Auto-centric, pedestrian-hostile cities OUTSIDE of North America

[muppet]

I think there's a disconnect here -a 'terrible pedestrian experience' as in it's ugly or too hot, or has narrow pavements or just badly designed etc... yet with plenty of pedestrians and public transport...



vs a non-pedestrian experience -as in empty verges, no pavement, little PT, autocentric:

[dc_denizen]

Singapore is a great urban experience , but near impossible to walk around

[muppet]

Some more pics of Milton Keynes, it's infamous in the UK as a place where souls go to die, about 280,000 of them.

To be fair it has valiantly been trying to shirk off it's autocentric, plasticky image with some
new urbanism, but note how utterly, utterly windswept those plazas are:


https://rainbow-int-franchise.co.uk

www.telegraph.co.uk



www.open.edu/openlearn

www.telegraph.co.uk

www.telegraph.co.uk


www.funktionevents.co.uk, https://thelondoneconomic.com

www.sickchirpse.com





www.venuefinder.com



www.silicon.co.uk, www.iotworldtoday.com

www.growthdeck.com

www.ikogroup.co.uk

[muppet]

Hatfield is another one.

Well doesn't this look charming - a medieval English village...


https://mummetamorphosis.files.wordpress.com



www.highlivingbarnet.com, www.britainexpress.com


Then you realise the rest of it looks like this:




www.wdlimited.co.uk



It does have the usual pedestrianised spots for retail, but they're utter shite







I lived here for a summer back in the day. Never, ever, have I felt so dead inside. I genuinely missed the mean streets of Peckham, back when it had the worst crime in the country.
There's an enormous campus for students and everyone just has to take the train to the next town, St Alban's for any semblance of nightlife. If you missed it, you could just go take a walk through the twee gardens and shitty gnomes, maybe try and access the fenced off forest.

[dc_denizen]

Looks like most of the Netherlands

[MolsonExport]

not the same Netherlands that I visited three times. Outside of the city centres of the biggest/oldest cities in Canada, the pedestrian experience is fucking horrible in comparison.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by Commentariat

Most of pre-1970s Australia looks something like that, does that count?

Yeah, I would think Australia wouldn't be much different than the US or Canada.

[Shawn]

As others have noted, most Southeast Asian large cities have poor-to-horrible pedestrian experiences outside of preserved "old towns", colonial districts, and hawker centers. Vast multi-lane arterials without sidewalks or crosswalks are common. Jakarta and Manila stand out here, in a bad way. Singapore and KL are less offensive, but still not nearly as nice a pedestrian experience as you'd expect - and this has nothing to do with the weather.

Shanghai is really hit or miss. Some areas are fantastic, while others feel like more organized, cleaner versions of Jakarta and Manila. Beijing too.

Seoul and Taipei both have sharp contrasts between super-dense, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods blocked off by massive arterials. Much moreso than you'll find in Japanese cities.

But you will find California-style dense suburbs with miles of big box plazas in Japan. Think South Bay, like Cupertino and Sunnyvale. This type of development and pedestrian experience covers large areas of Yokohama and Kanagawa Prefecture, Saitama and Chiba Prefectures, and down south in Shiga Prefecture (suburban Kyoto and Osaka).

[SFBruin]

Honestly, parts of Europe are auto-centric.

I visited Zurich once, and, in some of the suburbs, there were houses that looked like they came from American suburbia, with large floorplans, fenced backyards with patios and grills etc.

[muppet]

I don't get the hate for Singapore -is it too hot and sticky? Or people have been hanging around the wrong parts of town? It is completely walkable:




https://livingnomads.com


The traditional shophouses everywhere have a covered arcade to protect from the sun, they overhang the street.




If you want to see the streets fill with pedestrians -come after dark as noone wants to walk about in the equatorial sun without aircon attached.
-Bear in mind most streets outside the skyscraper district are Shared Surface.






www.tripsavvy.com















www.visitsingapore.com/

[destroycreate]

^ I agree with you--I've been to Singapore twice, and have never found it to be unwalkable.

Maybe people are referring to the non-core areas, where there's lots of commie blocks/state housing and the roads are super wide and there's not a lot of street retail? Even so, it's lightyears more pedestrian-friendly than anywhere here, especially due to the fact that most Singaporeans do not own cars.

[muppet]

Perhaps it's due to the 'shared surface' approach they traditionally used due to the shophouses, which provide a covered arcade for pedestrians, but were narrow so
many people walked in the street too. This is now making a comeback in Asia and Europe, whereby pedestrians and cars share the same street, and are careful -traffic
slows, pedestrians stay alert -and accidents rates fall.





https://img.traveltriangle.com/blog, https://www.changirecommends.com/dea...n-walking-tour






https://pickyourtrail.com



This is the shared surface where I work, before and after:





And other parts of the world - some new, some natural


www.vienncouver.com







www.vienncouver.co

[muppet]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

^ I agree with you--I've been to Singapore twice, and have never found it to be unwalkable.

