I feel bad if my comment ends up being the first one, because I'm coming to suggest a book that I immediately thought of as I got halfway through the article. If you want to read about human society and how much of it we're missing, read The Great Good Place, by Ray Oldenburg. (I believe it came out in the late 1980's.) There is a chapter on suburbia, and what an awful mess that has made of human sociability, particularly because you have to get in your car to go anywhere.
It's one of those books that lots of people have read, but many more people have heard of and mean to get around to reading. It's very good and very thought-provoking. I read it more or less when it came out, and it has stayed with me ever since. (I did re-read it about 10 years ago.)
With respect to the article, the automobile is one of those things that has changed society so thoroughly—and which seemed like such a great idea at the time—that most people can't even imagine the impact or what they've lost. We just take it for granted.
I hope the first HN comment is always a book suggestion. :)
I recently got rid of my car after four years of living in a city. I don't know why I held onto it for so long, but my life has improved dramatically. Not only can I go anywhere I want, but I never have to worry about permits, tickets, or parking.
This lifestyle can't work for people outside of cities, though. There's no way to get anyplace without a car, and there isn't enough density to make uber very effective. No one wants to wait a half hour for a ride.
Being in a city has downsides, but for this reason it's wonderful. There's even an app now where you can just use someone else's car. (Getaround, I think?) I've used it twice: one when I needed to go buy something about 20 miles away, and another to go on a trip a hundred miles away. And the price was very low.
> This lifestyle can't work for people outside of cities, though.
Exactly. Which means that, if cities are designed sanely, they will be more attractive to people who don't want cars (when I lived in a city during college, I never had a car and never missed having one), and suburbs and rural areas will be more attractive to people who do (as I do now since I like having a detached house and an actual yard).
There's also Turo, which seems similar to Getaround by your description, as well as hourly rentals through Zipcar. And the established rental players like Hertz and Enterprise have started trying to emulate the smaller startups with flexible locations and hourly billing. And there's always Uber.
My lease is up next year and I can't wait to get rid of my car. I won't be replacing it. My car payment is rather high, but even with just the insurance, city parking/tickets, gas, tolls, and maintenance costs, I'm pretty sure I can Uber/Lyft everywhere I need to go for less money and rent a car on the occasion I really need one.
Uber with car seats for 4 kids is a pain. With kids, a car provides a “base” for when you go out — you can carry everything you need without having to tote it all around once you arrive at the destination. Public transport for older kids is fine, but with small kids, it’s a nightmare, especially in NY where apparently only a few subway stops have elevators and they’re generally filled with piss.
I walk a block to the locally-owned hardware store and give my dollars to my neighbor, obviously. What do you do, throw your money into the giant corporate black hole?
Bike to one of the 3 (or 4?) hardware stores in a 10-15min radius. The closest one is barely 5 minutes away, but it's a bit expensive.
If I need something specialized, I either take public transit all the way there, or ride my bike to the S-train station and bring my bike on the train.
How do you handle it somewhere else? It can only get worse.
In the city I have the shops around and a lot of transport options (bike, bus, tram, walk, carsharing..) or I can order it online, or, gasp, ask any of my 20 neighbours. Elsewhere your options are far more limited.
> This lifestyle can't work for people outside of cities
I'm not sure. You have to look to other places in the world to see examples of lower density living, though. I live in rural Japan in a small town. Officially I think it is officially 25K people, but that's only because it is more efficient for a single city hall to service a larger area. In reality, I think that it is closer to 5-10K in the town itself and then a spattering of people around the outskirts.
The main street of the town is 6 blocks long, if I remember correctly. I live 2 km away from the "hustle and bustle" of the town ;-) I live in a 3 story walk up apartment building surrounded on 3 sides by rice fields. Here and there, there are similar small apartment buildings, single family homes and small farms. In the walkable area, there are 3 grocery stores, a variety of restaurants, some clothing stores, some hardware stores, one electronics store, many bars (Japan is a drinking society), etc. There are many factories in the area (including TDK, Suzuki, and a few other big ones). There are dentists, doctors, etc, etc, etc.
I have to walk to the "down town" to catch the bus to the nearest big city, which I probably do once a month or so. However, that's it. Near the main street, it is mostly houses and shops, but by the time you get out my way (which is only a 20 minute walk) more than half of the land is farmland. The main street is right by the beach, too, so it only spreads in one direction. That should give you an idea of how small it is.
There are definitely places where it would be very difficult to live without a car, but it's pretty darn rural here and it's extremely comfortable to live if you are able bodied. If you have a bike, you can even easily ride to the next town (or the one after that). When I was teaching in the high school here, most of my students rode from 2 or 3 villages away, because there weren't enough students in the area to fill up the school. So depending on your definition of "city", I think it's completely doable. You just have to intentionally design the towns to be accessible. (It also helps that farms in Japan are extremely small, by law).
Anecdotally, I always loved having a car and the sense of independence and freedom that came with it. Then at the age of 25, I moved out of the country to a small, walkable town in Latin America where I either walked, drove my scooter, or took motorcycle taxis everywhere. After two years of living there, I moved back to the US, bought a Jeep, and was super excited to have the autonomy and ability to travel between cities easily in a day. I didn't have a commute at the time, so I never really had to drive in traffic. A year later, I ditched my car again and spent a whole year traveling around the world. I got around by walking and taking trains and taxis. By the time I got back to the US, I hated driving. It felt so isolating and boring. Then I got a job where I had to commute for an hour and a half a day in heavy traffic. It was one of the most miserable periods of my life. I started resenting having to drive anywhere. I started resenting places that weren't walkable. I started resenting how roads designed for cars break up and eliminate public space. Finally, two months ago I sold my car and committed to a car-free lifestyle, probably for life. It's completely changed how I do things; I spend more time out of the house, I spend more time socializing, and of course, I walk more. I went from walking less than a mile a day to walking an average of five miles a day. I'm much happier with this lifestyle, and I hope I'm never forced to go back.
What happens if/when you have kids. I’ve seen many people biking around Amsterdam with their kids in protective bike high seats. But this is unheard of in many US cities. Minivans are the usual solution. Would you teach them to take public transport or try to live within walking distance of everything?
Obvs doesn’t apply if u don’t plan on it, but curious if anyone has found a solution in US cities.
With MUNI and BART you always have to make sure you and whoever is with you wash their hands after you get off. They are constantly filthy and you never know who sat in the seat you're in before you, but knowing the kinds of people who hop on, you know the potential for pathogens is considerable.
Of course, hygiene is important any place, but specially the city. Now, on the other hand, maybe it does strengthen your immunity... but it's also not fun getting sick cuz you forgot about washing after MUNI.
Kids are prone to go from dirty surface to face without thinking.
At least in Japan, while vomit in the late evenings is an issue, you know those systems get washed --not so for MUNI.
Anecdotally, I am in Madison, WI and it would be feasible with kids in the right neighborhood here. Lots of bikes have little carriages for small children.
Madison WI is that way too. I'm a year-round bike commuter here. Studded tires keep me shiny-side-up.
But I'm torn about pushing winter cycling on people. I realize that if it's miserable for somebody, then they're not going to do it. I happen to love cycling and bikes, so the idea of riding during the winter just means more chances to ride under different conditions, and a chance to tinker with one more bike.
In terms of ditching the car altogether, that's a toss up. For most families, to understand their commuting situation, you have to draw the triangle from the two parents jobs to school or day care, possibly different schools if they have more than one kid. For a while, my daily commute was a labyrinth involving dropping people off at different locations before turning the minivan around and heading for work. But today, everybody takes a bus or rides their bikes. Our high school has basically no student parking. Cars are part of our transportation mix, but we try to minimize their use.
At one point it had been so long since I drove to work, that I forgot about a big construction project, and got lost.
They also make bikes with wide tires now that perform admirably in snow. With the right gear, it's not too bad unless you are trying to ride through a foot of snow.
I'm a parent to a one-and-a-half year old in New York City, and I grew up in a mid-sized midwestern city. I'm obviously biased, but I think we've got it much better off here.
A block and a half away is one of the best playgrounds in the city, and three blocks the other direction is another fine playground. Both of them are packed with kids at all hours of the day. When we go visit family in the midwest, we make a point to take walks and visit the neighborhood playgrounds. We're almost always the only people there. Of course people have their yards so nobody needs the playground... I think something is lost.
Walk a few blocks in any direction from our house and you'll see tons of wonderful daycares, family-friendly restaurants, and other parents' necessities, most of them locally owned and operated by another member of the community.
We travel all around the city, we take the train. My son passes the time on the ride charming the other passengers and subway surfing. It's much more civilized than strapping him into a car seat and not looking at him for an hour every day.
I'll grant you that New York City is something of an outlier as far as American cities go.
I live in Seattle with a 2 year old and one more on the way. I can't believe I ever considered leaving the city to have kids. I can walk to a coffee shop 3 blocks away without taking 15 minutes to strap my kid in a car seat and the amount of parks we have access to in a short walk in incredible. We take the bus to the zoo and aquarium and my son loves seeing all the people and looking out the window.
Being out and about means I feel a real sense of community and have really gotten to know my neighbors.
When we see our friends from the suburbs its amazing how cooped up they are, how unlikely they are to leave the house, and how unattached they feel from their surroundings. Its too easy for them to play in their basement or yard.
Staying in the city has given me and my family a much higher quality of life.
I suspect when your kids become older, your life will become more dictated by your kids activities that you don’t control as much. Sports practices and games, school, etc. These will be unlikely be centered around walking distance from home. And, then, I will welcome you back to the fold of parent indenturedness. :)
Why would anything change? I live car free and everything is either walkable or public transportable distance away. Same for the activities you mentioned. When I was a kid and played a lot of sports if there was an out of town meet the team bus would take us.
Being forced onto a schedule dictated by your kids is a choice parents make, not a necessity.
I never said I didn't have a car when needed, just that my day to day is much more enriched by not needing one (and being forced to get out of the house).
I will always choose to spend my time exploring the mountains with my kids, but if they choose soccer/baseball/etc then its just medium walk or short bus ride away.
When the kids become older they should be able to take public transport by themselves. I took the bus to school when I was six. In Japan it's common to send little kids shopping by themselves. There are popular shows available on Youtube that show five year olds going on errands for the first time. For example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5k5XTZy0rA
Well, the elementary school is two blocks away, the middle school is two blocks the other way, and there is a high school about four blocks away (though by high school the neighborhood school isn't as relevant, at least in NYC). There are little league soccer and baseball teams that practice & play games at the small park a block and a half away and the larger park three blocks away. I'm pretty sure that neither of those particular developments require a car.
We do frequently use a car (when leaving the city, for instance), but we don't have any reason to own a car. And more critically, we aren't chained to it in the way that so many friends and family are, by virtue of every necessity lying well beyond walking distance tucked inside a giant parking lot.
I’m surprised by this, we visited a friend in Seattle with my son and it felt like the least child friendly city that I’ve ever been to. After seeing people tieing off to shoot up midday in Freeway Park any thought of having my kid play in the park was gone, no need to risk a needle stick.
I will say as far as cities go those effected with homelessness were not as aggressive towards me/us as I’ve experienced in other cities, but they were extremely aggressive towards each other and didn’t make it feel like a very welcoming place for families.
Perhaps the few days my family was there gave me an inaccurate impression. I’ve been there numerous times for business and always enjoyed the city, but those times tended to involve a lot more Lyft rides and eating/drinking at higher price point restaurants than walking around exploring the city and time in the parks. With my family we were mostly in the First Hill, Downtown, Pioneer Square, and a bit in Belltown neighborhoods.
Those are basically the city core neighbourhoods. Seattle city limits stretch rather far north into neighbourhoods like Ravenna and Phinney Ridge. I am not sure which neighbourhood the person you are replying to is in, but their story doesn't sound unbelievable outside of Capitol Hill plus the "core" neighborhoods you mentioned.
I’d guess if we define city living as an affluent neighborhood within city limits that one can live/work/play in without getting in a vehicle there are areas that fit the bill in nearly every city assuming that one has the correct income and profession to slot into it.
Where in seattle because I live in south lake union and there are no parks anywhere near me that I could have used as a kid to play ultimate frisbee, basketball, and football like I did as a kid. They are all way too small, overcrowded, and not generally safe in my opinion.
I assume you are being sarcastic because my parents raised me in a $1M massive single family home in midwest suburbia which was also in one of the top 100 public high school in the country.
However, I cannot find a single public basketball court in either neighborhood you mentioned, and I can see maybe one park per neighborhood that can each support 1 open space sports game which means my friends and I would have likely had no opportunity to find an open space to play a sport game when growing up due to how crowded parks are.
Add on the homeless problem here and it should come as no surprise my GF and I are planning on moving back to my midwest hometown once we start trying to have kids.
Yes, I was being sarcastic. I don't like the homeless problem here either, but it gets slightly better once you move out of SLU to a residential area with $1M houses. We still get things like car break ins though, my neighbor had one just this Tuesday. I'm also thinking about moving some quieter nicer place, but knowing myself, I probably won't.
