starting the second demographic transition.
> To point out how absurd this logic is, consider that it fails to consider the fertility rate of Japan as a whole outside urban areas, as well as failing to account for the many other extremely dense cities outside Japan that do have very high fertility rates.
LOL. No, they don't: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01975/
That's not universally true; it depends on what housing policies exist.
> That is the real reason for low fertility rates in big cities. People who want children have to be either rich, or move further away.
This is not universally true either.
That's a nice theory but all over the developped world, the countryside has lower fertility rate than the cities.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db297.htm
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/demography_2021/b...
[3] https://www.mof.go.jp/english/pri/publication/pp_review/fy20...
Maddy Novich, https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/, for one, may disagree with you. Interview:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs
She has three kids IIRC.
> Just imagine getting into Tokyo subway with a stroller for 2 kids. There's a reason why Tokyo fertility rate is below 1.
Hong Kong has always been dense, and it used to have a fertility rate of ~5:
* https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINHKG
Further, all US states, regardless of how urban or rural they are, have fertility rates with basically the same slope:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
In every industrialized, Western-ish society rates dropped during the 1970s, regardless of initial or final density.
I haven't seen this in the transcript?
> Hong Kong has always been dense, and it used to have a fertility rate of ~5
I'm going to save this quote. It goes next to: "Yes, Tokyo now is too expensive, but just 10 years ago you could dream about getting a house there".
> Further, all US states, regardless of how urban or rural they are, have fertility rates with basically the same slope:
Yes. Toxic urbanization has not spared the US. But it affected the US less than other countries because the suburbs put up a fight.
yeah, when comparing with other cities[1] it is way more affordable.
[1] https://www.timeout.com/hong-kong/news/hong-kong-has-once-ag...
1. Pass off an opinion as fact
2. Posit a straw man
3. Tether an unrelated fact as correlation.
I bet one could wire an llm instructed to such a formula to obsfucate otherwise fruitful public discourse.
While Tokyo has one of the worst fertility rates, it's not like the rest of Japan is doing particularly well. Also, I was staying in Azabujuban and I was surprised by the amount of kids I saw there.
I love to drive therefor I buy a car I love to drive.
America is largely rural. Comparisons to Europe aren't appropriate outside of the proper metros.
Bicycling with little kids is just not practical for a lot of it, and the nearest bus stop is a four hour walk (12 miles).
Do large cities and suburban neighborhoods deserve public transportation? Sure. Is that a universal answer? No. Not even close. There are farm fields out here larger than many towns. Roads, vehicles, and fast on demand transportation are a necessity for the geographic super majority of the US.
> Where I live the temperature swings from -40 to over 100F with very high humidity every year.
My "city" of 5K is considered "urban" according to the 2020 census. There are nearly zero services in this "city", only a couple of restaurants, the largest employer is the school district, and it's surrounded by farms and mountain forests. It takes 15 minutes by car to get to the next town over on a two lane highway.
If you want to get to any real city, you're looking at a 30-45 minute drive at highway/freeway speeds.
So yes, there may be more individuals in "urban" areas, but not all "urban" areas are functionally urban. My "urban city" per the 2020 census is no LA, Austin, or Portland.
https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_SimCity_2000_buildin...
Obviously that doesn't get to your point, which is accurate.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-p...
> I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots.
True for all infrastructure choices
> the physical space required for that alone is an unbelievable double-digit percentage of the city area
True, and I do miss big city life, but all the major cities have been captured by anti-development fanatics of a particular political bent vehemently opposed to me, people like me, and our priorities.
Conclusion: double-garage areas work best for my mix of requirements.
I get that density and banning cars are hostile to driving an SUV everywhere, but bike infrastructure and public transport aren't. If anything they take traffic off the road and speed up the morning commute of drivers, so they enable a better experience for drivers too.
Being trapped in your suburban neighborhood without access to a car is a special kind of hell. During the week mom and dad were too tired to drive me anywhere after work, unless it was urgent. Long commutes. Weekends were fun - sometimes.
There were SOME really awesome things about suburbia though. Snow days were the best.
I was deep into NY's drug and party scene from about the time I turned 12. Pedos used to follow me walking home from the public library.
Lotta my friends growing up did not make it and I no longer live in NYC.
Next caller.
My opinion is that parenting is supposed to play a major role here. Educating your child on the dangers of _why_ we avoid certain neighborhoods, _why_ we don’t do drugs, and surrounding them with good role models early is so so important.
I guess what i’m saying is, if you parents locked you up in a safe cage (like I grew up - in a “safe” suburb without access to much), you might have grown up to be a naive 18 year old. And then you’d maybe go off to college and end up with the wrong crowd doing drugs and other stuff anyway. Completely isolating a teenager from the world doesn’t teach them how to navigate it.
The pedo’s following you home is creepy as hell though. No comment on that. Damn.
Again, just my opinion. We can agree to disagree. Have a great day. :)
Go play SimCity again. The concept of mixed-use doesn't exist because it's built by an American.
Commercial zones that have groceries, restaurants, shops, and entertainment are almost always several kilometers away. You could technically bike there, but there are rarely bike lanes. And due to serving the needs of a large, low-density area, you’d have to bike on multi-lane high-speed thoroughfares which is far less safe than being able to use small local streets. Where there are sidewalks, they often end abruptly and don’t actually connect to anywhere or anything.
It is truly hell.
My (American) definition of suburbia primarily involves a lack of sidewalks.
When I finally got access to grocery delivery to my door, I could see how it all will work. Carrying things for one person is fine. It's carrying groceries for a household for a week where things break down. Even putting all that on an elevator would be really unwieldy compared to unloading from the garage.
Self-driving and the evolution of early-life education will play a big role in simplifying life without the parents needing to ferry the kids around five days a week.
In general, it makes a huge amount of sense for a specialized employee with specialized tooling to pick up groceries for many people and deliver them; the net result is less total person-hours spent shopping, less vehicle miles driven, and less overall labor.
The ants discovered hundreds of millions of years before even the chimps got social, that parents are not required for functioning society.
We will get there soon with artificial wombs on the near horizon.
Large cities are OK if you have one kid. They completely break down once you have 2-3 kids.
I live in Berlin with my wife and 2 kids (who were born lived their whole lives in Berlin). We all bike and take transit. Neither me nor my wife even have a driver's license. We're doing fine. We know plenty of other families with multiple kids in the same situation.
Maddy Novich, https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/, for one, may disagree with you. She has three kids IIRC. Interview:
But it may not be much “better” long term because you’ll be buying mini van(s), paying for gas, car insurance, higher property taxes, etc. All that extra cost adds up and could easily be put toward upgrading to a larger apartment instead.
