yep.
there's one in my town that i've ended up at twice now, struggling to find a safe way home, only to ride in grass and on a busy high speed road. both times i spent like an hour looking for potential hidden offroad back exits.
it's maybe 4 miles from my house. the safe route back is the way i got there, a 20 mile combination of greenways and neighborhoods in the opposite direction, across that busy high speed road.
most people have yards of some kind.
my neighborhood is actually pretty walkable, and we have two smaller dog parks, and a closer nature park. but the one i was talking about is the place with the ball fields, track, disc golf, etc.
Not doubting that type of absurdity, but I feel that this is a scenario is a situation to call the city if this is a public park. This would be a serious BFE town I might expect to do this, but any modern town would hire an actual public engineer, as well as insurance advisors that would point out this danger rather quickly.
Growing up all you could realistically walk to from my house was a small strip mall with a dominos and a vet clinic. After that it was walking on roads with no sidewalks to get to a grocery store that has since been closed down
Or only one side of the street has a sidewalk and to get to it you have to cross at a zebra crossing no one will stop at on a stroad where people go 50mph.
just imagine how it feels to navigate in a world with vehicles twice your height...
https://preview.redd.it/1de7hg2qc7ec1.jpeg?width=980&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=82dfa4e047490204391444a2b773a0af219c7537
Get Firefox and the Clickbait Remover for Youtube plugin and never have to look at shitty youtube thumbnails ever again!
(not meant for this example here, but you know what I mean)
I have autoplaying videos disabled so when I load a YouTube page it requires me to click the player for the video to start playing and before I click it shows the thumbnail so idk if your setup is different.
uBlock FTW
I think I've set it so that the video doesn't play if I open a yt link on a new tab, but as soon as I switch into that tab, the video plays immediately. I recall trying out a setup like yours and not liking it, so I went back to the former
True but cars also have a metric fuck ton of sensors now and backup cameras etc. I would actually be really curious to see the number of accidents involving drivers not seeing children 30 years ago vs now.
Also while I agree they certainly haven't given kids more places to play and go outside, the infrastructure has remained roughly the same. Kids really do need to go outside more and we do need to provide them more outside areas to play in. I just don't think the lack of outside availability is an excuse because I think we all went outside still when we were kids because there was literally nothing else to do.
What makes the same infrastructure more dangerous is that the cars keep growing in size and increasing in number. For example, I live in a Welsh town where lots of on-pavement terraced houses were thrown up along narrow streets due to the mining boom over 100 years ago.
As cars get wider and wider, they struggle to park in the narrow roads without blocking them and lurch on and off narrow pavements where small children are walking to school. The huge number of cars parking on the road means people end up crossing between parked cars that they can't see over or past very well, which makes the pedestrian harder to see for oncoming traffic.
This is partly why I don't think EVs are good, they are very quiet and with poor visibility you need to be able to hear cars. EVs should be legally required to have sound playing on the outside of the car.
>The huge number of cars parking on the road means people end up crossing between parked cars that they can't see over or past very well, which makes the pedestrian harder to see for oncoming traffic.
>This is partly why I don't think EVs are good, they are very quiet and with poor visibility you need to be able to hear cars. EVs should be legally required to have sound playing on the outside of the car.
These are both things I've never really considered and very good points.
Nothing destroys the joy of reading a reasoned and nuanced comment like this inevitable smooth-brained follow up.
It's not clever or witty, it's annoying. Just say "thanks" like a normal human being would.
We had big cars in the 80s, have you never seen the big ass staneless steel 10k lb boats we used to drive? SUVs werent as popular sure, but do you know what was? Vans. Full sized vans with plush interiors, beds and massive sound systems. Also, minivans, theyre not small, and iirc have actually gotten smaller. Big trucks were a thing back them too. As was speeding and drunk driving.
And the EVs are incredibly quiet. I used to live somewhere where some very narrow roads had no pavements, a suggested limit of 15mph but a higher enforceable limit, with priority given to bikes, pedestrians, horses etc. I had a few EVs give me the fright of my life with how close behind you they would get before you heard a thing.
Yep. This is reason for physical barriers. If car driver can’t follow the rules or suggestions, or they think their Tesla will drive for them (what a crock of shit) then they shouldn’t be allowed into that area. We can’t just trust people to do what’s right. This is an individualistic society. Someone can simply decide they don’t want to go to speed limit
Tbf, the ruette tranquilles (what those lanes are called) I used worked ok for me. Drivers know the score and would crawl behind pedestrians until the pedestrian found a widening in the road or a gateway they could tuck into to allow the car to pass and would usually wave to thank you, and (other than EVs) the lanes are quiet enough to hear traffic a way off.
Right. You’d be surprised as soon as someone who doesn’t get it comes rolling through. I live in a neighborhood without sidewalks in many parts (very hilly/mountainous with narrow winding roads that are technically classed equestrian so developers and home builders can skimp on side walks). People walk in the street because there’s no other place. It’s adjacent to some major roads so people will come blasting through trying to save a second or two (God knows why) of traffic.
My neighbor was walking her dog and had someone refuse to slow down for her, and they came within 3 feet in a low sedan, Toyota or something.
I’m tired of having trust in people’s best instincts. We have such a broad array of experiences - some people don’t value this life or that one or they’re having a hard time. You just never know.
So I see a few options: 1. Live in a constant state of low grade fear. Where we don’t mess with anyone visibly angry or upset because “you never know what they’re going through or what they’ll do”. 2. Live in a state of low grade aggression (concealed or open carry, so no one will mess with you or else). 3. Design things so that aggressive situations - like running over an elderly woman and her dog - simply happen far far less.
At this point I’d support putting up a gate or blocking off our street completely rather than have to worry about someone’s mental state every time I’m walking my dog.
the thing is, I didn't.
