Not Just Bikes / r/fuckcars / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car - People and grifters who hate personal transport, freedom, cars, roads, suburbs, and are obsessed with city planning and urban design

[JJLiautaud]

So many things going on here. Hyperoptimism for modernity. Purely utilitarian and unadorned architecture. Building too big too fast so it doesn't work because it's empty. Separating cars and people so much that it feels like a theme park rather than a town.

Above all, efficiency from a mathematical standpoint doesn't always work for people. We need to come to terms with the fact that we are stuck in our brains, and our brains are not objective - meaning "inefficient" things are just right and comfy for us, and the lack of these inefficiencies gives us the feeling of a void.

I still find it hilarious that the best planned city in all the UK, Poundbury, is the one everyone said wouldn't work, Prince Charles' playground they called it, now look who's laughing.

 

[quaawaa]

I still find it hilarious that the best planned city in all the UK, Poundbury, is the one everyone said wouldn't work, Prince Charles' playground they called it, now look who's laughing.

I love the Wikipedia intro:

Due for completion in 2025, it is expected to house a population of 6,000. There are 2,000 people in more than 180 businesses engaged in its development and construction. Poundbury has been praised for reviving the low-rise streetscape built to the human scale and for echoing traditional local design features, but it has not reduced car use, as originally intended. A 2022 report said: "Poundbury has been highlighted for its pedestrian and public transport links and not being as 'car-based' as other developments across the country."

The hilarious thing is that Charles’ “innovative” urban design is nothing more than an American-style mixed use neighborhood without garages glommed onto a small village. If anything, it is less of a “15 minute city” than many similar American suburban developments (and Milton Keynes), which typically have offices, a lot more retail, and also have taller apartment buildings in addition to townhouses.

Poundbury has been built according to the principles of Charles III, who is known for holding strong views challenging post-war trends in town planning that were suburban in character.

Also, when a literal monarch hates the suburbs and is building places designed make it difficult to own a car, how can urbanists claim that “no one wants to get rid of your car, there should just be viable alternatives”?

Of course, Charles himself lives in a massive country estate with no neighbors and is driven in a private car whenever he wants to go somewhere.

---

Why do they hate Milton Keynes? It has a fully grade separated pedestrian/bicycle network that makes Amsterdam look like it was designed for the car. It appears to be everything that they claim to want…
Of course, the real reason why they hate it is because it has houses with yards and parking and therefore doesn’t force people to live in the pod and give up their cars.

 

[Atypical Dog]

I still find it hilarious that the best planned city in all the UK, Poundbury, is the one everyone said wouldn't work, Prince Charles' playground they called it, now look who's laughing.

Linking the wiki article here and it reads like half celebrating their win and half coping that King Charles didn't go all in on urbanist talking points.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundbury

Choice quotes:

The development is built to a high-density urban pattern, intent on creating an integrated community of shops, businesses, and private and social housing; there is no zoning. The planners claim they are designing the development around people rather than the car and aim to provide a high-quality environment.

Translation: We whacked in an old-school town center and got rid of zoning laws so that we could cram more people in it. This is something people did before cars and it is somehow revolutionary and amazing. Apparently putting a ring road around an old part of town to service car/truck reliant businesses and relieve pressure on the main street is unheard of.

Poundbury's street plan and aesthetics have been variously praised and criticised by several commentators. Writing in Architect magazine, Professor Witold Rybczynski said that "Poundbury embodies social, economic, and planning innovations that can only be called radical."[40] Poundbury was intended to reduce car dependency and encourage walking, cycling, and public transport. A survey conducted at the end of the first phase, however, showed that car use was higher in Poundbury than in the surrounding (rural) former district of West Dorset;[41][42][18] but a 2022 report said "Poundbury has been highlighted for its pedestrian and public transport links and not being as 'car-based' as other developments across the country."[43]

Translation: Cars are so good that even though we literally built the entire village around making them less good, people still use them. That being said, that there are plenty of options is a good thing, and works well because of the relatively small population.

A few years later, British architecture and design critic Oliver Wainwright of The Guardian wrote, "Poundbury, the Prince of Wales's traditionalist village in Dorset, has long been mocked as a feudal Disneyland. But a growing and diverse community suggests it's getting a lot of things right." He argued that its main success was achieving genuine mixed-use development.[18]

This one isn't disingenuous, I just find it funny how they said "why don't we have more mixed-use development"? We'd probably have more of it if not for strict zoning laws sorting us into property tax buckets. Not that I'd support putting a big industrial chicken farm or a commercial butcher next to some high-rise condos for the smell, but strict zoning just prevents traditional hacks like living in an apartment above your shop, like old family businesses like to do.

