My dream is for my section of my town to ban cars. It’s already heavy pedestrian but if the cars went away (and everyone had to walk or e-bike or mobility scooter in the zone) it would be a utopia. Sure there’d be some issues to address and frustrations but we’d figure it out. The net would be amazingly positive.
> (and everyone had to walk or e-bike or mobility scooter in the zone)
E-bikes are very popular where I live. At first it was great to see people of all ages out biking everywhere.
But now everyone has started modifying their e-bikes to be overpowered and not require any pedaling. A lot of the cheap e-bikes have trivial procedures to unlock the power limit. Anyone who can search Reddit can figure out what to buy and how to do it quickly.
There's a multi-use pedestrian and bike path that parallels a road on my way to the office. In the mornings I commonly see e-bikes on the bike path going faster than the 30mph road traffic. I've been clipped by multiple e-bike riders who blew through stop signs or jumped from sidewalk to road. Last week I had to jump out of the way of an older woman on an e-bike who zoomed through a red light and turned right because she didn't see me in the crosswalk somehow.
A lot of these things are illegal, of course, but enforcement is non-existent.
It's weird to see it play out like this, though I should have seen it coming. I think even a small threat of enforcement and having modified bikes confiscated if used on public roads would make a lot of people think twice. For now, it feels like it's just an electric motorcycle free for all wherever we have a dedicated pedestrian and bike area.
It's just an electric motorcycle...
Fat tire E-bikes, recommended by Bicycling magazine.[1]
1933 Harley-Davidson motorcycle.[2]
It is an electric motorcycle.
It would be better to treat the more powerful E-bikes as electric scooters. Lose the pedals, lower the CG, require license plates, turn signals, and helmets. That's standard practice in China, which encourages electric scooters but discourages high-speed E-bikes.[3] "Electric mobility devices" - e-bikes, Segways, hoverboards, etc. are limited to 20km/h and have size restrictions. China already had a huge scooter fleet, which is going electric, but e-bikes never really caught on. E-scooters did, instead.
[1] https://www.bicycling.com/bikes-gear/a33313406/best-fat-tire...
[2] https://www.rideapart.com/features/247168/rebirth-of-an-amer...
[3] https://www.pacificprime.cn/blog/scooters-and-mopeds-china-c...
> It is an electric motorcycle.
The laws generally require that an e-bike must be under a certain power limit and the user has to pedal to keep it going. The power is for pedal assist only.
This is the difference between your links. The e-bike and the electric motorcycle have very different power limits and are controlled differently.
The unlocks remove the power limit and the mods can add a throttle so the user doesn’t have to pedal.
These turn it into an electric motorcycle under the law.
One is allowed on certain bike trails. An electric motorcycle is not.
That's a US definition pushed by the E-bike industry.[1] The EU has a completely different classification system.[2] Anything above a US class 1 e-bike comes with more restrictions.
Good E-bike vs. Motorcycle discussion.[3]
[1] https://bikexchange.com/electric-bike-classes/
The problem is people not cars or bikes because we rarely take into account how what we do affects other people. Riding my bike, I try to always consider the delta in speed between me and other folks. Sure I can speed along the walkway if there's no one else but as soon as there are or could be people around, I better slow down. Not only for safety but also to reduce stress on whoever is slower. Maybe we're too focussed on ourselves, maybe our community has broken down, maybe we don't consider each other real fellow humans.
> Maybe we're too focussed on ourselves, maybe our community has broken down, maybe we don't consider each other real fellow humans.
I think this is unquestionably a problem in modern society. Too many interactions are purely transactional. People are isolated and lonely. Many people are only out for themselves. Community has definitely broken down
I don't know how to fix this and I'm definitely part of the problem, but I think it is a very big problem
This is essentially the premise of Bowling Alone. The solution is not easy, but it is simple. We as individuals need to rebuild community in our towns and cities. Start a club, start a pickup soccer game that meets regularly, join existing fraternal societies that are aching for new members or start your own new society. Volunteer at your local food bank regularly.
If you know your neighbors, you are less likely to run them down on your e-bike.
> If you know your neighbors, you are less likely to run them down on your e-bike.
And if you know your neighbor and maybe even rely on them somehow, it makes it much easier to accept certain behavior or opinions for example. It's much too easy to dismiss other people because they don't look like us or think like us, there is no downside because everyone only needs themselves.
It's sad but my hope is that the climate breakdown, wealth inequality for example will eventually lead to a "rebuilding" of a more localized society where we depend and help each other. Maybe hard times will come and give us a bit of a shake as a species.
An "unlocked" e-bike is just an e-moped, and should be confined to streets where mopeds are allowed. It's not even clear that such a vehicle can safely share the street with ordinary bikes, let alone pedestrians.
Get the cars out of the streets and the (possibly modified) ebikes onto them... They have a literally smaller footprint, and are a huge improvement over cars.
I love the European model of retractable bollards that are down overnight and then go up in the morning and stay up until late in the evening. Allows for night time delivery vehicle access while preserving a car free space for the whole day for residents and visitors.
My anecdotal observation from my home city is that these are almost all broken. Could be an issue with city bureaucracy, or an inherent weakness.
We don't need to "ban" cars, removing parking minimums effectively does this in a friendlier way while allowing for some vehicles (only the most necessary) and vehicles where they are most needed (businesses will still build parking, just not a "required" excessive amount).
In fact removing parking minimums would probably do 50% of the work of this whole list. Combine that with mixed-use zoning, more units per lot (including reducing FAR/height limits) and narrower streets, and dare I say you are 80-90% of the way there. It only takes a few high-impact changes.
Since they specify a section of their city, I think they just mean fully pedestrianizing that section by blocking off some streets with bollards, letting people roam the full street, letting restaurants put out tables.
While you're talking about how to transform a city more systemically.
It is kinda crazy to see parts of cities where hundreds of people are confined to sidewalks on a Friday night waiting to cross a street for the convenience of a tiny fraction of people who insist on driving. Every city has at least a few blocks that make sense to block off from cars.
>fully pedestrianizing that section by blocking off some streets with bollards, letting people roam the full street, letting restaurants put out tables.
Which is nice, but having experienced that in multiple cities, doesnt truly contribute in a larger meaningful way to "making it easier to build beautiful and walkable places" in the same way
How would you get groceries tho? Everyone would starve!
(Ive had multiple family members who said this after I mentioned I didn’t have a car for 4 years while living in a major city)
From a life in a European city without even owning a car, I can tell you with confidence that I did not starve yet. You just go get groceries a few times a week, in smaller hauls, with the upside that you get fresh vegetables and fruits all the time. For family needs, get an e-cargo bike, and for the fringe cases where you must transport furniture or something, it’s still cheaper to rent a car or hail a cab.
When traveling in Eastern Europe I did my best to explain that you literally can't buy groceries without owning a car in most places in North America; people were legit confused by the logistics of it (even villages and single family house neighborhoods have corner grocery stores in walking distances and bus stops).
I wonder how much surplus calorie intake in the US is related to weekly grocery trips where you store hundreds of thousands of calories in your house at any time.
It's one of the first things that stick out when I live somewhere walkable where I can walk to the corner shop for a can of beans and avocados on demand, and I can keep my fridge/pantry quite barren of perishable food.
