alt Hacker News> I think roads lie at the heart of every city builder. It’s the fabric on which cities are built.
To paraphrase the article, this is what urban planners have nightmares about. Roads (as in: things made for cars) aren't the fabric of a city, streets (as in: things made not only for cars, but also for pedestrians, cyclists, public transport etc.) are. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad
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The same insights still hold true for streets and paths. Of course a single human or even bicycle can move with fewer constraints than a car, but a stream of humans won't. When we design pedestrian infrastructure with sharp corners people either cut through on the inside, creating desire paths on unpaved surface, or the inside section that lies on the paved path but outside the circle-section-path becomes a low-traffic zone, a place where people sit down or put up food carts or whatever
In remembering that cities are not roads alone, but also streets, paths and tracks, there is a lot of potential for this approach to building all of them
Yep, good point. I am myself a huge fan of livable oriented infrastructure (bike lanes, pedestrian paths, public transportation) but the hard truth is that roads were initially designed for carriages and later for cars. A though I recurrently have is how would a city designed from scratch by a civilization that uses only bikes and walking look like?
I will just say the Streets of San Francisco were almost all built by civil engineering principles, even those from the 19th century. If you want some sim SF or NYC, this guy is on the right track by not having fakey roads.
I had never considered there is a difference between the two words, but Wikipedia backs it up:
> The word street is still sometimes used informally as a synonym for road, but city residents and urban planners draw a significant modern distinction: a road's main function is transportation, while streets facilitate public interaction.
Even with this clarification, though, I think you unfairly characterise the quote from the article. Modern society has an insane demand for transportation. Roads – the medium on which we transport things – are the fabric on which cities are built. Not just inside the cities, but the vast network of roads outside the city, that feed it.
Before the 1900s, we weren't able to build cities far from water because of their demand for transportation. We can today, and it is only because of roads we are able to do that.