And remember, 3+ kids is FAR from the norm in 2025. It’s not 1970s…so this is a really pointless argument.
The subsidy per passenger mile in the US is :
0.019 for road transport, 0.021 for air transport, 0.710 for Amtrak and 2.300 for transit.
From : https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=22592
Just also as a note, you can create suburbs pretty easily where bikes use paths or whatever. I live in a suburb where I can ride 15 kms to work without riding on roads. The subsidy for bikes would actually be really low.
Bicycle infrastructure is often destroyed by those other investments and that is usually not counted as a con. But it is just too cheap to build bicycle infrastructure to be interesting.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218...
To the extent that "ban cars" even exists as a real political archetype rather than a meme, this is just patently not true. At least one of the two co-hosts of The War on Cars (again, a title which is intentionally tongue-in-cheek) has a preteen son.
But more importantly: car-dependent suburbs are an absolutely miserable place to grow up as a child if you're not wealthy enough to have one non-working parent and/or a nanny (or both). Being dependent on someone else to enable your entire social life until you turn 16 is a torturous enough experience that I'm not surprised that the first generation to have universal access to social media as teenagers has become the first generation to use social media to organize a teenage-driven movement for public transit.
I easily could, but I have no interest in chasing ever-moving goalposts.
And sure, humans are extremely diverse and adaptable, so you'll be able to find examples of any physically and logistically possible behavior. Eventually.
But statistically? We both know that I'm right. The Netherlands (the bike heaven) has the total fertility rate of around 1.5 And even within the country itself, Amsterdam (North Holland province) is at the second-to-last place from the bottom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Netherland... And the highest fertility rates are in Flevoland and Zeeland that are about 3-4 times less dense.
But my friend that has four children brings her kids to the school that's in front of my apartment, that promotes bike riding to school, and they even have a morning bike route that kids alone or with parents can join.
(Yeah, they both work)
It is THE difference that makes living great or terrible. Everything else simply pales in comparison, in the developed world.
Similar for the YouTube channel NotJustBikes, who has gone into great detail about the advantages of raising kids in a city planned around pedestrian and cyclist usage, and not in a suburban sprawl.
Buy a bakfiet cargo bike, there's models that can fit five kids under 7. Mine fits three.
Kids like them better and you get exercise. For the first time in my life I have a BMI of around 20 without having to waste time at the gym, the drop off, pick up, shopping, and work commute add up to an hour and a half of medium intensity cardio.
Every other parent my age in the neighborhood looks five years away from a heart attack. I'm fitter than I was in my 20s.
>There's less "objective good" or "objective bad" in these matters than I used to think. It's more about who you optimize for.
There are over 1,000 children killed in the US annually by cars. This is after we restrain them like Hannibal Lecter while in cars and don't let them out of our houses so they don't get run over.
That's before we talk about the child obesity epidemic, social media abuse, and on and on.
If given the choice between keeping cars or letting polio loose on the land you'd be hard pressed to figure out which will kill and disable more kids.
Off topic, but my brain did a double take there. Didn't know that the Dutch word "bakfiets" (bike with a box) was anglicized to "bakfiet". Cool. Usually it's us who borrow foreign words from all over
Even further off topic, I had an aha moment with "bakfiets" connecting to how "back" is a word for storage box in Swedish...
The fit parents and delighted kids I frequently see riding bakfeitsen in Amsterdam are always so happy and healthy and safe that I am envious I wasn't born here myself.
They effortlessly ride through busy city streets, wander through parks, and trek across the countryside, all with well maintained bike paths, and gather together to have picnics and play, which you can't do with an SUV. Also dogs love riding in them, and they're great for shopping and hauling too.
An electric bakfiets with an Enviolo continuous stepless automatic shifting hub is ideal and safe for kids, because you don't have to worry about shifting gears or even preemptively shift down before you stop at an intersection or unexpected obstacle.
It can shift when you're stopped and even while you're accelerating, and it automatically and smoothly shifts up as you accelerate. You just dial in your preferred cadence and it does the rest. So you can concentrate on the traffic and kids and scenery instead of your gears, even in stop-and-go city traffic.
I love the one on my normal eBike, it's a joy to ride, and I'll never go back. I have no affiliation, it's just a fantastic piece of technology. They're a Dutch company, so many Dutch brands of bike, bakfiets, and delivery bikes use them, but they're available worldwide.
https://www.koga.com/nl/elektrische-fietsen/e-nova-evo-pt-au...
They have special heavy duty bakfiets motors and hubs, and smooth quiet indestructible carbon fiber belt drives instead of clackety chains and derailleurs. Silent, reliable, maintenance free, and greaseless!
Enviolo fully automatic stepless transmission for e-bikes:
https://enviolo.com/products/#tab_automatic
>No distractions: Liberate your attention
>Enviolo Automatic is a “set and forget” system that adjusts to you – set your preferred pace and you’re ready to go. Focus your journey in bustling cities, relaxed countryside rides, or when travelling with kids.
Cargo L Cargo Line:
https://www.urbanebikes.nl/cargo-l-enviolo-automatic
Rave reviews on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CargoBike/comments/1f0rsu9/enviolo_...
Enviolo Automatic - Never Shift Again (check out the beautiful scenery and bike paths and parks of Amsterdam: it's really like that, on purpose!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQrgKBQrkag
Carqon Classic Enviolo | Elektrische bakfiets met stijl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2gWJvolBjg
Is enviolo the best internally geared hub for eBikes? (This is a nerdy technically detailed deep dive!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vob5Rb4IKsw
I Tested The Boujiest Cargo Bike You Can Buy (Monster Bakfiets!)
I would be worried about collision safety though, I am not going to persuade everyone in my neighborhood to stop using cars in a hurry and there are not bike routes between me and school, library, shops, ...
People use cars because they are (rightly) concerned about safety. People avoid using bikes because there are so many cars. It’s very hard to ban cars or restrict car usage because it seems like no one wants to use bikes, but it’s a self-reinforcing system.
Then the cars are safer both for the occupants and pedestrians/cyclists, so paradoxically people might be more inclined to walk or cycle.
Aggressively limit speed and enforce it until you're onto the fast roads.
If cars could only roll on at 10mph I'd feel a lot safer and I'd probably be able to use my bike and make better time for the local stuff.
Making adjustments to roads requires some upfront capital and scales to every car on those roads.
Check out this great resource of traffic calming measures from the Institute of Transportation Engineers[1].
Chicanes, Chokers, and Corner Extensions are just three examples of measures that can be taken temporarily and cheaply.
1: https://www.ite.org/technical-resources/traffic-calming/traf...
