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There is not faster to way to discredit oneself than to offer a pat, single variable explanation. As others point out, Americans like and want to transport the

There is not faster to way to discredit oneself than to offer a pat, single variable explanation. As others point out, Americans like and want to transport themselves by car. Let's accept this, work with it, and build around it instead of lusting after a minority defined Utopia.

cscurmudgeon 5y ago
Well said. Another angle is the race angle. Most people advocating for lesser cars are young, healthy, rich and white. Healthy enough to not use cars and rich enough to live near work. https://theconversation.com/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-cycling-76256 https://theconversation.com/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-cycl... The group that talks about systemic racism is perpetuating it.
- BrianHenryIE 5y ago
  Take a hypothetical scenario (not dissimilar to war breaking out in WW2, and not dissimilar to the 2020 global pandemic upending our lives) – where the private motor vehicle is gone. Society (cities) would quickly re-orientate themselves so work wasn't so far away from home. So shops weren't on the outskirts of town. Your argument is predicated on cars existing. On cars causing the problem you suggest they solve.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  "Healthy enough not to use cars" - man, that's a good one. I'll remember it next time my half-senile father in law has no other choice but to drive somewhere because there's no way around his car dependent neighbourhood - oh wait, that's every day.
  - short12 5y ago
    If he is senile he should not be driving anywhere
    - BrianHenryIE 5y ago
      That's exactly what kspacewalk2 is saying. He _should_ not.
    - kspacewalk2 5y ago
      The city around him is only built for driving, doubly so his completely car-dependent neighbourhood. He'll be doing this until he either cannot possibly pull it off, or gets in a serious accident. This is a fact of life for millions of seniors in North America, and saying "oh no they shouldn't" won't change squat.
      - short12 5y ago
        That's your job to take the keys away and get rid of the car. It's a sad situation but hardly unique
        eggsmediumrare 5y ago
        It's a sad situation made worse by stupid urban planning that prioritizes cars.
        kspacewalk2 5y ago
        No it's not "my job". It'll be his kids' job when he's fully senile, but until then he's an adult human being with rights, and he wants to be independent and "age in place". At some point he'll cross the threshold into having his decision-making powers taken away. Let's hope no one gets hurt in the meantime.
- phonypc 5y ago
  That article is about cycling as a sport. I'd bet if you look at cycling as a method of regular transportation, it would skew heavily non-white and lower income. Owning a car is expensive.
- yodelshady 5y ago
  That is an incredibly poor take on top of a serious allegation, and sorry-not-sorry, it's clear you don't really care about poverty, racial disparities or ill health. It takes very little empathy to realise that driving a car is a huge technical barrier compared to a wheelchair/scooter/just walking slower. There is no reason you need to be healthy to avoid car use... except one. That motorists will kill you if you don't quickly get of out their way. I've seen large parts of my local area become completely inaccessible to the less-abled because of fast roads, so can it with the "I'm thinking or the sick!". You're not. Or to just go look at which cities are not color-coded into mansions and slums, and notice those cities are ones where the poor do not need to maintain their own expensive machinery for basic tasks. Because ... again, I don't believe I need to explain that. It's a deliberate choice you're making to not understand it.
- oblio 5y ago
  You do know that poor countries overwhelmingly don't use cars, right? The standard social hierarchy is: walk everywhere -> bike everywhere -> go by motorbike everywhere -> drive a car everywhere.
- vanilla_nut 5y ago
  Cars are expensive. The old, the unhealthy, the poor -- all of these people can benefit from infrastructure that allows people to get around without using a car. Because cars are expensive.
jppope 5y ago
This may or may not be true, and it doesn't matter because single use zoning in most American cities makes it illegal to build walkable cities. It's pretty hard to establish what Americans prefer when the alternative what they have isn't allowed.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Why should a neighbourhood consisting of single family homes not be walkable? This is such a neighbourhood from the early 1920s not too far from where I grew up. Take a stroll through it with Street View. It is perfectly walkable. https://goo.gl/maps/kKqhtNbKDy6oycSi9 https://goo.gl/maps/kKqhtNbKDy6oycSi9 The lots are smallish compared to the American standard, though. This is a crowded continent.
  - nottorp 5y ago