There's Gilman Playground in Ballard with baseball park. It also has tennis courts. There's another baseball park at NW 63rd St and 20th Ave NW, and another one at 60th and 26th. There are more baseball parks in Woodland Park, and they also have soccer fields. Ballard High School has a football stadium, though I don't know how easily accessible it is to non-students. There's another baseball park/football/soccer stadium at Local Heights Playfield.
But yeah, if you're into basketball, you're probably out of luck if you're looking for any outside basketball place, it's not really that popular here.
And then you live in a tiny apartment that looks and smells like shit, otherwise pay $4000 a month for a decent 1 bedroom. Been there, done that. NYC is so much overrated.
I grew up in manhattan, and I really just think this is a situation of people wanting something different than what they previously had. The ability to drive instead of being jam packed on highly congested trains was something that I enjoyed when living in other cities, traffic does suck, but at least you're in a temperature controlled place where you can control the radio and what not. Additionally, point to point transportation is nice as well.
Over time, what I've come to appreciate the most is the middle ground, something that is incredibly rare but does exist within pockets of larger cities and that's the ability to easily choose between walking, taking public transit, biking or driving to really any destination. All of the big cities in the pacific northwest (portland, seattle, vancouver) do this well, in addition to areas outside of the city centers in the north east as well as some of the first ring suburbs.
I don't think it's as simple as rebelling against your parents -- plenty of my schoolmates are perfectly content to be slaves to their cars, and a good number of my city friends grew up here.
We, at least, do have the option of driving if we need to: we just walk a few blocks to the car share and off we go.
I live in the Midwest and have 3 young kids. We do have a minivan, but more and more we refuse to drive when we can almost as easily walk to parks, farmers market, library, museums, etc. Our oldest can easily walk for a few miles, and we have a stroller for the younger ones. After getting our weekly farmers market loot into the stroller, one of the younger ones walks part of the way, and the other one gets worn in a carrier.
It's precisely because I have kids that I prioritize a walkable place. Because kids can't drive!
So in car-dependent places, they have no autonomy until they're nearly adults. I think it's much more healthy for them to slowly and steadily expand their autonomy, rather than a sudden discontinuous break when they learn to drive.
The same argument applies in reverse to old people too. In places with good transit and walkability they can stay independent and active longer, with no sudden loss of freedom when they can no longer safely drive vehicles at high speed.
Walking and transit are both overwhelmingly safer than cars (most things are).
When kids are small you just push them in a stroller. Once they're too big for a stroller, they're big enough to walk everywhere that you can walk. It's really not that complicated. Suburban kids who never walk anywhere may whine about needing to walk two miles, but my kids have been doing that since before they could walk unassisted, it's perfectly normal to them.
I do also have a Dutch-style cargo bike which we use a lot around our neighborhood. It's wonderful.
> It's precisely because I have kids that I prioritize a walkable place. Because kids can't drive!
This point is tragically under-appreciated. Kids who live in car-dependent suburbs are in a very real sense alienated from the larger society. A twelve-year-old should be able to visit the library, stop by the park, grab a sandwich at a lunch counter, mail a letter, and wander back home all by themselves in an afternoon.
It's no wonder so many kids feel isolated and alone. They are!
"Suburb" is a pretty generic term. My hometown has older, inner-ring suburbs that are built more or less on a street grid, with local shops, connections to transit, and walkable corridors.
It also has far-flung, residential-only, cul-de-sac communities where literally nothing is within safe walking distance. [0]
We call both "suburbs," but they're very different places.
Thank you. Moreover, it feels like suburbs (I’m calling the town of Overland Park, Kansas a suburb) can’t or don’t clean sidewalks and crosswalks as quickly (if at all) or worse use the sidewalk as a dumping ground for snow from the road. Even on a normal day, a walk to the post office and back home can easily take half an hour, probably closer to an hour if you’re walking. That being said, it feels cramped to live in a city. There are other reasons to not get a pet (allegedly my fear of commitment) but I hesitate getting a proper desktop computer because it will occupy space. It feels illogical and wasteful (and unhealthy?) of brain cycles to worry about space that much. (What if I have to move... )
I don't strongly disagree with your point here, but like all city statistics that aren't normalized for area and density (e.g. by using the MSA/CSA or some equivalent), this one is potentially quite misleading. Kansas City draws its borders around an awful lot of rural land that wouldn't be (indeed, isn't) counted inside the borders of most cities. This is all well within the city limits, for example:
That only works if things are within a reasonable enough distance to bike to and if the roads are setup in a way that someone can safely bike at all.
If you're talking an older grid-style suburb with corner stores and the like, it's probably something kids can do.
On the other hand, in many of the exurbs/modern suburbs, there's large distances between things and very strict segregation of residential/commercial areas. Car-centric layouts don't help either, with routes between
-----------
Even older suburban areas can have their own problems.
For a personal anecdote, I grew up in a part of NJ that has been settled since 1700s and is rather hilly. (Watchung Mountains). Most of the main roads date from that time and resemble English country lanes in terms of width/geometry more than they resemble typical American roads. Speed limits are 35-45mph, traffic does at least 5 over.
It is absurdly dangerous to walk or bike on any of those roads, and there aren't really any practical solutions to that. They studied adding sidewalks and it was going to cost huge sums of money and require destroying hundreds upon hundreds of mature trees (the roads are thickly lined with forest, and there isn't even an inch of shoulder).
Cutting the speed limit is impractical because they're main roads that people drive 5-20 miles on, that's a significant time hit.
I had a bike when I was a kid. Had to ride over an hour just to visit my nearest friend. It was a pretty dangerous route on roads designed for cars too, so my parents wouldn't let me do it alone until I was 14.
Here's how it worked out for me in Italy, with a 3 and a 6 year old: "the right tool for the job".
In our immediate vicinity we had everything we needed, day to day: the kids' schools, a grocery store, cafes, a bakery, pizza shop, and a tram stop. All of this was walkable.
The tram stop was what we'd use to go downtown. There is no parking there, and parking is a hassle, and the tram runs frequently, so it was an easy choice.
Lastly, we also had a car, to go for a hike outside town, or go on a trip or something, but many weeks it would just sit there. Most American couples, even without kids, have two that get used all the time.
We lived in a 6-unit building, without much yard, but would frequently go to the park with the kids. As the quote goes, "kids don't need a big yard to play, they need other kids". Back here in the US, they don't use our yard much, but miss having other kids to play with on a spur of the moment basis.
This is part of the reason I moved with my wife and two kids to The Netherlands. My girls were 5 and 8 at the time. Almost everyone here rides bikes here in a city of 350k (Utrecht). We don’t own a car and either ride our bikes or walk everywhere. If we’re going to another city we take the trains.
My older daughter goes to school on here own bike 1 mike away and goes over to friends houses on her own. Decent used bikes here are 50-100eu and bike shops are in every little neighborhood. The city is amazingly quiet despite being notably more dense than San Francisco (where we’re from).
All of us love the freedom of not dealing with cars and everything that implies. We could never move back to a “car culture” city again.
I have a 2-year-old in San Francisco. We walk or take transit everywhere. (I also don’t use a stroller, so the kid is either walking for himself or riding on my shoulders, or occasionally riding in a wagon to the grocery store 2 blocks away.) My wife bikes to work. We have a car but it is mostly only used for trips to Costco and road trips; we could certainly get by with occasional rentals/taxis, but the car is occasionally convenient.
At some point in the nearish future I will probably put some kind of kid seat on the back of my bike.
> committed to a car-free lifestyle, probably for life.
Nothing personal, but I doubt that people are able to commit to any kind of lifestyle' for life. Public transportation can be good, can be miserable, and that perception can change very quickly due to changes in life circumstances.
Me right now. But for me I just moved from San Francisco to Southern California. The amount of time I have to spend just moving myself about is insane. People talk about how expensive SF is, but I didn’t have to spend 15 hours a week just moving myself around to work and back, grocery store, misc errands, etc. Between the cost of my time and the car I’m spending $3,000/mo just to be miserable. It sucks. Can’t wait to get rid of this thing.
It is the same story in some parts of the world but in Europe it is better where youngesters could take the train for free to all of EU countries, I think, although that was the case in differnt ways. Maybe you should read this nice analysis on it here:"Much has been said about the commodification of the city, a process by which urban space becomes a commodity and is thus systematically exploited for the primary purpose of profitmaking. Residents and tourists alike are reduced to “mere ‘extras’ in the great urban spectacle,” which is geared toward maximizing income." This is not to mention that they continue to be blighted by being car-based cities ill-suited for pedestrian life, and which cause thousands of traffic deaths per year, the highest rate in the world.
The answer, in short, is capital. More specifically, it is the form that capitalist enterprise has manifested as in the Gulf. Ever since the discovery of oil, most of the surplus petrodollars have poured into the so-called secondary circuit of infrastructure and real estate. Aside from oil, the region lacks primary productive circuits. As a result, much of the money the state gathered from selling oil abroad was poured directly into the built environment. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/11/gulf-states-oil-capital-e... EDITED for spelling.
For one, the geography of car use tracks with income and wealth: Car-dependent places are considerably less affluent. Metros in which a higher share of people depend on their cars to get to work are poorer, and those where more people use transit or bike or walk to work are considerably more affluent.
I always hated driving. I gave up my car more than a decade ago. I am happy to see stats like this.
In spite of how sprawling the US is, I think it is a myth that we have no choice but to build a car-centric America, a myth that serves as self-fulfilling prophecy. And I hate hearing it.
We don't have to build either a car-centric America or a non-car-centric America. We can, if we choose, build an America that has places for people who want cars, and places for people who don't. That was supposed to be a key idea of America--that not everybody has to live the same way.
You can spring up a new, distant, car-based suburb on a pristine land. The deer and the groundhog who used to live there, don't get a vote.
But usually, people who already live in a city of, say, density X, are pretty strongly opposed to building more and increasing the density to 1.2 X. Also, those 0.2 X new residents naturally are only moving in in the future, so they don't get to vote, either.
Somehow, the attitude of the people who get to enjoy the dense, walkable neighborhoods, would need to change so that they'd be more open to sharing their lifestyle with more new people.
Increasing density in cities is not the only way to get people out of their cars. It is very possible to expand cities outwards, while still maintaining walkability and bikeability. Expanding public transit alongside the city is one of the best ways.
Low density settlements have real trouble financing all the infrastructure they need from the taxes they get. I agree that a lot can be done with proper zoning to reduce the need for a car, but good public transit needs a certain density.
I had not thought of it that way - car-dependent places being poorer. Part of the reason this is not so obvious is that a car is a status symbol and people do like their nice rides and to feel special in their pride and joy car.
But it stands to reason that if all of your out-goings are paying for the motor then you are going to have less money to spend or invest in other things. If someone has a fancy car it may be leased for x amount per month with restrictions on miles driven, the financing being fairly scammy for the buyer and the auto-maker. Yet we see the gleaming motorcar and assume 'that person must be rich' (rather than pity them for their apparent status anxiety).
We don't see that person on a bicycle and think 'they must be rich', envying them for not outlaying $$$ a month to keep a tin box on the road belching poisons. Instead we are more likely to wonder what is wrong with them. In the last century you would possibly wonder if they got nicked for drink driving and their punishment was to be relegated to two wheels. Luckily attitudes have improved in that respect.
It is the same with houses. The person that rents might have debts but the person with the million dollar mansion and some type of interest only mortgage really does have a million dollars of debt hanging around their neck. Yet we perceive them to be rich. By this logic the homeless guy in the park is richer than all the neighbours beholden to banks rentseeking them with their mortgage products for 25 year periods.
The people who are actually rich as they have inherited the land are dismissive of the nouveau rich, maybe they know the truth at these folk haven't actually got tangible wealth, just big debts to banks and wannabee status anxiety. You can find landed-gentry types wearing the same coat for thirty years and driving round in cars approaching that age, beaten up and full of dog hairs. They might have bought that ancient Volvo new, no finance needed. They might also use it to buy very fine food and drink from the posh supermarket. They don't have status problems like the people in fancy cars do.
America is different to Europe in this aspect, partly because there is this idea that America is the land of freedom and opportunity, in Europe people kind of know their place and don't feel ashamed to do a regular job. In America you have to be a rockstar or die trying. Sense of community doesn't fill the void when life is one of suburban sprawl. In a walkable community you should be able to say hello to a few people just going about your business, a wave and a smile shared with that old guy you see walking his dog every day does give you some sense of belonging in your (little) world. You might grumble about the guy and how his dog walks so slowly with no road sense whatsoever but that passing acknowledgement of existence is a community bond, the smile is real. Driving some shiny behemoth of a vehicle gives you none of that, sure you can wave from the window and hoot your horn but it is still a little mobile prison cell of sorts. You can't actually stop and chat. Sure you are off to see more important, higher status people that have better convo than the doddery neighbour with the dog but you are also spiritually a bit poorer for not being part of a local, walkable community.
Those who are able to afford to live in affluent areas have high income jobs and can purchase the land surrounding their workplace, enabling non motorized conveyance or transit. The low and middle class, are forced out of the area, however these middle to low income jobs still exist and they need to be accomplished; think how far out a janitor is pushed away from a high income residence area before they can afford a place.
