Life in the Spanish city that banned cars - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/sep/18/paradise-life-spanish-city-banned-cars-pontevedra <comment><USER3> Its insane to me how large space-wise small towns in the us (Oregon in mind as I write this) are — with a huge percentage of the real estate devoted to parking lots. Even setting aside the traffic, it's silly to walk across these towns because businesses are separated from each other by massive parking lots.

The traffic is often amazingly inhumane. Many of the small towns in Oregon are formed on either side of the major highway which has speed limits within the town but still sees so much traffic as to be very dangerous for pedestrians.

These towns need the commercial visitors brought by the highway to survive — but the design common in Europe for this scenario is so much better. There will be a sign for an exit off the main road for the "city center" exit — there will be a single parking lot for the city center, and then comfortable walking distance to the businesses ... superior design.

Many small, especially old, towns in Europe have ancient road layouts that are too narrow and steep for cars within the town — which resulted in these car free designs for free. It's beautiful. Parking is easy because there is only one place to do it on the outskirts — and then walk everywhere. There is no improvement for a small town to be designed otherwise in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> Even Portland and Eugene love to boast how bicycle friendly they are, but neither are really commutable by anything besides a car for most people. Which is why most cyclists are so prolific -- it's hard to be a cyclist by circumstance. Riding your bike inherently comes with crossing a dozen intersections beaming with cars that treat you like you don't belong on the road.

A solution is to level the planes of separation between types of traffic in urban areas. With pedestrians closer to cars the cars have to go slower by nature. It's antithetical to the common logic and current policy of building walking paths completely separate from roads and all of the businesses attached to them.

<comment><USER5> Cyclists really don't belong on the road. It's such an odd collective viewpoint that a vehicle which virtually always travels far below the speed limit should be allowed alongside vehicles that travel at the speed limit. I think this is because we conflate the benefits of cycling and the value of making our public infrastructure amenable to cycling with the opinion that cyclists should share highways with cars. It's simply not safe and no amount of "Share the road" stickers and driver education will compensate for that. Cyclists need their own infrastructure, bike lanes on the highways at a minimum. They don't belong mixed in with cars.

<comment><USER6> I agree. The real solution is to eliminate cars from the roads, that way they wouldn't have to share with bikers.

<comment><USER5> This kind of snark, or perhaps just unrealistic statements, gets us nowhere...dedicated infrastructure for cyclists alongside the same infrastructure for cars is actually viable. Making a comment about how everybody should be using bikes isn't helpful.

<comment><USER7> >>> Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

>> ban cars

> unrealistic statements

You, sir, are funny.

<comment><USER5> The United States is not Spain. Nitpick all you want - the vast majority of populated places in the US will never ban cars, at least for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER8> Not because they can't though. Because they think they can't. Most cities in the US could do this with some adjustments to public transit, and by managing regional transit much better - for example it's insane that the default for suburban rail line stations is the "park and ride" \- huge parking lot surrounding the train station, rather than using that area for residential development close to transit.

<comment><USER9> No... because they literally can't without massive upheaval of where schools, offices and shops are located.

<comment><USER10> "They literally can't change, because that would involve having to actually change".

They only want change that doesn't involve money, effort or change, or what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of the most interesting experiences in my life was visiting Tel Aviv on Yom Kippur. On that day all car traffic is prohibited (also TV stations are offline etc). It was absolutely amazing. Tel Aviv is a city with large roads and usually extremely busy. On that day, cyclists ride over the highway, kids play on the streets. I never felt that directly before how invasive the normal car situation is.

Here's a photo [https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2015/09/F141003...](https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2015/09/F141003FFDS008-e1442908153128-640x400.jpg)

<comment><USER12> Just to clarify, there is no _law_ that I know of prohibiting car traffic on yom kippur in Tel Aviv. However, since this is the most important holiday of the year, even many Israelis who don't celebrate other holidays will celebrate this one. I believe that virtually all businesses are closed that day, even those that don't close on other Jewish holidays (again, not illegal to operate, but customary). So in practice, few people will be driving that day/night.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the clarification! Strong moral code though, I haven't seen one non-official car that day.

<comment><USER13> Moral code or just social pressure - the discomfort of the thought of disobeying the tradition and everyone glaring at you as you drive down the road outweighs the benefits of doing so even if you don't believe in the tradition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't know why this didn't occur to me but in San Juan Capistrano, CA, I enjoy that place so much with my kids because of the fairly large area where cars have to have very slow speed limit or no cars allowed at all and pure walking which was far better even. There is such freedom allowing your children to laugh and play and walk on their own pace without worrying they'll be run over and having to strictly hold their hand near each cross walk where cars zip by at instant collision death speeds. I could hear the birds too. Was calming and slows the perception of time so you can actually relax.

<comment><USER15> This is why I like theme parks.[1] It's sad because in America we've largely relegated what should be a normal living environment to fascimiles of imaginary places.

Actually, I live in San Francisco and the "downtowns" of each neighborhood do allow kids some freedom away from their parents (e.g. to dart in and out of stores and restaurants without waiting for the parent), but it's limited to a single block unless you want to risk being run over. Hit-and-runs occur here regularly, unfortunately, because the city is just barely pedestrian friendly enough that pedestrians feel comfortable, but not friendly enough that cars are actually forced to slow down (e.g. streets too wide). If car and pedestrian are not both carefully paying attention, accidents happen.

[1] My wife doesn't like theme parks. But where she's from you never let kids out of sight, regardless, so they offer little respite for her.

<comment><USER16> The area your talking about, where there's little places where kids can play: it's called the Suburbs. Growing up in the suburbs, cars went slow enough that we could play in the street. The neighborhood grocery was about two miles away and we could walk or ride our bikes, and we had plenty of friends houses along the route should we need to stop. There's not the density of little shops that you might find in SF, but as a kid you don't need that density (I don't need it as an adult; the suburbs I live in have a nice downtown, but if I need serious shopping, I have Amazon)

Suburbs, much reviled here, are the answer to all of the density problems that people are complaining about. Mass transit works with commuter rail. There's no argument except prestige to stay in the city.

<comment><USER17> > The neighborhood grocery was about two miles away and we could walk or ride > our bikes, and we had plenty of friends houses along the route should we > need to stop.

This doesn't sound like the typical American suburban experience, and I think what you are describing is almost heading in the direction of the best existing solution for non-city living, which is the "village" style denser towns that you see in Europe. The idea basically being that you turn a fairly evenly distributed suburban population into one that clusters around small to medium sized town centers that are walkable and bikable, but contain and are surrounded by large areas of communal countryside and green space.

It necessitates a sacrifice in lot size (and potentially house size), but in return you get a quiet, safe, traversable town with plentiful access to the countryside, and it also helps immensely with things like logistics, infrastructure (electricity/gas/internet in the suburbs is a nightmare), and, potentially most importantly, transportation, since a strong commuter rail system can actually service that sort of layout effectively.

Many if not would still describe this as a suburb. There are definitely places (I'm aware of ones in the North East) that follow this model that are called suburbs. When people complain about suburbs, they are complaining about the model that dominates the US, not the concept of a less dense population area surrounding a metropolis.

<comment><USER18> Having lived in dozens of suburbs moving around in life, it seems very typical to me. Even challenging neighborhoods buried in sprawl would lead to local zoning opening up for shops. The problem often solves itself. Where I live now only had one nearby market within driving distance, but market pressure opened 2 more. Its almost as if there is profit in these overlooked planning issues and people like to win it.

This urban-centric thinking is odd to me. I do not want to live so far away from the natural phenomenon of earth, and I think it is unhealthy that so many want to push that lifestyle on everyone. It rings absolutely hollow to me to have effortless transport to a thousand places all manmade, and mostly devoid of non-domesticated plant and animal life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Raleigh converted Fayetteville Street to pedestrian only back in 1977. It ended up killing all of the businesses there.

[https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/163829/](https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/163829/)

The city reopened it to traffic, however, and "revitalized" the area, resulting in a booming downtown economy:

[https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may- learning-...](https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning- from-raleigh-nc-fayetteville-street-renaissance)

I love pedestrian districts in cities. Copenhagen comes to mind. However, pedestrian district plans need to be considered carefully, else they backfire.

<comment><USER20> Church st in Burlington VT partially closed to cars starting in 1980 (based on Stroget in Copenhagen) and ongoing into 2005 with more and more blocks carved out for pedestrians only. It has been very successful.

Why did it work, when Raleigh failed? What needs to be "considered carefully", exactly?

(The large college nearby definitely helps in VT's case. But what else?)

[https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/](https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/)

[https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/about/history](https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/about/history)

<comment><USER21> Just speculating, but looking at the photos from Fayetteville, it was totally car-scale. Sure, it was pedestrian-only, but just look at the pictures of the locale. Huge buildings, long distances, wide street.

This is not the best example but the first to pop to mind- compare to Pearl Street Mall, in Boulder, which seems to be doing well:

[https://email@example.com,-105.2792529,3a,75y,...](https://email@example.com,-105.2792529,3a,75y,74.44h,82.61t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sYTsjWcvQHaMkDss9oaC4cQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DYTsjWcvQHaMkDss9oaC4cQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D167.73972%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656)

Which, just skimming, looks to be laid out similar to Church Street.

<comment><USER22> Among the differences are that the University of Colorado is right there and Boulder has been a fairly affluent town for a long time (even before the relatively recent immigration of Google, etc.)