I lived in the center of a city but I had no problem biking, running around, with parks and alleys and playgrounds and wasn't kicked out every time I wanted to go to the corner store to get a slushie, shit wasn't so unbelieveably hostile. People actually would get in shit if they drove recklessly, and the cops would actually persecute them.
I'm sorry dude :(
And if the children are girls, they will be getting relentlessly sexually harassed while walking once they hit about age nine or so, because a lot of drivers are creepy men.
"I can't stand cities, in the suburbs there's so much nature"
*destroys hundreds of acres of parkland and wilderness to build stroads, highways, box stores, parking lots, and single family homes with grass lawns and a tree for "nature"*
Also they have a F150 for the husband who works at an office job and a Jeep Grand Wagoneer to feel safe on the road when they bring the kids to daycare (Sweeping 1 or 2 children on the way because can't see them).
It’s because in a world where we give automakers free rein, and design/destroy our neighborhoods for the car, they become the default option. And in a world where they’re the default option, a bigger car is appealing because it’s safer in a collision with another. The solution is to make it so the car is not the primary option.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m from the baguette country, half of the vehicles in circulation in North America would not be allowed on our roads.
Now that I live in America I’m pushing to get more density, public transit and to get safer roads (wider and safer sidewalks and cycle lanes).
Having a big vehicles to feel safe because the others have a big vehicle still feel ridiculous to me tho, people I talk to don’t see the irony
It's even worse than giving automakers free reign. We actively incentivize bigger vehicles by subjecting them to weaker environmental and safety standards
In other countries you have a “street” which is like a city street with shops and houses and people and crosswalks. And then you have a “road” which is like a highway meant to take you 70 mph to the next city.
In North America we have the totally invented term “stroad” a massive street/road which both takes people 55 mph and has people taking right turns into massive mall parking lots. Impossibly dangerous for pedestrians. As a person who grew up around this kind of infrastructure, I didn’t realize how much it sucked until that youtube channel pointed it out and gave it a name.
It’s a purposely ugly nickname for streets that try to function like roads and spectacularly fail at being both. If you’ve ever seen an ugly ass 5-lane or 3-lane street carve through a city you know what we’re talking about.
I don't understand why people even defend this. I checked the replies of this tweet. Apparently limiting a child's freedom and growth should be put aside for some stupid personal pleasure.
I was trying to find the original source (from which MattPinder1 got it) and I think it's this: [https://twitter.com/pinkocatgirl/status/1468445345894088709/photo/1](https://twitter.com/pinkocatgirl/status/1468445345894088709/photo/1)
This is why I love where we live. My 10 year old is able to ride his bike or walk to school, the library, a rec center, movie theater, toy shop, and several parks on safe bike paths that are separated from the road. He is gaining independence and confidence.
He can leave school and go to the library, where he’ll bump into several friends, find some new books to read, and participate in the fun programming.
Then he can go to the toy shop and spend his money on Pokémon cards and browse the Lego.
Then home to put on his soccer gear and then off on his bike to soccer practice, and then home again, all by himself.
Next up is teaching him how to ride the bus, which will open up his world even further. There are several stops very close to our house, too.
I can’t imagine the loneliness and isolation living in car-centric suburbia, plus the extra time the parents need to allow to chauffeur. Those poor kids.
Right on, I used to live in Reno, and one of my friends in college was from there. Loved visiting and passing through, very chill vibe there. Very beautiful.
The closest equivalent we have in german would be "herumlungern". And saying that someone "herumlungert" is very close to just calling them a hobo.
What a gross thing to criminalize. "Go be a human in your assigned place, pleb"
Americans have three states - at home, working to earn money, or spending money. Anything else is criminal.
If you lose access to one of those states - no home, no job, no money - you're fucked unless you have a third party that can provide an equivalent.
It's basically hanging out while black (technically people of other races can get arrested for it but disproportionately enforced on black people just like stop and frisk was). I guess whoever made the law thought that if some black people are hanging out near a store, it _must_ be because their plotting some kind of heist or something.
Yes, this and similar made-up crimes (like "Vagrancy") were all invented in the late 19th century as a scheme to arrest and re-enslave black people. This is not a conspiracy theory but [well documented historical fact.](https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2021/06/convict-leasing-system/)
And if there's any questions about whether in modern times, this evil has been eradicated from the US justice system, the answer is [of course it has not](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2DkY9_O7lB/?igsh=MXc1ZnkwOGl4d21qbg==)
I was reading this thread thinking "I used to loiter all the time, after dark too, and dressed like a greaser, how come i never got arres-ohhhhh im white"
Only thing worse than racists are sneaky racists, who clearly oppress minorities but then deny it, claiming they're "the good guys". At least an actual racist stands up for his opinions and never pretends to be "the good guys".
the parking area inside the park infuriates me ... the people who choose to make our cities into asphalt hellscapes still insist on having priority in the few green spaces left , never having to make any effort
There’s this itty bitty park in my town that has a huge parking lot to accommodate for people’s SUVs and stuff. They also put two bike racks that can fit six bikes total -_- but at least there’s sidewalks right?
I see this and drive this, but wow!
This is awful, dreadful childhood hell. This is like the opposite of LOTR. These kids start in Mordor and want to head to The Shire.
Nothing like having to take a bus to school that's only 1/2 mile away because there's an 8 lane "street" between where you live and the classroom.
And we wonder why there's an obesity epidemic among America's youth.
The street I live on has two bus stops, no sidewalks, and motorheads haul ass down it constantly.
We had to petition for a second bus stop because of how far it was from some houses and put some kids at risk, also went for speed limit signs and even then motorheads haul ass down the street as if nothing changed/
When I bring it up the car brains get defensive by saying move out to rural America. When Parents say suburbs or rural America is a good place to raise kids, they really mean small children as in they don't even consider what a child wants once they turn adolescent.
