UberGeek

I assume it'll happen once people realize it's more economical to live where you work, rather than obey Robert Moses' directive of "Live in suburbs, work in city".

UberGeek

You can thank Robert Moses for that.

cooker

The causes of sprawl are multifactorial and people wanting to escape some kind of real or imagined urban problems is no doubt one part of it. Or they may just want a cheaper, larger lot and larger house, which is fine. People can have whatever they want, I don't mind. If they can afford it, and nobody else is harmed, they are welcome to it. I only care if it impacts on me, or on society at large or the environment.

And it does - sprawl is harmful. It causes traffic deaths. It increases global warming. It reduces food security. It sucks up massive tax dollars. It contributes to lower population health. So whatever the causes may be, it still represents a a raft of problems that need to be addressed. You harping over and over again that sprawl is simply a fact, get used to it, does nothing to solve those problems. You practically can't even admit they exist.

Mobile 155

Cooker,
It doesn't matter if I accept your fears or not. My contention is based on what is and the odds of the micro minority changing it are pretty small. So yes there is a much better chance you will simply have to get used to it than either of us will see your vision change things. Because if the root cause is the same the result will be the same. If it isn't cars it might be personal pods. But what ever it is those that can will spread out. History teaches us as much.

cooker

Not fears. facts.

Mobile 155

And with that I am pretty much done. We drifted way off the topic, agreed mostly that bikes were never going to go head to head with cars and moved on to all kinds of other social ills. Much like this forum always does.

Next topic maybe?

Machka 

Here's the thing ... going back to the original post ...

Necessity might be the mother of invention ... but laziness is the father.

Think about it. Have there been any inventions designed to make life more difficult and challenging? Most inventions cater to our inherent laziness.

Wheels are put onto office chairs so we can roll about the office rather than getting up and walking. Remotes are created so we can stay lying on the sofa and change channels rather than having to get up and walk over to the TV to do it. Electric irons are invented so that we don't have to hoist iron irons in and out of the fire.

Having experienced our own private and personal individual motor vehicles which allow us to go where we want to go when we want to go there ... it would be a very difficult thing to convince people to take a step backward to the more difficult and challenging idea of riding a bicycle.

It would be like asking them to give up their remotes, to do all their cooking over an open fire, to wash their clothes with a washboard down at the local creek ...

Roody

You honestly believe that cars are not a crucial part of the formula for sprawl? That is kind of incredible.

Roody

Yes, in one city or one region of the country. But we also have sprawl and a car-centric world in regions that never even heard of Robert Moses. So, although Mr. Moses is certainly an arch-villain in this story, he is not the only one.

I remember, back in the day, trying to hitchhike across northern New Jersey and cursing Robert Moses for creating this hellish sprawl.

cooker

aw come on - you've never shied away from these discussions before and besides it is on topic, certainly for the thread and arguably for the forum as well. The OP stated his reasons for wanting to see the bike compete with the car - it is because bike are (he claims) emission free and don't depend on oil, which he thinks should be banned for private cars. I'm actually not as militant as him - I have never advocated banning oil use or private cars, but I would like to see major cutbacks in the support society as a whole provides to them, so that people who use them shoulder more of the responsibility for their use and the consequences - which, by the way, is the true American way, not the watered down modern version where people expect the government to build them everything they need.

Or, if people do expect the government to provide facilities, then people who would like to bike more or would consider living car free (who greatly outnumber the ones who are brave or progressive enough to actually do it, the way society is now structured around the car) should expect society to cater to them too, and not just to motorists who suck up more than their share of the revenue, including some of your tax dollars. Totally on topic for this forum!

History probably also taught us that human sacrifice and slavery would go on forever or that the Roman Empire would continue to grow indefinitely, but at some point, history turns out to be wrong. Historical sprawl was puny compared to modern sprawl and wasn't butting up against limits like oil depletion, aquifer depletion, soil degradation, regional smog, global food security threats, and so on. If sprawl and automobilism are now a threat to societal or planetary wellbeing, (and I know you always carefully avoid addressing that question) then you and I should be looking for ways to reduce or eliminate the threat, including getting others on board, regardless of whether it is an uphill battle.