For example, in the US, even buying a bag of ten apples from Costco means I'm probably going to eat five apples today. Versus picking up one apple on my walk back home when I feel for an apple.
Between that and not burning extra calories walking between places, possibly.
I will say after not having a car for close to a decade and walking/biking everywhere who just recently left the city being able to drive to the grocery store has been really, really nice. I didnt even realize how much stress in my life was because of how much a pain in the ass walking to the grocery store was.
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There's very few places that do this (most are car-lite) but the center of Utrecht is great in this regard. Here's a new housing development which does indeed ban cars, I'm very curious to see how it proceeds.
How would people be able to "express their personality" by removing their muffler or putting a two foot lift on their truck?
Walking around in platform shoes as a substitute for driving around in a lifted truck, maybe?
Yeah, but how do you modify platform shoes to hit children?
Put spikes on 'em and yeet the brats to oblivion!
You can just kick the little shits whenever you want
Modify their leaf blower to "roll coal"
I think I hate leaf blowers more than I hate cars.
Unusual and inventive walking styles?
https://youtu.be/iV2ViNJFZC8 (Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks)
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For the young people, 20 years ago the line was "nobody is coming for your cars you stupid conspiracy theorist", etc. Now such people, including actual politicians, have absolutely no issue openly advocating for the straight up banning of cars.
It's not specific to the car issue either, it's many issues. They lie to your face and gaslight you for years on end as to their true motivations, while they slowly pry the door further and further open for their ideology, until they've finally garnered enough support that they can switch phases and now be open about their true goals.
I'm not quite sure what the end plan is, since they're forever burning bridges with people like me. I guess they plan on the newest generations having the viewpoint forced on them from a young age, overriding people like me who are quite disgruntled.
I don't know why more municipalities don't jump on this. In my area (I live in the US) we have a number of neighborhoods that are very walk-able and they are consistently the most competitive areas for housing. In all the spots, homes are expensive and that's even if they make it on the market because hardly anyone wants to sell when they live in a place like this.
The people who live in these areas dont want these things, and they control local politics. Typical hypocritical bullshit, "I can have my nice things but if anyone else does Ill be inconvenienced".
IMO it's because we (americans) are in an oligarchy, and barring modifications to the urban fabric that stem from (often repetitive) loss of life, there are no massive corporations to bankroll or lobby for pedestrian and urban mobility enhancements.
I mean, we just got a signalized crosswalk on a state highway to my city's most popular custard stand, 3 years after a student was killed by drivers and others were injured. https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/17-year-old-hit-kill... || https://www.stlpr.org/news-briefs/2025-07-16/deadly-crossing...
and even still, the only thing separating the highway and a crowd of 100+ people in line for custard is a fence on an 8-12" tall curb https://maps.app.goo.gl/2pD9mSzr9yTAK1z19
I wish we had a society where the "real" felony is developing harmful infrastructure in the first place. Manslaughterers losing their license or going to jail, and band-aid fixes like paint, signals, and frangible fences do actually nothing to prevent the next fatality.
Because it's not actually politically tractable. Pretty much every one of these proposals has some implied back side or quiet part you don't say out loud to it that the exact same people who like the sound of walkability in the abstract would be unwilling to make.
Think about how many people who support this stuff would be screaming bloody murder if some developer bought their neighbor's lot and coordinated with some other local developers to submit all their proposals for the most hard to approve stuff right at thanksgiving to take advantage of all the sped up paperwork and limits on how long government can sit on things and then built right up to the sidewalk.
Hi there, I support this stuff and would not care in the slightest if someone built right up to the sidewalk because literally, who gives a shit?
All my favorite places have their buildings built right up to the sidewalk! ITS GOOD! I'm tired of pretending it's not! What are we afraid of? Oh no! There isn't a pointlessly small patch of astroturf out front?
I would be happy that people are building on all of their available land because it is scarce and it makes the units bigger.
> Think about how many people who support this stuff would be screaming bloody murder if some developer bought their neighbor's lot and coordinated with some other local developers to submit all their proposals for the most hard to approve stuff right at thanksgiving to take advantage of all the sped up paperwork and limits on how long government can sit on things and then built right up to the sidewalk.
Maybe show some of the negatives, your example as is doesn't sound that controversial.
"Here's what people said:" before the actual list was super annoying.
> Allow single‑stair buildings up to 6 stories
This seemed like a terrible suggestion, but it caused me to google it and now I see it's not that terrible.
I didn't fully understand all of these, and some are clearly specific to California. I also worry about some of these opening the floodgates for greedy developers (a lot of existing laws are due to some developer doing something ridiculous, collapsing, and leaving the municipality holding the bag).
Overall I like the direction, though.
Sorry to focus on the greedy developers comment, but one thing I'd ask you to consider is that sometimes you need some greedy developers to balance things out a bit. The US has gotten so bad at building housing supply to meet the demand that prices have obviously gotten out of whack. The past several years in Austin, TX, though, as an example, have shown that unshackling some greedy developers to come in and build is actually good for the masses because it leads to reduced rents/prices. That's not the entire story in Austin, but it is a major reason prices have come down.
I feel like we've been out of balance for so long (decades and decades and decades) that it might be a good idea to swing the pendulum back to the greedy developers so that rents/prices become more affordable. Disclosure: I guess I'm sort of a greedy developer albeit at a tiny scale.
Things are bad in the US for housing because we count on market forces to provide what's necessary. Market forces shut down development if housing prices drop. After all, why start a project if you have a chance of being underwater by the time you're done with it?
see: https://clmarohn.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-housing-pr...
If you want affordable housing, it will have to be government-funded, allowing developers to continue making a profit while the government bears the loss. Another way of expressing it is the government pays for housing to be built at cost plus and then charges rent according to what people can afford, i.e., income and expense-based rent.
> Market forces shut down development if housing prices drop
There's a huge gap there where building housing would still be entirely profitable, if only we didn't have the self-inflicted wound of the permitting and zoning process in most major US being extremely slow and expensive.
For example, new row houses are explicitly or implicitly illegal in many cities (and thus all the old ones are extremely expensive), despite being both immensely popular for urban families and cheap to build in bulk.
Multifamily housing is not terribly popular here in New England, mostly because developers are cheap ass bastards and skimp on noise proofing. When my partner was renting in a two-family house, we could hear the landlord's child running, yelling, screaming, and dropping things. It was hell. It was one of the primary motivations for us to get our own house. My only experience with good multifamily housing was in Estonia, where the walls were thick and didn't pass sound at all.
Row houses are an interesting solution as long as there is a 30 dB or greater sound attenuation between apartments and a 90-minute firewall between them. Row housing is also interesting because it allows for the inclusion of a garage and charging infrastructure beneath the house, as well as a space to store home-scale batteries charged by your rooftop solar panels.
Imagine though, some people might not be able to afford a place with more sound-proofing. Mandating it doesn't magically make it free. This is how we ended up in the situation we have in the first place where its too expensive to get a roof over your head because of hundreds of little rules and stipulations. Would I prefer to sleep under a highway overpass or sleep in an apartment where the bedroom doesn't have a window? Would I really care?
