• 7 Posts
  • 217 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 27th, 2023

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  • That’s happening in Paris. Some other cities are moving in right direction too, some installing new trams from zero etc. Most bigger cities have subways. But you should try visiting rural France without a car… Not a butcher or a bakery left for many kilometers/villages around, only big roadside Malls with an enormous supermarket and some fake little “shops” at the entrance. Many rural villages are dead and without a car you’re screwed big time. This is where the Gilet Jaunes came from.




  • If there’s not very much car traffic and almost no trucks, and if that traffic obeys the rules and speed limits well enough, there is not always the need for separate bike lane. This way the bicycles, if there are many cyclists, become an indication to car drivers that what they are driving on is a local street, woonerf, school area, etc. While the design with separated bike lane would be a 1 person wide situation, while this way cyclists can cycle 2 next to eachother together in the street which is a lot more fun. I don’t know this particular street or city, if it works depends on local factors such as general driver culture, habits, local policing efforts, amount of cyclists, etc, but it’s not per definition the worse design.

    What I dislike is that they did put in the bike lane for the silly short piece. In this case, it could’ve been better to just raise the entire intersection in a speedbump-plateau and no separate bike lane at all.












  • Well, this picture is just poor city development. Living in appartement buildings 3-5-7-9 floors high is all very fine, IF

    • The neighbourhood is (pedestrian) permeable enough. The space around it must be pedestrian/cycle friendly and green. The blocks in this picture are way to wide, forming too big barriers for local slow traffic
    • there is a bit of variation in colour, size, shape. A neighbourhood with such blocks can surely have 4 identical buildings, but not 30… It feels uneasy to humans this way. We need a taller or oddly shaped or nicely coloured one once in a while, as a reference point, as things that give the neighbourhood a bit of an identity
    • The buildings themselves are high enough quality (well insulated, every appartement has 1 or 2 real balconies, …)
    • there are plenty of playgrounds and sports facilities and cars are in general carparks in garages at the edge of the neighbourhood, not on the streets
    • neighbourhood is well connected to the rest of the city
    • there are plenty of jobs in the area. Probably the hardest part.