Damn right. Cars are freedom. The Foucault biopolitics crowd will never understand this. I’m glad that the lefts so called “anti authoritarian” accolades are being massively called into question on things like the demand to get us out of our cars.
No! I want my damn air conditioning, my music, and to be away from the smelly masses. Trying to force me to be around others is authoritarian bio power. Car centric society is amazing. Everyone who doesn’t have it desperately wishes they did have it. Singapore people pay 100K+ for a shit car in a place with the best mass transit in the world and virtually zero crime for a reason!
If you want to live spread out, fine. There’s plenty of space for that.
If you want to go into the city for the amenities it provides, take a reasonable form of transportation that doesn’t require millions of parking spaces and bulldozing neighborhoods for new freeways.
Heterogeneity of options is good. I don’t think most people who advocate for good urban spaces think that everyone should be forced to live that way. They just want it to be an option instead of only building homogenous suburban developments everywhere.
Right now the supply and demand for those kinds of walkable, bikeable cities, towns, and neighborhoods is out of whack. You can tell this because the places that are built like this tend to be very expensive places to buy a home.
In my area a house in a normal suburb costs around $500k. A similarly sized house near a local town center with walkable shops, restaurants, park, grocery store, library, etc cost $1m+.
It is frustrating how so much in life can feel car centered, I think. That said, so many of the counter arguments cannot contend with the fact that having a car is convenient. To an absurd degree.
There is a reason why everyone in the dormitories knew who had a vehicle. And though you could get to some of the off campus areas by foot, it was far more likely that you would hitch a ride.
See where i live my car is drastically less convenient than walking, biking, or taking the bus for basically any trip under ~5 miles. The effort to get out of my garage and out of the neighborhood and sitting in traffic and finding parking on the other end means biking is basically always faster, and for anything within a half mile (which covers most things i need day to day) walking is just easier.
I enjoy having a car for when i want to go on road trips or move something big or go to some specialty shop of the clear other side of town, but it is not at all convenient for ~90% of the places I go.
This person misses the point. They seem to be arguing for their right to own a car and to own a large plot of land. Which isn't what NotJustBikes, StrongTowns, etc. are arguing.
The actual argument is that when developing infrastructure we should be developing it so that people can also safely and comfortably walk and bike, etc. Notably that was historically possible in rural farming communities for thousands of years before the car.
Sure choice of needing space, walking sure these are subjective, but for many many people the choice to where to live in not determinable. America is such a selfish society in regards to this when it comes to local democracy. (ie NIMBY, car focused, no care given to future population densities)
I spent 20 years of my life in Houston and saw first hand how horrible it is for non drivers and poor people to get around, lose their livelihood when losing car access etc -ie the working poor
Any major city must support the needs of its poorest majority as much as possible, and a city the size of Houston must have a better transportation and social spaces -it is absolutely horrible.
now if you want space and move to places that only work with cars sure, but our cities are suffering the lack of support for walkability and public transport. Anyone who has spent time in European cities where these spaces and public transportation options exist by necessity can see the value
I appreciate the tact taken by the writer in general, despite deeply disagreeing. However the gross generalizations and myopia of the argument are clear enough from the closing lines:
> I wonder if the massive shift in urban vs. rural living over the past 200 years has happened at the expense of our natural inner urge for open space. Am I bad because I want to live on land that otherwise would have been used for hay farming?
This extrapolation, that humans innately desire to live apart from one another, is a bold claim and directly refuted by the immense populations of voluntary urban dwellers. For certain, pro-density arguments against car-centered development can suffer from the inverse generalizations, and it should be called out in either case.
Issue for me with cars isn't space vs no space, it's the amount of stress, time and money that is wasted in car-centered societies. 20 minutes to work. 20 minutes home. Add another 20 minutes if you do anything else but home to work. That's an hour a day. You've also wasted an hour doing nothing that might have otherwise been spent walking. Now you need to borrow another hour for the gym or some kind of physical activity… and that assumes you don't drive to a gym (one of the the most bizarre things people do). But that's two hours a day that just feels "wasted," and that's a best case scenario. Then there is the cost of the car, insurance, gas, maintenance. The hours that all translates into. Add it all up over the year and you spend like 15-20% of your waking hours dealing with the reality of the car. For some, it's more.
