Was this an edited title, or some A/B testing? Because the title I see is Can Car-free Living Make You Happier?, and what is described in the article is hardly a town, but more like an oversized apartment complex.
Yeah this place again. I mean kudos on trying something new, but it's basically condos/apartments with no parking, and surrounded by rest of Tempe, AZ. It's puffing this up to be something it's not.
It's interesting that rather than walking everywhere and getting busses they seem to have gone with ebikes. I've found in practice that kind of thing is a very pleasant way to get around. Unlike walking/busses it's pretty quick. Also unlike non electric bikes it's kind of effortless which is good for older people - I'm 60 and find non electric a bit tiring now. And unlike cars parking isn't really a problem. Also unlike motorcycles, limiting the speed to 15-20 mph makes it mostly non fatal accident wise.
Before we had cars, we had cities with general stores and stores for every need. Later when cars were in use trucks carried goods to Walmart and other big box stores that put the smaller stores out of business.
I haven’t read the article but a town without cars implies that I’ll have to live in close proximity to a lot of people. Which means it’s apartment and condo living or living with no significant backyards. Both of these would be immediate dealbreakers for me.
If you don't want to live near people, maybe you don't want to live in a town.
But for people that live in towns, they shouldn't live in environments built for cars rather than people.
I'm European and lived in Columbus, Ohio for a period and traveled the US a bit and I just can't understand how can people do not recognize those cities are barely livable, walkable let alone enjoyable.
At the end of the day it's a matter of trade offs and I have nothing against people willing to live in car oriented cities, I'm just surprised that it's like that literally everywhere bar some downtowns I've seen like Boston (but my memory may fail me), there should be more variety of city planning, rather than isolated buildings with countless parkings everywhere.
Also, cars are really bad for health, even if they are not gas powered tires create tons of dust. If you've lived in a city and a country you know the difference in dirt in them, and it's largely car dependent.
> If you don't want to live near people, maybe you don't want to live in a town.
You're right. The problem is all of the people saying things to the effect of "we need to ban low-density single-family housing to save the environment" who want to keep us from living how we want.
As one of those people, I'll clarify what they actually mean. Banning single-family homes in a vast majority of places is unnecessary. We need to ban exclusive zoning for single-family homes and allow more dense housing within those zones. Want to build a single-family home in this theoretical zone? Go ahead! There's already a single-family home in that zone? Go ahead and buy it! Want to build a duplex or triplex? Currently, that wouldn't be allowed, but I think it should be. While we're at it, allow small corner stores, maybe a local pub or restaurant within the residential zone (emphasis on small here, I don't want a Walmart, but something the size of a bodega would be nice). Banning single-family housing in most places in the US is not necessary, economic incentives can determine what should be built. In the sticks, single family, in the town center, multi family or apartments. It's about having the freedom to build what you want, instead of forcing others' hand into single-family.
> Banning single-family homes in a vast majority of places is unnecessary.
> Banning single-family housing in most places in the US is not necessary
Why do you qualify those statements with "most" and "a vast majority of"? Are there places where you do want to only allow high-density housing and totally ban single-family homes?
I guess the question is do we think twice as many tornadoes a year and billions of dollars in coastal property lost is a fair trade off for a small percentage of people getting to live in the sticks.
Seems easy if you're not the one paying for the cleanup I guess, except if you're a taxpayer then ultimately you will be.
Automobiles, especially if they’re electric contribute relatively little to overall climate change (6-9% currently for ICE vehicles). Your proposed justification is a ridiculous reason to force people to live in coops.
A walkable city and a coop are not the same thing, but anyway here are some more justifications.
Even if you discount CO2, cars still produce a lot of plastic waste in the form of tyre wear, estimated as about 9% of that currently produced (https://www.systemiq.earth/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Breaki...). EVs actually produce _more_ of this because of their weight.
Cars are also the primary source of noise pollution (again, even EVs) and are responsible for a considerably number of deaths (number 1 cause of deaths outside of disease). Road maintainance is also one of the highest financial burdens on towns, to the extent that towns actually are unable to pay for their own road maintainance at all and taxes from people living in cities needs to make up the shortfall. A massive reduction in driving would constitute an enormous cost reduction for the federal government, allowing taxes to be allocated to other sectors.
Maybe none of these seem particularly compelling by itself, but taken together it adds up to a lot of reasons to reduce car reliance to whatever extent we can.
The ecological impact of the transitive hull of car infrastructure is far greater. Consider sand and lithium extraction, noise and particulate pollution.
In an ideal car-less city, public transportation should be adequate in moving people from their neighborhoods to places that are walkable. You can have your ideal home while still living in a place that doesn't prioritize 2-ton death machines over actual people.
If public transportation is beneficial to a city, you've already missed the ideal mark by a long shot. The ideal city has no need for movement of people over distances where mechanical movement is the only practical option.
