I think there’s a lot of overlap. The article seems a bit conflicted even from that perspective. It talks about “We shouldn’t post articles about the netherlands and denmark because people will respond with ‘we arn’t europeans’” and then says we should be posting about france and paris? Even trying to talk about places like New York and Vancover will illicit the same backwards culturally framed response(something that was brought up by the article itself). Which leaves me with wondering what the point it’s trying to make in the first place?
It’s very easy to cycle with arguments with people and how to push people towards urbanism (We can’t live without cars → response: Well france is pushing towards it, and netherlands and denmark to a great degree, and places like new york, vancover(iirc), and china(if we want to talk about willingness and effectiveness at building rail infra, ignoring some other stuff) can be living examples of how that isn’t the case → well arn’t x location we (are less dense/have too much car industry influence/etc) => response China is extremely sparse and they still have good rail, most parts of the us with the majority of the population demonstrably are dense enough, most eurpean examples went through the process of caring up, and then decaring, if you think we have too much influence the next step is determining how to dismantle that not giving up or refusing to acknowledge you’re part of the problem, etc => response: well this is how it is and I/we can’t live without cars.
This is of course highlighting the most obstinent examples. In specific and a more widespread sense though, I think it is possible to show that people can be convinced as we repeatedly highlight talking points and examples from all of these arguments. It’s not a “only talk about netherlands and biking”, but netherlands and biking are part of trying to push a broader narrative that pushes towards smarter cities and anti car rheteric.
In the same sense, that assumes that an important part of pushing for this is converting people into urbanists. I think this is the case to some degree. I wouldn’t follow the advice of obstinant bad faith actors and pretend we have to convert everyone into a urbanist before we engauge in urbanist public projects and reorientation, but it’s obviously a factor. The trap here is we can get ourselves(and communities) into equally determanistic/hard to break mental loops. (How do we get urbanist projects started and reorient away from cars => we elect officials willing to dismantle the incentives for cars and build pedestrian/public transit infra => how do we do that? => we convince people to be urbanist to vote for urbanists/we convince elected officials that it’s safe to support initiatives and they’ll have the support they need after the fact. This runs into problems w/ the earlier one because people have material reasons to continue their patterns, and the latter because sometimes it causes those officials to become un-elected and sometimes these efforts are actually stymied or rolled back. It also assumes they are convinceable etc etc.).
To take a step back. It’s easy to get into loops of trying to understand the best move to make and how to push for outcomes. I’m not entirely sure what the articles point is and even if it is “we shouldn’t be talking about the netherlands” it’s points seem weak, or simular to bad faith rheteric.
The people forcing the changes are generally the people who are already extremely receptive to “let’s look at what other countries are doing” as a general rule.
Don’t underestimate the true private and public cost of even a single small and efficient car. If a suburban person could get all that money back in their pocket they could probably afford something pretty ludicrous, like NYC rent or something.
Normally I don’t want to link to the podcast from which this thread gets its name. However, the newest episode is an interview with author Jessie Singer about their book “There Are No Accidents.” Obviously haven’t read this book that is so new, but this episode is very very strong. If you listen to only one episode of this podcast, or have to get some pro-car person to listen to only one episode, I think this is the one.
Feels slightly “NIMBYish” to me based on the responses. I mean in the kind of self centered way nimby’s tend to think and also doesn’t match the “how would the world work if everyone made these rules” test. Like, I’m not sure why locals “deserve” exemptions, especially given the way these sorts of zones(for example new york city) are centered on the wealthiest parts of cities. Exemptions for through traffic feels a little awkward given the way locals and others rely on other neighborhoods for through traffic. Sometimes these sorts of measures(I know such measures, either through law or design) are put into effect in suburbs for the same reason. I know they tend to favor car design and sfh’s more, but it doesn’t sit well with me for people to come into a stance which I feel they’d be upset if other people took the same stance.
Maybe it all works well and fine who knows, but it bares the marks of some maybe too generous exceptions especially if the goal is to push people out of cars and to use pub transit, biking, and walking.
Not much difference here on that, I can see that it covers parts of the 7th and 6th Arrondissements, which start wealthy and only get wealthier closer to the river, As well as parts of the 5th and almost the entirety of the 1st through 4th, all of which range from very pricey to holy shit I didn’t know you could charge that much for an apartment. Hell, just about the only truly wealthy part of paris that I can see, from my rough-and-ready grasp of paris, that they’re not including is the 16th, but that’s far enough out and old money enough that generally the cars required by the poors are not a problem.
This has been discussed before, but this has a lot more stats on people buying trucks and not using them.
Example:
According to Edwards’ data, 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raisond’être—once a year or less.
Imagine a person buying a bulldozer and driving it to the grocery store, and never dozing anything. This situation isn’t really any less preposterous.
This is very timely. There’s been a rash of wrong way drivers on freeways here in Utah recently, 3 just this weekend alone! Seeing the headlines or content of the reporting calling these “accidents” is maddening. It is also not helping something I’ve been thinking of more and more ever since Covid-19 has highlighted how much the deliberate decisions and lack of care for others of those around us can cause real and significant harm to anyone else they encounter, to wit: it’s pretty nuts that we drive down two-lane roads with vehicles approaching each other at incredible closing speeds with no divider preventing one vehicle from simply veering into the oncoming lane at any moment.
It’s kind of like that irrational feeling that many people get (myself included) when approaching the edge of a tall building or cliff that “I hope I don’t suddenly fall or jump off this edge!”, only that hope must be placed in the person driving the oncoming vehicle and it happens all the time and very quickly!
Quick clarification on this, because it’s come up before in some circles, and I think the clarification is interesting. This isn’t to say the ups shouldn’t be buying electric vehicles(for example), and/or more efficient vehicles. But if you’ve seen the mpg number (8.5 mpg vs the old 8.2 mpg), it’s based on a custom “cycle” that accounts for the inefficiencies in starting and stopping the vehicle every 20 feet or so instead of regular city driving or regular highway driving, which is extremely fuel inefficient. Arguably it get’s more efficient as well(war on suburbs!!) if you have like, a reasonable mail room or something instead of rows on rows of single family homes with kentucky bluegrass(although I guess it maybe doesn’t matter really from a mpg standpoint only on a gallons per mailbox metric or something).
That’s a really weird cycle. I personally have never seen a mailman drive a little bit stop, get out, deliver mail, get back in the truck, drive to the next house, repeat.
I’ve always seen them pull up to a block of houses, chill in their van for 20 minutes, get out, walk the block, deliver mail to each house, go back to van, get more mail, repeat.
I’ve lived in cities, villages, and extremely rural areas, but not suburbs, is this a burbs thing?
