You forgot the homeless people, forced to live under that interchange because you know, america, freedom etc…
If they are lucky enough that nobody installed some hostile architecture there to keep them out.
Omg make it stop — I’m already too free
I could be wrong but iirc, Italy also has a lot of homelessness
According to wikipedia, 8.4/10k for italy vs 17.5/10k for the US. So while the US is the richest country in the world they have twice as many homeless people per capita :/
I see thanks for clarification
Counted in the population.
Duh, moron, the future is you just live in the car.
You cant legally park it anywhere near anything useful for survival, and gas is expensive and so is car insurance.
But thats fine because cars and car companies have more rights than people! Or something…
What I am saying is anyone who walks to the grocery store /deserves/ to get run over.
Natural Selection mannnnn!
inhales
Alright, feelin good, got beer in the glove compartment, time to film my magnum opus:
DeathRace 2024.
YEEEEEHAAAWWW!!!
immediately peels out, doesnt see other driver blowing a red light until too late, swerves to avoid and crashes into the weed dispensary, paralyzing himself from the legs down and killing 4 others
In many cities, people are literally living in cars that don’t run, in public parking spaces, because it’s the only enclosed place they can afford to live in.
Yep, and that is almost always illegal, and such people almost always end up having the car towed, having to pay for the car being towed, losing all their possessions and then becoming homeless.
Its just a matter of time until enough people report it and the police get around to it.
Capitalist wet dream right here
cue America Fuck Yeah! song
This isn’t a great argument. There is so much open undeveloped space in the US that could be used to house people. This interchange isn’t taking space away from anyone. There are lots of good reasons to reduce cars, but this isn’t one of them.
That’s not really true here though. This is in the middle of an urban area, not in some big open empty space that’s unoccupied, like Montana, or North Dakota. This is in the middle of Houston, Texas, a very populous city.
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Calling anywhere in Greater Houston “the middle of an urban area” is just incorrect. It’s the 4th most populated city in the US and the 150th most densely populated. There are a lot of people in Houston but also just a fucking Tom of Houston around. But, as is the norm in this magazine, you are all free to ignore facts and data so you can raise a furor in your tiny anti-car cult.
Calling anywhere in Greater Houston “the middle of an urban area” is just incorrect.
…
It’s the 4th most populated city in the US
lmao
Houston is so big because the city has absorbed all the communities around it. It’s incredibly sprawled so the density is much lower than cities of comparable population. This creates all sorts of other issues, like the problem of paving over hundreds of square miles of wetland.
Why do you think it’s so sparsely populated? What’s keeping people so far from each other? Is it just Houstonians are their own species and can’t stand to be in areas over a certain population density?
Because humans enjoy having lots of space to live in. Personally I would never go back to living in an apartment since I can afford a house and land. I’ve lived in small apartments, big apartments, a single-wide trailer, large houses, small houses, and medium houses. Medium house with acreage of land is the best living situation of all for me.
Did you really decide that posting that was a good idea? Did you seriously think about it at all before writing it?
Yeah, this place is dumb as hell and you idiots need to know that.
Cool story. Come back when your brain has developed past the age of 2, we’ll gladly discuss then.
I concur bro. These bullshitters are high on their own farts and apparently can’t see the truth that they are never going to change the vast landscape of America into their imaginary Soviet-style shithole idea of a “utopia” where people don’t drive and live in tiny boxes in human hives.
Soviet Union was bad for multiple reasons but in major cities the housing was not really any worse than anywhere else in the world. I guess you just enjoy spending 3 hours a day in your car.
I don’t commute to work often, but when I do it’s only about a 20 minute drive in light traffic. I certainly wouldn’t spend 3 hours a day in a car to commute to work when there are plenty of jobs within that 20 minute commute from my house.
And? If they need space they expand elsewhere. If this interchange was at the edge of town, middle of town, north or south. The town is still the same size. America is large, lots of “empty” space.