That's not really realistic though, you shouldn't need to use "mechanical movement" _every day_ but that's a far cry from never needing it at all. At the very least if you ever want to go somewhere else you're going to need a way to get to an airport (or I guess in this ideal utopia a train station).
Why is it not realistic? If you feel the need to leave, is it really the ideal city? It seems that you're hung up on imagining the shitty cities of today, except without cars, not anything resembling an ideal city.
First, make sure enough of it is natural habitat for animals so people don't have to drive to national parks outside the city to gain some contact with nature.
Fine if you are young, able-bodied, don't need medical care, and don't mind living with the sights, sounds, and smells of a lot of other people. Not to mention the algorithmic rent hikes and whatever restrictions the landlord imposes.
Found the person who wants to pretend mobility scooters or elevators (both electric), don't exist. Nor townhomes/condominiums. Never been to Europe or even Washington DC, where people somehow still survive.
Emergency/delivery vehicles are usually given a pass in these kind of designs as well.
I don't think your comment on being young and able-bodied follows. I certainly know people who can't drive due to their disabilities; I've never met someone who could drive but couldn't use some kind of personal mobility device (walker, scooter, wheelchair, etc.). Presumably medical care would be available via public transit, ambulances would be an obvious exception to a ban on cars, and your doctor's office would be in your neighborhood.
I suppose if you can't stand other people then living in a community would be an issue, but the majority of people tend to enjoy being around other people. Then densities required for being car-free aren't that high regardless.
I'm not really sure how such a place would be more susceptible to algorithms and bad landlords than anywhere else.
People around is great. People around in great density tends to breed problems instead. Your parent is probably thinking density. Like lots of 3 storey plus buildings with paper thin walls and ceilings. In dense urban development.
You can like people and community all you want but if that's all over the place you are gonna breed interpersonal issues. You have to be a very tolerant person to endure that.
And for the record, yes, not everyone likes non family people being that close. I am OK with my neighbors doing whatever they want if I can't hear their loud bass all afternoon and night time. But if it feels like their every weekend (or worse weeknight) is happening right in my bedroom then yeah I "can't stand people".
For one, which large cities in NA have any of that? They've got buildings that are not new all over.
Also, what is "new"? I've lived in buildings built in the last 10-15 years that were definitely still paper thin.
Heck we have several tens of meters between us and the neighbors house and we can hear them sometimes.
The other thing is for example balconies. There's not a thermal or insulated wall new building thing in the world that is gonna save you from your downstairs neighbor chain smoking on the balcony all hours of the day. You can't sit outside in the afternoon or on the weekend enjoying life. You can't sleep with the window open (fresh cool air required for proper sleep).
At least because you live in a city without cars you can have the window open during the night without noise pollution, right? We'll sorta because the neighborhood youth is out three stories below, gathering and having "fun" while you are trying to get the baby go to sleep before you yourself pass out from exhaustion. All the while annoying the elderly couple three balconies over with baby cries yourself.
For some years we lived in a rowhouse development about a mile outside the Washington, DC, beltway. It would be difficult to overstate the general shoddiness of the construction, which was from the early 1980s. But with the firewalls, we rarely heard the neighbors--we could just hear one household's TV from a corner of the basement. Now, there were a handful of times, averaging perhaps every other year, when somebody would have a loud late party.
So there are two solutions to the noise problem, better sound isolation or putting dwellings further apart. Why have you decided that one solution is an obvious winner over the other? I really think you need to inspect your own assumptions.
The examples they gave really can't be mitigated with insulation, unless you want to turn all these apartments into isolated bubbles, completely cut off from the environment. I mean you could probably do that, no balconies, no windows.
I think you would be surprised at how far sound can travel through steel and concrete.
As for putting dwelling further apart, that's why we have the suburbs.
You are conveniently ignoring the parts of my post that have no solution in sound insulation at all: fresh air in both window and balcony and smell (which in my example isn't just fish smell like in sibling posts but actually carcinogenic as well).
Look I don't mind if you want to live with those things. No issues at all. If you love it, go for it.
Just don't make me do it.
And yes I've lived in properly built concrete apartments where I did not hear my neighbors at all and I had no balcony and I was able to open my windows without issue. Not in NA and I had one of the very luckily located apartments out of like 100 in that building.
I've also lived in concrete apartments with a balcony and all the problems I described earlier. Never again as long as I can help it.
Why have you decided that the other is the winner?
When Boeing or Airbus announce a new airplane, they come up with all sorts of luxurious concepts that would make air travel less miserable if not enjoyable. We all know damn well that the airlines aren't going to do any of that except maybe for first class. Housing is the same. Cheap out on everything, pack 'em in, profit. Then when there's a big fire or it all falls down, close up and start again under a different name.
