People Like Cars (Commentary)

[M II A II R II K]

Like your car? Then you'll like development happening around Southdale


June 24, 2016

By JAMES LILEKS

Read More: http://startribune.com/like-your-car...ale/384286841/

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Dense cities often discourage cars and the people who prefer them, and deal with the result. The people who don’t want cars will move in; people who like cars will say “Well, I know when I’m not wanted” and move out.

- But if a community is already arranged around the car, it’s silly to punish drivers. Any rational transit proposal should have options for those who don’t have — or don’t want — a car. It should have pedestrian paths, bike lanes, buses that appear more often than Halley’s comet. If people like to drive to Target and load up groceries and bales of bathroom tissue and a lawn chair and a case of beer because everyone’s coming over on Saturday for a cookout, it is futile to tell them to take the bus.

- People like cars, and they’re not getting out of them anytime soon. That’s what the ongoing redevelopment around Southdale recognizes. It also shows that designing with cars in mind can be … beautiful. Of course, even car lovers would admit that the aggregate effect of an automobile-based culture is ugly, especially in the suburbs. Parking lots are necessary, but they’re not appealing. This just doesn’t matter to most people.

- No one parks and walks across the Target lot thinking, “This vast expanse of asphalt really keeps the area from establishing the sort of architectural compression that makes for interesting, vibrant neighborhoods.” Why? Because it’s a Target parking lot. --- Suburbs are built around atomized, disconnected destinations — towers set back from the road, low-slung office buildings. --- It’s not intended to form anything cohesive.

- No one is thinking “The architectural details of the Office Depot facade really offer an interesting counterpoint to the signage of the Fuddruckers,” because this isn’t that kind of place. It’s built to service people in cars, and it prospers because lots of people like cars. --- It’s a fact of life, even though many New Urbanists believe that everyone — in the suburbs as well as the cities — should live in dense housing with walkable retail.

- Another example is the Penn American project in Bloomington. It’s more interesting to drive past the retail/apartment complex than the auto dealership that occupied the space before, but no one mistakes it for Soho or Paris. They could fill all four corners of the intersection with apartment buildings, and the street would still be ruled by cars, by the broad river of Penn Avenue S., the massive ramps to the freeway. And the car would be still be king in this part of town.

- When you state the simple fact that people like cars, your options are either to argue that they shouldn’t, figure out ways to change their minds, come up with schemes to force them out of their cars, or seek a design recipe that recognizes reality. --- Suburban areas like Southdale — with dense housing that, yes, has big parking lots and side streets full of flowers and greenery — are morphing into a new style of city that reflects how some people want to live. You want to drive? Drive. You want to walk? Walk.

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[ChargerCarl]

Solution: don't hamstring the market with needless zoning and land use regulations so both types of communities can exist.

[jg6544]

I don't mind cars, as long as I don't have to drive.

The problem isn't cars themselves. The problem is that our infrastructure has been tailored to encourage car ownership and maximize the movement of cars, forcing pedestrians and cyclists onto ever-narrowing strips of poorly-maintained concrete along 4-to-6 lane highways where there were originally 1- or 2-lane neighborhood streets. And because of that drivers have developed a sense of entitlement and can't fathom a world where they don't have a direct, unobstructed route to their destination and a parking spot at the front door, everyone in between be damned.

[M II A II R II K]

The layout could be changed to have the stores at the sidewalk and having the parking lots hidden at the back. And add a couple of woonerfs and fountains and stuff.

[Steely Dan]

People also like Celine Dion and Nickelback.

There's no accounting for taste.

[mhays]

So some people like cars. Maybe we should knit every town -- and every block in every town -- together with streets and highways that will enable every car to go everywhere. Oh, we already did. And what, we're keeping all that too? I guess we're not cracking down on cars.

[ssiguy]

The article has a point especially for American cities.

Even in large urban areas Americans have a dislike for transit with a few rare exceptions. Is it really worth the bother of trying to provide transit to these areas where the ridership is so poor and frequency so bad that all it does is drain much needed funds from core areas?

The money spent on transit to serve these non-existent riders is money not being spent to improve service on routes that need it. So maybe transit systems just say screw it, and leave whole swaths of the city without transit so the areas that need it and will actually use it get good service. Gets down to this............is it better to provide everyone with lousy service or fewer people with a good one?

I think it's the latter.

[chris08876]

I like cars. I also like Trains, but I hate buses.

Trains are great if you are in the quiet car. It's the other cars that I can't stand, with the crying babies, the cackling woman, and the people who think "Beats" are real headphones and play the music so loud that they fail to realize the ear damage they are causing. These are all things that WILL occur during rush hour on your typical NJ Transit rush hour commute. Now I drive, but I did to the commute via train for 4 years, and you value the quiet car. Fellow Westfield riders will agree!

I do wish we were up to par when it comes to trains though. I've ridden bullet trains in Europe, and man, they shit on our diesel engine trains badly.

Alvia in Spain is great. Now that's a real train. Better than this crap.


Credit: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=...67034623379353


Credit: https://www.raileurope.com/european-...w-to-book.html

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

People also like Celine Dion and Nickelback.

There's no accounting for taste.

Fair point, thankfully someone wearing a Nickelback t-shirt makes it easy for me to decipher who I do and don't want to talk to.

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

Like your car? Then you'll like development happening around Southdale

To go along with this, and in theme with this thread, of course people like cars, but we don't need to be designing with the car coming first. designing for the pedestrian first is always the best route because it makes the experience best for everyone, and often times makes it easier to streamline movement for cars, while making things safer for pedestrians and cyclists.