If We Want a Shift to Walking, We Need to Prioritize Dignity

While taking a walk near downtown Austin, TX, a police car stopped next to me and the officers started asking weird questions. Including if I know where I am at, where I go, or is there someone who could help me with these apparent struggles in my life.

It took me a couple awkward minutes to realize that I'm the only one standing on my feet and not sitting in a car wherever I was looking. I apologized (???) and told them I was heading to a museum, bc I'm a visitor here and that's what we do right? I added a colleague's address and assured them that I'm not "confused", and will take an Uber now.

This was simply unbelievable in my world; for the next week I observed my colleague, whenever they took me out, or went to somewhere: we never walked outside. From the building to the parking lot, from the destination parking lot to the resto and vice versa.

Today, of course, I know that there are walkable cities too, I enjoy walking from my Chicago hotel to the office building :-) every single time I enjoy my US visits, but after a couple weeks I can't wait to get back to my 98% car free European life.

I think one of the key points that is often not understood widely is that car-centric infrastructure causes things to be spaced so much farther apart (with unpleasant empty tarmac) than necessary. If every building is surrounded by a border of 15 meters of roads, that significantly expands the distances that a person needs to travel to get anywhere. This further prioritises cars and drives demand and cultural norms.

I don't think we should be trying to get away from cars altogether by any means, but I think we should seriously consider banning them almost entirely from city centres. There's still a need for emergency vehicles and goods to be transported within the city, so we would still need some roads, but we could eliminate a considerable number of lanes.

GCN, a cycling channel, just released a video on the car-centric thinking that we all have been forced into over the past century https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_4GZnGl55c It took me years go get into a thinking that mobility should be the priority, not cars. Once you do this mental step you can think about who needs mobility but for whatever reason cannot use a car (too young, too old, drunk, etc) and how streets and cities need to be redesigned to slow down cars to make them safer for what many call an indicator for a good cycling infrastructure: women (with kids) on bicycles.

I moved to Barcelona and living in a walkable city is such a life upgrade. My whole life is within the distance of a walk. The grocery store, gym, doctor, friends, restaurants, beach, movie theatre, shopping, everything. I can walk across the entire city in about an hour.

Barcelona takes it a step further than just being high density with wide pedestrian streets lined with trees and outdoor seating at the expense of roads used for cars/trucks. At the end of every block on a rambla is a roundabout where people sit and hang out, with more trees. It really feels like cars are 2nd class citizens here.

The mental tax of having to get into a car, navigate bad traffic and other drivers, finding parking, etc is hugely underrated. When I describe the above to people, it's easy to brush off as "not that big of a deal", but it is a big deal on general mood and wellbeing compared to what it could be if you remove those 'micro' stresses from your life.

And finally, if you need to get somewhere quick, there are taxis everywhere, and the underground metro is pretty decent.

These posts always feel like people are fetishizing some "utopia" where everyone should want to live in an imaginary fully walkable, meticulously maintained, pristine city. The comparisons of like a 2 square mile section of the nicest parts of a European city to areas of the rural US that have land areas larger than many European countries feels... at best, idealism run afoul.

The headline is a bit misleading compared to the article. Everybody already cares about dignity but only at the expense of everyone else. We need to prioritize dignity for pedestrians at the expense of drivers.

Everyone in Yukons and F150s are already using, at least in their minds, what they think is a dignified mode of transportation. Excluding cities for the wealthy (there's no dignity for the poor anyway), most cities in the US are not livable without a car. Affording a car, particularly a new one, earns one some degree of dignity. Furthermore, drivers living in poorly planned-cities spend lots of time in their cars and have chosen larger cars where they feel comfortable and safe.

> Have you ever had a friend return from a vacation and gush about how great it was to walk in the place they’d visited? “You can walk everywhere! To a café, to the store. It was amazing!”

Honestly, no.

I live in a medium sized city in southern Ontario, about a 3 1/2 - 4 hour drive from Toronto. I just came back from spending a week in Toronto and although everything was walking distance, and we did walk everywhere, the week-long stay was not at all enjoyable.

There are people who love big cities. They love being able to walk everywhere, they love the "excitement" and the ability to experience a wide and diverse range of activities and food etc.

And then there are us introverts who find it extremely uncomfortable to be in places that are so crowded.