An example of this is San Francisco's suburb expansion with the streetcar's development. As the streetcar line expanded, the lower income folks could afford better residences as opposed to having to live in a walking distance to their job, which drove up costs as individuals competed for residences.
The automobile enabled individuals to find affordable residences and provided middle income and lower income individuals the power to find jobs not within walkable distance of a residence or rail line. The automobile has been a net good for society, especially the low income or middle class.
You're describing a chain of events that happened, but doesn't necessarily had to occur. Firstly, the mechanism you describe where people bid up housing near transit corridors also happens near highways and traffic corridors, though it is more dispersed. This effect can and has been mitigated by combining rail transit with buses or trams leading to rail stations. It is of course more effective in less suburbanized areas where density is higher.
That's not to say that there's something inherently wrong with the American suburban model, it just doesn't scale well. So much space is wasted on parking lots for vehicles that stand empty most of the day. And rush hour traffic is just not fixable beyond a certain point, no matter how many lanes are added to the highways.
It's just flat-out wrong to claim that non-car commutes only benefit the affluent. That's entirely dependent on how the economics of the community are set up. If there's a will to have everyone commute by public transit, there are many ways to achieve it.
>"So much space is wasted on parking lots for vehicles that stand empty most of the day"
Don't forget that these stretches of black asphalt act as giant heat accumulators, soaking up the sun during the day and keeping temperatures uncomfortably high after the sun goes down.
That can be fixed with some trees (or better yet: captalized upon with solar panels). Parking garages are another option for more space-efficient parking
Parking garages are much superior to flat parking lots, especially if you put them underground, underneath the buildings in question. Keep the eyesores hidden.
The best option would be to make neighborhoods walkable/bikeable, implement good public transit as much as possible, and offer an affordable delivery service for bigger items. Going further, it would be beneficial to abolish megastores and return to more human-sized retail outlets.
"Parking garages are much superior to flat parking lots, especially if you put them underground, underneath the buildings in question. Keep the eyesores hidden."
Indeed. A lot of this sort of infrastructure can and should be built below-ground. Parking garages, warehouses/storage, utilities, the works.
"Going further, it would be beneficial to abolish megastores and return to more human-sized retail outlets."
Not sure if I follow. Megastores are nice as one-stop shops, reducing the need to drive around town to get everything.
I am in favor of making them more modularized/sectionalized, such that they can be rearranged vertically (whether above-ground or below-ground) and reduce the horizontal footprint. Their similarly-sprawling parking lots also can and should be replaced with underground parking garages.
My point regarding megastores is that they squeeze out neighborhood stores, which they can do because corporate is willing to burn money to take over markets.
Sterile charmless megastores are a symbol of unrestrained corporatism.
I don't mind department stores, but I do have a problem with Walmart and their ilk.
Wal-Mart as a specific example also happens to be readily affordable and available to lower-class (let alone middle-class) Americans 24-hours a day and 7 days a week. Very few neighborhood or even department stores offer that, nor do most grocers (Safeway being a notable exception). It's for that reason that I tend to appreciate Wal-Mart's existence; yeah, it certainly ain't the best employer, and I know I personally prefer shopping at the mom-and-pop stores, but I also recognize that most Americans don't have the privilege of being choosy about those sorts of things.
As an additional bonus, most Wal-Marts (in my observation) will let you park your car there overnight, no questions asked. For someone who's homeless and living out of one's car, or for someone who's traveling and can't afford lodging, that's a pretty huge help.
It's apparent you have never been to Chicago or spent much time in New York. Affordable housing is available 30 minutes in transit away from the Chicago business district, and a less than one hour subway ride from Manhattan's.
I live in an area of Berlin where about half the residents are on social security. Everybody is within walking distance to a bus stop, buses come every ten minutes or so, and trains and subways take you to the city center in less than half an hour. An hour in public transport connects almost any two points in Berlin. Public transport is an effective alternative to cars in cities with decent density.
Biking to the city center is also possible and takes about half an hour as well.
The author did a great job of arguing the case that transportation preferences map semi-neatly to red tribe / blue tribe distinctions, but it doesn't convince me that cars cause Americans to be apart.
I'm sure Americans would be closer together if more things were walkable for more people and I don't oppose investments in walkability. However, some people don't want that, some people are thrilled to drive a big vehicle and burn a gallon or three of gas to pick up a case of beer and log of chewing tobacco.
What virtue do we need to inoculate into Joe Sixpack to get him to participate in a the vegetarian version of personal transportation?
We could start by pricing in the damage cars do to the environment. A first step would be raising taxes on fuel until Joe Sixpack thinks twice before burning a gallon of gas to get his beer.
Americans want to be "apart"! Most people in America see high-density living as a negative. Most want a yard and a garage. The country is huge - you can fit three UKs into the state of Texas alone. We have the space, we have the roads, we like our yards.
I have moved our family into progressively rural environments and will continue to do so until the distance to basic necessities is intolerable. In most rural environments there is no meaningful traffic so people aren't that down on being in their vehicles.
Maybe you mean American corporations and people in power love space and their cars and the money they make off of selling and developing those things?
For example, LA used to have a great train network for public transportation until the automobile industry made sure to tear it down so people would be forced to drive cars.
In SF/BayArea people want zoning to change so there can be more housing/apartment buildings. Who's blocking that from happening? Homeowners who think that would devalue their properties.
Also, doesn't seem like people in NYC value cars or yards that much (at least not over living in NYC).
De-urbanization was spurred by housing shortages post-WW2 and federal policy seeking to stabilize the housing market. The FHA was created to insure home loans that met a long list of requirements[1], which had biases towards increasing consumption (including cars) and racial segregation. The marketing and growth of suburbia was then promoted by various business interests that would benefit from that increased consumption[2]. The new suburban lifestyle led to the rise of modern conservatism[3]. Most (~85% [3]) of the US lives in metropolitan areas, so rural lifestyles are not typical and it would be vastly less efficient if everyone lived there rather than in cities.
"America" doesn't consist of LA, NYC, and SF. There are a lot of people even in those places that don't want density but choose the environment because there are jobs, and there are jobs because so few people are willing to leave. (catch 22)
It's true that America isn't only New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, but those three areas do make up over 10% of the population, which is nothing to sneeze at.
While that is true, LA makes up a big portion of that "over 10%" hardly anyone in LA lives in anything remotely like high-density housing or lives there for much beyond the fantastic weather and job opportunities. Also, you don't do anything to address the parent comments point that plenty of people who live in higher-density areas would prefer to move to somewhere more rural, but can't because of life.
100% of the my friends and family who live in New York would live nowhere else in the country in spite of the extreme costs of living in Manhattan, when they could have equal incomes elsewhere.
I know it's hard for you to believe, but some people like living in high density areas.
I understand that. But at the same time I know plenty of people who live in SF who would love to move to a more rural area, but they or their spouse can't find work in their field outside of metro areas and SF is close to their rural roots. Some people don't like living in high density areas, but find themselves their out of circumstance.
Hundreds of thousands of people live in high density areas of Los Angeles with densities far exceeding San Francisco's most dense areas. Also people live in LA for the same reason they live in other big cities, because it's incredibly diverse and vibrant. Traffic may be bad, but most people aren't in transit for that long anyways since the city is still pretty dense, and you can get everything you need within your neighborhood (where many neighborhoods are totally walkable).
but (hundreds of thousands[living in high density LA]) + (hundereds of thousands [living in high density SF]) + 8 million (living in NYC) =/= 10% * 350 million.
In fact, if we generously estimate that 10 million people live in high density metro areas that don't rely on cars we are looking at less than 3% of the US population. I think that is something to sneeze at.
The US has over 200 zip codes with a population density of 20k/sqmile. While 20k/sqmile isn't an 'emblem of urban density' it does show there are several locations a person that enjoys high density can live in.
I know it’s because it’s HN, but SF is just not that big of a city to be included with the other two. Maybe include Houston, Philadelphia, or Phoenix. SF isn’t even in the top ten.
The San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area is estimated at 8.8 million, putting it fifth, after Greater NYC, Greater LA, Greater Chicago, and the Washington DC metro area including Baltimore. [0]
Have you lived the alternative? It's obvious people are raised to want large houses and large yards, its cultural, but given we'd know the true experience of both would we still feel that way?
I've lived the big city, high density European lifestyle, I lived it in America too, and in Canada, and I've lived the American and Canadian small town life.
They're both nice. The small town life is great if the community is healthy, and there is a town core that is dense of businesses and shops which you can go to and walk around. It gives you access to nature and land in an unprecedented way. And the small population means you get a feel of community and know others, and events can be hosted on peoples properties.
If the town is struggling, its not that great, and can start to feel depressing and isolated.
The european city style is also great, it feels like a buzzing small town, minus the access to land and nature. The sense of community, knowing your neighbors, being proud and invested in your neighborhood. Being physically active. These are all there. Similar to how you can find that in prosperous small towns too.
In the end, I feel the choice between small town and European style cities is personal. If you prefer nature, enjoy quiet downtime, and peace, small town wins. If you prefer urban landscapes, a buzzing vibrant environment, and constant flux of activities and creativity, European cities would win.
That said, I'd be surprised if anyone prefers the American style cities and suburbs. Its like the worst of both worlds. You get a medium sized house, big enough that maintenance is a chore, yet too small to have the space for serious house endeavors. A yard, but too small to have it be a place to enjoy nature. Its not quiet, yet also not buzzing. It lacks creativity and the feeling of community, and everywhere is hard to get too, too far to walk, too crouded to drive.
That's what I think people complain about. I personally hate them with a passion.
Yes, lived in urban environments. When I was young and single I didn't mind density and the resulting loss of personal space. Now that I am older I want as much space between me and my neighbors as possible. Short of a trip to the hospital, I have no plans on sharing a wall with a stranger ever again.
I'm not sure about Europe and America but where I live (Australia) living in the city is ridiculously expensive (Sydney routinely ranks as one of the highest cost of living cities in the world).
When I was growing up I lived in the suburbs, I hated it so far from everything, very infrequent public transport (lucky to get one bus an hour). Maybe worst of all as a young geek poor internet speed. I was stuck on dial up for years because it was all we had...
I vowed when I left my parent's home I'd live closer to the city. But it is just so expensive (especially rent) there is no way I can justify it. So I suffer through all the long commutes, traffic congestion hell etc.
Perth has a sickeningly low density of residents within the CBD, and as a result you can get some really good deals on apartments within a stones throw to the city. It's also got a pretty good 'small town' sort of atmosphere compared to other cities.
It's not exactly the most progressive of places, however. But personally I love it.
NB: I'm currently in the position of purchasing land in Perth and you can get some good sub-$200k deals on 350-400 square metre blocks within 20 minutes to the city too if you look around.
I totally understand that. Cities can be crazy expensive, and small towns lack the job market some people need.
I guess I just wonder sometime, what if we designed a city where cars took second place, and high density, public transit, walk-ability, bike-ability, e-bike, car share, etc, was made the priority. Would it make for nicer cities, which are more livable and affordable?
I don't know, maybe not, but it seems as long as Car are still around, we'll never try it out.
EDIT: Generally, dense cities in the European style are like that because they were designed prior to the existence of Cars, and thus Cars have never been able to enter them successfully, too small roads, and weird road networks. Since they were made for walking, they're automatically higher density. But, those cities were also designed before public transit, e-bike, bikes, scooters, package delivery, car share, etc. So I feel like we could do much better then those today.
> Most people in America see high-density living as a negative.
The times, and with it many people's preferences, are always changing.
It's wonderful that you have found the place that suits you. Likewise, a growing number of people value higher density living, just as you do low density living.
I'm a little torn. I don't remember my apartment days fondly (except during college and in Houston where apartments can be LARGE). Noise/smell/bugs from neighbors is awful to deal with, crummy stairwells (never an elevator), fighting for a parking spot and hauling groceries was a hassle.
But I dislike driving for a commute, I've done as little as 30 minutes and up to 1.5 hours of commute, it's very stressful to be constantly alert for a good chunk of your day just to get from A to B.
I think I've found the best of both worlds; a house that's my family's own space, and Houston Park and Ride stations. I drive 10 minutes to the station, leave my car there and commute on a bus to my job. The stop is about 5 blocks from the building I work at, I'm relatively stress-free and I can choose to make good use of the time spent riding the bus (generally reading books, news, sports, etc.). The bus gets there at the same time I would have in spite of the stops it makes because it uses the HOV when I would be stuck in traffic on the freeway
I think all of the things you mention can be addressed, it's just that cities often build apartments as a way to increase density only when it's needed rather than to think things through in a density/walkability first way.
Cities can have family sized apartments, with the needed amenities in a way that's designed both for cars/walking/biking/ect.
> Noise/smell/bugs from neighbors is awful to deal with, crummy stairwells (never an elevator), fighting for a parking spot and hauling groceries was a hassle.
That's unfortunate. One of the things I love about my apartment (Chicago) is that I've got friendly neighbors, it's well kept, there's decent parking, and I've got a deli and 2 grocery stores in walking distance.
