I live in a block of new buildings. It’s not positioned as an elite part of town, but de-facto it is. It’s not the best place to live, but it’s a very nice place. There is a huge natural park nearby, right off my window. Yet I’m still in the city centre. I think that’s one of the best locations I could find to live in, regarding this city. All the needed commutes are achievable by a not too long walk. Or a few bus stops.
Sometimes, once a month or two, we need a car. Or, to say it differently, it would be more comfortable to make that journey by a car, in contrast to a public transport or even taxi. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re going to have a car at some point. ‘Unfortunately,’ because I believe most people in a well-designed city need no cars. Apparently, Lviv is not well designed, even despite it’s quite comfortable to live in. It’s an old European city, designed for horses. And then under almost a century of Russian occupation, it degraded to a typical Soviet city with nobody thinking of infrastructure, architecture, and anything urban.
I have this theory in my mind, that simple systems work better, even when they’re designed by people of less expertise.
Complex systems are very difficult to architect, even for the people of great talent. With that in mind, I’d say that a small city is usually more comfortable to live in, as of compared to a huge city, especially in the same country, where architects and city designers are wildly incompetent. (Like here, in Ukraine, as a post-Soviet occupation trauma.) That’s why I have no plans to relocate to a bigger Ukrainian city, like Kyiv. However, I’m very open to smaller cities, even in Ukraine.
My vision is that Lviv — especially its centre — needs no cars. Or they should be super expensive to keep, like Singapore. However, I see countless number of super-expensive cars. My building complex alone, I saw all kinds of cars, I never knew they even existed. Did you know there are electric Jaguars, Porches, and Ferraris? Yeah, I never thought of that, but saw all three — not simultaneously tho — right before my window.
I have no awe of cars, and I rather despise this boyish car mania. My very son loves cars, and he’s like that for a couple of years already. But, hey! He’s four! I expect him to be a complex and smart person by 20, not that die-hard-fan-of-something. I may like some cars designs, other things cars. But I keep no particular delight of cars. Car is a car. A machine. Four vehicles (most times) and some wheel, some chairs, some super weird and useless entertaining system for people who never knew computers or even smartphones. Nothing to be over enthusiastic about.
Today, I saw one Tesla in the neighbourhood — and boy, we have many Teslas here! — and it’s car plate had this advertising of leasing a Tesla. And that got me thinking: am I some naive boy to believe that all the expensive cars in the neighbourhood are bought? It never occured to me that you can rent that car.
Probably, it makes this schizophrenic situation even worse! I’ve been thinking:
- why on Earth you’d buy such an expensive car, living in Lviv? A small city, you can ride it through and through with a bike. It’s not that big, to have a car. Yet, cars are everywhere!
- Why would you buy such an expensive car, while living in an apartment? In my logic, if you have money, lots of it, why not buy a house then? House is much better in every possible aspect, except money you need to buy and support that house.
- Yeah, I realise that someone might have both, a house and an apartment, but I bet not every expensive car owner is like that. Not all expensive cars are terribly expensive. Some just unreasonably priced, and make zero sence for this city. Yet, most of its population tries to show off before someone (it looks like that to me).
- Why would someone buy such an expensive car while your country at war? There are many layers of that, starting with money better utilised killing ruzzianz (i.e. donated to the military) and ending with your ass needing to evacuate the city. Or do they expect to evacuate on a Porsche better than some other dude on his 4x4?
- My money is on the jeep, when it comes to evacuation, especially if we speak Lviv, the city most closest to Poland than most others.
So many questions, and it looks like most of them are rhetorical ones. I mean, I’d love to know the answers. But at the same time, I afraid I know the answers, and they make me even scarier.