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

[Midwit]

A short walk from over 500 stores and a train station. Nearby stops have even more shopping. I wonder why this city never makes the list of the best urbanist cities?

Because it has grade-seperated pedestian infrastructure built into the whole thing, therefore it's even more car centric than if pedestrians had to cross over the roads at level to get anywhere.

suburban homes aren't made of concrete

I think that there are a few in Australia for cyclone proofing, but that's not a common circumstance for the places where urbanists actually live so it's fair to discount it.

Why not just get a train set?

Have you seen how expensive that shit is? Might as well just buy your kid an actual car at that point.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Have you seen how expensive that shit is? Might as well just buy your kid an actual car at that point.

Well maybe full H0/HO layouts, but even kids' trainsets cost $60-ish (USD) depending on the brand. Not that much if it's a birthday present and you're making a decent income. Hell that carpet is $40, even for one the size of a doormat.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Well maybe full H0/HO layouts, but even kids' trainsets cost $60-ish (USD) depending on the brand. Not that much if it's a birthday present and you're making a decent income. Hell that carpet is $40, even for one the size of a doormat.

I'll tell you why not buy a kid the train set, is because you need the kid to be pretty old, I'd say 8 or 10 before they can keep something like that maintained; a train set missing one track (even if a Brio or whatever) is basically useless.

Whereas if you have a pile of toy cars, they keep being toy cars even if one gets lost.

Hmmm, kind of like the roads, even if one road gets closed or damaged traffic can route around it, a rail line goes down and all shit explodes.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I'll tell you why not buy a kid the train set, is because you need the kid to be pretty old, I'd say 8 or 10 before they can keep something like that maintained; a train set missing one track (even if a Brio or whatever) is basically useless.

Whereas if you have a pile of toy cars, they keep being toy cars even if one gets lost.

Hmmm, kind of like the roads, even if one road gets closed or damaged traffic can route around it, a rail line goes down and all shit explodes.

Freight lines I believe have some sort of redundancy in most cases (similar to power lines), but that's okay because freight lines mog passenger rail in every way.

Most passenger rail don't have redundancy, their "backup" solution is just to send everyone in by bus, but that just opens up the question of "why use rail at all", why not just use buses? In most cities, that's a valid question to ask.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Freight lines I believe have some sort of redundancy in most cases (similar to power lines), but that's okay because freight lines mog passenger rail in every way.

Most passenger rail don't have redundancy, their "backup" solution is just to send everyone in by bus, but that just opens up the question of "why use rail at all", why not just use buses? In most cities, that's a valid question to ask.

I can confirm that every rail line I’ve ever had become a bus sucked triple ass. Except the latest night train - that one actually was on time as a bus. Rare as fuck.

Busses are really the nigger of transportation; even the best BRT still sucks.

 

[Yamamura]

Oh how I love the "Look we banned cars on this street and people just WALK there MINDBLOWING" posts. They don't care that such actions inconvenience people that actually *live* in those places. Online "urbanists" are only interested in transforming cities into big theme parks for tourists.
I happen to live in a somewhat big, very old European city- obviously we have a lot of tourists here. Unfortunately the city does everything they can to make lives if residents a nightmare just to conform to tourists. Closing down parkings, streets, etc. The most obvious thing happened- people with families (including me) started buying cars and moving to suburbs/exburbs.

We're all just blockin the street! We're all just blockin' the street!

The featured product is a "good" version of the playmat that /r/fuckcars hates:

These toys look like they suck to play with. At least if you're going to do toy trains have things they can load into them like cargo containers.

I said this before but what is a child going to role play with this?

"This is Bob, he's going to ride the bus to the post office to file his taxes. I hope he gets a good tax return this year to buy more vegan food and feminist literature. After that he's going to go to his job as an accountant."

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

It looks cheaply printed, I mean come on. The only people buying this shit are virtue vultures so charge enough to print it well and have deep vibrant colors.

