Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by EdwinLarkin 1889 days ago
>Oh no doubt it's unlikely. Does that mean we should build suburbs instead of walkable neighborhoods? I'm not sure why it would.

I am not sure.Should we? I think living in the suburbs (and now I dont have a picture of american suburbs in mind) is something that a lot of people imagine as good life.Is it sustainable? Dont know. But is city life in mega cities sustainable? Also not.

>I'm not even arguing for that. I'm saying just stop building more suburbs. The cities will retrofit over time on their own as it starts to make economic sense.

Are cities better than suburbs? Asian megacities definitely are not solving the problem (although I am not arguing they should move to the suburbs :D).

>I live in the suburbs. Most people have no choice in living in the suburbs or not. The suburbs are simply built, and then that's all the choice you have.

I am not sure they are simply just built (maybe in the US?). Here in Europe suburbs are built because they provide better value for the price. Apts in cities are expensive and too small.

>Yea... tell me about it as I have to close my windows because every day there is constant mowing, leaf blowing, and weed whacking and people driving loud cars and motorcycles. Oh and dogs barking. Though that's in the suburbs.

Point taken. But you can definitely build a house / retrofit it that can mitigate the noise.That's much harder to do in a highrise building.

>Why would you need public transportation to walk down the street? You'd just walk.

I do that here in Europe.Cities are mostly walkable and yet most of the destinations that I want to go to are more reachable by car than by public transport.

>Why would you then trust the government to build and maintain roads and highway infrastructure?

Because they dont.They gain points by mismanaging public resources (building roads and highway infrastructure leading to nowhere (or very sparsely populated areas).

>I don't think technology can solve the problem. It's a public policy one. We need subtractive solutions, not additive ones, in my opinion.

You can live comfortably without being affected by these solutions.There's many more people that will having more tough because of that.