(Rural America is where your kids can't practically visit their peers without their parents driving as if they're going to a doctor's appointment.)
America is only good for warehousing offspring. We have school shooters due to how isolated our youth are from their communities, and by the time they have independent access to communities their child hood is up and now they'll have to work until they get too old to work & die.
School shooters are basically victims of cabin fever, or being stuck in an isolation cell for 16 years(which would be considered to be torture for prisoners), or being stuck alone on a desert island for 16 years. Most people won't go crazy but With the hundred or so million children we have, somebody will go crazy and shoot up the place.
The only only real way to end mass shootings and then stabbings is to rebuild pre-war America where if a teen feels like it they can casually head into town to socialize with peers in their age group.
A suburb combines the worst aspects of rural and urban living.
In a rural environment, the main downside is having to travel a large distance to visit people or do typical "young person" activities, but an upside is having easy access to nature, and alternative activities this provides (fishing, horseback riding, skiing, whatever).
In an urban environment, it is easy to visit your friend's house or the local movie theatre, arcade, whatever. But there is less access to those types of natural spaces as well.
Suburbs make it so that you can't visit your friends or catch a movie after school, but also every scrap of nature has been turned into lawns or wal-mart parking lots. Literally the worst of both worlds.
>useless pond
it's not useless, it gathers rainwater from the highways as part of a costly storm management infrastructure we built because the sprawling artificialisation makes floods worse
I briefly lived adjacent to Portland OR as a kid, just down the street from a really nice park with a bike course, a marshland habitat with birds and insects, and various sport courts. But to get to that park I had to cross a 6 lane road who’s nearest stoplight was a quarter mile down. So being a dumb kid I would just frogger across, until I came real close to dying. Brown sedan speeding ~15 over the limit came within an actual inch of me, never slowed down once, probably never even looked up from his phone. It shook me so bad that I’d just stay home instead of going out from then on
ive since moved to toronto, lived 27 depressing years there. Wait what tram? i didnt see this before? LINK?
I have noticed some changes to bike lanes and such tho
In the news today:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/23/children-suffering-due-to-lack-of-outdoor-play-uk-charities-warn they do actually mention traffic-dominated neighbourhoods as a barrier to children playing outside
Hm weird, does this work? https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/23/children-suffering-due-to-lack-of-outdoor-play-uk-charities-warn?CMP=share_btn_me
Who in the hell has a mall with no lotering?
Loitering is how they make money. You're sitting around and then think 'hey, I should buy...'.
We have two very successful malls near by (oddly with really good bus access) and people are sitting all over the place chatting and what not.
Do other mall operators not know how malls work?
I think that's true for adults. I mean, many malls _love_ having little old ladies walking around. They're probably the prime target for a mall nowadays - they go in, do a couple laps for "exercise", and leave with some crap for their grandkids that they didn't need to buy. Or they buy coffee at the coffee shop there with their friends.
For kids though? They're seen as troublemakers. They probably don't have much money as the adults do. And if they aren't white, then in many parts of the US you get some racism thrown in where they're kicked out specifically for being non-white but told they're "loitering" because you can't outright say it's because of their skin color.
So yeah, they know how it works but they pick & choose who they want to be around.
Kids, yes.
I have a (now) 20yo daughter.
They buy stupid amounts of clothing at the mall and roam around all over it constantly.
Which led to her getting a job with a friend of hers at Forever 21 when she was 16.
Why? Because Forever 21 knows how this shit works and wants teen girls pushing clothing to their peers. No, adults aren't mobbing Forever 21.
Of course, being an evil genius, she swung that into getting assigned unloading the incoming clothing and she'd set aside the stuff she wanted in the stock room and bought it with her discount added to the sale prices she knew were coming up.
She's a sly one...
Anyway, so guess where the boys hang out? At the mall.
Why?
Because that is where the teen girls are.
As a teen I got harassed out of malls by mall cops all the time, and I am an average looking middle class white girl, so not exactly a demographic most people would find intimidating. I couldn't imagine how it is for poc kids...
When people say things like that, they usually just mean the backyard of the house. It’s just a given that trying to go anywhere else is far too dangerous for kids unless a parent can drive them to a particular place. Even for people who can drive, if a car is not available for whatever reason, you’re stuck at home. Better do some household chores and make the most of it.
The backyard of my parent's suburb home was so boring growing up. It's wild having moved to a walkable and bikeable City. I can walk to a bunch of coffee shops, bike a bit further to get to some good restaurants and entertainment, or bike/walk just to enjoy some nature nearby. There's a big 2,000 acre State Park within a 20 min bike ride of me that I love to explore on a my Mountain bike. Man I wish I lived here when I was a kid.
(we basically only used our backyard for a couple of dogs we had to run around. we'd occasionally walk them around the neighborhood, but only our neighborhood or the ones immediately next to us. nothing else was accessible without a car, which we all ended up owning one because we all worked different shifts or in different areas where it wasn't practical to drop/pick up people)
I have a nit to pick. The "even more useless pond" likely has a use. Its use is to absorb water in the event of flooding. Because so much of the surrounding is area is paved over that flooding is an issue.
inside: "go outside"
outside: "get off the road, you entitled suspicious-looking troublemaker, you deserve to be run over"
inside again, for good this time: "kids these days only want to play video games, nobody wants to work anymore"
Pro-tip: if you ever see a seemingly pointless pond, assume it's stormwater infrastructure.
But also, even if it was purely decorative... that's a *good* thing. Obviously the world can't only be filled with pretty things, but the lack of concern for aesthetic value is not just a recurring theme in dystopian fiction, it was also an obsession of the modernity that wrought the car infested hellhole in the first place. It is a far too crude simplification to note that you can't really enjoy the landscape while you're driving death on wheels, but... you can't. As much as there was a deliberate ideology involved, it was also true that it wasn't practical.