I'm a big fan of park and rides though, esp if it connects to rail. They seem like a good compromise to help alleviate congestion from a city and work to collect from lower dense areas where there's not enough density to support rail.
A lot of people don't want to live in the middle of cities. I don't understand why people who live in cities think everyone wants to live there. I want to own several acres of land to have room to do the things I want to do. I don't want to live in a condo where I have to be careful about noise levels and with no ability to have a big party at my house because of lack of room for the guests.
One thing I have always found odd is how no one talks about treating cars like guns.
Both have reasonable use cases. Both are fun to tinker with. Both are the main ways people kill other people. And you shouldn't need to use either daily in a civilized society.
That's not even talking about the rest of the problems mass car ownership creates, from climate change to destroying neighborhoods to the health crisis sitting instead of walking creates.
>And you shouldn't need to use either daily in a civilized society.
This is either some next-level elitism or a false argument. Does the recluse have no place in society? What about the logger, or the Tractor operator? What about the surgeon who is on call, do you want them to bike to the hospital at 2 AM? I sure as hell don't.
If your argument is that no individual should have to own a car, we already live in that America. If your argument is that no one should have to own in a car, get real.
I have been to old town centers in Europe, you really ought to tone down your elitism.
What I meant when I said "tractor drivers getting to work" is people like my friend who grades and compacts pads for new homes. He drives a 4x4 pickup down a dirt road sometimes for 10+ miles to get to his tractor so he can start working. How does mass transit work for new construction?
Building is a reasonable use case for cars while protecting yourself from polar bears is a reasonable use case for guns [0].
I don't understand why you, and a large number of other people, are being willfully obtuse about this. 10+ miles on dirt roads to get to a tractor is not someone who lives in civilization, it's someone out in the wilderness.
speaking as an engine mechanic for a small chain of auto repair shops, it feels like americans have grown outright apathetic to the commute offered by cars --any car-- in this age.
How do i figure? Maintenance. My most common customer comes in complaining about a noise or a smell and stares at her shoes when asked when the last major service was, what the mileage is, or when the last oil change was. Its almost like drivers have learned to internalize their hatred of the commute into the car itself. Like they just dont want to think about any of it.
Bare brake pads, scored rotors, and boiled oil are all so common it hurts. I once had to spend two weeks rebuilding most of a partially seized engine because a customer couldnt understand why his two year old car idled so rough. a $40 oil change could have prevented what ended up being $8000 in parts and service.
I'm glad for the light on the dash that blinks when my car needs an oil change. And I'm lucky to have an honest mechanic who keeps me up to date on issues without gouging me.
I've become apathetic about driving too. It's become mostly unpleasant due to congestion. What you say cuts pretty close for me: A car is an appliance.
But also, cars have gotten so reliable that it's easy to stop thinking about what's going on under the hood.
I can understand the feeling though. Even though I don't commute by car any more, I see the same thing in how I treat my mountain bike vs how I treat my commuter bike. My mountain bike is for fun and gets cleaned/maintained etc after I use it in the weekends. My commuter bike is used during the week either first thing in the morning or early evenings before getting home for a meal and seeing my family. It's kinda a necessary evil and resented a bit compared to my mountain bike. I want it to just work and not have to think about it (until it annoyingly doesn't).
I started commuting by ebike full time last year and now when I do drive in traffic I notice how crazy my road rage gets. I get so upset at the insanity of sitting in this giant box that is 25x my body weight as I crawl in orderly queues with other people doing the same thing. In a world without cars we could have small EVs (bikes, scooters, pods) that all had no crash safety features and all weighed under 500lbs. Average speeds on freeways around cities are below 30mph these days anyways, why are we doing this still? Anyways, I'm workin on it.
Much of the car-bound design resulted from zoning and simple the-rode-to-hell-is-paved-with-good-intentions. The problem is fixable, but it will probably take much clamoring over a generation’s timespan to undo the damage.
In my city we have a great transit system which often gets disrupted by the traffic jams caused by personal cars.
I can understand that not every city can provide a good transit system, but for cities like ours I wonder if the problem can be solved by creating dedicated bus lanes that are always separate from other lanes throughout the city. When you're stuck in traffic and see the buses whizzing through without delay, it's easy to make the decision to ditch the car and start using the transit.
A great Dutch ‘invention’ is what is known as a Bakfiets - effectively a longer, heavier bicycle with a large ‘bucket’ (bak) at the front that can carry two children and/or lots of shopping or goods.
Also worth noting is the huge environmental cost of cars - not just in carbon monoxide, huge array of components and metals they require to build, impact on climate change, etc., but also how they create ‘nature barriers’ dividing land corridors for flightless animals. Witness roads in the middle of otherwise pristine forests or road networks that clear huge swaths of wilderness.
I’ve frequently thought how the true cost of cars has been understated, possibly due to the assumed bias that cars are positive pieces of technology, lobbying efforts by vehicle manufacturers, a bias against public transport, etc.
Cars are in many ways, the precursor to the most private of popular, self-focused technologies: the mobile phone.
Cars benefit a private (individual, family) need generally over a public one. It is your car and your ‘asset’. Whilst there are, of course, ‘public cars’ (taxis and ride-sharing), they are not the norm in most cities, in most suburbs, in most places.
We should, as a society, spend more time debating the merits of cars and road networks - especially factoring in the downsides for those with physical disabilities and those on low incomes.
edit: fixed spelling mistake, added last three paragraphs.
We've had similar bikes to the Bakfiets here in Denmark since 1929, the "Long John" as it was originally known. It's no surprise really, considering the very similar flatness of our countries, that bicycle culture is so big in both our countries.
Nowadays, I think people are more comfortable riding the three-wheeled cargo bikes, or Christiania Bikes, as they're commonly known.
You can transport a surprising amount of stuff on either type, especially the e-bike versions.
I live in a neighbourhood formed between 1910 and 1930. When I looked it up in the photo archives, I saw how the road was a single piece spanning the entire width of the street, front door to front door. I saw how children and people just walked and played on it. A horse carriage moving through it. Nowadays from left to right it's a small side-walk, parked cars, a road for cars, a small strip for cyclists and another small side-walk. I really want to go back to having just a big wide lane for general use.
I find there are a number of things I cannot do without someone having a car.
1) Go hiking, snowboarding, mountain biking
2) Drive fast on road courses
3) Come home from the airport after midnight
4) Purchase more than 2 bags of groceries (including TP, laundry detergent et al)
5) Go on road trips
6) Isolate myself from the mentally ill or obnoxious behaviors and smells I'm surrounded by, including their fecal matter
7) Isolate myself from the constant crime that I am surrounded by
8) Isolate myself from the constant excessive sound that I am surrounded by
9) Easily move around tools and supplies to maintain my home
on and on it goes. A life without a car is a life of either hiring everything out (expensive), doing without (no hikes for me) or constantly renting (what's the point?)
If you live in a walkable area, that means a city, and if you ever want to get out of the city you’ll need a car, or a serious dedication to biking. There are exceptions, I had no trouble getting out of the city on foot in Boulder for example, the bus will even take you out to semi-rural areas.
A motorcycle is one potential solution but they are incredibly dangerous and not very practical in many parts of the country due to weather.
Unless you're paying for a private track, #2 makes the road less safe for others that want to use it and cost more to repair. It's the textbook example of abusing the commons.
Snowboarding? Pack my stuff, take the train to the airport, fly to country with mountains, take train to ski resort town, go snowboarding. Optionally rent a car if necessary.
Road trips? Rent a car, or fly somewhere interesting and rent a car locally.
#5-8 I handle by not being needlessly paranoid and distrustful of other people. "The mentally ill and their obnoxious smells and fecal matter", seriously?
Obviously when you have a car right there, you tend to gravitate towards it, when all you have is a hammer etc.
I'm sure there's also a big cultural aspect to it. I also thought it would be hell to not have a car anymore, but it has turned out to rather easy and straight forward.
Have you considered that "isolating" yourself from the people in your community who are most in need has had a negative impact on both you and your community? And that you may vastly overestimate the presence of crime and homelessness because of this isolation?
As someone who does take public transit on a daily basis and occasionally interacts with the homeless and petty criminals, the dehumanization of people in your own community in your comment is absolutely astounding. These people are your neighbors, whether they smell bad, have become victims of addiction, or have turned to petty crime.
I'm not the person you're responding to but I share that person's sentiment.
Some people don't like other people. Regardless of whether my neighbors are nice people who have an excess of delicious baked goods or meth addicts, I don't want to interact with them and I have no obligation to them just because of our proximity.
It's perfectly okay to not like being around people, especially people with obnoxious behaviors (whether they are because of a mental illness or otherwise) or people that smell bad.
I'm torn. I hate driving to work but, living in Colorado, I can't imagine not having a car to drive up to the mountains. Ideally, I could use public transit for getting around in town and just use my car when I need to either transport things or leave the city. Unfortunately, the closest light rail stations to my home and work are about 1 and 2 miles respectively--a long walk. I've recently considered the combination of riding a bike and taking the light rail though.
How often do you drive to the mountains though? Even if it’s once a week, there are cheaper options than owning a car - options which may also end up being more convenient if you take into account no longer needing a parking spot.
I personally love driving - but I work from home. Nothing makes me happier than remote starting my F150 and hearing its V8 roar from inside the house through several walls/doors.
Have kids? When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat.
My son had a bad reaction to a doctor prescribed medicine and had a seizure early one morning. We were at the hospital in 15 minutes thanks to the modern automobile. We don’t live in a city because we consciously chose the suburbs. I grew up in a walkable city and getting my first car was still one of the highlights of my youth.
Now my kids play soccer and they practice and play 4 days/week all over the local area. Good luck doing that without a car.
The freedom/flexibility a car provides us as individuals is unprecedented in human history. You can drive from NY to LA in 41 hours and you are on your own schedule.
For the folks that don’t like driving, you have plenty of cities to choose from where that’s doable. That’s the beauty of modern society - the choice is yours and we don’t have to judge/demonize one another’s choices.
Sure, but the point is that nothing in your post was made possible by the automobile. People in walkable cities do everything you mention and they did all those things before the invention of the automobile.
If you build a suburb so that you need a car, then, sure, I guess you'll need a car. But that's not because any of those activities require a car. It's just that your town was built to require it!
If we put a dome over your town and sucked out all the oxygen, then you'd also need spacesuit to perform all those tasks, too. But it wouldn't be because any of those tasks require a space suit. You'd need the space suit because we sucked out all the oxygen.
I didn't build a suburb - it was already here, just like you didn't build the city you live in. I drove to the suburb to begin with of my own free will because I didn't like living in a city (having already done so, Buffalo & Boston.) I'd already made the choice to live a lifestyle that is automobile-inclusive ;)
You don't get to judge or decide for me what is right for me and vice-versa. We all have a choices to make and do the best we can with what we have.
It's interesting that for all the intelligent people on HN, there's a lack of empathy and understanding that everyone has their own perception of reality. What's 'right' and 'real' in your mind may 1) not actually be reality 2) be neither 'right' nor 'wrong', but just a personal preference/opinion. I got a taste of this myself when I stumbled upon this book (and it's second part) https://www.amazon.com/DAY-Through-German-Eyes-Hidden-ebook/... (D-Day through German Eyes.) It's been eye-opening for me because I'd always assumed the Germans troops were evil men who were all bent on conquering Europe.
Unfortunately, this live-and-let-live account of history simply isn’t true. The suburbs were made possible via massive government subsidies, both in infrastructure and incentives for suburban homeownership.
Also, exclusionary zoning played an enormous role in deciding what those places looked like and they did it in large part to control who got to live there.
Finally, your lifestyle choices have externalities, from the immediately obvious 30k deaths a year, to more dangerous streets for people who choose not to drive, to environmental damage, to cities clogged with the cars of suburban commuters twice a day.
Respectfully, you've misunderstood what they mean by urbanization in those articles and completely missed their point, which is about the growth of urban areas (which includes suburbs) in general:
"It’s true that as people in developing nations move from the countryside to the city, the shift may reduce the pressure on land, which could in turn be good for the environment. This is especially so in desperately poor countries like Madagascar, where residents in the countryside slash and burn forests each growing season to clear space for farming. But the real difference is that in developing nations, the move from rural areas to cities often leads to an accompanying increase in income — and that increase in income leads to an increase in the consumption of food and energy, which in turns produces an uptick in carbon emissions."
In other words, wealthier people living in urban areas -- in both city cores and in the suburbs -- are worse for the environment than rural poor folks, and as developing nations urbanize, we can expect to see an increase in these impacts.
So now your opinion is that cities are equally bad...great so we've come full circle - we should all go live on a farm - got it. Farmers need pickup trucks so I guess I'm good to go (I happen to live within spitting distance of several farms so it's even more convenient.)
People on HN needs to get over themselves. Smart yes, able to see other's perspectives...hardly.
So your argument is that you need your car because you don't live in a place that is designed for humans, so we shouldn't change cities to be less car dependent?
I have a choice, I can live in a walkable place, but it involves tradeoffs that I don't care to make - because I don't see car ownership (or driving) as a negative thing, unlike this echo chamber.