I enjoy walking as a solitary activity. I'm not lazy, I'm not averse to doing physical activity. But I really really really dislike walking anywhere that has a sizeable population density. I've heard that in the USA / Canada, the average "personal space bubble" that people find comfortable is around 1.5 feet. For me it's closer to 6 feet. I find that trying to navigate busy sidewalks is overwhelming and anxiety-inducing.

I've heard a lot of city-loving younger people talk about the pains of owning a vehicle. I didn't get my driver's license until my early to mid 20s. At the time I had a young family of 4 (my wife and I plus two small children) and, although I might be biased because I live in a built-for-cars North American city, getting our first vehicle gave us so much freedom and independence that it was life-changing in a positive way. I realize that if all amenities had been within walking distance then maybe not having a car wouldn't have been such a hindrance, but when I think back to being in downtown Toronto recently, I couldn't imagine navigating that population density nightmare while also pushing a double-stroller.

To me, and maybe this is more psychological / emotional than logical ... but a car is my personal isolation bubble that gives me much needed personal space while travelling. Though I also must admit that leaving the house is a special occasion for me. So yeah, I'm not typical and city-life is just not for me.

Tangentially related but I saw some similar comments in the original thread [0] so hopefully this is alright.

How does one move to Europe? Or how does one begin the process? I’m an average engineer and only speak English. Clearly I’m not the type of immigrant counties would love to welcome in. Where does one start?

For clarity, countries like Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Estonia highly appeal to me.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36920622

This is a real problem that's hard to describe. Walking around the US (excluding large cities) just makes you feel like a jackass.

It shouldn't matter but it does.

One thing I really don’t get, is what do people under the age of 16 (can’t drive yet) and over the age of 75 (get a bit too old to drive) do when they wanna just hang out? Ok, well, I know what they do, but how are people ok with being trapped within a small local zone and be depended on others? I grew up in a walkable city, would take the walk, bus, or subway home since I was 10, met up with my friends at a mall or downtown to just hang out.

Now I live in a very walkable neighbourhood in Vancouver, and constantly see older people going throughout their days. And I would want the same for myself when I reach their age, rather than live in a suburban zone with no ability to see life outside of my 500m radius.

As an SF Bay Area resident who walks/BARTs as much as possible, IME bicyclists are at least as big a threat to my safety as motorists, who at least have a license and insurance on the line if they screw up. I can't tell you how many times I've been hit or very nearly hit by entitled cyclists who don't think that traffic laws or common courtesy apply to them. Even worse since motorized bikes/scooters hit the streets...er, sidewalks in recent years.

Discussion a year ago (608 points, 688 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36920622

City centres should be built so that people naturally prefer walking/cycling/public transport over driving there. That's how many European cities are, and it works just fine. It doesn't mean anyone has to give up their car, instead people can learn to use it only where it makes sense.

I would never give up my car, but I use it only for stuff where walking is not practical (visiting countryside, buying lots of groceries from a big market located in less dense area). Suburbs that have apartments with enough parking slots AND adequate public transport / cycling roads to city centre work perfectly for me.

When I traveled for the first time to the US ca. 1997 (from France) I decided to go for a walk.

A police car stopped to ask me what was going on. They were surprised I went for a walk (despite the fact that there was a sidewalk, although empty).

It was a semi industrial (company buildings), semi hotel, semi mall, semi houses kind of place.

And, suddenly, the pavement stopped without any reason.

Instead of trying to jam squishy humans along side aluminum vehicles, why not build elevated walkways above traffic?

In a city, the space between buildings can be auctioned, and the owner of that space is responsible for cleaning and policing a section of elevated plaza. The second story of each building can then be used as a storefront and events can be held in between buildings.

If even a few blocks in the center of a city can be walkable above the traffic, I think it could create a popular tourist hub where people can explore the city, see events and spend money.

Who foots the bill for construction, maintenance, and inspections which ought to be thorough and frequent, that’s another question I hope somebody who knows politics can answer.

> Have you ever had a friend return from a vacation and gush about how great it was to walk in the place they’d visited?

In my adult life I have always lived in dense urban centers (precisely because I like to walk for coffee, quart of milk, etc., and have a choice of restaurants)

When I return from travel after renting a car, I gush about how cool it was that I got to shop at a mall and stop at two other strip malls on my way home and load the car up with bags of supplies I never could have carried :)

if people on holiday bought mayo and all they need to go with it at Costco, they might have a different memory of their walking tour. grass. greener.

Moved to Amsterdam for the luxury of not having a car. After the 4th kid, my wife wanted a car for road trips. We never need it.