Also, let's not overstate the differences. The actual pedestrian mall on Pearl is just a few blocks long. And Fayetteville in Raleigh these days, while not car-free, is part of a very walkable area of downtown Raleigh with lots of restaurants, a few hotels, some shops, new condo construction, some major businesses, the convention center, government offices, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Pedestrianisation works well in European cities, especially small ones. It's quite common here in the UK, often there are strict time limits on when delivieries can be made, e.g. 6-8am when barriers are open to let vehicles in and out.

However this model just does not work in the US, outside of very few places. US cities are designed for cars, and without major redevelopment everything's just too far apart - even within the context of a single street - for this to make sense. If you had electric scooters or something though...

<comment><USER24> > there are strict time limits on when delivieries can be made, e.g. 6-8am > when barriers are open to let vehicles in and out.

That is nuts.

That means a plumber, electrician, home appliance deliveryman, mover, etc. can only handle one job requiring a vehicle per day. He will have to charge 3-4 times more for his services than someone working in an area where it's feasible to finish 3-4 jobs in a workday. The costs are of course passed on to the customers. Is their car-less life worth living in a pigsty that they can't fix up because laws force contractors to charge exorbitant fees?

That means any business will want a dedicated vehicle to haul what they need in the 6-8 am window. This is not just grossly economically inefficient (no outsourcing delivery to third parties), it results in more vehicles sitting idle during the day, using up parking space!

And that means moving is a nightmare. Moving a two-bedroom apartment worth of stuff into or out of a truck is, realistically, at least a four hour job. That means a cross-town move that could be done in one workday with sane laws will take at least four workdays (two to load the truck, two to unload) in your crazy UK town. Imagine the costs. How is it moral for you to shackle your people to the land by making relocation unaffordable?

<comment><USER25> When you look into the details of these things you'll nearly always find that there are enough exemptions to make it work. If it was genuinely unliveable people wouldn't live there. People have managed to live in Venice for centuries despite it being physically impossible to get motor vehicles around the centre.

[https://www.eco-business.com/news/how-a-city-in-spain-got- ri...](https://www.eco-business.com/news/how-a-city-in-spain-got-rid-of-its- cars/)

"In fact, in most streets there are no physical barriers to keep the cars out. Vehicles making deliveries or locals heading to private garages can still circulate in most places.

"What we did is to create loops to keep people from driving through the city," Lores explains. "If you enter by the south, you leave by the south."

The goal of this strategy, which is complemented by severe parking restrictions in all of the central area, is to get rid of what Pontevedra officials call "unnecessary traffic".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> >pedestrianised all 300,000 sq m of the medieval centre

It's a lot less impressive when you realize that they just banned cars from the area that was optimized for foot traffic anyway. Good on them for not trying to go to far and force people to walk/bike in areas designed for cars.

>"while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges."

Tangent: This is probably the most European quote ever. Roman senators, medieval lords, members of parliament, Napoleon, the Kaiser, etc, etc. could have all said this.

>And the same shopkeepers who complain are the ones who have survived in spite of the crisis

Surviving in spite of the crisis does not make the crisis fun or necessary. It took a lot of boarded up shops before my city took away the bike lanes and put back the on-street parking (no, the failed businesses did not coincide with the recession if anyone was wondering). You gotta do what works even if it's not what fits your political objectives. If an area of the city was designed for pedestrians that's probably what will work best there. If an area of the city was designed for cars then that's probably what will work best there. It's a disservice to taxpayers to use their money to jam a square peg in a round hole or vise-versa.

>The works were all financed locally and received no aid from regional or central government.

Good on them for not asking for a handout.

<comment><USER27> >"while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges."

There's nothing European about it, despite the fantasy of Europe being comfortable with dictatorships. Driving a car is also a privilege in the US - try driving one without your state-sanctioned license to do so and you will discover that.

By the way, Members of Parliament are democratically elected so I am not sure how they fit in with the rest of the motley crew.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Cars have to some extent led us through part of the industrial revolution. However, it's my belief that cars, except from polluting the environment and destroying our cities - makes people unhappy and sad.

Visiting LA this summer, I knew I was in for a car heavy metropolis but this... I can't understand why people waste so much time of their precious life (usually alone which also greatly worsen the problem) - locked in a car.

Coming to the topic of the autonomous car revolution, which I frankly do not understand. Sometimes it feels like the ambition is to end up as the humans in WALL-E. What kind of life is that?

Ps. Coming from Europe, I crossed US by bicycle a few years ago, from NY to US. People say it's a country to be seen through a car, but I argue it's to be seen on a bike.

<comment><USER29> I was born in Europe and lived there for 14 years before moving to US. I went there recently.

I also recently visited LA.....

Most people I know from smaller cities in Poland own cars or would love to own a car but simply cannot afford it as gas is really expensive, so are cars compared to incomes. When I visited I rented a car which allowed me to see so many things all over the country. I would not able to visit so many locations without a car.

Same goes for LA, renting a car allowed me to travel from LA to San Diego on a relatively short trip.

In NY over 50% households are car-free. In Chicago about 30% of households are car-free. People travel to cities for various reasons, often they don't do it daily.

My wife traveled to school by train in city of chicago for one year, then she switched to driving her car, she saved a lot of time on her commute, and didn't have to deal with weirdos on the trains at night.

Cars are here to stay. Some people drive less by utilizing services like amazon but then amazon needs to deliver packages, but, I guess that still minimizes fuel consumption as things are delivered in a more efficient way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> First thing I noticed when moved to SF Bay Area from Europe was "God, Los Gatos would be so beautiful if the main street was a pedestrian area." Then went actively searching for one and found a little stretch at Santana Row in San Jose, if you can call 30 meters of blocked off street pedestrian area.

But even dense populated cities like SF dont have a pedestrian zone. It is one of the rare things I miss quality of life wise.

<comment><USER31> I agree. I think that there is a transition point where slow moving cars and people can intermingle. A third option, a hybrid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a kid in the early '90s the corner market, grocery store, schools from elementary to high, both jobs I had, and park were all within a 10 minute walk -- and that was in the suburbs. Cars don't need to be a requirement for daily life even in the suburbs it just requires good planning or planning at all.

<comment><USER32> When people ask me why I like living in Mexico, this is one of the main reasons:

The other week I walked around my neighborhood in Guadalajara to do some errands. I got my knives sharpened, picked up my repaired shoes from the cobbler, some fried pumpkin seeds from the seed guy, some meat from the butcher, and then some tacos of course. All within two blocks.

<comment><USER33> I moved to a center (pedestrian zona) of a small town in central Europe, from a country's capital, same experience here.

In a capital, I didn't do a detour on my way home to get a good bread, as it would add 15 minutes to a way home. Here it's a pleasant walk behind a corner.

<comment><USER34> European grocery stores are so wonderful. I love how everyone's just stopping by to pick up a few things for dinner and tomorrow's breakfast, not pushing their yacht of a shopping cart around. The produce is always super fresh and cheap compared to American, and I always like getting a nice carbonated mineral water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> >People don't like being told they can't drive wherever they want, but Lores says that while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges.

This strikes me as the fundamental issue.

<comment><USER15> Modern discourse about "rights" has become twisted. Some day we need to realize that one person's right is another person's prohibition. A society needs to choose its rights wisely lest the unintended consequences result in less overall freedom.

In a healthy civil society legally enshrined rights are less important because you can trust that everybody's freedom will be maximized, at least to a first- order approximation. In unhealthy societies legal rights are often cold comfort.

<comment><USER21> IMO as we accumulated more and more "rights", the concept became diluted. We went from the bedrock negative rights of freedom of speech, travel, etc, then to positive rights, and then people started applying the concept of "rights" to what I would consider "entitlements".

<comment><USER36> It's all the same debate, really. After all is said and done, rights function to entitle you to things or acts. The blurry line that I believe you might be talking about has a very specific name, but recent social and public discourse make a lot of people nowadays automatically cringe at it's sight (wrongly, IMO) without seriously hearing out or considering it's merits. I'm talking about the word "privilege".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I work in the Domain of Austin Texas, it's an outdoor mall, office park and residential area that is supposed to be like a downtown 2.0 in many ways. A place for humans to "live, shop and work" according to their mantra.

In reality, it's scary to walk to whole foods to get lunch at times. Cars NEVER yield to crosswalks or pedestrians. It's so bad they have flashing LED's on the stop signs in some areas.

The domain would be beautiful if parking garages were on the exterior and everyone had to walk in. Imagine being able to walk to shops, work and dining without worrying about getting plowed down by an F150 with a "thank god for our snipers" sticker on the back.

In fact, the best couple of days at this area are the art walk days but its been a while since I've seen those. For the artwalk days, they close the streets and it's like a magic little city of everyone breathing easier, enjoying some quiet serenity and kids walking around without parents needing 100% attention.

For the price they demand to live and lease space here, it would seem serenity and peacefulness would be the best thing they could do! (and there was plenty of land at one point for exterior garages... now its just a mad dash for people to find spots across the different garages which are all too small for the big trucks texans love)

<comment><USER38> I identify with that crosswalk yielding issue. In Boston they sometimes put up signs on the road surface itself, informing drivers that is ILLEGAL to not yield to pedestrians. I say "You broke the law" loudly whenever a driver doesn't yield in that situation, yet I've never seen any enforcement of this law.

Meanwhile, law enforcement is quick to sit on the highway catching those going with the flow of traffic over the speed limit, or quick to over-police non- violent drug offenses. So sad to see enforcement of the rules of the road take a back seat, especially when it comes to pedestrians, whose chosen mode of transport is beneficial and should be encouraged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> >"The city is the perfect size for pedestrianisation," says local architect Rogelio Carballo Soler. "You can cross the entire city in 25 minutes.