That's such a nonsensical argument. Suburbs weren't designed for elephants, they were created for humans, just like cities. You want to alleviate the dependence on cars in cities, make public transportation as convenient and flexible as having a car. Oh wait, you can't. People have cars because they do provide a perceived benefit, otherwise people would choose the alternative in droves.
Maybe you all should create a pedestrian-only city and live happily ever after.
Suburbs are designed for automobiles to move humans between places, not for humans to move themselves.
There is no choice but to build cities in this car-dependent way. Cities are forced to do so by our legal system that has been influenced by the automobile manufacturers and other industries.
Instead of me digging up some citations, just go watch Roger Rabbit. This has been the story for many years.
Our zoning regulations enforce the automobile's hegemony, increasing distances and exposing pedestrians to the elements as well as dangerous traffic.
Without being forced to build in this financially insolvent manner, [1] no community would choose to isolate people from each other in the way that we do now in the United States.
Our neighboring country, Mexico, (among many others) shows that a costly design is not required for urban and suburban environments to work for humans.
The impending arrival self-driving car gives hope that the gigantic proportion of land devoted to car storage can be radically reduced, giving space for more buildings and habitable spaces between the buildings we have already constructed. This is a good sign for the future but we sure took an expensive, circuitous route to get there, all the while losing local power over our communities to industrial interests.
What about the choice of an individual to get an F150 which has an unnecessarily large V8 engine roaring and idling when no one is using it for what it was designed for? I am in a city surrounded by cars that are far too large for their designated duties. People choose, like you mention, and yet it's the children with asthma and my mother with asthma who pays the price for the ridiculously oversized and smog-producing vehicles that are everywhere in society. I'm all for pickup trucks and minivans and buses, but only in the right application. At other times, which is probably 80-90% of the large vehicles I see, your choice to go alone in the car hurts all of our lungs and our planet.
> I'm all for pickup trucks and minivans and buses, but only in the right application.
I'm glad I don't live in a place where it's ok to limit people's choices based on someone's opinion on what is or isn't the 'right application.'
I'm sorry about your mother's asthma; my 6 year old son is a type 1 diabetic - that doesn't make it ok for me to go chastising society's choice to put sugar in practically EVERYTHING we eat or to try force society to change because of my son's misfortune.
Unless someone is forcing your kid to eat food with sugar in it, it's not a good comparison.
Your neighbors don't really have a choice as to whether or not they enjoy "hearing its V8 roar from inside the house through several walls/doors" or breathe the extra pollution that some (but not all) large trucks create.
> When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat.
I'm sure your neighbors will love being woken up in the middle of the night. Perhaps some of them would be glad to live in a society where there are reasonable limits on what situations other people can force you into for their own pleasure.
Please note that this comment isn't really directed at you specifically - you might not have close neighbors or they might be truck enthusiasts as well. It's directed at all owners of obnoxiously loud trucks who don't care how it affects other people, which may or may not be you.
> Your neighbors don't really have a choice as to whether or not they enjoy "hearing its V8 roar..."
You're right, they don't - but since many of them have a truck, it really isn't an issue. I'm honestly not a 'truck enthusiast', but I'd wanted one for the longest time and I'm happy with my choice. It makes trips to Home Depot / Lowes / etc a dream. Going to the mountains on vacation with it has been great as well - having gone up the side of a mountain up a single lane dirt road to a house we rented a couple of years ago (you never know what kind of infrastructure exists when you rent a place on VRBO/HomeAway/etc.) in our minivan was an experience let me tell you. This year we rented another place up in the mountains and having a truck was a godsend.
I don't remote start my truck at night (because I'd like to think I'm not an inconsiderate A-hole) - I only start the truck remotely during the day for a few minutes to get the A/C started since it's over 100 degrees (F) in summertime here. I let my non-truck owning neighbors/friend borrow my truck when they need it - so on the contrary, our neighbors love us.
Personally my experiences living in a city have been far louder and had much ruder neighbors than I could dream of than in our current situation (people blaring music at all hours of the night and early morning, driving cars with seemingly no mufflers or motorcyclists whose sole purpose seems to be to irritate everyone sleeping, domestic disputes between deaf people (otherwise why would I have been able to hear them from several houses over, etc.)
The problem is libertarian viewpoints which espouse individual choice must also account for negative externalities of one's activity. If I produce a bunch of pollution on my land or on public lands, I should pay for whatever costs that pollution incurs on others. I don't fault you personally, nor anyone driving their Cadillac Escalada to the grocery store solo, however I do fault politicians and the populace at large for not enacting sensible pollution taxes which recompense innocent bystanders to your choices. For you, I'm glad you can utilize that vehicle when you feel you need to, and I think it's only fair that you pay a tax for the increased cost to society that that choice incurs.
> Have kids? When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat.
I can cycle to mine in 5 minutes, taxi, uber, run, walk, etc..
> I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat.
> We were at the hospital in 15 minutes thanks to the modern automobile.
If you live within 3 minutes of a Walmart (3 minutes traveling there, 3 minutes checking out, and 3 minutes returning) and 15 minutes of a hospital you are significantly better located than the average suburbanite.
Most walkable urban areas will have 24 hour convenience stores every few blocks. Most walkable urban areas will have many options for quick travel to medical facilities (Zipcar like services, uber like services, frequent emergency clinics, ambulances).
I think cities have better access to medical care than suburban areas. There are more medical facilities. There are more options in choosing primary care. There are more specialist. There are more alternative treatment options. Try getting antibiotics for strep throat at 2am for less than $250 cash in less than ninety minutes in a suburb.
> Most walkable urban areas will have 24 hour convenience stores every few blocks.
This is only true in very large cities (NYC, LA, Paris, etc.) In smaller cities my experience is quite the opposite, shops close early and they are far and few between. I'm talking between 200-500k population (my sample size is small, but one city is in the US the other in France, neither had pharmacies within walking distance that were open past 9pm.)
> Try getting antibiotics for strep throat at 2am for less than $250 cash in less than ninety minutes in a suburb
Never been a problem here with a local 24/7 pharmacy that takes insurance so I'm not sure where you're getting your $250 figure from.
I’ve done that as a small woman living alone in an opposite-of-upscale neighborhood, across the street from a public housing project. Really not a big deal.
I don’t know what neighborhoods you were living in, but my experience is that for every dangerous urban neighborhood there’s an equally affordable one that isn’t dangerous if you know where to look.
And it’s not like everyone can afford the privilege of a car either.
Says someone who has never experienced being beat up by a group of young men because of my race in just such a neighborhood as you described.
Growing up in a bad neighborhood, I didn't exactly have a choice to leave (until my parents bought a house in a better neighborhood in my late teen years.) I remember vividly the frozen blood on the concrete sidewalk across the street from my childhood home when leaving to walk to school - someone had been bludgeoned the death in the middle of the night.
Before I had a car, my girlfriend at the time lived in an even worse neighborhood (where shootings were a common/daily occurrence) the anxiety I experienced walking to the bus stop from her house, then waiting downtown for a transfer at a bus stop across the street from public housing, etc - that feeling is so vivid in my memory even though it's been 20 years. Not everyone shares the same experiences, and thus have the same values & priorities. Even after getting a car my troubles weren't quite over. I was nearly carjacked after dropping off the same girlfriend at her house at 11pm on a Friday night - he managed to open the car door, but not before I did a 180 in reverse and sped off.) Because I hadn't learned my lesson, I also had to change a flat tire in the same neighborhood at 3am one night. There's nothing like the threat of being shot or beat up to force you to learn to change a tire in a few minutes.
I'm happy in my suburb with a big backyard and a big dog and my truck (and yes firearms (gasp!)) It's fine if that isn't your cup of tea, just don't judge me for it.
There is an assumption that I actually want to interact with random members of the community. I don’t. Cars give me the freedom to choose my interactions and just generally be left alone. I don’t like waiting at bus stops, I don’t like having to watch my bag carefully or worry about forgetting things. I also don’t have to be exposed to whatever cold is making the rounds. I also don’t have to deal with psychotic, drug addicted homeless harassing me for money. Nor do I have to ride on a bus that makes twenty stops before it gets me to where I need to go. For me, cars represent freedom. If I want cold AC, I can do that. If I want to make a random diversion, I can do that too. Try to stop by Home Depot on the way home from work using public transit. Not only do you have to figure out the route and wait for the bus and possibly transfer and then tote whatever you buy back to a bus stop to do it all in reverse. If that makes me a bad person, then I am ok with that.
This is true of larger cities and metros, but the size of the US is too large to get rid of cars. I’m currently on a road trip through at least 7 states, and the car is the only way I pull that off.
If the main use of cars were seven state road trips I don't think people would complain about being stuck in rush hour traffic or having to drive twenty minutes to the nearest grocery store.
My point was that cars are versatile people moving machines. They’re very imperfect, but they go almost anywhere. HN seems to have an assumption that what’s good for the Bay Area can be exported everywhere, but that’s simply not true.
I have a four wheel drive, for going out to collect fire wood, go camping, and do generally outdoors things with.
I have a race/track car for being a general nuisance to society and shooting flames at people. And then I have a silly little automatic Honda for doing errands around the city when I need something cheap to operate and nimble around tight streets and things.
Having these cars all fit particular requirements I have. However I still end up riding my push-bike or taking the bus, because the normal day-to-day commute doesn't always require storage capacity.
I can certainly understand the reasons that people can be sufficiently happy with doing without a car. I can also understand the reasons why people are forced to need a car. I don't, however, like seeing people vilified or interrogated for being on either side of that fence.
Exactly, owning a car doesn't actually oblige you to use it every day. I also have two garaged cars (a sports coupe and an economical diesel estate), located within a 30 minute walking distance from my home, because parking space is scarce. I use the estate for long trips and the coupe for short weekend trips. While driving, I enjoy every bit of it. I also enjoy keeping both cars in top shape. During the week, I solely walk and the temptation to use the cars is reduced because of the long distance to the garage.
similar experience, I use my Jeep to go anywhere city or jungle and the Mustang for the strip and simply for nice summer days.
My drive to and from work is long at 1 hour each way but I found it still time well spent catching up on news on the radio. Once in the city I actually enjoy walking everywhere even for distance that my city friends would drive or take an Uber to.
If driving doesn't put a smile on your face you simply have the wrong vehicle.
I would encourage anyone who wants to compare two very different cities to drive and ride the rail systems around Seattle and Vancouver.
Vancouver has had a fully automated light rail system since 1986. New lines added in 2000 and 2009. There's significant high rise condo and apartment density around many stations.
City council a very long time ago cancelled a plan to build a freeway from east vancouver to downtown.
Seattle is sort of the opposite of that, it's very much more car dependent. The new light rail line helps a lot but its entry into service date was 22+ years after Vancouver's.
In my experience in Vancouver a great deal more people live a lifestyle that doesn't involve owning a car. Gas is a lot more expensive and insurance is more expensive. Many "normal" people commute daily on transit.
This is from 2002 but I don't think there's anything about it which is less relevant today, regarding suburban architecture/urban design and the lifestyles associated with extensive suburban sprawl:
225 comments
[ 72.2 ms ] story [ 4624 ms ] threadIt's one of those books that lots of people have read, but many more people have heard of and mean to get around to reading. It's very good and very thought-provoking. I read it more or less when it came out, and it has stayed with me ever since. (I did re-read it about 10 years ago.)
With respect to the article, the automobile is one of those things that has changed society so thoroughly—and which seemed like such a great idea at the time—that most people can't even imagine the impact or what they've lost. We just take it for granted.
I recently got rid of my car after four years of living in a city. I don't know why I held onto it for so long, but my life has improved dramatically. Not only can I go anywhere I want, but I never have to worry about permits, tickets, or parking.
This lifestyle can't work for people outside of cities, though. There's no way to get anyplace without a car, and there isn't enough density to make uber very effective. No one wants to wait a half hour for a ride.
Being in a city has downsides, but for this reason it's wonderful. There's even an app now where you can just use someone else's car. (Getaround, I think?) I've used it twice: one when I needed to go buy something about 20 miles away, and another to go on a trip a hundred miles away. And the price was very low.
Exactly. Which means that, if cities are designed sanely, they will be more attractive to people who don't want cars (when I lived in a city during college, I never had a car and never missed having one), and suburbs and rural areas will be more attractive to people who do (as I do now since I like having a detached house and an actual yard).
My lease is up next year and I can't wait to get rid of my car. I won't be replacing it. My car payment is rather high, but even with just the insurance, city parking/tickets, gas, tolls, and maintenance costs, I'm pretty sure I can Uber/Lyft everywhere I need to go for less money and rent a car on the occasion I really need one.
If I want it faster than that, or cheaper, I walk to the home depot a mile away.
If I need something specialized, I either take public transit all the way there, or ride my bike to the S-train station and bring my bike on the train.
If i want to go to the really big hardware warehouse, I catch the tram from just outside my house.
And if i need big things for some reason, I book the share-van, drive there, load it into the back, drive home, unload it, park the van, walk away.
In the city I have the shops around and a lot of transport options (bike, bus, tram, walk, carsharing..) or I can order it online, or, gasp, ask any of my 20 neighbours. Elsewhere your options are far more limited.
