Thats pretty much exactly what we did to accommodate cars with their highways and parking lots in the first place. But its really less about tearing down and more about building up instead of out. They already tore down the cities to pave more lanes and make more parking.
It is a huge problem cause we had great functional cities with lots of housing and most had trams on every majory roadway. We made huge mistakes destroying multi story buildings to pave surface level parking lots. This problem was decades in the making and will take decades to build out of, but thats what we’ll have to do if we want to fix it. There is no magic undo button.
Things cities can do to start improving today inckude upzone residential neighbourhoods to make midrise multi units possible to build. Allows mixed use zoning where residential moxes more with light comercial and restaurants. Restrict new developments on the edges of the city to meet minimum density requirements and transit access standards. Update fire/building codes to make single staircase buildings safe and viable. Do a street assement when repaving roads to determine if dedicated transit, cycling, or pedestrian lanes should replace some car lanes.
Anything that takes decades to do is no longer possible in America. At best we get four years of progress and then four to eight years of stagnation, if not actual regression.
Saying things like “oh just do this” ignores the complete lack of political will to do this at every level from the voters to the presidency.
Nearly everything i mentioned can be done at a municipal level which tends to have less extreme shifts than federal politics. A good city council could commit to improving their city’s situation. Often once this gets started, people like it. For example, people loved the pedestrianized streets some cities had during covid. I do understand your point though, the premier of my province made it illegal for municipalities to build bike lanes (which imo is way too much provincial over reach into muncipal planning).
Oh cool we just need to tear down and rebuild the cities.
You say that as if we didn’t already do it once before, when we demolished perfectly-good walkable downtowns to pave over them for car parking.
Yeah but then it was actually politically viable.
Thats pretty much exactly what we did to accommodate cars with their highways and parking lots in the first place. But its really less about tearing down and more about building up instead of out. They already tore down the cities to pave more lanes and make more parking.
So assuming we have as much buy in from government at all levels as we did for highways and parking lots we might have walkable cities in 50 years.
And that’s a huge assumption.
It is a huge problem cause we had great functional cities with lots of housing and most had trams on every majory roadway. We made huge mistakes destroying multi story buildings to pave surface level parking lots. This problem was decades in the making and will take decades to build out of, but thats what we’ll have to do if we want to fix it. There is no magic undo button.
Things cities can do to start improving today inckude upzone residential neighbourhoods to make midrise multi units possible to build. Allows mixed use zoning where residential moxes more with light comercial and restaurants. Restrict new developments on the edges of the city to meet minimum density requirements and transit access standards. Update fire/building codes to make single staircase buildings safe and viable. Do a street assement when repaving roads to determine if dedicated transit, cycling, or pedestrian lanes should replace some car lanes.
Anything that takes decades to do is no longer possible in America. At best we get four years of progress and then four to eight years of stagnation, if not actual regression.
Saying things like “oh just do this” ignores the complete lack of political will to do this at every level from the voters to the presidency.
Nearly everything i mentioned can be done at a municipal level which tends to have less extreme shifts than federal politics. A good city council could commit to improving their city’s situation. Often once this gets started, people like it. For example, people loved the pedestrianized streets some cities had during covid. I do understand your point though, the premier of my province made it illegal for municipalities to build bike lanes (which imo is way too much provincial over reach into muncipal planning).