 

[Lobster Cult High Priest]

I'll tell you why not buy a kid the train set, is because you need the kid to be pretty old, I'd say 8 or 10 before they can keep something like that maintained; a train set missing one track (even if a Brio or whatever) is basically useless.

Whereas if you have a pile of toy cars, they keep being toy cars even if one gets lost.

Hmmm, kind of like the roads, even if one road gets closed or damaged traffic can route around it, a rail line goes down and all shit explodes.

That's when you buy your kids the wooden Thomas sets.

 

[Apple Porcupine]

I'm legitimately not sure what this guy wants at this point.

Chuck complains about affordable housing because... it's not affordable enough? He throws a bunch of numbers and graphs that have been compressed to the point that they're actually illegible trying to convince his readers of... something?

His solution (beyond wanting to entirely up-end the established economic system) is to "take that unused fourth bedroom in the single-family home and turn it into an accessory apartment." So... AirBnB?

I'm genuinely confused by the point of this one, maybe I just don't have the brain to comprehend all of this. I know Chuck's all buzzwords and no bite but still. I don't understand how people can continue to eat this up.

Source (Archive)

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

He’s autistic and stupid be he’s almost to the point - the problem with housing is under supply making it inelastic which means the price surges along at “maximum anyone will pay”.

If we overbuilt for a few years suddenly there’s enough housing that the prices start cratering (which the government is assbolutely terrified of, because that IS the shit that would result in revolution).

The only real way out is to increase luxury supply but increase inflation a bit more so that existing houses go down in real dollars but still appreciate slightly in nominal dollars.

 

[quaawaa]

I'm legitimately not sure what this guy wants at this point.

Last week, he wrote a weird article hating on actual traffic engineers (the last section is him seething about being called out for being a fake engineer by the licensing board):

This private information is unavailable to guests due to policies enforced by third-parties.

Source (Archive)

Regarding his points:

1. I've lived in areas which banned off-street parking for apartment complexes. All it resulted in was the street parking being full 24/7 and unhappy existing residents who could no longer easily park in front of their houses as no one sold their car when moving in. Urbanist activists then complained about all the public space being dedicated to cars instead of people, completely forgetting to mention that it was only a problem thanks to the regulations that they advocated for.
2. Areas that get rid of their parking are areas that people don't go to anymore. There are lots of high streets and downtowns that have killed themselves by removing/charging exorbitant rates for parking. The only way it doesn't result in destruction is if the density is so high that the businesses don't need anyone from outside the neighborhood to visit to stay in business. In practice, I've noticed that dense areas of American cities have few businesses besides bars and restaurants.
3. The real engineers are right about street parking reducing sight lines.
4. A serious engineer doesn't use a Twitter poll of his echo chamber as a source.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

You know where band on overnight parking are found? Where there’s no parking minimums! In those oh-so-perfect old walkable neighborhoods- that’s were you’ll find the “no parking 2-6 AM” signs and similar. I knew people who lived in those areas who would set an alarm and get up at 2 AM to move the car (some just say you can’t be in the same spot overnight, so if you moved at 2AM the meter maids wouldn’t chalk you).

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I'm genuinely confused by the point of this one, maybe I just don't have the brain to comprehend all of this. I know Chuck's all buzzwords and no bite but still. I don't understand how people can continue to eat this up.

I had assumed that there might be something on how "affordably priced" units fucks up the rest of the housing market and worsens the cycle, but instead it's shilling doubling up with "accessory units".

I guarantee that Chuck's not renting out his spare bedroom to strangers.

If we overbuilt for a few years suddenly there’s enough housing that the prices start cratering (which the government is assbolutely terrified of, because that IS the shit that would result in revolution).

That did happen in Houston, what happened is that rents plummeted and started to become slums virtually overnight and what couldn't be leased at market rate was simply demolished.

For your reading pleasure--
page 1, page 2

Areas that get rid of their parking are areas that people don't go to anymore. There are lots of high streets and downtowns that have killed themselves by removing/charging exorbitant rates for parking. The only way it doesn't result in destruction is if the density is so high that the businesses don't need anyone from outside the neighborhood to visit to stay in business. In practice, I've noticed that dense areas of American cities have few businesses besides bars and restaurants.