And just because you mind living with noise doesn't mean everyone does. Why should we outright ban places like that if there are people who might not be able to afford something better, or don't care and would like to save some money?
Like, your entire comment is part of the goddamn problem. Don't legislate your preferences.
There’s a good argument for not “leaving it to the market” for things like this: when you’re evaluating an apartment (to rent, or even to buy), it can be difficult to know what the soundproofing is like. Noise is maybe not life and death, but it’s a major quality of life issue for some people.
Of course an outright ban is pretty extreme, but alternatives to overcoming this information asymmetry are not straightforward. Ideally: compulsory testing and disclosure, if it could be done.
Just because someone thinks they can stand higher noise levels doesn't mean they should. Urban noises and light levels are associated with a significant number of adverse health outcomes. Like food and medications, housing shouldn't compromise your health.
The original start of this whole thread included a list of things the author wanted to see happen, which falls into the same category as legislating preferences, or, as I see it, a baseline that is higher than what we have today.
The loudest thing I have to deal with living in Chicago is the roar of car traffic on Western Ave (at times it hits 80-90dB), fucking leaf blowers, and the shitheads on my block who floor their shitty dirt bikes every once in a while. Motors, usually internal combustion, make up the bulk of my noise floor.
I'd deal with having to hear the neighbors fighting every once in a while vs never having to hear some small-penised individual revving his stupid engine ever again. One way of getting closer to that is building more dense housing cheaper. If we're talking about urban noise floors, start at the real fucking problem.
What you say is true to an extent, but I think you're underestimating a couple of things. First, some real estate developers enjoy very good margins, particularly those who purchase land, entitle the land and either build the improvements themselves or sell the land to someone who follows through with the construction. That is to say that even when prices/rents compress there tends to still be opportunity for developers (I'm not talking 2008-level price drops that are existential problems for the real estate market and the world at large).
Also, when you cite "market forces" it suggests that the real estate market in the US is driven mostly by market forces, but it's highly regulated (zoning, building codes, etc.). As other commenters have pointed out, even in a declining market, if you removed some of the regulation you'd offset some of the drop in market prices thereby preserving the incentive for developers to build.
Lastly, if you think we arrived where we are today because of market forces I think that's largely untrue. HCOL areas (seems like the entire country is turning into one of those!) have criminally under-built for decades and that hasn't been a market problem, but a regulatory problem. Now I'm not advocating for unlimited development so please don't read it that way, but the historical forces against building have been municipalities, on behalf of their politically-active residents, erecting countless impediments to development. If that were only true for a couple of years then we wouldn't have ended up where we are, but over decades the compounding effect of that reality is the single-biggest reason we're in the situation we're in. It is likewise going to take decades to address it so if the regulatory regime changes and stuff starts getting built and you still see rising prices that shouldn't be a surprise. Funny enough the more real estate developers going bankrupt the closer we'll be to affordable housing for all (ok, for "many" because all is likely never going to happen).
Btw everything above assumes you actually believe that increased supply of housing (eventually!) decreases prices. I know you, ricky, don't believe that atm. Tons of people point to places like NYC as evidence that supply/demand doesn't work in desirable places, but, as Flavor Flav once said so well: don't believe the hype; even places like NYC have under-built for decades.
Man I write long-winded comments on HN. This one is the worst by far, I think.
The Substack article I linked in my previous post presents a compelling case for why and when builders stop building. Your position that we could fix that by removing regulations. I think that's not a wise course of action because many of the housing regulations are written in blood, and if you're going to eliminate regulations, you need to understand why they were there in the first place and how much blood is behind them.
But even with regulations, developers don't care. see: https://www.youtube.com/@cyfyhomeinspections. This bloke is a building inspector in Arizona, and he documents all the shortcomings and tricks that builders will use.
You are right, I don't believe that increasing the supply of housing will decrease prices because housing is a financial instrument, and the whole system is so leveraged that it will fall apart if prices decline. One could claim that it fell apart in 2008. However, if you were to move housing out of the asset class, you would cause significant financial trauma to tens of millions of people. How would you make them whole?
We have an example of oversupply not leading to price drops. Commercial real estate, such as storefronts and offices, continues to maintain a high price, even though a property has been idle for years. One would expect it to sell/lease for less due to the lack of demand, but it doesn't.
The only thing I know that will decrease housing prices predictably or consistently is not maintaining the property. Let the property become worn, dysfunctional, and substandard. Some classes of landlords have made this an art form.
My responses are always long-winded, but that's a side effect of using speech recognition. :-)
Things like the soundproofing regulation you are advocating for are written in blood?
And there is no example of oversupply not leading to price drops in residential construction. See every existing city with population declines as an example, or what happens in areas with growth when the increase in housing units exceeds household growth.
> Another way of expressing it is the government pays for housing to be built at cost plus and then charges rent according to what people can afford, i.e., income and expense-based rent.
Does this sound like a realistic policy in any part of the US to you? Do you think the tax base in the US is eager to increase their taxes significantly to fund the creation of a government housing arm? My experience has been that even US megaprojects can't justify keeping staff in-house, let alone a housing authority. The stuff in this list is much more politically palatable.
My opinion is influenced by what I've seen and read about Helsinki social housing. As for the stuff on the list being more palatable, I'm not so sure. Many of the things on the list are the reasons why I don't want to live in a city. Remember, I'm a country mouse. However, I don't see them as being particularly viable either, because each one has an impact on many other items on the list. And if you're going to change one, you need to change several to make it cost-effective in terms of money and political capital.
"Greedy" developers.... because "make something and sell it for money" makes you greedy in any other line of business?
> "Here's what people said:" before the actual list was super annoying.
Updated now
Nashville just passed this. so did Austin.
here's a relevant info with visualizations: https://secondegress.ca
"Greedy developers" is a signal someone doesn't know anything about real estate. It's up there with "late-stage capitalism" as a sure sign someone doesn't understand the subject matter.
Well, mother-in-law's developer collapsed in the middle of building their development, and managed to empty the escrow accounts using forgery and fraud on the way out the door. That's not really the same scale as what we're talking about here, so much, though.
Being from Connecticut, this case comes to mind as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
Where a developer planned some huge build, forced people out of their homes via eminent domain, and then never actually broke ground at all.
These companies shut down once they hit some snag and then pop up somewhere else under a different name.
You named two developments vs the entirety of the modern physical world that you interact with every day.
Edit: also you misrepresented one of the examples. The developer did NOT use the power of eminent domain. The elected officials of the City of New London used eminent domain.
Good list. By my count, 77% (27 of 35) of the items in the list are removing restrictions (many of them put there by urban planners).
I upvoted you but I literally wanted to reply with "THIS!" because it's such an important point. There is no direct dollar cost to municipalities to doing many of these and many of them would actually save cities money (though I think the direct dollar savings are on the margins). Some of the externalities will have costs, many qualitative and/or subjective (how dare you take away my constitutional right to street parking!), but generally speaking if you went through the list and tried to quantify the externalized costs one by one you'd end up with massive dollar savings, or maybe better put many of the major external costs of enacting these would be voluntarily shouldered by the residents/businesses vs. the municipalities.
>many of them put there by urban planners
At the behest of the prior generation of shortsighted attempts to build a utopia.
Not that this should be in any way construed as excusing industry fads at the expense of the public.