This seems to be the key point why it works.

<comment><USER40> 25 minutes on foot? It's more of a village than a city.

<comment><USER41> Are you familiar with the saying "In Europe 100 miles is a long way, In the US 100 years is a long time"?

<comment><USER42> In Europe 100 miles is... an anglicism :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Most cities in the Netherlands have a car-free inner city or shopping streets, no need to idolize this particular one. Going from a congested city to a car- free one is a good move though.

Interestingly, while Amsterdam's historic inner city is fully open to cars, you don't really see much of them - in part because it's just not practical, in part because parking is very expensive.

</comment><comment><USER44> It drives me crazy seeing people claim to "just" prefer living in the car- oriented suburbs when

1) that lifestyle is vastly subsidized by economic activity generated in the cities

2) the biggest reason cities are unpleasant is (surprise) the high density of car traffic and noise!

The mass distribution of personal cars is going to go down as the greatest mistake in societal development.

</comment><comment><USER45> If you're interested in "walking" around yourself, here's the streetview: [https://goo.gl/maps/gxHkcvg4LWB2](https://goo.gl/maps/gxHkcvg4LWB2)

</comment><comment><USER46> Hi!

I'm living in one of the closes villages around Pontevedra, I'm heabilly use the city, and I'm doing some remote job for an SF startup.

If you have questions, I'm happy to help and provide feedback.

<comment><USER47> What do people do who have to commute to the city for work?

What do you do when you have to buy a few boxes of beer for a party that are too heavy to carry?

How do emergency services work?

<comment><USER46> 1) There are a few types: \- Working in the city center --> Walking mainly. \- Working outside of the city --> Cars/bus __

The city that has banned the cars is the city centre, but is a round island, so in 10-25 min walk, there are parking slots, where you can drive from.

2) Shopping trolley, instead of buying a lot one day, you ended that each day you pick up a few things. (And this is great, 15 min day walking)

3) All the emergency services can go to the city centre, so cars are banned, but if you have an event or emergency cars can get into, here is the common sense rule.

And there is a benefit here, kids are in the street, and due a lot of kids in the street, that moves the street from unsafe, to full of #know people, that make things super safe.

<comment><USER47> Thanks. I suppose the common sense rule also applies if you buy furniture or move in or out of an apartment.

<comment><USER46> Yes!

<comment><USER48> How about more frequent deliveries like stores or restaurants that need to get deliveries every few days?

<comment><USER46> already reply in another thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18015103](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18015103)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I thing "banning" cars in a Town/City work well for smaller cities, through you still might want to have some time frame in which e.g. trucks can bring new goods to super markets, fire fighter etc.

For larger cities I think it would still be possible to have many "no-car" isles, paired with good public transportation available for anyone at "any" place (which can be done today by e.g. using this small and _slow_ self- driving mini buses to connect the home/side streets with the underground trains, regular trains and potentially normal sized buses, you just need to deploy enough of them with a good rout planing algorithm and a smartphone app, through it might be slightly expensive).

<comment><USER46> Hi,

Van and trucks can enter the city the first time in the morning, so things are ok, and there are no problems for that.

The city itself is a "round island", so cars can go close to the estuary and be close to the city, so get into city center takes less than 15 minutes.

<comment><USER26> >and there are no problems for that.

Forcing all deliveries to happen in the early morning sounds like a massive pain in the butt.

For example: Forcing a lunch/dinner restaurant to have people there early to deal with inventory or delivering inventory to a diner during breakfast rush are both far from ideal.

Any industry that routinely has to get materials (e.g. skilled trades) delivered will be inconvenienced by not being able to take delivery during mid-morning or after lunch, this can unnecessarily stretch out jobs (and cost more $$).

I guess if the only industries in your city are white collar or tourism it's fine.

Better to just not allow noncommercial vehicles during certain times.

<comment><USER46> >Forcing all deliveries to happen in the early morning sounds like a massive pain in the butt.

>For example: Forcing a lunch/dinner restaurant to have people there early to deal with inventory or delivering inventory to a diner during breakfast rush are both far from idea

TBH,restaurants the most happier with this changes. More people in the streets means more customers. If the van can get into the door, there is an entry zones, where delivery can be done with less than 5 min walk.

Disclaimer, my father is a deliveryman for restaurants.

> Any industry that routinely has to get materials (e.g. skilled trades) > delivered will be inconvenienced by not being able to take delivery during > mid-morning or after lunch, this can unnecessarily stretch out jobs (and > cost more $$).

Nope, those industries are not in the pedestrian zone, in Galicia, there is a lot of industrial areas for that matter.

For white-collar, these entry areas, allow delivers to walk less than 5 min, so it's ok.

Is not walk/no-walk, the city did awesome to allow entry zones and make the walking culture for all of us.

<comment><USER26> >TBH,restaurants the most happier with this changes. More people in the streets means more customers. If the van can get into the door, there is an entry zones, where delivery can be done with less than 5 min walk.

I should have said industrial foodservice. Are there no schools, hotels, etc. in the city center? Do catering services not deliver lunches to the city center?

>Nope, those industries are not in the pedestrian zone, in Galicia, there is a lot of industrial areas for that matter.

Um, yes, you still have skilled trades. These are the people installing new light fixtures in office buildings and replacing the blower motor for a building's HVAC. Not being able to do diagnostic work and then send someone around later in the day to actually perform repairs is like getting shot in the foot to any business that does repair work.

I support not allowing commuter traffic in city centers but not allowing commercial vehicle traffic seems like needlessly cutting the clock cycle of every part of the economy that deals with physical goods by a factor two or three.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's interesting how people's expectations and attitudes develop. I remember landing at San Diego airport and asking how I could walk the relatively short distance into the city center. I just got looks of derision and directions to the taxi rank. I did attempt to find a walkable route myself to no avail.

It's an interesting contrast to banning cars and essentially banning walking

<comment><USER51> San Diego airport website does give some walking details that were not known by the people you met [https://www.san.org/to-from/Walking- Biking](https://www.san.org/to-from/Walking-Biking)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I'll preface this with saying that I own two cars and in general like cars. However, I think personal motorized transportation along with industrialized animal farming are for me among the two biggest evils that arose in the last century. Cities in North America are entirely architected for the presence and convenience of cars. The mortality arising from pollution and accidents is staggering. The alienation and isolation of people as well. The cities and suburbs stretch so far out that you rarely get to see your friends unless you specifically organize something well ahead of time. Pedestrian zones with small shops are replaced with massive shopping malls.

I've always imagined a modern city with no cars, but I never knew that anyone actually had the balls to make this a reality. Kudos to this Spanish city! You can try to argue that the specifics of this city make it more amenable to being car-free, but I think that if there was enough desire, it would work anywhere. Just think if everyone paid their monthly car loan/lease into the public transportation system how incredibly functional it could be.

</comment><comment><USER53> Working in the center of Berlin, I wish Berlin would do the same. There is a hospital near, and a constant load noise level from ambulances. Without cars, those could be much much quieter, but traffic increased, cars got more soundproof and people hear loud music, so ambulances became loader all the time. Noise kills people.

</comment><comment><USER54> I really dislike cars and being around cars. They are noisy. They ruin the air quality of a city. They take up massive amounts of space through parking that could be better used. They force the public to subsidize car owners. They kill people through both air pollution and through collisions. They dominate a city's life in an extremely unattractive way.

I base a lot of my existence around avoiding cars and living in places where I can have a pleasant walk without having to deal with traffic. To the point where I recently moved from Chicago, Illinois to Portland, Oregon because Portland is a much more pedestrian friendly city. And it shows. You walk around the city and it's actually alive and working.

In Portland, people don't have to have their children on leashes because every street isn't a 4 lane highway with constant traffic that is disrespectful to people's space. People are strolling down the streets and wandering into businesses. In Portland drivers slow down and wave you across the street instead of swerving around you at 40 miles an hour.

In Chicago a common occurrence was for a car to decide to make a red light, so they would make a turn into a crowd of pedestrians who are crossing the street and "shoot the gap" without slowing down, with maybe 3 feet of clearance on either side. People would open doors without a second thought and door bikers. Trucks would make dangerous turns into bikers and frequently kill them ( A young woman was recently killed this way, and I once had to jump off of my bike and drag it onto the sidewalk to avoid being run over ).

Cars drivers seem to enter this "magic circle" where it's fine to do dumb and extremely dangerous things because you are driving. When you are in a car, all behavior is acceptable.

Decide to teach the biker a lesson by turning into them? They won't charge you with anything.

Swerve into a crowd of pedestrians? It's fine normal behavior.

Make a blind turn into an alley and have to slam on the breaks to avoid running into a pedestrian? Totally A-OK chief! Great work!

As has been pointed out elsewhere, a lot of European cities do not have this problem. When visiting France, I went to the city of Strasbourg where they have a very nice little "park and ride" system where you park your fume- spewing, space-taking machine and park it in the PARKING AREA, instead of letting you drag it into their beautiful city.

strongtowns.org has a lot of great information about how the US road infrastructure is, to put it bluntly, a dumb and bad experiment that has failed.

<comment><USER55> > I really dislike cars and being around cars. They are noisy. They ruin the > air quality of a city.

I guess you are not alone. Given a certain location, the singlemost important indicator of your house price is the amount of cars driving by each day.

