zlacker

>>amathe+(OP)
The issue of quiting cars is nowadays far from just a matter of values as the article seems to be implying.

Cars are by now a hard to reverse environmental and urban planning disaster across the world. We are stuck with them. As a mode of transport it has grown uncontrollably at the expense of all others (except the airplane) and practically everything has been shaped to accomodate it.

Reversing that development, limiting car traffic to where its really needed is like trying to perform a complete heart and arteries transplant on a living person. Even if there was a will (which there is not) it is not clear if there is a way.

In the best scenario it will be an excruciatingly long transformation (~50 yr) as car oriented cities (or city sections) get slowly deprecated and the car-free or car-lite segments become more desirable, more livable.

>>nologi+Mz1
The silliest mistake I see wasn't creating suburbs but shoving roads into denser cities. In some cases this was the result of corporate lobbying, like in Los Angeles. Wastes like 1/3 of the space and ruins the enjoyment of living there, so people prefer suburbs instead in most places.

The little success I keep thinking of is downtown Mountain View during/after covid19 lockdowns. They shut down the roads, so people walk around and interact. Some still drive to there and park on the perimeter of that big walking area. If they keep this kind of thing up, making these areas desirable to live in and growing them, things will become more consolidated. Eventually with those fewer "point masses," public transit can go between them. Doesn't make sense currently because there are just too many destinations.

Meanwhile those who really want to live in suburbs and drive around can still do it. They could even drive to the dense areas and park. They'd just be missing out.

>>hot_gr+YG1
There are two aspects to this story.

For one, large arterials were placed where the most marginalized in society lived so that they couldn't protest. Historically black neighborhoods and poor white neighborhoods were flattened to accommodate large arterials.

The other is sprawl. Newer arterials, built after the problematic era, started out as state highways designed for transport. Once interstates were built, due to height and FAR limits in residential and commercial zones, new development sprawled out, sometimes onto these state highways which now had interstate alternatives. Naturally it was mostly low cost housing or commercial real estate as those are the most likely uses that would work adjacent to a large arterial.