I think it's not happening because it's a chicken and egg problem. To have where to realistically walk, to have some stuff you want reachable on foot, you need to have a high population density. When everyone drives, people want, and get, lower population density because it gives them more personal space, lowers crime, makes kids safer, and cost of living lower. Sure it destroys the sense of community and makes everyone obese, but that comes slowly and so it's not what people consciously prioritise. Thus building good pedestrian infra in a low-density community built for driving won't give much benefit: most places people need to go to will be too far for walking anyway. And pushing people to higher density will mean pushing them to ghettos because everyone who can afford, lives in those car-centric, low-density, safer places.

Disney World is the example that comes to mind as an environment where pedestrian movement is maximized. When it works it's still better than driving, but it's extremely tiring to walk _all day_ (at least if you're not used to it, like I'm not).

Lets handwave that concern away though; if everyone walked around that much normally it wouldn't be an issue right?

There are still roads, but they're mostly divided from pedestrian movement ways. Mass transit systems connect between the pedestrian optimized blocks. In at least that respect I think Disney World DID become the 'city of the future' example. That's the logical direction to move things.

Oh can we also ban all the noisy cars to underground passages except between 10am and 10pm and emergency use?

Meanwhile in Nashville where they literally don’t have sidewalks, this is an actual bus stop: https://maps.app.goo.gl/yRoV8TzuKHVHjaMj9?g_st=ic

Agreed. But this is an easy fix. Except it isn't because it's a matter of character and manpower and only then is it about money. Cities would gladly implement ideas, just create websites with & for proposals, let the neighborhoods know, get volunteers, demand social and corporate social responsibility, plan and organize potential development projects, in some cases we'd have to wait a year or or two or three for some official approval and a construction company to find a free spot but this really isn't a problem to which the solution requires more than a naive beginners mind set and consistency.

I'm pretty sure that I've seen this before. Maybe not the same exact post, but one similar enough to be a match.

It's spot-on.

However, I submit that, as software/hardware/tech engineers, it behooves us to add User Dignity as a fairly important axis; just as important as Security and Usability. Lot more difficult to define, though.

For me, and the software that I write, it's absolutely crucial, and I will spend many hours, refining what appears to be perfectly functional UI, to enhance the Dignity of those using it; especially technophobes.

In my case, I write software for my Community, and I deal with the users of my software on a daily basis. Very few of them have the slightest inkling of what I do. It's "Some stuff with iPhones. I dunno."

To be fair, they often don't offer me, or my work, too much Dignity, but that's not their job. It is mine.

A perfect example is error handling.

Microsoft Windows is notorious for its obscure, jargonistic error messages. Many users quake in fear at triggering one of them.

I have found that the best way to give the users some Dignity, when an error occurs, is to make sure that the error doesn't occur, in the first place.

That can be a tough ask, but good affordance design, doing things like disabling UI paths that won't result in success, smoothly failing (as opposed to crashing, or triggering an error alert that isn't actually necessary to anyone but the IT HelpDesk person), and avoiding the use of jargon, in our displays, are a good way to get this.

I just went through a year and a half of wrestling with a designer, on an app that has been shipping since January. A lot of the stuff that I wanted, wrt to usability, affordances, etc., didn't make the cut.

Some of my concerns were probably overblown, but a number were not. The users are having difficulty in exactly the places I thought they would. They are also surprising me.

Help screens and whatnot, are pretty much worthless. I have a feature in the app, where, if you long-press on any element, a popover appears, with the accessibility label as the title, and the accessibility hint, as the text. You basically get focused, directly-relevant help, for any element of the screen, and it also helps us to make sure that vision-impaired accessibility is handled.

No one uses it.

Ah, well...

I actually have a great deal of love and Respect for the users of my software. I do my best to make sure that the software I write helps them to solve their problems, achieve their goals, and not impact their self-respect and Dignity.

Does this happen a lot? This was on front page one year ago today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36920622

Fire and EMS demands have more impact on our built environment than I see in these comments.

Some of this is direct from land use regulations. Some of this is from political influence of Fire depts.

It's only recently that people are waking up to how the regulatory requirements of staircase design in multi-family buildings for the ostensible purpose of evacuation impact the look and feel of US cities.

Same for street widths. You will rarely find support from fire depts. for compact and connected streets.

I once flew to LAX and just wanted to walk down to Santa Monica from the airport, or walk downtown. If it took 8 hours I didn’t care I just like walking and exploring.

