10 ms·

> And America's love affair with the automobile is a well-known abusive relationship that America will never have the courage to leave. It's pretty much imposs

by lghh 9y ago

> And America's love affair with the automobile is a well-known abusive relationship that America will never have the courage to leave. It's pretty much impossible to leave this relationship unless you live in one of the larger US cities. If you live in a suburb, rural area, or city that's not in the top 10-15 in terms of size there's literally no other option that exists or that could easily exist.

TulliusCicero 9y ago
That's a self-inflicted problem though. Nobody put a gun to America's head and forced us to make our cities sprawl out. We collectively decided to do it that way because we thought it was better. And for a few things it IS better. But there are a whole lotta costs, too, with the top 3 being being actual financial cost, grinding on the faces of the poor, and making us fat.
- karmelapple 9y ago
  How can we better quantify the costs? That's where, I think, many people have a blind spot.
  - TulliusCicero 9y ago
    Don't have an authoritative answer for you, but I thought this chart was pretty great; it shows the profit/loss for the local government (so, taxes vs spending) for different neighborhoods for a city in Lousiana: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
- dukoid 9y ago
  Not a gun but nuclear missiles: https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/why-sprawl-was-caused-nuclear-arms-race-and-why-matters-more-ever-today.html https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/why-sprawl-was-cause...
- Jach 9y ago
  It's probably not even a decision so much as a probable consequence of having a much smaller population and opening of new frontiers to settle over the course of the country's history, ending up today with about half the population spread across about the same total area, and not uniformly. What has been our decision is to respect individual and local preferences (NIMBYism) and to ignore certain infrastructure improvements. Given that sprawl is not a new phenomenon but obesity is I don't see how you can claim this is responsible for making us fat.
  - TulliusCicero 9y ago
    Sprawl IS a new phenomenon, though. We didn't see the kind of suburban sprawl that we see today until after WW2, when cars became THE way to get around. It became more and more dominant and entrenched as the interstate highway system developed. Remember, we're talking about relative density within a metro area, not how close each metro area is to the others. If you look at cities that were more or less fully developed prior to WW2, like Boston, you find that they're more compact, as opposed to, say, LA or Phoenix. That said, I don't think it's the only thing making us fat. But I do think it's one contributing factor.
    - Thriptic 9y ago
      True, but even in Boston they can't get public transportation and infrastructure right. Boston is almost certainly one of the most vibrant economic hubs in America and one of the most compact cities, but the subway absolutely sucks, is completely outdated, and can't adequately service proximal cities like Somerville. The city is also desperately in need of further tunneling and infrastructure expansion to service the Cambridge / Somerville area as well as the Sea Port but I can't see that ever happening. It's taken us over five years to fix a single small bridge with two lanes in each direction...
      - serhei 9y ago
        When I read about proposed public transit projects in Boston that were never built, most of them had actually been _court mandated_ by the Big Dig mitigation lawsuits, but they still didn't get completed. Very mysterious. To be fair about the 'single small bridge', it seems like smaller projects suffer proportionately larger delays due to being considered low priority, ridiculously lax work scheduling, etc. Although the financial scales are completely different, it takes my city (Toronto) approximately the same time to build a subway extension as to renovate the bike trail that runs near my house.
- anovikov 9y ago
  It was done for a very rational reason: making country more immune to a nuclear attack, especially the retaliation to its own nuclear attack (i.e. a nuclear attack that is coming in convenient time of day and week because you chose the time). It works perfectly to that purpose: it is whole lot better to keep all relevant population in separate houses with basements, with little combustible material around, than in multimillion cities with no way out of them. If U.S. launched its missiles while all these people just came home from jobs say at 11pm ET/8pm PT, and people in the Soviet Union were on the way or at their factory jobs during Moscow morning on Siberia mid-day, it would be a slaughter for the Soviet Union and an easy win for the U.S.
  - TulliusCicero 9y ago
    Ah, that's a good point. Still, it seems the design pattern has outlasted the attitude that created it.
  - deanCommie 9y ago
    Have a source for any of that? Sounds like a completely made-up justification after the fact. Surely someone would have raised the point that the soviet union could just launch it's missiles in the middle of the work day. Also, Moscow is tremendously sprawled out.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      To me the simpler theory is that the US has been quite wealthy since World War 2 and has lots and lots of space. Which doesn't mean that building sprawling subdivisions is a great idea, but space is a pretty easy thing to sell.