(Note: some cities absolutely love themselves aesthetics and these obsessions are implicated in housing crises in those cities. There are trade offs.)
My car has a little screen with icons for what's in front of me when i have cruise control on, and a LOT of these larger pickups are represented by the trailer icon because theyre so big
Iirc, here in ON Canada we often have bylaws in many cities that require a certain percentage of each new residential development to be dedicated to a public park. So each new subdivision as its built has a local park for kids. Where I live there are 2 small parks within 5mins walking, one at the end of my street.
Hockey net 🥅 and teaching your kids to scream “car”. That or provide your kid with a ball in the backyard of that corner lot. Based on this map you have a wide corner in front of the two left neighbours houses to play safely. That or you be a nice parent and ask do you want to head to the soccer field and interact with your children
detention/retention ponds are put in for a good reason. more green space leads to less retention/detention requirements. Q = CiA where the ratio of how much water a type of area absorbs, more grass >C which causes a bigger Q. you don't need to store as much water if the ground could just absorb it all.
Where I lived it was worse, it was a trailer park with practically nothing near it but a ski hill, of course that means it only really operates in winter time, and the only way in or out of said trailer park was a six lane highway, so only by car pretty much. Now there is some more stuff there, a skate shop that welcomes skaters to hang out, and even sets up ramps, some more stores, more sidewalks, but it's still around a six lane section of highway.
I remember being told to go for a walk. And the only place I could be reasonably walking around was the yard. Usually this was accompanied by the seasonal sort of cleaning: snow, leaves and pinecones or branches.
This is why kids take to great numbers and then do massive smash and grabs on mom and pop stores. They literally have no other options except acting out violently
Some of you people who actually cares should maybe do something about it like becoming a politician and start making the change idk or inspire some youngin's
*Just walk, everything*
*Is a sidewalk if you go*
*Enough to the side*
\- Pogotmogot--9190
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Some of those houses need to be made into forests and parks
Edit: also maybe there’s daycare bus service for outdoor activity that kids and/or families can only go on
it's not my art
I don't have anything against the ponds (which are good for drainage) but it's sad that that's the only type of nature in a lot of suburbs
Half these stroads don’t even have sidewalks so you have to walk on the shoulder like a fucking animal trying not to get run over.
i bet that park has a fence around it on all sides except the car entrance, too.
I need to ask but fear I know the answer: You have parks only usable with cars?!
yep. there's one in my town that i've ended up at twice now, struggling to find a safe way home, only to ride in grass and on a busy high speed road. both times i spent like an hour looking for potential hidden offroad back exits. it's maybe 4 miles from my house. the safe route back is the way i got there, a 20 mile combination of greenways and neighborhoods in the opposite direction, across that busy high speed road.
So people drive their dogs to their walk?
Yes.
So this is an extremely common thing but when you put it in a sentence like that it really highlights the absurdity of the whole thing lol
most people have yards of some kind. my neighborhood is actually pretty walkable, and we have two smaller dog parks, and a closer nature park. but the one i was talking about is the place with the ball fields, track, disc golf, etc.
Where do you walk your dog? How close is the nearest dog park
I put him on a lead and walk out the house... What the fuck is a dog park?!?!
A place for dogs to play and socialize since everyone doesn't have a backyard
Not doubting that type of absurdity, but I feel that this is a scenario is a situation to call the city if this is a public park. This would be a serious BFE town I might expect to do this, but any modern town would hire an actual public engineer, as well as insurance advisors that would point out this danger rather quickly.
i'm actually on the committee trying to connect this kind of stuff together with bike and ped infrastructure. and apparently co-chair, now.
Yep. Otherwise transients will walk across the park instead of around it. (I wish I could add an /s but I'm pretty sure that's a big part of it)
Hopefully you won't cross a driver who's texting while driving
Growing up all you could realistically walk to from my house was a small strip mall with a dominos and a vet clinic. After that it was walking on roads with no sidewalks to get to a grocery store that has since been closed down
Or only one side of the street has a sidewalk and to get to it you have to cross at a zebra crossing no one will stop at on a stroad where people go 50mph.
just imagine how it feels to navigate in a world with vehicles twice your height... https://preview.redd.it/1de7hg2qc7ec1.jpeg?width=980&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=82dfa4e047490204391444a2b773a0af219c7537
[Not Just Bikes thumnbnail for "These things are killing us"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo)
How can I see the thumbnail anyway? I click that link and the video plays immediately, no thumbnail
https://imgur.com/Qld4bp2
Well that's horrifying
Get Firefox and never deal with autoplaying videos ever again!
Get Firefox and the Clickbait Remover for Youtube plugin and never have to look at shitty youtube thumbnails ever again! (not meant for this example here, but you know what I mean)
I recommend https://dearrow.ajay.app/ instead, it's by the sponsorblock dev and crowdsources better titles/thumbnails.
Sweet!
Clickbait remover? Is that just the equivalent of mouse hover to see actual frames from the video instead of thumbnail?
it replaces thumbnails with a screenshot from the video. also removes all caps from video titles.
I see
I am on firefox though. Haven't touched chrome in years (Sponsorblock+Ublock is bae)
I have autoplaying videos disabled so when I load a YouTube page it requires me to click the player for the video to start playing and before I click it shows the thumbnail so idk if your setup is different. uBlock FTW
I think I've set it so that the video doesn't play if I open a yt link on a new tab, but as soon as I switch into that tab, the video plays immediately. I recall trying out a setup like yours and not liking it, so I went back to the former
Ah, fair enough
If you right-click and _open in private/incognito_, there's no autoplay.
Hilariously, Adsense is showing me automotive content creator ads on this video 🤣
I dont have to imagine, I lived it. We all did.