One unexpected benefit is that the muddy/wet boots don’t muss up the bike like they would if I was loading them into a car. Just drips out the bottom grate.
Lots of other small benefits but not so related to winter.
Stockholm January average: 25°F / –4°C (low) to 32°F / 0°C (high) — closer to Chicago than Minneapolis.
Having been splashed by busses in winter you have to be a special kind of crazy to ride a bike or motorcycle in Minneapolis or Chicago.
There is usually a week in January in Minneapolis where the high temperature for the day does not break -10F. Air temperature, not wind chill.
Minneapolis at least has a skyway for pedestrians in winter. Chicago loop, not so much.
To each their own, right?
I can think of multiple European towns which offer a great quality of life together with (thanks to safe cycling and great public transport) the ability to live largely or entirely car-free, if that’s your choice.
Europe is nice. But I would never want to live in European cities unless I was a gazillionaire and could afford a large, modern property with a garage for a good car (which wouldn't be used as often but still used sometimes).
With that much money, anyone could be fine anywhere. The European lifestyle wouldn't be bad during retirement, but still not ideal because I would want the peace of a smaller town anyway.
It's quiet. No matter how you spin a 100-200K sized city, it will never be this quiet.
Medium towns in the US can be great too...
When I had kids, the suburbs suddenly made a lot of sense. Better schools, tons of neighborhood sports, lots of kids around, very dog friendly, etc…
Now that I’m an empty nester, I’d love to move further out of the city. Get more space around me, have a smaller home but a bigger workshop, sauna, and garden.
I can imagine that when I hit my 70’s or 80’s, I might want to be back in the city again closer to other people, healthcare, and other services that will be a bigger part of my life.
There really isn’t one ideal setup for me in all parts of my life.
This seems very different from the large anti-car movement in the Netherlands in the 1970s (which eventually led to massive investments in bike infrastructure and car restrictions in the cities).
There was significant parent involvement, touting the memorable slogan "Stop de Kindermoord" ("Stop the Child Murder").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_transport_in_the_Netherla...
She came to visit for one month. After the first week she was already comfortably going around with the Ubahn to pick up the kids at school. I have 4 supermarkets less than 150m away from me, so we would walk to do groceries every other day. I spend ~80€/month with taxi rides (for the occasional trip to meet someone in a less convenient place), which is less than what she pays in car insurance alone, not even counting the cost of gas.
At the end of the trip, she got it. Having a car is not a necessity. It should be seen (and taxed) as a luxury.
Seems like empathy should work both ways?
The whole series of videos from Strong Towns are good, you should take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg
For example, I know Oakland, CA has severe financial issues (looks like the school district might go bankrupt) but I wouldn’t generalize from that to all cities.
> Financial problems are local.
There might be differences in the particulars among cities, but they share a lot of common causes and one of them is that suburban sprawl is cheap to begin (acquiring and building on the land) but expensive to maintain.
The lines are so blurry between consumption of local services and taxes paid that it's almost impossible to draw any conclusions that don't start from a biased premise.
Higher and lower density areas have a symbiotic relationship, and people like the parent poster like to pretend everything will be great if they cram as many people into an area as possible and ban everything they don't like it in, while ignoring that they need to get food and clean water from somewhere, need a place to dispose of their waste, and that most of their imported goods (and almost everything must be imported because they don't have the space locally to produce much of anything) will be delivered via a road system.
The first minute is nothing but conjecture and personal opinion full of misinformation, and it just continues from there.
Strong Towns is a good source, but they don't make or support most of the claims in this video because they have no basis in fact.
My hostility is towards people who claim to prefer to live in the suburbs, but do not want to pay for the privilege.
Show me people that say "Yeah, I won't mind having higher property taxes, extra fees to keep my many cars in the garage and have to pay full price for the extended infrastructure (sewer, roads, water, electricity lines, etc) just so that I don't have to live among those poor city-dwellers" and I'll be totally fine with their choices.
I suspect that even people with strong opinions have little understanding about infrastructure costs and who is subsidizing what. I’m unwilling to take this on faith - it seems like there need to be financial deep dives.
The math has certainly not been done. There are no cities without suburbs. For food and water.
Berlin does things to people.
The argument is intra-municipalities, not intra-country. The argument is that people that live in the suburbs of a city end up costing more and paying less than the city-center counterparts. The richer people in the city do not pay proportionally to the cost they incur in the city's expenses, but when push comes to shove it's the poor people who are left with poor infrastructure, unmaintained roads, etc.
(As for the discussion regarding Berlin getting subsidies from the south: I can not argue there, but I am pretty sure that what I am paying in taxes is vastly more than what I am getting in benefits and public services. Just like I am pretty sure that the 1000€/month I am sending to TK is to cover the cost of others. There isn't much more than I am supposed to do, is there?)
Property tax eh? kind of depends on cost of the things that are paid for by property tax. Sometimes that'll be higher in urban and sometimes higher in rural.
I don't know why I should pay extra fees to keep my many cars on my property... that's why I have my property. I don't mind license fees, and I grumble but don't mind that they're higher for my PHEV even though I don't drive it much or plug it in. If I was parking on public right of way, it might make sense to charge me per car, but my cars don't use shared resources when they sit at home, and I can only drive one at a time.
Where can I live where I don't have to pay full price for extended infrastructure? That'd be great. Where I am, I have to pay my own way for my well and septic; if I wanted municipal of either, I'd have to pay for the build out to get it to my house, just like I did for muni fiber. The owners before me that had electricity hooked up must have paid the utility to extend it, and enhancements would be at my cost.
Places that grew before cars, were built with walking distance separations. It wasn't possible to profit as a grocery by building miles away from the people.
What the discussion should instead highlight is that with just moderate increases in population density you can escape the need for a car and it ends up being better for everyone. That mostly only applies to new development.
Heck, even if you just made cars second class in new suburbs you could see cheaper housing with equivalent land. Put in a shared parking garage for a suburb instead of putting a garage on everyone's home and all the sudden the amount of sqft needed just to get cars in and out gets massively reduced meaning more room for more homes and an easier argument to make for bus service.
Why should those subsidies be expanded, yet any subsidies for cars (which certainly exist, but drivers pay for more than 10% of their vehicle costs) should be eliminated?
You have to do some pretty creative accounting to get it as subsidized as public transit (which isn’t to say PT shouldn’t be subsidized, mind you).
I made different choices, and I am being taxed for those. But what I don't get is the hostility towards people who make this choice?
I choose to not live in a place with supermarkets within 150m. When I look outside I see the edge of my property and then I see untouched nature.
I pay for that, in land cost, and in fuel cost because I live (by choice) further away from everybody.
No, you aren't.