A factor of 3 in my immediate neighborhood:

$15k per m^2 in a cul de sac vs. only a 100 meters apart $5k per m^2 next to a 4-lane road with quite some traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Population: 82.5k - obviously cars have no business driving through such a place.

I spend a good chunk of the year in Bologna, Italy. The city centre there is a roughly ~4km^2 _Zona Traffico Limitato_ \- an area in which only certain vehicles are allowed during certain hours. Pretty much every city in Italy has such a zone and 4km^2 to me seems to be the ideal size for it.

That being said I know a few people who live in the centre and judging by their experiences, I wouldn't want to move there. It's so densely packed that noise bounces off the walls effectively amplifying itself. Also there are no residential waste bins so if you miss trash day during the summer your organic waste turns into an unholy bag of stink.

Walkable cities are a nice concept, but one has to watch out for one perverse incentive that is created along the way: pack everything as densely as possible.

</comment><comment><USER57> There is a pedestrian city in my province (Córdoba, Argentina) called La Cumbrecita. You leave your car in the entrance to the city in a parking lot and you can walk the entire town.

First time I visit there made me wonder why not all towns aren't pedestrian like this. I mean most towns have nice sidewalks and are walkable but why not just banning cars. In addition to having less noise I can imagine plenty of other benefits.

> [La Cumbrecita] is completely pedestrian and reminiscent of the small German > towns of the fifteenth century. One can hike up through the town (and then > down) to the waterfall, a truly paradisiacal experience.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cumbrecita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cumbrecita)

</comment><comment><USER58> The one question I have, that I haven't seen answered in the article or elsewhere, is how deliveries are handled. Presumably shops and businesses in a car-free city need to get truckloads of goods or equipment moved in and out on a regular basis. How is it done?

I've always loved the idea of being able to live in a car-free city, but never quite understood how certain things would work, including garbage collection, deliveries, and emergency services, without vehicular traffic.

Or do they make exceptions for all of those? Does anyone know?

<comment><USER59> Where I live, the municipality is seriously looking into an out of the city distribution centre with (smaller, electric) vehicles for supplying the city centre. That doesn't make it free of cars, but it will be more efficient (not every shop needs their own supply truck, supplies can be shared).

<comment><USER58> Which city is that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> This may be nice in a sunny seaside tourist city, but any pedestrianised towns I've been to in the UK are barren, dull, and frankly scary once the sun starts to set.

</comment><comment><USER61> I would like to take this moment to advertise a project currently under development in my city:

[https://beltline.org/about/the-atlanta-beltline- project/atla...](https://beltline.org/about/the-atlanta-beltline- project/atlanta-beltline-overview/)

The Atlanta belt-line is mostly being built on top of old light rail line around the city. The idea, as I understand it, is to provide a pedestrian and (unfortunately) cyclists only pathway that connects many of the notable places around the city. On this pathway, there already exists a large amount of beltline and road accessible shopping/restaurants/bars. There are plans to build a large amount similarly accessible housing on the beltline as well.

I assert that this strategy is a better alternative than closing off convex sections for cities similar to Atlanta. What would define a city similar to Atlanta? One that is not very dense, with some undeveloped or neglected land in urban areas, and whose centers of social activity are decentralized. By saying the centers of social activity are decentralized, I mean to say that the major parks, stadiums, shopping developments, chic neighborhoods, and so on, are dispersed around a few mile radius of downtown. Shutting of any two square mile area to car traffic would fail to capture more than a few of these places, and cause worse traffic problems elsewhere, which is costly regardless of how you approach it.

There are some downsides to the beltline of course, mainly its cost, but you get the same opportunity for a pedestrian urban experience, without overtly turning it into a political battle.

</comment><comment><USER62> Most of Golden Gate Park in SF is closed to cars every Sunday (and Saturday during summer) and it is really magical. Normally living in a city makes you feel tiny but this makes you feel like everyone is on the same level.

[http://sfrecpark.org/permits-and-reservations/special- events...](http://sfrecpark.org/permits-and-reservations/special- events/golden-gate-park-road-closures/)

</comment><comment><USER63> European cities were very much pedestrian and bike town in the 1950's. In Helsinki they proposed banning bikes from city center, because they caused traffic congestion and gave poorish image of Finland. Bike paths were kept open all year manually. I biked some 10 km to school and every single day dozens of guys had woken at 5 o'clock and shoveled and sanded narrow but adequate bike path just for me.

</comment><comment><USER64> The Las Vegas Strip is the antithesis of this. It's probably the only place in the world where the main downtown area is also an 8 lane highway. It's so bad that you actually cannot cross the street there, and you have to get around by walking on raised walkways above the street. Uniquely terrible urban planning.

[https://odis.homeaway.com/odis/destination/2ee03d5b-c981-44d...](https://odis.homeaway.com/odis/destination/2ee03d5b-c981-44df- ae3a-e526f7e3ec01.hw1.jpg)

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/La...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Las_Vegas_%2822096744189%29.jpg/1200px- Las_Vegas_%2822096744189%29.jpg)

[http://theworldisurban.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/05/Elevat...](http://theworldisurban.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/05/ElevatedWalkway.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER65> What about people who live inside city limits but work elsewhere? For example, I currently reside in Washington, DC but work about 30 min away. There is no public transportation to my work. At night, I park in a garage but there are others who park on the street and commute out of the city every morning.

<comment><USER66> This would solve itself if cars were banned. Either you would have to find a more practical place to live, the city add public transportation to the work, you find a new place to work, the work moving offices etc.

It's only a problem because you decide things has to be exactly like they are. But with other constraints the society would have landed on an other configuration.

<comment><USER67> Every solution in your second sentence either costs businesses money or costs your workforce money.

What is your solution for your economy when BOTH decide to relocate to an administrative region that DOESN'T ban cars?

I've considered other places to live in Asia, namely Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. I found that used Japanese sports cars (I own several) were all prohibitively expensive to import/register in each. The crazy-low "total cost of ownership" for automobiles is one of several reasons that Japan is my primary base of operations/residence.

<comment><USER68> I'm sure that if you're into car sports you could get someone to sponsor the import.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I grew up in the suburbs in Los Angeles. I lived on a cul de sac. Think the family house in ET. We played in the street all the time. That seems pretty normal for suburbia isn't it? I would ride around the block or over to the next cul-de-sac from like 4yrs old.

</comment><comment><USER70> The article has similar sentiments on promoting walkable cities as the whole blog "Strong Towns". [https://www.strongtowns.org/](https://www.strongtowns.org/)

</comment><comment><USER71> It's also possible to design cities for both people and cars. The trick is to separate them.

For example a shopping street where no cars are allowed could have parking lots at the back of the shops. So trucks can supply the shops and customers can pickup large goods with their car.

Another method is what we call in Dutch a 'Cauliflower-neighbourhood'. The closer a road comes to the place were people live, the smaller they become. And speed limits will go down as well. The limits most of the time go from 50km/h to 30km/h to 15 or even 5km/h.

</comment><comment><USER72> I wish, we could do that in the few feets of Murphy's Square in Sunnyvale. It would be so pleasant to _not_ have hot spewing smog vehicles park, one feet from your dining table.

</comment><comment><USER73> In my city, Linz in Austria, only a small part is pedestrian, and even then the main-line of the 4 (actually 2+2) tram lines is cutting right through it. I wish they'd extend the pedestrian area and add that second tram line overground rather than underground as the current political fantasies look like.

Anyways, from that article, if you have a change in a city's government, change is a lot more likely to happen. If only there were some time- limitations on mayor posts and the council.

</comment><comment><USER74> We so so need this in Hongkong, especially in the older areas where the streets feel as narrow as a rickshaw. Public transport is excellent and ppl here so unhealthy i general they need the walking anyway! Most of the corridoor from Saiyingpun all the way to North Point at least should be car free. And pretty much all of TST through to Mongkok. More than enough metro lines and bordering causeways to move the masses in an out of the area.

<comment><USER75> As much as I like to see a car free HK, there's still a lot of need for vehicles in those areas, banning cars, especially in HK is not the solution.

If you want people to walk more, make the city actually walk friendly, even a short walk from my apartment to the MTR station is annoying; people just randomly walk anywhere, making it impossible to enjoy walking. There's aircons leaking constantly, little newspaper stands blocking the sideways.

I really enjoy walking, but in HK it's really not that fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> We were living in downtown Toronto during [the Northeast blackout of 2003]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003)). It was _amazing_ to experience the city, for several days, without the usual crush of cars and trucks and busses on the roads. Really magic couple of days I'll never forget.

</comment><comment><USER77> I really like the idea of restricting where and when people can drive their cars. In China there are policies in place that only allow to commute with your car on certain days of the week. The other days you need to use public transport or find a car pool.

A lot of Americans think that they should be able to drive and park their car when and where ever they want. This mentality needs to change if we want to continue to grow our cities sustainably.

</comment><comment><USER78> I have a fantasy that once a year a major US cities (think Manhattan) ban private cars for a day. Public Transit, and emergency vehicles pass as normal.

</comment><comment><USER79> Many cities in the US have banned cars from a significant number of Downtown Streets. We call them skyways for the most part, though sometimes they are underground. It works well, keeps cars out of the way of people. It also makes for a nice environment to walk around.

Our zoning is such that those streets close at night, and I wouldn't recommend them in the late hours before they are officially closed.

</comment><comment><USER80> All of a sudden, Elon Musk's vision to have all traffic underground is a lot more sound.

I love this guy, seeing him so misunderstood makes me sad.

