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7 votes
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The case for making low-tech 'dumb' cities instead of 'smart' ones
15 votes -
How Berlin's Mietskaserne tenements became coveted urban housing
7 votes -
Why Amsterdam’s canal houses have endured for 300 years
6 votes -
What’s behind the iconic floor plan of London
7 votes -
Copenhagen-based firm Henning Larsen Architects has proposed a low-rise neighborhood south of central Copenhagen using all-timber construction
4 votes -
How dog parks took over the urban landscape
6 votes -
Bjarke Ingels Group and WXY reimagine downtown Brooklyn
4 votes -
Scandinavia is famous for its liveable cities, but a new university course in Nordic urban planning has raised questions about replicating the region's approach elsewhere
8 votes -
How Helsinki built book heaven – Finland's most ambitious library is a kind of monument to the Nordic model of civic engagement
7 votes -
The evolution of urban planning in ten diagrams
12 votes -
The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht
5 votes -
Shared mobility principles for livable cities
8 votes -
We replaced sixty-eight Tube adverts with cats
13 votes -
Helsinki's new flagship library Oodi has been voted winner of the 2019 Public Library of the Year award by the IFLA
6 votes -
Indonesia will build its new capital city in Borneo as Jakarta sinks into the Java Sea
11 votes -
Indonesia plans to move its capital to the island of Borneo
8 votes -
Copenhagen has taken bicycle commuting to a whole new level
5 votes -
Want safe, bikeable streets? Get rid of free parking, as Amsterdam did
14 votes -
Rethinking the good city: Vallejo’s bold vision
4 votes -
A small city with big delusions: Pine Island, MN (population 3,000) has huge dreams, yet they can’t take care of their basic systems. Who pays the price?
8 votes -
Europe’s cities weren’t built for this kind of heat
21 votes -
How a new logo saved the city of Oslo $5 million a year
8 votes -
Vanished neighbourhoods: The areas lost to urban renewal
6 votes -
Finland invited me to visit and to learn all about the country's smart cities projects
4 votes -
How Utrecht became a paradise for cyclists
6 votes -
Paris will create the city's largest gardens around the Eiffel Tower
9 votes -
In car-choked Brussels, the pedestrians are winning
6 votes -
After overthrowing its government and changing its name, North Macedonia faces up to the urban crisis in Skopje
8 votes -
Indonesia plans to move its capital out of Jakarta, a city that's sinking
9 votes -
Indonesia President Joko Widodo plans to move capital city
4 votes -
Cities don’t have souls. Why do we battle for them?
11 votes -
The hidden resilience of “food desert” neighborhoods
9 votes -
To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars
13 votes -
A modest proposal to eliminate 11,000 urban parking spots
6 votes -
Can post-revolution Yerevan get to grips with its informal architecture epidemic?
10 votes -
Super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive: The 'pencil towers' of New York's super-rich
14 votes -
Taking back Taksim: Everyday life vs. top-down redevelopment
6 votes -
Suburbs and car centric urban design is the worst mistake in modern history
Designing our countries to accommodate cars as much as possible has been one of the most destructive things to our health, environment, safety and social connectedness. The damage has spread so...
Designing our countries to accommodate cars as much as possible has been one of the most destructive things to our health, environment, safety and social connectedness. The damage has spread so far and deep that it has reached a crisis point in most developed cities in almost every country. The suburbs we live in are subjected to strict zoning laws baring any form of high density building and any form of mixed zoning. As a result our houses are spaced so far away from each other and from the essential services we need that unless you own a car you are blocked from having a normal life. The main streets full of independent stores and markets have all been killed by megamalls 30km away from where people live with carparks bigger than most park lands. All of this was caused by car usage pushing our societies further and further apart to the point where many people find it acceptable and normal to drive 40km each direction to work each day.
One of the more devastating effects of this urban sprawl is the supermarket has been moved so far away that most people avoid going as much as possible and limit it to a single trip every 1-2 weeks. Fresh food does not last 1-2 weeks which leaves people throwing out mountains of spoiled food that wasn't eaten in time as well as the move to processed foods packed full of preservatives. As well as a shift to people buying dinner from drive through takeaway franchises because their hour long commute has left them with little time to cook fresh and healthy foods.
Owning a car in many countries is seen as the only way to get a job. This locks the poor from ever regaining control of their life because the cost of owning and maintaining a car is higher than most of these people get in an entire year. Our city streets which should be places of vibrant liability have become loud, unsafe and toxic.
Elon and his electric cars solve none of these issues. Electric cars are not the way of the future. They don't even solve air pollution issues entirely because a large part of air pollution is brake pad fibres and tire wear which is proportional to the vehicles weight. And these Teslas are not light.
The only solution is reducing personal vehicle usage as much as possible in urban areas. Of course there will always be some people who will genuinely need vehicles such as in rural areas but there is simply no reason to have the average person drive to and from their office or retail job every day. Its wasteful and harmful in so many ways.
There needs to be a huge push to reclaim our cities and living spaces to bring back the liveability that we could have had. In my city some of the side streets were closed to cars and the change was incredible. Plants and seating filled the spots that would have once been a row of free parking. The streets are filled with the sounds of laughter instead of the roar of motors. The local pubs and cafes have benefited hugely. They didn't benefit at all from street side car parks that were always filled by people who have done 5 laps of the city looking for an empty park and do not intend to shop there.
What is everyone's opinion on this topic and what can we do about it?
64 votes -
How an emerging African megacity cut commutes by two hours a day
11 votes -
How Manhattan became a rich ghost town
14 votes -
Cincinnati joins the list of cities saying ‘no’ to parking minimums
11 votes -
Five rules for designing more walkable cities
10 votes -
Desire paths: The illicit trails that defy the urban planners
23 votes -
An inversion of nature: How air conditioning created the modern city
3 votes -
Who owns the space under cities? The attempt to map the ground beneath our feet
7 votes