I also feel like a peculiar externality of car-centric society is anger. I get why. You are wasting all your time in the car. You aren't walking. No exercise. Fast food. Parking. I can see why people who are pro-car want space—they are angry all the time. They need space to cool off. There is even a face that I call "car face" which is that kinda pissed off for no reason always in a rush face. People who "love cars" and don't find it "stressful at all" seem to have this face to the max.
I like my city a lot, but "urbanists" really need to update their priors and examine what they're advocating for. Ride share, electric micromobility, and (soon) self-driving cars totally change the equation for transportation.
Chicago is about to spend $440 million(!) to update a single train stop for a system that is carrying 25% less riders than before the pandemic.
Ridership keeps increasing as the system rebuilds from the mass staffing shortages of the pandemic. Every time they increase the frequency of a bus line, ridership increases. The trains will be the same as operators continue to be hired.
State/Lake has been sorely lacking an in-system transfer for damn near a century, and the feds are funding the rebuild. It's one of the busiest stations in the whole city, and evening rush demand still exceeds capacity on two of the six lines it services.
As someone who actually uses the station to get home from work it's ridiculous to hear you talk about this project like it's a bad thing.
> This would be a big claim for me to make as someone that has no formal education in the topic, I wonder if the massive shift in urban vs. rural living over the past 200 years has happened at the expense of our natural inner urge for open space
This is a big claim for you to make for sure :) . As someone who also lives in Texas, I'll just say that wanting space is not a problem in it self, but the argument of Texas has ~millions of acres of land and therefore wanting a few for yourself is not bad just does not hold when you consider the resourcing required to fulfill your want (tax money, water plumbing, electrical wiring, concrete and the alike).
If we take into consideration 'efficiency', resource-wise, when attempting to build a city that works for most, not just thee, it would end up looking like a high-density urban area that is in-fact walkable and small individual space for those in it.
This of course, does not preclude the existence of outskirts and places outside core density, which is was you want. By all means, you can have it, but degradation of shared infrastructure is to be expected. As in, maybe you have some unpaved roads, no water line or electrical etc.
This way the city saves on aforementioned resources, and yes including the good'old tax payer money. "Don't want my tax payer money subsidizing your choices" is common phrase used in this state. By that logic, "I don't want my tax payer money subsidizing your choice to live outside the would-be dense city" would apply here.
Sadly, this state does rely in ever-more sprawling city design that will bring about its financial demise as the cost of maintenance and upkeep catch up to a slow down in the state/city tax revenue. Checkout urban3's work on city financials https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/
I think many things in this article are wrong (the claim that EVs are silent is plainly false). But I'll just say that even though you might want open space, does that necessarily mean that you are entitled to it (at a reasonable cost)? Strong Towns made a pretty compelling point that urban downtown areas overwhelmingly subsidize suburban areas due to their much higher tax density, and I have to think that rural areas where it's truly possible to own "open space" are even more subsidized than suburbs.
In defense of big oil, single occupancy vehicles, abandoning public transportation, climate inaction, and walkable cities because anything else is "communism".
This is a superficial, selfish, ignorant take. Instead, smaller and walkable villages exist that have enough of everything close by without having to be Houston, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, or tiny town texas where groceries and hospital are 30-45 minutes away. The closest I've seen to this is Davis CA. There are probably others but not many. 90% of Americans will rationalize meat-eating, owning guns, and ICE vehicles until the end of time because "me, me, me" entitlement.
PS: I live in hill country in close proximity to SATX not entirely by choice. I wished there were public transportation, bike highways like the Netherlands, and more essential services nearby.
18 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 36.4 ms ] threadThat Not Just Bikes video felt like a personal attack... lol
No! I want my damn air conditioning, my music, and to be away from the smelly masses. Trying to force me to be around others is authoritarian bio power. Car centric society is amazing. Everyone who doesn’t have it desperately wishes they did have it. Singapore people pay 100K+ for a shit car in a place with the best mass transit in the world and virtually zero crime for a reason!
If you want to live spread out, fine. There’s plenty of space for that.
If you want to go into the city for the amenities it provides, take a reasonable form of transportation that doesn’t require millions of parking spaces and bulldozing neighborhoods for new freeways.
Heterogeneity of options is good. I don’t think most people who advocate for good urban spaces think that everyone should be forced to live that way. They just want it to be an option instead of only building homogenous suburban developments everywhere.