If I'm being honest, this list is really daunting. I had no idea that so much red tape stood between North America and pedestrian (i.e. human) friendly places.
Sounds like the author said this is indexed somewhat to California so thought I'd chime in. Your pessimism is legit, but some of the major ones are either already done or are in process in California and/or the city of Los Angeles in particular, which, although not the nimby capital of California, is pretty terrible as far as anti-change sentiment is concerned. Numbers 1, 3, 5, 8, and (sort of) 11 are either already done or are likely to happen.
And those are some of the most meaningful ones on the list because importantly they a) don't require government funds to execute b) decrease the cost to build. Best way to make places beautiful and walkable is to put more people in them because then the demand and funds become available for some of the items that require material funding.
Every point on that list is going to generate so many objections that it will probably never take off. Therefore instead of making a list it is probably better to start a dialogue.
Most people aren't aware of the red tape. The decisions were made before they arrived and now they are seeing the results of it without knowing that the red tape is why things are the way they are.
Like why can't they walk to a cafe. Why a bar needs 100 parking spaces. Why parking dominates their city. Why they can't find a small lot. Why they can't build up to the edges of their own lot. Why they can't find a small house. Why housing prices only increase.
Most people don't realize that a place in Europe they might idealize is illegal to build in the US, and the closest they've experienced it in the US is walking around Disney World.
What makes you think that? The top 9 have all happened in New York City; most of them were pushed through by our current, fairly moderate mayor. They're not pipe dreams.
The list does start the dialogue.
Otherwise it's one side saying "coulds" and the otherside saying "is'" and there not being any movement on anything.
I'm already imagining the idiots who's made regulation worship their religion coming out of the woodwork to screech about how setbacks and parking minimums are "written in blood"
Indeed, kinda unfortunate! I was told by one of the people who helped that it varies quite a bit by state, this one is more indexed to California and a few others
Wow. Would love to see cities ranked by score against this list.
Me too. Do you mean USA cities or worldwide? I'm told that some of the most walkable cities worldwide are: Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Vienna, and Barcelona. Which other ones should be on there and which ones from USA?
Devon also made this list: https://airtable.com/appcoaCeTbl22Few2/shrWJYzc04FQZIkP5
I visited Amsterdam this summer. It's amazing, almost eerie how you get off the train at Cetraal station and you are greeted by a city that is nearly silent. Instead of the usual groan of the combustion engines you just hear the gentle sounds of bicycle chains all around you.
This has been my reaction in Oslo. I saw so few cars I thought they might be banned (but I don't think that's the case). Additionally, a great deal of cars in Norway are electric already. From what I can gather, 95+% (!!) of new cars bought in Norway are electric, and 30+% of cars as a whole.
Combine the two and it feels like walking in the middle of a Covid lockdown.
> almost eerie how you get off the train at Cetraal station and you are greeted by a city that is nearly silent
This was exactly my experience. Blew my mind. I walked down a street that was being repaved, so there were construction vehicles actively tearing up the road surface, and it was still quieter than an average block on a normal day in New York City.
I think the lack of heavy HVAC equipment on every building helps too. Living in a mild climate has a lot of perks.
Utrecht is even better!
This is a really cool idea.
You say "A list of changes" and all I'm seeing is "A pattern language".
They're all able to be distilled into patterns (or antipatterns). Someone actually wrote a book on it.
These are all great, I love city life and would embrace every single item, but without addressing the dramatic decline in public safety in virtually all US cities, none of these will matter at all.
Interesting thing is that cars are never considered to be threat to public safety. People have simply accepted that cycling/walking is unsafe (because of cars), so parents have to drive their kids everywhere.
During the 70s in the Netherlands there were massive protests called 'Stop the Child murder', because cars were killing too many children on bicycles. This was actually a conservative protest, because people were used to safe streets and simply did not accept that cars started killing their children.
One under-mentioned hazard for pedestrians and bicyclists is poor outdoor lighting at night. I cannot tell you the number of times high-glare lighting has blocked my ability to see a pedestrian or cyclist.
One thing I've noticed that makes biking/walking in conjunction with cars much safer is the construction of road-sized sidewalks with clear delineators, where pedestrians and cyclists can safely pass. In Helsinki, biking was a joy, despite the busy streets nearby. I saw the same organization in many parts of Israel—big sidewalks with a section designated for bicycles, scooters, and e-mobility devices. In many of the small cities surrounding Stockholm, dedicated bike paths with their lighting were located adjacent to the main roads.
Around where I live, there is a three-lane main thoroughfare that has two lanes for travel and one lane for turning. There are sidewalks along this road, but they are functionally destroyed by the roots of trees growing near them.
This could become more bicycle-friendly if roundabouts were installed at major intersections and the sidewalks were expanded to accommodate pedestrian/bicycle use. Although if they did, I could hear the screams about how the roundabouts are impeding traffic flow for commuters and removing all the sidewalk-destroying trees.
I agree with the people who say it's not that we can't do it, it's that we won't do it.
I think in the US we've done a great job educating a subset of the population about how dangerous cars are. In the wealthy, walkable neighborhood I live in, everyone is very sensitive to the dangers of cars. Cycling and walking are common, with many kids being involved too.
That said, this understanding is very unevenly distributed, in large part because our neighborhood also gets more police attention and is generally very safe.
I don’t think it is just about awareness. Americans have simply accepted that cars are dangerous and thus traffic is dangerous and people have adjusted their whole lifestyle around it. For example, it’s normal to drive your kids everywhere.
Cars are dangerous. When crime began to decline after the early 90s, American cities had a renaissance with huge numbers of people moving to them. Now, with the rampant public disorder, we are back to suburbs dramatically outgrowing the center cities.
What do you mean by "decline in public safety"? The violent crime rate has dropped to around half what it was in the '90s:
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/us-c...
Property crime is down similarly.
I understand that some people feel so afraid of homeless people or street addicts that they assume they must be in danger whenever they witness such poverty, but crime statistics do not support this opinion.
Crime is down since the 90s and up since 2018.
Yes, that is shown in the data I linked, but the rebound is much smaller than the previous drop.
And yet, public disorder is increasing. Sure, it is better than the 90s, but that can hardly be the standard. Those days were awful, we can and should do much better than that.
Which is it, crime or disorder? These are not the same thing.
In terms of actual crime, we're doing about as well as we were back in the late '50s.
You sound like many people here in Seattle who gripe about "public safety", but this is a very safe city - it's kind of absurd. When you press them on it, you find out that they simply don't like to look at homeless people, or junkies, and they mistake the discomfort they feel when witnessing such sights for actual danger.
Statistics show that homeless people and street junkies are far more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violent crime. Merely seeing them does not harm you; nor are they likely to do anything which would harm you.
I'm a little suspect of any claims or numbers outside of murder counts nowadays. Unreported crime was an issue before but now that police have embraced a sort of slacker/work-to-rule/soft-strike attitude to their jobs since they don't feel appreciated after civilians dared to protest their bad behavior, there's a feedback loop of: crime happens, cops are called, nothing is done, another crime happens, no one bothers to report it. It's not just the cops that are a problem either, the revolving door where criminals that do get brought in are right back out on bail is demoralizing cops and civilians alike. If real crime rates were decreasing, wouldn't we see the system that handles them also improving? Instead it looks like a shit show, thus the numbers are probably kinda bullshit.