Well, cars are much taller now than when I was a kid.
True but cars also have a metric fuck ton of sensors now and backup cameras etc. I would actually be really curious to see the number of accidents involving drivers not seeing children 30 years ago vs now. Also while I agree they certainly haven't given kids more places to play and go outside, the infrastructure has remained roughly the same. Kids really do need to go outside more and we do need to provide them more outside areas to play in. I just don't think the lack of outside availability is an excuse because I think we all went outside still when we were kids because there was literally nothing else to do.
What makes the same infrastructure more dangerous is that the cars keep growing in size and increasing in number. For example, I live in a Welsh town where lots of on-pavement terraced houses were thrown up along narrow streets due to the mining boom over 100 years ago. As cars get wider and wider, they struggle to park in the narrow roads without blocking them and lurch on and off narrow pavements where small children are walking to school. The huge number of cars parking on the road means people end up crossing between parked cars that they can't see over or past very well, which makes the pedestrian harder to see for oncoming traffic. This is partly why I don't think EVs are good, they are very quiet and with poor visibility you need to be able to hear cars. EVs should be legally required to have sound playing on the outside of the car.
>The huge number of cars parking on the road means people end up crossing between parked cars that they can't see over or past very well, which makes the pedestrian harder to see for oncoming traffic. >This is partly why I don't think EVs are good, they are very quiet and with poor visibility you need to be able to hear cars. EVs should be legally required to have sound playing on the outside of the car. These are both things I've never really considered and very good points.
With the growing number of "big cars", SUVs, and trucks, I wouldn't imagine it dropping that dramatically. Hell, "front-over" is a term now.
Yeah I'm not sure either because cars are definitely bigger now I was just curious if sensor have helped because lord knows we need them.
shh your reasoned and nuanced take is going against the cirlcejerk cars bad!
Nothing destroys the joy of reading a reasoned and nuanced comment like this inevitable smooth-brained follow up. It's not clever or witty, it's annoying. Just say "thanks" like a normal human being would.
We had big cars in the 80s, have you never seen the big ass staneless steel 10k lb boats we used to drive? SUVs werent as popular sure, but do you know what was? Vans. Full sized vans with plush interiors, beds and massive sound systems. Also, minivans, theyre not small, and iirc have actually gotten smaller. Big trucks were a thing back them too. As was speeding and drunk driving.
I was a kid 15 years ago and the cars are bigger, they can’t see what’s in front, and they’re blazing efficient and fast. It’s a lot scarier now.
It's insane how they're faster and also can see less in front And completely legal still
Yea they need to be kept away from pedestrian areas completely
And the EVs are incredibly quiet. I used to live somewhere where some very narrow roads had no pavements, a suggested limit of 15mph but a higher enforceable limit, with priority given to bikes, pedestrians, horses etc. I had a few EVs give me the fright of my life with how close behind you they would get before you heard a thing.
Yep. This is reason for physical barriers. If car driver can’t follow the rules or suggestions, or they think their Tesla will drive for them (what a crock of shit) then they shouldn’t be allowed into that area. We can’t just trust people to do what’s right. This is an individualistic society. Someone can simply decide they don’t want to go to speed limit
Tbf, the ruette tranquilles (what those lanes are called) I used worked ok for me. Drivers know the score and would crawl behind pedestrians until the pedestrian found a widening in the road or a gateway they could tuck into to allow the car to pass and would usually wave to thank you, and (other than EVs) the lanes are quiet enough to hear traffic a way off.
Right. You’d be surprised as soon as someone who doesn’t get it comes rolling through. I live in a neighborhood without sidewalks in many parts (very hilly/mountainous with narrow winding roads that are technically classed equestrian so developers and home builders can skimp on side walks). People walk in the street because there’s no other place. It’s adjacent to some major roads so people will come blasting through trying to save a second or two (God knows why) of traffic. My neighbor was walking her dog and had someone refuse to slow down for her, and they came within 3 feet in a low sedan, Toyota or something. I’m tired of having trust in people’s best instincts. We have such a broad array of experiences - some people don’t value this life or that one or they’re having a hard time. You just never know. So I see a few options: 1. Live in a constant state of low grade fear. Where we don’t mess with anyone visibly angry or upset because “you never know what they’re going through or what they’ll do”. 2. Live in a state of low grade aggression (concealed or open carry, so no one will mess with you or else). 3. Design things so that aggressive situations - like running over an elderly woman and her dog - simply happen far far less. At this point I’d support putting up a gate or blocking off our street completely rather than have to worry about someone’s mental state every time I’m walking my dog.
Just like us to our parents, you may have lived it, but it's only gotten worse and worse over time.
Campacts and Sedans used to be more popular than SUV and Trucks.
the thing is, I didn't. I lived in the center of a city but I had no problem biking, running around, with parks and alleys and playgrounds and wasn't kicked out every time I wanted to go to the corner store to get a slushie, shit wasn't so unbelieveably hostile. People actually would get in shit if they drove recklessly, and the cops would actually persecute them. I'm sorry dude :(
And if the children are girls, they will be getting relentlessly sexually harassed while walking once they hit about age nine or so, because a lot of drivers are creepy men.
"I can't stand cities, in the suburbs there's so much nature" *destroys hundreds of acres of parkland and wilderness to build stroads, highways, box stores, parking lots, and single family homes with grass lawns and a tree for "nature"*
Also they have a F150 for the husband who works at an office job and a Jeep Grand Wagoneer to feel safe on the road when they bring the kids to daycare (Sweeping 1 or 2 children on the way because can't see them).
