This perfectly captures our family’s own experiences in East Vanouver.
Despite living in a neighborhood with some of the lowest rates of car usage and ownership, and the highest rates of active travel in the region, we found ourselves surrounded on all four sides by four- and six-lane arterial roads that each carried upward of 40,000 vehicles per day; a huge number of which were just passing through. To make matters worse, Commercial Drive—the vibrant high street where we did all of our local shopping, dining, and after-school activities—had the dual and conflicting function of serving as a four-lane arterial road that moved 20,000 cars per day.
Neither television nor illegal drugs has been the chief destroyer of American communities. Instead, the automobile has that dubious honor. — Jane Jacobs
The definitive account of this phenomenon is found in a 2020 update to the 1981 book Livable Streets by urban designer and theorist Donald Appleyard.
“The gauge becomes, how far are you willing to rake the leaves beyond your own front steps?” Dr. Appleyard asks. If the street itself doesn’t encourage people to be outgoing and connect to their community, they are reluctant to accept any responsibility for it and its care. This insular and selfish thinking
“The gauge becomes, how far are you willing to rake the leaves beyond your own front steps?” Dr. Appleyard asks. If the street itself doesn’t encourage people to be outgoing and connect to their community, they are reluctant to accept any responsibility for it and its care.
Pinker found regular interaction with close personal relationships increases one’s life expectancy by an average of 15 years.
Provided they meet a set of requirements—chiefly around preserving the width of the footpath—residents are encouraged to remove a patch of paving stones in front of their home and replace it with a green space.
“Automobility fosters individuality, competition, rejection of collective responsibility, aggressiveness, and domination by way of movement, speed, and escape.”
it is more a question of speed than mode. He sees the development and marketing of faster, smarter, more powerful motorized bikes as an extension of the same troublesome thinking. “The car is not the problem, but it’s the best symbol of the underlying problems,”
the egalitarian nature of Dutch society, perhaps best epitomized by the saying “Niet gelijk, maar wel gelijkwaardig” (We’re not the same, but we’re worth the same).
after a decade of fighting against the status quo in a car-dominated region of 2.5 million people, and daily struggles with the hostile streets in our community (despite many investments in active travel), it was time to downsize. Delft turned out to be the perfect alternative.
From an anthropological viewpoint, it is an intrinsically feminine quality to review, evaluate, ask what’s working and what isn’t, and then take the necessary measures to correct course.
65 percent, or 450 million Europeans reside in dwellings exposed to levels above 55 decibels, the amount the World Health Organization (WHO) deems unacceptable.
concluded that alarms cost the city $400 to $500 million per year in public health costs, lost productivity, decreased property value, and diminished quality of life. It would be one thing if the alarms actually prevented theft, but there is zero evidence that they do. A 1997 analysis of 73 million insurance claims found that cars with alarms show no overall reduction in theft losses. An estimated 95 to 99 percent of all car alarms are false,
Since 1956, highways alone have accounted for nearly 80 percent of all government spending in America’s transport system, leaving precious little for other projects.
“Personal vehicles are not cheap, and are not subsidized. But because American cities fail to provide people with alternative transportation options, people are forced to travel by personal vehicles,”
A dramatic spike in fuel prices forced many to reacquaint themselves with their bicycles—the sales of which doubled—producing a collective desire for safer streets. This shift was reinforced by the national government’s Car-Free Sunday policy. Suddenly, for one day a week, cities went totally silent, and their thoroughfares were returned to the public realm.
The electrification of the transport network is seen by many as the singular solution to these sustainability issues, ignoring many of the inefficiencies built into a car-based system. It would, for example, be a much easier lift if the vast majority of the required energy—renewable or otherwise—wasn’t wasted on 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds) of dead weight, a machine that weighs 30 times more than the human it’s propelling.
We loved our lives in Vancouver, but it was always understood that it was a place in which we likely couldn’t grow old. We wanted to be able to slow down, and live in a calming environment, but we didn’t want to sacrifice the walkability, bikeability, and overall connectedness we enjoyed in our East Vancouver home. Now that we’ve landed in Delft, we think we may have found just the place to “settle down” and grow old together.
Barcelona (population 5.6 million) has been rolling out its transformational “Superblocks” scheme, which restricts through traffic to every ninth street, and opens up entire neighborhoods to pedestrians, cyclists, and playing children.
Everyone dreams of finding a place they don’t feel the need to escape from.