- Suburbanites are being subsidized by city-dwellers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI&t=19s
- The gas for your car is heavily subsidized.
- You don't pay for the increased costs in healthcare caused by air pollution or the amount of concrete needed to keep all those roads.
- Car owners are not taxed extra for the economic impact in social security due to the tens of thousands of people that die every year.
I could go on. There are countless other environmental and economic externalities that suburbanites are not being accounted for and they only get away with it because that's in the interests of the privileged elite.
Maybe in US. In Europe this is not the case. On the contrary gas is heavily taxed.
The conclusions vary, except that they generally agree that driving in dense urban areas is heavily subsidized. And if you accept the roads as essential infrastructure claim, driving in rural areas is too heavily taxed.
And as others have mentioned, just because something is necessary, doesn't mean we should subsidise it. Especially when rail and (contextually) river shipping exist and are often cheaper.
It is unfortunately a necessity in many parts of America where public transportation is lacking or nonexistent.
And making it a "luxury" just further stratifies our society into different, non-interacting economic classes. When things start becoming "privileges", you get a privileged class who cares less and less about the quality of life of those in lesser classes, shaping society to benefit their lifestyles at the expense of others.
As someone who grew up in abject poverty in a very rural area and was homeless and on completely on my own by 16, I have already seen how this plays out. The trajectory of my life was majorly affected by a lack of a car or adequate public transportation. I have since had to make choices about where I live in order to minimize car use in order to align with my own philosophy around transportation, but it comes at great cost in America when such walkable cities are so desirable that cost of living shoots through the roof due to demand. And conversely, poorer areas often lack walkability or sufficient and accessible public transportation.
Berlin does not have the same problems as America, a sprawling empire in decline.
I'll never forget one of my last lectures from my high-school History class teacher. She said "People talk about societies in terms of two classes: the kings and the plebs, the haves and have-nots, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. I hope you managed to learn that throughout all of history, what we have is actually three different forces - priests or monks in Ancient times, or the merchants during the Renaissance, land owners in the US - and that it's this third class that is crucial in determining the course of History. Every time they aligned with the elites there was no change in the status quo, and every time a revolution happened was because they in the middle shifted their support to the other side."
I'm saying this for one simple reason: the way to fix this problem is not by pretending that car ownership isn't a luxury, but by de-stigmatizing public transport. I can bet you that if political forces shifted and started putting pressure against car-ownership, you would quickly see a swing from the middle class in support for better public transit, mixed-use zoning, YIMBY-ism, etc.
"A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation"
I don't avoid it because of "stigma" but lived experience where it takes 2x as long to get anywhere and I'm far more likely to get assaulted by some rando while minding my own business or having to deal with someone else's bodily fluids or public intoxication.
But I loved public transport back in places and times where I felt safer.
My question is the sense of "are you doing anything to change this reality, or are you just going to accept that now that you have a car you see no point in advocating better public transit for your community?"
I cited lived experience, not feelings, and it's hard to see how expanding transport more is going to fix that when they don't care for what we have now.
Improvements in public transport could be made simply by having more frequent buses on a route, for example. Or longer hours of operation. Or (in the cities that have them) getting streetcars to be properly isolated from the cars. Sometimes it can be as simple as having the bus stops properly illuminated so that people feel more safe waiting for the bus at night.
Any of these improvements can make a big difference in ridership numbers, and any increase in public transit adoption is better for everyone. More people using public transport means less cars on the road and less traffic for those who still depend on a car.
To go back to the original point: I'm hoping you realize that what I'm trying to do is that we are exactly part of the pendulum that my History teacher was talking about. If you wish to live in a less car-centric society and if you wish that more people had access to fair, safe and affordable public transit, then it's up to people like you to push for this change.
That can be a great topic on its own, but it's not the same topic others are discussing.
And unless I missed it, you didn't say "let's switch the topic", you just went off in your own direction.
I've never met an online public transit advocate who didn't come off as a zealot, lecturing the uninformed masses about the obvious benefits that will come from joining them while dismissing any criticism or skepticism as ignorance.
Unfortunately, I encounter many, many, many more public transit zealots online (and in person, though much less frequently) than I need to hear parrot the same talking points from fuckcars and NotJustBikes about the joys of living in an efficiency apartment and using a cargo bike to get my kids to and from their 3 different schools in the snow or blistering heat while ranting about vague "externalities" without ever providing actual numbers.
Why would I do this? It's just not possible for public transit to provide equal quality of service to a private vehicle unless I lived in one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, which I do not (though I do live in a major metropolitan area).
On top of that, my area has spent tens of billions to expand the subway system, to little effect and with many, many delays and cost increases that indicate that the local government is not capable of successfully managing a large scale infrastructure project.
> Are you discussing with your neighbors about changing zoning laws so that small business and shops can be located closer to you?
I already live in a pretty walkable area and things are already trending towards making things even more walkable, so no I'm not because it's not needed.
Having a <hot shower> is not a necessity. It should be taxed as a luxury.
... Well this line of reasoning isn't very good.
When the fuck-cars people start ranting, what they mean is that they want me and the millions like me to move to some distant gigantic city and make that even more gigantic. I do not look forward to becoming the termite people that they wish to become.
The luxury is living in a place where this is a possible lifestyle, and then thinking every one of 300 million people can live in such a place or make the place they live into such.
No, we want you simply to pay the full sticker price for all the things you are consuming and exploiting.
It's simple as that. Drop the pretense that you are actually carrying your own weight and that your lifestyle is sustainable. If you do just that and start paying for the privileges you have, we'll leave you in peace.
Most if not all of these groups are minorities or have a clear need for the tax relief. This is not the case for wealthy suburbanites.
2. You can complain all you want but we live in a democracy. Your idea of “fairness” and “paying your share” would have to be voted on. And the populous would have to agree with your view of the world. Good luck with that.
3. Your view of a disjointed America where people are city folk or suburbanites is not how the country operates. People move about freely. You may live in the city and vacation “upstate” for a break. Or live in a suburb and commute into a city for work, paying city taxes, etc. It isn’t as disjointed as you presume.
So yeah, making car ownership generally expensive is a bad idea, and would only make Europe's already expensive housing market worse. There are more fair and effective ways to make city centres car-free, and suburb-dwellers to pay their fair share for infrastructure.
This is absolutely no reason to justify owning a car.
People can still rent a car, people can still do car pools, people can still can have intercity buses.
Still, I'm not sure what is so bad about owning a car in a small or medium-sized city like mine. Average age of a car in my country is almost 14 years, and rising. Very few people are buying new cars, and keeping the old ones around, using infrastructure already built isn't so bad. The population is barely growing and will soon fall, further reducing need for new car-centric infrastructure. I drive less than 8k kilometers a year.