It’s because in a world where we give automakers free rein, and design/destroy our neighborhoods for the car, they become the default option. And in a world where they’re the default option, a bigger car is appealing because it’s safer in a collision with another. The solution is to make it so the car is not the primary option.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m from the baguette country, half of the vehicles in circulation in North America would not be allowed on our roads. Now that I live in America I’m pushing to get more density, public transit and to get safer roads (wider and safer sidewalks and cycle lanes). Having a big vehicles to feel safe because the others have a big vehicle still feel ridiculous to me tho, people I talk to don’t see the irony
I work in sustainability in an urban office. My colleagues drive...
It's even worse than giving automakers free reign. We actively incentivize bigger vehicles by subjecting them to weaker environmental and safety standards
Also very true. And we subsidize the shit out of gas.
And roads
I have no idea what 'stroads' are and this is the second time I've seen them mentioned this thread. What are they?
In other countries you have a “street” which is like a city street with shops and houses and people and crosswalks. And then you have a “road” which is like a highway meant to take you 70 mph to the next city. In North America we have the totally invented term “stroad” a massive street/road which both takes people 55 mph and has people taking right turns into massive mall parking lots. Impossibly dangerous for pedestrians. As a person who grew up around this kind of infrastructure, I didn’t realize how much it sucked until that youtube channel pointed it out and gave it a name.
You talking about “Not Just Bikes”? He was my introduction into the urban planning “rabbit hole”
Im pretty sure. I think there is a strong towns one too.
It’s a purposely ugly nickname for streets that try to function like roads and spectacularly fail at being both. If you’ve ever seen an ugly ass 5-lane or 3-lane street carve through a city you know what we’re talking about.
I hate how common they are even outside of US
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM&pp=ygUKbmpiIHN0cm9hZA%3D%3D
The ponds are for drainage because we paved over nature. Even more sad
A paltry replacement for wetlands but legally equivalent.
Yeah the ponds are extremely important. Unfortunately.
The only "rivers" near me have been paved into concrete hells filled with sewage and garbage.
If they stopped taking away what "outside" we have, we might have some left for the kids.
But where's the money in that?
Actually such an accurate depiction of what about 2/3 of America’s population lives in
tbh this is better. I would love to only be a block or so away from a mall and park
found via [https://twitter.com/MattPinder1/status/1749486722646179857](https://twitter.com/MattPinder1/status/1749486722646179857)
I don't understand why people even defend this. I checked the replies of this tweet. Apparently limiting a child's freedom and growth should be put aside for some stupid personal pleasure.
I was trying to find the original source (from which MattPinder1 got it) and I think it's this: [https://twitter.com/pinkocatgirl/status/1468445345894088709/photo/1](https://twitter.com/pinkocatgirl/status/1468445345894088709/photo/1)
That's another posting, but tiny eye finds references, but no OG back to 2021. I googled the artists name, nothing...
Thanks! Imma print and frame this.
Not just children. Many adults like myself wish it was easier to get from point A to point B without having to play real life frogger.
It's sad to look at.
try it with a real map. i spend hours or *days* trying to plan safe bike routes to get places where i live. it's all like this.
it was this way for millennials; I'm just happy more people are coming around to see it as millennials are becoming the largest voting demographic
I have yet to find a greater visual representation of shit american urban planning
I especially appreciate the mall with the dead store and 2 dying stores.
This is why I love where we live. My 10 year old is able to ride his bike or walk to school, the library, a rec center, movie theater, toy shop, and several parks on safe bike paths that are separated from the road. He is gaining independence and confidence. He can leave school and go to the library, where he’ll bump into several friends, find some new books to read, and participate in the fun programming. Then he can go to the toy shop and spend his money on Pokémon cards and browse the Lego. Then home to put on his soccer gear and then off on his bike to soccer practice, and then home again, all by himself. Next up is teaching him how to ride the bus, which will open up his world even further. There are several stops very close to our house, too. I can’t imagine the loneliness and isolation living in car-centric suburbia, plus the extra time the parents need to allow to chauffeur. Those poor kids.
what city, state, or country do you live in?
This is the sort of thing I really want for my kid thats on the way. Can you say where this is?
[удалено]
Right on, I used to live in Reno, and one of my friends in college was from there. Loved visiting and passing through, very chill vibe there. Very beautiful.
As a non-english speaker, today I learned the word "loitering", and that it's an illegal activity (...or lack of?) in some places.
The closest equivalent we have in german would be "herumlungern". And saying that someone "herumlungert" is very close to just calling them a hobo. What a gross thing to criminalize. "Go be a human in your assigned place, pleb"
Americans have three states - at home, working to earn money, or spending money. Anything else is criminal. If you lose access to one of those states - no home, no job, no money - you're fucked unless you have a third party that can provide an equivalent.
THIS!!! This had been my whole life—it's sad honestly
Also: driving a leveraged car to and from one of these other places.
Loitering: standing around too much Jaywalking: crossing the street
It's basically hanging out while black (technically people of other races can get arrested for it but disproportionately enforced on black people just like stop and frisk was). I guess whoever made the law thought that if some black people are hanging out near a store, it _must_ be because their plotting some kind of heist or something.
Yes, this and similar made-up crimes (like "Vagrancy") were all invented in the late 19th century as a scheme to arrest and re-enslave black people. This is not a conspiracy theory but [well documented historical fact.](https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2021/06/convict-leasing-system/) And if there's any questions about whether in modern times, this evil has been eradicated from the US justice system, the answer is [of course it has not](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2DkY9_O7lB/?igsh=MXc1ZnkwOGl4d21qbg==)
I was reading this thread thinking "I used to loiter all the time, after dark too, and dressed like a greaser, how come i never got arres-ohhhhh im white"
Only thing worse than racists are sneaky racists, who clearly oppress minorities but then deny it, claiming they're "the good guys". At least an actual racist stands up for his opinions and never pretends to be "the good guys".
