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car centrism makes everything ugly and soulless (i.redd.it)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/fuckcars@lemmy.ca
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[–] -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (10 children)

One is a city (Paris) as a tourist hotspot, the other is a rural area. One seems to be people getting coffee to and from work (the shadows make it look early morning, so more likely to), the other requires they have time to enjoy. I don't really see it as a very effective argument.

Tourist spot will always beat rural spot in terms of pure aesthetics - that's why it's a tourist spot. The streets around Cafe Palais Royal aren't even that pedestrian-centric, they are just small Paris streets with small sidewalks whose streets have yet to be really pedestrianized.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago

    A local cafe near Me has a seating area inside to enjoy a coffee with friends, and a window facing outside to get a coffee on the go. There's no car access, you have to walk there. There are always customers, many of them very busy, and it's a much nicer place to be than this picture of a Starbucks.

    Also I don't think this is rural. There's a six lane stroad visible on the right. This is a city. It just looks rural, because the Americans spread everything out so much. I don't think all these shiny SUVs are on their way to a goat farm. I think the Americans are sprawling everything out with hectares upon hectares of concrete and asphalt and then claiming to be rural.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    The cafe in Paris is indeed extremely central and I would assume also pretty touristy. Ironically enough it is on a fairly car centric road.

    All of that does not change the fact that modern transit/bike/pedestrian neighbourhoods, built for locals, not tourists, are much more like the Parisian cafe than the drive through hell above, that includes bakeries for your to-go demands.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    The US drive-thru urban sprawl hellscape is pretty unique to North America. The bottom picture didn't have to be central Paris, you could find a similar motif in countless places.

    You present it as if the bottom picture is the unusual one, when in reality it is the top one for almost all the world.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (3 children)

    when in reality it is the top one for almost all the world.

    I didn't know Cafe Palais Royal were so prolific! I mean, if you want to use bad examples because they are more photogenic, it's up to you. Plenty of less iconic shops with pedestrianized streets that image could have come from, sure. I think you have more of a point with the "urban rural sprawl hellscape" in US rural planning, but a place with more people density is going to have more of a soul regardless.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago

    You don't need that many people to have cafés with outside seating. Basically speaking, if your town is big enough to have a pedestrian zone it's big enough to have those. Heck, my hometown lacks a café or a pedestrian zone but does have a bakery with outside seating and it's rural enough that you can smell the pig stables from any point in town.

    It's more a question of whether you're willing to dedicate space for people to be outside (rather than just traveling from A to B) and whether people actually want to be outside. Culture matters a lot here. Where I'm from people will happily use outside seating right next to a busy arterial road because sitting outside when the weather is nice is seen as desirable.

    As for urban vs. rural, a six-lane road practically screams "urban sprawl"; that's the kind of road generally associated with major population centers in Europe. I know that many municipalities in the States like to overbuild their car infrastructure to the point where you can walk nowhere and then wonder why there's so much traffic. But from a European perspective that very much looks like a commercial zone on the outskirts of a big city.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Every cafe in Australia has this same arrangement. Tables spreading outside, crammed inside, fucken amazing coffee and often tons of people.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 month ago

    since there are café, like this one in every other corner of Paris... and it is not a Paris things, all city/village in Europe have a decent number of café even in the less tourist area ever. A 2k habitant village, will have its central café. The moment the café goes away, is usually a sign, the village is dead

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