      - TulliusCicero 9y ago
        Those things enable sprawl, but they don't force it.
    - equalunique 9y ago
      Federal Highways in the US are designed to increase national security. The best example is certain bridges are in certain places so that their destruction would cut off the easy path for mobilized enemy armor. They're designed to be easily blown up on purpose.
vinay427 9y ago
This is an extremely simplistic view of the situation. In reality, many of the largest cities are almost entirely unusable without a car while many small cities (in the extreme case, most college towns) have excellent walkability and public transit because of their dense layout. I have personally experienced these. This is not a problem of urbanization to large cities, but of overall urban design.
- Xeoncross 9y ago
  You assume those that live in small cities work there as well. A large number of people living rural areas or small cities drive to big cities to work. There are very few "small" cities on the coasts (<10,000 people) so perhaps that is what you are referring to by small cities for which this works.
  - saint_fiasco 9y ago
    If a large number of people all have to go in the same direction at a similar time, isn't that what public transit is for? Cars are more useful when people need to go to random places at indeterminate times.
    - pavel_lishin 9y ago
      > If a large number of people all have to go in the same direction at a similar time, isn't that what public transit is for? Yes, and in a sane nation, this would mean that people could live in small cities, take transit to work, then take transit back. But there are many, many places where this is not the case. I lived on the outskirts of Dallas; it took ages for the rail system to approach usefulness, and individual cities along the route could opt out of having stations (and therefore, opt out of paying for them.)
    - atemerev 9y ago
      I don't even understand the need of physically being at the same place, for information workers at least (until remote surgery and hairdressing catch up). Working remotely is good for the environment! I like cars, but I'd never want to use one for commuting. Random places at indiscriminate times — this is what cars are for indeed.
deanCommie 9y ago
You don't think people in Europe live in suburban or rural areas? The difference is networks of buses and trains that the countries and cities invested in over decades. America went in another direction, and looks no closer to changing it's mind.
- taurath 9y ago
  Most of Europe doesn't live in what Americans would call suburbs, but villages. They're dense where people live and have train and bus service conveniently, because in postwar Europe there were a lot fewer cars. They also zone such that there's a dense living area surrounded by farmland - when that farmland becomes all housing thenyoull have American style suburbs, but few in Europe want that because it's harder to get where you want to go.
  - chrischen 9y ago
    This is pretty much the norm in orher places such as China and Japan. New developments havebeen getting more sprawl in China though, as cars have become more popular.
  - wott 9y ago
    You'd better update your knowledge. Suburbs now spread for miles around towns and even former villages, for ten or twenty miles around major cities. And small towns and villages lost their railways and stations 40 to 80 years ago.
    - taurath 9y ago
      Not in a lot of Germany, or Austria from what I saw driving the countryside for a week
  - dilemma 9y ago
    Post-war Europe didn't have cars and cities are surrounded by farmland? Nope.
hdhdjjdjd7773 9y ago
The answer is to build new infra close by in support of those locations! Oh.
zghst 9y ago
Even in San Francisco, widely known for its public transit system, not having a car some of the time sucks. It's much more convenient to get around by car. That's why Uber and Zipcar are ultra popular here.
- ACow_Adonis 9y ago
  Is San Fran really known for its public transport system? New York, sure. Everyone's heard of their subway. The first time I'd ever heard of BART was when I visited briefly, and in doing so I learnt 2 things: 1) BART is pretty bad: noisy and a small network 2) Talking to people during my short stay made it pretty clear San-Fran and the bay area was considered 99% car territory, and traffic/congestion/commuting around SF was a significant problem commensurate with that fact. Edit: understand this is a genuine question asked as a foreigner who has only formed an impression from short visits.
  - LordKano 9y ago
    The first time I'd ever heard of BART was when one of it's officers killed Oscar Grant. I couldn't see myself ever wanting to take that mode of transportation.
zghst 9y ago
Even in San Francisco, widely known for its public transit system, not having a car some of the time sucks. It's much more convenient to get around by car. That's why Uber and Zipcar are ultra popular here.
reviewmon 9y ago
Taken for a ride - https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4 https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4
MachinShinn- 9y ago
Those rural towns only exist because they are subsidized by everyone else through taxes. Close the loss-making post offices and roads servicing those towns and everyone would be forced to move. Problem solved.
fulafel 9y ago
It can be changed by collective action lke rezoning and legislating incentives. People can move.