Speaking of Houston, I remember the Midtown area (an up and coming area with lots of bugmen housing blocks) got rid of parking minimums. In 2019, a Whole Foods Market opened up in an apartment building, yet four years later it closed (archive).

The article mentioned parking difficulties and despite the parking being free, either the access into the store revolves around some awkward escalators or not connected to the store at all.

What the article doesn't mention is that at the time of Whole Foods' closing in 2023 there were two other supermarkets within a one-mile radius that closed for unrelated reasons during this time, and the only other supermarket is a Randalls that opened in 2002, with a decidedly less complicated parking setup. I believe Randalls also owns their own building.

Meanwhile, the Whole Foods has two other stores within a few miles to the west (also in yuppie neighborhoods) but both of them have surface parking. With this, we can infer the following:

1. Whole Foods tends to attract a lot of people from outside the neighborhood because despite being degrading under Amazon, it's still a destination. No one from outside the neighborhood was going to the Midtown besides local residents, so it was underperforming, especially compared to the two other locations.

2. Grocery stores have a very low margin, so they prefer to own their real estate. Even if Whole Foods was getting more volume than Randalls, it still wasn't fighting an uphill battle with lease requirements.

3. Randalls built at a time with stricter rules on parking, so it has plenty to go around, and has very visible surface parking, not a parking garage tucked away behind the building.

 

[BulkForceFive]

Well maybe full H0/HO layouts, but even kids' trainsets cost $60-ish (USD) depending on the brand. Not that much if it's a birthday present and you're making a decent income. Hell that carpet is $40, even for one the size of a doormat.

you can also go to a train nerd convention with a swapmeet and buy old Lionel (the non-collectible stuff) for pennies on the dollar.

interestingly the biggest problem for model train nerds isn't the price, it's that fewer people own... a suburban home, which you need to set up your tiny train world in! maybe urbanists can explain how you're supposed to have this non-carbrained hobby in a two-room shitparment.

 

[quaawaa]

1. Whole Foods tends to attract a lot of people from outside the neighborhood because despite being degrading under Amazon, it's still a destination. No one from outside the neighborhood was going to the Midtown besides local residents, so it was underperforming, especially compared to the two other locations.

The major problem with that store is the demographics.

Seattle has several similar stores, include the infamous "racism has no place here" store that are built into apartment buildings and are still in business:


The difference is the people who live in Capitol Hill, Seattle are a captive audience. The only other grocery store in the neighborhood is a QFC (Kroger) which is infested by the homeless and it's not like the rich left-wing hipsters who live there would ever dream of driving to the suburbs for cheap groceries.

In contrast, that Houston Whole Foods had a lot of competition because the Houstonians all have cars and aren't afraid to use them.

 

[Ensok]

Most of these ideas aren't terrible but it's mixed with the classic ignorance and misunderstanding of an urbanist. Because guess what? A lot of that is already being done if you look in the right place.

We can take that unused fourth bedroom in the single-family home and turn it into an accessory apartment

No, horrible idea. It completely misses the point and purpose of a spare room in a home and doesn't take into account larger families at all. But oh hey, some homes are already being built with something similar called a Multi-Gen Suite. It's essentially a mini apartment built into your home. Typically it's just an option (that obviously costs quite a bit extra to make) but you can get it. As the name implies though, the idea behind it is that it's typically for families that will have their grandparents living with them or possibly a young newlywed child and spouse that doesn't have their own home yet. You can rent it out to others and I've seen several people do this but usually a family won't want to do that with a random stranger or couple.

We can take that unused space in the backyard and allow the homeowner to build a backyard cottage

Again, we already have this. They're called casita's in California. The issue is that most new homes don't even have large enough backyards for this anymore. You'd have to look around for a bit but you can still find them. I'm all for homeowners being allowed to build them on their own too and rent them out to whoever, but not everyone is going to want to do that or have the land for it.

