What is Digg?135 Comments
- Lane, on 10/10/2007, -2/+85Park Avenue is still an accurate description.
- kennywinker, on 10/10/2007, -23/+93Oh, I'm sorry I didn't realize people WANTED to be able to only travel 10 miles a day, as well as constantly be facing the odor from thousands of horses and their feces. By all means, do away with cars and bring back horses what an AWESOME IDEA!!!!!!
- KevenM, on 10/10/2007, -1/+45not to mention all that bicycle feces
- Humptydank, on 10/10/2007, -3/+39The average amount of manure was twenty-five pounds per day, per horse. Multiply that by 200,000 horses in New York at the turn of the century, and you have 2,500 tons of excretion raining down from horse-butts every single day. And that doesn't include copious amounts of pee. Anyone who's ever been near Central Park South and smelled the gifts left by just the fifty or so tourist carriages knows that no one on Tree-Hugger pining for the "good old days" in New York would have lasted five minutes. When horses live in fields they are part of nature, but when they are brought into cities and used like cars, they are far more filthy.
Add to that the fact that the wealthy could afford to have their neighborhoods cleaned while the poor, say, on the Lower East Side, would have to navigate literal piles of filth, and I vote thumbs up on the whole car thing.
The car isn't perfect. Far from it. But it sure as hell was a revolutionary improvement over the technology of the day. - drouk1556, on 10/10/2007, -5/+40It's only $250 to stay in a hotel on Mediterranean Avenue.
- JaridR, on 10/10/2007, -8/+41It didn't start going downhill with the automobile. Before there were too many horses, too much horse-sh*t. Then cars, now too much carbon.
- IShouldBeWorkin, on 10/10/2007, -5/+27If you think thats bad you should check out what Baltic looks like...
- tomisina, on 10/10/2007, -7/+29you should look at a picture of a city before they had electricity... those gas street lamps were beautiful...
we should outlaw electricity! - seanc6610, on 10/10/2007, -2/+23I'm calling shenanigans. I checked this out, and I'm pretty sure this isn't totally accurate for all of Park Ave., as the avenue carried tracks from more than one railroad as early as the 1830s. Maybe this is an area of the ave. where the trains didn't run, but Park was definitely never actually a giant park running down Manhattan.
- mishabear, on 10/10/2007, -4/+25We're never going to remove cars until something better comes along but that doesn't mean we need to allow cars on ALL streets. I'd love to have urban areas again where people could mingle, have sidewalk cafe's, etc. without everything being commercialized or designed for drivers. Hell, just ONE street through the downtown area would be enough. I think most cities are trying to do something like this. I can think of a few cities already.
- mrroarke, on 10/10/2007, -2/+21How about a picture of the landscape before the people, buildings and streets? I'll bet it was even better.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -11/+24what about bikes?
- nixonrichard, on 10/10/2007, -3/+16pushing the little pedal and going 70mph with the A/C on is even easier.
- juttman, on 10/10/2007, -4/+15i do too sometimes
- rspeed, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10You don't need to bring back walking in NYC. It's there, trust me.
- consoneo, on 10/10/2007, -2/+11Don't dig this guy down, go read this and believe it!
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1971/6/1971_6_65.shtml
It is a horribly long article describing how the horses were so much worse than cars ever have been. Pollution was higher due to the above mentioned fecal matter. - juttman, on 10/10/2007, -5/+14Is Boardwalk still available?
My bad, that was Park Place. - Bamborzled, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8"Hippocrates"
You keep using that word (or name, rather). I do not think you know what it means.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocrates - drouk1556, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10Uphill both ways.
- timlopez, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7
Pshhh, who wants to walk to McDonalds?! - celerate, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7We don't need horses any more, there are better forms of public transportation now. Some of the future concept cities imagined by the Japanese as they need to expand to suit the population size are designed to have monorails for public transportation instead of roads for motor vehicle transportation.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Looking at that picture I'd definitely like to see pedestrian cities.
