this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
1087 points (97.5% liked)

Fuck Cars

10375 readers
1612 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] sommerset@thelemmy.club 8 points 3 hours ago

This is literally how ussr built things

[–] thisdude1092@lemmy.world -4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Cause no way in crap would that many people living that close together not cause issues

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

imagine being so antisocial that you'd rather drive to buy some fucking bread

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 15 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

But that runs counter to my need as a developer to bulldoze the entire area, build mcmansions 6 inches apart from eachother and at the barest mimimum of code (and perhaps even lower with a $$friendly$$ inspector), and then plant like a grand total of 5 trees that wont survive the first year.

Oh, and also pave everything over. Gotta pave everything over. No one wants green space! /s

[–] MintyFresh@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

When I was first committing to my no automobile lifestyle, one of the first things that struck me was the pavement. Fucking everywhere.

Next time your about town , take a mental picture. Then subtract the parking lots. The huge road. Put the buildings closer together. Make a nice bikelane, something just wide enough to get a fire engine down. Plant some trees. Pretty nice right?

Instead we have salted earth. It really is just rude to the earth. Fuck your car!

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago

All I want is the infrastructure to be more convenient. I cant walk anywhere unless I want to spend an hour+ walking, which is just impractical when i need to run and grab some fucking garlic powder real quick in the middle of dinner.

Neighborhoods should have special commercial zoning inside of them to allow small shops, cafes, bakeries, etc

[–] GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 22 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

The best part about this is that this will give blackrock more homes to purchase with cash to the rent out to people at ridiculous prices. /s

Sorry, I've become way to cynical these days about virtually everything, I need to go touch grass.

[–] pseudo@jlai.lu 5 points 8 hours ago

You should move to a golf-neighbourhood.

[–] Krik@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 13 hours ago (6 children)

Why building something on it instead of converting it into a park? People love green stuff, you know.

[–] GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 hours ago

I think the proposed homes near the highway should be forested as a buffer.

[–] biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works 10 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

People love green stuff, you know.

Exactly, this is why we should legalise weed!

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 20 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Why does it need to be a dedicated park? They're not proposing getting rid of all the green stuff. Even better than having green stuff some distance away is living in the middle of the green stuff.

[–] Krik@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 4 hours ago

Look at the picture. There'll be not much green left. They'll only leave the trees alone and based on the figure of 40 000 new residents the buildings will be taller than the trees. I don't think that is great.

Cities are more livable when there are parks every few blocks. I mean big ones, at least half a mile long. People need nature, not a tree here and there.

[–] The_Caretaker@urbanists.social 10 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

@FooBarrington @Krik
Close the asphalt streets. Rip them up and plant trees and grass. A 9 foot wide pathway for pedestrians and bicycles in the middle. Subways and streetcars to transport people from one green belt to the next one road with access for emergency vehicles, public service vehicles and deliveries circling every 9 square blocks.

[–] Krik@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 hours ago

Interesting idea. I'm not sure if that works everywhere but it's a start. :)

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Sylence@lemmy.dbzer0.com 37 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Not sure how it works in the US but here in Oz (where water scarcity is always present in our collective psyche) golf courses are usually placed on flood plains where it would be dangerous/too expensive to build housing. In addition most allow people to walk through them and many even allow dog walkers so they have quite a lot of public amenity.

I would still prefer if they were just designated as public parks rather than having huge swathes of grass that needed frequent watering, but they're not nearly as bad as most make them out to be.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 11 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Public golf courses are one of the best things about Oz. They provide a forest island for birds and mammals among the suburbs. Many golf courses have large swathes of natural bushland around them. They are often run by the local council, and are hence not for profit, and generally they are very cheap to play.

They make most of their money via selling beer and expensive golf clubs.

Turn them over to property developers, and they'll pave it with cheaply built single dwelling houses and flog them for way too much money resulting in just more urban desert and padded the obese wallets of billionaires.

That's if they are even build able. Some areas on floodplains and marshes that serve as a local soak for stormwater, hence the water hazards. Some are built on landfills that contain mu icipal waste or even asbestos, hence you can't risk putting houses on them where someone might dig up the asbestos or waste. Turning them into a revenue-generating forest parkland is one of the few good things you can do with that land.

The revenue earned by the golf course that is used to offset local parks and recs costs would otherwise be gained by taxing the local residents through land rates.

I used to hate on them a lot before I learned that the economics of public courses is way different to that of private ones. There are still some private courses, and I wouldn't be opposed to these being taken back into public hands and/or converted into affordable housing. To the gallows with the greedy exclusive fucktillionaires.

[–] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 22 points 16 hours ago

Yeah, here in the US, golf courses can be extremely wasteful. There's two golf courses on my drive into the city, one is on a river floodplain, the other is a HOA golf course full of sprinklers that could absolutely be more housing. If I go the other way, there's another HOA golf course that could be housing too. So, to start with, there's three golf courses in a 15km radius.

One of the HOA ones is exclusive access to the surrounding retirement community, the other HOA one doesn't have a fence or anything, but idk if they chase people off. The one on the floodplain you have to pay to access the grounds.

[–] doktormerlin@feddit.org 7 points 14 hours ago

In Germany most courses only have a few public walkways and if you leave them security will escort you right out

[–] stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

but then where should the rich people go golfing?

[–] mouserat@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 14 hours ago
[–] stormeuh@lemmy.world 7 points 14 hours ago
[–] karpintero@lemmy.world 164 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Let's also get rid of golf courses in arid deserts in the midst of droughts

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 142 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

You had me at "Let’s get rid of golf courses"

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 47 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (6 children)

This is a municipal course as well, so Seattle could literally do this. The city government doesn't want to.

This heavily neglected sidewalk, next to the fenced off golf course, alongside a high speed and very busy highway onramp just 2 blocks from a light rail stop, tells you just how much the city cares about the area.

There is no excuse not to cleanup and widen this sidewalk except apathy and malaise from the city.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] SomeoneSomewhere@lemmy.nz 93 points 22 hours ago (5 children)

You're probably not going to save 95% of the trees given the major earthworks likely needed for managing sewage, stormwater, and other utilities. You'll probably save most of them, though.

40k looks pretty optimistic for the size and number of buildings, too.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] urata@lemmy.world 36 points 20 hours ago

I work at a golf course and I'd rather be doing something meaningful like building homes so this post speaks to me directly.

Unfortunately the big thing lately is we've been dropping a bunch of trees.

[–] FleetingTit@feddit.org 10 points 16 hours ago

Now add in mixed use zoning, and affordable housing units and this could be a winner

[–] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

That area should hold about 400 people, not 40,000. The trees won't survive unless they can see the sky.

[–] LaminatedDenim@lemmy.world 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

In the United States of America, the average lot size for a single-family home is 0.19 acres (which is equivalent to 8,176 square feet). This math means that around 5 average-sized single-family homes can fit into one acre of land.

(Source)

So even if we're talking regular single-family homes you can already build 800.

Many trees do very well in the shade, as long as their crowns get sun part of the day. Leave some room between buildings and you can easily build 4-6 stories tall and still have trees in between. You can easily fit 20 apartments per acre that way. That's about 3200 apartments. With 3 people per household that's close to 10k people.

I agree 40k is optimistic, but 400 is way pessimistic

[–] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Look at me on my .23 acres, essentially a sprawling compound. It's really a perfect size.

I don't think the setup here is at all realistic. ADA would probably have some qualms with it. I have seen golf courses repurposed for residential though, and it's great.

load more comments
view more: next ›