My small Canadian town, where most people drive a massive pickup truck everywhere, has started considering improving transit and introducing car-free areas. Things are changing.
Started reading without really looking at the scrollbar size 😀 27k words is almost a short book. Read half of this, really love it so far, will try to finish later. Just not too sure if Medium is best place to post such long essays, though I really appreciate it!
I really supports this and see quite often talked about on internet and that makes me hopeful. But at the same time I feel like this is just a bubble that I’m at and 95% of people don’t even think about this.
@Five Yes, and... I think there are probably a lot of opportunities for people to make their own living rooms, lawns, and driveways 'third places' in their neighborhoods. We've built a monster, but it's our monster.
I don´t know anything about his political views but I adore his architecture (and I hate most architecture in general). What´s not to love about houses that look like children’s drawings full of trees :D
Sadly, many places (not all, but many) do have a systemic hostility to non-automotive transit. It’s not that bad everywhere, but where it is bad it really is that bad.
Haven't watched the video yet but I'm guessing the reasons are:
Zoning - mixed use zoning and medium density housing are notoriously missing in the US.
Setbacks/Clear zones - Time and time again, US city planners have widened roads, straightened roads, and removed trees and such, catering towns and cities for driving, rather than building them for humans.
Assuming the structure can support the weight, I’m all in favor of green roofs. Though, most buildings are privately owned and therefore are not true replacements for proper public greenspace within a city. I think it’s also important not to get distracted from the primary source of land waste within cities: car infrastructure.
Lately I’ve been thinking about how a city would look if you could take up street and sidewalk, plant trees, and keep just a bike path through the middle. The logistics challenges (maintaining access to buried infrastructure/protecting them from roots, and making sure vehicle-based emergency services like firetrucks and ambulances can get everywhere, handicapped people have options/access everywhere) are keeping me busy but I have a couple ideas for photobashes of solarpunk streets to try out eventually.
Like the video already outlines… lots of structural issues for having trees there, while planted cascades and similar green-roofs are much simpler and easier to build. I think this is one of the cases where the result does not justify the costs/efforts required.
Probably doesn’t make sense for standard residential buildings but for these tall buildings that are highly engineered, does it really increase the costs by that much? Trees offer a large increase in benefits over other types of vegetation due to the shade and many times greater biomass.
That said, simpler green roofs should also be more widely used in cases where trees are too heavy or expensive. And vines and green walls too. I want to see the concrete jungle become an actual jungle!
That huge below surface cistern and the efforts to anchor the trees against wind would seem to add significantly to the cost over artificial shading structures with ranking plants for example.
I suppose it would depend on the costs and benefits which I haven’t seen quantified. But in general those things don’t provide anywhere near the benefits trees do.
A lot of the reason I've put off buying a bike is that most of the bike lanes were either nonexistent or painted ones that abruptly ended whenever there's an intersection. I personally knew a little kid who got hit riding through the neighborhood, and whoever hit him sped off. Luckily he survived, but he very easily could have died if they hit him at a higher speed. Drivers just normalize being impatient way too much nowadays (especially after the pandemic) that you can't trust people to obey things like painted lines. You need barriers, even if they're cheap temporary solutions.
Agreed. Unfortunately several immediate members of my family have been hit by cars while riding and some had serious, life-changing injuries. So I am pretty passionate about this.
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