I just rented a car for a holiday. It was much more expensive then the cost of keeping my own car on the road, and took a whole lot of time to book including avoiding a number of ways any minor damage would cost thousands more.
And once you have it …
I can even tell you of a friend who works in Berlin and prefers to make a 50-minute commute by train over having a car.
This is not unreasonable to think it can be done again. The thing is we have made so much room for cars they have eaten all the space and are endangering everyone. But this can change.
Now, if you live in a smaller town it’s a whole different story and I suppose it’s the same in Europe. I don’t see the need to own a car living in a capital in my State, but in smaller towns basically everybody has at least motorcycles.
European cities started on a scale designed around the limitations of human walking. Even before they built out mass transit systems, living without a car was doable. Adding mass transit is icing on the cake. If you live in such an environment, it is easy to make the case that cars are a luxury. That's because other people's daily experience is that it is a luxury. As your mother discovered when she visited you.
Most American cities are built on a scale designed around human driving. Even where they built out mass transit systems, between scale and density they can't work as well as European ones. (Fun fact. Across the USA, busses are on average so underutilized that we'd save gas by making everyone drive instead.) Underinvestment in mass transit is icing on the cake.
This was your mother's daily experience in suburban Massachusetts. And even though she sees how you can live without a car, it's pretty safe to bet that she doesn't think that she can live where she does without a car.
Which means that, in America, saying that cars are luxuries is a poor argument. It directly contradicts everyone's personal experience. Yes, this is fixable. But fixing it literally requires tearing cities down, then rebuilding them on a scale where walking makes sense as a major mode of transportation. We can't even manage the political will to build enough housing to keep people off the streets. Any lifestyle change requiring this level of rebuilding is a nonstarter. No matter how many lectures we get from Europeans.
That's absolutely not true. It only became true in the post-war when there was a push for suburban sprawl, lobbied by GM and all the auto industry [0]
> it's pretty safe to bet that she doesn't think that she can live where she does without a car.
"Where there is a will, there is a way", right? The discussion is not even if she can go by without a car, but whether she would want it.
> We can't even manage the political will to build enough housing to keep people off the streets.
Ok, but then don't go around trying to rationalize your bad choices and poor capacity for civic organization. [1]
Don't go around saying "I lived in NYC and I thought I could live without a car, but after I had kids I realized they are not so bad", and please don't go around saying "it can't be done".
Amsterdam and Rotterdam were once also car-centric cities which managed to turn themselves around in less than a generation. There is no inherit limitation in the US that forbids this change to happen. There is no amount of American Exceptionalism that can prevent people from clamoring change. Maybe it won't be done in the US, because people are lazy and not willing to sacrifice their own convenience for some communal benefit, but it's super annoying to always get in these discussions when people try to hide their preferences on external circumstances. North American cities are they way they are by choice.
[0]: How The Auto Industry Carjacked The American Dream (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOttvpjJvAo)
[1]: The Dumbest Excuse for Bad Cities (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ)
To start, as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_city will verify, the switch in the USA to car-centric cities began in the 1920s. By the 1930s, about half of American households had cars. And American cities were being reshaped by this. After the war, the automobile industry did conspire to remove public transit to improve profits. However this was on top of a giant car-centric housing boom, and already wide existing infrastructure changes. Which all contributed.
The American experience stands in stark contrast to Europe. In pre-war Europe, cars were only a luxury item for the rich. Germany's early success came in part because it was more mechanized than the rest of Europe. But even so, about 80% of all of Nazi German logistics was by horse. They were absolutely unprepared for what happened after the USA converted car manufacture over to tanks and airplanes. With the result that the USA quickly outproduced the rest of the planet combined. (Though, to correct a common American misconception, the most important military use of American equipment was by Soviet soldiers.)
After WW 2, Europe's manufacturing increased rapidly. And yes, cities did become more "car centric". Including Amsterdam. But even "car centric" Amsterdam was nowhere comparable to the average US city. By the time the 70s rolled around, car ownership was still well behind the USA. Yes, new construction was planned for cars, but there was a lot less of that than in the USA. And the core of various cities, including Amsterdam, was still built to the old scale.
The scale that the core of a city is built at, matters. Even in the USA it matters. The USA has many cities that were highly populated before cars. Particularly Manhattan. By and large, they remain walkable today.
But cities that were constructed almost entirely after cars, such as Los Angeles, are car-centric to an extent that simply never has existed anywhere in Europe. No, not even in the bad old days of "car centric" Amsterdam.
And so, I stand by my point. I'm someone who has visited multiple countries, and has lived in a variety of cities. I've lived both with and without a car for various stretches of my life.
Take any city in the world that is an example of a good place for living by mass transit and bicycling. At no point in its history was it anywhere near as car centric as the average US city. And that is true whether you compare to how car centric the US city is today, or to how car centric it was back when the other city had more cars.
So lay off on "car centric Amsterdam". It's an argument based on comparing apples and oranges. It was never even remotely comparable to the average US city.
> And American cities were being reshaped by this.
It's one thing to have cities building infrastructure in their existing areas to make room for cars. It's another to have suburban sprawl of the post-war, where cities would grow exclusively by spreading to the outskirt and building single-zoning areas.
> The USA has many cities that were highly populated before cars. Particularly Manhattan.
And there were also many big, developed cities which had their downtowns destroyed in favor of highways. Manhattan being an island protected it from this fate, but lots of cities in the Midwest or Texas had walkable areas.
One of you is pointing out that cars are a necessity for some in the current reality. The other is pointing out that we could change that reality like other places have.
You are both right.
I am very against the continuation of car primacy in urban design, but I live in a place where that is the current reality, so for all practical reasons I need at least one car in my household. I advocate for the changes so that isn't true and see that it is possible to live otherwise, but it isn't reality right now, so I own a car. Me owning a car isn't to "rationalize [my] bad choices and poor capacity for civic organization." I do it because the housing that I can afford, in the country that I live in is in an area where that is necessary. In the meantime I advocate for better transit and other options, but I am not omnipotent, and even those with tremendous amounts of power cannot make these changes happen quickly given the 75+ years of infrastructure and urban design.
You are tremendously mean-spirited and un-empathetic in proclaiming that those that don't agree with you are 'lazy' and 'not willing to sacrifice their own convenience for some communal benefit'.
Try understanding where people are coming from. Many believe as strongly as you do, and can provide just as many backing youtube videos, that cars are an unalloyed good. If you come at them this aggressively telling them that the places they live are just plain wrong, you will not convince them of anything.
