[kuldeep_kap]

I'm dreaming of the day when US cities start adopting car-light (if not car-free), walkable & bikeable urban designs. I have no interest in car centric 15-min cities. They are hard to scale and even when you achieve that goal with cars, the standard living is poor.

Portland & Detroit comparison is a bit laughable. May be we'll see this one day, but I'll believe it when I see it.

[kieselguhr_kid]

I live in one of the "complete neighborhoods" in Portland and it's really nice. I can walk to the grocery store to buy fresh food for each day, and I'm less than fifteen minutes by foot from three public parks (and a tiny one that I don't really count). This is far from representative of the city itself, but I would never want to give this lifestyle up.

[kqr]

This really gave me pause. I know the US is car-centric, but walking to the grocery store and at most 15 minutes to a real park sounds like the bare minimum for a livable location in my mind. Is the implication that regular US cities don't even fulfill that requirement?

[martopix]

When I first visited the US I was pretty appalled. Silicon Valley towns are huge stretches of residential areas where you can't even get a coffee on foot, you might be ok by cycling if they're not too large. In inland non-ancient cities, even the city centre is built for cars --- you can go around and get things by foot in the centre, but the roads are still made for cars, so you're constantly crossing 4-lane roads and walking across huge parking lots.

[ArgusStrav]

For reference: The nearest grocery store to me is 3 km away, down a hill and across an interstate that does not have a method for pedestrians to cross it, other than playing Frogger, if you know what I mean. And that store is overpriced and doesn't have a good selection. The next-closest store is 8 km away.

I live in a suburban area in a town of 30k.

[pharmakom]

> I have no interest in car centric 15-min cities.

A car centric 15 minute city is literally impossible. There will always be too much congestion to get anywhere in 15 minutes since cars take up too much space.

[pavon]

It's not clear what you mean by that. It is easy to build a city where you can reach everything you need within 15 minutes by car. What is hard is to build a city like that where you can also reach everything you need by foot within 15 minutes. I don't think it is as impossible as some urbanists make it though.

The downtown in my city is by far the most dense and walkable area of town while still being far more accommodating for car drivers than any of the areas that have been newly revitalized for walkability. The main difference is the existence of ample parking shelters where the main (st)roads hit downtown, unlike the new areas that insist on only having street parking to intentionally limit the number of cars. Both approaches allow the area to be designed for walkability first. But the former does a better job at accommodating people who don't live within 15-minutes by walking or public transit, and does a better job at keeping cars from being a nuisance. Because the motorists have a convenient place to park and walk they do so, while street parking only forces the cars into the walkable streets(and surrounding neighborhoods) to circle endlessly looking for a place to park and increasing congestion.

I really like the strong-towns framing of delineating roads vs streets which are designed for cars and pedestrians respectively. I think too many people are quick to jump on the assumption that roads==bad and streets==good, when having good roads and parking structures can relieve the pressure and allow your streets to be streets. At least in the short-term, and in the long-term you are going to want to keeps some sort of arterial land strips for public transit use (in all but the most dense areas which can support subways). So making them roads now with a mix of buses and cars that gradually becomes more buses, and then possibly dedicated public transit makes for a good growth plan.

[atoav]

Having some urban structure where everything is within 15 car minutes is easy. It is just not a metropolitan city. My (central european) 9000 inhabitant village/city was like that and there are many like it.

The issue is that this will not scale. The space needed for cars scales at a different rate than the space needed for people, so does the infrastructure.

Today I live for a decade in one of the biggest cities in Germany (a still quite car centric nation by European standards). I never owned a car in that city and never missed it. If I need one for the hardware store I can just get a car sharing one. I spent maybe 100 Euros on car and gas every year.

Most of what I need for my daily life is within walking radius (grocery store across the street, hairdresser, 24/7 drinks and cigarettes, some restaurants and bars on the street, the rehearsal space for my band is a 5 min walk where I don't have to cross a single road). It is quite silent in my area and the air is good (no dust/grime on the balcony).

If my area was car centric I'd have to sacrifice all of that. But what would I gain in return? The ability to go to all the places I can already go to by subway, S-Bahn, bus or bicycle? No thanks, I'd rather have my city human-sized than car-sized.

[JadeNB]

> It is easy to build a city where you can reach everything you need within 15 minutes by car.

I think getting to places by car is often not the hardest part. Instead, the hard part (at least from a user's perspective!) is storing all the cars for all the inhabitants of the city, both at their origin and their destination. This creates ballooning space requirements, including duplication of space (much residential parking will remain largely unused during the day, and much business parking will remain largely unused at night). Then, even after devoting as much space to cars as US cities do, one winds up unable to plan simply to drive to one's destination, but having also to devote significant planning to parking.