I'm not sure. You have to look to other places in the world to see examples of lower density living, though. I live in rural Japan in a small town. Officially I think it is officially 25K people, but that's only because it is more efficient for a single city hall to service a larger area. In reality, I think that it is closer to 5-10K in the town itself and then a spattering of people around the outskirts.
The main street of the town is 6 blocks long, if I remember correctly. I live 2 km away from the "hustle and bustle" of the town ;-) I live in a 3 story walk up apartment building surrounded on 3 sides by rice fields. Here and there, there are similar small apartment buildings, single family homes and small farms. In the walkable area, there are 3 grocery stores, a variety of restaurants, some clothing stores, some hardware stores, one electronics store, many bars (Japan is a drinking society), etc. There are many factories in the area (including TDK, Suzuki, and a few other big ones). There are dentists, doctors, etc, etc, etc.
I have to walk to the "down town" to catch the bus to the nearest big city, which I probably do once a month or so. However, that's it. Near the main street, it is mostly houses and shops, but by the time you get out my way (which is only a 20 minute walk) more than half of the land is farmland. The main street is right by the beach, too, so it only spreads in one direction. That should give you an idea of how small it is.
There are definitely places where it would be very difficult to live without a car, but it's pretty darn rural here and it's extremely comfortable to live if you are able bodied. If you have a bike, you can even easily ride to the next town (or the one after that). When I was teaching in the high school here, most of my students rode from 2 or 3 villages away, because there weren't enough students in the area to fill up the school. So depending on your definition of "city", I think it's completely doable. You just have to intentionally design the towns to be accessible. (It also helps that farms in Japan are extremely small, by law).
Obvs doesn’t apply if u don’t plan on it, but curious if anyone has found a solution in US cities.
Of course, hygiene is important any place, but specially the city. Now, on the other hand, maybe it does strengthen your immunity... but it's also not fun getting sick cuz you forgot about washing after MUNI.
Kids are prone to go from dirty surface to face without thinking.
At least in Japan, while vomit in the late evenings is an issue, you know those systems get washed --not so for MUNI.
But I'm torn about pushing winter cycling on people. I realize that if it's miserable for somebody, then they're not going to do it. I happen to love cycling and bikes, so the idea of riding during the winter just means more chances to ride under different conditions, and a chance to tinker with one more bike.
In terms of ditching the car altogether, that's a toss up. For most families, to understand their commuting situation, you have to draw the triangle from the two parents jobs to school or day care, possibly different schools if they have more than one kid. For a while, my daily commute was a labyrinth involving dropping people off at different locations before turning the minivan around and heading for work. But today, everybody takes a bus or rides their bikes. Our high school has basically no student parking. Cars are part of our transportation mix, but we try to minimize their use.
At one point it had been so long since I drove to work, that I forgot about a big construction project, and got lost.
As for cold, the kids can stay under a bubble canopy if it's really bad. I have this bike, though we've never bothered with a canopy, we just dress them warm (in New England): https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=workcycles%20kr8%20...:
A block and a half away is one of the best playgrounds in the city, and three blocks the other direction is another fine playground. Both of them are packed with kids at all hours of the day. When we go visit family in the midwest, we make a point to take walks and visit the neighborhood playgrounds. We're almost always the only people there. Of course people have their yards so nobody needs the playground... I think something is lost.
Walk a few blocks in any direction from our house and you'll see tons of wonderful daycares, family-friendly restaurants, and other parents' necessities, most of them locally owned and operated by another member of the community.
We travel all around the city, we take the train. My son passes the time on the ride charming the other passengers and subway surfing. It's much more civilized than strapping him into a car seat and not looking at him for an hour every day.
I'll grant you that New York City is something of an outlier as far as American cities go.
Being out and about means I feel a real sense of community and have really gotten to know my neighbors.
When we see our friends from the suburbs its amazing how cooped up they are, how unlikely they are to leave the house, and how unattached they feel from their surroundings. Its too easy for them to play in their basement or yard.
Staying in the city has given me and my family a much higher quality of life.
I never said I didn't have a car when needed, just that my day to day is much more enriched by not needing one (and being forced to get out of the house).
I will always choose to spend my time exploring the mountains with my kids, but if they choose soccer/baseball/etc then its just medium walk or short bus ride away.
We do frequently use a car (when leaving the city, for instance), but we don't have any reason to own a car. And more critically, we aren't chained to it in the way that so many friends and family are, by virtue of every necessity lying well beyond walking distance tucked inside a giant parking lot.
I will say as far as cities go those effected with homelessness were not as aggressive towards me/us as I’ve experienced in other cities, but they were extremely aggressive towards each other and didn’t make it feel like a very welcoming place for families.
Perhaps the few days my family was there gave me an inaccurate impression. I’ve been there numerous times for business and always enjoyed the city, but those times tended to involve a lot more Lyft rides and eating/drinking at higher price point restaurants than walking around exploring the city and time in the parks. With my family we were mostly in the First Hill, Downtown, Pioneer Square, and a bit in Belltown neighborhoods.
I’d guess if we define city living as an affluent neighborhood within city limits that one can live/work/play in without getting in a vehicle there are areas that fit the bill in nearly every city assuming that one has the correct income and profession to slot into it.
With that said, you visited what I would consider some of the worst places in the city to spend time with kids.
However, I cannot find a single public basketball court in either neighborhood you mentioned, and I can see maybe one park per neighborhood that can each support 1 open space sports game which means my friends and I would have likely had no opportunity to find an open space to play a sport game when growing up due to how crowded parks are.
Add on the homeless problem here and it should come as no surprise my GF and I are planning on moving back to my midwest hometown once we start trying to have kids.
There's Gilman Playground in Ballard with baseball park. It also has tennis courts. There's another baseball park at NW 63rd St and 20th Ave NW, and another one at 60th and 26th. There are more baseball parks in Woodland Park, and they also have soccer fields. Ballard High School has a football stadium, though I don't know how easily accessible it is to non-students. There's another baseball park/football/soccer stadium at Local Heights Playfield.
But yeah, if you're into basketball, you're probably out of luck if you're looking for any outside basketball place, it's not really that popular here.
Over time, what I've come to appreciate the most is the middle ground, something that is incredibly rare but does exist within pockets of larger cities and that's the ability to easily choose between walking, taking public transit, biking or driving to really any destination. All of the big cities in the pacific northwest (portland, seattle, vancouver) do this well, in addition to areas outside of the city centers in the north east as well as some of the first ring suburbs.
We, at least, do have the option of driving if we need to: we just walk a few blocks to the car share and off we go.
We do this year round: snow, rain, or sunshine.
We live in downtown Bellevue, so we don’t need to drive to hit the park, mall, or grocery store
So in car-dependent places, they have no autonomy until they're nearly adults. I think it's much more healthy for them to slowly and steadily expand their autonomy, rather than a sudden discontinuous break when they learn to drive.
The same argument applies in reverse to old people too. In places with good transit and walkability they can stay independent and active longer, with no sudden loss of freedom when they can no longer safely drive vehicles at high speed.
Walking and transit are both overwhelmingly safer than cars (most things are).
When kids are small you just push them in a stroller. Once they're too big for a stroller, they're big enough to walk everywhere that you can walk. It's really not that complicated. Suburban kids who never walk anywhere may whine about needing to walk two miles, but my kids have been doing that since before they could walk unassisted, it's perfectly normal to them.
I do also have a Dutch-style cargo bike which we use a lot around our neighborhood. It's wonderful.
This point is tragically under-appreciated. Kids who live in car-dependent suburbs are in a very real sense alienated from the larger society. A twelve-year-old should be able to visit the library, stop by the park, grab a sandwich at a lunch counter, mail a letter, and wander back home all by themselves in an afternoon.
It's no wonder so many kids feel isolated and alone. They are!
It also has far-flung, residential-only, cul-de-sac communities where literally nothing is within safe walking distance. [0]
We call both "suburbs," but they're very different places.
[0] What would somebody who lives here walk to, for example: https://goo.gl/maps/nX5ttfsYJBq
Fun fact- there are more highway miles per capita in KC than any other city in the US: http://www.publicpurpose.com/hwy-tti99ratio.htm
https://goo.gl/maps/Dm76roteRbx
All of which is just to say: political borders are drawn differently in every city, so you can't meaningfully compare cities using political borders.
Does Kansas City (as a region) actually have more highways than most equivalent cities? Maybe. I don't know. That table doesn't tell us that.
If you're talking an older grid-style suburb with corner stores and the like, it's probably something kids can do.
On the other hand, in many of the exurbs/modern suburbs, there's large distances between things and very strict segregation of residential/commercial areas. Car-centric layouts don't help either, with routes between
-----------
Even older suburban areas can have their own problems.
For a personal anecdote, I grew up in a part of NJ that has been settled since 1700s and is rather hilly. (Watchung Mountains). Most of the main roads date from that time and resemble English country lanes in terms of width/geometry more than they resemble typical American roads. Speed limits are 35-45mph, traffic does at least 5 over.
It is absurdly dangerous to walk or bike on any of those roads, and there aren't really any practical solutions to that. They studied adding sidewalks and it was going to cost huge sums of money and require destroying hundreds upon hundreds of mature trees (the roads are thickly lined with forest, and there isn't even an inch of shoulder).
Cutting the speed limit is impractical because they're main roads that people drive 5-20 miles on, that's a significant time hit.
In our immediate vicinity we had everything we needed, day to day: the kids' schools, a grocery store, cafes, a bakery, pizza shop, and a tram stop. All of this was walkable.
The tram stop was what we'd use to go downtown. There is no parking there, and parking is a hassle, and the tram runs frequently, so it was an easy choice.
Lastly, we also had a car, to go for a hike outside town, or go on a trip or something, but many weeks it would just sit there. Most American couples, even without kids, have two that get used all the time.
We lived in a 6-unit building, without much yard, but would frequently go to the park with the kids. As the quote goes, "kids don't need a big yard to play, they need other kids". Back here in the US, they don't use our yard much, but miss having other kids to play with on a spur of the moment basis.
My older daughter goes to school on here own bike 1 mike away and goes over to friends houses on her own. Decent used bikes here are 50-100eu and bike shops are in every little neighborhood. The city is amazingly quiet despite being notably more dense than San Francisco (where we’re from).
All of us love the freedom of not dealing with cars and everything that implies. We could never move back to a “car culture” city again.
At some point in the nearish future I will probably put some kind of kid seat on the back of my bike.
I'm just in the middle, I went back to SEA.
Nothing personal, but I doubt that people are able to commit to any kind of lifestyle' for life. Public transportation can be good, can be miserable, and that perception can change very quickly due to changes in life circumstances.
When I go back to the US, I now don't like driving and try to avoid it. Family and friends get frustrated that I never want to drive.
The answer, in short, is capital. More specifically, it is the form that capitalist enterprise has manifested as in the Gulf. Ever since the discovery of oil, most of the surplus petrodollars have poured into the so-called secondary circuit of infrastructure and real estate. Aside from oil, the region lacks primary productive circuits. As a result, much of the money the state gathered from selling oil abroad was poured directly into the built environment. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/11/gulf-states-oil-capital-e... EDITED for spelling.
I always hated driving. I gave up my car more than a decade ago. I am happy to see stats like this.
In spite of how sprawling the US is, I think it is a myth that we have no choice but to build a car-centric America, a myth that serves as self-fulfilling prophecy. And I hate hearing it.
That’s what needs to be fixed.
But usually, people who already live in a city of, say, density X, are pretty strongly opposed to building more and increasing the density to 1.2 X. Also, those 0.2 X new residents naturally are only moving in in the future, so they don't get to vote, either.
Somehow, the attitude of the people who get to enjoy the dense, walkable neighborhoods, would need to change so that they'd be more open to sharing their lifestyle with more new people.
But it stands to reason that if all of your out-goings are paying for the motor then you are going to have less money to spend or invest in other things. If someone has a fancy car it may be leased for x amount per month with restrictions on miles driven, the financing being fairly scammy for the buyer and the auto-maker. Yet we see the gleaming motorcar and assume 'that person must be rich' (rather than pity them for their apparent status anxiety).
We don't see that person on a bicycle and think 'they must be rich', envying them for not outlaying $$$ a month to keep a tin box on the road belching poisons. Instead we are more likely to wonder what is wrong with them. In the last century you would possibly wonder if they got nicked for drink driving and their punishment was to be relegated to two wheels. Luckily attitudes have improved in that respect.
It is the same with houses. The person that rents might have debts but the person with the million dollar mansion and some type of interest only mortgage really does have a million dollars of debt hanging around their neck. Yet we perceive them to be rich. By this logic the homeless guy in the park is richer than all the neighbours beholden to banks rentseeking them with their mortgage products for 25 year periods.
The people who are actually rich as they have inherited the land are dismissive of the nouveau rich, maybe they know the truth at these folk haven't actually got tangible wealth, just big debts to banks and wannabee status anxiety. You can find landed-gentry types wearing the same coat for thirty years and driving round in cars approaching that age, beaten up and full of dog hairs. They might have bought that ancient Volvo new, no finance needed. They might also use it to buy very fine food and drink from the posh supermarket. They don't have status problems like the people in fancy cars do.