As an aside, the Dutch aren't nearly as car free as you are presenting. They are in the top 25% for per capita car ownership worldwide, and have higher rates of car ownership rates than Denmark, Sweden, Greece and Croatia which isn't even all of the countries in Europe with lower rates of car ownership. Hell, they have more than double the rate of car ownership of Saudi Arabia, a country that subsidizes fuel prices to encourage car use.
The ugly truth (for public transit zealots like the parent poster) is that there is no amount of investment that can make a person with the ability to afford a car willingly choose public transit, unless they live and work in a place with extremely high population density.
They keep ranting about how cars are a luxury, and they are right, but basically want to change human nature to suit their preferences IMO.
I know plenty of people who choose transit even though they own a car.
My in-laws live in Rotterdam, and cycle and transit for most day to day stuff. But they also own and use a car, when appropriate (they do have big box stores and suburbs in - gasp - bike crazy Rotterdam).
People will use transit if it is pleasant, fast, and affordable. When I lived in Vancouver, you would be nuts to commute by car if there was a train line near you. It was cheaper and faster to take transit, especially during the working hours.
But as you stated, most people who can afford a car do end up with one, even if it isn't their primary mode of transit.
I don't think so, but partially because the person I responded to is off the charts in the anti-car direction.
> I know plenty of people who choose transit even though they own a car.
Most people choose what makes sense for them, myself included. I drive most of the time, but have no problem taking public transit when it makes sense.
> People will use transit if it is pleasant, fast, and affordable. When I lived in Vancouver, you would be nuts to commute by car if there was a train line near you. It was cheaper and faster to take transit, especially during the working hours.
The issue is that there are very few places where it's cheaper and faster to take public transit.
The solutions most transit advocates come up with involve kneecapping car usage so public transit can compete or insisting people live at density levels most find unacceptable, neither of which are practically feasible.
But also:
> Most people choose what makes sense for them, myself included. I drive most of the time, but have no problem taking public transit when it makes sense.
I apologize for taking your word as literal. The first quote is what I was really responding to.
There is a middle ground, it just sounded like you didn't know it existed.
Agreed.
> but it isn't reality right now, so I own a car.
This means that you at least consider a possibility of living without a car. You at least understand that there is nothing about the US making it impossible to work towards car independence. I have no reason to argue with you or people who share this sentiment.
I do get upset at the people who think that this situation is static and that it can not be changed, ever. But I get more upset at the people who complain at the North American reality only when they are directly suffering from it, and act like when the systemic problem doesn't exist anymore just because they manage to "solve the issue" for themselves.
> As an aside, the Dutch aren't nearly as car free as you are presenting.
They have high rates of car ownership, but they are not car dependent. Even the people who have to drive for work use cars only for longer distance trips, and walk/bike/use public transport for shorter ones. In Greece, much like in the US, people assume that you have to have a car to do anything.
But I'm also pointing to the fact that this is easier to change in some places than others. It doesn't just take will to change. It takes more will in some places than others. Because you have to fight against the layout and built up infrastructure of the area.
Conversely, the other person is pointing to how friendly Amsterdam is to not having a car. The fact that lots of people there have cars doesn't take away from the fact that it is easy to live there and not have a car. Just like the number of TVs in America don't take away from the fact that it is easy to live in America and not own a TV. (Case in point. I live in America, and haven't owned a TV in 20 years.)
Wrong usage of statistics. The rate of car ownership is not the metric to look at, but rather the % of trips taken by car vs bike.
The result is that even if you increase the density in some US city, the people in the surrounding areas will still need cars, and then will come to the city in their cars because it's the only city within reasonable distance of them.
The subset of the US where that isn't the case is basically the New York Metro Area.
If you draw a 250 mile radius around Rotterdam, it contains Paris, London, Frankfurt and the entire countries of Belgium and Luxembourg. If you draw a 250 mile radius around Portland, Oregon, the only major city is Seattle some 175 miles away and mostly it contains a lot of trees. And then even though they're the sort of people who like mass transit and build it, the large majority of people there still don't use it.
Wrong, the population density of a country is irrelevant. People aren't uniformly distributed over an entire country's area. A low density usually means a country is big and has a lot of nearly deserted areas, which is true of the US.
> Moreover, the major cities in the US have more distance between them.
Yet another simple average that has no bearing on anything relevant. NYC is far away from San Francisco? No shit.
> The result is that even if you increase the density in some US city, the people in the surrounding areas will still need cars, and then will come to the city in their cars because it's the only city within reasonable distance of them.
Yeah, that's literally the same everywhere else in the world. Therefore, the argument is moot.
> The subset of the US where that isn't the case is basically the New York Metro Area.
Obviously untrue.
> If you draw a 250 mile radius around Rotterdam, it contains Paris, London, Frankfurt and the entire countries of Belgium and Luxembourg. If you draw a 250 mile radius around Portland, Oregon, the only major city is Seattle some 175 miles away and mostly it contains a lot of trees.
Yay, cherry picking! In any case, now explain why despite sufficient density existing in a lot of places in the US there's 0 investment into mass transit there either? It's almost like density is not relevant at all when it comes to the US, weird.
> And then even though they're the sort of people who like mass transit and build it, the large majority of people there still don't use it.
Uhuh, "the sort of people". Let me make one thing clear. There is no place in the US that has any sort of a half workable mass transit solution, with maaaybe NYC as the sole exception as something that can maaaaybe aspire to be half as good as your average European city. So if you're telling me Portland, Oregon built mass transit, then your idea of mass transit is very different from what that actually means.
I badly want better urban design in the US, focused on walking, biking, and public transit - but we have to understand and deal with the fact that good people are raised in a very different environment, and that it truly is quite difficult in a great many places that people live to simply change your lifestyle to one without a car. You have to meet people where they are. Show them a better way, and be understanding when they resist and say it won’t work, because they have only known a different way.
I have seen many people who are receptive to these ideas, but have been so put off by the insulting attitude of many notable proponents (like NotJustBikes) that they are wary of engaging with it.
You are justified in your anger at the situation. I get angry all the time at the risk, pollution, expense, and lack of amenities that I must bear due to the car-centric design of America. Still, that does not make hostility an effective strategy. We will make change by showing a better way, not by denigrating and insulting.
People love to get rid of traffic along their house so it's easy to get buy-in from the public to convert their area to a neighborhood without through traffic, even when that means they have to navigate a few blocks to get in and out of their neighborhood. This results in more traffic pressure in the surrounding area, but that's not as bad as you think because you can remove a lot of traffic lights if there are fewer roads in and out of a neighborhood. Slowly build up to more and more of these areas.