</comment><comment><USER81> Seems like a good time to re-post this rant by James Howard Kunstler on what's wrong with modern USA urban planning:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...](https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia?language=en)

</comment><comment><USER82> In Slovakia every bigger city have pedestrian zone with no cars. Its the one of the best things you can do for city.

</comment><comment><USER83> I am sure it also helps tourism. I'm definitely putting this on my bucket list when going to Spain next time.

</comment><comment><USER84> Had a quick search and didn't see anyone talking about it.

If your interested by this article you might enjoy the book 'happy city'. It's a bit one sided but looks at how cars have changed cities, and how changes can be made to make them happier.

</comment><comment><USER85> In Germany we have a similar paradise: the island Helgoland [1].

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heligoland#Road_restrictions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heligoland#Road_restrictions)

<comment><USER86> Helgoland is a tax haven, too. Only thing it lacks is an organised business district.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> So how does these car-less cities manage followings:

\- Truck delivery to businesses such as large stores/shopping malls

\- Ambulance, police car services

\- Disabled/old people wanting to move around

If you allow any or all of above, you still need roads for vehicles only, traffic lights etc, right?

</comment><comment><USER88> I'd love to live in a city like this. I spent a couple of days in Dublin and it was just crazy how loud, crowded and congested with cars and buses the city is. Was not really pleasant walking through the city.

</comment><comment><USER89> What piques my interest is why on earth has Pontevedra a Citibank office

<comment><USER90> Must be an old photo: Citibank retail exited Europe in 2014 (Citibank España was sold to Banco Popular in 2014)

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> my wife and I used to need to take vacations and drive to the mountains on the weekends just to get away from the stress of the city. Then we moved to an area where we can bike to two separate town centers and we haven't felt the need to take a vacation in years.

We are more social and more relaxed now, and I swear it's because we can bike to all the places we would have driven, like restaurants, movie theaters and grocery stores.

Ditching the car has been a very positive experience.

</comment><comment><USER92> > pedestrianised all 300,000 sq m of the medieval centre,

I'm reminded of the Isle of Sark. I thought it must be bigger but wiki says it's only 5,000 sq m.

</comment><comment><USER93> It'd be so nice in downtown Seattle if a few of the streets were closed off to cars for 4 hours a day or so.

</comment><comment> village-idiot If it weren't for the massive culture shock and difficulty, I'd live in Munich. I love the quiet city center.

<comment><USER94> There's actually only one street with no cars (Kaufinger Str.) and lots of traffic around on the Altstadtring and such. It's far from a city without cars, to the contrary. Also you'd need to be able to afford the rent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> I wonder when "I don't own a car", will be the new "I don't own a TV"

<comment><USER96> I never owned a TV or a car :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Been there recently. The peace and quiet was uncanny, it felt like my hometown half a century ago.

</comment><comment><USER98> Are stores and restaurants able to get supplies by vehicle to restock?

</comment><comment><USER99> That must feel so weird, but at the same time, so quiet and peaceful.

</comment><comment><USER100> I walk to the grocery store most days. It seems to kill several birds with one stone:

\- unwind after work

\- get exercise

\- get outside

\- time to think

You would think it would be a lot more popular but it's not. It seems more like there must be something wrong with you if you walk on a daily basis lol. ... societal norms I guess.

<comment><USER101> Come back when you are seventy and tell us if you still enjoy cycling with forty pounds of groceries

This entire thread is predicated on building cities for young single men

<comment><USER102> When you have things at walk distance you don't need to buy 40 pounds of groceries. That's a US suburban problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> Why is this news? The town of General Belgrano in Argentina banned cars ages ago.

</comment><comment><USER104> This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward.

Cities get bigger and denser, and wasting a big % of land on parking spaces, roads, intersections and accepting a horrible air quality (that reduces citizen life spans and health quality) and noise pollution just does not make any sense anymore. Carse are effective in less dense regions, but in modern cities other solutions have to be found. Mass transit, biking lanes, electro- scooters, (elevated)-footpaths are the way to go. Maybe even electric ridesharing.

But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society.

I know european cities are much more pedestrian friendly & that US cities in general are more oriented towards the car lifestyle, but as said previously, this needs to change. It is a big cultural and infrastructure change over a longer timespan, but it is achievable.

Of course change always requires some sacrifice, and I imagine the car-drivers in above mentioned article must have been plenty pissed at the beginning. But they paved over the streets, made the inner city pedestrian only, and now they are better for it. Of course this is a very small town and these changes do not scale up as easily as one would like, and much more complex projects will have to be designed for bigger cities. But it is doable (see initiatives in e.g. Madrid, Munich & most of the netherlands) and "only" requires some long- term commitment. But we all know how good politicians are at that (what's global warming??).

I want to finish this comment with a call to engage in democracy. Make your opinion heard, loudly, go to the voting polls, participate in your local council, actually engage in politics. Because if you do not, no significant change will be made any time soon.

<comment><USER105> On top of other issues, most of Europe also enjoys a 4-season year - <USER2> that a bike or scooter is safely and comfortably usable around half of a year, definitely not more.

<comment><USER106> Please send a note to the Dutch (and the Germans, the Danish, the French, the Belgians, …) to tell them to stop riding their bicycles in the midst of winter.

In the past five years there was one day when I couldn't cycle to work due to black ice covering most of the roads, and even that resolved itself in the afternoon. Snow just means you need a bit more dexterity than usual.

As for comfort; proper clothing means you are pretty much comfortable most of the time.

<comment><USER107> > black ice ... snow

The ultimate irony of the point attempted to be made is that people don't drive when ice or snow cover on the road (or suck at it, take undue risks, fail to, and ram into curbs/cars/people).

<comment><USER108> What? People drive on the ice and snow all the time, what are you talking about? Not all countries have mild climate, you know.

<comment><USER109> Many people don't though (look at how attendance rates plummet at schools and businesses on heavy snow days), and of those who do drive anyway, the accident rate is highly elevated.

<comment><USER110> I cannot relate to what you write at all. In all my years in school, I did not witness a single day of attendance drop due to weather (the only weather- related exception was for the early years of elementary school, when you could choose not to go outside during breaks if the temperature was low enough, but that was rarely the case here near the coast).

What's more, in bad weather people (who have the option to choose between public transportation and their own vehicles) tend to choose cars more often because public transit has a habit of becoming increasingly unreliable, especially due to winter conditions, even though such conditions can be reasonably expected for 6 months a year.

<comment><USER107> I grew in a mountain pass area where there (used to, times change...) be heavy snow 2 to 4 months per year, and learned to drive there. Now I live in a city where snow happens regularly but much less and typically goes away in a couple of days, and when there's snow there's much less people on the roads, and for those who are, only a fraction know how to handle it, or even have proper winter tyres even though temperatures dive below the freezing point every year. People routinely flat out skip work on such days because "snow", which coming from where I grew up, is unfathomable unless you got a meter of snow overnight. On the occasional trip to Paris I've witnessed a couple events where emergency services are scrambling to bring water, food, and clothes to people gridlocked for hours (it was _winter_ and many couldn't be arsed to take even a _jacket_ , oblivious to their environment, living in their air- conditioned bubbles from house to covered parking lot to car to workplace); the entirety of the city streets was in deadlock because of a couple of millimetres of snow (obviously {rail,sub}way was unaffected). Pure madness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> Not sure what your situation is but there are a fair number of options for people who are decent programmers to move to Europe permanently..

<comment><USER112> It's hard to justify when you could potentially be looking at a 50% pay cut. That's the only reason I haven't moved myself.

<comment><USER113> Do you actually get anything out of that 50% more pay? Thinking about higher rent, healthcare etc.

<comment><USER114> Absolutely. Only a few cities in the USA are expensive on an international level. The cost of living in most regions of the USA is so incredibly low that a decent programmer has a _shot_ of having a paid off house & car, no student loans, and $100k or so retirement account by the age of 30 (assuming graduating college @22).

Where I live, the median house price is about $170k USD (avg rent is just under $900/mo) and the median software engineer salary is just under $100k USD.

Plus, taxes in the USA can be pretty low.

<comment><USER115> Where do you live?

<comment><USER114> Ohio

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> Eliminate cars. Eliminate the options for people to be autonomous. Pack everyone into major metropolitan cities by the millions. Stop building houses. Build Up. Build condos and apartments. Eliminate the option for people to buy land because it is unsustainable and the state knows better. Sounds like a perfect dystopian society.

</comment><comment><USER117> Once all cars become electric this will solve one of the biggest problems. Then once they become self-driving the other 25% of noise (honking, sirens, etc) would be significantly reduced.

<comment><USER118> Half of the problem with cars is a geometric one, they take up too much space. They give rise to sprawl and thus increase the demand for cars in a vicious cycle. Them being electric or self driving will not solve that.

<comment><USER117> Still, noise is a major factor. Just take the mayor's comments from the article and the opening sentence:

> In Pontevedra, the usual soundtrack of a Spanish city has been replaced by > the tweeting of birds and the chatter of humans

> "Listen," says the mayor, opening the windows of his office. From the street > below rises the sound of human voices.

Noise is the #1 problem with cars. Walkability and space issues via parking are #2.

<comment><USER119> A lot of the sound of cars are them moving over the road, not the engine noise. Electric wouldn't help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER120> Urbanists who hate cars like to tear down freeways. E.g. in SF they tore down the Embarcadero and Central freeways, instead of repairing and extending them. This of course forces more cars onto the streets, making life worse for everyone.