- ReadItAndWeep, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Didn't you know that nuanced arguments aren't allowed on digg? Everything must be black and white. Its either tree-hugging hippies who want to live in horse ***** or a 4 lane highway in front of every building. Got it? Don't go and muddy the waters with talk of different city planning approaches, etc.
- frostmonkey, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7I live in Calgary AB, and we have a street like that...sort of.
Stephen Ave. (which is right in the core of downtown Calgary) is closed to all motor traffic during the work hours. It allows restaturants to have their large outdoor patios, and the three blocks or so which are closed off are absolutely SWARMING with people during lunch hour. I mean thousands of people, with street vendors, performances etc.
Gotta love being oil rich haha - kettlechips, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7I don't buy a large appliance every day, and the delivery charge is a lot lower than car expenses.
- JDoorjam, on 10/10/2007, -6/+12It's not about cars vs. horse *****. That's an awfully false dilemma. The real question is just how much we're willing to sacrifice to the automobile in terms of pleasant living spaces -- in an environment that, yes, must make some concessions to the automobile. We should have walkable neighborhoods, and broad walkways on tree-lined boulevards. It's not hard to figure out, and it's not even expensive (sidewalks are easier and cheaper to maintain than roads anyway).
For more on livable, human-oriented urban design, google "new urbanism." The issues new urbanism deals with are exactly those that this photograph hints at. - kwojniak, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Yeah, screw getting some exercise and breathing fresh air. My time is better spent viewing pictures of cats.
/sarcasm - nixonrichard, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8He invented the Internet so everybody could bitch about global warming.
- seanherman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Keep in mind that's Park Avenue, the richest, most prestigious road in Upper Manhattan. All the old money that lives on the east side (of the park/island) lives between Park Ave and 5th Ave (along central park). Go two blocks east of that picture, and there were probably alleyways and streets covered in horse *****, human ***** and all sort of other crap. Much of the Upper East Side might have been nicer than that, but I can assure you areas like Hells Kitchen, Harlem, etc. would look nothing like that picture.
- Walgreenz, on 10/10/2007, -3/+8Its a real shame what Al Gore has done...
- Sliver85, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5State st. in Madison is an example of this.
- gl77, on 03/31/2008, -4/+9***** that *****, i walked to work and back last week, 5 miles round trip, doesnt sound like much, but when there's a heat advisory out and its 97 degrees (felt like 110 with the heat index), i almost had a ***** heat stroke.
- aaronm67, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Never been to New York? Unless it's several miles, people typically walk.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Let me say that walking to work would be possible for me, *IF* we had all the corporations in cities. However, my wife goes to school in Oakland and I work in Dublin. The closest we can live to both is Walnut Creek/Pleasant Hill/Concord. So what do we do? We live there. Sure we both commute about 15 miles each way, but she'll sometimes take BART and then drive to school from the station, but I don't have that choice because it would take me over an hour to get to work with the current BART system. It takes me about 30 minutes driving.
To solve the issue of cars and cities we need 3 things:
1) FAR better public transportation. While we have a start, we need to bring trains back for local travel. BART is awesome, but there just isn't enough track
2) Better use of land. This will never happen, but we need to build up rather than out....ain't gonna happen, but nice to think about.
3) A reasonable way to live, work, go to school, etc in the same area. I love working from home, but that's not always an option. We need to think about ways to get the worker connected to the office in better ways. I tried to market my ideas, but it seems nobody wanted a lightweight virtual classroom/office. So, we're stuck going into work and stuck having to commute.
Oh, and to those of you that go on and about how things "used to be better." Please tell me how you'd transport around all the crap you have to haul now. Hell, I carry a backpack to work just to haul my laptop and all the peripherals that go with it. What can I do when I have a ton of other things to carry as well? I can't bike or walk...so that means driving. - murty, on 10/10/2007, -11/+15Bring back walking! Would probably solve a lot of other issues... would probably create other issues as well i suppose.