If the only cars in a neighborhood street are from people who live there then traffic intensity is low enough that no bike lanes are needed there and kids can play in the street. Finally, if all that works, you can start stringing neighborhoods together with dedicated bike lanes, away from streets with cars. Bike lanes that are not part of a road are surprisingly cheap because road wear scales with the third power of vehicle weight so those rarely need resurfacing.
there are a lot of facilities where you can either rent by the hour (including or excluding the instrument) or by the month (usually 100% self-furnished including some, but not all, instruments and equipment) and play as loud as you want.
most of these hourly spaces will provide a drum kit minus "breakables" (cymbals, snare drum and kick drum pedal) and a basic PA system for singers/keyboards etc. the facility is responsible for maintaining these things (YMMV; some places replaces drum heads often, other places you might end up with a broken cymbal stands or worse). often they'll also come with speaker cabinets for guitar and bass amps, and the guitarist or bassist will bring their own instrument, cables, effects pedals and often a combo amplifier or amplifier head, per requirement or personal preference. sometimes you can pay an additional fee to rent an instrument like a guitar or bass but this isn't guaranteed at all spaces and quality is usually not great.
i don't personally know much about how it works for brass players. not sure people are too excited to share those instruments that involve a lot of bodily fluids :) i imagine most horn players prefer to keep their own instruments. i know a lot of rehearsal facilities also provide storage for large instruments - you just retrieve your instrument when its time for rehearsal or for a gig, then return it to the storage facility.
the monthly option is usually called a "lockout" in US slang and a lot of times you go in on a unit with other musicians; for example, a full band will rent a room, or multiple bands; or a group of individuals who agree to keep a schedule for reserved access to the room. i've been in spaces that have up to 7 different full bands and time is precious, and others where the monthly cost was low enough that only one or two bands used the space.
Then they are unlikely to be unbiased - someone who uproots and moves their family due to an issue they care about is almost never going to express any regret, no matter how bad things get.
>> Then they are unlikely to be unbiased
> Of course it's not unbiased.
Then why, in the words of GP, "It's worth watching"?
Having said that, what a strange question. Do you only find it worthwhile to engage with unbiased content?
Of course not, but there's a huge difference between:
1. Pointing someone at (for example) a church's website when you are trying to support an argument against pro-choice, and
2. Pointing someone at the relevant wikipedia page
Both are biased in some way, but one of them is so biased that it is effectively useless unless you are already on board and in agreement with the argument.
> Having said that, what a strange question.
It's only a strange question to the people who are already ideologically aligned in that direction.
And? If you do agree with the argument you will find the church's website useful. Honestly, what are you whining about? If you're not interested in watching a channel about how cars ruined cities then don't watch it. Not every recommendation any random person makes will appeal to you.
That aside, I don't agree with the statement. Someone pro-choice may very well find the church website interesting. Reading what the other side says is important, if nothing else so you're not caught on the back foot in an argument, but more importantly because you may one day realize you were wrong all along.
>It's only a strange question to the people who are already ideologically aligned in that direction.
No, it's a strange question regardless of who hears it. You already conceded that you don't only engage with unbiased content, so if anything that makes it even stranger. It's like you don't understand why people recommend things to each other.
The videos show mostly the result of that movement. If one thinks that traffic in the US is ok and has no idea about how it is in the Netherlands, those videos show what's different.
Wasn't always like that either. In the 90s it was cars-first just like the OP likes nowadays.
It's definitely true that having only bicycle infrastructure doesn't really work for families though. It's a different story if you've got a cargo bike and public transport... But it's understandable that that's not even entering his mind considering the culture of the USA.
It's only cheap because they are heavily subsidized. And then we go back to a discussion about policy. If you remove all the subsidies or make car-owners pay for the externalities, things would quickly turn in favor for higher density, public transit, and AFAIK no game has put this into their game economics.
The ongoing cost is minimal and my life would be significantly worse without the ability to drive places.
Add the cost of the gas needed to power all these cars, plus the cost of the land allocated solely for parking, plus the costs of the roads, plus the costs in healthcare associated with air pollution, plus the environmental cost of all the concrete and steel need to build and maintain the roads, etc.
It's not just "car ownership", it's "car-centric infrastructure" that is expensive.
But you'd need less of them.
> The majority of the wear on them isn't from passenger vehicles.
Correct, but irrelevant. The I-93 around Boston does not have 4-6 lanes each way because they have lots of trucks during rush hour.
The size of a traditional road is about 6 metres wide or less (that's measured from the front wall of the building on one side, to the front wall of the building on the opposite side). In comparison, the same wall-to-wall measure of a car-centric suburban street comes out to, IIRC, 20-30 metres. That's 3-5x the cost in just land alone, let alone maintenance.
And yes, we will need some roads - about 20% or so, as arterial roads. But right now we're closer to 100%, and most of the throughput of arterial roads is tied up in one-occupant passenger vehicles rather than actually necessary cargo/tradie vehicles.
See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARjrpb_FOcs (skip to about 5:00 or 8:00 so get a sense of some of the redesign).
See https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/amsterdam-chil...
It looks to me like it was 100% a "think of the children" moment that often gets ridiculed. I can see the same inflection point in my country around the same time, when street and road design shifted to car orientated and car priority - Amsterdam being one of the notable exceptions but with a well documented fight.
Maddy Novich, https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/, for one, may disagree with you. Interviews:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDhJt26dQTs
And I'm not sure how many folks are about banning cars (completely), as opposed to designing things so that (two) cars go from being mandatory to optional.
People somehow perceive all of these things as trying to ban cars instead of promoting other forms of transportation.
And if you want to know right away, think about who can drive your car, as supposed being able to walk or ride somewhere. You're limiting their own personal freedom by forcing them to have you always needed to go somewhere.
It's still annoying to not have a car. I don't have kids but f I did then the first thing I would do would almost certainly be to buy a vehicle.
I see them a lot and also makes going around with kids more fun for them too!
Your feeling is the result of NYC and the entire USA being generally dysfunctional, not an inherent truth.
The data we have shows that the presence of cars is the main source of risk on the street, not the act of biking itself. Neighborhoods that design around walking and biking tend to have fewer serious accidents, not more.
If we're talking about optimizing for kids, then banning individual car use in residential neighborhoods would be the ideal. I know it’s not politically feasible in most of the US right now, but it’s worth keeping in mind that cars are the danger.
>Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars"
In other words: I was okay with demanding change when it didn't inconvenience me, but now that I get to benefit from economic policy that heavily subsidize my lifestyle I rather keep the status quo.
Here comes the flood of "but not meee" comments
But, this is why we live in the Netherlands. If all you've seen is the US I can see how you might not understand that not being car-dependent is actually better for kids.
Meanwhile my friends in the suburbs had to walk 30 minutes to get Starbucks. And it was a gruelling march without sidewalks or tree cover.
