Car culture is more of a symptom than the cause of most of the problems.
Cars aren’t the cause of houses being identical, roads being identical, etc. A culture of trying to battle for the cheapest implementation of everything is the cause. We want the most bang for our buck for everything. You get that by lowering costs using pre fabricated parts and reusing safe ideas.
And comparing the “identity” of cultures that existed for thousands of years to that of the Americas is arguing in bad faith on the topic. The push to drive things to be cheaper has been priority for a much greater portion of our history.
Homogenization of culture isn’t a lot of “bang for my buck.” In fact I’d say it’s actually extracting a lot of value out of culture for the sake of someone else’s profit. In a word commodification.
Yep! We can see in some archaeological sites where pottery and plates went from a luxury to a mass produced commodity. Its fucking awesome, if you ask me. I wouldnt mind more, not less similarities. Once it looks like commie blocks we can stop and add some paint or a facade.
You’re right, when I left that comment I hadn’t watched the video. Now that I have, I feel like I’m covered in awkward teenage angst.
The video gives examples of “look at these cities with thousands of years of culture compared to cities in North America.”
And doesn’t highlight any of the benefits cars bring. Heres some arbitrary arguments (to keep in the style of the video):
Person needs to do a midnight move from an abusive situation, but can’t because they have to wait for the bus/train and can only carry on a few belongings.
Person needs medical care, not ambulance worthy, but can’t stand on a train for an hour.
Hit rock bottom and lost your shelter? You can sleep in your car. It’s way better than a train station.
Want to go camping/hike/climb anywhere? Public transit can’t accommodate everyone’s schedule/place to be.
Agree though, we need a better solution for parking.
None of the places outside North America mentioned in the video have completely banned cars. The video is mostly talking about reducing car dependence and increasing options for transport rather than banning them completely.
Also every situation you mentioned can be solved with a taxi or rental car. We can still do those things without having to drive everywhere for everything.
Yeah but all taxis look the same, most have a monopoly or at best an oligopoly in major cities. Doesn’t that “rob us of our individualism?” and ability to break free of massive corporations/governments?
Why rely on yet another corporation for a car when I can just use my own at any time on a whim?
Right, leave it to our very efficient and trustworthy governments to create non restrictive 15 min cities that everyone will enjoy lol. What could go wrong?
This ideology could be astroturfed fossil fuel propaganda, but electric cars are being mandated in most countries. Fossil fuel corps won’t hold on to a battle they’re already losing.
The 15 min city “conspiracy theory” comes from people not wanting government over reach, especially since these govs are considering centralized digital currencies. This needs to be addressed.
Otherwise we’re going to trade one dystopia for another.
It seems that I could only find about 18 countries with mandates. That hardly accounts for most of them. There have been an increasing effort to make them but that doesn’t really show that fossil fuel companies are in a losing battle. If anything, they’ve gone up.
I don’t see how the conspiracy, which is what is is, has anything to do with government overreach and digital currencies. The conspiracies usually go into weird territory about being cut off from using your car or similar nonsense. Creating a walkable city is really very easy to do once you weed out the political roadblocks, which is of course much easier said than done. The end result wouldn’t be limiting people’s movement. If anything it would be expanding it when done right.
You do have a point that it can be nearly impossible depending on the country or the city and how much of a grip corporate interests have. My own country has done pretty well with what you might call “15 minute cities.” It probably helps that local government or the cities that built the way they are don’t have a strong multinational presence in them.
Would those 18 countries be considered “first world”? Car manufacturers don’t have the capacity to make a different vehicle for every country, it’s operated more by continents with a couple exceptions. So a few large economies kind of get to decide for everyone.
Our older vehicles often end up in poorer countries. I’d actually never thought about this implication before, but those poorer countries will struggle to get any electric infrastructure up and might be worse off. Hopefully not.
The 15 min city idea doesn’t have good publicity, especially when you see Shanghai attempting it with their social credit system.
Ultimately, we need a way to regulate the regulators, without restricting peoples movement or current freedoms. I think we both agree on this. I’m all for a greener, less congested cities if it can be done, but it needs to be a careful transition period with intensive, neutral, and transparent planning so we don’t end up with tyrants running the show. I still don’t think cars are the enemy here though.
The 15 minute cities conspiracy theory came from covid deniers who, when it became clear that governments weren’t trying to instate perpetual lockdowns, needed a new thing to latch on to and came up with the idea of “climate lockdowns”.
The actual 15 minutes cities idea is literally just to have the things you need daily within a 15 minute walk of your home. It’s pretty sensible and not harmful to your mobility at all. But now the guy that came up with the idea gets death threats because of people spreading this bullshit.
Most things aren’t created out of malice, like the 15 min city idea. Communism was created in the same light, people trying to come up with a better system.
If we don’t do these kinds of things very carefully though, it will be exploited. Obviously death threats aren’t the answer, but there is legit cause for concern here
I’m concerned we’ll all be stuffed into little apartments, with “everything we need” in a 500m radius. That’s going to be a disaster if the wrong people get into power. There’s a reason the Canadian Charter of Rights includes “free movement”.
Imagine if “the wrong people” got into power and restricts the access to oil. How many days do you survive before starving cause you can’t even walk to a super market?
Lol man, if oil was shut down tomorrow so would the super markets. They’d have stock for like 2 days before there isn’t a super market to walk to anymore
The current status quo in most of the US and Canada is that in large areas nothing but large single family houses are allowed to be built, which forces people into spending thousands a year on their cars to get anywhere. The alternative being proposed is building areas that can have a mix of housing types and uses, so people can live without needing a car to get anywhere, not to stop being from having cars and going places.