by lghh 9y ago

TulliusCicero 9y ago

That's a self-inflicted problem though. Nobody put a gun to America's head and forced us to make our cities sprawl out. We collectively decided to do it that way because we thought it was better. And for a few things it IS better. But there are a whole lotta costs, too, with the top 3 being being actual financial cost, grinding on the faces of the poor, and making us fat.

karmelapple 9y ago
How can we better quantify the costs? That's where, I think, many people have a blind spot.
- TulliusCicero 9y ago
  Don't have an authoritative answer for you, but I thought this chart was pretty great; it shows the profit/loss for the local government (so, taxes vs spending) for different neighborhoods for a city in Lousiana: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
dukoid 9y ago
Not a gun but nuclear missiles: https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/why-sprawl-was-caused-nuclear-arms-race-and-why-matters-more-ever-today.html https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/why-sprawl-was-cause...
Jach 9y ago
It's probably not even a decision so much as a probable consequence of having a much smaller population and opening of new frontiers to settle over the course of the country's history, ending up today with about half the population spread across about the same total area, and not uniformly. What has been our decision is to respect individual and local preferences (NIMBYism) and to ignore certain infrastructure improvements. Given that sprawl is not a new phenomenon but obesity is I don't see how you can claim this is responsible for making us fat.
- TulliusCicero 9y ago
  Sprawl IS a new phenomenon, though. We didn't see the kind of suburban sprawl that we see today until after WW2, when cars became THE way to get around. It became more and more dominant and entrenched as the interstate highway system developed. Remember, we're talking about relative density within a metro area, not how close each metro area is to the others. If you look at cities that were more or less fully developed prior to WW2, like Boston, you find that they're more compact, as opposed to, say, LA or Phoenix. That said, I don't think it's the only thing making us fat. But I do think it's one contributing factor.
  - Thriptic 9y ago
    True, but even in Boston they can't get public transportation and infrastructure right. Boston is almost certainly one of the most vibrant economic hubs in America and one of the most compact cities, but the subway absolutely sucks, is completely outdated, and can't adequately service proximal cities like Somerville. The city is also desperately in need of further tunneling and infrastructure expansion to service the Cambridge / Somerville area as well as the Sea Port but I can't see that ever happening. It's taken us over five years to fix a single small bridge with two lanes in each direction...
    - serhei 9y ago
      When I read about proposed public transit projects in Boston that were never built, most of them had actually been _court mandated_ by the Big Dig mitigation lawsuits, but they still didn't get completed. Very mysterious. To be fair about the 'single small bridge', it seems like smaller projects suffer proportionately larger delays due to being considered low priority, ridiculously lax work scheduling, etc. Although the financial scales are completely different, it takes my city (Toronto) approximately the same time to build a subway extension as to renovate the bike trail that runs near my house.
anovikov 9y ago
It was done for a very rational reason: making country more immune to a nuclear attack, especially the retaliation to its own nuclear attack (i.e. a nuclear attack that is coming in convenient time of day and week because you chose the time). It works perfectly to that purpose: it is whole lot better to keep all relevant population in separate houses with basements, with little combustible material around, than in multimillion cities with no way out of them. If U.S. launched its missiles while all these people just came home from jobs say at 11pm ET/8pm PT, and people in the Soviet Union were on the way or at their factory jobs during Moscow morning on Siberia mid-day, it would be a slaughter for the Soviet Union and an easy win for the U.S.
- TulliusCicero 9y ago
  Ah, that's a good point. Still, it seems the design pattern has outlasted the attitude that created it.
- deanCommie 9y ago
  Have a source for any of that? Sounds like a completely made-up justification after the fact. Surely someone would have raised the point that the soviet union could just launch it's missiles in the middle of the work day. Also, Moscow is tremendously sprawled out.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    To me the simpler theory is that the US has been quite wealthy since World War 2 and has lots and lots of space. Which doesn't mean that building sprawling subdivisions is a great idea, but space is a pretty easy thing to sell.
    - TulliusCicero 9y ago
      Those things enable sprawl, but they don't force it.
  - equalunique 9y ago
    Federal Highways in the US are designed to increase national security. The best example is certain bridges are in certain places so that their destruction would cut off the easy path for mobilized enemy armor. They're designed to be easily blown up on purpose.

