Polish society mentally is at the stage where car is the status symbol and part of their identity. Amplified by the fact that they're historically unable to construct their own car. Nobody is giving up their Mercedes/Volvo/BMW/Audi in a lease 1k EUR per month to walk around or drive bicycle around the city. Especially that employment regulations promote taking a lease for a car and having company's car is the ultimate benefit. Plus the obnoxious trend of huge SUVs and American-style pickups. People move out to the outskirts, buy more cars and bigger cars and then... they commute daily to the city.
As a non pole living in Poland I think you are being unfair. The car mentality is not new, nor is it evil by itself. On the contrary it is supported by the reality that inner-cities are unbearably expensive and people need to live in the suburbs just like in the US. It is no irony that the same phenomenae has similar consequences. It is not people who are bad or stupid, on the contrary.
In Wroclaw they added hundreds of KM of bike lanes....crisscrossing normal roads. I would like to take my children by bike to their kindergarten but I dont want me or them to die.
So indeed i take my car, which i regret not being a damn fat SUV because i cannot damn stand being shaken out of my bones anymore. The roads are the German coblestone type and they are not crap because of the potholes. That is already a taken, no. The whole roads have severe long period troughs and hills that together with the pot holes make the experience a nightmare. Sprinkle that with tramlines, activated or not and I am currently considering moving out. The trams and buses work well but politicians and well meaning people often forget you need the car for things like the supermarket? I have a family of several so i cannot just take the tram or by bike for groceries. Oh my, i need a car. The sin, we are all "patola"[1] :).
And this is not just in the city proper, the surroundings' roads are awful as well. I just damaged my rim and tire driving on a normal road 40Km/h while doing this gas guzzling hobby of taking my children to a local forest.
I am a bit upset writing this because all these people in power in Europe dont have traditional families and exist in their own heaven on earth where they are independent in a very pure state. When i was 20 or if I would be a single I would get it, but with a family, please take your silly ideals elsewhere(this is for the mayor Jacek Sutryk who is unironically a bachelor).
Portugal is a bit better in that the left leaning well-doers preach but people are too real to let things get ridiculous. The talking heads sometimes fantasize about bikes everywhere but then the cities are hilly and old so it is unfeasible to add bike lanes.
[1] Patola is a derrogative name from pathological [family]. It is used to insinuate you come from a dysfunctional, often alcoholic family. Very common insult in Poland which I am fascinated about. I wonder if this insult exists in other Slavic countries.
I don't understand how you ended up and why would you live in Wrocław. I ended up there one winter when the city was notoriously in media for having among the worst air in the country and evacuated after trial period. The ruling "elite" is an awful corrupted clique holding multiple public offices each, police regularly beats random people to death. Exclusively outsourcing and nearshoring jobs with miserable salaries, with established cliques in every workplace. The real estate prices skyrocketed yet thousands of "poor" Ukrainians and people from Causasus somehow can afford living there.
> On the contrary it is supported by the reality that inner-cities are unbearably expensive and people need to live in the suburbs just like in the US.
Noone is forcing people into suburbs (which are awful in itself) but people feel the need to have detached house with garden (as a status, just like car…)
> Noone is forcing people into suburbs (which are awful in itself) but people feel the need to have detached house with garden (as a status, just like car…)
Sure. How dare people not afford 1.2 million PLN( 304k$) so that 4 people (2 adults + 2 children) can live in a 80 sqm apartment[1].
The theme in these answers are very common, the majority of people wanting comfort are wasteful and vain. I guess back in the day of Gierek's(communist times) buildings were the right fit.
Yes, because thanks to dumb housing market becoming "investors eldorado" instead of doing more dense residential building that doesn't require creating "subursbs" and dumb urban sprawl.
You are aware that it's possible to create relative big departments in such scheme, right?
Yes and I recommend you Wrocław city museum for a showcase of beautifully thought out plans that never went anywhere even when Wrocław was Breslau. It is the reason I was touched by such a mundane topic that I would not otherwise be interested in.
One of the reasons such plans did not go ahead is that it required a state that can expropriate left and right and amounts of capital not available to localities, even in cities like Wrocław.
Those kind of grand plans only work if there is a national drive that imposes it, or most likely after a war. This is true in Poland Portugal or anywhere developed and desirable.