What surprised me is that you literally cannot walk away from the airport without (probably) breaking some law by the highway.

I guess this night sound strange to some but it felt a bit oppressive.

Am I the only one who thinks this title is a bit click-baity? What does shade, engagement, and separation from car traffic have to do with dignity?

If you want a shift to walking, you need to ensure that

- everyone lives close to their ideal, well-paid job.

- everyone lives close to an excellent school for their kids.

- everyone lives close to inexpensive, well-stocked organic produce store.

- everyone lives close to acres of green park space.

- everyone lives close to amenities for all imaginable interests.

Otherwise, some people are just gonna hop in their cars and collect their pieces of the puzzle from here and there.

The issue is simple, we don’t need to belabor it. Dense city centers are more walkable, but most people can’t afford to live there, while at the same time being forced to work there. Don’t worry, Europe, you’ll get to the same point eventually with rising time prices.

Unfortunately, dignity for the citizen is fundamentally at odds with the way the United States is structured.

> The layers are compliance, safety, and dignity.

I just went back for a week to the city in which I was born (in the EU) and I was shocked to see that, in many neighborhoods, there was nobody walking on the streets anymore. The reason is not that they're taking the car more: the reason is safety.

But not safety as in "I fear for my life due to the risk of a car hitting me" (btw speed has been lowered to 30 km/h aka 18 mph in the city). No. Safety as in: "My city has become a hellhole and I feel I risk getting robbed or raped if I get out at night".

Does self driving cars affect how we might think of arteries and driving? I haven't seen a downtown area that only allows self drive yet. Could be narrower etc.

I live in Vancouver, and I find this discussion utterly fascinating. Thank you all for sharing.

The issue is not about walking vs using some transport tool, but what's needed to support people only walking.

There are many who state dense 15'-cities are eco-friendly because people move without polluting, but no considerations seems to exists about how many others pollute much to supply anything needed by the eco-friendly pedestrians and IMVHO and experience (as a former big city resident now living on mountains) the answer is WAY TOO MUCH, meaning the "eco friendly walkable cities" are not eco friendly AT ALL and they are also unsustainable since they can't evolve without rebuild witch consume much more and demand much big effort than spread areas of small buildings who can be re-built and evolved one at a time issueless for all the others.

Strong Towns should start to consider that their model is not those of the modern cities but the one of the older villages, witch due to tech changes is now the model of spread areas. There is no strong-walkable-town possible in the modern world, only polluting monsters, modern Fordlandias doomed to fails like the original, take Neom, Arkadag, Innopolis, Prospera, Telosa, ... as good examples.

Than start to ask who profit from them, and you'll see the big financial capitalism behind the (dollar/stereotypical toxic waste leaking from rusty barrels) green fog.

Most of the things the article mentions would be lovely, but I'm more concerned with much more basic aspects of walking.

For example, a neighborhood in which most sidewalks are simply impassable for a wheelchair, even though it gets a high "walkability" score for Realtors to claim.

(And that tree cover "dignity" the article mentions? Someone tries to do that by taking a sidewalk just wide enough for two wheelchairs to pass each other, and puts in a tree well that won't even let one wheelchair scrape by. And often the roots eventually tip up the sidewalk into a tripping hazard. And extremely frequent parking-related sign posts along that stretch as additional obstacles. With overgrown landscaping on the other side, jutting into the sidewalk already too narrow. Occasionally with surprise poison ivy/oak, scraping across your hand, arm, leg, or face. And on the bigger streets, some street work gets done, and there's briefly enough space, then, bam, bike-sharing station, with garish advertising. Then winter comes, and if you walk heavily, even with traction aids and diligence, eventually you're going to get injured by a hazard that someone else managed to create beyond normal snow and ice.)

Suggestions:

1. Make the sidewalks passable. Including by wheelchairs.

2. Make traffic signals greatly increase the priority given to pedestrians. (Even consider a near-immediate Walk signal from button/sensor, with half-minute cooldown so cars can't be entirely DoS'd. If that will make traffic worse, then let traffic be worse.)

3. Eliminate dangerous noise pollution. (Like the "loud pipes save lives" modified motorcycles, one of which surprise blasted my eardrum a couple hours ago. Or a subset of the ambulance sirens, some of which I'm pretty sure are well into hearing damage decibel territory for people on the sidewalk, when the siren tries a little too hard to be heard by people sealed into cars and blasting music from their infotainment systems half a block away.)

