The Wrong Side of my Car
The blog that wants to go obsolete
City or kids?
There is one stage in your life where this urbanist stuff makes complete sense. Back when you were Young, perhaps Unmarried, and definitely still without kids.
This was once my life. I was a yuppie in Milford. All this urbanism stuff made sense. I could walk to the town centre, or to the bus station if I wanted to go to the city, and I could ride my bicycle to work. If I would have had access to car rentals or car share, I would perhaps have sold my car.
And you can probably still do this in Auckland, today. If you’re a single, or a couple without kids.
The scale of Auckland
I sometimes tell people the scale of Auckland is mind-boggling. An endless sea of houses. Where does that impression come from?
It is of course because what I am used to in Europe. European cities have a different history, and therefore developed with a different settlement pattern. If we would have a city with that sort of pattern over here, what would it look like? How big is it?
We could come up with some imaginary settlement pattern, with about 1.5 to 1.7 million imaginary people.
Is driving for the rich too?
After creating that cycling mode share map, why not get them for other ways to get around as well? *1
First, walking:
The unavoidable traffic infarct conjecture
What is it with cities that always causes them to suffer from congestion all the time?
Auckland is still quite OK compared to what we’re used to in Belgium, but it’s catching up fast:
It seems unavoidable that as a city grows, its traffic grinds to a halt. But why?
You could argue that this happens because there are not enough roads. You’d be right, but why don’t we just build more roads as the city grows? Judging from the discussion about rate increases for the next 10-year plan in Auckland, one issue seems to be funding.
It got me thinking. Why is that? Are we doing something wrong? Or is it just a consequence of how cities work?