• Kuinox@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      34
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      Car with horse existed when theses road were designed.
      It’s even a paved road, I find it a bit sad they tore down the pavement. There is even a photo somewhere on internet where you can see a dead horse with kids playing next to it as car pass by.

      Exemple of a photo 100year ago in Paris:

      Pedestrian can walk on pavement.

      I’d like to remind that cars were banned in center of Rome, because there was too much cars.
      And I’m talking about the Rome of 2000 years ago.

      • Vaquedoso@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        19
        ·
        edit-2
        5 months ago

        They might have not suffered the noise of cars as much as today, but accordig to that photo they did constantly suffer the noise of lowercase a everywhere

  • Neato@ttrpg.network
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    58
    ·
    5 months ago

    Making a road with shops and services pedestrian-only will greatly increase foot traffic and people shopping there. Now people will walk down the street and stop in places they happen to find. In cars people who to know about it and specifically choose to go there.

    • snooggums@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      5 months ago

      Even though I only go to stores that I planned to go to ahead of time, this switch is great because it means things are closer together and there is roughly the same amount of walking as driving to multiple stores and needing to walk from the lot into each one. Plus the view is better!

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      There’s a spot not far from my house that’s right across a little pedestrian bridge. The shops are lined up along a walking path and face a small park. They do enormous amounts of business, particularly in the evenings when kids are out playing and adults can simply walk across the street to grab dinner or visit the sports bar.

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      5 months ago

      Jane Jacobs wrote about this pretty extensively in “Death and life of great American cities” back in like the 1960s, if anyone hasn’t read that.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    60
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    5 months ago

    I am all on board with “Fuck Cars”, but also your street is always going to look nicer with bright overhead lighting during midday, relative to the dreary shadows of the early morning.

    • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      ·
      5 months ago

      The buildings on the left have sunbeams on them and you can see the bright sky reflected on the car windscreens. The bottom pic has a cloudy sky but has been brightened and saturated as much as the top pic has been dulled and greyed.

      We get the point, but be honest

      • bitwaba@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        5 months ago

        The bottom picture looks like a mock up computer generated image from an architect’s presentation of their plan for the street.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      5 months ago

      THAT is what you saw?

      I saw no cars, plants, people walking and enjoying, I saw beauty. Just the “oh but the lighting is better too” is something I really just plain missed.

  • Dezzorian@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    5 months ago

    And bring back the canals that were turned into highways in the 80’s (Utrecht, the Netherlands)

  • casmael@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    37
    ·
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    Pretty sure Sadiq khan tried to pedestrianise Oxford street but the conservative local council were like no actually we quite like the most polluted street in Europe as is thanks a lot I prefer the palpable scent of particulate emissions and nitrous oxide, how else am I going to enjoy my boarded up empty shops? Tories man, you know what they’re like

    • nifty@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      5 months ago

      It’s almost as though conservative ideology has nothing to offer than to stand in the of way making things better

    • rosamundi@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      5 months ago

      As I understand it, the big problem with any Oxford Street pedestrianisation is the diverted bus routes. Everything would have to go down Wigmore Street, which would have to be converted back to a two-way street.

    • cestvrai@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      5 months ago

      The infra is still a bit lacking but when I visited I found the drivers to be surprisingly decent with bikes & peds.

  • Mordred_85@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    5 months ago

    One reason can be that police has to walk to get there without the whoop whoop beep beep armored cars

  • Pulptastic@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 months ago

    🤷 generalizing but west end isn’t narrow here. There are some old narrow neighborhoods that would be great candidates though.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    5 months ago

    I’m dead against it. People forget that traders still need access to Dixons.

    • Jake Farm@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      Look at the store signs. It’s only a slightly different angle. Specifically on the right.

      • Baggins@piefed.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        5 months ago

        Just looked on desktop (I was on mobile earlier) and yes, it has made a difference.
        Going to edit my original post

  • Ballistic_86@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    38
    ·
    5 months ago

    Let’s try that here in Minneapolis. See how well that works with several inches of snow cover and sub-zero temps.

    I’m def not a “I love cars” kind of person, but a heated and protected pod to transport me, my family and friends, my belongings and anything I purchase is a necessity. Can’t just “pop to the grocery” every day or two in winter conditions even if I didn’t live miles away from any viable store with food.

    • MintyFresh@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      37
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      I grew up in northern Minnesota. Fuck whatever your saying. You absolutely can pop to the grocery. It’s disingenuous AF to say this place is inhospitable without automobiles. The Anishinaabe have managed it. I managed it. Litteral millons do.

      What you meant to say is “surviving in a place like Minnesota requires planning and community” I’m MN born and raised. I haven’t owned an automobile for 15years. It’s very possible.

      And seeing how there’s ten billion souls on this planet, rapidly fucking it up, it would behoove us to live with less resource expenditures. Any way you stack it up, from leaded gasoline to the sleekest EV, the personal automobile is a gluttonous, selfish act. We can live without them, your very existence is proof. Ride the bus, snow shoe, ski, walk bus, fuck.

