this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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Everything is far apart because the streets are too wide. This dates back to the 1780s, it's actually older than cars, and it was what made people adopt cars in the first place - for instance, Manhattan already had its car-sized streets of their current size way, way before cars were invented.
In the long term, the problem is the street grid itself - squish everything closer together and everything will be nicer to walk to (because it's human-scale), closer to walk to in the first place, and cheaper to maintain.
Manhattan had car-sized streets, sure. But, they were used completely differently.
For example, vendors would come and park their carts on the side of the street, with the wares facing the middle of the street, and people would walk up and shop while standing in the street. There were a lot more people walking and standing in the streets. And, it was a lot more common (and a lot safer) just to walk out into a street, because a horse wouldn't typically run someone down, and when cars first came along they were very slow.
I don't really see super wide streets as being a problem. Especially in a place like Manhattan where there are huge skyscrapers, you want wide streets so buildings aren't in perpetual shadow. You just need to make sure to keep cars away, and to limit the speed of any remaining vehicles to something reasonable. Then the streets belong to pedestrians, as they should.
Yea, and when our neighbourhood’s main street(two way and street parking on either side) becomes pedestrian in the summer it’s awesome and full of patios. Large, lovely town squares have also existed for a long time, that’s zero excuse. You have to have more than just “human” scale, you also need to be able to handle a lot of people and a 5’ sidewalk, or maybe a 10’ street if you remove the car lanes’ width, just doesn’t cut it.