#walkability

[incognitopolls]

This poll is asking about general walkability, not your personal habits– if there is a supermarket nearby but you do not or cannot personally walk there, vote according to what a hypothetical able-bodied person would be able to do.

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[sylviaodhner]

The Shopping Center Disconnect

[whereserpentswalk]

I have decided to become a walkablity extremist.

Cars should not be allowed in towns and cities at all. The only places where they should be at all present is in rural areas where any other means of transportation should be impossible.

High speed rail networks should allow for a trip from Mexico city to Montreal in under 24 hours.

All public transportation should be 100% free.

Lawns should not exist.

It doesn't make sense for single family homes to be built in most American cities.

Architecture must be beautiful again.

Every commercial street should have at least one bench.

Public restrooms must be free, common and accessible.

The pigeons are not enemies. The pigeons are freinds.

[fixing-bad-posts]

car culture is so fucking annoying.

[walkingdetroit]

Happy Halloween

[dacromir]

America is an unwalkable hellhole

I'm currently shopping around for houses. There's a house that came up on the market recently. It's a little out of budget, but I looked at it anyways. It turned into a great illustration of how incredibly inefficient and unhealthy our unwalkable city design is.

Good news! It's less than 400 feet away from a Costco, which would carry groceries, home goods, and all kinds of useful stuff. Living 400 feet away from a Costco should be a dream, as it should let you knock out a good number of chores with a quick walk across the street.

However, you might notice that it's crossing quite a big road there. Let's do a quick check to see how long the safest walking route is.

Oh look! It's a one-hour walk each direction to go to a store that's four hundred linear feet away.

Well, we're in America. What if we hop in our Freedom Car and drive there like God and the Founding Fathers intended?

Take a look at that! It's a five-minute drive with moderate to low traffic for the area. Five minutes to go 400 feet is just shy of 1mph, so my Freedom Wagon is going about 1/3 the speed of walking directly there while also generating 20x the C02! Great!

BUT WAIT! It gets better!

If the store is busy, I could very realistically end up getting in my car, driving for 5 minutes, spending several minutes hunting for a parking spot, and still have to walk another 680 feet. All to get to a store that's 400 feet away from the house I was looking at.

I so, so desperately want to live in a place where I can just walk to a store, and a library, and the place I work. But we don't have that here.

[coulsonlives]

Tbh.

[atlurbanist]

Bland buildings are less offensive when they're part of an overall great urbanism

Something occurred to me while walking around Paris last week during a vacation visit...

If you zoom in on average Paris buildings, many resemble the apartments that often get pegged as being "cookie cutter, soulless density" in Atlanta. They may not be exactly as bland as the worst offenders in Atlanta, but they can be pretty dull in themselves, relative to the grandest architecture in the city.

But when you zoom out to their full context, to see how they're grouped closely together against pedestrian-focused streets, with shops on bottom, they look glorious.

This is the physical aspect of good urbanism that matters so much.

It's about creating public streets scaled primarily toward the movement of humans, and less toward the movement and parking of cars.

It's about streets where many things are in walkable distance, and where the doors and windows of buildings are politely close to pedestrians instead of being set back behind unused landscaping or parking spaces (though if I was rebuilding Paris, I'd definitely leave some room for more street trees).

Of course, individual buildings that are set back from the street in less pedestrian-oriented formats can be beautiful and beloved in themselves.

But in terms of scaling large populations upward in a way that sustains walking (versus car dependency), prioritizing compact density is important. And in the process, bland architecture is more forgivable because the aesthetic of the larger place is what's most important.

It's a challenging argument to make because I realize that Atlanta's dullest architecture is much more offensive than the bottom rung of what you find in Paris.

But in a classic European city where there's a lot of really grand, elegant, detailed architecture (much more so than what we have in Atlanta), the ones I posted here count as what I'll call "bland background buildings" by comparison.

It's only when you crop it specifically into pieces that you can see "oh, this building doesn't particularly stand out in terms of architectural details, but the entirety of the street is gorgeous anyway," and that's because of the overall structural urbanism happening.

I think there's a lesson for Atlanta in that. Yes, there's value in improving some details of our dull architecture. But the most important improvement in our design needs to happen at the level of streets and neighborhoods.

[thoughtportal]

the United States was not built around cars. the infrastructure of the United States was destroyed to make way for cars.

[fairyboygenius]

the funniest thing about going to college in a non-walkable city and not having car is trying to figure out if you can afford an uber back to your dorm from the gynecologist after your uber there & your copay and then seeing how far it is if you walk and

almost three hours. it’s a 14 minute drive

all because i got coffee and a cookie today

[icedgarlic]

I HATE DRIVING I HATE DRIVING I HATE DRIVING I hate everything taking 15-20 minutes to reach I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE I hate always feeling in a rush I hate the isolation of private transportation I hate shit heads on the road i hate worrying about my gas tank I hate my carbon footprint increasing I hate every commute feeling like it takes forever I HATE IT I HATE IT IM DONEEE

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[sylviaodhner]

Cars and Independence

My Patreon

Update: This comic has received a lot of both positive and negative attention, and I decided to post a follow-up comic to address some of the criticism: Revisiting Independence

[whereserpentswalk]

Car "based" infostructure? Actually, it seems pretty cringe to me.

[astroauddy]

In my opinion era

[walkingdetroit]

Passing Through Wayne State