I assume your mention of Shanghai is referring to their COVID lockdowns, which I also think were too severe, but as far as I am aware have completely ended. This was also in response to a virus, and has nothing to do with urban design.
My mention of Shanghai was how they have a horrible ruling class, that has implemented a Social Credit Score. Do or say something they don’t like? No more taking the train out of the city. People become bound to the zone they are designated. Sounds a little dystopian no?
The large single houses thing is not true either, I live in Canada and my neighborhood has big corps sweeping through buying properties and building cookie cutter condos in place of the houses. Many don’t even have parking
There’s a lot you could criticise about the Chinese government, and yet you choose more conspiracy theories. The social credit score in the way that you speak of it comes from a misunderstanding of a vaguely worded Chinese policy document, which lead to various pilot projects by some companies, cities and ministries which have all been conflated into one thing. Here’s a good video which goes over the whole thing which I’m sure you won’t watch but will still have many opinions about.
The issue you describe in Canada is part of the problem that I describe. Here’s a zoning map of Vancouver for example:
In all of the yellow areas, only single family homes and duplexes can be built, which have very low densities. This means anytime there is space where something more dense can be built, the most dense thing possible is built. If there was less restrictive zoning which allowed more mixed uses across the area, what’s known as missing middle housing, that is all of the other housing types in between single family homes and large condo towers, could be built.
Thank you for enlightening me on the Social Credit Score, it’s good to know it’s only court ordered in cases where people aren’t allowed to take the train or fly. That’s still not great though. I work under some (overly nepotistic) execs for a corp and they use similar vague style tactics. It’s honestly both a weapon and a shield that leaves the players powerless and the game masters with too much control. I wouldn’t want a country run this way.
I also think of people like Xu Xiaodong who had his score reduced to “D” until he paid $40,000USD for calling a fake martial artist a fraud ಠ_ಠ. The courts in China are another discussion though. I’m just saying there is too much room for weaponization in scenarios like this. If it can be exploited, it will.
The missing middle housing stuff does look interesting, and I see your point with it. If it doesn’t impede peoples sunlight or take away yards/gardens while mixing buildings like that, it might be a good solution that we could agree on.
I never said roads, I said car centric infrastructure. You can have roads without being car centric. And elaborating on that, car centric infrastructure restrict the movement on everyone who don’t drive, for example poor people who can’t afford a car, gas, insurance… or younger people who can’t drive yet, or older and people with disabilities that can’t safely drive.
How does it impede on those who can’t drive? Because they’re not allowed to move as freely as someone with a car? How would taking away everyone’s car help that scenario?
have you ever been to an American city? everything is at the service of roads, cars, and space to park the cars. we have thoroughfares through residential neighborhoods, monstrous intersections that are unsafe to cross by foot, infrastructure that’s unsafe to use by any mode of transportation that isn’t a car – because the cars will run you over – and it’s all wildly more expensive and less efficient than a functioning public transportation system. think of it like this – if more people can get where they need to go by public transit, the roads won’t be so congested.
Right, the road won’t be so congested, but you have to run on a specific schedule and only go to specific places.
You have to pay for all of this somehow too, be it through fares at a toll or taxed by your gov. It won’t be any cheaper running transit. Maybe even more expensive, because they still have to maintain the roads, but now the cost of vehicle repair is on the gov/Corp and not the individual. More tolls or more taxes.
a functioning public transit system covers the whole city, nearly point to point, and it runs on a regular schedule with buses and trains arriving every few minutes.
but who’s going to pay for it???
it’s really a good thing no one has ever run the numbers on this and there’s absolutely no literature analyzing the costs of various forms of public infrastructure to determine which is the most cost effective. there’s no way at all anyone has ever done that.
Car centric infrastructure makes everything apart, so you can’t walk anywhere, public transit is unfeasible because the low density, and biking is extremely dangerous. They are not only not allowed to move “as freely”, they cannot movebat all. I don’t know where you get this “taking everyone’s car”, you’re the only one talking about it. You can can have infrastructure that is inclusive to everyone, even people with cars.
The person under an abusive situation easily loses the car key to the abuser.
Ambulances get stuck all the time in congestioned cities and that’s a problem.
A car should never be someone’s night shelter, that person is homeless in that case. Houses, not cars, can solve the problem.
Want to do a special trip where car is the most convenient option? You can rent one out. If you only use a car a few times a year, buying one is a terrible waste of money and street space.
You’re playing semantics and missing the point, but whatever, let’s play.
There’s a good chance the victim has a friend or someone they trust that could drive. In your world, they still have to wait for the fucking bus or at a sketchy train station at 2am - both on a public schedule that everyone’s aware of, including the abuser.
What about my not ambulance worthy scenario? Again are they just going to stand on the train with a broken foot? Otherwise yes, ambulances can run into congestion which isn’t great, but more that’s more of an engineering issue.
I’ve slept in my car, even with houses for rent and homeless shelters I could’ve stayed at (they sound better on paper than they are in person).
For those “special trips” I use it a lot more than twice a year lol. I should also mention my vehicle is a cheap POS so I’m not driving some fancy ass truck around. I’m also willing to pay more for the convenience of not having to go to a rental store every time, while having to lug equipment around. Rental stores are lump summed too, at least in ownership I can spread the cost out to maintain some cash flow
Add comment