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Atlanta 1950s and now
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this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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Am I the only one who finds the 1950s version also not nice from an urban planning perspective? I mean, it is a car-centered design anyway.
Still, do you see how many trees there are? That place must've still looked nice and was certainly transformable into a really nice place without unreasonable effort.
Now, it's basically a wasteland.
Nah not really, such low population density requires cars to be used. If you think tearing that down would be simple, then yes. But I think that even in Atlanta that would be difficult. The reason why those highways are there is that more people wanted to live in that kind of neighborhood.
As someone living in a much less dense area, I wholeheartedly disagree. Even just a single tram stop with >=bi-hourly frequency near the center could make that entire area car-free if the people weren't car-brained. That area looks like it'd be bikable in <10min side-to-side, so most people could probably even walk to such a tram stop.
(That tram would actually need to go somewhere but that's part of a larger system's problem, not of this hypothetical neighbourhood.)
There are a lot of assumptions there.
First of all, I am sure that is part of something much larger and it is a real neighborhood, not something hypothetical.
Second, I don't see people giving up their car brains just because you put a tram. I myself would still be using a car if it wasn't made completely superfluous and fatiguing where I live and work.
The former streetcars aren't an "assumption;" they're historical fact. Here's the damn map!
That was not the assumption. Also, that map is either 20something years too early or too late to be proof of much of what was going on in the 1950s.
Absolutely.
I'd agree but I don't see how that makes a difference. My point was that the visible part could be served by even just one tram station. If there are more such parts, you'd obviously need tram stops for those aswell. (More tram stops would realistically be necessary anyways.)
Me neither. Point was that it'd be possible for those people to reasonably get where they need to go without any cars involved with as little infrastructure as a single tram stop.
No, those highways are there because white men got together and intentionally chose to put the highway there with complete disregard (or quite possibly, with malice) for the people who lived there.
Yea just get rid of the poor people right?
No, the 1950s version (actually more like 1900s; those houses were already decades old at the time they were photographed) was good. It was a traditional street grid with small blocks, and there were streetcars going all over the place. Sure it was mostly single-family (probably with more than a few duplexes sprinkled in), but it had great bones for densifying later when demand justified it.
I live only a few miles from the area pictured, in a neighborhood with the same development pattern. Even though it's been damaged by the removal of the old streetcars and having zoning superimposed upon it after the fact (which causes problems by mandating things like too-large setbacks and minimum parking requirements, as well as outlawing corner stores within residential areas), it's still mostly fine.
That's what I was thinking. Neither solve the problem. The 1950s one just resulted in bigger traffic jams. What solves the problem is robust public transportation.