[kqr]

> It is easy to build a city where you can reach everything you need within 15 minutes by car.

Not when you account for congestion. Let's pretend that the average driver can accept sitting in traffic for one hour daily, or 30 minutes one way. What happens then is that more and more people will take the car until it's just congested enough to take 30 minutes to go somewhere -- even if the distance at full speed is just 15 minutes.

If you increase capacity more people will take the car until the trip takes 30 minutes again.

This just doesn't happen with less massive modes of transport because accommodating practically infinite amounts of foot traffic requires, comparatively speaking, very little area. Distances have to be shorter, yes, but scaling at a lower rate.

[Wowfunhappy]

Depends on the size of the city, I suppose. A 15 minute car city like New York or London is almost certainly impossible.

In a comparatively-suburban "city", it's absolutely possible and probably fairly common. Of course, you'll likely have to leave the city far more frequently, and those trips may take longer than 15 minutes. By contrast, you could easily spend your entire life in New York without ever leaving city limits.

[munk-a]

I think car oriented cities come with a lot of issues, but I don't think this is really a fair statement. Small towns can easily exist with <15min commutes and the city scalable version of this (which I hate, but does work) is basically a continuous field of suburbs dotted with occasional clumps of box stores stretching out into the horizon.

[ghaff]

I live in an exurban town near a couple of small cities. I work remotely but am within 30 minutes of my office by car. And I'm within a 10-15 minute drive of grocery stores, (some) restaurants, and various big box stores like Walmart. It's not like I have quick access to big city amenities but I'm a reasonable pretty uncongested drive from most of the things I need day-to-day. (And I can walk but just for a fairly lengthy walk in the woods.)

[brewdad]

The trouble comes when sprawl catches up to your exurban city. Now, one of two things happens: either your 15 minute city becomes a 30 minute city due to traffic congestion or zoning laws limit new construction and the cost of living there increases dramatically. If you managed to buy a home there, you'll be fine but renters soon have to seek either the next exurban spot or an older, decaying area closer to the central city.

[ghaff]

We're talking an almost 500 year old farm town near a 80,000 person (twin) city so there isn't really a "central city" in the sense you're thinking of. They're old mill cities but there hasn't been a whole lot of sprawl over the past decades. It's pretty far out from the nearest major city.

[jcranmer]

A car-centric 15-minute city is actually quite possible. Something like Urbana-Champaign could well qualify. It's basically a stretch of suburbia centered around a university, which ends up being inherently pretty walkable to boot too.

[SkeuomorphicBee]

It is possible, just not scalable. It is ready for a small city to be a car centric 15 minute city, but once population reaches the 6 digits problems start to arise, and ~500k is the rough upper limit where it becomes impossible.

[sien]

I live in a car centric 15 minute city.

My work is ~13 minutes away. There is a Primary and Secondary School within 5 and 20 minutes walk. A supermarket is a 10 minute bike ride away. A hospital is 10 minutes drive away. A top 50 ranked University is 25 minutes drive away.

There is a good question from w-j-w that has been deleted here. Yes - it's a 15 minute car city at 8:30 AM. My commute goes to about 14 minutes...

This is on the days when I'm not WFH - which should also be factored in.

[_carbyau_]

Lived in Canberra for a long time but no longer.

Can confirm it is a 20 minute city with your own car/motorbike/bicycle-enthusiasm (year round in 35 degree heat or -7 degree cold). The arterial roads are good and the bicycle pathways are pretty good in any area established before self government.

The new suburbs suck, and if you need public transport it is a tram line that services a single area and buses everywhere else. Live in a new suburb and have to rely on public transport? Sucks to be you...

Pretty good if you have a car/motorbike/bicycle-enthusiasm though. s/ Just choose not to be disabled or too old to drive.../s

[Smoosh]

And I also live and work in Canberra (Hi Sien).

Some commutes are more like 30 minutes (by car) or 40 at a bad time. But this is where someone has chosen to live at the opposite end of the city to their workplace, which is largely unnecessary.

I myself walk to and from work (when not WFH) and it takes around 20 minutes.

[imachine1980_]

where?, sound interesting to research.

[sien]

Canberra.

[HeyItsMatt]

Walter Burley Griffin designed Canberra with space allotted for highly efficient tramways that still haven't been built.

The guy has been dead for nearly one hundred years and the city still hasn't assigned a replacement urban planner...

[w-j-w]

Is your city a 15 minute city at 8:30 AM?

[kuldeep_kap]

100% agree.

If anyone is interested here is great video on [Autoluw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlXNVnftaNs). This is what US needs, but I dont see this happening due america's car-centric culture.

[eru]

Just do congestion charging.

[rayiner]

I live outside of Annapolis, in a metro area of about 150,000 people, and everything is within 15 minutes even with traffic.

