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You can have a house in Annapolis that is a 3 mile round trip walk from the nearest grocery store. I invite you to do that walk with asthma in -5C weather with

by munin 10y ago

You can have a house in Annapolis that is a 3 mile round trip walk from the nearest grocery store. I invite you to do that walk with asthma in -5C weather with a strong wind while carrying a weeks worth of groceries.

rayiner 10y ago
You can, but you don't have to. The zoning codes are such that you can choose to live a less car dependent lifestyle even if you're not able to afford a place like Central London or NYC. But insane zoning laws take away that option in many parts of the country. I grew up in Vienna, VA, where you needed a car even if you lived around the Metro station, because the town decided to surround it with low-density residential instead of high-density mixed residential/retail: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vienna%2FFairfax-GMU+Station/@38.8734466,-77.2747919,15.38z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89b64bf11a59a0bb:0x4934e351d5846a8!8m2!3d38.8777457!4d-77.2715288 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vienna%2FFairfax-GMU+Stati.... In contrast, I lived in a relatively affordable New York suburb,[1] where the Metro North station was surrounded by a mix of retail and residential: https://www.google.com/maps/place/New+Rochelle,+NY/@40.9092953,-73.7851734,16.31z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c28d89d5ba56b5:0xcf7ac33b6a7edaa2!8m2!3d40.9114882!4d-73.7823549 https://www.google.com/maps/place/New+Rochelle,+NY/@40.90929.... My wife and I had a car, and a baby, and we used the car only once a month because even the Costco was right next to a nearby Metro North stop. People used to post-WWII suburbs really fail to realize how much government policy distorts peoples' choices. My house in Annapolis (which is at the edge of rural Anne Arundel county) is in a neighborhood where you can walk to a park, a bar, and two quickie marts. The subdivision was built about the same time as Vienna (in the car era), but back then the county had much smaller minimum lot sizes, less than a third the current minimum lot size in the county. The streets are barely wide enough for one car to drive through. That's how people choose to live when you don't force development into a sprawling wasteland model. [1] It wasn't substantially more expensive than Vienna, despite being within a 30 minute train ride of Midtown Manhattan.
- munin 10y ago
  Even if you can technically walk to something, a person can have a disability such that it is impossible for them to do that. Encouraging them to ditch their car is stupid without giving them an alternative. A grocery delivery service really isn't an alternative because they suck: do you want squished and spoiled vegetables and broken eggs? It's basically only good for dry and pre-packaged frozen foods. So now instead of driving once a week to go to the store and eat healthy foods, we microwave the TV dinners that the Amazon drone flys to us every day. Hooray?
  - rayiner 10y ago
    Who is saying we force disabled people to give up their cars? We are talking about getting rid of stupid zoning laws that preclude everyone else from choosing less car-dependent cities.

by munin 10y ago

rayiner 10y ago

You can, but you don't have to. The zoning codes are such that you can choose to live a less car dependent lifestyle even if you're not able to afford a place like Central London or NYC. But insane zoning laws take away that option in many parts of the country. I grew up in Vienna, VA, where you needed a car even if you lived around the Metro station, because the town decided to surround it with low-density residential instead of high-density mixed residential/retail: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vienna%2FFairfax-GMU+Station/@38.8734466,-77.2747919,15.38z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89b64bf11a59a0bb:0x4934e351d5846a8!8m2!3d38.8777457!4d-77.2715288 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vienna%2FFairfax-GMU+Stati.... In contrast, I lived in a relatively affordable New York suburb,[1] where the Metro North station was surrounded by a mix of retail and residential: https://www.google.com/maps/place/New+Rochelle,+NY/@40.9092953,-73.7851734,16.31z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c28d89d5ba56b5:0xcf7ac33b6a7edaa2!8m2!3d40.9114882!4d-73.7823549 https://www.google.com/maps/place/New+Rochelle,+NY/@40.90929.... My wife and I had a car, and a baby, and we used the car only once a month because even the Costco was right next to a nearby Metro North stop. People used to post-WWII suburbs really fail to realize how much government policy distorts peoples' choices. My house in Annapolis (which is at the edge of rural Anne Arundel county) is in a neighborhood where you can walk to a park, a bar, and two quickie marts. The subdivision was built about the same time as Vienna (in the car era), but back then the county had much smaller minimum lot sizes, less than a third the current minimum lot size in the county. The streets are barely wide enough for one car to drive through. That's how people choose to live when you don't force development into a sprawling wasteland model. [1] It wasn't substantially more expensive than Vienna, despite being within a 30 minute train ride of Midtown Manhattan.

munin 10y ago
Even if you can technically walk to something, a person can have a disability such that it is impossible for them to do that. Encouraging them to ditch their car is stupid without giving them an alternative. A grocery delivery service really isn't an alternative because they suck: do you want squished and spoiled vegetables and broken eggs? It's basically only good for dry and pre-packaged frozen foods. So now instead of driving once a week to go to the store and eat healthy foods, we microwave the TV dinners that the Amazon drone flys to us every day. Hooray?
- rayiner 10y ago
  Who is saying we force disabled people to give up their cars? We are talking about getting rid of stupid zoning laws that preclude everyone else from choosing less car-dependent cities.