And that’s how you get sprawling cities that are completely untraversable on foot, bike or bus. Urban planning is important, even when space is abundant
Which expands the total travel distance on average, exacerbating all car use in the area. Things need to be closer, not further. That will only encourage car dependent infrastructure.
Not just car use, also infrastructure cost for literally anything from water over sewage to electricity, internet connections, gas pipes,…
Expanding the distance is much, much worse than simply affecting travel times and making us more car dependent. It is literally something we can not afford.
Cities should avoid becoming nightmare, sprawling hellscapes. Dense cities with multi-use buildings, public transit, and walkable infrastructure are where its at.
Dense, ugly cities, with no character, where people trip over each other isn’t the solution.
Those can be a part of the larger city, why can’t everyone have what they want instead of just a small portion of people who only think of themselves?
Its great to know this community is open to discussion instead of just perpetuating the same tropes and downvoting people!
Dense and ugly are not synonyms, same with lacking character. If you go to sprawling suburbia, you’ll find that there’s exactly no character, you can drive for 30 minutes and think you went in a circle.
Do you genuinely believe people want sprawling hellscapes where they have to sit in traffic forever to get to the nearest Walmart, destroying the environment and further atmozing individuals and alienating themselves, or do you think it makes more sense to address population needs, environmental needs, and efficiency via smarter urban planning that isn’t so car-centric?
Car-centric infrastructure takes up for more space and far more time is spent on commuting than well-planned urban infrastructure with public transit, and costs the environment far more, and is far more economically expensive. It’s disastrous and should be stopped entirely.
Ugly and character are both subjective, your opinion isn’t the correct one. Nor is someone’s else’s, but one side is vocal while the other trudges along allowing the other to do and get what they need and want.
Some people do, yeah. Do you seriously think people don’t want that? People literally drive trucks as a career lmfao, yeah lots of people love it, in fact, they are the majority and you are the vocal minority. Get a grip on reality lmfao.
No.
People absolutely loath getting stuck in traffic, and the existence of truckers does not mean that the majority of people love traffic and wasted space, fighting over parking, wasting tons of money, and destroying the environment.
You implied that dense requires ugliness and lacking character, which is the exact opposite of reality. Car-centric infrastructure is incredibly ugly and lacks any and all character, it’s just roads and parking garages, traffic, and pollution.
https://youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI?si=4Dhz8B-6AYK677PO
You may want to look at the economic downsides to sprawl. If you really want sprawl, then you’re gonna have to pay for it, cause we’re sick of paying for your roads, and the people who live in the cities pay for everyone else’s roads, and we want walkable/bikeable cities with cars being excluded to a few parking structures on the edge of the city.
You’re so american it’s sad. American cities are some of the ugliest in the entire world, whereas dense cities like what you’d find in most of Europe or Japan are absolutely beautiful and brimming with character.
that’s not how urban development works, like, at all, lol.
This is not really outside the city though
…and even though it’s next to industrial zone, this is what downtown Houston actually looks like on a map. Numerous square miles of space just for “letting traffic through”. The bill on the upkeep of this kind of wasteful infrastructure must be much more than what it costs to provide housing for all the homeless people in the county!
I think OP’s argument is that the interchange is a symptom of low density urban sprawl and all the associated maladies that come with it.
@Anarch157a @BradleyUffner Yeah, it’d suck trying to walk to a friends house on the other side of the interchange.
Do you think the people here care about sound arguments? Nobody except for a select few hyper-fit nutjobs are ever going to walk even so much as an 1/8th of that images span for anything. The area is far too large to want to walk, so we use it for transit instead. Forget that it transports millions of people, products, goods, etc. They want it to house hundreds of people instead.
People who will then not be able to get those products and goods, because…they fuckin’ ripped the road out!
Is it just me, or are the Lemmy fuck cars communities a lot more infested with trolls like this guy☝️ than the one on Reddit was?
Apart from the time when they don’t.
People That Disagree with you != Troll.
