If I'm being honest, this list is really daunting. I had no idea that so much red tape stood between North America and pedestrian (i.e. human) friendly places.
"Here's what people said:" before the actual list was super annoying.
> Allow single‑stair buildings up to 6 stories
This seemed like a terrible suggestion, but it caused me to google it and now I see it's not that terrible.
I didn't fully understand all of these, and some are clearly specific to California. I also worry about some of these opening the floodgates for greedy developers (a lot of existing laws are due to some developer doing something ridiculous, collapsing, and leaving the municipality holding the bag).
These are all great, I love city life and would embrace every single item, but without addressing the dramatic decline in public safety in virtually all US cities, none of these will matter at all.
- If you throw your trash anywhere except the bin you get punished
- If you shout into your phone you get punished
- If you intentionally break or deface anything you get punished
If your city is full of drug addicts and anti-social people not a single thing you are going to do about zoneing will make it more "walkable". This stuff is so completely delusional. People use cars to get away from the total dysfunction and danger of cities.
This is a great start to an evidence database. The next step should be adding evidence and contextual details explaining why each claim is true, perhaps in a table.
My dream is for my section of my town to ban cars. It’s already heavy pedestrian but if the cars went away (and everyone had to walk or e-bike or mobility scooter in the zone) it would be a utopia. Sure there’d be some issues to address and frustrations but we’d figure it out. The net would be amazingly positive.
For the young people, 20 years ago the line was "nobody is coming for your cars you stupid conspiracy theorist", etc. Now such people, including actual politicians, have absolutely no issue openly advocating for the straight up banning of cars.
It's not specific to the car issue either, it's many issues. They lie to your face and gaslight you for years on end as to their true motivations, while they slowly pry the door further and further open for their ideology, until they've finally garnered enough support that they can switch phases and now be open about their true goals.
I'm not quite sure what the end plan is, since they're forever burning bridges with people like me. I guess they plan on the newest generations having the viewpoint forced on them from a young age, overriding people like me who are quite disgruntled.
I don't know why more municipalities don't jump on this. In my area (I live in the US) we have a number of neighborhoods that are very walk-able and they are consistently the most competitive areas for housing. In all the spots, homes are expensive and that's even if they make it on the market because hardly anyone wants to sell when they live in a place like this.
The people who live in these areas dont want these things, and they control local politics. Typical hypocritical bullshit, "I can have my nice things but if anyone else does Ill be inconvenienced".
My town has some people obsessed with "walkability" and the want to take the ONLY alternative to I 80/94/6/US 41 down to one lane each way... People will die if they get there way, as ambulance and fire vehicles become mired in congestion.
Not to mention that the weather for walking is only present for about 20 days per year.
Walking everywhere isn't a practical for most people in the Calumet Region of Indiana.
There are reasonable sidewalks already present and crossing buttons on the lights where needed. I've actually used them on occasion.
I don't see the need to push walkability further at the cost of everyone who passes through the area on the interstate.
The focus on ground-level retail as opposed to multi-story retail is a bit disappointing. This Substack post from Noah Smith does a really great job explaining why density for retail is also an important part of creating walkable neighborhoods: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/a-better-way-to-build-a-downto...
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 35.6 ms ] thread> Allow single‑stair buildings up to 6 stories
This seemed like a terrible suggestion, but it caused me to google it and now I see it's not that terrible.
I didn't fully understand all of these, and some are clearly specific to California. I also worry about some of these opening the floodgates for greedy developers (a lot of existing laws are due to some developer doing something ridiculous, collapsing, and leaving the municipality holding the bag).
Overall I like the direction, though.
- No drug addicts
- No homeless people
- No drunks
- If you throw your trash anywhere except the bin you get punished
- If you shout into your phone you get punished
- If you intentionally break or deface anything you get punished
If your city is full of drug addicts and anti-social people not a single thing you are going to do about zoneing will make it more "walkable". This stuff is so completely delusional. People use cars to get away from the total dysfunction and danger of cities.
A good model is here: https://www.college.police.uk/research/crime-reduction-toolk...
It's not specific to the car issue either, it's many issues. They lie to your face and gaslight you for years on end as to their true motivations, while they slowly pry the door further and further open for their ideology, until they've finally garnered enough support that they can switch phases and now be open about their true goals.
I'm not quite sure what the end plan is, since they're forever burning bridges with people like me. I guess they plan on the newest generations having the viewpoint forced on them from a young age, overriding people like me who are quite disgruntled.
Not to mention that the weather for walking is only present for about 20 days per year.
Walking everywhere isn't a practical for most people in the Calumet Region of Indiana.
There are reasonable sidewalks already present and crossing buttons on the lights where needed. I've actually used them on occasion.
I don't see the need to push walkability further at the cost of everyone who passes through the area on the interstate.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_Town%E2%80%93Peter_...
They're all able to be distilled into patterns (or antipatterns). Someone actually wrote a book on it.