I agree, this is also clear when looking at how often traffic laws are broken with no police reaction.
Every serious study of this was done by people entirely aware of that problem, who use multiple data sources to mitigate the effect. And yet every time this comes up on HN a bunch of posters are all “well I push buttons on keyboards for a living, so I know better than experts in every other field, even about their own field!”
I’ve seen posters complaining about unreported crimes on here in response to posts citing studies that directly and prominently address that exact problem, because I guess they just assume everyone in the social sciences is a total dipshit who can’t possibly have thought of this obvious thing (and didn’t bother to read the study and perhaps learn something).
Victimization surveys agree with police report data. Crime’s down in general, way down in some cities, and violent crime especially is down, versus the 90s, and very much so versus any decade before that. There’s been a little bump post-Covid but it’s not ongoing and last I checked it was trending back down again, and it wasn’t anywhere near wiping out the progress from before.
There is some evidence/belief that increased foot traffic actually improves crime rates. I'm certainly not saying it's a magic bullet, but there's at least some hope that if these types of changes were introduced it would actually directly decrease crime. I don't have a source handy, but the concept is that the more eyes on the street the less willing people are to commit crimes. I think the exception is that some kinds of petty theft can increase with more people (pickpocketing for instance because more targets).
Pickpocketing isn't really an issue in US cities like it is in Europe. I've heard of it happening a tiny bit in extremely busy tourist areas like Times Square in NYC, but it's not something you need to be vigilant about in everyday life.
Ha, yeah, I would agree with you there. I was trying to make sure to acknowledge a potential downside of increased foot traffic. Tend to think folks like to rebut comments when they're too one-sided, but then you came along with a totally legit rebuttal to me trying to "both sides" this!
Could become more of an issue as foot traffic increases if these changes are implemented
I completely agree with this, but I think it's more humane to use foot traffic as a way to solidify safe places and not as a way to bring crime down.
Can you expand on that a bit? I'm not sure I quite understand, but I'm interested to know how you're thinking about it.
I would not ask normal people to start walking in dangerous neighborhoods in order to increase foot traffic and make it safer, those first folks are at great risk of just getting hurt.
I would, however, try to keep any safe area with good foot traffic that way, or even increase foot traffic.
I'm not sure downvotes are the right way for folks to disagree with you though I'm thinking some folks think you're trolling. But I'll assume you aren't trolling and since I asked you to reply to my question I thought I would just clarify: I wasn't suggesting that you stick people in harm's way in order to decrease crime (that would very much be the tail wagging the dog). What I was saying is that when increased numbers of people are on the street research has shown that crime decreases as a result. It's not that someone's holding a gun to the head of the new people who show up on the street. It's that those new people choose, of their own volition, to be on the street because something (investment, the government, other residents) made the street more desirable to be on and a byproduct of that increase of people is a decrease in crime (because there are literally more eyeballs watching the street (not watching for crime or to deter crime, but because criminals aren't as likely to commit crime when there are more witnesses)).
But, of course, you have a problem with the direction of causation in that case. Streets with many people on it are safe, but did the people make it safe, or did the safety bring the people?
Can you source that fact? I'm seeing both violent and property crime as statistically way down over the few decades.
My anecdotal experience visiting LA and SF in 2022 was wild - homeless and mentally ill people yelling, being a public nuissance, defecating on the streets, multi-story tents on the same block as the Hollywood stars. It bewildered me that the same state that houses Apple and Google can’t afford to help these people. Whilst I am empathetic and understand that these people need help, I wouldn’t let an 8 year old roam these streets, whereas I was allowed to roam my town when I was 8. Maybe it has been even worse before, and I don’t agree that making the cities walkable before these people are no longer on the streets is somehow usess, I do think that it is a more pressing issue.
I think this is a dominating perspective for a lot of people. A few neighborhoods in LA and SF get infinitely more news coverage than the thousands of quiet urban places where nothing spectacular is going wrong, which creates an illusion of widespread despair.
I’m not saying crime or homelessness don’t exist, but urban LA is just not representative.
It is shocking that the richest state in the history of the world can’t figure out how to help the people with nowhere to go.
Skid Row has been in LA since the 30s. The problem is largely that there's a lot of vested interest in painting Californian Urban Areas as bad and so negative coverage focuses on the Tenderloin, Union Square, and Skid Row.
Those people are there because of the help. Every time a municipality expands support for the homeless and addicted they get more homeless addicts. Surrounding areas will in fact put people on buses and ship them out to towns where there is more support.
This is why Housing First is such a brilliant idea. Give them help, but require them to be stably housed (i.e. on a viable path out of long-term homelessness) before they can access the help.
My town set up an apartment building specifically to house the "chronically" homeless. It cost a fortune to build (something like twice the cost per square foot as normal, or maybe more). The rationale was exactly that, give them stable housing so they can work on their addictions and life skills.
Fast forward five years, the place is a shithole. Roach-infested, apartments severely damaged and filthy, needles and garbage everywhere. Police, fire, and EMS spending a disproportonate amount of resources there.
People who are chronically homeless and addicted do not know how to live in houses. If you give them housing they will destroy it or they people they associate with will destroy it.
Sobriety has to come first. Some people won't accept that. At some point you have to stop accomodating their behavior and just say "no, that is not an acceptable way to live, and you can't do that here."
I'm not sure what's the problem is. They're getting individual apartments, right? If someone makes their assigned apartment a shithole, they should get kicked out of the program. Offer them rehab and therapy in a supervised community setting, like you say.
The results have been that much of that housing ends up with the same problems homeless shelters do.
So you visited once? My anecdotal experience is I grew up in LA in the 80s and 90s. My middle school was shot at on three occasions I can remember. We weren't allowed to wear red, blue, or Raider's jerseys because the school district was so scared of kids getting shot for being suspected gang members. Six different intersections directly in front of elementary and middle schools near my neighborhood had no stop lights, until so many kids got hit by cars and killed that the parents finally demanded it enough that the council did something about it. My sister's best friend was murdered, smothered in her sleep by her mom's boyfriend. My second sister's best friend's mom had a fake identity because she survived getting attacked by the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez. There was a black girl found tied to a fence and burned alive near my house whose name I never learned. My dad was punched by some guy at his birthday party where he met my mom and his friends took that guy into the concrete river ditch and shot him. As far as they tell me, no one ever got in trouble and I don't even think the authorities gave a shit. My dad was also shot in the chest with a shotgun, had his thumb cut off in shop class, broke his collarbone in football practice and didn't even get medical care for it. My uncle drowned in a river. My best friend from preschool died from touching a stray cat. My buddy in drafting class freshman year shot himself because he got a bad report card and was tired of how many times his dad beat him for something like that. I was kind of a goth and a bunch of my friends all gave themselves HIV because they were dumbasses who thought they were real vampires and drank each other's blood in the middle of a damn AIDS epidemic. In elementary school, we were often not allowed to have recess because air pollution was so bad that it wasn't safe to play outside. The nightly local news was so damn repetitive, because it was every single week an 8 year-old trying to buy ice cream from the ice cream truck getting caught in gang crossfire and shot in the head. Always the same little girl, always buying ice cream. Felt like it happened a thousand times. I was a pretty lucky kid that never got picked on, but you know why? My school had no idea what to do with someone who learned math as easily as I did, so they let me teach a remedial class when I was 12. The other kids I was helping were mostly gang bangers who came to really like me and beat the ever living shit out of any other kid that looked at me funny.