Right now the supply and demand for those kinds of walkable, bikeable cities, towns, and neighborhoods is out of whack. You can tell this because the places that are built like this tend to be very expensive places to buy a home.
In my area a house in a normal suburb costs around $500k. A similarly sized house near a local town center with walkable shops, restaurants, park, grocery store, library, etc cost $1m+.
There is a reason why everyone in the dormitories knew who had a vehicle. And though you could get to some of the off campus areas by foot, it was far more likely that you would hitch a ride.
I enjoy having a car for when i want to go on road trips or move something big or go to some specialty shop of the clear other side of town, but it is not at all convenient for ~90% of the places I go.
The actual argument is that when developing infrastructure we should be developing it so that people can also safely and comfortably walk and bike, etc. Notably that was historically possible in rural farming communities for thousands of years before the car.
I spent 20 years of my life in Houston and saw first hand how horrible it is for non drivers and poor people to get around, lose their livelihood when losing car access etc -ie the working poor
Any major city must support the needs of its poorest majority as much as possible, and a city the size of Houston must have a better transportation and social spaces -it is absolutely horrible.
now if you want space and move to places that only work with cars sure, but our cities are suffering the lack of support for walkability and public transport. Anyone who has spent time in European cities where these spaces and public transportation options exist by necessity can see the value
> I wonder if the massive shift in urban vs. rural living over the past 200 years has happened at the expense of our natural inner urge for open space. Am I bad because I want to live on land that otherwise would have been used for hay farming?
This extrapolation, that humans innately desire to live apart from one another, is a bold claim and directly refuted by the immense populations of voluntary urban dwellers. For certain, pro-density arguments against car-centered development can suffer from the inverse generalizations, and it should be called out in either case.
I also feel like a peculiar externality of car-centric society is anger. I get why. You are wasting all your time in the car. You aren't walking. No exercise. Fast food. Parking. I can see why people who are pro-car want space—they are angry all the time. They need space to cool off. There is even a face that I call "car face" which is that kinda pissed off for no reason always in a rush face. People who "love cars" and don't find it "stressful at all" seem to have this face to the max.
Chicago is about to spend $440 million(!) to update a single train stop for a system that is carrying 25% less riders than before the pandemic.
https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/08/20/state-and-lake-cta-s...
State/Lake has been sorely lacking an in-system transfer for damn near a century, and the feds are funding the rebuild. It's one of the busiest stations in the whole city, and evening rush demand still exceeds capacity on two of the six lines it services.
As someone who actually uses the station to get home from work it's ridiculous to hear you talk about this project like it's a bad thing.
This is a big claim for you to make for sure :) . As someone who also lives in Texas, I'll just say that wanting space is not a problem in it self, but the argument of Texas has ~millions of acres of land and therefore wanting a few for yourself is not bad just does not hold when you consider the resourcing required to fulfill your want (tax money, water plumbing, electrical wiring, concrete and the alike).
If we take into consideration 'efficiency', resource-wise, when attempting to build a city that works for most, not just thee, it would end up looking like a high-density urban area that is in-fact walkable and small individual space for those in it.
This of course, does not preclude the existence of outskirts and places outside core density, which is was you want. By all means, you can have it, but degradation of shared infrastructure is to be expected. As in, maybe you have some unpaved roads, no water line or electrical etc.
This way the city saves on aforementioned resources, and yes including the good'old tax payer money. "Don't want my tax payer money subsidizing your choices" is common phrase used in this state. By that logic, "I don't want my tax payer money subsidizing your choice to live outside the would-be dense city" would apply here.
Sadly, this state does rely in ever-more sprawling city design that will bring about its financial demise as the cost of maintenance and upkeep catch up to a slow down in the state/city tax revenue. Checkout urban3's work on city financials https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/
- EU 7.7t
- USA 16.5t
[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...
This is a superficial, selfish, ignorant take. Instead, smaller and walkable villages exist that have enough of everything close by without having to be Houston, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, or tiny town texas where groceries and hospital are 30-45 minutes away. The closest I've seen to this is Davis CA. There are probably others but not many. 90% of Americans will rationalize meat-eating, owning guns, and ICE vehicles until the end of time because "me, me, me" entitlement.
PS: I live in hill country in close proximity to SATX not entirely by choice. I wished there were public transportation, bike highways like the Netherlands, and more essential services nearby.