We live in a lovely leafy suburb completely car free. But it's this one - https://youtu.be/r-TuGAHR78w
This morning the four of us biked to the grocery store (we loaded the groceries in the bakfiets). The kids bike to their daycare. We bike to the train when we feel like a day out.
I can't fathom trying to raise kids somewhere we need to use a car to do anything.
Getting groceries is a particular pain in the ass; I either need to go to the (very limited) grocery selections in my neighborhood with a cart, or lug the cart up and down the stairs of the subway, or be ok with only taking as much as I'm able carry with my hands in a few bags. I could get delivery, and I do that fairly often, but there are things that I prefer to get in person, like fruits or vegetables.
There's also just large things you cannot realistically take on a train, like large sheets of plywood at Home Depot. Again, you can of course get this stuff delivered, but then you run the risk of them sending you the worst, most warped piece of wood available, which has happened to me multiple times.
I've grown to sympathize with most Americans as a result.
Stated with love out of concern for our, "whole societal family" which includes you and yours.
Relevant: https://sites.pitt.edu/~syd/ASIND.html
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/...
Maybe the problem is that the leafy suburb you moved to is car-dependent? It doesn't have to be built that way, that's a design choice. It's possible to build a low density suburb that kids can bike through safely, for example: https://youtu.be/r-TuGAHR78w
Seems very rare that people describe their families in here so I wouldn’t go to that conclusion. I didn’t even know this page had a “bio” section. Anyway, seems like a strawman to me.
It's not like Americans need to drive coast-to-coast to buy groceries or drop their kids off at school.
That's because the infrastructure doesn't exist in lots of the US, either it never existed or it got ripped out during the car boom phase.
Here in a suburb of Munich (Germany), almost everything one needs in life - all four large supermarket chains, a veterinarian, a hardware store, daycare and school for children - is walkable in less than half an hour, or 5-10 minutes with a bike.
I'll give you some examples of the kinds of things I easily did with my two bigger kids (5 and 3 years old)
- woke up on a nice Sunday morning and decided to go for a woodsy hike 20 min drive away. - threw our kayak on the roof and drove out to paddle it on the south shore, on a whim. - threw bikes into the bike rack for a long ride along a Greenway. - dropped by Grandma's house easily. - went to the Adirondacks for a week and brought our bikes and paddle board along with a bunch of other stuff.
And not directly care related but car enabled - I just opened the backyard door and they were playing there by themselves while I kept an eye from the kitchen.
The point I was making w that one is - lower density is what allows us a back yard while higher density is what supports walk-ability and transit. So maybe I can make the point in a cheekier way - your Hamptons weekend is closer to my every-day life than to your city life :)
An example that’s minor for young singles but major for parents: train stations here pretty much all have elevators and they almost always are working. This alone changes the game.
Seeing American suburbia, decades later, explained everything.
I am considering the morality of future mods, where the Sim City masses, Frog in Frogger, and characters like Ulfric Stormcloak and Paarthurnax in Skyrim, are replaced with individual persistent self-aware world-aware in-game reinforcement models. Entirely replacing game-designed behaviors (programmed reflex, caricature, or intricate) with spontaneous situation processing, needs and decisions.
Strange that this could credibly happen this decade.
Science fiction has long considered conundrums around robot rights. But the crux of the moral issues will be relevant regardless whether self-aware models have physical/3D or digital/abstract environments.
I think language is not a good prime modality for self-aware assistants. By being trained to deeply mimic us, they (already, but not yet problematically) absorb views on their identity and survival that are not at all compatible with what we will do with them.
Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996) (2023 Video Update)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34573406
https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-s...
Will Wright - Maxis - Interfacing to Microworlds - 1996-4-26
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsxoZXaYJSk
Video of Will Wright's talk about "Interfacing to Microworlds" presented to Terry Winograd's user interface class at Stanford University, April 26, 1996.
He demonstrates and gives postmortems for SimEarth, SimAnt, and SimCity 2000, then previews an extremely early pre-release prototype version of Dollhouse (which eventually became The Sims), describing how the AI models personalities and behavior, and is distributed throughout extensible plug-in programmable objects in the environment, and he thoughtfully answers many interesting questions from the audience.
This is the lecture described in "Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996)": A summary of Will Wright’s talk to Terry Winograd’s User Interface Class at Stanford, written in 1996 by Don Hopkins, before they worked together on The Sims at Maxis.
That used to be the case maybe 50 years ago, when we had the first network built in Munich.
The problem is, since then a loooooot of stuff was built underground. Not just more and more tunnels, but also so many subterranean lines for power, POTS, internet... and a lot of what was built 50 years ago was built by literally ripping open a street, excavating tunnel space, building a roof of concrete and backfilling everything with soil. You simply can do this exactly once and you need a wide enough street to do this. Once all these "cheap and easy" routes are built over, it becomes a multi-billion-dollar project as you have to make sure you don't endanger the buildings on top - in Cologne, that cost the lives of two people and destroyed a good portion of the City Archives [1].
> The property tax rate should rise or fall within a time frame that would incentivize people to vote with their feet.
People should not be forced to move, at all. Incentivizing movement, okay, but forcing people around like we do now (mostly, by not having any kind of modern jobs in rural areas) has a lot of nasty side effects - not everyone can move, so you get resentment building up against those that did move (eventually culminating in the "these librul cities turn our kids gay!!!" bullshit and, subsequently, the massive urban-rural political disconnect), and a lot of old people in rural areas end up having no one to take care of them in old(er) age, and young people in urban areas don't have kids because they don't have family to support them in raising said children.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historisches_Archiv_der_Stadt_...
Is it dated? Yep, but it's intuitive enough for nine-year-old tombert to have figured it out ok, and to me part of the fun is trying to use the UI quickly enough to put out fires and the like.
It could just rose-tinted glasses on my end, very likely honestly, but I still find the entire experience to be pretty fun. I liked Sim City 3000 and Sim City 4, and they are arguably better games, but for me Sim City 2000 hit the right balance of "easy" and "complicated" that I find myself most drawn to. I will load up Sim City 2000 about once a year off of my GOG purchase, and still thoroughly enjoy it, and find myself wasting way more hours than I budgeted for it.
Discoverability aside, it made the UI nicely compact while being easy enough to access, so the city could fill most of the screen instead.
If you haven't seen it and think it's weird to beat a city game; if you fill the entire board with Arcologies, they all become rockets and take off into space. What a thrilling science-fictional way to end the experience. Loved it.
bell-cot•4mo ago
But, being humans, the "I put away" is always a bit aspirational. And part of being older and wiser (or at least aspiring to the latter) is more maturely reflecting upon your own younger years.