this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
98 points (100.0% liked)

Canada

9952 readers
628 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Related Communities


🍁 Meta


🗺️ Provinces / Territories


🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.


🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.


💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales


🗣️ Politics


🍁 Social / Culture


Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca


founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (35 children)

Yeah, the total direct monetary cost of maintaining low-density car-dependant cities is extremely high: road construction & maintenance, plumbing and electrical, parking lots taking valuable space that could be used for housing or workplaces, insurance for personal and commercial vehicles, maintenance and upkeep, gas, and probably many more I've missed.

And on top of all of that, the externalized monetary costs are also high: medical costs from all the deaths or injuries due to collisions (the stats are honestly depressing), medical costs due to less physical activity across the population, environmental damage, time wasted due to traffic, slower delivery times for long-haul trucks, and probably many more I've missed.

And on top of all of THAT the intangible costs are also high: isolation from the people and communities directly around you, less customers for small businesses that rely on foot traffic and have no parking space, increasing polarization between urban/suburban/rural populations, and probably many more I've missed.

Side note for the people that still really need cars in their lives (workers in rural areas, people living in suburbs, etc.), pushing for better transit and city planning will directly benefit you. If less people have cars: gas prices will be lower (supply and demand), road construction and upkeep will be cheaper, traffic will be better for you directly, and more. I always fear that pro-transit, pro-urban planning folks (me included) come off as dismissive. There are definitely people who will still need cars in their lives. The goal is to catch the many millions of people who could probably replace their car usage if transit systems and cities were built better.

People will always do what is easiest/best for them, we need to keep pushing towards systems that make sense.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (34 children)

pushing for better transit

Eh, I'm still not sold on transit (for people). If you live in a well designed city, everything should be right there in front of you, no more than steps away. The need to move further than your feet (or wheelchair, if that's your thing) can reasonably allow is a straight up urban planning failure.

I can buy into the idea that, given our existing urban planning failures, it is better than nothing. As a bandaid, sure. But in the context of looking to build the world in which we want to live, why settle for bandaids? Why not go straight to building cities properly, thereby having no need to move people around with external propulsion at all?

Those in the rural parts are a harder problem, but it seems you think the car is still their best option. So, when does transit become useful?

Is it the freight transit infrastructure you see as needing improvement? It is true that, even with the best laid plans, we are not in a place to give that up yet. As interesting as vertical farms are, the technology just isn't there yet to supplant food grown in rural areas, never mind things like lumber and other commodities that aren't usually found in cities.

But when it comes to people, concentrating them close together is kind of a city's whole deal. Why then pretend it is a rural area that requires travel over long distances?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (6 children)

I think that's the goal. All of your essentials are available within walking distance, while your workplace is accessible by transit. Obviously, you can't move every time you switch jobs, so transit is still necessary. It also provides mobility for when you want to, y'know, shop at another grocery store or eat at another restaurant.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Yeah there is no possible way that everywhere a person needs to go can be within reasonable walking distance.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Fortunately, the serious advocates for more walkable cities aren't calling for absolutely everything to be within walking distance, only the most commonly accessed things.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Where do you go in a typical day or week or month? Groceries, restaurants, gyms, entertainment, maybe the doctor/dentist?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I think we are on the same page, my comment was meant to agree with you.

All of the most common essentials (groceries, pharmacy, etc.) along with some shops/restaurants have enough patronage to justify high density / be within walking distance of most people in an urban environment. While things that are farther away (both less common essentials and non-essential) should be accessible through transit.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Trouble is, if there is somewhere you need to go that is so unique that a dense city population cannot support it locally, within walking distance, you also won't have the ridership necessary to support transit to that destination. Just you sitting on the train doesn't work – even the original comment said that cars are necessary in such cases. Mass transit requires mass ridership.

Our "solution" to that problem is to make cities wannabe rural areas, where the services are many kilometres away from where the people live, requiring a trip by car/train/bus/whatever just to do anything. Then you have some guarantee of mass ridership. But having to get into a vehicle to do anything is a horrible way to live. It's the worst part of living rurally with none of the upside of living rurally. If you are going to live in a city, why not embrace it? I get having a large rural acreage is everyone's ultimate dream, but maybe it is time to accept it is not in the cards and start to love the one you're with?

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (29 replies)
load more comments (29 replies)