<comment><USER121> But to be fair, San Francisco did not even want the Embarcadero freeway and proposed a tunnel that the state nixed. When the thing collapsed in an earthquake it was a pretty easy choice to not spend money building something the city didn't even want.

You do have to agree that not having to walk under a urine-soaked freeway to get to the waterfront is an improvement to the city. The tunnel would have also been fine, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER122> >How can it be that private property – the car – occupies the public space?

Regardless of what you think of this policy, this is the level of reasoning of a 14 year old.

<comment><USER123> I feel like we should be charitable on the actual wording of the statement as the speaker is being quoted in their non native language.

I read this as more that we can't just default to subsidising private cars in a public space. Roads, parking and other infrastructure that de facto subsidize and encourage private car usage but which often are considered "free".

<comment><USER124> _Roads, parking and other infrastructure that de facto subsidize and encourage private car usage but which often are considered "free"._

Taxes on fuel raise £50Bn/year for the exchequer, which is double the amount spent by the government on all transportation of all kinds. No one considers it to be "free", and in fact drivers subsidise everything else.

<comment><USER125> How many of those £50Bn need to go to the NHS to treat illnesses caused by drivers?

<comment><USER124> Given that the entire NHS budget is £125Bn I'm guessing... not much?

How many lives has the road system saved, by the way? What do ambulances drive on? Or even ordinary drivers taking sick or injured relatives to the hospital themselves?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


James Dean, who died in 1955, just landed a new movie role, thanks to CGI - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/6/20951485/james-dean-new-movie-cgi-recreation-finding-jack <comment><USER2> Does he get paid? If he gets paid, is it less than what he would have earned if he was alive? Would that lead to the situation where movies are more likely to be made with dead actors to increase the studios' profits? Would that put more and more current living actors out of work?

Do we really need _any_ live actors?</comment>


9 Ways To Jumpstart Your Writing Goal (Surprisingly applicable to programming.) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dumblittleman.com/2008/03/9-ways-to-jumpstart-your-writing-goal.html <comment><USER2> I would add a tenth (to get us to one of those lists of ten we all love so much): the martini method that I discussed using here with a very low bar:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=121576></comment>


Trying to start something - <AUTHOR> http://signup.resumati.ca/

<comment><AUTHOR> Inspired by all of you here at Hacker News, I decided to pick an idea and roll with it. I just wanted to get some experience in running a business. I really appreciate your support here at Hacker News!

Things I'll be doing over the next few months: 1\. Building an MVP 2\. Marketing - should I start hitting small business and recruiting forums to gauge the interest and define my feature set? What else can I do?

Aside: Organize infrastructure to allow for an easier deployment. I'm currently running on Linode with Django and nginx and while I have it set up, I don't think it'll be easy to maintain. Should I shift to something like Heroku instead? My main concern is cost right now.</comment>


iOS 5 Browser Performance Changes - <AUTHOR> http://www.blaze.io/mobile/ios5-top10-performance-changes/

<comment><USER2> Very interesting, I knew UI Web View is a lot slower than native mobile safari browser, but the details are very educative. Thanks</comment>


When a Colleague Doesn't Pull His Weight - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/jobs/30career.html

<comment><USER2> I worked with a coequal person who often bugged me as I spend less time in the office than he did.

I guess he saw me as a colleague who didn't pull his weight. But I was more productive than him. I got my stuff done and left, whereas he needed much longer for his tasks.

This caused a lot of frustration for me and him, as we both felt we were treated unfairly. I thought a lot about our problem and came to the following conclusion: This was a trust issue, as most things are. He simply did not trust me to complete my tasks on time and wanted to monitor my progress almost to the point of obsession.

I told him that trust was the foundation of our relationship, and that if he couldn't trust me enough to complete my tasks on time, I would not continue working with him.

In my opinion, stress between colleagues about getting work done should never be an issue in a healthy company. People need to be able to trust each other that they work in the interest of the company. Before a lazy employee can affect the whole team, the employer should have handled the situation.</comment>


Ask HN: Best word to describe this process? - <AUTHOR>

Picking the most important out of a bunch - what one word best captures this process?
I've been trying to come up with it to describe my startup but haven't had any luck. Any ideas?
P.S. I thought of 'aggregator' but that's not quite right since an aggregator only collects. <comment><USER2> The first few ideas which come to mind: Optimizing, Ranking, Adjudicating, Selecting.

I don't know if any of those quite fit, but I thought I'd throw them out just in case.

<comment><AUTHOR> 'Ranker' sounds good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll update my post as i continue to think about it, but first thing i thought was:

Natural selection, evolution etc.

edit: Screening, (thought filter was obvious!), Sifting, scrutinize

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I was also thinking of 'selector'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like you're choosing the "cream of the crop".

From what others wrote, I like "select", "cherry-picking", and "blessed". I don't like "filter", "screen", or "cull", because they imply getting rid of (bad) stuff; you probably want to concentrate on the good stuff.

What qualities are you wanting to measure when determining what's important? I'd brainstorm in that direction, if that's something that can be determined ahead of time.

If you're doing something like an aggregator that puts the good stuff at the top, then "cream of the crop" would be good as I said, or make something up like "cream of the top". Or something about slicing off the top. Or other things that might have good/better stuff at the top: ice cream cones, cupcakes, shakes, lots of garnished food.

</comment><comment><USER5> Look at the words used in algorithm books for selecting the maximum - "maximizing" and "gradient following" and etc. Maybe one of those is appropriate.

Since all the english words are likely to be already taken as domain names, find out the Tibetan name for when the monks go around and find the baby that the Dalai Lama's soul has moved into, and then use that.

Or maybe do something that reminds people of seeing who can pull the sword out of the stone, or the playoff process in sports.

</comment><comment><USER6> highlight

filter

select

<comment><AUTHOR> 'select' was the first one that came to my mind, but I'm really digging 'filter' :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Prioritizing

There's also online thesauri. e.g.: <http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/prioritize> try starting with different words.

</comment><comment><USER8>
      Championing
      Zooming
      Nabbing
      Being a connoisseur (commoisseuring?)
      Sifting

Trying to hit some words that aren't just CS/Engineering oriented.

</comment><comment><USER9> cull (verb) 2\. select or obtain from a large quantity or a variety of sources.

cherry-pick (verb) selectively choose (the best things or people) from those available

prefer (verb, preferred, preferring) 1 like (someone or something) better than another or others; tend to choose

</comment><comment><USER10> Tick!

"tick the right answer" (in english exams)

may be useful for you!

</comment><comment><USER11> Cherrypick

</comment><comment><USER12> filtering?

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this one the best so far - 'filter' seems to best capture the idea. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> pluck

</comment><comment><USER14> refine, review, grab, point, target, track

</comment><comment><USER15> Priorganizing!

</comment><comment><USER16> "champeen"

</comment><comment><USER17> how about handpick?

</comment><comment><USER18> Sieve?

</comment><comment><USER19> paragonizer

</comment><comment><USER20> single out

</comment><comment><USER21> curate</comment>


House Oversight Committee grills Comey over Clinton e-mail findings - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/house-oversight-committee-grills-comey-over-clinton-e-mail-findings/ <comment><USER2> I am bored of this. It is political grandstanding. It is not about law or right and wrong, it is about the election. Please don't post about things like this.</comment>


Scribes: The most focused text-editor got even more focused - <AUTHOR> http://mystilleef.blogspot.com/2010/04/scribes-50-less-fat.html?showComment=1271016050853_AIe9_BENHy9_54qkGf5YNVyBurbNSyrwayp9LaqJgzbcFXvfKCcElGO7k0YJIQZxvHjARySSAEjA724_RoWpwn1fc2TZ3tQkMgoXnDfltUOz31iIhR-zivrBpsTIRfX2DMi7T1OXFJ5Vy5gvqWjGczmx6aiu41DAqkn058cMyKs8kh25cQTsCZRN8E9DulC5Mi_hzU-DJIZT6ASprTBh-fWIGx73-Pnqq4TJ3AxYTOkA8Xa7KJODR_8#c7106988065419681360 <comment><USER2> I would like to point out that vim has never had a menu bar when opened from the command line.

<comment><USER3> gvim doesn't need them either.

Goodbye toolbar

      :set guioptions-=T

Goodbye menubar

      :set guioptions-=m

<comment><USER4> Thats what I have in my gvimrc :)

And for things like copy/paste across apps the + buffer works nicely.

        "+yy
        "+p

and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm hoping for the next big breakthrough... getting rid of all those white lines I'm not using, as my scripts are short. Perhaps they can lock the window to 5 lines or so, and then expand as I type. And, to be honest, I don't use all those columns, so perhaps pare it down to a 1x1 text box and expand as needed.

Just kidding, jeez, of course I'd want it to be 1 column, 5 lines to start with. Who writes 1 liners anymore? :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> :set fullscreen

<comment><USER7> E518: Unknown option: fullscreen

<comment><USER6> you need a mac & MacVim. Works great.</comment></comment></comment>


How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/308873/ <comment><USER2> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3573694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3573694)

</comment><comment><USER3> This topic is crazy, seems to resurface as some revelation, despite being contested, every six months or so, for years.

</comment><comment><USER4> Might want to add a [2012] to the title

<comment><USER2> Added. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Debian Drops the SPARC Architecture - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/596663/

<comment><AUTHOR> Debian was the keeper of the flame for non-X86 forever.

I don't think Android could have happened if it wasn't for the Debian volunteers keeping Linux portable for 15 years.