People that use arguments easily debunked by a 5 year-old or repeat garbage == trolls
The images span is about a mile… I know American fitness standards are low but I think most can walk an eighth of a mile.
Also it’s not housing hundreds of people, as shown in the meme it could house 10s of thousands of it’s not huge lot single family housing, but that’s only if you care about “sound arguments”
To be honest it’s kind of weird here in North America. People frequently act like a 15 minute walk is crazy, and a 30 minute walk is impossible. These people could walk that far, it’s not a fitness issue, just people pretty much always just default to driving everywhere in certain places.
@Chobbes @Not_mikey Walking 600m (as the crow flies) from my hotel in Sugarland Houston to the shopping district near it was sketchy as. Y’all are crazy hostile to people choosing to walk anywhere.
Ooooh yeah, big time! I just want to live somewhere that at least acknowledges how fucked up the car situation is 😭
Probably part of the problem is where they make you walk, or that nobody actually plans for safe nor comfortable walking anywhere.
This is an issue sometimes. It’s not great when suddenly there’s no sidewalk and you’re walking alongside a busy road. That said, I don’t think this is the main contributor. I think people are just in the habit of driving everywhere to the point where they won’t walk 15 minutes from their house to a convenience store and will opt to drive instead, and this is in neighbourhoods with good sidewalks and no particularly busy roads. People just don’t think about walking as a means to get anywhere and they’ll frequently drive just a couple of blocks if they’re going to visit somebody nearby too, in my experience anyway.
Sound arguements are fine, but the interchange is literally in the middle of the 4th(?) largest city in the US, not the middle of nowhere. Houston is also known for a huge amount of sprawl which is literally caused by the amount of space the 10+ lane roads take up.
Is America running out of space or something? Yeah it’s a concern when there is limited space, but America is mainly “empty” the sprawl doesn’t affect them.
“Hm yes if we inefficiently use all this space then we can destroy all this perfectly good agricultural land and make space for more cars!”
What’s inefficient about vertical farming? There’s plenty of green area even in the Picture that’s posted, could easily put a bike and pedestrian network through there. If it was needed.
There’s always solutions, but it’s also just easier to bitch and moan instead.
What’s inefficient about vertical farming?
Cost. It’s a lot more expensive to build vertical. Additionally you need lighting that would wouldn’t need otherwise.
The capacity more than makes up for it. You could also grow in cold climates where you can’t normally as well.
The benefits are there.
You know what can transport millions of people? Trains. Oh and bikes and buses exist. Cars are not the only form of transport, or the best.
Yep, actually in a city setting there are scenarios where walking has got better throughput rates than car traffic…
Possibly. This isn’t reddit… yet…
Yet again, another 'murican that can’t fathom how people use their legs.
Let me take this apart: “Nobody except for a select few hyper-fit nutjobs are ever going to walk even so much as an 1/8th of that images span for anything.” What’s the span in the image? Maybe a mile? Two? Come on! IF the surroundings aren’t noisy and are pleasant a normal average human of the planet earth is capable and willing to walk about 2-5 miles a day. In civilized countries you also have multiple options, it’s not just “suffer and walk” or “sit in a car and bang your head on the steering wheel”. Just the option to walk to most places where you need to go actually gets rid of some of the traffic that causes congestion. And the highway intersection hellscape depicted only serves the people who have no other option than to drive everywhere. It’s a prison. “The area is far too large to want to walk, so we use it for transit instead.” No, it’s not.
“Forget that it transports millions of people, products, goods, etc.” You know there are better ways to do this than building an eversprawling city with highways cutting right through it. Highways are among some of the most inefficient ways of transporting goods and people. They cause noise and pollution. Everyone wants to live as far away from one as is convenient. Not that these human errors aren’t to be found everywhere in the world, it’s just that it’s only in the North America where this is more prominent than elsewhere. “They want it to house hundreds of people instead.” You just looked at a picture where you have an area in Italy, similar in size to a highway knot in Texas that houses 30k people and you fail to understand what you just saw. 🤦♂️ “People who will then not be able to get those products and goods, because…they fuckin’ ripped the road out!” I can’t even… 🤦♂️
Yeah, but you can’t get to the other side of Siena in 20 seconds? Efficiency isn’t pretty.