    It's not a single use zone if stores are allowed in it. The OP means that you need a car to get anything you need because the nearest store is 2 hours of walking away.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Ah, this is something I did not know. A residential area that allows no stores is really a weird, weird concept.
      - oblio 5y ago
        Small stores draw criminals, you see?
        inglor_cz 5y ago
        So does big business :)
      - nottorp 5y ago
        Oh, I'm also in Eastern Europe and it's similarly foreign to me. Even the new suburbs they're building here now with all identical houses, Edward Scissorhands style, have corner stores(tm) within walking distance everywhere.
BrianHenryIE 5y ago
Wrong. I tried to find the tweet, but it was succinctly put ~"it's said people in Los Angeles love their cars, but people in LA have no choice but to own a car, it's not love, it is necessity". In every city that has made a concerted effort to accommodate all modes of transport, driving as a percentage has gone down. "build it and they will come" is better suited to transport than it ever was to SaaS. It is easy to conclude that people don't "want" to drive.
- AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
  Look, the fact is, even in places with excellent public transport, the car is still the best way to travel short of helicopter. How do we know this? Look at the rich and powerful of New York, they are driven to their destinations, they don't take the subway, and if they do, it's notably unusual.
- dymk 5y ago
  “It’s said that” is not the same as “polls show” and then linking to a source LA is also cherry picked to be one of the worst places for cars. It’s legendary for its traffic. Writing in from the PNW where I wouldn’t trade my car, and the freedom it gives me and my friends and my dogs to travel, for anything.
  - forgotmyoldname 5y ago
    I lived in the PNW and loved that I could take a bus just about anywhere. It was a big draw for me. If it was a hellscape dominated by 26 lane highways and hours of traffic to get anywhere like many parts of the US, I never would've bothered moving there.
    - dymk 5y ago
      The whole of the PNW is not a city or specially designated hiking trail, and 99% of where you could go in the region was not accessible by bus routes.
  - BrianHenryIE 5y ago
addicted 5y ago
I am not sure if we can tell whether Americans like cars or not considering they don’t really have a choice.
pjlegato 5y ago
San Francisco and New York, the most walkable and densely built urban areas in America, are famous for their extremely high rents. This is a function of extremely high demand for housing there. Apparently a whole lot of Americans _don't_ want to transport themselves by car.
- ironman1478 5y ago
  You need a car in SF depending on the area you live in. On the west side, SF has very poor public transit
Kim_Bruning 5y ago
Right. It's not just car dependency, and ... it's Not Just Bikes either. It's almost a tautology to say that if you want to have a particular kind of nice neighborhood you'll have to include those uses in your planning. I think that most people want to be able to get from A to B in comfort, and are not necessarily married to one particular mode of transport. If the only way to get anywhere is by car, then of course people want to transport themselves by car. If you offer other competitive options, people will sometimes take those options instead.
- frankus 5y ago
  It’s worth remembering that for a lot of “A to B” trips the change in location is kind of incidental to the actual goal of shopping, socializing, dining out, etc. In other words you if locate a lot of “B”s close to your “A” (or vice versa) people will tend to be satisfied with slower modes like walking and biking (that also reduce the energy needed by a couple of orders of magnitude).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
brailsafe 5y ago
The U.S already did this, starting in the 40s-50s up till now, and it's horrific. The idea of building infrastructure around everyone having a massively expensive and wasteful machine to get anywhere they want as fast as possible all the time (and without any energy expenditure) makes for a hellscape. It's fine to like and own cars, but cars should be de-prioritized in planning and infrastructure considerations because it makes everything worse for everyone, including car owners. Might as well design cities around providing everyone with personal planes at this point.
vagrantJin 5y ago
> Americans like and want to transport themselves by car. I think the minority are questioning the strangeness of this supposition. Least of all because the government has a hand in it. Neighbourhoods are where people live, yet built for and around cars? It may be single variable but I think a reasonable person might want to question that at least on some way.

cscurmudgeon 5y ago

Well said. Another angle is the race angle. Most people advocating for lesser cars are young, healthy, rich and white. Healthy enough to not use cars and rich enough to live near work. https://theconversation.com/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-cycling-76256 https://theconversation.com/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-cycl... The group that talks about systemic racism is perpetuating it.

