[dilap]

I love driving, but man, it sucks to build a city around it. I'm living in SF right now, carless, and skate a lot. It's fun, but holy shit does it suck constantly having to dodge oblivious drivers, asshole taxis, and homicidal MUNI drivers.

I have a fantasy where the whole city is grass and bikepaths. All normal deliveries are by bike, & if you really need to move something big, you get a special permit to rent a truck that goes 10 MPH and beeps.

[wanderingstan]

Whenever I hear the whirring of hybrid or electric car I realize that times are changing. It may be decades or more away, but I like to imagine what cities of the future will be like.

So quiet! So fresh! The rumble of a car engine and its smelly exhaust will seem quaint. Maybe like the feelings now of seeing a horse-drawn carriage, and seeing the horse shit in the street.

So much space! My street is walled in by parked cars. The driving lanes are wide to accommodate human error. Perhaps the outer parts of the road will be re-purposed as park space. Only two narrow lanes in the middle for the computer guided vehicles to travel on. Or maybe only one lane, since the cars can coordinate their directions on this rarely-trafficed street.

Of course things won't be all rosy, but it IS certain that the feeling of cities will be very different.

[jordanthoms]

My fantasy is to build a city with lots of roads, but put them underground. Street level can be solely for pedestrians, bikes, and vehicles delivering things on that block (although most buildings would have underground road access).

[justincormack]

London tried to have a form of that, where pedestrians could go on raised walkways, while the cars owned the roads underneath. Fragments remain around the Barbican in the City of London, and you can see blocked off unfinished walkways.

Underground roads are being suggested in many places as they free up land for buildings.

[vidarh]

Toronto is a better example of separating cars and pedestrians, though it's underground rather than raised:

http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=f537...

[Nicholas_C]

Dallas recently built a park[0] over a highway smack dab in the middle of the city and it has been a huge success. It would be great to do this in more places.

[0] http://www.klydewarrenpark.org/

[vanderZwan]

Mind if I plug my former university city of Groningen, the Netherlands?

https://vimeo.com/76207227

[rickdale]

Not quite SF, but this might be close to your fantasy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Island

[toast0]

Don't worry, SF is terrible for drivers too. I'll just keep my truck in the south bay, where they appreciate it (kind of; why does caltrans forget how to design north of the grapevine?)