4 HN users recommended this commentary4 months2021–2024score 4
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Cited in urbanism threads as a clear argument that car-dependent suburbs impose traffic on everyone.
Oh The Urbanity! questions the framing that urban planning reforms like bike lanes and traffic calming wage war on suburbanites. It argues that suburban and urban residents alike want less traffic on their own streets.
“This video makes that point so crystal clear” (HN, 2021)
Exactly. This video makes that point so crystal clear: [this video] Car-dependent suburbia is about imposing your car on everyone else while not allowing anyone else to impose their cars on you. It is inherently selfish city design.
Makes clear that car-dependent suburbia imposes cars on others
There's a great video about that too. "The Suburban Traffic Contradiction" by Oh The Urbanity. [this video] One of the interesting points is that there is a commonality between those suburbans and people who want walkable urban areas: few of us want to deal with the problems of lots of cars driving around us.
Suburban and urban residents both want less traffic
Correct. Suburbanites want the freedom to drive everywhere but also limit through-traffic and noise on the street their house exists on. That's why twisty roads and culs de sac exist. "Oh The Urbanity!" argues this point elegantly in: [this video] "The Suburban Traffic Contradiction"
Why suburbanites want driving freedom but no nearby traffic
Yes, cul-de-sacs are a design element that can help to reduce the negative impacts of cars - in the immediate area. Though if you build an area out of cul-de-sacs with no bike/pedestrian shortcuts, you end up not being able to practically get around without a car, so the area around the cul-de-sacs needs lots of car infrastructure. (Which is not so great if your kids are unlucky enough to live across a wide arterial from their friends from school.) But ultimately yes, reducing through traffic can be a good thing, and there are ways to do that in cities too. There's a good video on this here: [this video]
I don't know what to do about airplanes, but I want to see cities be designed to rely much less on motor vehicles. "Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud" [link] "The Suburban Traffic Contradiction" [this video]
It sits in a kind of weird contradiction, because although one of its characteristics is that it's really only practical to navigate by car (and thus generates traffic!), one of its key design goals is to minimize the car traffic near people's houses. Postwar suburbs have more car traffic in total, but it's okay because it's not in front of your house. But once you go outside of the residential subdivisions, to the places where the traffic has been exiled, they're nightmares. [this video]
> Taking away people's transportation is a bad thing to do Drivers have been taking away transportation from non-drivers for decades. Look at suburbs without sidewalks. Look at winding suburban culs-de-sac that massively increase travel distance and make walking and cycling impractical. Look at the drivers who shout down any attempt to install bike lanes, or those who refuse to fund public transit. [this video] > they hate me personally Sounds similar to drivers who want to run cyclists off the road. "Get off the road!" "You don't even pay insurance and road tax!" Also sounds similar to drivers who deny pedestrians the right to exist. Overall, rpmisms, I don't think you appreciate your privileged position as a driver. Society has spent the last century bending over backwards to serve motorists like you. I hope you can develop a sense of compassion for those who are not in a car and are continually subjected to verbal and physical aggression from motorists.
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