/S (big a for big sarcasm)
@eya This is such a weird way to compare countries anyway, Italy has giant interchanges too: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.929109,12.7359436,1733m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
Because it’s not meant to compare countries, it’s meant to compare sizes. That interchange could be replaced with any interchange of similar size.
That’s not in the middle of the city, unlike Houston’s.
Ah Houston, not a whole lot to like about living here.
Foods pretty good… but yeah… that’s all I got.
bUt wE hAve EnoUGh sPaCE!
Even better: Leaving that land undeveloped and natural, instead of cramming humans or cars on it
People need to live somewhere, and if they live somewhere like Siena it leaves more space for nature.
Yeah, and the nicer urbanists can make cities the more empty land there will be. And I can live in a pile of rocks with animals for my friends while you all enjoy the nice cities.
Humans need land to live on. Constructng densely reduces the land needed for humans, leaving more undeveloped land.
Reducing human population is beyond the scope of urban planning.
The last sentence could be argued as north american roads become more deadly.
Are you proposing a design competition for making the deadliest road?
Legalize mad max cars! This murica, any car without a machine gun installed on the hood is for sissy liberals.
Real men run others off the road with their 80,000lbs Ford, with it’s hood 6ft up from the road.
Your average SUV or pickup truck is deadly enough. Also the so-called self-driving vehicles that aren’t really autonomous are deathtraps and lethal to third parties, like children that one can’t see while sitting in a 2024 Ford F-150.
Hell Yeah! Deer and rabbits have to live somewhere too. I wish I lived 15 min. from undisturbed nature!
Siena is (in my memory at least) a small, quaint, Tuscan village.
It’s a medieval walled city of historical significance; the centre is a world heritage site. It’s the location of the oldest bank in the world, one of the oldest universities and the central piazza is the venue for the Palio (a bareback horse race contested by the different quarters of the city.)
I went there by chance during a Palio. The whole city was alive in a way that I can’t even begin to describe. Would definitely go back.
Still too many people far too close to me
What a dumb take.
Nah
Well damn start building apartments in the empty parts. Its not that difficult to understand.
With 6inch thick windows or intolerable noise pollution, sounds great. I wonder which one penny pinching developers are going to build.
Cars double as housing. Checkmate, socialist commies!
/s just in case, as is tradition now.
/s is not actually entirely accurate in this case. Here’s an article on how US residents are trying to live in their cars by finding “safe parking lots” to reside in: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/05/safe-overnight-parking-lot-sleep-in-car-rv-homelessness-housing-shelter
So in the richest nation on Earth, cars do double as housing.
The /s was for the “Checkmate” bit 😂 Technically, of course you can use your car as a dwelling. But it’s certainly not an answer (or at least, not a serious one) to a lack of housing supply, I think we’ll all agree.
That looks like hell. Where do you go when you want to get away from people?
The parks or your own home. I don’t normally go into the middle of a highway interchange for solitude.
Parks with all the other people? Locked in a room in a 300 sq ft apartment with your family/roommates outside?
The interchange allows you to live far enough away from the overcrowded city that you can own a bigger piece of land where you’re not packed in with your neighbors like sardines so you can actually go outside and sit and be alone without hearing 15 other families doing shit. It also allows you to have enough space to have a workshop space for hobbies or a garden or whatever else you want to do.
You understand that Italy has areas that are not as densely populated as the city center. In fact some places are down right rural. And the US has some very densely populated square milage.
This is such a wild, wild take on the US’s cat centric build.
Most country, urbanist or not, do have wilderness, where you can live and die without people know.
