- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
In the same way, the damage to walkable, sustainable urban development is the parking places ... but the car-dependency creates the "need" for parking places. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Indeed, that simple recipe seems very much like the recipe for Grizzly Bear Soup that begins, "first, capture, kill and clean one Grizzly Bear". "Pretending that parking problems don't exist" requires eliminating the auto dependency for a substantial share of the population, or else it is politically infeasible, and "provide a bus system" is not the universal panacea for breaking auto dependency. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
But then again, I live in a world in which a city without a bus system - however rudimentary - is as unthinkable as a city without sidewalks for pedestrians, electricity or plumbing, so that might affect my thinking...
When over 80% of workers in a town require a car to get to work, getting into the bully pulpit to blame the large majority for blocking better public options and then staying in the bully pulpit is problematic. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Though you can alleviate some of that by using a shared space concept and limiting cars to 15 kilometres an hour outside of the main streets, and 30 in general in residential areas.
The biggest problem with cars is city planning around car use. I live 800m away from a Supermarket which I can go to by tram (1 stop) or drive to, but I can't walk to. Suburban America is coming to Europe - except in America there is so much space for roads that Riverside, CA had more bike lanes on streets 5 years ago than I expect Madrid to have 5 years from now. The peak-to-trough part of the business cycle is an outlier. Carnot would have died laughing.
Paris apartments are way too small now - they weren't 100 years ago when kids casually played in the street. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
