[SUSPENDED] On the Road Again

[Verdant Haven]

Here is an issue to look at what is done with the endless miles of paved roads in nations that choose to outlaw cars. Its basic premise (what to do with empty roads) is derived from a suggestion in the discussion thread about my previously abandoned Bike Path Wrath.

Also, because it sounds overly large but is entirely accurate, here's the citation for streets taking up a quarter of all land in big cities.

[TITLE] On the Road Again

[DESCRIPTION] Ever since the banning of personal automobiles, @@DEMONYMPLURAL@@ have reveled in the relative peace that has descended upon their towns and cities. In dense downtown areas, however, the high value of real estate has led to numerous cries to repurpose the streets, which take up nearly a quarter of all available land.

[VALIDITY] Must not allow cars

[CHOICE 1] "The streets were built for commerce, and they should remain dedicated to it!" clamors local Chamber of Commerce rep @@RANDOMNAME@@. "Issue permits for developers to build new businesses in these unused streets, and we'll bring every imaginable product to the eyes of commuters! Imagine, tens of thousands of people walking to work down the sun-lit promenades of our shopping malls! Outdoor markets, video billboards, a captive audience! The economy will boom like never before!"

[FALLOUT 1] office workers carry shopping bags instead of briefcases


[CHOICE 2] "This is a tremendous opportunity to help the needy!" enthuses prominent social activist @@RANDOMNAME@@. "All over @@NAME@@ there are people forced to live on the streets. Now we can all live on the streets! Build affordable housing on this unused land. Tiny homes are in vogue, don't you know! With quality construction, some amenities like wifi and coffee shops, and some rent control, we can give these unfortunates a great place to live!

[FALLOUT 2] well-heeled hipsters are moving to homeless camps in droves


[CHOICE 3] "Remember mother nature?" queries @@RANDOMMALEFIRSTNAME@@ Starchild as he taps arhythmically on a set of bongos. "That's why we outlawed cars in the first place! Isn't it? I think so, I can't quite remember. Anyway, so I had, like, a great idea! We need more green spaces, so we should totally build like gardens and stuff in place of all this pavement. Think about it! Fields of grass… huge trees… green everywhere!"

[FALLOUT 3] commuters regularly get lost in the weeds


[CHOICE 4] "Hey now, let's not get ahead of ourselves" spouts former auto-industry executive @@RANDOMNAME@@. "We've still got the same population, and they've still got to go the same places. If we fill in the streets, how will they get around? Anyway, my engineers have come up with a new invention that I think the streets are perfect for! To help people get where they're going without cars, we've produced the Motorized Transport Assistant! It comes in two- and four-door models, uses existing roads, and best of all, we can make them at my old factories. What a boon!"

[FALLOUT 4] a healthy smog covers the land once more

[Australian rePublic]

Option 4- what about golf buggies?

Also, option 2 greenery ain't gonna work in the desert or Arctic

[Verdant Haven]

Option 4- what about golf buggies?

Also, option 2 greenery ain't gonna work in the desert or Arctic

The whole idea of option 4 is that they're just building cars again, and calling them something else. It's a reversal option. Golf carts might or might not still be allowed under a car ban (along with public transportation, emergency vehicles, military, etc). I wanted to be careful about not making the text too long and verbose by having everybody acknowledge exceptions, but they do exist.

For option 3 (the greenery one), that might be true, and I can tweak how he phrases it. The main joke of course is that every word the bongo-playing hippie uses is a pot reference, as is the fallout text. Grass, trees, green, weeds, etc

[Verdant Haven]

Gonna kick this to the top of the pile again, looking for feedback :-)

[Chan Island]

I like this a lot, but you should consider that the street will just be filled with horses and carriages without cars, so there might not be all that much more space to actually use.

Also, there used to be a social dimension to roads, and still is where roads are rare. You might want to consider an option where you encourage children to play ball games, elders to sit around chatting and drunkards to perform stunts on the now-much less motorised roads.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

It's an interesting premise, though I'm thinking that in most real life car-free cities these things have mostly been dealt with on a city-planning and locality level rather than at a national level, as the transformation of the city tends to be in the form of a thousand case-by-case assessments rather than because of a national initiative. Of course, there's no real life nation I'm aware of that has banned cars across the whole country either...

I'm not entirely sure how this situation would actually pan out, and I wouldn't be confident editing this because the thought experiment of what a car-free nation would look like requires so many assumptions.

I'd recommend proceeding with this draft, but perhaps doing some research on how these things pan out in real car-free cities, then incorporating that to give a strong sense of verisimilitude. Realism doesn't need to be a goal, but my feeling is this issue needs to feel more real to work.