America is different to Europe in this aspect, partly because there is this idea that America is the land of freedom and opportunity, in Europe people kind of know their place and don't feel ashamed to do a regular job. In America you have to be a rockstar or die trying. Sense of community doesn't fill the void when life is one of suburban sprawl. In a walkable community you should be able to say hello to a few people just going about your business, a wave and a smile shared with that old guy you see walking his dog every day does give you some sense of belonging in your (little) world. You might grumble about the guy and how his dog walks so slowly with no road sense whatsoever but that passing acknowledgement of existence is a community bond, the smile is real. Driving some shiny behemoth of a vehicle gives you none of that, sure you can wave from the window and hoot your horn but it is still a little mobile prison cell of sorts. You can't actually stop and chat. Sure you are off to see more important, higher status people that have better convo than the doddery neighbour with the dog but you are also spiritually a bit poorer for not being part of a local, walkable community.
The automobile enabled individuals to find affordable residences and provided middle income and lower income individuals the power to find jobs not within walkable distance of a residence or rail line. The automobile has been a net good for society, especially the low income or middle class.
That's not to say that there's something inherently wrong with the American suburban model, it just doesn't scale well. So much space is wasted on parking lots for vehicles that stand empty most of the day. And rush hour traffic is just not fixable beyond a certain point, no matter how many lanes are added to the highways.
It's just flat-out wrong to claim that non-car commutes only benefit the affluent. That's entirely dependent on how the economics of the community are set up. If there's a will to have everyone commute by public transit, there are many ways to achieve it.
Don't forget that these stretches of black asphalt act as giant heat accumulators, soaking up the sun during the day and keeping temperatures uncomfortably high after the sun goes down.
The best option would be to make neighborhoods walkable/bikeable, implement good public transit as much as possible, and offer an affordable delivery service for bigger items. Going further, it would be beneficial to abolish megastores and return to more human-sized retail outlets.
Indeed. A lot of this sort of infrastructure can and should be built below-ground. Parking garages, warehouses/storage, utilities, the works.
"Going further, it would be beneficial to abolish megastores and return to more human-sized retail outlets."
Not sure if I follow. Megastores are nice as one-stop shops, reducing the need to drive around town to get everything.
I am in favor of making them more modularized/sectionalized, such that they can be rearranged vertically (whether above-ground or below-ground) and reduce the horizontal footprint. Their similarly-sprawling parking lots also can and should be replaced with underground parking garages.
Sterile charmless megastores are a symbol of unrestrained corporatism.
I don't mind department stores, but I do have a problem with Walmart and their ilk.
As an additional bonus, most Wal-Marts (in my observation) will let you park your car there overnight, no questions asked. For someone who's homeless and living out of one's car, or for someone who's traveling and can't afford lodging, that's a pretty huge help.
Biking to the city center is also possible and takes about half an hour as well.
I'm sure Americans would be closer together if more things were walkable for more people and I don't oppose investments in walkability. However, some people don't want that, some people are thrilled to drive a big vehicle and burn a gallon or three of gas to pick up a case of beer and log of chewing tobacco.
What virtue do we need to inoculate into Joe Sixpack to get him to participate in a the vegetarian version of personal transportation?
I have moved our family into progressively rural environments and will continue to do so until the distance to basic necessities is intolerable. In most rural environments there is no meaningful traffic so people aren't that down on being in their vehicles.
For example, LA used to have a great train network for public transportation until the automobile industry made sure to tear it down so people would be forced to drive cars.
In SF/BayArea people want zoning to change so there can be more housing/apartment buildings. Who's blocking that from happening? Homeowners who think that would devalue their properties.
Also, doesn't seem like people in NYC value cars or yards that much (at least not over living in NYC).
De-urbanization was spurred by housing shortages post-WW2 and federal policy seeking to stabilize the housing market. The FHA was created to insure home loans that met a long list of requirements[1], which had biases towards increasing consumption (including cars) and racial segregation. The marketing and growth of suburbia was then promoted by various business interests that would benefit from that increased consumption[2]. The new suburban lifestyle led to the rise of modern conservatism[3]. Most (~85% [3]) of the US lives in metropolitan areas, so rural lifestyles are not typical and it would be vastly less efficient if everyone lived there rather than in cities.
1: https://marketurbanism.com/2017/09/12/financing-suburbia-how...
2: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/...
3: http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/97...
I know it's hard for you to believe, but some people like living in high density areas.
In fact, if we generously estimate that 10 million people live in high density metro areas that don't rely on cars we are looking at less than 3% of the US population. I think that is something to sneeze at.
SF only has a population of one million.
Basically the US has NYC and parts of Chicago as emblems of urban density.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_statistical_area
I've lived the big city, high density European lifestyle, I lived it in America too, and in Canada, and I've lived the American and Canadian small town life.
They're both nice. The small town life is great if the community is healthy, and there is a town core that is dense of businesses and shops which you can go to and walk around. It gives you access to nature and land in an unprecedented way. And the small population means you get a feel of community and know others, and events can be hosted on peoples properties.
If the town is struggling, its not that great, and can start to feel depressing and isolated.
The european city style is also great, it feels like a buzzing small town, minus the access to land and nature. The sense of community, knowing your neighbors, being proud and invested in your neighborhood. Being physically active. These are all there. Similar to how you can find that in prosperous small towns too.
In the end, I feel the choice between small town and European style cities is personal. If you prefer nature, enjoy quiet downtime, and peace, small town wins. If you prefer urban landscapes, a buzzing vibrant environment, and constant flux of activities and creativity, European cities would win.
That said, I'd be surprised if anyone prefers the American style cities and suburbs. Its like the worst of both worlds. You get a medium sized house, big enough that maintenance is a chore, yet too small to have the space for serious house endeavors. A yard, but too small to have it be a place to enjoy nature. Its not quiet, yet also not buzzing. It lacks creativity and the feeling of community, and everywhere is hard to get too, too far to walk, too crouded to drive.
That's what I think people complain about. I personally hate them with a passion.
When I was growing up I lived in the suburbs, I hated it so far from everything, very infrequent public transport (lucky to get one bus an hour). Maybe worst of all as a young geek poor internet speed. I was stuck on dial up for years because it was all we had...
I vowed when I left my parent's home I'd live closer to the city. But it is just so expensive (especially rent) there is no way I can justify it. So I suffer through all the long commutes, traffic congestion hell etc.
Condos in Perth near the CBD are surprisingly very affordable, though there are fewer good jobs.
It's not exactly the most progressive of places, however. But personally I love it.
NB: I'm currently in the position of purchasing land in Perth and you can get some good sub-$200k deals on 350-400 square metre blocks within 20 minutes to the city too if you look around.
I'm looking in the near future so would be keen to know where to look.
I guess I just wonder sometime, what if we designed a city where cars took second place, and high density, public transit, walk-ability, bike-ability, e-bike, car share, etc, was made the priority. Would it make for nicer cities, which are more livable and affordable?
I don't know, maybe not, but it seems as long as Car are still around, we'll never try it out.
EDIT: Generally, dense cities in the European style are like that because they were designed prior to the existence of Cars, and thus Cars have never been able to enter them successfully, too small roads, and weird road networks. Since they were made for walking, they're automatically higher density. But, those cities were also designed before public transit, e-bike, bikes, scooters, package delivery, car share, etc. So I feel like we could do much better then those today.
It's mostly about driving in cities / commuting to work, not driving across America and living in the rural countryside.
The times, and with it many people's preferences, are always changing.
It's wonderful that you have found the place that suits you. Likewise, a growing number of people value higher density living, just as you do low density living.
> An urbanized area consists of densely developed territory that contains 50,000 or more people.
Still 70% of the US population.
But I dislike driving for a commute, I've done as little as 30 minutes and up to 1.5 hours of commute, it's very stressful to be constantly alert for a good chunk of your day just to get from A to B.
I think I've found the best of both worlds; a house that's my family's own space, and Houston Park and Ride stations. I drive 10 minutes to the station, leave my car there and commute on a bus to my job. The stop is about 5 blocks from the building I work at, I'm relatively stress-free and I can choose to make good use of the time spent riding the bus (generally reading books, news, sports, etc.). The bus gets there at the same time I would have in spite of the stops it makes because it uses the HOV when I would be stuck in traffic on the freeway
Cities can have family sized apartments, with the needed amenities in a way that's designed both for cars/walking/biking/ect.
That's unfortunate. One of the things I love about my apartment (Chicago) is that I've got friendly neighbors, it's well kept, there's decent parking, and I've got a deli and 2 grocery stores in walking distance.
I'm a big fan of park and rides though, esp if it connects to rail. They seem like a good compromise to help alleviate congestion from a city and work to collect from lower dense areas where there's not enough density to support rail.
Both have reasonable use cases. Both are fun to tinker with. Both are the main ways people kill other people. And you shouldn't need to use either daily in a civilized society.
That's not even talking about the rest of the problems mass car ownership creates, from climate change to destroying neighborhoods to the health crisis sitting instead of walking creates.
This is either some next-level elitism or a false argument. Does the recluse have no place in society? What about the logger, or the Tractor operator? What about the surgeon who is on call, do you want them to bike to the hospital at 2 AM? I sure as hell don't.
If your argument is that no individual should have to own a car, we already live in that America. If your argument is that no one should have to own in a car, get real.
> we already live in that America.
Perhaps you should visit the old town centres in Europe, or the country villages. You can see what a society built around not using cars looks like.
What I meant when I said "tractor drivers getting to work" is people like my friend who grades and compacts pads for new homes. He drives a 4x4 pickup down a dirt road sometimes for 10+ miles to get to his tractor so he can start working. How does mass transit work for new construction?
Building is a reasonable use case for cars while protecting yourself from polar bears is a reasonable use case for guns [0].
I don't understand why you, and a large number of other people, are being willfully obtuse about this. 10+ miles on dirt roads to get to a tractor is not someone who lives in civilization, it's someone out in the wilderness.
[0] https://www.cntraveler.com/story/alaskan-town-kaktovik-polar...
"Yes guns are dangerous, but they're meant to be. They still don't kill as many people as cars do!"
"Yes cars are dangerous, but they're fulfilling a real need. Transportation is more valuable than violence!"
How do i figure? Maintenance. My most common customer comes in complaining about a noise or a smell and stares at her shoes when asked when the last major service was, what the mileage is, or when the last oil change was. Its almost like drivers have learned to internalize their hatred of the commute into the car itself. Like they just dont want to think about any of it.
Bare brake pads, scored rotors, and boiled oil are all so common it hurts. I once had to spend two weeks rebuilding most of a partially seized engine because a customer couldnt understand why his two year old car idled so rough. a $40 oil change could have prevented what ended up being $8000 in parts and service.
I've become apathetic about driving too. It's become mostly unpleasant due to congestion. What you say cuts pretty close for me: A car is an appliance.
But also, cars have gotten so reliable that it's easy to stop thinking about what's going on under the hood.
- The Geography of Nowhere https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geography_of_Nowhere
- Suburban Nation https://books.google.ch/books/about/Suburban_Nation.html?id=...
Much of the car-bound design resulted from zoning and simple the-rode-to-hell-is-paved-with-good-intentions. The problem is fixable, but it will probably take much clamoring over a generation’s timespan to undo the damage.
I can understand that not every city can provide a good transit system, but for cities like ours I wonder if the problem can be solved by creating dedicated bus lanes that are always separate from other lanes throughout the city. When you're stuck in traffic and see the buses whizzing through without delay, it's easy to make the decision to ditch the car and start using the transit.
Also worth noting is the huge environmental cost of cars - not just in carbon monoxide, huge array of components and metals they require to build, impact on climate change, etc., but also how they create ‘nature barriers’ dividing land corridors for flightless animals. Witness roads in the middle of otherwise pristine forests or road networks that clear huge swaths of wilderness.
I’ve frequently thought how the true cost of cars has been understated, possibly due to the assumed bias that cars are positive pieces of technology, lobbying efforts by vehicle manufacturers, a bias against public transport, etc.
Cars are in many ways, the precursor to the most private of popular, self-focused technologies: the mobile phone.
Cars benefit a private (individual, family) need generally over a public one. It is your car and your ‘asset’. Whilst there are, of course, ‘public cars’ (taxis and ride-sharing), they are not the norm in most cities, in most suburbs, in most places.
We should, as a society, spend more time debating the merits of cars and road networks - especially factoring in the downsides for those with physical disabilities and those on low incomes.
edit: fixed spelling mistake, added last three paragraphs.
Nowadays, I think people are more comfortable riding the three-wheeled cargo bikes, or Christiania Bikes, as they're commonly known.
You can transport a surprising amount of stuff on either type, especially the e-bike versions.
