Cars really messed a lot of that up.

In the 1900s every city was walkable. Most cities had trains of some sort for the majority of transport and bikes or horses for the last mile.

It really makes me sad to see even old cartoons showing off the tram systems of the day. Those all got pulled up for "progress" thrusting us all backwards into bumper to bumper traffic.

Whats incredible is that happened almost immediately after expansion of personal vehicles.

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cyberax 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> In the 1900s every city was walkable. Most cities had trains of some sort for the majority of transport and bikes or horses for the last mile.

Not the "last mile". The _only_ mile. Cities were so walkable that London had multiple distinct local accents because people were living their entire lives in one neighborhood, venturing outside only for special occasions.

This changed only with the invention of electric trams that allowed people to relatively cheaply move around. Technically, horse-driven trams were invented a bit earlier but they never got built at scale.

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pasc1878 3 days ago | parent [-]

In London trains came in 30-40 years before electric trams. So trains were the driving force.

See the Underground for an example.

Might even be 70 years see the London-Greenwich railway for the first instance.

	▲	cyberax 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		The early trains did not significantly change the situation, they were more useful for trade and long trips. They were not frequent enough for daily commutes for the majority of city residents. London and Paris were real outliners, with the early adoption of steam-powered subways. Mostly because they had to due to their size, but it really was the tram that initially allowed the working-class city population to commute freely. It's also interesting that it coincides with the significant boost in productivity, and also with general improvements to workers' rights.

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bobthepanda 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Romanticizing horses, specifically, is a very rose colored glasses situation. At the turn of the last century, cities were getting overwhelmed by thousands of tons of horse feces, a similar volume of their urine, and the carcasses of overworked horses dropping dead in the street.

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cogman10 4 days ago | parent [-]

> Romanticizing horses, specifically, is a very rose colored glasses situation.

Apologies, I wasn't trying to romanticize the horse aspect. Rather, the public transit and train shipping aspect.

In the US, at one point trains were so popular that even rural farms would have small train depots to load up crops on and ultimately ship goods wherever they need to be. You'd even find stores with train station docking.

In fact, before the national highway system, pretty much the only way to travel was by train.

We've taken a costly step backwards by building out the highway system and moving to semi shipping rather than keeping and expanding public transit.

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wordpad 4 days ago | parent [-]

Rail can't take you to suburbs is basically the main reason this happened.

	▲	bluGill 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The suburb was invented by/for the train. We called the first ones "street car suburbs" for good reason - the rail was why they were even possible in the first place. Cars work better than rails in suburbs (no congestion) and so rails have mostly disappeared, but rails absolutely could work in suburbs again if we invested in making them fast and frequent (which is expensive so we won't)
	▲	pasc1878 3 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Look at South London - train to suburbs is normal
	▲	1718627440 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Ever heard of trams and busses?

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bluGill 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That is looking at the past through rose colored glasses. Walkable cities are too small to have the wealth of options a car (or transit) city does.

trains are nice but cars were faster for most (until congestion - but by then there were so few users that service was bad)

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cogman10 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Walkable cities are too small to have the wealth of options a car (or transit) city does.

It's counter intuitive but it's quiet the opposite. I've lived in the UK for a while and in some pretty walkable cities. Even in the smaller cities, what you'd find is a wealth of different shops and options catering to all sorts of needs.

But then just consider that when you are walking you are being exposed to all the shops in the city.

Cars isolate. You are much less likely to notice the hole in the wall specialty shop and you are much more likely to instead just go to a Walmart or national brand place to get what you want. And you'll much more likely want to stop at all in one stores such as Walmart because you don't want to hop in your car multiple times to get the shopping done. In walkable cities, it's almost like a mall experience in every city center. 3 doors down is the hardware store and 2 more stores is the candy shop.

And because that downtown location is a highly desirable place with lots of foot traffic, any shop that goes out of business gets quickly replaced with another. Which means you generally end up with a lot of pretty high quality stores.

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bluGill 4 days ago | parent [-]

That depends on what you are looking for. There are plenty of shops for the common needs - but if you want an odd niche no small walkable area can support it. How many magic stories can your city support? Even something like a guitar shop need a very dense area for people who live in walking distance to be enough to support it. I can think of dozens of other niches - many smaller the above examples.

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cogman10 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> but if you want an odd niche no small walkable area can support it.