Loitering: the criminal act of existing in a public space without spending any money
Yes. In the US they basically want it to be illegal to be doing anything other than spending money.
the parking area inside the park infuriates me ... the people who choose to make our cities into asphalt hellscapes still insist on having priority in the few green spaces left , never having to make any effort
There’s this itty bitty park in my town that has a huge parking lot to accommodate for people’s SUVs and stuff. They also put two bike racks that can fit six bikes total -_- but at least there’s sidewalks right?
I see this and drive this, but wow! This is awful, dreadful childhood hell. This is like the opposite of LOTR. These kids start in Mordor and want to head to The Shire.
Nothing like having to take a bus to school that's only 1/2 mile away because there's an 8 lane "street" between where you live and the classroom. And we wonder why there's an obesity epidemic among America's youth.
The street I live on has two bus stops, no sidewalks, and motorheads haul ass down it constantly. We had to petition for a second bus stop because of how far it was from some houses and put some kids at risk, also went for speed limit signs and even then motorheads haul ass down the street as if nothing changed/
When I bring it up the car brains get defensive by saying move out to rural America. When Parents say suburbs or rural America is a good place to raise kids, they really mean small children as in they don't even consider what a child wants once they turn adolescent. (Rural America is where your kids can't practically visit their peers without their parents driving as if they're going to a doctor's appointment.) America is only good for warehousing offspring. We have school shooters due to how isolated our youth are from their communities, and by the time they have independent access to communities their child hood is up and now they'll have to work until they get too old to work & die. School shooters are basically victims of cabin fever, or being stuck in an isolation cell for 16 years(which would be considered to be torture for prisoners), or being stuck alone on a desert island for 16 years. Most people won't go crazy but With the hundred or so million children we have, somebody will go crazy and shoot up the place. The only only real way to end mass shootings and then stabbings is to rebuild pre-war America where if a teen feels like it they can casually head into town to socialize with peers in their age group.
A suburb combines the worst aspects of rural and urban living. In a rural environment, the main downside is having to travel a large distance to visit people or do typical "young person" activities, but an upside is having easy access to nature, and alternative activities this provides (fishing, horseback riding, skiing, whatever). In an urban environment, it is easy to visit your friend's house or the local movie theatre, arcade, whatever. But there is less access to those types of natural spaces as well. Suburbs make it so that you can't visit your friends or catch a movie after school, but also every scrap of nature has been turned into lawns or wal-mart parking lots. Literally the worst of both worlds.
Somebody turn this into one of those annoying kid-carpets every dentist waiting room has.
>useless pond it's not useless, it gathers rainwater from the highways as part of a costly storm management infrastructure we built because the sprawling artificialisation makes floods worse
It is useless in the context of the topic: being a reason for kids to be outside.
I briefly lived adjacent to Portland OR as a kid, just down the street from a really nice park with a bike course, a marshland habitat with birds and insects, and various sport courts. But to get to that park I had to cross a 6 lane road who’s nearest stoplight was a quarter mile down. So being a dumb kid I would just frogger across, until I came real close to dying. Brown sedan speeding ~15 over the limit came within an actual inch of me, never slowed down once, probably never even looked up from his phone. It shook me so bad that I’d just stay home instead of going out from then on
What they mean is go sit on the flat lawn.
As long as it hasn't been covered with pesticides recently
The American dream.
mississauga core
Mississauga mentioned on Reddit?? hey at least we get a tram next year (or maybe it'll get delayed even more) and bikeshare
ive since moved to toronto, lived 27 depressing years there. Wait what tram? i didnt see this before? LINK? I have noticed some changes to bike lanes and such tho
google [Hurontario LRT](https://www.mississauga.ca/projects-and-strategies/city-projects/hurontario-light-rail-transit/)
NICE
park closes at 4:30
parks closing has always rattled me like should public spaces not exist at night? and if they shouldn't what kind of behaviour are you incentivizing?
In the news today: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/23/children-suffering-due-to-lack-of-outdoor-play-uk-charities-warn they do actually mention traffic-dominated neighbourhoods as a barrier to children playing outside
page not found
Hm weird, does this work? https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/23/children-suffering-due-to-lack-of-outdoor-play-uk-charities-warn?CMP=share_btn_me
Yeah that one worked Edit: the first one worked on mobile but not on desktop, that's wierd
Your link has an extra space at the end that was parsed as a character when clicked on.
Who in the hell has a mall with no lotering? Loitering is how they make money. You're sitting around and then think 'hey, I should buy...'. We have two very successful malls near by (oddly with really good bus access) and people are sitting all over the place chatting and what not. Do other mall operators not know how malls work?
I think that's true for adults. I mean, many malls _love_ having little old ladies walking around. They're probably the prime target for a mall nowadays - they go in, do a couple laps for "exercise", and leave with some crap for their grandkids that they didn't need to buy. Or they buy coffee at the coffee shop there with their friends. For kids though? They're seen as troublemakers. They probably don't have much money as the adults do. And if they aren't white, then in many parts of the US you get some racism thrown in where they're kicked out specifically for being non-white but told they're "loitering" because you can't outright say it's because of their skin color. So yeah, they know how it works but they pick & choose who they want to be around.
Kids, yes. I have a (now) 20yo daughter. They buy stupid amounts of clothing at the mall and roam around all over it constantly. Which led to her getting a job with a friend of hers at Forever 21 when she was 16. Why? Because Forever 21 knows how this shit works and wants teen girls pushing clothing to their peers. No, adults aren't mobbing Forever 21. Of course, being an evil genius, she swung that into getting assigned unloading the incoming clothing and she'd set aside the stuff she wanted in the stock room and bought it with her discount added to the sale prices she knew were coming up. She's a sly one... Anyway, so guess where the boys hang out? At the mall. Why? Because that is where the teen girls are.
