Quote:
Originally Posted by soleri
Cars fuck up cities worse than anything. ANYTHING.
You have to be blind not to see the enormous damage cars have done to virtually every American city. Cities in 1950 were glorious and coherent emblems of a vital civilization but by 1970 became bombed-out ruins and sterile reclamation projects. The few cities that didn't destroy themselves for the sake of the private car (and Portland counts as one) are today's urban success stories. New York, Boston, San Francisco, Vancouver, BC, Washington, DC are wonderful precisely because they're not moonscapes of parking lots, freeway spaghetti, and barren autocentric developments like Lloyd Center.
Car lovers should visit Europe sometime to see how great life can be without cars. You already own the suburbs. Leave cities alone. You'll kill Portland by widening its streets and freeways. And it's gonna be over my dead body.
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I have no intention of supporting "innovative's" short-sightedness, and I understand you may be using broad strokes. But having lived in several places in Europe, I can confidently say many do not live entirely without cars. Nor do I think should we. This is precisely the point. Germans and French often have learned to use cars for specific purposes when it suits the occasion, but we tend to default to them for every purpose, even when it makes little sense and costs way more, simply because we are used to it.
Innovatives "cars will always rule" motto is ridiculous of course, not only because of the decline in the average household ownership,
decline in average vehicle mileage since about 2005, the increase in transit ridership etc., but mainly because other cities have tried and succeeded in the same process. Everyone always driving everywhere just doesn't make for a decent place to live
Amsterdam, for example.
"Between 2005 and 2007,
Amsterdam residents rode their bicycle 0.87 times a day on average, compared to 0.84 trips by automobile." We don't have this because we don't build the infrastructure. The dutch designed freeways in the 60s and 70s and then realized how shitty it was to live near them. Then children protested, yes kids (you can watch them fighting cars
here). Why? Because streets where people are driving 35mph through are unlivable. Looking at you Foster Rd. They started investing in cycle infrastructure and removing inner-city highways, and that's where we are heading. Can't wait for the Foster road diet 2016. Sloooowly we're getting there.