I spend a lot of time fantasizing about what building a city "from scratch" would look like.
It's a painful problem to actually make it happen because cities are all about network effects (you live there because people you know are there, etc). I just think it would be very appealing to me to live in a city that is optimized for biking + walking instead of having to own a car.
If I were ever to get rich, this would be an area I'd throw funding at to figure out. Is anybody aware of any research in this area?
This is something that I'm working on and hope my next startup will be about, I know there are others interested in it. The problem is generally the regulatory environment, it's a surprisingly difficult thing to do in any habitable location.
Marc Lore is working on this, throwing his billions into a concept for a new city out in the desert somewhere: https://cityoftelosa.com
The team at Culdesac are trying this in a "compliant" way, they built an apartment complex with basically no parking in Tempe, AZ but are positioning it as a car-free neighborhood. I believe this is their prototype and they hope to scale it up in future projects, this is about as realistic of a path as I think anyone has.
Building for cars is required by law across North America, and getting around that is quite hard.
I fantasize about that, too. You might be interested in the work of Culdesac (https://culdesac.com/); they're building an expressly car-free neighborhood, from scratch.
I'm optimistic that I can make strides closer to home. I have only ever lived in places that predated the advent of automobiles. At one time, they were very accessible via walking, biking, rail, and trolley. So, last fall, when I moved back to Providence, I made it my mission to get involved in local transit activism. It's been a great source of social and civic satisfaction, and I intend to repeat the exercise when I move again next Fall.
It feels like positive change is (slowly) happening.
Has Culdesac made much progress? The site looks fairly similar to last time I looked at it, a while back. Are they building it all out or waiting on sales to finance progress?
Vancouver didn't start from scratch, but aggressively built out its cycling infra over the past two decades. I love bicycles, I love green tech, and I love my e-bike! But I also note these concomitants:
- Rapid gentrification. Foot/bike accessible urban infrastructure turns out to be the hottest possible commodity.
- Luxury pricing of car parking, insurance, and spacing. This seems harmless until you remember that e.g. poor people shop at box stores (which depend on a car to access) in order to bring down the cost of living. Intentionally pricing car access as a luxury good makes the poor pay for climate progress. Making cars more expensive to own and operate is an inflationary force that disproportionately afflicts the poor.
- Gentrification + Inflation = Displacement. It's almost a joke at this point -- if your neighbourhood is putting in a bike lane, and you don't own your home, you are basically watching them tidy up for the next tenant, who will be like you, but better-off, and will pay more in rent.
When I see a bike lane getting put in, I know I'll be moving in a few years. And those twee little bicycle-lane-only traffic lights? Cute, right? Those are basically tombstones for your local art scene, because that whole block is 'going Vanhattan' (portmanteau of 'Vancouver' and 'Manhattan').
Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with bikes, and I listed the above adverse outcomes as 'concomitants', and not side-effects. I don't want to suggest that the lines of causality are that clear.
But talk about 'optimizing' cities is fundamentally talk about redistributing those cities, and redistribution creates (or effaces) winners and losers.
> Making cars more expensive to own and operate is an inflationary force that disproportionately afflicts the poor
No it isn't. I think you know the answer to the question "are transit riders more or less affluent than drivers on average?"
> And those twee little bicycle-lane-only traffic lights? Cute, right? Those are basically tombstones for your local art scene, because that whole block is 'going Vanhattan' (portmanteau of 'Vancouver' and 'Manhattan').
Please name one place where this has occurred in Vancouver (which I am intimately familiar with).
> Luxury pricing of car parking, insurance, and spacing
This is a transition problem more than anything. Those are used by poor people today because the state subsidizes that way of shopping. If the state subsidizes a different way of shopping, that will become the cheap way of shopping
All problems are, when seen from far enough away, 'transition' problems.
They are very, very real for the people experiencing them. Life itself is transitory, often on a shorter timeline than the problems encountered throughout.
The book “Car Free Cities” is a beautiful imagining of what would be possible if we built from scratch, attempting to connect concepts in cities like Venice that actually are car free.
The book itself is a beautiful physical object. I really wish we could do cities from scratch.
There are many cities around the world that don't prioritize cars at all. None of them are in the US. We got pretty much screwed on this count -- the US wasn't always so car-centric, but then we got suckered into it only to discover that it's a trap after it's too late.
The network effects evolve over time because people move. As a city increases bike friendliness, it will attract people to move there who want a livable/bikable life.
As NotJustBikes has taught me, you don't have to start from scratch. Many cities in Europe were bulldozed for the car only to regret this decision decades later. Now you have bike utopias like Amsterdam.
Definitely. Brussels was designed for cars (and Belgium is very car-centric in many ways) but it's got much better for cycling in the ~15 years I've been here, thanks to a mixture of incremental improvements and political "big pushes".
There seem to be two styles of city from scratch: extravagant and monumental, as St. Petersburg, Washington, or Versailles; suburban, homogenous, and bland, as in the Levittowns or whatever Disney called its development in Florida.
Yep and I know this to be true because my family often vacations in places that have this as a core feature. It's easier in resort type areas for the reasons you mention. The freedom of biking and walking about is a great feeling.
It's a painful problem to actually make it happen because cities are all about network effects (you live there because people you know are there, etc). I just think it would be very appealing to me to live in a city that is optimized for biking + walking instead of having to own a car.
If I were ever to get rich, this would be an area I'd throw funding at to figure out. Is anybody aware of any research in this area?