BrianHenryIE 5y ago
Take a hypothetical scenario (not dissimilar to war breaking out in WW2, and not dissimilar to the 2020 global pandemic upending our lives) – where the private motor vehicle is gone. Society (cities) would quickly re-orientate themselves so work wasn't so far away from home. So shops weren't on the outskirts of town. Your argument is predicated on cars existing. On cars causing the problem you suggest they solve.
kspacewalk2 5y ago
"Healthy enough not to use cars" - man, that's a good one. I'll remember it next time my half-senile father in law has no other choice but to drive somewhere because there's no way around his car dependent neighbourhood - oh wait, that's every day.
- short12 5y ago
  If he is senile he should not be driving anywhere
  - BrianHenryIE 5y ago
    That's exactly what kspacewalk2 is saying. He _should_ not.
  - kspacewalk2 5y ago
    The city around him is only built for driving, doubly so his completely car-dependent neighbourhood. He'll be doing this until he either cannot possibly pull it off, or gets in a serious accident. This is a fact of life for millions of seniors in North America, and saying "oh no they shouldn't" won't change squat.
    - short12 5y ago
      That's your job to take the keys away and get rid of the car. It's a sad situation but hardly unique
      - eggsmediumrare 5y ago
        It's a sad situation made worse by stupid urban planning that prioritizes cars.
      - kspacewalk2 5y ago
        No it's not "my job". It'll be his kids' job when he's fully senile, but until then he's an adult human being with rights, and he wants to be independent and "age in place". At some point he'll cross the threshold into having his decision-making powers taken away. Let's hope no one gets hurt in the meantime.
phonypc 5y ago
That article is about cycling as a sport. I'd bet if you look at cycling as a method of regular transportation, it would skew heavily non-white and lower income. Owning a car is expensive.
yodelshady 5y ago
That is an incredibly poor take on top of a serious allegation, and sorry-not-sorry, it's clear you don't really care about poverty, racial disparities or ill health. It takes very little empathy to realise that driving a car is a huge technical barrier compared to a wheelchair/scooter/just walking slower. There is no reason you need to be healthy to avoid car use... except one. That motorists will kill you if you don't quickly get of out their way. I've seen large parts of my local area become completely inaccessible to the less-abled because of fast roads, so can it with the "I'm thinking or the sick!". You're not. Or to just go look at which cities are not color-coded into mansions and slums, and notice those cities are ones where the poor do not need to maintain their own expensive machinery for basic tasks. Because ... again, I don't believe I need to explain that. It's a deliberate choice you're making to not understand it.
oblio 5y ago
You do know that poor countries overwhelmingly don't use cars, right? The standard social hierarchy is: walk everywhere -> bike everywhere -> go by motorbike everywhere -> drive a car everywhere.
vanilla_nut 5y ago
Cars are expensive. The old, the unhealthy, the poor -- all of these people can benefit from infrastructure that allows people to get around without using a car. Because cars are expensive.

jppope 5y ago

This may or may not be true, and it doesn't matter because single use zoning in most American cities makes it illegal to build walkable cities. It's pretty hard to establish what Americans prefer when the alternative what they have isn't allowed.

