I was just listening to an interview with Brent Toderian talking about why downtown Vancouver has a lot of families and downtown Seattle doesn’t. One big reason: Vancouver mandated two and three bedroom apartments be built. You can’t point to most American cities and say that the dearth of families indicates families hate cities. But you can say that families don’t like living in places built almost exclusively for young single people. I mean, duh.
It reminds me of the “minivans and more lanes are pro-family” argument I’ve seen, maybe in that same publication. In other words “people prefer driving in places built for car traffic.” Again, duh.
I do think devices and entertainment pull kids home while streets push them inside. There’s an interplay of both elements that mutually reinforce the other.
The thing to remember is that the rapid decline in kids walking or biking to school started in 1970 and hit nadir around 2010. Tiktok and Instagram didn't even exist then.
Great article even though I am unaware of the players or their specific clash. Of course streets are a sacrifice for drivers that's why freeways, highways and motorways were invented. Application of highway principles to streets is a major engineering failure of context sensitivity. Design induced unsafely is often lurking in the background of crashes.
Wild to think something claiming to be a walkability index does not consider traffic speed, volume, safety and ease of crossing. That's more a vibe score than what I would consider an actual walkability index. Mere proximity is insufficient if partitioned by death canyons.
The point about child mobility patterns being different to adults reminds me of the book invisible women. Transport planning based on journey to work misses much more complex carer trip patterns. Always perilous to ignore diversity of usage patterns.
It beggars belief that anyone who has walked in different built environments would claim they would have no effect on how may people walk.
But I am not surprised that Lyman would make a ridiculously absurd argument; I blocked him some time ago because it was clear he would never concede anything that was counter to argument he was making. I don’t think anyone who claims every data point is clearly in their favor should be trusted.
I wish everyone or even just anyone would talk about the logical fallacy inherent in helicopter/intensive parenting that children are safer in cars than as pedestrians. Children are much much likelier to die as a passenger in a car than as a pedestrian. Yet, every parent I know justifies driving their children literally everywhere to save them from the supposed danger of pedestrians accidents. This is honestly insane to me.
Yoni Applebaum’s recent book recounts the very North American ideology against apartments and in favor of single family homes. So many Americans - including Stone - act as if our preference for SFHs is naturally derived. It’s absolutely not. Even middle and upper middle class and rich people live in multi family housing all over the world, including in other rich countries. There was a conservative, xenophobic political project for more than a century in America to villainize multi-family living. It is a politically manufactured preference, not a naturally derived one. Highly recommend this book.
I was just listening to an interview with Brent Toderian talking about why downtown Vancouver has a lot of families and downtown Seattle doesn’t. One big reason: Vancouver mandated two and three bedroom apartments be built. You can’t point to most American cities and say that the dearth of families indicates families hate cities. But you can say that families don’t like living in places built almost exclusively for young single people. I mean, duh.
It reminds me of the “minivans and more lanes are pro-family” argument I’ve seen, maybe in that same publication. In other words “people prefer driving in places built for car traffic.” Again, duh.
I do think devices and entertainment pull kids home while streets push them inside. There’s an interplay of both elements that mutually reinforce the other.
The thing to remember is that the rapid decline in kids walking or biking to school started in 1970 and hit nadir around 2010. Tiktok and Instagram didn't even exist then.
Great article even though I am unaware of the players or their specific clash. Of course streets are a sacrifice for drivers that's why freeways, highways and motorways were invented. Application of highway principles to streets is a major engineering failure of context sensitivity. Design induced unsafely is often lurking in the background of crashes.
Wild to think something claiming to be a walkability index does not consider traffic speed, volume, safety and ease of crossing. That's more a vibe score than what I would consider an actual walkability index. Mere proximity is insufficient if partitioned by death canyons.
The point about child mobility patterns being different to adults reminds me of the book invisible women. Transport planning based on journey to work misses much more complex carer trip patterns. Always perilous to ignore diversity of usage patterns.
It beggars belief that anyone who has walked in different built environments would claim they would have no effect on how may people walk.
But I am not surprised that Lyman would make a ridiculously absurd argument; I blocked him some time ago because it was clear he would never concede anything that was counter to argument he was making. I don’t think anyone who claims every data point is clearly in their favor should be trusted.
I wish everyone or even just anyone would talk about the logical fallacy inherent in helicopter/intensive parenting that children are safer in cars than as pedestrians. Children are much much likelier to die as a passenger in a car than as a pedestrian. Yet, every parent I know justifies driving their children literally everywhere to save them from the supposed danger of pedestrians accidents. This is honestly insane to me.
Yoni Applebaum’s recent book recounts the very North American ideology against apartments and in favor of single family homes. So many Americans - including Stone - act as if our preference for SFHs is naturally derived. It’s absolutely not. Even middle and upper middle class and rich people live in multi family housing all over the world, including in other rich countries. There was a conservative, xenophobic political project for more than a century in America to villainize multi-family living. It is a politically manufactured preference, not a naturally derived one. Highly recommend this book.
Notably for the debate: You could probably have single family homes and also traffic calming/ smaller trucks.
And the effects of density as a fertility suppressant can exist alongside these effects on childhood independence.