alt Hacker NewsI lived in Vancouver for years, near the downtown, near the SkyTrain and it was amazing. Back then I thought I would never live anywhere but the downtown of a city.
But, you know what, life changes. I know there’s hardcore folks out there who will cycle miles with their kids, or take them on transit, or even live with them in a 2 bedroom downtown apartment, but it is just too hard to live that way for many people. With a family, most people need more space, and they need to be able to get from their suburban home to some kind of shopping or work, in minimum time so that they can both take care of kids, maintain a career, and have a glimpse of a life for themselves.
We don’t need to have surface lots right in the middle of every downtown, but there needs to be somewhere for people to park.
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Parking exists in cities that are transit-first. But you are living in a car-dependent city for most things, so obviously it’s not going to be as convenient: the city isn’t built to be livable without a car. More developed countries put the amenities with the transit. IE your kids school has a metro stop named after it, and the grocery store is also the subway station.
It’s unfortunate that NA developed the wrong way because it takes a while to repair stupid planning decisions
I don't really buy this argument. I live a happily (nearly) car-free life with 3 kids. It's not hard, it really isn't. I bike them everywhere, we take transit. I even do our weekly grocery shopping by bike. I bike them to school year round (yes, even today when it was 10F this morning). I wouldn't consider myself "hardcore" at all. I'm just your average middle-aged dad.
I use our car approximately once per week. In 2024 I used my car a total of 32 times (I actually tallied it out for the whole year)
It's really just a matter of city design. Do you think there aren't families in Copenhagen who need to get to their job and shops? They manage with much lower car mileage than the average American. American suburbs are car-centric and those cars end up clogging up urban cores where people are trying to live their lives.
Many Americans/Canadians probably cannot even imagine what my life is like. They can't even picture what it means to pick up a week's worth of groceries for a family of 5 on a bike (with a kid!). It just doesn't even register that this is a possibility.
Good thing that this article is not arguing for the elimination of parking!
Heck, I'm happy just parking close enough to walk to a downtown area, so parking doesn't necessarily have to be in the middle for me to use it, but there's no way I'm taking public transport to get close enough.
Just sounds absolutely miserable to prioritize that way of living that is so car dependent. So many negatives come from it:
- pollution
- traffic deaths
- heat generation from all the infra
- inefficient use of space
- ugly aesthetic of strip malls and parking lots
It doesn't have to be this way. We can do better to build diverse housing in our cities, leverage space at the ground level for businesses, invest in our transit to make it safer and more convenient.
Instead we just go with what's easy and continue to build roads and sprawl.
Some European cities have car-free city centers. I live in one, which serves as the shopping center of roughly 1 million people living in the suburbs. If you want to shop in the city you need to park in one of the big underground parking lots and pay sth like more than 10 Euros/hour. Alternatively you can park just outside the city at a park & ride spot for 10 Euros/day and take the public transport included in the parking price.
It's inconvenient for people, yes. It was inconvenient to drive and park in the narrow streets of a medieval city too. This is unfortunately not easy to implement in North America, as the cities are relatively new. What we have feels very privileged.