>>>That's because Oslo, like probably most of the other European cities, wasn't really planned for this much of traffic. One way streets are only a half measure (pardon the poor pun). I've had the same experience driving through Budapest, Novi Sad and Belgrade, where I'm supposed to be more or less at home
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>>When we were there last year, the traffic is Budapest was awful.
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>Glad to hear that the old place hasn't lost any of its charm ;). Before driving there, I thought I knew how to drive and park in a tight downtown. It took me a whole day of driving around to learn what I thought I knew.
FWIW, we loved Budapest, despite the traffic. That was the only city on our trip where we had a totally free day and we used it to expore, and of course, had the best day of the trip.
>Cul-de-sac is the extreme aspect of that separation. I've seen it around here, taken to the extreme - the soil is flat, and apart of a few bays and lakes there are no landscape features which would dictate the shape of streets. Any building lots are created by cutting old forest. But it's so obvious, when looking at a map, that practically every neighborhood is planned as an insulated country, with almost no contact with its neighbors; even when there is no fence, there is no connecting road. And it's not typical of just housing projects and gated communities (or what other name tags they may have), it's the same with the businesses. Each lot has to have its own parking, with its own entrance from the main street. If you happen to enter the wrong parking - because the entrance was obscured by the vehicle in front of you, in many cases you can't just drive over. They're all separate universes.
Again, this is mostly the local government requesting it, not the developers wanting to do it. Since local governments are, of course, people who live there, the way to fight it is through the ballot and through talking to your elected officials. I suspect, though, that most people like it this way. You and I are the oddballs here.
>>>There's been some movement in the last few years toward what are called TNDs, traditional neighborhood developments. My husband's company built one a few year ago:
http://www.livingplaces.com/PA/Bucks_County/Doylestown_Borough/Lantern_Hill.html>
>Great - looks very nice, specially that they took the liberty to reintroduce color into the landscape. I thought color was restricted to traffic signs and rear lights, everything else had to be gray, drab or creamy - which was true even for the cars, until last fall.
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>Still, look at the layout of the streets on the map:
http://www.livingplaces.com/PA/Bucks_County/Doylestown_Borough/Lantern_Hill_Map.htmlThere's an interesting story. This borough wrote a master plan that called for a TND, but they had it in mind for a different property. My husband's company came in to propose it on this property (which was reclaimed brownfields) and the borough and neighbors were pretty tough. I think they went through 16 versions of the plan before they got it approved.
Tamar
