The Wrong Side of my Car
The blog that wants to go obsolete
Should we wear bike helmets?
Ah yes. Bike helmets. What are they? A simple piece of protective equipment? Or some ritual object which hopefully, after blessing it with the right incantations, will levitate you out of the way if a truck left hooks you? Or is this just the brain damage from this discussion speaking?
Not many things get cyclists up in arms as this simple object. And probably even cyclists who wear these things. Why is that?
Driveways: we’re still doing it wrong
A while ago it was time again to complain about footpaths.
So what is it this time? Auckland Transport has rebuilt the footpaths on Birkenhead Avenue. While this is by itself a good idea, they have, on the northbound side, once again gone for the pump track design. So for their effort, they get a significantly less useful path than what they could have gotten for their money.
So what is wrong with it? Are we even supposed to build it like this?
The myth of permanently supervising children
A point that comes up again and again in discussions about streets is whether or not children should ever be outside of their homes by themselves.
(If you’re Dutch, this entire discussion is going to seem insane, and it frankly is, but it is worth appreciating how unusual the situation in the Netherlands is)
And for sure, it seems the obvious answer to many people is that of course not, it would be totally irresponsible to let children out unsupervised. Also, it is The Law, you have to supervise them until they’re 14 years old.
Wait, fourteen. Fourteen? Really?
Is ornamentation really a crime?
1890 — Grey Lynn, Auckland.
Time to build, build, build. There’s a brand new subdivision and there’s money to be made. The streets are laid out, in a neat grid. Except that awkward hole where the swamp is. New houses, mass produced. All of them more or less the same, with their bay windows and porches. Get a load of mass produced widgets to decorate and customise their looks a bit. Tacky, perhaps, but it gets the job done. Nobody wants to live in a landscape that looks like a bunch of cardboard boxes with holes cut out, right?
The scale on maps is… quite fluid
Remember when the map was still this huge folded sheet of paper in the door of your car?
By now, that has become yet another thing inside your phone, just like your FM radio, your flashlight, MP3 player, agenda, alarm clock, newspaper. Maybe not that FM radio anymore, but you get the idea.
Even though that old paper map and this map inside your phone come from the same reality, they are not quite the same. Below is a modern slippy map (I picked OpenTopoMap, based on OpenStreetMap data *1) and the stuff that used to be printed on the Michelin paper maps.
Can you spot the differences?
Child raising BS: holding hands
Ashley Neal posted a video *1 containing a clip where a toddler rolls into the street, ahead of his parents. If this happens at the wrong time, that can easily end with a dead child.
So a question a few people asked was: why can’t those parents hold hands with the kids?
And the answer is it doesn’t matter, holding hands doesn’t prevent kids running off.
Have you ever walked with a toddler? Has he ever try to run off? It is possible to restrain a toddler by holding his hand. But you’ll have to squeeze hard. And I mean hard enough that it will properly hurt after a few minutes. So that is not how you normally hold hands.
Holding hands will guide your child, but it will not restrain them.
What’s the deal with those backyards?
Here is something awkward for urbanists over here: if you want to raise a kid in Auckland, you need a backyard.
No ifs and buts. Backyard.
And that is very unfortunate. We keep going on and on about how we need to live smaller. Build apartments. The solution to housing crises always seems to converge to 6-storey apartment blocks*1, and Auckland is no exception.
But then you have to find people who are willing to live without a backyard.