Not Just Bikes
1 HN recommender · recommended in 7 months, 2022–2023
13:08 · 1.1M views · Feb 7, 2022
Not Just Bikes explains why living in a dense, bikeable Dutch city sharply reduced his family's environmental footprint and improved quality of life. It is a collaboration that continues on Climate Town.
HN cites it in threads on sprawl, density, and climate, especially for the point that everything is a short bike ride from downtown Amsterdam.
14 comments from Hacker News
There are quite a few factors, I'd encourage checking out the following videos by Not Just Bikes and Climate Towns that cover a broad range of city planning and zoning in the US. Strong Towns Play List by Not Just Bikes (This heavily covers city planning issues in the US): [LINK] The Suburbs Are Bleeding America Dry by Climate Towns (This covers zoning): [LINK] How The Auto Industry Carjacked The American Dream (This covers the auto industries impact on US cities.): [LINK] Dutch Cities are Better for the Climate (and my sanity) by Not Just Bikes (Not super relevant to zoning, but it's part 1 of The Suburbs Are Bleeding America Dry so I figured I'd link it.): this video These are pretty snarky, but fun videos and the authors list their sources. Their video descriptions are worth checking out just to find a ton of reading material on each topic.
> But there's a flip side to this coin. This isn't necessarily a desired "way of life", it's what naturally evolved due to severe space constraints. There is nothing 'natural' about the evolution of NL cities as demonstrated by the fact that (e.g.) Amsterdam started to go down the car-centric route: * [LINK] It was a policy choice to not go in that direction—or rather to stop and turn away—as opposed to some kind of physical law of the universe. Not Just Bikes uses Rotterdam as an example of how even in NL† policy can go in other directions: * [LINK] My dad used to work at the post office facility in this area: * [LINK] In the early 1990s there used to be strawberries fields across the street, and now the entire area is filled with generic suburb strip malls. Perhaps agriculture would have gone away eventually, but there's no reason why it had car-centric, low-density development that replaced it. How close is agriculture to some NL cities? * this video > Suburbia can be denser but than it must be cheap. Dense expensive suburbia is the worst of all worlds. No: low-density expensive suburbia is the worst of all worlds because it necessitates cars, which has leads to all sorts of externality costs. The total OpEx is also much more expensive with low densities: * [LINK] And just because you have sprawl doesn't mean you have cheap housing: * [LINK] See LA and even the Greater Toronto area (GTA) as examples: * [LINK] † I use "NL" in the international ccTLD sense, and not in my Canadi
I find this to be a bewildering opinion. I get that people are wired different, but I am surprised that you aren't capable of envisioning a situation where a huge percent of the world chooses to live in a city. > The city is obsolete in the era of WFH The first thing I did after negotiating WFH is to move to a dense neighborhood of NYC (soon). > Demand for nicer living conditions I am. I want to walk down to local markets & restaurants. I want to go anywhere in the city without exposing myself to the main cause of youth death (cars). When I am travel to another part of town, I'd rather absentmindedly read a book, than be stuck paying attention in bumper2bumper traffic. I want 100s of activities, cuisines & communities to be at my disposal when I want to access them. I don't want to have to ferry my future children around everywhere. I would much prefer a big bustling park with trees like Boston Common or Central Park, than a lousy unsustainable private mound of grass. I love fresh air & low noise pollution. I wonder what's causing them. Can't be the folks in cars commuting from their beautiful suburbs can it ? [1] [2] [3] Why do people think that cities have to concrete jungles with no social life & huge amounts of crime. Cities (esp. NYC) are safer than almost everywhere in the US. Having friends & tons of activities nearby encourages social behavior and having parks be in shared spaces means that they continue to be well funded and environmentally sustainable means you can
> I have no interest in living in shoeboxes. No need. See the concept of "streetcar suburbs" and how things used to be built pre-WW2: * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK] High(er) density does not mean Manhattan and Hong Kong levels of density. 50-100 people per hectare (Hamburg, Paris, Stockholm, London, Brussels) is not crazy high: * [LINK] A video of what's available via a fifteen minute bicycle ride from Amsterdam: * [LINK] See also: * this video Fifteen minutes pedalling in one direction is downtown, fifteen minutes in the other is farm land. > Nope. Some just think quality of life isn’t about accounting and ROI. Do enjoy your shoebox though. * [LINK] * [LINK] IMHO you have a myopic view of what "urban" means. Further, what will your quality of life be like if your municipality/county goes bankrupt: * [LINK] * [LINK] Or if taxes need to be raised over and over to keep things in a state of good repair and other services suffer. A growing portion of your income could end up going to taxes with less left over to discretionary spending because the place you're living in made bad financial decisions.
Before there's a silly comment about "shoeboxes", see the concept of "streetcar suburbs" and how things used to be built pre-WW2: * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK] High(er) density does not mean Manhattan and Hong Kong levels of density. You can have a backyard and a garage (usually adjacent to a laneway) if you want to. Just because only car-dependent suburbs have been built for the last few decades in North America does not mean that is the only type. Further, as you can see from the above street views, plenty of folks still own cars, but they become optional instead of being mandatory / a necessity, for many things. 50-100 people per hectare (5000-10'000 people/km^2) is not crazy high (see Hamburg, Paris, Stockholm, London, Brussels): * [LINK] A video of what's available via a fifteen minute bicycle ride from Amsterdam: * [LINK] See also: * this video Fifteen minutes pedalling in one direction is downtown, fifteen minutes in the other is farm land.