You don’t need to live in the city if you dont want to. You can live off grid, and burn your own feces for heat if that is the life of your choosing. What people here are fighting for is to keep this living style is outside of cities.
Basically, city is not the place for giant emotional support vehicles. And outside traffic should not disrupt the normal form of transportation in cities, which should be dominated by public transport, walking, and efficient personal vehicles (like bike, scooters, wheelchairs, etc).
@lightnsfw @KnowledgeableNip what exactly is your “hobby” that you need to be so far away from other people to do it?
Building/refurbishing furniture, working on cars, basically anything that is loud and requires power tools and space to lay out, assemble, or store materials, also gardening.
this is all stuff that in Italy goes on inside the city. There are fab-labs, maker-spaces, communal gardens and other communal organizations that enable you to do this without living in bumblefuck nowhere or renting a giant ass house.
There are garages underneath the apartment lot where you can do reasonably noisy work from 7:00 to 23:00, no need to go to a maker space or anything like that
Have you ever worked in a shared space? I have, and shit was constantly being lost, broken, or stolen. More people just means more chances some asshole will ruin things for everyone.
omg you’re so American. These places have clear rules, systems to guarantee accountability, with software tracking every person using a room or a tool at any given time. They are managed by people that work there full-time and guarantee everything is in order.
All of those things can be done in a densely populated city. I do it and live near the city center in São Paulo, the world’s 4th most populous megapolis. In short, your arguments are bullshit.
Can I ask how? I really don’t see how a person on a average income could afford enough space to do that living in a city.
In 'murica it may be impossible (thank car-centered infrastructure and your insane zoning laws!), but here you can just rent a house instead of an apartment… an OK place (2+ bedrooms/ 150+ m²/ space for tinkering) at an OK location (safe enough, relatively close to the city center) is ~600 to ~800 USD, which is certainly more expensive than the local average, but not eye-wateringly so.
This is my hangup as well.
I agree with the premise of this sub. The way car first places such as the US does things is a problem. The cars themselves and the underlying infrastructure, such as that exchange.
But I also don’t want to live in cramped multidweller unit housing. I’ve done so most of my life and I hated it.
I don’t know what or even if there’s a good solution that accomodates both, but I hope so.
You can have walkable areas that aren’t all multi unit. This video goes over some existing places that fit.
And if you’re someone that wants to live somewhere actually remote, having dense urban areas instead of suburban sprawl will leave more space for rural areas and nature.
I am no expert, but if we are allowed to design everything from ground up, I believe personal electric vehicle (e-bike etc, abbreviated as PEV) for suburb, transit/bike/walk in city, and high speed rail between cities are probably the way to go.
City should be mostly car free, people can transit to suburb via transit, and to other city via rail. People move within city using walk/bike/tram. Vehicle besides delivery and commercial vehicle should be discouraged from entering the city, by removing in-city parking and setup no-go zones for private vehicles.
Even in the U.S. most people in suburb live rather close to a town center (less than 15 mins with PEV or bike). Thus efficient transit from town center to city can be a good idea. People will be discouraged from driving to city due to the lack of road and parking within cities.
For long form travel, people should move via high speed rail. Then take local travel options once arrived. High speed rail provide a faster and more comfortable travel alternative to driving.
Finally, I believe for people living in rural areas (an hour to any town center on PEV), cars and electric cars are their only option. If they want to enter city or suburb, they can drive to the nearest town center and take transit.
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Interestingly, with this type of town, it’s easier and quicker to go out of the town than in American car centric towns.
Public transports are more efficient. You don’t need cars. You have parcs and actual green space. The energy consumption is also reduced.
It’s no magic that they built these type of towns in the past. They couldn’t afford our type of energy consumption and land use. And, it was more practical for the daily life.
You know houses exist right? Tho maybe not a lot of americans sleep in cars…
If there’s 30k people in that small of an area most of them aren’t going to be able to afford houses.
Haha you know thats the funny thing. They dont have houses but should have said housing as they do have shared houses and apartments.
