Originally Posted by
McBTC
Sure, the 8.5 million people who live in NYC obviously do not really have much choice to do otherwise-- there's far too many of'm to all drive to and park their own automobiles at most any place of possible employment so they either live close enough to walk or ride a bike to a job or take a cab or a train or some form of underground public conveyance.
That's the point of a city in the first place: as many people as possible in the same area at the same time by having short travels. The car has just been standing (and driving) in the way of the development of city life. Tourists in Amsterdam for example often ask why so many people cycle. But that's not the right question, the question should be how did all those people manage to get here at the same time. Cycling cities or walkable cities are just busier and more lively. People get from A to B easier, but that means that they will go to C and D too, so they'll do more and spend more.
Nothing great about that lifestyle to many-- especially those who grew up in California when Disneyland was first built in Anaheim and probably thought if anything there'd be space-age monorails traversing such cities by now instead of herding people into crowded underground subways.
Yes, but that's linear thinking that everything newer must be better. Images of a future where everybody moves around on electric bicycles through a clean siltent city with a mobile phone/tv/library/music player in their hand would have been utopian too. In a lot of futuristic ideas in the past there was this idea that people should be as isolated from strangers as possible, but that's never been what city life is about. Of course cycling is much nicer than taking the subway, but if you don't like to be among lots of strangers city life just isn't for you.
Originally Posted by
cooker
Those pre-industrial cities weren't designed for horse and buggy - only a few rich people had them - and in fact even in Julius Caesar's time, Rome had to restrict downtown carriage traffic because it was causing too much congestion. That's why historic European cities can so easily revert to a downtown car-free model - they were never designed for vehicular traffic in the first place.
Yes, but there where also cities like Paris and Barcelona who broke down large parts of the historic parts to create wide avenues between compact blocks. In the end you need to get a lot goods in and a lot of garbage out. The car was often seen as a blessing for the urban environment because of all the horse and ox manure in the streets. A lot of European cities stayed compact despite the car because there was just no room to expand much. Not just the city is historic, but also the location and the surroundings.
Originally Posted by
Dahon.Steve
Actually, that picture was probably after 1922 when the Model T was constructed. The videos I posted from Youtube were before 1910 and placed on trolley cars.
That picture is taken after 1920, probably closer to 1930.