How the automobile shapes cities for the worse

[MolsonExport]

For all its benefits, the automobile (and its fuglier big brother, the prickup truck) have, more than anything else, contributed to the uglification of our cities and suburbs.
A place to discuss.

Sountrack:
• Video Link

Six egregious symptoms of the Cancer:

(1) Snout Houses


cbc


davidngo


iheartradio.ca


thegazette


rectumville

(2) Big Box Barf-somehow way, way worse than the shopping mall it replaces. Landing pads for UFOs?


kpaularchitect


dumbcentres


dumbcentres

(3) Horribly ugly suburban arterial roads (the most pedestrian unfriendly places on the planet other than expressways). The solution to congestion? Widen then again, and again, and again!


cbc

loopnet

(4) Extremely ugly highrises surrounded by acres of parking

residence soleil

(5) gigantic parking lots


reddit




chiefswire

(6) drive thrus (perhaps the very worst of them all)

bellspalseycorners

all in one:

ssp

Other symptoms?

it is clear that the automobile is, indirectly, the most subsidized industry in North America. We design cities and many buildings for cars, not for people.

[iheartthed]

These examples aren't the fault of the automobile. This all happened because of bad policy, bad planning, and bad design.

[MolsonExport]

This all happened because of bad policy (putting cars before people), bad planning (incorporating the car into every planning decision), and bad design (making sure that cars are most convenienced by any building)

[M II A II R II K]

They could have had sidewalks always included and have all the stores at the streetfront and delegate all that parking at the back out of sight.

[MolsonExport]

(7) fatmobiles


lard

[deja vu]

In fairness, a lot of us humans have realized the errors of our ways and are making efforts to undo some of this awfulness. We have a long way to go, for sure.

+1 for fatmobiles. Convenience begets laziness.

[JManc]

Deed restrictions could mitigate those ugly garages so they are not so prominent. Our garage is behind our house.

[mhays]

With an alley, sure. Otherwise you're simply turning half your yard into a driveway the length of your property.

[dubu]

glad 100 years of having cars have passed and now we realize there are things called trains. maybe the next 100 years will be different.

[mrnyc]

This Is What New York City Would Look Like If Cars Were Banned

by OLIVIA HARVEY
published JUL 14, 2020


Fewer cars mean less air pollution (PAU posits that Not Your Car would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent and carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent in Manhattan), fewer vehicular homicides and accidents, and upward of 30 percent more space for New Yorkers—85 percent of whom do not own cars—to safely and happily exist in.

“The land value of Manhattan alone is estimated to top $1.7 trillion,” Manjoo writes in his OpEd piece. “Why are we giving so much of it to cars?”


more:
https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/no-cars-nyc-36772314

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

(7) fatmobiles


lard

haha yeah -- but actually the great lakes brewing company in cleveland has long run 'fatty wagon' busses over to the ball park, stadium and other events since at least the 1990s.

they are of course eco-friendly busses that in part at least run on brewpub kitchen oils.

so recycling, a bus and less gasoline used helps the cause:

https://www.greatlakesbrewing.com/node/2084

[memph]

You forgot highway oriented office parks. So much lost potential with those...

[JManc]

Originally Posted by mhays

With an alley, sure. Otherwise you're simply turning half your yard into a driveway the length of your property.

Half my property isn't close to being a driveway and it's landscaped plus alleyways aren't feasible in most scenarios. Most cities, blocks are too large with houses back to back unlike somewhere like Chicago where they are smaller and individual lots are long and narrow.

I wish we could have alleyways or at least they were allowed.

[The North One]

Is it really the automobile's fault though? The car doesn't force humans at gunpoint to build development and infrastructure like this. Sure it made it possible, but it didn't have to be like this.

[xzmattzx]

How are drive-thrus the worst of them all?

I would say the worst of them all are the acres of parking for these strip malls and big box stores. Other than Black Friday, I think you can cut the parking in half and never have any issues at 99% of places. And acres of stadium parking is different, and clearly not as worthy of scorn.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by dubu

glad 100 years of having cars have passed and now we realize there are things called trains. maybe the next 100 years will be different.

With the move towards EV’s that has been lauded by environmentalists, the irony is that the car isn’t going anywhere.

In fact, while before you could drive a car and feel bad that you are belching emissions into the atmosphere, that changes with EV’s. People can now drive guilt free.

So in a sense, it’s great for the environment but a major setback for the effort to reduce car usage.

[badrunner]

Don't blame cars for your ugly suburbs and uglier houses. There's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. Canadian auto oriented suburbs gets it all wrong on every level.

[MolsonExport]

without private automobiles, all our cities would look extremely different. I can't think of anything that changed the course of city development more than the automobile. Mostly for the worse.

And the advent of air conditioning greatly hastened the development of large cities in the Southern United States. Prior to air conditioning, you had to sweat out half the year in your Seersucker.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

without private automobiles, all our cities would look extremely different. I can't think of anything that changed the course of city development more than the automobile. Mostly for the worse.

And the advent of air conditioning greatly hastened the development of large cities in the Southern United States. Prior to air conditioning, you had to sweat out half the year in your Seersucker.

The car didn't force sloppy planning and massive surface lots but rather laissez faire oversight and hands off zoning standards. Cars are ubiquitous everywhere but some areas were more stringent in how development incorporated them into the urban fabric.

[MolsonExport]

The car didn't force it, but it would never have happened hadn't private cars become ubiquitous. We need to recognize the extreme damage done to our urban environments just because everyone wants to drive a mechanical device weighing a ton or more just to pick up a shitty drive thru coffee. Would the Middle East be the shitshow that it is if our economy wasn't so dependent on fossil fuels?

Imagine, for a moment, what the world would be like with private automobile ownership severely curtailed (or at least, the driving thereof).