    • servobobo@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      The answer is it would work much better because you wouldn’t have the parked cars wasting space and making it difficult for the plows to clean the street quickly.

    • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      I walk to my grocer frequently (1-2 per week) in northern ontario and have no difficulties due to snow or ice. I use a small backpack and some cotton bags to carry my grocceries. I have a nice coat and good boots.

        • SeekPie@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          14
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          5 months ago

          So mobility scooters/electric wheelchairs don’t exist and no disabled person can ever ride a bike? And disabled people should be forced to buy a car (that is expensive) to do the most basic things (like going to the store or hospital)? And it’s easier to navigate around car traffic than people walking and biking?

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      34
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      And making those places inaccessible to people with mobility issues.

      builds impassable six lane highway through center of town

      tears up all the sidewalks and floods the air with noxious vehicle exhaust

      no public transit, you just need to put your vehicle on the other side of a half-acre wide parking lot and hoof it in the middle of the baking sun

      Thank goodness we made all these improvements for the sake of people with mobility issues.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          edit-2
          5 months ago

          You’re not going to believe this, but buses, trains, and planes also have special seating and services for people with mobility issues.

          The big difference is that you don’t need to go out of pocket for your own bespoke mobility friendly automobile to use the bus.

          Can you stop lying

          Where did I lie? Show your work.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              7
              ·
              5 months ago

              last time I checked, buses, trains, and planes didn’t go DIRECTLY TO THE PLACE YOU NEED TO GO. YOU HAVE TO GET OFF AND KEEP GOING TO THE ACTUAL LOCATION YOU NEED TO GET TO.

              When you build a community around mass transit, these services do in fact drop you off directly at your destination.

              Check out Terminal Tower in Cleveland, Ohio. A 52-story skyscraper built directly above the Cleveland Union Terminal. Penn Station, NY is directly across the street from Madison Square Garden and in the beating heart of the city’s largest shopping quarter. Transbay Transit Center in San Fransisco is surrounded by enormous apartment blocks. And these are in the states, where our transit networks generally suck.

              Tokyo’s Metro has an entire in-built navigation system for the blind, with metro stops at some of the densest housing, retail, and business districts in the world. There is nowhere else in the world you would rather be wheelchair bound, sightless, or otherwise disabled.

              The dirty secret about mass transit is that it encourages dense urban development. And, as a consequence, it reduces the total distance traveled from your front door to your destination. This, combined with large public municipal works friendly to disabled individuals, means you can leverage economies of scale in public investment rather than being forced to take up the entire burden of your disability on your own shoulders.

              Elevators are the most efficient and disability friendly forms of mass transit. But they’re enormously expensive for individuals to build and maintain.

              I’m the person that is being attacked by your very attitudes and words

              If you feel attacked because I’m suggesting meaningful improvements to your quality of life, I have to question what your end goal is.

              Are you sadistically inflicting misery upon yourself? Or are you simply burned out from all the individualized burdens of disability heaped upon the individual in a society that refuses to invest in high quality mass transit on a national scale?

              Either way, I believe you’ve fallen to a kind of car-owner Stockholm Syndrome. Trapped in a machine that tortures you for so long you’ve lost sight of the scars.

              Go to hell.

              I’m in Houston. Hell would be an improvement.

    • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      33
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      Cause that narrow-ass curb used to be very wheelchair accessible indeed.

      Paris is a nightmare city for people with mobility issues.

    • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      5 months ago

      Hey look, it’s someone using disabled people as their personal prop to push a political agenda that harms those same people

    • Farid@startrek.website
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      27
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      Could you explain how this is less accessible? Is a mall less accessible because you can’t drive your car inside?

    • Kuinox@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      27
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      Tell me how a blind person can drive.
      A blind person can live in the road taken in photo in this post.

    • Buffalo1387@thelemmy.club
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      25
      ·
      5 months ago

      Which of the two pictures show somewhere that is more accessible to someone using a wheelchair, the same accessibility aid that would allow them to access the shops themselves?

      The one with level access, clearer visibility and without the risk of not being seen by a chunk of metal travelling at relative high speed or the one that has on street parking?

    • Ibuthyr@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      5 months ago

      Lol, the car brain on this one. People with disabilities get by fine in the Netherlands. In fact, they lead a way more fulfilling life because they get to be part of day to day life. If your disability is this severe, you’d need help anyway. There’s no way you can drive a car with a disability that bad. Go play in traffic, you seem to love it so much.

      • the_doktor@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        11
        ·
        5 months ago

        If you can’t get to where you need to go easily, how the fuck do they get to be part of day to day life? Ooops, yet another lie by the hateful ableists. Fuck off.

        • Ibuthyr@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          5 months ago

          They park in the area 100-200m further away? And if they really just need something real quick, they drive to a mall? I have a feeling you are a bit… Dumb?

    • AchtungDrempels@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      9
      ·
      5 months ago

      Finally someone with a sincere and compassionate argument for car acess everywhere. Never heard that one before, great point!