You'd be really surprised. I knew smaller cities with shops dedicated to Warhammer 40k. [1] (Surprisingly, still in business :) )

> Even something like a guitar shop need a very dense area for people who live in walking distance to be enough to support it.

A guitar shop just needs enough people interested in guitars. Being walkable doesn't mean there's no transit. Usually, walkable cities will have a city center where the shops are concentrated and if the city is big enough, you'll end up with a bus station in the city center. In fact, the referenced city has several of those shops. [2]

This isn't a large city, it's around 100,000. It's also fairly isolated. Nobody is coming to this city to get a guitar.

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/nzmGkPKBCJi9xCAb7

[2] https://maps.app.goo.gl/gB46tVVRa195NkNs8

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bluGill 3 days ago | parent [-]

My comments (this thread) were in context of 120 years ago when cars were a rich person's toy and most people lived on farms and so didn't have access to the transit that existed. That a store can make it today is different because context is different.

How many of the customers of the Warhammer store walked there from their house? How many came from a different cities because it was the closest store? The store does well because it can draw from a much larger area than a pure walking (or the limited trams of back then)

Similar for guitars - I expect a city of 100k to support 1-2 guitar stores - but I expect the majority of customers are not walking. Maybe they drive, maybe they take transit.

	▲	cogman10 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> most people lived on farms Not in the UK but yes in the US (in the 1900s, only 10% of the UK population farmed. Most were in the service industry and manufacturing). There's also a very different city layouts in the UK vs the US. If you were a farmer in the US in the 1900s, you'd mostly likely ride a horse. > How many of the customers of the Warhammer store walked there from their house? Almost 0, but a very large percentage got there via bus and walked from the bus station to the store. For these older cities that's just how it has to be because there's no room for parking. In the context of the 1900s, biking and walking is how people would get around in the UK, they'd simply not go downtown as often. In that city in particular there are a TON of old walking trails from the outskirts to town center. I know because I walked them. You might think "Well, it's a 1 or 2 miles away, that's just too far" but honestly when all you are used to is walking it's not. It was just more expected that taking an hour long walk happens. > How many came from a different cities because it was the closest store? For that city, almost 0. It's way too isolated. Even today in england you'll find a lot of people that very rarely leave the city they were born in. > but I expect the majority of customers are not walking. Maybe they drive, maybe they take transit. Most of it will be park and walk. You are correct in assuming that they'll likely take transit or drive to a closer location. However, because not every store has parking like the US, it's most likely that they'll have to walk some distance to and from the store however they decide to get there. If you click around the shrewsbury city in google earth street view, what you'll notice is very few cars in the city center and a lot of people walking around.

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lbreakjai 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I live in a city of about 160k inhabitants. I live about 2 kilometers away from the hypercenter. A half-hour walk, which I wouldn't consider "walking distance".

Most of the city center is inaccessible by car. Parking your car is expensive, driving is discouraged.

Removing cars means there's more space for people. It means it's safer, quieter. I'm not in mortal panic if my 4 years old drops my hand. It means the bus isn't stuck in traffic, and is therefore really fast. It's the most vibrant place I've ever lived in. It's full of life and energy.

The city is full of small, independent shops.

A boardgames café:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Boardroom/@52.3864335,...

A guitar shop:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alphenaar+Muziekhandel/@52...

A tabletop store, hosting MTG tournaments on a regular basis:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tabletop+Kingdom+Haarlem/@...

A store fully dedicated to expensive collectibles:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Past+Joys/@52.3798456,4.63...

There's a ton of small shops, whose names I can't remember, that I only discovered because I happened to walk past them. This creates a positive feedback loop. It's rewarding to just wander about, because you may discover something.

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wongarsu 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Being walkable doesn't preclude having transit though. It does clash with cars because cars need parking, and parking takes so much space that walking distances quickly become an issue. But subways, trams or even buses don't have that issue, they don't meaningfully decrease walkability

European cities are also quite car-infected, but in many the older core still work somewhat similar to how cities worked back then: you have the daily necessities within a 10 minute walk, for anything else you can fetch transit to the city center within 15 minutes, where you generally get everything else (except Ikea)

	▲	bluGill 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		My point was historical - in 1915 cars were a revolution to the few who had them, and there were so few in cities the downsides were not noticed.

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prmoustache 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That is the opposite brcayse infrastructure to move and park cars occupy an awful lot of space that kill density.