We can take that empty lot and get a 400-600 square foot starter home built on it.

I fully support this other than the fact that it might draw the wrong kind of people into a neighborhood. And probably also make a neighborhood look ugly and lopsided if you have a bunch of 2,000 sq ft homes and then this sitting right between two of them.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

No, horrible idea. It completely misses the point and purpose of a spare room in a home and doesn't take into account larger families at all. But oh hey, some homes are already being built with something similar called a Multi-Gen Suite. It's essentially a mini apartment built into your home. Typically it's just an option (that obviously costs quite a bit extra to make) but you can get it. As the name implies though, the idea behind it is that it's typically for families that will have their grandparents living with them or possibly a young newlywed child and spouse that doesn't have their own home yet. You can rent it out to others and I've seen several people do this but usually a family won't want to do that with a random stranger or couple.

There are so many rules on renting, too, that unless they have a history of eviction there's very little options to turn down tenants. In New York City, Colorado, and California it's illegal to even ask to provide proof if they're in the United States legally. I remember a court case (forgot which one) where there was even a question of refusing the first tenant that showed up.

Again, we already have this. They're called casita's in California. The issue is that most new homes don't even have large enough backyards for this anymore. You'd have to look around for a bit but you can still find them. I'm all for homeowners being allowed to build them on their own too and rent them out to whoever, but not everyone is going to want to do that or have the land for it.

The big problem with the "accessory units" in single family homes are twofold:

1. Limited parking space. They aren't going to upgrade streets, especially if said streets already lost street parking to oversized bike lanes
2. People don't want to see their neighborhood bought up by corporations. My extremely suburban town has a number of areas with fourplexes and duplexes. The problem is, those see almost no maintenance because there's incentive for the renters or owners to do anything beyond token adherence to city code, so these things are falling apart.

I've attached a picture (sorry, no Street View link) that exemplifies this. (To be fair, the grass is dead because of a drought, but otherwise fits pretty well):

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Owner-occupied duplexes and fourplexes and stuff can be decent, because owners have an incentive to keep them up. Non-owner occupied duplexes and fourplexes are usually shit because they're owned by small-time landlords who don't know any fuck about actually being a landlord as a business.

But oh hey, some homes are already being built with something similar called a Multi-Gen Suite. It's essentially a mini apartment built into your home. Typically it's just an option (that obviously costs quite a bit extra to make) but you can get it.

This is usually cheaper than you think if it is a new build and the plan is already setup for it. Because all you do is partition off a bedroom, bathroom and a second room to become a sitting area/kitchen. The total cost is some additional plumbing for the kitchen and the appliances, etc. If the plan was designed for it you can get out under $10-20k. Otherwise that kind of thing is starting at $100k and goes up.

And as for being landlord, you really need to study carefully before you venture down that path. The fun part is that owner-occupied gives you some major lee-way that you otherwise wouldn't have, up to and including discrimination that would otherwise be illegal. For example, some states allow sex and race discrimination if letting rooms.

In other news, Balldo has complained about the stress of 80 miles a day of driving causing him to coke out, so clock one up for the urbanists! If he had been in a bustling city like LA instead of a small town he'd be fine today, his kids would be gone or dead, and everything would have been perfectly fine. Carlovers btfo.

 

[The Jewel of the Nile]

And the best thing this dude was able to find is a nigger complaining about white man modernising his shithole country.

Every time I see a leddit urbanist seething over big cars it makes me want a huge ass car even more. They look a bit ridiculous on polish roads, but I'll happily become a lovely housewife doing chores in a nice big Ford F-150 bought with husband's money. Difficult role but I'm willing to give it my best- and seething posts are going to be my reward.

I don't think about you at all.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

And the best thing this dude was able to find is a nigger complaining about white man modernising his shithole country.

The best part is that it only talks about paving roads. According to Urbanist History, paved streets were designed for bicycles, not cars.