Roody

"If it was easy, we wouldn't have to do anything about it." (quote from my mother, life-long warrior for progress and peace)

Mobile 155

Ok, one more then. Machka has hit on a point that can't be ignored. Society never goes backwards. But more importantly we have a whole world of other societies that are still growing as an economy and see things much like we did when we started expanding. You can only put so many potatoes in a ten pound sack and then you need a bigger sack or more bags.

People, not paving | The Economist

Roody

The rest of the world seems to have a better handle on it than we do. Maybe we should be looking to them for guidance? The US used to take a leadership role in science and technology, but I'm afraid this is no longer the case when it comes to urban planning, energy use, and transportation development.

cooker

That article says that sprawl is creating problems in China - do you agree?

"China’s largest cities can mostly cope with population growth. The spread of concrete is a bigger problem."

"Rather than try to control population size, the central government would do better to have a go at curbing the spatial expansion of cities."

mstateglfr 

All growth is planned and controlled.
Show me a town/village/city that doesn't have zoning. Someone buys land from a farmer, gets the zoning changed, and builds a house. A handful of others like the picturesque area and do the same. The farmer cashes out and 10 homes go up with a lot of space on each lot.
That was all planned which contradicts this definition. But its sprawl based on other definitions and the one provided by Cornell.


That's a tough one.

Roody

If the world was designed better, non-automotive transportation would not be a hardship in many areas that are urban or suburban. Good public transit, good infra for walking and bicycling would create a situation where most people could travel comfortably for most of their trips without cars. They would also save money, pollute less, and still have an enjoyable trip.

I-Like-To-Bike

Don't be so sure. Have you been following some of the news of the past couple decades in the Middle East and SouthWest Asia? Think Taliban and the like with leaders who push for their version of "The Simple Life."

Artkansas 

I wouldn't look to China for guidance on that. Have you heard of Jing-Jin-Ji, a super city of 130 million, a city larger than Korea.

Roody

A lot of sprawl occurs beyond the city limits, where there are no zoning laws. Also, zoning ordinances alone have obviously not been effective for actually "planning" a community with good design principles.

cooker

LOL now we're the Taliban - at least you didn't Godwin the thread!

cooker

The phrases I quoted were from the Economist commenting on China, not the Chinese. Besides it was Mobile 155's link.

mstateglfr 

You mentioned working definitions earlier. the word 'sprawl' means, to most everyone ive heard say it, to spread out haphazardly without a plan. Within that word there is an implicit idea of a large enough population to make some sort of impact.
My view is that a dozen houses on 20 acres that's 10min past city limits isn't sprawl. But that scenario apparently applies to the definition. The community wasn't planned out by some master overseer. 'Good'(what a worthless word in the context of debate) design principles almost certainly wouldn't have been used. etc etc.

Cyclosaurus

The Roman Empire disagrees. Western civilization took 1000 years to recover.

I-Like-To-Bike

Are "we"? Since no one made such a claim or inference, perhaps you know more about who "we" are than you have let on.
Or perhaps you just twisted my response to fit into your wack-a doodle scheme of reality.

Roody

I really didn't intend to start a trivial argument about what the best definition of sprawl is. I really hate this kind of thing. The definition has provided us with a definition that seems to be accepted by at least some professionals in the field. So I think it's best to just use that definition for as long as it works, then stipulate a different definition if that helps you to make some point. (As in this post.)

Like I said earlier, probably 98 % of the people in the world would stipulate that sprawl is a bad thing. The only place I've ever run across anybody saying it's good is right here on this forum. It's pretty funny, actually, or at least a little ironic. But I suspect it's mainly because they don't understand the standard definition of "sprawl" and are getting it mixed up with "suburb."