- TheBigBentley, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4All I can think is "Wow that looks like a long walk."
- DMRsweden, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Did I read the page wrong? Where did it say to bring back the horses??
- trebuchet03, on 10/10/2007, -4/+8Why does everyone have horse ***** on the mind. It's not saying we should go back to that era, the point is that we should rethink and move beyond our current design ideals.
Does every building need surface roads connected to it? Imagine a 4 block area without car traffic, but road access to it. Of course, there's a whole other set of issues (traffic density would be much worse in surrounding areas). But then again, the ethos of America (at least the one I live in) is to get in your car to drive a few blocks to your destination.
All that said, I too wonder if that's an accurate representation o.0 - twinklyJesus, on 10/10/2007, -7/+10You ever try to deliver a washer/dryer combo on a bicycle? A sofa? I don't know about NYC, but Houston is HUGE. I wouldn't want to pay the delivery charge to have my furniture moved 40 miles across town by bicycle.
THINK! - CatsAreGods, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4If you read the comments on the original article, they bring out what anyone who has ever been to NYC would know: the "before" picture of Park Avenue with no cars is a complete and utter fake.
- DOCKAUF55, on 10/10/2007, -4/+7hullo how much to park my thimble overnight?
- bigjimslade, on 10/10/2007, -3/+6
...unfortunately it took hours for them to clean up the horse crap that was all over the place. - acefearless, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3This is exactly what the pictures comparison are about. The point isn't to get rid of cars or replace them with horses. But to make our cities human centric. I live in San Francisco, I walk to work most days but I also own a car. But I don't need to be able to drive on every single street in the city. Take grant street in San Francisco. For the most part it is just a tourist walking street with a single lane of traffic down the center and about a mile and a half of shops and restaurants. No one drives down this if you can avoid it, which you easily can. But tourist love the Chinatown section of it and a lot of locals love the North beach section of it and every one walks on the two very narrow sidewalks bumping in and stumbling over each other because they don't want to get hit by the occasional car that drives down. Imagine this mile long street that crosses town where business are already aimed at foot traffic, if you don't need to worry about being hit by cars. You can wander amongst trees and flowers and street cafes sit on a nice bench when you like listen to street performers (when they are good). Sounds kind of nice doesn't it. And remember a block down is a nice fast car street if you need to get from point a to b in a hurry.
In a suburban city you call these mile long walkable streets that are focused on people walk in malls. In an urban city like New York or San Francisco the malls aren't the center of the world the streets are. It would be nice if a few of these were focused on being a place for the millions of people who live there to get around with out worrying about getting hit by cars. - unfinite, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4No man, it's only $250 to BUY a hotel on Mediterranean Avenue.
- ThatGeek, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3i love the articles that just pose problems, and never say a thing about solutions. I dont like using cars to get around everywhere, but as of right now i dont see a better solution
- SickMonkey, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3You can have the best of both worlds simply by setting the buildings back farther from the street and creating pedestrian green buffer zones between the streets and buildings. Of course this would require giving up a lot of valuable real estate to the pedestrians, but the payback would be a much nicer and user-friendly urban environment with cafes, bike paths, etc... A better solution still is building a good subway system for commuters yet still maintain the top streets for commercial commerce. Of course all of this requires perfect city planning from start to finish, so it will never happen except in a very few cities where history let them evolve that way.
- 808kick, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Ottawa has Sparks St.
- uptown, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I'm looking out my window onto Park Ave. right now and it's a parking lot of 90% taxis .... most of which are being blocked by a cop car that decided to push through the cross-street's traffic light and got stuck blocking the intersection.
- TheMidnight, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yep. They don't allow cars on State Street, just taxis, buses and police. You can usually walk down the street without fear unless a drunk bicyclist is about. State Street is famous for bars, college students, panhandlers, the Halloween party, and occasional violence.
- jlharrity, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Cars powered by petroleum, at any rate.
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