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[personal profile] andrewducker

Date: 2012-01-27 11:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nancylebov.livejournal.com
It looks more likely that people who do overtime get depression rather than the other way around.

"Cars kill cities" chooses an annoying example. (Is there a term for that rhetorical trick?) Instead of mentioning important errands which involve moving a substantial amount of mass (buying food, taking babies and toddlers anywhere), the example repeatedly given is picking up dry cleaning.

In re the hidden epidemic-- damned if I know. Sometimes real problems (agent orange, fibromyalgia) get ignored.

I'm not a geek, but the programming video was still pretty funny, even if I probably missed some of the fine points.

Date: 2012-01-27 12:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nancylebov.livejournal.com
I would say that's true about food if you're not buying for more than two people, aren't generally buying beverages, and aren't buying from anywhere far enough away that you want to consolidate shopping trips.

Date: 2012-01-27 12:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] laplor.livejournal.com
Agreed, and sadly, mine is badly designed in that very way.

My city deliberately uses a zoning system to ensure that residential, business, retail, and industrial areas all be as separate as possible. You cannot live near where you work, nor buy food near either your home nor your job.

Then they provide bus service between the zones only on the hour, and not before 7 am nor after malls close. They can't understand why the bus system is lightly used, so the keep withdrawing routes and runs.

Lately they've been on a kick to try to reduce car/pedestrian fatalities - a problem that better urban design would have greatly prevented!

Date: 2012-01-27 12:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nancylebov.livejournal.com
I've got varied grocery shopping within half a mile, but if I want Whole Foods or Trader Joe's (and I generally do), I use a bicycle with large baskets, and (especially the Trader Joe's) is far enough away that I don't want to bike there (mass transit would take about as long on the average, I think, and it would be less convenient to carry things) every couple of days.

Date: 2012-02-01 06:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skreidle.livejournal.com
Most of the U.S. is badly designed in this way, due to commercial/residential zoning restrictions. You'll see miles of housing, then maybe some major roadways, then miles of shopping. Walking simply isn't an option. (In actual cities, or in "town centres" that are popping up here and there in the suburban areas, walking or biking can be more feasible.)

Date: 2012-01-27 12:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] naath.livejournal.com
I don't own a car; I buy food. Food buying does not required a car. Here are three ways I have handled food buying at various times in my life:
*buy small amounts often, say by stopping at the grocery store on the way home from work and getting dinner. Thus the amount bought fits easily onto a bike.
*order online, get food delivered. Yes, this uses a van, but one van delivering to ten people is less than ten cars.
*own a bike trailer. Now I can fit a whole LOT of shopping onto a bicycle.

I don't myself have a child but I know people who do and who get them places on foot (child in buggy/sling/etc), public transport, and bicycle (many ways of attaching children to bicycles exist).

I think that it is a failure of city planning if it is not generally possible for an able-bodied person who lives and works in the city in good health to walk all the places they regularly need to be (home, food shop, child's school, work, gym, wherever else you go) and a failure of public transport policy if it is not generally possible for anyone who is capable of moving around outside at all to move between those places. The prevelance of car-use where it is not strictly needed leads to cities being designed with car-use in mind, making them ever harder to use without a car.

Date: 2012-01-27 12:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kerrypolka.livejournal.com
I don't own a car; I buy food. Food buying does not required a car.

Yes, thank you!

Date: 2012-01-27 12:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] naath.livejournal.com
TBF if the nearest food shop to your house is 20 miles away, accessible only by a busy dual carriageway (on of the Tescos near Cambridge is essentially accessible only by using the A14 for instance) and no-one delivers food because "everyone has a car"... well, then it's a lot harder.

Also I assume that if you have a large family it is harder; but at the same time I would tend to assume that a large family contains more people who can go to the shop and carry things home from it.

(these days we are totes lazy and get that nice Mx Ocado to deliver our noms direct to our door; the main advantage of which is that I no longer buy a big bag of pasta when there are already two bags of pasta in the cupboard).

Date: 2012-01-27 06:42 pm (UTC)
ext_9215: (Default)
From: [identity profile] hfnuala.livejournal.com
I have 2 kids (2 and 5) and no car and I do all my shopping and kid wrangling on foot with buggy and occasional bus use. Of course, I live in a medium density inner suburb of Edinburgh - school is 10 minutes 2 year old walk away, 5 minutes when she's in the buggy, there are 5 supermarkets walking distance away and several more a direct bus from here. Also walking distance are a library, cinema, park, high school, city farm and a canal. This area was mostly built in late Victorian times.

I couldn't imagine my life if I lived in a modern new build car centred suburb but I suspect I would have been hospitalised by now.

Date: 2012-01-28 01:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undeadbydawn.livejournal.com
interesting.

people who drive tend to swear that things are very difficult without a car.
people who do not drive tend to point out that they manage those things perfectly well without a car.

I am of the latter camp.
as a career cyclist with one successfully raised child, I can assure you that those things can be done extremely easily without a car.

I'm also [as a student of both civil and mechanical engineering] horrified by the amount of space devoted to parking in the given example. Especially having designed car parks.

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