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Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
Actually, my post was only about the vilification of automobiles (and by extension, users/owners of automobiles) used as a common narrative by urban activists. It's really a false narrative created by activist groups to divide - to create an enemy so that the fight can be defined and easier to understand for its members. It's really easy for a cyclist or pedestrian to be pissed off at a vehicle driver because the driver did something stupid/selfish/aggressive that caused a problem, or almost did. Tools like this are used by activists to introduce an emotional element to the cause, which really works well because people mostly act on emotion - it's a real motivator. I think activism is important, but IMHO the bluster associated with activism tends to water down discussions like this, as we are all intelligent people and see through statements like "automobile dominance", or on the other side "war on the car"... both are bullshit attitudes meant to elicit an emotion that the reader might already harbour against whatever side they are pissed off at. For me, it just makes me wonder "why do we have to take sides? Why can't we look at this more logically and reasonably?". I don't have an answer to that, because recently it seems like the whole world has lost the ability to reason and is going full-on tribalism and choosing emotion over logic.
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I know you just want to get along with everyone and we do agree on most things, but there's a couple of things I have to - respectfully - push back on. Like the statement that intelligent people can "see through" the term automobile dominance. Perhaps I'm just not intelligent because I stand by the use of that term. There are just too many examples showing how an attempt to accommodate automobiles has dominated urban design. I agree with you that the phrasing tends to elicit an emotional response, but it does so only by pointing out something important that people are often missing. However, it avoids being inherently confrontational by focusing solely on a technology rather than on the people using it. Such videos aren't dividing people into groups of motorists vs cyclists and pedestrians, but rather speaking to everyone and saying that as a society, doing more of x will have a better outcome than doing more of Y (in this case, using more public/active transportation and less car driving). Simply identifying a technological or procedural problem and proposing a solution isn't adversarial. What makes it adversarial is when some people attach their personal identify to a particular technology causing them to refuse to acknowledge any downsides to it.
I do agree however that it's best to avoid choosing emotion over logic. But questions like "why do we have to take sides" is doing just that. It's allowing an emotional aversion to conflict and the feel-good desire for a kumbaya circle to shy away from the logical solutions we need. Rationally evaluating a situation and concluding that action X is the best solution to problem Y isn't tribalism. Dogmatically refusing to consider the rational case for solution X is. Often when there are major problems, they require major changes to solve them. And major changes are always disruptive and upsetting for certain people. But it's rational to accept that and do our best to manage and minimize conflict since an irrational aversion to it will force us to cede important progress to the heckler's veto.
In other words, terms like "auto dominance" are rhetorically provocative phrases used in service of a substantive argument, while "kumbaya" arguments that suggest people are wrong or irrational is are purely emotional appeals that aren't backed up by substance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
To address your argument: I don't think we need to differentiate between "roads" and "streets" as they are interrelated in a similar way that capillaries are to veins and arteries. As long as we, as a society, are choosing the easy, convenient, time-efficient mode of automobiles with which to get around, then we need to have roads that aren't constantly backed up, and streets that take us to our homes so we can leave our vehicles in our driveways or parkades.
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Your response suggests a fundamental misinterpretation of my argument. I'm not distinguishing between streets and roads in terms of their nomenclature or terminology (as the terms are often used interchangeably) but rather in terms of the fundamental ontologies of two different types of thing. The difference between a
place on one hand and something you use to get to/from places on the other. A good place has an entirely different function that's concerned with being comfortable, interesting, and attractive whereas a conveyance to get to or from places needs to have little more than efficiency.
Perhaps that's where the whole debate originates. That as a society we've lost the collective ability to differentiate between the two. We so greatly eroded the quality of our places to allow for quicker access, egress, and pass-through that we've forgotten about the time actually spent there. Even people who regularly use cars don't want to spend time in places dominated by traffic. There are countless streets in auto-centeric areas that have traffic calming measures intended to keep vehicles on main corridors and away from where people live. It's easy to forget that even the design of places with little traffic like culs-de-sac were a response to car domination. The people at the forefront of automobile adoption designed their local streets with the purpose of traffic calming.
I also must point out that in an urban setting, automobiles are not the most time efficient mode for cities. Traffic congestion eventually prevents them from moving freely in even the cities that spend the most money on road infrastructure. Yes, if cities intentionally design themselves in a way that gives cars greatest priority and prevents other modes from effectively competing they may be fastest in that context but that's because of the environment rather than the technology. And we still must not forget that worldwide, when we consider the average time people have to spend working to buy and power a car that their overall
average travel speed is lower than walking. Not too surprising considering that even in the HRM, when we factor in the work time required to own a car it drops the average speed by about 1/2. And that's not even counting the enormous cost of infrastructure. While it's fine to recognise that they have their advantages (such as comfort) it's essential not to falsely attribute advantages they lack.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
Regarding the Ponte Vecchio, I think it's a really cool artifact of the time, and a great example of how we could use our imagination to create interesting and useful spaces moving forward. It's also a great example of how something was built to fit the needs of the people for the time. Would this be useful moving forward? I would suggest perhaps not, as a lot of time passed between medieval times and the invention of the automobile, and the world isn't littered with 'malls encased in bridges'. But, a great example of beautiful architecture/engineering/stonework, regardless.
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To be clear, the point I was making with that bridge had nothing to do with that bridge specifically as pretty much all medieval bridges were like that. I was simply refuting the statement, "...historically roads have always been built to move people and goods by the most efficient means available." While that was true of roads
between places (to my earlier point), roads or street inside of places like towns and cities were not historically used primarily as efficient transportation through them. They were, with fairly few exceptions,
places where people spent time even though it greatly compromised the efficiency of through traffic.
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