noglider 

We can't give all people all the things they prefer without cost. Private MV traffic is heavily subsidized by not requiring users to pay indirect costs. And yes, space at the edge of busy sectors is generally less valuable than in the middle.

Dis you know that more than a quarter of city traffic is made of people looking for parking spaces?

Arcanum

Oh yes, that's working out great in San Francisco. Densification is prevented by zoning rules and housing prices are skyrocketing, yet people still want to live there because of jobs and society and culture and all the other benefits of city living. Sure, some people end up living in other cities, but many still work in and around San Francisco, obligating ownership and use of a car.

Artkansas 

Arcology was coined by Paolo Soleri in the 1960s to refer to a combination of Architecture and Ecology. Follow this link to Soleri's Arcology page. It tries to make a compact and very integrated city, a concept he worked out in his project ArcoSanti near Prescott AZ.

I-Like-To-Bike

The question was: Who would benefit from your scheme to make everybody always park a mile away from their home and destinations?

Ekdog

Over 420,000 of them use BART, the nation's fifth-busiest heavy rail rapid transit system, and thousands more cycle and ride buses, streetcars and cable cars. I've lived in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose, and not once did I feel obligated to use a car.

Ekdog

And the answer is: Cyclists, pedestrians and mass transit users.

I-Like-To-Bike

Except when they wish to park their cars near their destinations.

noglider 

Sure, and some deserve to. Currently, they are too well subsidized to do this. I'm not saying it should be impossible. But the general flow should not favor the most wasteful mode.

I-Like-To-Bike

Do you think a tiny group of ideologues from a tiny subset of the general population who might favor implementation of such a scheme, should also be the group to make the decisions on who "deserves" or doesn't deserve to park within a mile of their home or destinations?

noglider 

I'm speaking of what I'd like to see. I'm not claiming to have any power.

noglider 

But if the people see the real costs of what we have, they may decide it's time for a change.

I-Like-To-Bike

Yes it will be quite a trick for the ideologues to convincingly lay out the plan for actual cash savings for the affected population by the implementation of a scheme to force people to park a mile away from their home and destinations that are currently accessible to them by privately owned motor vehicles.

noglider 

Take a look at those who have made these changes. How do they feel?

I-Like-To-Bike

Dunno of anybody who prefers to park their own vehicle a mile away, but doubt that many have seriously proposed or successfully implemented any plan to force others to join the "change."

I doubt that those who do park a privately owned car at a distance from their home because of their personal "beliefs" or more likely because of the difficulty in finding nearby affordable parking, enjoy any non-monetary "benefits" (such as more space for their wheelchairs or bicycles) from not being able to park conveniently near their home. I also suspect that such people seldom, if ever, use their non-conveniently parked car to visit an establishment that does not provide convenient parking.

noglider 

Sure, in general, people want what's best for them individually. That's the force against change for the common good. There is such a thing as the common good, though, as much as you appear to disagree.

I-Like-To-Bike

That is your misinterpretation based on your concept (shared by other ideologues on LCF) that someone who disagrees with your opinion, or the viability of your proposal, doesn't understand what you have written, or in this case is skeptical about the actions proposed by you are allegedly for the "common good".

noglider 

I don't believe you misunderstand me, but I can't claim to know what you think and feel. Feel free to say what it is. Forgive me if I misinterpreted you. I wouldn't want to do that.

I'm sure Burlingon, IA has different needs than NYC. I don't know what the challenges there are. I can tell you that driving a MV here is pretty frustrating. Fewer than half the households own a car. We didn't have one when I was growing up here. Mostly, it is more of a liability than an asset.

I-Like-To-Bike

I know NYC traffic and living patterns are far different from Burlington IA, as well as being different than living in Philadelphia where I lived my first 30 years; and in fact is quite different than almost anywhere else in the U.S.

Perhaps if you specified that your envisioned parking scheme was targeted specifically to areas as dense as NYC especially Manhattan, and the few (if any) other U.S. locations with similar population density, limited space for parking, traffic patterns and readily available public transportation.

As posted, you gave no indication that your envisioned traffic modeling was limited to one, or only a few, unique location(s).

noglider 

It turns out that there is an engineering professor at my workplace who might know about traffic modeling. I'm gathering up the courage to talk to him.

What are Burlington's challenges?

I-Like-To-Bike

Older population with declining economic opportunities for younger people, nothing unique to smaller towns throughout the Midwest,if not the U.S. in general. Easy for anyone to get about in town door to door by cycling or driving.

Make sure to specify to the professor if your inconvenient parking scheme is NYC specific, and if it would provide any significant benefits to all or most of the residents/businesses of areas beyond the Manhattan-type density scenario (not just the relatively tiny slice of the population who are voluntarily LCF.)

tandempower

There are objective reasons some things are better than others. Sprawl is land-waste, pure and simple. If everyone insisted on driving an RV everywhere, or a dump-truck, or flying helicopers, the waste would be obvious and it would be clear that people should switch to less wasteful and less obnoxious and hazardous vehicles because the overall effect of everyone engaging in such waste adds up to harm the environment, each other's freedom, and future quality of life for everyone. Only because we have been trained to accept common evils as inevitable do most people fail to recognize driving less as being for the common good.

No, every location will grow as a result of spillover from areas that reach sprawl-saturation. People get tired of driving in sprawl and ultimately end up moving to smaller areas where driving is easier and takes less time. Because of this spillover, smaller towns and cities grow. Unless this pattern is interrupted, spillover growth will turn every small area/town/city into a sprawling motor-congested hell sooner or later.

Growth is inevitable. For it to be sustainable, space-wasting practices like driving-dependency need room to evolve. If very few people are comfortable with switching modes, driving becomes a stagnant paradigm with an inflexible limit. Inflexible limits and growth are a dangerous mix, akin to a pressure cooker. Only if people are free to change modes can areas evolve as they grow without reaching limits, i.e. sustainably.

Roody

J.H. Crawford envisions cities being built in pod-like neighborhoods that are connected to each other by fast transit. Each neighborhood is of a size (less than a mile across, perhaps) that makes for easy walks to a centrally located transit stop.

On a map, the neighborhoods look a bit like beads on a necklace, with the transit line being the string that holds the beads together:



IIRC, he is planning for a maximum door-to-door travel time of 30 minutes within a city with a population of 1 million.

BTW, he is talking about a city with NO cars whatsoever.

Carfree Cities: City Topology

Rollfast

Cul-de-sacs are not all that efficient and add large amounts of traveling distance to your journey AND they are very confusing to many vehicle users, including bikes. They are trendy but grids are more practical. This is the act of a daydreamer.

Roody

Some regions have experimented with joining cul-de-sac neighborhoods with bike paths between them, connecting the rear parts of the cul-de-sacs. this would put the bike paths in the wasted space between the neighborhoods, far from the often busy roads that connect them for cars.

Something similar can be done with busy street/highways that have strip development--buuild bike paths in the back of the stores--convenient but far away from the busy highway in front of the stores.

Rollfast

But this still makes them fuel wasters for motor vehicles and lends a 'boutique' status to bicyclists that is not advantageous to anyone. You have to commit to multi-vehicle planning or keep things small.

Cul-de-sacs are a huge waste of valuable residential spaces. They are a huge pain for me as well and I haven't driven a car since December 26, 2006. I find them highly frustrating to navigate period.