1) Go hiking, snowboarding, mountain biking 2) Drive fast on road courses 3) Come home from the airport after midnight 4) Purchase more than 2 bags of groceries (including TP, laundry detergent et al) 5) Go on road trips 6) Isolate myself from the mentally ill or obnoxious behaviors and smells I'm surrounded by, including their fecal matter 7) Isolate myself from the constant crime that I am surrounded by 8) Isolate myself from the constant excessive sound that I am surrounded by 9) Easily move around tools and supplies to maintain my home
on and on it goes. A life without a car is a life of either hiring everything out (expensive), doing without (no hikes for me) or constantly renting (what's the point?)
A motorcycle is one potential solution but they are incredibly dangerous and not very practical in many parts of the country due to weather.
I thought it would be really annoying to live without a car, but it's actually quite nice, and I save so much money on fuel and maintenance.
[1] aside from the road courses. I race gocarts for fun instead.
My posting said > without someone having a car.
Care to share how you go snowboarding, #3 and #5-8 ?
I have read mr money mustache write a lot about what can be accomplished by a bicycle + trailer. But even he still has a low cost car.
Road trips? Rent a car, or fly somewhere interesting and rent a car locally.
#5-8 I handle by not being needlessly paranoid and distrustful of other people. "The mentally ill and their obnoxious smells and fecal matter", seriously?
Obviously when you have a car right there, you tend to gravitate towards it, when all you have is a hammer etc.
I'm sure there's also a big cultural aspect to it. I also thought it would be hell to not have a car anymore, but it has turned out to rather easy and straight forward.
Come to SF sometime. I literally have to dodge poop daily.
As someone who does take public transit on a daily basis and occasionally interacts with the homeless and petty criminals, the dehumanization of people in your own community in your comment is absolutely astounding. These people are your neighbors, whether they smell bad, have become victims of addiction, or have turned to petty crime.
Some people don't like other people. Regardless of whether my neighbors are nice people who have an excess of delicious baked goods or meth addicts, I don't want to interact with them and I have no obligation to them just because of our proximity.
It's perfectly okay to not like being around people, especially people with obnoxious behaviors (whether they are because of a mental illness or otherwise) or people that smell bad.
Have kids? When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat.
My son had a bad reaction to a doctor prescribed medicine and had a seizure early one morning. We were at the hospital in 15 minutes thanks to the modern automobile. We don’t live in a city because we consciously chose the suburbs. I grew up in a walkable city and getting my first car was still one of the highlights of my youth.
Now my kids play soccer and they practice and play 4 days/week all over the local area. Good luck doing that without a car.
The freedom/flexibility a car provides us as individuals is unprecedented in human history. You can drive from NY to LA in 41 hours and you are on your own schedule.
For the folks that don’t like driving, you have plenty of cities to choose from where that’s doable. That’s the beauty of modern society - the choice is yours and we don’t have to judge/demonize one another’s choices.
I could hit 3 bodegas from my front steps with a rock. I don't need to start a truck to get Ibuprofen.
If you build a suburb so that you need a car, then, sure, I guess you'll need a car. But that's not because any of those activities require a car. It's just that your town was built to require it!
If we put a dome over your town and sucked out all the oxygen, then you'd also need spacesuit to perform all those tasks, too. But it wouldn't be because any of those tasks require a space suit. You'd need the space suit because we sucked out all the oxygen.
I didn't build a suburb - it was already here, just like you didn't build the city you live in. I drove to the suburb to begin with of my own free will because I didn't like living in a city (having already done so, Buffalo & Boston.) I'd already made the choice to live a lifestyle that is automobile-inclusive ;)
You don't get to judge or decide for me what is right for me and vice-versa. We all have a choices to make and do the best we can with what we have.
It's interesting that for all the intelligent people on HN, there's a lack of empathy and understanding that everyone has their own perception of reality. What's 'right' and 'real' in your mind may 1) not actually be reality 2) be neither 'right' nor 'wrong', but just a personal preference/opinion. I got a taste of this myself when I stumbled upon this book (and it's second part) https://www.amazon.com/DAY-Through-German-Eyes-Hidden-ebook/... (D-Day through German Eyes.) It's been eye-opening for me because I'd always assumed the Germans troops were evil men who were all bent on conquering Europe.
Also, exclusionary zoning played an enormous role in deciding what those places looked like and they did it in large part to control who got to live there.
Finally, your lifestyle choices have externalities, from the immediately obvious 30k deaths a year, to more dangerous streets for people who choose not to drive, to environmental damage, to cities clogged with the cars of suburban commuters twice a day.
http://science.time.com/2012/09/18/urban-planet-how-growing-...
https://www.prb.org/urbanizationanenvironmentalforcetobereck...
"It’s true that as people in developing nations move from the countryside to the city, the shift may reduce the pressure on land, which could in turn be good for the environment. This is especially so in desperately poor countries like Madagascar, where residents in the countryside slash and burn forests each growing season to clear space for farming. But the real difference is that in developing nations, the move from rural areas to cities often leads to an accompanying increase in income — and that increase in income leads to an increase in the consumption of food and energy, which in turns produces an uptick in carbon emissions."
In other words, wealthier people living in urban areas -- in both city cores and in the suburbs -- are worse for the environment than rural poor folks, and as developing nations urbanize, we can expect to see an increase in these impacts.
People on HN needs to get over themselves. Smart yes, able to see other's perspectives...hardly.
That's such a nonsensical argument. Suburbs weren't designed for elephants, they were created for humans, just like cities. You want to alleviate the dependence on cars in cities, make public transportation as convenient and flexible as having a car. Oh wait, you can't. People have cars because they do provide a perceived benefit, otherwise people would choose the alternative in droves.
Maybe you all should create a pedestrian-only city and live happily ever after.
There is no choice but to build cities in this car-dependent way. Cities are forced to do so by our legal system that has been influenced by the automobile manufacturers and other industries.
Instead of me digging up some citations, just go watch Roger Rabbit. This has been the story for many years.
Without being forced to build in this financially insolvent manner, [1] no community would choose to isolate people from each other in the way that we do now in the United States.
Our neighboring country, Mexico, (among many others) shows that a costly design is not required for urban and suburban environments to work for humans.
The impending arrival self-driving car gives hope that the gigantic proportion of land devoted to car storage can be radically reduced, giving space for more buildings and habitable spaces between the buildings we have already constructed. This is a good sign for the future but we sure took an expensive, circuitous route to get there, all the while losing local power over our communities to industrial interests.
[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/4/19/the-sprawl-con...
I'm glad I don't live in a place where it's ok to limit people's choices based on someone's opinion on what is or isn't the 'right application.'
I'm sorry about your mother's asthma; my 6 year old son is a type 1 diabetic - that doesn't make it ok for me to go chastising society's choice to put sugar in practically EVERYTHING we eat or to try force society to change because of my son's misfortune.
Your neighbors don't really have a choice as to whether or not they enjoy "hearing its V8 roar from inside the house through several walls/doors" or breathe the extra pollution that some (but not all) large trucks create.
> When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat.
I'm sure your neighbors will love being woken up in the middle of the night. Perhaps some of them would be glad to live in a society where there are reasonable limits on what situations other people can force you into for their own pleasure.
Please note that this comment isn't really directed at you specifically - you might not have close neighbors or they might be truck enthusiasts as well. It's directed at all owners of obnoxiously loud trucks who don't care how it affects other people, which may or may not be you.
You're right, they don't - but since many of them have a truck, it really isn't an issue. I'm honestly not a 'truck enthusiast', but I'd wanted one for the longest time and I'm happy with my choice. It makes trips to Home Depot / Lowes / etc a dream. Going to the mountains on vacation with it has been great as well - having gone up the side of a mountain up a single lane dirt road to a house we rented a couple of years ago (you never know what kind of infrastructure exists when you rent a place on VRBO/HomeAway/etc.) in our minivan was an experience let me tell you. This year we rented another place up in the mountains and having a truck was a godsend.
I don't remote start my truck at night (because I'd like to think I'm not an inconsiderate A-hole) - I only start the truck remotely during the day for a few minutes to get the A/C started since it's over 100 degrees (F) in summertime here. I let my non-truck owning neighbors/friend borrow my truck when they need it - so on the contrary, our neighbors love us.
Personally my experiences living in a city have been far louder and had much ruder neighbors than I could dream of than in our current situation (people blaring music at all hours of the night and early morning, driving cars with seemingly no mufflers or motorcyclists whose sole purpose seems to be to irritate everyone sleeping, domestic disputes between deaf people (otherwise why would I have been able to hear them from several houses over, etc.)
Well, no, they are quite able to not account for those. “Should”, not “must”.
> what are you going to do?
err, take a taxi? Or have ibuprofen always at home?
Not everyone can/does live in a city where you're tripping over Taxi/Uber at all hours of the night.
I can cycle to mine in 5 minutes, taxi, uber, run, walk, etc..
Or use one of the car share services near me.
> We were at the hospital in 15 minutes thanks to the modern automobile.
If you live within 3 minutes of a Walmart (3 minutes traveling there, 3 minutes checking out, and 3 minutes returning) and 15 minutes of a hospital you are significantly better located than the average suburbanite.
Most walkable urban areas will have 24 hour convenience stores every few blocks. Most walkable urban areas will have many options for quick travel to medical facilities (Zipcar like services, uber like services, frequent emergency clinics, ambulances).
I think cities have better access to medical care than suburban areas. There are more medical facilities. There are more options in choosing primary care. There are more specialist. There are more alternative treatment options. Try getting antibiotics for strep throat at 2am for less than $250 cash in less than ninety minutes in a suburb.
This is only true in very large cities (NYC, LA, Paris, etc.) In smaller cities my experience is quite the opposite, shops close early and they are far and few between. I'm talking between 200-500k population (my sample size is small, but one city is in the US the other in France, neither had pharmacies within walking distance that were open past 9pm.)
> Try getting antibiotics for strep throat at 2am for less than $250 cash in less than ninety minutes in a suburb
Never been a problem here with a local 24/7 pharmacy that takes insurance so I'm not sure where you're getting your $250 figure from.
Are there many walkable cities with populations in that range?
> I'm not sure where you're getting your $250 figure from.
Including getting the script.
If you don't have health insurance, you're on your own (sadly.)
Don't assume that everyone can live a life of privilege in an upscale urban area.
I don’t know what neighborhoods you were living in, but my experience is that for every dangerous urban neighborhood there’s an equally affordable one that isn’t dangerous if you know where to look.
And it’s not like everyone can afford the privilege of a car either.
Says someone who has never experienced being beat up by a group of young men because of my race in just such a neighborhood as you described.
Growing up in a bad neighborhood, I didn't exactly have a choice to leave (until my parents bought a house in a better neighborhood in my late teen years.) I remember vividly the frozen blood on the concrete sidewalk across the street from my childhood home when leaving to walk to school - someone had been bludgeoned the death in the middle of the night.
Before I had a car, my girlfriend at the time lived in an even worse neighborhood (where shootings were a common/daily occurrence) the anxiety I experienced walking to the bus stop from her house, then waiting downtown for a transfer at a bus stop across the street from public housing, etc - that feeling is so vivid in my memory even though it's been 20 years. Not everyone shares the same experiences, and thus have the same values & priorities. Even after getting a car my troubles weren't quite over. I was nearly carjacked after dropping off the same girlfriend at her house at 11pm on a Friday night - he managed to open the car door, but not before I did a 180 in reverse and sped off.) Because I hadn't learned my lesson, I also had to change a flat tire in the same neighborhood at 3am one night. There's nothing like the threat of being shot or beat up to force you to learn to change a tire in a few minutes.
I'm happy in my suburb with a big backyard and a big dog and my truck (and yes firearms (gasp!)) It's fine if that isn't your cup of tea, just don't judge me for it.
I have a four wheel drive, for going out to collect fire wood, go camping, and do generally outdoors things with. I have a race/track car for being a general nuisance to society and shooting flames at people. And then I have a silly little automatic Honda for doing errands around the city when I need something cheap to operate and nimble around tight streets and things.
Having these cars all fit particular requirements I have. However I still end up riding my push-bike or taking the bus, because the normal day-to-day commute doesn't always require storage capacity.
I can certainly understand the reasons that people can be sufficiently happy with doing without a car. I can also understand the reasons why people are forced to need a car. I don't, however, like seeing people vilified or interrogated for being on either side of that fence.
My drive to and from work is long at 1 hour each way but I found it still time well spent catching up on news on the radio. Once in the city I actually enjoy walking everywhere even for distance that my city friends would drive or take an Uber to.
If driving doesn't put a smile on your face you simply have the wrong vehicle.
Vancouver has had a fully automated light rail system since 1986. New lines added in 2000 and 2009. There's significant high rise condo and apartment density around many stations.
City council a very long time ago cancelled a plan to build a freeway from east vancouver to downtown.
Seattle is sort of the opposite of that, it's very much more car dependent. The new light rail line helps a lot but its entry into service date was 22+ years after Vancouver's.
In my experience in Vancouver a great deal more people live a lifestyle that doesn't involve owning a car. Gas is a lot more expensive and insurance is more expensive. Many "normal" people commute daily on transit.
This is from 2002 but I don't think there's anything about it which is less relevant today, regarding suburban architecture/urban design and the lifestyles associated with extensive suburban sprawl:
https://www.weeklystandard.com/david-brooks/patio-man-and-th...