[replygirl]

tell me you live in a busier part of a global city without telling me you live in a busier part of a global city

[munk-a]

Burlington VT was a lovely city to live in though the fact that it's Vermont means you'd need a car to get practically anywhere the downtown core is dense enough to allow you to walk, eat, shop and dine[1]. But, honestly, the city has pretty weak public transit infrastructure due to its size and the grocery options available by foot are extremely limited and pricey.

I think it's one of the better options in N/A outside of NYC, Boston and places in Canada (especially Quebec City and Montreal) - Boulder also often comes up in discussion though I've never been.

Comparing these to European cities which weren't leveled in WW2 is insane though - when pedestrians are first class citizens cities are absolutely wonderful to live in.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Street_Marketplace

[rmbyrro]

How do self-driving cars change this equation?

I imagine they'll drastically reduce parking needs, opening space for traffic lanes (reduce congestion) and commercial/services areas (make things closer to home).

[LeonidasXIV]

Opening space for traffic lanes does not reduce congestion, it induces demand (for more traffic lanes).

[anamax]

The demand was always there. There was just no hope of satisfying it before.

[asoneth]

Self-driving cars make driving easier so they will increase the demand for private vehicle travel and make it even less likely that we can satisfy demand.

I'm not even sure it is possible to satisfy this demand in a city. Houston has 26-lane highways and they are still building more roads to handle traffic. LA uses 14% of all land for car parking and is still building more parking spots. I suppose there must be a theoretical upper bound past which building more space for cars does not eventually induce more driving, but I know of no city that has reached that limit.

[cpursley]

It's just not going to happen until gas is over $10 gallon.

[presentation]

I couldn't let my dreams be dreams, so I left the USA.

[kuldeep_kap]

where did you move? hows the city life there?

[presentation]

Tokyo, the best

[bdcravens]

Climates in Texas and other southern areas make this borderline impossible during the summer. Ditto for northern cities in winter months.

[NegativeLatency]

Your claim about northern cities is just not backed up by data, we have:

- the large amount of bike culture in Minneapolis, people ride all year long (once you're moving you'll stay pretty warm with the right gear) https://gearjunkie.com/biking/minneapolis-bike-capital

- the bike culture in Finland where it's even colder: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2020/feb/0...

the difference in most of the US that it's not prioritized by local government, bike lanes don't get plowed and fill up with gravel, there's not sufficient bike infrastructure to being with etc

[eru]

And for hot places: have a look at how Singapore deal with these things.

(Yes, it's too hot to enjoy biking during the day. But public transport is great, and has aircon.)

[sunflowerfly]

The Not Just Bikes Youtube channel did a great episode on why some places have winter cycling and others do not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

[milkytron]

I think there are steps that could help reduce the affects of heat. Things such as more street trees, less asphalt (reduce the heat island effect), heat reflecting building roofs, etc.

It's not like the south is a lost cause, improvement can still be made.

[bdcravens]

Perhaps but 102 is still 102. I think you can make the same argument in Chicago when it's 10 and snowing.

[munk-a]

Chicago can (and in some areas has - along with Boston) fixed that issue with pedestrian tunnels that allow easy movement during cold weather. A similar fix is available for southern cities but I think a more reasonable approach is just tighter pedestrian alleys that prevent full sun from ever bathing the walking surface (and reduce sun exposure to buildings) along with lots and lots of trees. Trees are seriously amazing and dissipating heat from the sun.

Once you eliminate the sun you just need to make sure that wind alleys are set up to keep air moving through the city and have regular green spaces with water to help reduce air temperature. This can be done quite sustainably - Las Vegas is actually a great example of (rather) sustainable water use from a city built in the middle of a desert.

[bobthepanda]

Plenty of people walk to do things like get groceries in Chicago.

Heck, there is a subartic city in Finland with 12% cycling share, which is a lot higher than pretty much any city in North America. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/amp/2021/01/22/meet-the-b...

[dhosek]

I lived car-free in Chicago for 7 years. I now live in an inner-ring suburb (Oak Park), car-light (my wife and I share a car that I drive as little as possible). If we define 15 minutes as ¾ mile walking distance, I have within that range, two supermarkets, a library, health clubs, coffee shops, two drug stores, dry cleaners, banks, doctors, dentists, schools, daycare and a number of restaurants not to mention a stop on the “L” and at least half a dozen bus routes within my 15-minute zone. If I didn’t prefer Trader Joe’s to a mainstream super, I wouldn’t drive to go grocery shopping (and TJs is just over a mile away). If I expand my range a bit more, I add in even more of all the above plus a book store and movie theater.

[PeopleB4Cars]

Perhaps we shouldn't be encouraging people to live in such places then

[cpursley]

Tell that to the Russians and the Spanish...