I never understand these kinds of sentiments on the Internet. Was nobody actually alive in the 90s? Have no memories? All rich white kids who grew up sheltered in the suburbs? Is Hacker News just super European and it was way better there? I get that California closed all of the state mental hospitals 35 years ago and now you have to actually see crazy people shitting on the street near your office building, but the overall reality is so immeasurably better than it was then that you guys make me feel like I'm being Mandela Effected. I somehow slipped into the timeline where Los Angeles and San Francisco weren't gang-infested murdervilles suffering from drug and disease epidemics with barely breathable air 40 years ago but were actually paradises.
Like you're talking about the Walk of Fame? Hollywood Blvd has been public drug use, street walkers, sex shops, theaters where Pee Wee Herman might cum on you, for as long as it's existed. Pretty Woman wasn't making it up except they weren't actually as attractive as Julia Roberts.
Thank you for your perspective, it does adjust mine heavily. Yes, I am a European, and your depiction of LA makes the post soviet 90s of Eastern Europe look somewhat tame in comparison. We had shootings and violence, but not nearly to the same extent.
Yet my point still stands, how can the worlds richest state not fix this?
I would love to live wherever you live so that I could even imagine that this was not obvious to anyone who goes out into public spaces.
Seattle! Violent crime is way down from the 90s. People don’t think this is obvious because violent crime rate is not actually an immediately visible problem, since the majority of violent crime takes place in or around homes (followed by hidden places like alleyways and parking garages, chosen for not being seen).
The actual visible stuff (homeless people, trash, smell of public urination, people on drugs in public, people being mentally ill in public, shoplifting) is up. And both violent crime and rich people are more evenly distributed around the city so the “violent crime near a rich person” is up. And so people react to those.
The late 80s early 90s was the all time crime peak for a lot of places.
That's like saying the economy is up from the 1930s.
Personally I think two things are true, crime ain't that bad and you're basically framing the problem to let you lie through your teeth a politican.
What insulting shit.
To be clear, your response to the extremely reasonable request for a source of the wild claim that you made is "it's obvious"? Am I reading you correctly?
No, you are not reading me correctly.
Isn't it wonderful that we have people doing actual research on the topic, so we we can know what is actually going on instead of relying on random people's subjective impressions of what seems "obvious" from their necessarily limited viewpoints?
Come on down! Columbia SC is experiencing a bit of a renaissance…there’s growth all over the city and a lot of optimism.
Life isn’t perfect, and we have serious problems like any other city, but I took my kids bike riding through downtown yesterday evening and felt safe.
Is it doing better than 5-6 years ago?
I lived there for a few years, and while the river walks were very pleasant, I don’t have much to say about it particularly otherwise.
The job market was pretty bad, basically limiting you to State gov or one of the handful of insurance companies around and state government work is rough (easily the most fulfilling job I’ve had, but the salary was just way too low.
Seems hard to justify with GA and NC markets nearby unless you’re staying solely for CoL or existing ties.
Better, yes. The market has grown a ton, and was ranked #1 in the country recently. Our tax base is weak, which makes it hard to compete with GVL and CHS, plus we have worse weather.
But the Bull Street district is in a totally different place from when you were here, which creates a feeling of “coming liveliness.”
Also Scout Motors is dropping a multi billion dollar plant in Columbia which will help job market
Definitely not Greenville, but we are getting there.
I am glad you are enjoying it, but Columbia, SC has an extremely high murder rate, even for the US which in general has terribly high murder rates.
Unfortunately, we do. For various historical and demographic reasons, my exposure to this risk is extremely low. But yes, it is a massive problem.
But drivers slaughter 40,000 people a year (give or take) in the US. A driver is the biggest risk to your kids.
I have never had a car try to run me down, but I have had multiple vagrants chase me and my family through the streets.
== without addressing the dramatic decline in public safety in virtually all US cities==
Can you expand on this? What timeframe? Which cities? Which crimes?
Violent crime is down precipitously in pretty much every US city right now.
What are you talking about? Crime rates have dramatically been reducing basically everywhere.
Cool, enjoy your safe space, wherever it is.
Chicago, friend. :)
I'm reminded of being on an airplane sitting next to a cop who told me, "Did you know that Chicago is the murder capitol of the world?". It was fun to show her that Chicago isn't actually even in the top 10 of the US in terms of homicide.
Where do you get your news from that makes you think crime is going up?
I moved out of Lincoln Park (Chicago) 2 years ago because my wife almost got hit by a teenager stealing a car.
It wasn't the first or last car theft we witnessed.
Chicago is safe 90% of the time. Statistically speaking, you won't be a victim of a crime. That doesn't mean the crime isn't happening and it doesn't mean it's getting properly reported either. Crime is here.
From my post, what makes you think I think it's 100% gone?
I get my information about dangerous public spaces with my eyes, ears, and memory that it used to be safer very recently.
Chicago has had fewer shootings this year than any time in at least a decade. There are plenty of news articles on it if you care to read up. Those of us who actually live here can visibly notice the difference.
[0] https://news.wttw.com/2025/07/11/shootings-homicides-chicago...
[1] https://chicagocrusader.com/violent-crime-in-chicago-sees-bi...
[2] https://www.wbez.org/cpd/2025/05/01/chicago-hasnt-seen-an-ap...
Write a peer reviewed paper with facts and figures
Unreasonable standard for reaching conclusions, I suspect if you thought about it, you would agree.
Vibes are also an unreasonable standard. :)
Vibes and observations are very different. I am judging by my direct experience.
Confirmation bias is a savory drug, friend.
There is a big difference between confirmation and confirmation bias.
You've been disconfirmed already!
And yet it moves.
Given the data you're up against you're doing more of a flat Earth thing here.
I appreciate your political commitments and I understand how that makes this topic unproductive for us to discuss.
The difference is that confirmation requires evidence. If you had any evidence you would have provided it.
About half of the items in that list are satisfied by Peter Cooper Village in NYC.[1] Go there and see if you like it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_Town%E2%80%93Peter_...
You could say the same thing about colonial Williamsburg. The list seems focused on removing restrictions and red tape. It doesn’t dictate form. You could still build a typical single family McMansion in an area that adopted this list… if that’s what you’re into.
Colonial Williamsburg is a theme park.
This is a great start to an evidence database. The next step should be adding evidence and contextual details explaining why each claim is true, perhaps in a table.
A good model is here: https://www.college.police.uk/research/crime-reduction-toolk...
The focus on ground-level retail as opposed to multi-story retail is a bit disappointing. This Substack post from Noah Smith does a really great job explaining why density for retail is also an important part of creating walkable neighborhoods: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/a-better-way-to-build-a-downto...
My town has some people obsessed with "walkability" and the want to take the ONLY alternative to I 80/94/6/US 41 down to one lane each way... People will die if they get there way, as ambulance and fire vehicles become mired in congestion.