Maybe people are referring to the non-core areas, where there's lots of commie blocks/state housing and the roads are super wide and there's not a lot of street retail? Even so, it's lightyears more pedestrian-friendly than anywhere here, especially due to the fact that most Singaporeans do not own cars.

Yep Singapore is all about public transport -car usage is STRONGLY discouraged. Pretty much every car you do see is owned by crazy rich Asians.

A new Standard Toyota Corolla Altis 1.6 costs US$71,930 as of November 2020. Every year, you might expect to pay an average of $1,175 a year on car insurance if you're a brand new driver, $458 for servicing/maintenance costs, $547 in road tax, and $1,800 in petrol costs.

On average, you should expect to spend in the range of $73,700 for a sedan, $80,410 for a small SUV/crossover, and $136,320 for a luxury car in Singapore.


On top of that if you vehicle isn't eco-friendly enough expect to pay up to $22,000 on top. Oh, and the one-off registration fee is 100% -180% the price of your car.

It still works out cheaper to buy a car in the UK (one of the highest pricing in the West) and ship it to SG.

[destroycreate]

Originally Posted by muppet

Yep Singapore is all about public transport -car usage is STRONGLY discouraged. Pretty much every car you do see is owned by crazy rich Asians.

A new Standard Toyota Corolla Altis 1.6 costs US$71,930 as of November 2020. Every year, you might expect to pay an average of $1,175 a year on car insurance if you're a brand new driver, $458 for servicing/maintenance costs, $547 in road tax, and $1,800 in petrol costs.

On average, you should expect to spend in the range of $73,700 for a sedan, $80,410 for a small SUV/crossover, and $136,320 for a luxury car in Singapore.


On top of that if you vehicle isn't eco-friendly enough expect to pay up to $22,000 on top. Oh, and the one-off registration fee is 100% -180% the price of your car.

It still works out cheaper to buy a car in the UK (one of the highest pricing in the West) and ship it to SG.

It makes zero sense to me to have a car in a place like Singpore. Where is one to really drive off to? Seems so wasteful.

[dc_denizen]

try walking from NUS to downtown, you are cut off by major expressways

at least the west side of the city is built around public transit, large self-contained residential/retail complexes connected by rail, but not exactly fun to traverse by foot.

meanwhile the SFH areas in singapore have the typical brick walls , somewhat like southern europe.

A city like DC is a lot better of a pedestrian experience. there's something to be said for a tight grid with rowhouses and short blocks

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

Maybe people are referring to the non-core areas, where there's lots of commie blocks/state housing and the roads are super wide and there's not a lot of street retail? Even so, it's lightyears more pedestrian-friendly than anywhere here, especially due to the fact that most Singaporeans do not own cars.

I've only been to Singapore once, but didn't find it particularly walkable, though yeah, much better than Jakarta. It's very much a mall-and-commieblock city.

And of course, people are talking about non-core areas. That's like 95% of the city. Singapore was a small city until relatively recently. And you don't judge a city's walkability by the core, as those are almost always walkable.

I don't think transit-orientation necessarily implies walkability. Moscow is one of the most transit-oriented cities on earth, and is possibly the most apartment-oriented major city on earth (Moscow SFH essentially don't exist. Even in HK, there are plenty of SFH). But Moscow isn't particularly walkable, and is rarely a pleasant walk outside of a few historic streets around the Kremlin.

[homebucket]

I don’t think anyone is saying Singapore is horrible. It’s just not as walkable as it’s peer big Asian cities. Of course it’s still way better than anything in America except for NYC.

[dc_denizen]

How is Singapore’s walkability better than sf, dc or Boston ?

Again, as someone who spent months in Singapore , it’s a great urban city but not tops for walkability

Crossing the AYE was a baffling ordeal

[muppet]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

try walking from NUS to downtown, you are cut off by major expressways

at least the west side of the city is built around public transit, large self-contained residential/retail complexes connected by rail, but not exactly fun to traverse by foot.

meanwhile the SFH areas in singapore have the typical brick walls , somewhat like southern europe.

A city like DC is a lot better of a pedestrian experience. there's something to be said for a tight grid with rowhouses and short blocks

To be fair the National University of Singapore was built on the only available land in the city then, right next to the container port and is over 7.3 miles drive from the city centre,
on the least developed direction the city heads out in. It's designed as an out of town, garden campus (though it isn't really).



The equivalent for DC would be near Allencrest, 7.4 miles:



Both areas are surrounded by green campus/ suburbs, but Singapore is significantly denser and much more reliant on PT. The DC+ city urban density is 3,644 per sq km, compared to 18,100
for urban Singapore (about 70% higher than NYC's 5 boroughs).

[Acajack]

One thing I will say is that pedestrian hostile places outside North America still for some reason have way more people walking around than here in North America.