inglor_cz 5y ago
Why should a neighbourhood consisting of single family homes not be walkable? This is such a neighbourhood from the early 1920s not too far from where I grew up. Take a stroll through it with Street View. It is perfectly walkable. https://goo.gl/maps/kKqhtNbKDy6oycSi9 https://goo.gl/maps/kKqhtNbKDy6oycSi9 The lots are smallish compared to the American standard, though. This is a crowded continent.
- nottorp 5y ago
  It's not a single use zone if stores are allowed in it. The OP means that you need a car to get anything you need because the nearest store is 2 hours of walking away.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Ah, this is something I did not know. A residential area that allows no stores is really a weird, weird concept.
    - oblio 5y ago
      Small stores draw criminals, you see?
      - inglor_cz 5y ago
        So does big business :)
    - nottorp 5y ago
      Oh, I'm also in Eastern Europe and it's similarly foreign to me. Even the new suburbs they're building here now with all identical houses, Edward Scissorhands style, have corner stores(tm) within walking distance everywhere.

BrianHenryIE 5y ago

Wrong. I tried to find the tweet, but it was succinctly put ~"it's said people in Los Angeles love their cars, but people in LA have no choice but to own a car, it's not love, it is necessity". In every city that has made a concerted effort to accommodate all modes of transport, driving as a percentage has gone down. "build it and they will come" is better suited to transport than it ever was to SaaS. It is easy to conclude that people don't "want" to drive.

AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
Look, the fact is, even in places with excellent public transport, the car is still the best way to travel short of helicopter. How do we know this? Look at the rich and powerful of New York, they are driven to their destinations, they don't take the subway, and if they do, it's notably unusual.
dymk 5y ago
“It’s said that” is not the same as “polls show” and then linking to a source LA is also cherry picked to be one of the worst places for cars. It’s legendary for its traffic. Writing in from the PNW where I wouldn’t trade my car, and the freedom it gives me and my friends and my dogs to travel, for anything.
- forgotmyoldname 5y ago
  I lived in the PNW and loved that I could take a bus just about anywhere. It was a big draw for me. If it was a hellscape dominated by 26 lane highways and hours of traffic to get anywhere like many parts of the US, I never would've bothered moving there.
  - dymk 5y ago
    The whole of the PNW is not a city or specially designated hiking trail, and 99% of where you could go in the region was not accessible by bus routes.
- BrianHenryIE 5y ago

addicted 5y ago

I am not sure if we can tell whether Americans like cars or not considering they don’t really have a choice.

pjlegato 5y ago

San Francisco and New York, the most walkable and densely built urban areas in America, are famous for their extremely high rents. This is a function of extremely high demand for housing there. Apparently a whole lot of Americans _don't_ want to transport themselves by car.

ironman1478 5y ago
You need a car in SF depending on the area you live in. On the west side, SF has very poor public transit

Kim_Bruning 5y ago

Right. It's not just car dependency, and ... it's Not Just Bikes either. It's almost a tautology to say that if you want to have a particular kind of nice neighborhood you'll have to include those uses in your planning. I think that most people want to be able to get from A to B in comfort, and are not necessarily married to one particular mode of transport. If the only way to get anywhere is by car, then of course people want to transport themselves by car. If you offer other competitive options, people will sometimes take those options instead.

frankus 5y ago
It’s worth remembering that for a lot of “A to B” trips the change in location is kind of incidental to the actual goal of shopping, socializing, dining out, etc. In other words you if locate a lot of “B”s close to your “A” (or vice versa) people will tend to be satisfied with slower modes like walking and biking (that also reduce the energy needed by a couple of orders of magnitude).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

brailsafe 5y ago

The U.S already did this, starting in the 40s-50s up till now, and it's horrific. The idea of building infrastructure around everyone having a massively expensive and wasteful machine to get anywhere they want as fast as possible all the time (and without any energy expenditure) makes for a hellscape. It's fine to like and own cars, but cars should be de-prioritized in planning and infrastructure considerations because it makes everything worse for everyone, including car owners. Might as well design cities around providing everyone with personal planes at this point.

vagrantJin 5y ago

> Americans like and want to transport themselves by car. I think the minority are questioning the strangeness of this supposition. Least of all because the government has a hand in it. Neighbourhoods are where people live, yet built for and around cars? It may be single variable but I think a reasonable person might want to question that at least on some way.