4. Improve snow/ice management. (Don't plow streets up onto the sidewalk. If punting to property owners, actually enforce that. Also educate and enforce about not actively making surprise ice slicks on the sidewalk. Maybe, a bit like the city plows streets, also have city units go clear the numerous sidewalk stretches that property owners neglected, protecting pedestrians from crippling injury, and then later figure out the delicate politics of whether to fine/bill property owners.)

5. And only then -- after those basics of being able to move around, and not be maimed casually -- think about dignity like pleasing views, and sidewalk feng shui.

Y’all walk all you want it’s a free country. And stop interfering with my driving.

Everything about our world is designed for us to spend money. Walkers don't buy cars. People on bikes don't buy gas. Why would the overlords ever promote such anti-capitalism? That's not in their interest. More to that point, dignity is for the rich. Comfort is for the already comfortable. So, shut up, buy the landcruiser on credit and don't you dare consider otherwise.

Maybe this sounds idiotic, but I've started playing chicken with drivers. If it's a crosswalk with no pedestrian signals, as long as they've made eye contact with me, I just go.

Hit me. You won't.

We can talk about this forever, but it's a waste of time. Nobody is listening and nobody is making any real effort to combat car culture. And the right wing, always eager to lap up whatever slop corporate american serves them, has chosen this as a culture war issue. "15 minute cities... but where will I park muh truck??"

The dumb-fucks with their emotional support trucks have won. We've paved over the whole fucking country and all of the road construction and automobile businesses are laughing their way to the bank.

Every time we try to fix something, the chuds start crying about "but muh traffic" and it gets canned. They don't want to actually pay their own fucking way, through tolls or gas taxes or taxes on their asinine vehicles. They want to take our money and use it on roads.

It's dead. The middle class is dead. The country is dead. Progress is dead. Try to enjoy yourself for the next 30 years before the Great American Desert reaches Chicago.

Why would I want a shift to walking? Cars give me fast transportation on my own schedule and let me have far more access to things than just walking or walking plus public transit.

As someone who has biked in Minnesota winters as part of a commute, it sucks. I don't want cars taken away. I run to get my exercise. My commute to work is short. I don't sit in traffic most days.

At the risk of stirring a pot... Where's the boundary between "nicer for walking" versus "can't pay for it unless population/income gentrifies"?

There are certainly low-cost ways of changing things and not-doing-dumb-stuff, but the list does contain some things like extra-streetlamps and maintained sidewalk trees and buildings with natural stone exteriors etc., which adds up.

Pedestrians are after thoughts and hsve to constsntly pull on resources to get ahead. Could have cameras or learning systens that adapt to the flow of crowds. But the world is mot designed for pedestrian peasants.

"Have you ever had a friend return from a vacation and gush about how great it was to walk in the place they’d visited? “You can walk everywhere! To a café, to the store. It was amazing!”"

What is amazing about walking I have no idea. That sounds utterly horrible - to be in a place where everything is so close together that you can walk to everything?

Space, humans need space.

Ugh, I'm getting nauseated just thinking about it. And yes, I've been in places like that, I've tried them out, and they were as unpleasant as I expected.

I tested it, I went to NY using only public transportation, and it was the most horrible time I've ever had being away from home. Never again! Never!

My feet hurt, my back hurt, without a car I had nowhere to leave my stuff, so I had to carry everything with me, or make the long trek to my hotel (NY banned AirBNB, so hotels are far away from where I wanted to be).

It was truly an absolutely miserable experience, and sitting in traffic, or hunting for a parking space is a billion times better.

I've tried NY with a car before then, but I was told you don't need a car in NY - so I tried it! And they are wrong. Public transport is ALWAYS worse than a car, it's slower, much slower, it's less convenient because they only run during popular hours, it's more expensive than renting a car because you have to supplement with Uber.

I don't know why I keep trying this no-car stuff, but I did, I tried Washington DC with and without a car. (I went for 2 days, one without a car, the second day with.) A car is better. MUCH MUCH better, and cheaper too, even paying for parking.

The Elephant in the Room that author ignores: Streets smell, and smelling them by walking a few km, cars and various chemicals are far more annoying than in a closed window car. If they were serious about walkable cities, the streets should be pleasant to walk. Evidently this isn't the case even in Europe and even less likely elsewhere, where smelly diesel engines, motorcycles and garbage have a significant odor problem.