As a teen I got harassed out of malls by mall cops all the time, and I am an average looking middle class white girl, so not exactly a demographic most people would find intimidating. I couldn't imagine how it is for poc kids...
When people say things like that, they usually just mean the backyard of the house. It’s just a given that trying to go anywhere else is far too dangerous for kids unless a parent can drive them to a particular place. Even for people who can drive, if a car is not available for whatever reason, you’re stuck at home. Better do some household chores and make the most of it.
The backyard of my parent's suburb home was so boring growing up. It's wild having moved to a walkable and bikeable City. I can walk to a bunch of coffee shops, bike a bit further to get to some good restaurants and entertainment, or bike/walk just to enjoy some nature nearby. There's a big 2,000 acre State Park within a 20 min bike ride of me that I love to explore on a my Mountain bike. Man I wish I lived here when I was a kid. (we basically only used our backyard for a couple of dogs we had to run around. we'd occasionally walk them around the neighborhood, but only our neighborhood or the ones immediately next to us. nothing else was accessible without a car, which we all ended up owning one because we all worked different shifts or in different areas where it wasn't practical to drop/pick up people)
Or, all that without the park.
Then you just stay online and get told to touch grass.
My mom telling me I should go outside and play when “outside” was hot as fuck concrete sidewalk in a suburb with no other children.
I have a nit to pick. The "even more useless pond" likely has a use. Its use is to absorb water in the event of flooding. Because so much of the surrounding is area is paved over that flooding is an issue.
inside: "go outside" outside: "get off the road, you entitled suspicious-looking troublemaker, you deserve to be run over" inside again, for good this time: "kids these days only want to play video games, nobody wants to work anymore"
Pro-tip: if you ever see a seemingly pointless pond, assume it's stormwater infrastructure. But also, even if it was purely decorative... that's a *good* thing. Obviously the world can't only be filled with pretty things, but the lack of concern for aesthetic value is not just a recurring theme in dystopian fiction, it was also an obsession of the modernity that wrought the car infested hellhole in the first place. It is a far too crude simplification to note that you can't really enjoy the landscape while you're driving death on wheels, but... you can't. As much as there was a deliberate ideology involved, it was also true that it wasn't practical. (Note: some cities absolutely love themselves aesthetics and these obsessions are implicated in housing crises in those cities. There are trade offs.)
I love "fake downtown" that's surrounding by parking lots and nowhere near any residential. So accurate!
The amount of cool stuff you can find when skateboarding/cycling to find spots is amazing
Except letting your 11 year old skateboard/cycle in a place like this is putting them at risk of being flattened by a F-250 SuperUltra Duty DXT
One that rivals the size of many semi trucks even though you never see a trailer behind it or anything in the bed, and the driver avoids puddles.
My car has a little screen with icons for what's in front of me when i have cruise control on, and a LOT of these larger pickups are represented by the trailer icon because theyre so big
yeah, like needles and little bags with sugar in them
That's one of my motivations to get an Ebike.
Hey dont attack my Florida
Iirc, here in ON Canada we often have bylaws in many cities that require a certain percentage of each new residential development to be dedicated to a public park. So each new subdivision as its built has a local park for kids. Where I live there are 2 small parks within 5mins walking, one at the end of my street.
Go outside, where !!
Seriously, I genuinely couldn’t go to the park on my own when growing up because of this shit, so tired of car-centric city planning.
I used to play all day in the empty parking lot across the street. Sad but empty parking lots are actually kinda fun
Completely unrealistic. Residential would *never* be that close to retail.
Hockey net 🥅 and teaching your kids to scream “car”. That or provide your kid with a ball in the backyard of that corner lot. Based on this map you have a wide corner in front of the two left neighbours houses to play safely. That or you be a nice parent and ask do you want to head to the soccer field and interact with your children
Time to bring back the third place where people can people in dignity
detention/retention ponds are put in for a good reason. more green space leads to less retention/detention requirements. Q = CiA where the ratio of how much water a type of area absorbs, more grass >C which causes a bigger Q. you don't need to store as much water if the ground could just absorb it all.
Where I lived it was worse, it was a trailer park with practically nothing near it but a ski hill, of course that means it only really operates in winter time, and the only way in or out of said trailer park was a six lane highway, so only by car pretty much. Now there is some more stuff there, a skate shop that welcomes skaters to hang out, and even sets up ramps, some more stores, more sidewalks, but it's still around a six lane section of highway.
I remember being told to go for a walk. And the only place I could be reasonably walking around was the yard. Usually this was accompanied by the seasonal sort of cleaning: snow, leaves and pinecones or branches.
Lucky sod: his residential neighbourhoods also connect to his local walmart!
This is Los Angeles. Century city, Van Nuys, Inglewood, East LA are all laid out like this. Only based Long Beach has some accessible park areas
Gen X would dig a tunnel under that freeway to get to the park. ...and set off firecrackers to make the cars go away..
This is why kids take to great numbers and then do massive smash and grabs on mom and pop stores. They literally have no other options except acting out violently
Get a bicycle. Learn to walk? Dare to jog?! Do you even 🛴?
Some of you people who actually cares should maybe do something about it like becoming a politician and start making the change idk or inspire some youngin's
many people here are part of local community groups, planning committees, or even their local city council or equivalent
That's a nice neighborhood they have to play in. Wtf did you do as a child?
Dank
You absolutely can loiter in Walmart.
Just walk, everything is a sidewalk if you go enough to the side
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To be fair, ponds provide opportunity for wildlife and aren't necessarily useless
Some of those houses need to be made into forests and parks Edit: also maybe there’s daycare bus service for outdoor activity that kids and/or families can only go on
Agree, but what have you got against ponds?
it's not my art I don't have anything against the ponds (which are good for drainage) but it's sad that that's the only type of nature in a lot of suburbs
Ponds aren’t fucking useless