Also if this was all King Charles did I'd consider him One Of Us (tm). None of us are ever going to get to pay city painter in real life, but I'm glad somebody gave it a shot and made it work.

 

[Major]

There are no zoning laws to speak of in England. Under the Town and Country planning acts, all decisions relating to urban development and land use are normally done on an ad-hoc basis on the local level; meaning that every application is individually reviewed and approved.

 

[An Sionnach Seang]

while we're on the subject of Britbong New Towns, here's a musical tribute to the one in Wales

 

[CFC-12]

THEY'VE FOUND THE THREAD!!!!
View attachment 5832062
View attachment 5832063
View attachment 5832065
View attachment 5832069
Link in comment (Archive)
View attachment 5832078
View attachment 5832076
View attachment 5832079
View attachment 5832081
View attachment 5832083
View attachment 5832086
View attachment 5832089
Source (Archive)

>radial leftists

lol

 

[Fren]

Don't know about Japan, but the core of their argument seems to be trying to claim that road infrastructure's expenses are unfairly paid and that everybody has to pay for roads even if they don't use them.

And even if bug people don't drive cars, all their goods and services are dependent on the road network, so they are also indirectly dependent on it.

 

[TowinKarz]

Above all, efficiency from a mathematical standpoint doesn't always work for people. We need to come to terms with the fact that we are stuck in our brains, and our brains are not objective - meaning "inefficient" things are just right and comfy for us, and the lack of these inefficiencies gives us the feeling of a void.

It drives (ha!) the social engineers nuts, but, fact is, people are not hard-wired for efficiency.

Outside of work or graded tasks, the vast majority of people do not feel good knowing they were efficient and most daily human activities, at least the ones on a personal level, are grossly inefficient. But trying to fix this just turns everything you do from how you shower and shave to walk around your own house into a regimented exercise that most people don't want in the first place and would quickly grow tired of anyway.

Being inefficient, having no plan and no schedule, is a psychological reward to the human (and probably mammalian in general) brain that you can't undo with some slick maths.

Its why we have hobbies, it's why we take a drive to nowhere on a sunny day, its why we browse shops instead of having a clear idea of exactly what we want.

Deep down inside, a lot of the social tinkerers are very very adverse to this, seeing it as disorganization and chaos ruining what we COULD do if only we "worked together" , ignoring the fact that if working together brings no freedom from having to do so all the time? People reject it.

TLR - humans are not ants.

 

[The Hardest R]

Adding insult to injury is that only some people are supposed to be autistically focused on efficiency and reducing their carbon footprint but other people aren’t expected to contribute to anything. In a future hellscape, imagine getting dinged on your social credit score for taking a shower five seconds too long and then you get stabbed by a heccin’ niggerino on your way to work. Stabbing white people wont lower your social credit score so he’ll be released back onto the streets later that day.

 

[Aero the Alcoholic Bat]

Deep down inside, a lot of the social tinkerers are very very adverse to this, seeing it as disorganization and chaos ruining what we COULD do if only we "worked together" , ignoring the fact that if working together brings no freedom from having to do so all the time? People reject it.

Adding insult to injury is that only some people are supposed to be autistically focused on efficiency and reducing their carbon footprint but other people aren’t expected to contribute to anything. In a future hellscape, imagine getting dinged on your social credit score for taking a shower five seconds too long and then you get stabbed by a heccin’ niggerino on your way to work. Stabbing white people wont lower your social credit score so he’ll be released back onto the streets later that day.

Furthermore, "efficient" by whose standards?

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Furthermore, "efficient" by whose standards?

Math standards. They figure that you can cram x people into a given space (be it train car, apartment cube, etc.) which is more space-efficient and fuel-efficient than a car and a house. The three problems with that are:
- If there's ever a fuel crisis, then there won't be buses crammed full of people, it's back to subsistence farming and smaller cities. There's this weird unspoken myth that if the oil disappears and we're stuck without a viable source, then we'll all move to the cities en masse. (Fittingly, this was the premise of Ready Player One despite the obvious major problem of "mass poverty and energy crises but everyone has VR headsets").
- There's no need to be "space-efficient" because we aren't Sims and don't need to be in a 4km*4km square. In extreme cases where there's no other buildable area you end up with some place like Hong Kong (don't want to cross border to China, can't build where the British say not to), but that's an exception rather than the rule.
- And finally, people aren't Sims, or commodities. There's a math to how many cans of cat food you can get into a truck and a good number to shoot for but those are inanimate objects. Ships were crammed with slaves because they were treated as commodities, but that was and is barbaric. (It should also be noted that the same people who think that people should be packed denser run with the same crowds who think chickens should be allowed more space in trucks and pens. Now chickens are neither people nor cans of cat food, but they have their own quirks, you can't have a bunch of chickens in space to chill out like a train because they'll start attacking each other).

