this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
309 points (97.8% liked)
Data Is Beautiful
6953 readers
51 users here now
A place to share and discuss data visualizations. #dataviz
(under new moderation as of 2024-01, please let me know if there are any changes you want to see!)
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The title could be cities with good vs bad city planning. All the green cities are designed to force people to use cars, because they made everything so spread out with little to no public transportation. The red cities are built properly with public transportation to help people get around.
Or bad vs worse city planning. I was surprised to see so many upstate NY cities on the low car ownership list. They do have some public transport but can still be pretty tough without a car. Though they've all had some efforts to rein in some failed urban renewal projects like bulldozing unnecessary freeways, and some attempts at improving walking and biking experiences.
I imagine that it has to do with the age of those cities. They were established before cars, so the older parts were designed to get around easier. At least that's what I assume, because virtually all the cities with low car ownership are in New England.
Have you been to Los Angeles? It's not so much that it was poorly designed as it is that it just never stopped growing. Los Angeles county is 4753 square miles.
Yeah, I went on a road trip a long time ago. I remember it was almost all highway with tons of cars without a good public transport system. They knew they were growing and could have held off the heavy traffic with commuter trains and a substantial public transport system.
Sure there's a system already in place in LA, though I'm sure there's room for improvement.