Not to mention that the weather for walking is only present for about 20 days per year.
Walking everywhere isn't a practical for most people in the Calumet Region of Indiana.
There are reasonable sidewalks already present and crossing buttons on the lights where needed. I've actually used them on occasion.
I don't see the need to push walkability further at the cost of everyone who passes through the area on the interstate.
Congestion is the result of having too many cars on the road. The only viable solution to having too many cars around is replacing some of the cars with alternative modes of transportation that are more scalable and less congestion-prone. It's not rocket surgery.
How are you going to replace all those vehicles going hundreds of miles that happened to get dumped through our town?
I thought I was fairly explicit that this wasn't just a typical low traffic suburb. We routinely have backups that go for miles. It's been a feature of the area (the crossroads of the nation) since my dad was a kid in the 1950s.
Fewer lanes is insane, but they want to do it anyway
Cars cause congestion for emergency vehicles.
A dedicated bus lane or a dedicated cycling lane on the other hand keep a lane free for emergency vehicles to drive in.
I think pretty much anyone who is pro-walkability would hop onboard a car-free lane for emergency vehicles which is a strictly better solution than the status quo where ambulances compete with cars to get people where they need to go.
The "walkability" obsessed are becoming insufferable
After you've had a taste of life in a walkable neighborhood, it is really hard to go back.
I live in a walkable neighborhood... I see people going past to use the trail at the end of the block all the time. There are plenty of food establishments within walking distance from me. The problem is there's one of THE major expressways through the US that goes around the southern end of Lake Michigan about 1 KM north of us, and our main street often, and unpredictably, is forced to handle most of that traffic.
I maintain we're in a special case, for just 3 roads (Ridge, Calumet, and 45th) walkability should only be a secondary concern, not the primary one.
It's much harder to give up having a large piece of property
What does the property do for you, I wonder, which makes it worth the maintenance?
For me, moving to a townhouse was a genuine relief - no more yard work making unwelcome demands on my time! The old place was not a large property, though, just an ordinary suburban-style lot.
I'm sure I'll feel that way when I am retired
Think about all the government jobs that would have to go away (because the regulation would be eliminated) by making these changes.
Some additions:
- No drug addicts
- No homeless people
- No drunks
- If you throw your trash anywhere except the bin you get punished
- If you shout into your phone you get punished
- If you intentionally break or deface anything you get punished
If your city is full of drug addicts and anti-social people not a single thing you are going to do about zoneing will make it more "walkable". This stuff is so completely delusional. People use cars to get away from the total dysfunction and danger of cities.
The US already has the highest incarceration rate of any developed country, and it's not even close (we're #5, slotting in right behind Turkmenistan). Your solution to society's ills seems to be more "punishment." Do you think the wrong people are in jail? Or is there something unique to American society makes us have more people deserving of imprisonment than almost any other country in the world?
I do not care. I also do not live in the US. I live in a country where child rape gets you probation, so I guess I want more people in prison.
On further thought, maybe I actually don't, but I do not think that is the discussion.
OK, well, you're commenting on a list that primarily addresses the US.
You're not wrong that such things make a city less walkable, but there's also a strong argument that just punishing people, instead of, you know, addressing the underlying problem doesn't solve the problem either. It just sets up a situation where people bounce from jail (due to the realities of living on the streets) to the homeless encampment (due to unpaid fines preventing them from earning any money).
Like, the whole reason the West Oakland homeless encampment has such an enormous garbage pile problem is because nobody living there can sign up for trash service, since they lack an actual address (and likely can't afford trash service anyway). So as soon as the single 30-gallon courtesy trash can gets filled up (within hours of delivery, if experience is any guide), they're on their own until that that can gets emptied. And they provide that single can for all the trash needs of the 30 or so people living adjacent to it.
One of the core drivers of homelessness is the absence of affordable housing within efficient reach of public transit to get to where people work. So by setting up communities that are designed specifically for walking and public transit and are affordable for most directly addresses the main driver of homelessness, which in turn starves the friends-couch-to-homeless-encampment pipeline. Nobody goes directly from evicted to homeless encampment. Its a long fall from grace. Preventing the first step, by ensuring there's adequate housing near where the jobs are, helps prevent the final step.
> the whole reason the West Oakland homeless encampment has such an enormous garbage pile problem
I lived in West Oakland for several years during the first .com bubble. People with houses there often didn't sign up for garbage service (or if they had, they didn't pay). I had to put a damned padlock on my garbage can just so I didn't have my own garbage dumped out and replaced by the freeloaders living next to me. They eventually notched my garbage cans with a saw so I couldn't lock them anymore. By the time I moved it was dueling piles of garbage, and it wasn't like I was the only one with the problem.
I find online commenters consistently underestimate the level of antisocial behavior that accompanies much of the squalor we see, and the fact that many people simply have no interest in playing by the rules of society regardless of how many handouts you give them.
That kind of looks like a capitalism and privatization problem from here where trash is a municipal service and paid for by taxes?
The problem at hand is antisocial behavior, not how garbage service is handled in Oakland. Giving my neighbors effectively free garbage service wouldn't meaningfully address it.
You can't just keep giving them free things and hope they'll magically turn into productive citizens, especially when 'free' really means "paid for with someone else's money." They just laugh at you and take the handouts, just like they laughed at me for being such a sucker that I paid my bills every month. This is the reality of dealing with antisocial behavior, and it would behoove more commentators (and policymakers) to familiarize themselves with it.
>You're not wrong that such things make a city less walkable, but there's also a strong argument that just punishing people, instead of, you know, addressing the underlying problem doesn't solve the problem either. It just sets up a situation where people bounce from jail (due to the realities of living on the streets) to the homeless encampment (due to unpaid fines preventing them from earning any money).
To be honest I do not care. If you want to have great urbanism the single most important thing you can do is create places, where people want to be. Those places have to be nice to look at, enjoyable to be in and need to feel very safe, especially at night. If you have that everything else will follow, people will want to be there and they will demand zoning and transit to make it easier to access.
>One of the core drivers of homelessness is the absence of affordable housing within efficient reach of public transit to get to where people work.
No. It is drugs and untreated mental illness. Have you ever been around homeless people? The idea of homeless people, as people who are priced out of housing is ridiculous.
>Have you ever been around homeless people?
Yes. At many stages of the descent from "I'm just crashing on your couch until I save up enough for another deposit" to "I'm sleeping in my car until I can find a job" to "I'm living in a shanty and rummaging through the trash to turn in aluminum cans for change". Both whilst living in the Bay Area, but also in Oregon and Washington.
You're complaining (rightly) about the end stage. I'm saying that nobody starts at the end stage.
Hell, I'm actively watching my brother-in-law and his baby mama descend through the mental illness and addiction process, and even though they've been evicted and are now dragging their daughter through the couch-surfing phase, they still aren't at the living-in-tents-shitting-on-the-street phase of that descent.
And a major factor, for them was that neither of them could get the kind of jobs that would allow them to both have a stable living situation and do anything but work (because of criminal history resulting from addiction). Its a cascading series of problems that when he lost his license (due to his addiction), he could only work where he could walk, or where he could realistically ride a bus. And in most of the country, if you can't find work within those two ranges, you're shit out of luck.