[Verdant Haven]

I like this a lot, but you should consider that the street will just be filled with horses and carriages without cars, so there might not be all that much more space to actually use.

Also, there used to be a social dimension to roads, and still is where roads are rare. You might want to consider an option where you encourage children to play ball games, elders to sit around chatting and drunkards to perform stunts on the now-much less motorised roads.

In a previous draft, now discarded, addressing this question, I was told in no uncertain terms that I should treat nations with the "no cars" policy as having only just recently placed such policies in to place, and to assume that they were fully built and planned with cars, paved roads, etc - hence that draft disappearing, and this one being developed. Based on that information, I don't think there would be so many horses and carriages, since very few people know how to use them, much less own, care for, or have any place at home to stable them! Horse ownership for modern urban-dwellers is an intensely complicated and expensive process (my father's wife owns one, and that single horse dominates her life and finances), and neither the knowledge nor infrastructure is widespread. It would take significant time, I think, for that to filter back in to society.

I like what you're suggesting about the social dimension of roads. I can definitely replace the first option with one talking about smaller markets, street games, social places, etc. Roads really do take up more than a quarter of all space in modern big cities. It's a tremendously large swath of land the people can use.

It's an interesting premise, though I'm thinking that in most real life car-free cities these things have mostly been dealt with on a city-planning and locality level rather than at a national level, as the transformation of the city tends to be in the form of a thousand case-by-case assessments rather than because of a national initiative. Of course, there's no real life nation I'm aware of that has banned cars across the whole country either...

That's precisely the issue - there is zero precedent for this. It's hard to make real-feeling issues about policies that are utterly disconnected from reality! There's almost no such thing as a "car-free" city, with Venice being the only exception I can think of (which is only car-free because they built it on water like 1500 years ago). A couple tiny island communities are car free for practical or commercial reasons, but the whole "car free downtown" concept seen in some places, especially old European capitals, is not remotely comparable to the "No Cars" policy. To really be both car-free and practical, things would have to be planned from the ground up, not implemented after the fact by banning vehicles once construction was done for them, which is (according to the previous thread I referenced when responding to Chan, above) what occurs in an NS context. There are a couple "concept projects" underway by totalitarian regimes in China and the UAE to build entire cities from the ground up as pre-planned car-free eco cities, but those have not been completed, nor integrated in to the surrounding car-dependent areas.

I'm not entirely sure how this situation would actually pan out, and I wouldn't be confident editing this because the thought experiment of what a car-free nation would look like requires so many assumptions.

I'd recommend proceeding with this draft, but perhaps doing some research on how these things pan out in real car-free cities, then incorporating that to give a strong sense of verisimilitude. Realism doesn't need to be a goal, but my feeling is this issue needs to feel more real to work.

That's fair, and I'll see what I can do! Thing is, there's no such thing as a real car-free city these days, much less a nation! The entire NS policy of "no cars" lacks both realism and verisimilitude, which I'm not saying is a bad thing (where else but a game can we play with some things?), but definitely limits the real-world examples to draw from. A few square blocks of limited circulation is not comparable to the isolation and devastation such a policy would unleash upon the economy and populace of a nation.

[Trotterdam]

In a previous draft, now discarded, addressing this question, I was told in no uncertain terms that I should treat nations with the "no cars" policy as having only just recently placed such policies in to place, and to assume that they were fully built and planned with cars, paved roads, etc - hence that draft disappearing, and this one being developed.

I thought the problem wasn't assuming that car-free cities wouldn't have roads suitable for cars, but assuming that car-free cities wouldn't even have roads suitable for the vehicles they do have.

It's like if you banned alcohol and found that soft drinks have now also disappeared from the market, just in case.

[Verdant Haven]

In a previous draft, now discarded, addressing this question, I was told in no uncertain terms that I should treat nations with the "no cars" policy as having only just recently placed such policies in to place, and to assume that they were fully built and planned with cars, paved roads, etc - hence that draft disappearing, and this one being developed.

I thought the problem wasn't assuming that car-free cities wouldn't have roads suitable for cars, but assuming that car-free cities wouldn't even have roads suitable for the vehicles they do have.

It's like if you banned alcohol and found that soft drinks have now also disappeared from the market, just in case.

I had written it as assuming cities and towns had been built from the ground up with roads sufficient for what they had when built, but that just as happens with cars, those roads were now insufficient for the expanding population and usage. Basically, it was written with the idea that no matter what means of transportation was used, you would eventually face the same issues of needing to expand capacity.

I was told that it made no sense because it should be assumed there were whopping great roads everywhere for cars, but no cars on them, so there shouldn't be a problem. That was where the suggestion was made that I should work on what happens to those roads after cars are removed, because that was the logical problem to face.