vinay427 9y ago

This is an extremely simplistic view of the situation. In reality, many of the largest cities are almost entirely unusable without a car while many small cities (in the extreme case, most college towns) have excellent walkability and public transit because of their dense layout. I have personally experienced these. This is not a problem of urbanization to large cities, but of overall urban design.

Xeoncross 9y ago
You assume those that live in small cities work there as well. A large number of people living rural areas or small cities drive to big cities to work. There are very few "small" cities on the coasts (<10,000 people) so perhaps that is what you are referring to by small cities for which this works.
- saint_fiasco 9y ago
  If a large number of people all have to go in the same direction at a similar time, isn't that what public transit is for? Cars are more useful when people need to go to random places at indeterminate times.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    > If a large number of people all have to go in the same direction at a similar time, isn't that what public transit is for? Yes, and in a sane nation, this would mean that people could live in small cities, take transit to work, then take transit back. But there are many, many places where this is not the case. I lived on the outskirts of Dallas; it took ages for the rail system to approach usefulness, and individual cities along the route could opt out of having stations (and therefore, opt out of paying for them.)
  - atemerev 9y ago
    I don't even understand the need of physically being at the same place, for information workers at least (until remote surgery and hairdressing catch up). Working remotely is good for the environment! I like cars, but I'd never want to use one for commuting. Random places at indiscriminate times — this is what cars are for indeed.

deanCommie 9y ago

You don't think people in Europe live in suburban or rural areas? The difference is networks of buses and trains that the countries and cities invested in over decades. America went in another direction, and looks no closer to changing it's mind.

taurath 9y ago
Most of Europe doesn't live in what Americans would call suburbs, but villages. They're dense where people live and have train and bus service conveniently, because in postwar Europe there were a lot fewer cars. They also zone such that there's a dense living area surrounded by farmland - when that farmland becomes all housing thenyoull have American style suburbs, but few in Europe want that because it's harder to get where you want to go.
- chrischen 9y ago
  This is pretty much the norm in orher places such as China and Japan. New developments havebeen getting more sprawl in China though, as cars have become more popular.
- wott 9y ago
  You'd better update your knowledge. Suburbs now spread for miles around towns and even former villages, for ten or twenty miles around major cities. And small towns and villages lost their railways and stations 40 to 80 years ago.
  - taurath 9y ago
    Not in a lot of Germany, or Austria from what I saw driving the countryside for a week
- dilemma 9y ago
  Post-war Europe didn't have cars and cities are surrounded by farmland? Nope.

hdhdjjdjd7773 9y ago

The answer is to build new infra close by in support of those locations! Oh.

zghst 9y ago

Even in San Francisco, widely known for its public transit system, not having a car some of the time sucks. It's much more convenient to get around by car. That's why Uber and Zipcar are ultra popular here.

ACow_Adonis 9y ago
Is San Fran really known for its public transport system? New York, sure. Everyone's heard of their subway. The first time I'd ever heard of BART was when I visited briefly, and in doing so I learnt 2 things: 1) BART is pretty bad: noisy and a small network 2) Talking to people during my short stay made it pretty clear San-Fran and the bay area was considered 99% car territory, and traffic/congestion/commuting around SF was a significant problem commensurate with that fact. Edit: understand this is a genuine question asked as a foreigner who has only formed an impression from short visits.
- LordKano 9y ago
  The first time I'd ever heard of BART was when one of it's officers killed Oscar Grant. I couldn't see myself ever wanting to take that mode of transportation.

zghst 9y ago

reviewmon 9y ago

Taken for a ride - https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4 https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4

MachinShinn- 9y ago

Those rural towns only exist because they are subsidized by everyone else through taxes. Close the loss-making post offices and roads servicing those towns and everyone would be forced to move. Problem solved.

fulafel 9y ago

It can be changed by collective action lke rezoning and legislating incentives. People can move.