Consolidated reply to you and a few others: Speaking here as an older-than-average HNer caring for an elderly parent. Not all doctors are equal, if the local is a lemon, it is usually a distance to the next one. Then, there are specialists and worst-case, hospitals. Public transit is awful in the US and not nearly reliable or safe enough for medical transport, especially of the elderly. There are senior transport vans but they require scheduling, there are restrictions on which cities they go to, and there can be delays. I don't use rideshares but I'm betting that they're not geared towards riders that need extra time and maybe help getting all the way to the door and then into the house. All added stress for the senior citizen. Ambulances are ruinously expensive. I'm extremely happy that I can drive her where she needs to go.
Being around people and being on top of them are two entirely different situations. I lived in apartments until a late age when I could afford to put down roots. They were ill built, insulated, and ventilated then and getting worse. When remote neighbors made fish, I gagged all the same. Navigating cramped parking lots, dealing with stolen packages and mail, and having the musical choices of others thrust on me? I can do without that and a lot more.
We have family members that lived in a huge SoCal apartment complex for a few years. One is in a wheelchair and the development had some mandated ADA units. Every year they had to move to a new apartment within the complex to /minimize/ the rent increase. Minimize. They tried to negotiate with the faceless corporation that said no negotiations were possible. Pay to stay or pay a little less to move. They eventually left for NorCal where they could purchase a home.
These developments are put up by, whaddya whaddya, developers. They are cheaping out on quality so the units are smaller, the walls are thinner, and the ventilation just good enough to pass. Enshittification is everywhere. And, just like the new generation of malls, any public and semi-private spaces are governed by heavy restrictions on what can be done (not much) and what can't (quite a bit).
There's a YT channel, I forget the name, that had lots of vids on "It's better in Amsterdam" because the 30-something creator could bike to his grocer and cafe. Lots of repeated clips of the same bike going down the same flat path in good weather to a shop or restaurant. I'm for livable, walkable cities but I soon had enough and blocked the guy.
On the other hand, I live in Switzerland and I see the apartment buildings around (it's a village) with large balconies and terraces, only a couple of stories high and well insulated, with services for the elderly available around the clock, public transport close to home even at night, and they are built by, whaddya whaddya, developers. So please don't dismiss something just because it's not working in the States. It IS possible and it EXISTS already, whatever you block the messengers or not. And if you folks keep your eyes closed or keep saying "not possible here" you will never have it either. Never.
It's possible, like every molecule in the room suddenly collecting in one corner of it. Just highly unlikely. Public anything in the US is a four letter word thanks to decades of assaults. Value extraction from the many for a few is the sole goal.
Glad it worked in Switzerland. Our demographics, scale, and politics are just a tad different.
I think the idea is large pedestrian only paths, interruptible in rare occasions by emergency vehicles or for moving large things (perhaps car priority during very limited hours?)
If you watch film of early cars, people still happily walked amongst them. The problem isn't so much with cars themselves, but with increasingly impatient people; the intensifying rat race.
Counterpoint: You stay able-bodied by exercising, and young by stimulating your brain with sights, sounds and smells. And rent hikes happen everywhere.
You stay a healthier old by stimulating your brain with etc. I get a fair bit of exercise and a fair bit of stimulation, but I don't think that anyone would call me young.
Technically. What would be the point of said exception, though? If personal vehicle use is exchanged for taxis, you will still have more or less the same number of cars on the road, doing nothing to solve the apparent problem.
I mean, you could grant taxi use only under certain circumstances (e.g. medical need), but then the taxi isn't really an option for general use. And in that case, you could apply the same restrictions on personal vehicles, rendering the exception for taxis alone to be rather pointless (unless you are trying to subsidize your taxi operator friends, I suppose).
Let's actually approach this from good faith, shall we?
The point is to try to remove car travel as much as is possible, even if that isn't 100%. You can build a city where everything you need on a day to day basis is within walking or cycling distance, and nearly everything else can be got to easily with public transport. There will almost certainly be some edge cases though. Replacing everyones commute with walking or cycling or public transport gets rid of something like 50% of cars on the road. Doing the same with shopping trips is probably another 80% of what remains, so just doing that is already a significant improvement (numbers pulled out of my ass but they seem realistic). If you only need to use a car once a _month_ then suddenly the economy of owning one yourself becomes very questionable next to just getting a taxi on those rare occasions, or hiring one if you need to drive somewhere not so ideal.
So there would still be cars on the road, but it would be very far from the same number of cars.
None of this explains the car ban. Yeah, make cites more walkable. That's just logical. These wannabe rural areas we call cities today are hilariously nonsensical. But you don't need to ban cars to get there. And if we hypothetically assume for the sake of discussion that you do need to ban cars to get there, then exempting taxis won't help as people will simply replace their personal vehicle use with taxis, negating the hypothetical pressure to change.
If someone wants to own a car for their once a month trip, who cares? It is not cars in a garage that is bothersome with respect to the topic at hand.