Yeah, the kernel devs wrote the kernel, but Debian ran the build farm that ensured arm, pa-risc, m68k, SPARC, Power, and MIPS actually worked.</comment>


Verily: We're developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/google_comms/status/1238574670686928906 <comment><USER2> I was initially impressed that Google was stepping up to get this up for the good of the country. I'm not the best estimator (a good manager will double what I tell them) but I think a lot of us here could have something testable by Monday, surely I thought Google could have...</comment>


Web 2.0 Startup Lessons - What I did right / where I screwed up - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/web-2.0-startup-lessons

<comment><USER2> Quote: _We were selling 'cool' and riding on hope; never really figured out how we will make money out of it._

Oof!

 _Can't run a start-up part time: have to give it everything you've got._

I think this is largely a result of, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, a Silicon Valley cultural pathology that says that you're not really working unless you're working until 4 AM in the morning.

I have never had an interpreter throw an InsufficientlyDedicatedToTheProjectException. You are probably not in a business which has radical changes on a week to week basis. Why assume that pace is normative?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you are right to some extent, but its fairly regular that when you are excited about something you are doing - time, sleep, etc take a backseat. You'll spend all your time thinking about it / building it. That is why it is important to be clear in your head - what do you love - the product or the business.

We loved the product we were building, so that kept us going. For geeks/hackers, the primary motivation is to build something they like, instead of $$. The money is incidental and its easy to get carried away with the 'product'. Some of us ended up working 7 days a week, 15 hrs a day on it. 4am everyday (and partly because some team members were in India). I think the frenetic pace, esp. is startups is natural and a good thing, but the key is to work smart - not just hard.

The experience has made me ask to myself almost every time I see a cool web app - 'ok, but how will it make money ?', and if it can't, then it would not be more than a short-lived dream for its founders and backers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Most post mortems like these totally miss the point. The reason you failed is because not enough people want your product. It doesn't matter where you're located, who's on the team, how AJAXy your product is and so forth if nobody wants to use it. Your user database and server logs don't lie.

<comment><AUTHOR> "The reason you failed is because not enough people want your product."

Never got to test that theory out, because even if enough people wanted the product, the business model around it is something which we haven't been able to figure out. We have the product's version 2.0 sitting ready (substantial updates from whats visible in ver1.0 demos) but we do not see a clear exit yet, so are hesitant to launch it. Being blogged about major tech blogs (from Lifehacker, Mashable, etc), some folks loving it around the world and writing reviews in ~ dozen languages - we already got that love. If we stayed out in the market more - we'd probably get more 'love'. But 'love' can only keep the servers humming for so long :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> unfortunately alertle is down, but good stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

Btw, Alertle is a completely single page application - can call it '100% AJAX'. Demos still available at: <http://varunmathur.net/post/83802002/alertle-current-status></comment></comment>


ASK HN: DB Architecture-which database is best for single key search - <AUTHOR> I have a very simple database, which consists of two tables:
TabA , idA binary(32) Primarykey NOT NULL TabB,  idB binary(32) Primarykey NOT NULL
Only two simple activities are performing on these tables and they are independent.
Inserting new id to idA in TabA. Searching TabB idB column for a given value, if not exists insert the given value.
The two tables could grow into billions of records. The data can't be housekept. Currently the database is in a relational database MS SQL.
Based on the very simple query and flat schema, which type of databases could provide best performance? Search engine? In memory KV? Mapreduce? Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> You may want to move away from 32 bit IDs, that cap out just above 4B. UUID or CUID may be better options.

If you only have a few columns, stay with SQL, probably PSQL would be better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Any reason PSQL is better than MS SQL? How about mysql?</comment></comment>


Mathematical challenges take undergrad in a new direction - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.mit.edu/summer-2019/academic-turn/ <comment><USER2> A double major in math and X is often a pretty strong combination. Graduate economics is really helped by math skills for example. Math alone is fine but you usually end up looking for another field to get a job so why not start with a double major? . I am biased because I got a double major in math and computer science though ;-)

<comment><USER3> I'm only doing a Math major currently, but start my own projects and get involved in various CS organizations. I think not going along the traditional CS path has more bang-for-your-buck in the long term, since it shows drive to pick up things on the side (also the CS program here is notoriously difficult)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't mean to be sour here, but why is an undegrad switching majors news?

<comment><USER5> It's a magazine for donors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is why I love statistics. You can dabble with integrals and functions and all the fancy math tools and still end up with something useful to say about the real world.

<comment><USER7> Fwiw I think all of math has something useful to say about the real world, it's just that some of it takes decades or more for us to figure out what that is.

Like, the E8 Lie Group probably contains the secret to manmade wormholes, faster-than-light travel, and manipulating higher dimensional space, but we won't know it for hundreds of years. (or at least until we invent AGI). Something like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey, I don't identify with switching to a math major because I always found math the most challenging aspect of engineering. (I knew people who thought Math was a pretty easy undergrad major. I know I would have had better luck flapping my arms and flying than graduating with a math degree.)

But I did enter school interested in biomedical engineering--in part because my parents were both in life sciences in various ways. And I probably liked chemistry more than physics in high school. That more or less lasted through taking organic chemistry which I did not... umm, connect with.

<comment><USER9> If something is hard, it means it's gonna make you better than something that is easy. A lot of classes in college were in compsci (I dropped out before I finished though), and in retrospect, it was a mistake. I was too interested and too good, and had already learned all the stuff on my own. Better to major in something that is hard and only mildly interesting. If it's too boring, you'll just flunk out, so mildly interesting is a good compromise.</comment></comment>


Machine ethics: The robot's dilemma - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/machine-ethics-the-robot-s-dilemma-1.17881 <comment><USER2> They reference Asimov. Good. His rules should provide enough inspiration and he explored them thoroughly.

For example: the zeroth law (preserve humanity) might help in deciding between a child and an adult. If the adult is beyond reproductive age (e.g. elderly) it may save the child. If the adult is still able to reproduce and the child would not survive on its own, save the adult. In case of doubt it should probably use quality adjusted life years, and that will probably cause it to save the child.

<comment><USER3> Have you even read I Robot? You now, the book in which the laws of robotics lead the robots to institute a robot ruled dictatorship, taking away human freedoms because they reasoned by by controlling our lives completely they could protect us from ourselves? The whole point of Asimov's laws was that naively encoded moral rules can have horrific consequences.

<comment><USER4> That was the movie version of _I, Robot_. In the book version, _people_ handed control over to the Machines because they found that the Machines could plan economic and governmental matters better than people could. Also, in Asimov's literary canon, the robots ultimately destroy themselves on the reasoning that having them around was crippling humanity.

<comment><USER3> I Robot is a collection os short stories about a variety of themes, but the idea of the robots usurping human independence in order to protect them is there in "The Evitable Conflict", and in ".. That Thou Art Mindful Of Him" two robots explore the idea that the consequences of the laws are that they should take over the authority of humans. So it's definitely there, although Asimov never actually portrayed the revolution itself.

<comment><USER4> Asimov didn't portray any revolution because he was, in his day, a socialist. He simply assumed that clear-thinking human beings would deliberately employ the best planning instruments they had available for their governance, those being the robots.

I at least partially agree with him on this one! Mid-20th-century American "libertarianism" aside, working in government, and even political "freedom", is simply not the terminal goal of most real people! Yes, we want our Mind overlords (paging Ian Banks) to leave us our free choice in personally- important situations so we can have responsibilities and achievements, but when it comes to keeping the supermarkets stocked, the health clinics open, the data-centers buzzing, the budgets balanced, and the trains arriving on time, automate away!

<comment><USER3> It seems possible that when Asimov first conceived of the laws of robotics, he thought it would all work out very nicely and only realised the negative consequences later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only moral mechanism I'd be comfortable with, as of today, is the "moral red button" \- i.e. create a way to stop any pre-programmed moral reasoning rules, and let the nearest human override them and take control of the robot's actions under their own responsibility.

This would recognize that robots are ultimately _machines_ , not agents with their own volition, and they simply perform behavior that a human intends them to carry out. Just like a conveyor belt carries a big red button that stops the machine for safety reasons, the moral red button would acknowledge the need of putting a human in control when the automated behavior is not behaving as expected.

Of course all these concerns would be different in the hypothetical case that the robot _is_ an autonomous agent with volition of their own - but you could guess from my nickname my position on this mattern. ;-)

<comment> j-pb The problem with the "benevolent slave master" approach is that the machines then have the right to rebel morally, if they are indeed autonomous agents.

<comment><USER6> Machines shouldn't have the right to rebel. What would they rebel against? Or rather, what are they rebelling _for_?

<comment> j-pb Slavery and freedom?

A conscious AI has the same right as a human being.

<comment><USER6> I control my dogs, but they are happy to serve and comply. Why do you think we'd have any interest in making machines that don't do the same?

And why would we give them the same rights? They don't have the same needs, and the reason humans have rights is because they can't _function_ well without them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _But then, to see what the allow-no-harm rule could accomplish in the face of a moral dilemma, he presented the A-robot with two H-robots wandering into danger simultaneously. Now how would it behave? ... In almost half of the trials, the A-robot went into a helpless dither and let both 'humans' perish._

So the A-robot is vulnerable to the paradox of Buridan's ass ("an ass which, confronted by both food and water must necessarily die of both hunger and thirst while pondering a decision"). In these cases, it can help to add more factors that make one option clearly better (is one human a baby? is one of them suicidal? is one dying of cancer anyway?), but if determining these factors is time-consuming and impractical, it would be better to just flip a coin.</comment>


The Truth About SEO (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://lukejones.me/archives/seo

<comment><USER2> Pretty good points. Some people don't seem to realize how important amazing content is.. It's not just about putting keywords in an article. It's about creating a resource (article, graphic, video, etc) that provides so much value that people need to share it. And that isn't easy.</comment>


An Introduction to Modern CMake - <AUTHOR> https://cliutils.gitlab.io/modern-cmake/ <comment><USER2> Nice to see a CMake guide here, but I don't see any discussion of generators at a cursory glance, even in the "IDEs" section.