And to be clear, I'm not proposing we just throw up our hands and say "I guess they're just addicted and this is our life now". I'm saying that "just lock up the homeless people" is as much a solution as "well, we've got seatbelts" is for a hydroplaning car. We have within easy reach the ability to 1) stop more people from becoming homeless, and 2) help people who are homeless get their lives back in order.
> We have within easy reach the ability to 1) stop more people from becoming homeless, and 2) help people who are homeless get their lives back in order.
I live in a country with a right to housing. The government will literally pay your rent. Public transit is still full of homeless people. Guess why? Spoiler: It is not because housing is unaffordable or because transit is bad.
>Hell, I'm actively watching my brother-in-law and his baby mama descend through the mental illness and addiction process, and even though they've been evicted and are now dragging their daughter through the couch-surfing phase, they still aren't at the living-in-tents-shitting-on-the-street phase of that descent.
And you are sure that, if they stayed completely drug-free and sane, they couldn't find jobs which allowed them to pay rent? The problem here are the drugs, blaming anything else is absurd. There is exactly one way to help them and their child get the parents of the drugs and the child away from them until the parents stay sober.
Literally every single step in that tragedy, as you describe it, revolves around drugs. Seeking the cure in anything but getting rid of the drugs is absurd.
>We have within easy reach the ability to 1) stop more people from becoming homeless
No, we don't. The only way to stop people being homeless is getting rid of the drugs. Even if the government is legally obligated to pay for housing there are still homeless people because of the drugs.
>2) help people who are homeless get their lives back in order.
No. We need to get drug addicts sober. Anything else is secondary. Do you think your brother in law would be fixed if he got free housing, but remained a drug addict? Of course not.
So, do you live in a country that is notoriously designed almost exclusively for personal automobiles? Whose cities' growth was informed as much by lobbying from the automotive industry as by a desire to use personal automobiles? Do you live in a country where prison sentences are applied in such a way that meaningfully decreases the recidivism rate?
I see by your comment history that you live in Germany. You do understand that even California is considerably less urban than your country, right?
And to be clear, I'm not saying my brother-in-law doesn't need to quit drugs. I'm saying that the in the US's justice system, just putting him in prison until he's clean will just guarantee that he's in and out of prison until he eventually overdoses, all the while dooming his 11-year-old daughter, my children's beloved cousin, to a life of addiction and abuse herself. Moreover, even if he does get himself clean, because of his criminal record, he's doomed to working those same shit jobs, living at the ragged edge of the poverty line, for the rest of his life, because very few will take the risk of hiring an ex-con. Nobody ever relapsed in those conditions, no sir.
Maybe its different in Germany. Maybe getting yourself clean and sober will allow you to live a productive and happy life, and once you've served your time, you're free of the stigma of being an ex-convict. But if the only solution to the drug problem in the US is incarceration, given the current state of prisons in the US, a more humane approach might be mass executions. Which, I recall, Germany has some experience with.
>I see by your comment history that you live in Germany. You do understand that even California is considerably less urban than your country, right?
Is it? Much of Germany is rural, especially manufacturing, you would be surprised.
>But if the only solution to the drug problem in the US is incarceration, given the current state of prisons in the US, a more humane approach might be mass executions.
My point is that the homelessness problem is downstream of drugs. I have never said, nor do I believe, that just putting drug addicts in prison will solve anything. Especially when the prisons are full of drugs, as they are, even in Germany.
I do believe that trying to solve homelessness, while not addressing how to get people of drugs is a pointless endeavor.
>And to be clear, I'm not saying my brother-in-law doesn't need to quit drugs. I'm saying that the in the US's justice system, just putting him in prison until he's clean will just guarantee that he's in and out of prison until he eventually overdoses, all the while dooming his 11-year-old daughter, my children's beloved cousin, to a life of addiction and abuse herself. Moreover, even if he does get himself clean, because of his criminal record, he's doomed to working those same shit jobs, living at the ragged edge of the poverty line, for the rest of his life, because very few will take the risk of hiring an ex-con. Nobody ever relapsed in those conditions, no sir.
But the drugs clearly started it all. It is the root cause, not the lack of housing or distance to jobs. We both know that had he never taken any drugs none of this would have happened.
Some quick googling suggests that 80% of California's land area is rural, compared to 39% of Germany's. Considering they're very nearly the same size, that's considerable. And also understandable, considering that Germany has more than double the population.
At no point did I say "don't try to solve the drug problem". I even said as much when I said "help the homeless get their life back on track". What I'm trying to say (and clearly failing at saying) is that "don't even bother with 'x' until we accomplish 'y'" misses the fact that at least as it pertains to dealing with making cities people want to live in, its a complex, interrelated system. In my, highly limited experience, for instance, homelessness drives drug use, because its a relatively cheap escape from the desperate reality of homelessness and long-term unemployment. I'm not here to make excuses for people, but I am here to say that its a lot more complicated than "get rid of the drugs, and people won't be homeless". If it were that easy, then Reagan's War On Drugs would've actually, you know, worked.
You should educate yourself on the root cause of the US's opiate problem. While there a lot of recreational drug users who went off the rails, virtually all of the addicts I know personally were initially wildly over-prescribed opiates for a legitimate medical reason, and in trusting their doctor, got addicted. There was a big court case around it. I know, the plural of anecdote is not data, but there is in fact data about it.
> Some quick googling suggests that 80% of California's land area is rural, compared to 39% of Germany's.
Yeah, just the federally controlled (mostly protected national parks, forests, wilderness, wildlife refuges, etc.) land is 45% of California’s land area.
>but I am here to say that its a lot more complicated than "get rid of the drugs, and people won't be homeless".
The only reason it is not as easy as that is, because it is very, very hard to get rid of the drugs. But if that was accomplished and mentally ill people were properly institutionalized, then homelessness would become a non-issue.
>If it were that easy, then Reagan's War On Drugs would've actually, you know, worked.
Nonsense. The war on drugs failed to get rid of the drugs.
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> Also who hurt you?
Please don't cross into personal attack in HN comments.
Also, please omit internet tropes. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
>Also who hurt you?
I do not own a car, I walk/bike/bus/train everywhere and almost every time it is a terrible experience.
I want to have a better city, but a city does not become "walkable" or "unwalkable" because of zoning. It becomes either because it is either a good place to be or a terrible place to be. The obvious drug dealing at train stations make it a bad place, the obnoxious people with a total disregard for others make it a bad place, the trash everywhere make it a bad place, etc.
If you do not make cities nice places to be nothing else matters. And if you do make them nice places, everything else will follow, since now people want to be there and will demand e.g. better zoning and infrastructure.
> Also, in the vein of this guy I think 21 is a bad idea
Could you elaborate on that? I could speculate, but I'd love to know your reasons.
Not the parent, but weather resistant bus shelters take up a lot of space. So you're essentially trading sidewalk space for bus access.
No one uses the covered bus stops in my street because they’re full of homeless people slop? Once that shit gets rained on people have the heart to bin it.
I think we should take away people's right to live in suburbs. ;-)
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Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.
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I lurked this forum for several years before I ever posted, which is why I don’t make Reddit-coded comments like “Who hurt you?”