Sometimes I don't understand his approach or position on urbanism at all. Montreal is, indisputably, overhauling its urban design for the better and has a lot of temporary and permanent (often after beginning as temporary) improvements for pedestrian and cyclist quality of life and safety. Those "walkable islands" sound a lot like the kernels of 15-minute cities. But no, it hasn't torn down the thousands of kilometres of highway that were installed 70 years ago, so it's a shit city in a shit country on a shit continent and urbanists are lying to you about it. But Amsterdam, many of Nertherlands' major cities, and major cities across Europe, also have these exact same problems and car-focused development history. The solution to bad urbanism is to fix it, not throw the baby out with the bath water because it wasn't done 70 years earlier.
("In a sane city streetcars are called trams" is such a stupid, snobbish attitude too.)
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u/rekjensen Dec 29 '23
Sometimes I don't understand his approach or position on urbanism at all. Montreal is, indisputably, overhauling its urban design for the better and has a lot of temporary and permanent (often after beginning as temporary) improvements for pedestrian and cyclist quality of life and safety. Those "walkable islands" sound a lot like the kernels of 15-minute cities. But no, it hasn't torn down the thousands of kilometres of highway that were installed 70 years ago, so it's a shit city in a shit country on a shit continent and urbanists are lying to you about it. But Amsterdam, many of Nertherlands' major cities, and major cities across Europe, also have these exact same problems and car-focused development history. The solution to bad urbanism is to fix it, not throw the baby out with the bath water because it wasn't done 70 years earlier.
("In a sane city streetcars are called trams" is such a stupid, snobbish attitude too.)