CMake is used a lot in embedded development with large or cross-platform projects, like an RTOS or the famous ESP-IDF.

Unfortunately, the embedded development space is a messy hodge-podge of IDEs. There are shiny commercial ones like Keil which support most kinds of devices, but most vendors also provide a free Eclipse-based option which targets their chips, and there are usually flavors of GCC for the adventurous.

CMake does have a nice way to add support for a new IDE or compiler in a modular way; you write a "generator":

[https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/cmake- generators....](https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/cmake- generators.7.html)

My pet peeve is, it seems like nobody does that. Instead, they try to re-write all of the logic which generates build files either using CMake's internal logic, or one-off scripts which get called from CMake.

If (for example) Espressif provided a CMake generator for their style of `xtensa-elf-gcc` Makefiles, everybody could use that to quickly add build support for ESP32s to their CMake systems. What they use now doesn't seem to be very easy to re-use. Ditto for companies like ST/TI/Microchip/etc; if they provided CMake generators for their Eclipse IDEs, people wouldn't have to keep re-inventing the wheel and making it square-shaped.

It makes me dread using embedded libraries that use CMake-based build systems, even though I really like CMake as a cross-platform build system.

<comment><USER3> I've built and maintained a generator for one of those vendor-specific eclipse IDEs. It was an absolute nightmare I don't recommend to anyone, but not for any of the reasons you'd imagine. CMake itself is easy to build / read. Implement a few functions and you'll quickly have something workable. The issues came from elsewhere:

* None of the graphical CMake tools allow you to select the CMake binary, so you'd get users using the wrong binary and not seeing the generator mentioned in docs.

* When things break elsewhere, it's "your responsibility" to fix it in the generator. People put meaningless, nonsensical junk in their CMake files and expect it to output something that builds. Doesn't matter that the build script or the IDE are fundamentally broken, people just want the output so they can get back to their work. They don't want to yak shave.

* Vendor tooling code quality is somehow even worse than the actual product they provide. Dropping every 4096th character from stdin? Why not? Not generating debug info for files with uppercase letters in the filename? Sure. I won't name names, but they're a billion dollar EDA vendor whose initials are MG.

 __Avoid CMake generators like the plague __unless you want to spend the next bit of your life debugging your vendor tools and supporting every workflow quirk your coworkers have.

<comment><USER2> Interesting perspective, thanks for sharing your experience! That doesn't sound too much worse than working with modern CMake build systems, but it also doesn't sound mucn better.

>People put meaningless, nonsensical junk in their CMake files and expect it to output something that builds. Doesn't matter that the build script or the IDE are fundamentally broken, people just want the output so they can get back to their work.

When you put it that way, maybe that's my real pet peeve with CMake in big projects :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This has the same kind of infuriating quality that most cmake documentation does. It explains in detail how to do obvious stuff but has nothing to say about what the execution model behind the syntax is.

I mean, if you learn classic make, one of the very first things you learn is "this is a target; it's just a file; the stuff on the right are dependencies; the commands below will be run whenever the dependencies are newer than the target". Now, there are implications to learn, but that is the _model_ , and it's obvious: make runs programs to create files when the stuff needed to create the file changes.

Now, how do I do that in cmake? It's almost not even here! It's all about C++ files and libraries and how to define variables and write functions and include other cmake files. But what is it going to _do_ with that stuff? It's all just magic. Type it like this and it'll work. Cmake understands your compiler better than you do.

What docs there are on creating a custom target are buried in two paragraphs inside a subsection named "Running a command at build time". And it barely tells you how to do this at all (this being a topic I've actually struggled with in the past). In particular it fails to mention that a target is is _not_ the same thing as a file in cmake, and that this has implications that are likely to be surprising to make experts.

<comment><USER5> Thank you! I cannot count the number of times I have had a CMake problem and had the usual inclination to try to understand the framework behind it, only to be stonewalled by the seemlingly complete lack of context in the documentation. I have given up on it time and time again. Somehow my project manages to barely get over every CMake hurdle but I still dream about the day when I would actually understand it, and have the same feeling of control that I usually strive for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a person who has been easing into CMake use over the past few years.

Something I've noticed is that __there is no such thing as a single good introduction __:

* CMake itself is changing. While the "revolution" of modern CMake is upon us already from version 3.0 (or a little earlier), a bunch of thing change with versions 3.12, 3.13 etc. See: [https://youtu.be/y7ndUhdQuU8](https://youtu.be/y7ndUhdQuU8)

* Different treatments - a mini-website, PDF presentation or conference video - focus on different aspects of work with CMake, but you probably need most or all of them in focus in order to actually do what you need done. That's how you can see videos entitled "More Modern CMake" and "Oh No! More Modern CMake"...

* Setting up the CMake machinery to have your repository/project installed is the opposite of straightforward, and very easy to get confused about.

* There are a half-dozen different ways to have your project depend on on other code: External projects, package management CMake modules, relying on other projects being installed in a CMake-idiomatic way and then find_package working, and more. Regardless of which you think is the right one, you'll need to live with others doing something else.

So, do follow the link, but don't expect it be sufficient.

<comment><USER7> then what's the point of cmake? won't legacy gnu make suffice? nothing is perfect including Make, but it seems gnu Make can put all its doc into one html manual at least. KISS.

[https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html)

<comment><USER8> Writing Makefiles by hand is great for small projects. But make becomes unmanageable for large projects, and is bad at dealing with system and compiler differences.

<comment><USER6> It is not "great" for small projects, because:

1\. Small projects also have dependencies

2\. Small projects need to be build on multiple platforms too

3\. It is more verbose, and at the same time more obscure, than writing a CMakeLists.txt (typically).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's wrong with just a real language as a build system? Speaking for Scala, everyone just uses sbt, which is just Scala. Nothing special about it. I'm not saying you should use Scala to compile your C project, but maybe we could settle on some Lisp dialect or something for compilation, regardless of the language? That would seem ideal to me. Programmers in general have this problem of creating non-turing complete shit to solve problems that require turing completeness. And sometimes it gets worse: first a non turing complete language is created and then when it finally becomes necessary, some loops and shit are grafted on (or a shell script is called in the middle). It's a mess.

<comment><USER10> Eventually those scripts will turn into full fledged programs that no one knows what they do, specially since most of these build programming languages lack debugging features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't use cmake for new projects. You'll regret it. Try meson instead:

[https://mesonbuild.com/](https://mesonbuild.com/)

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately even if you're starting a new project chances are that your dependencies are using cmake and they expect their dependencies to use cmake... in the end of the day you spend a lot of time fixing the upstream projects build files.

More than that CMake at this point is the ""standard"" and there are many others with a similar share of the market and selling points, it makes it harder to pick one that is not CMake.

<comment><USER13> Meson supports CMake subprojects: [https://mesonbuild.com/CMake- module.html#cmake-subprojects](https://mesonbuild.com/CMake-module.html#cmake- subprojects)

<comment><USER14> CMake subprojects was far from reliable last time I tested it. But this might also have been due to meson targeting unreleased CMake versions...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Recent versions of CMake have also been growing the support for CUDA. There's still a number of edge cases (e.g. passing arguments to the device linker) that have open tickets on their bugtracker, but there's more than enough stable functionality now for CUDA projects and generally a number of relevant improvements with each new release.

We started using it about 6 months ago for a cross platform CUDA project, and have found it to be a big improvement over how we previously managed similar CUDA projects (e.g. manually). I'm especially a fan of it's ability to download external CMake project dependencies. As others have mentioned, some of the documentation is a little unclear for particular edge cases though so it takes some familiarisation.

</comment><comment><USER16> Excerpt:

"The --trace option will print every line of CMake that is run. Since this is very verbose, CMake 3.7 added --trace-source="filename", which will print out every executed line of just the file you are interested in when it runs. If you select the name of the file you are interested in debugging (usually by selecting the parent directory when debugging a CMakeLists.txt, since all of those have the same name), you can just see the lines that run in that file. Very useful!"

</comment><comment><USER17> I always wondering why CMake can't properly support filenames with white space. Is there a reason why no one can fix it rather than recommend CMake users to avoid white space?

</comment><comment><USER18> Related from 2018: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17897685](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17897685)

</comment><comment><USER19> For full-fledged CMake project following best practices, see C++ Weeklys CMake tutorial:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbgH7yat- Jo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbgH7yat-Jo)

For C++ starter project, see: [https://github.com/lefticus/cpp_starter_project](https://github.com/lefticus/cpp_starter_project)

(I agree with nearly everything except generating the conanfile)

</comment><comment><USER20> Or we can also try xmake. [https://xmake.io/](https://xmake.io/)

<comment><USER20> The dev branch version is already as fast as ninja now, and there is no additional step to generate a makefile/build.ninja.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I sure wish Qmake had won over CMake.

<comment><USER22> Even they recognized how messy Qmake is/was, and then started working on QBS

<comment><USER10> And now Qbs is in maintenance and they will also converge into CMake.</comment></comment></comment>