 

[Aero the Alcoholic Bat]

- If there's ever a fuel crisis, then there won't be buses crammed full of people, it's back to subsistence farming and smaller cities. There's this weird unspoken myth that if the oil disappears and we're stuck without a viable source, then we'll all move to the cities en masse. (Fittingly, this was the premise of Ready Player One despite the obvious major problem of "mass poverty and energy crises but everyone has VR headsets").

Doesn't it also mean we don't have plastic or other compounds anymore?

 

[Return of the Freaker]

Doesn't it also mean we don't have plastic or other compounds anymore?

Yes but I doubt most of them think of that, they only think of oil as fuel, maybe engine lube. Now I wonder how many people understand what engine oil does?

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Yes but I doubt most of them think of that, they only think of oil as fuel, maybe engine lube. Now I wonder how many people understand what engine oil does?

I think that if you bring back plastics they might talk up plant-based plastics. But without modern agriculture that allows crops to be redirected to non-food purposes (which requires fossil fuels), so goes the idea of plant-based anything.

 

[Lemon-Lime Turpentine]

I think that if you bring back plastics they might talk up plant-based plastics.

In the bugman utopia, even the funko pops will be made of soy.

 

[TowinKarz]

Yes but I doubt most of them think of that, they only think of oil as fuel, maybe engine lube. Now I wonder how many people understand what engine oil does?

I've run into people while towing cars (theirs specifically) that honestly believed that if the oil light came on? But the engine didn't immediately stop? Everything was fine, the light was just faulty, so they drove another 30 minutes until it exploded like a hand grenade. They then got incredulous when told the WHOLE MOTOR had to be replaced to fix this. "What do you mean everything inside is broken?" (did I stutter?) "How could that happen?" Easy, you ran it out of oil...... yes, it's that important, that's why there's a WARNING LIGHT when you have no oil pressure.

Or people who thought the engine only used gas when the gas pedal is pushed, and that the car can just idle indefinitely...... and didn't understand why it died from running out of fuel in the driveway because they wanted to keep the AC running all afternoon so it'd be nice and cool inside if they decided to drive somewhere....

Or that I was lying when I said my tow truck had a V8 engine in it, apparently, NO vehicle has a V8 in it anymore because "Those are illegal!"




You don't want to know the depths to which this rabbit hole goes..... trust me.

 

[Luigi Cadorna]

"Decided to take the bus today because I’m a big supporter of public transit."

(Link)

 

[KingLiberty76]

"Decided to take the bus today because I’m a big supporter of public transit."
View attachment 5878352
(Link)

Guess the race
hint: It is 13% and over 50% at the same time and loud on public transit

 

[quaawaa]

/r/fuckcars doesn't know the rules about crosswalks:



Source (Archive)

---

He has to walk down a waterfront path shaded by palm trees! The horror!



Source (Archive)

---

There's a reason why the sign calls you out specifically...




Source (Archive)

---

Cars are the reason why people don't want to ride transit with "undesirables":





Source (Archive)

---

Commercial makes fun of cargo bikes; /r/fuckcars is very mad:

Source (Archive)

---

Defund the Police! Protect POC rights! Why isn't the officer arresting the Hispanic man for daring to wash cars in public?!?!





Source (Archive)

---

Florida man makes urbanists seethe:









Guess who made the trains run on time?



Source (Archive)

---

/r/fuckcars compiles a list of the best cities in the world:
























Source (Archive)

---

Turns out bike lanes aren't that popular:

Link in post (Archive)







Source (Archive)

---

More advocating violence:








Source (Archive)

 

[Xarpho's Return]

He has to walk down a waterfront path shaded by palm trees! The horror!

I was genuinely confused when I was reading. Is it wrong that I thought the "disability" was being FUCKING FAT and the sidewalk was too narrow?

Cars are the reason why people don't want to ride transit with "undesirables":

On some level they have a point, a lot of drivers in blue cities will vote for the bullshit that allows the problems to fester, but the idea of not voting Democrat would be unfathomable. ("just more funding bro")

Commercial makes fun of cargo bikes; /r/fuckcars is very mad:

Have they ever ridden or seen people ride fully loaded cargo bikes? It seems that all the cargo bike pictures are them sitting empty on perfectly level streets.

More advocating violence:

Yet they're probably against open-carry...