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right, but the solution to that is to redesign cities.
by adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
right, but the solution to that is to redesign cities.
- colejohnson66 4y agoDon't get me wrong; I wish we were less car-dependent too, but it isn't going to happen in our lifetimes. Cars are too deeply ingrained in American culture, and Europeans bragging about their cities isn't going to change that. Not to mention how massive the US is! We have states (California and Texas) that are larger than over half of the European countries.
- whiplash451 4y agoNot sure why you are being downvoted systematically on this thread. I think your point is very valid.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ouid 4y agolong distance travel is even better suited to mass transit, as it's more laminar.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago>but it isn't going to happen in our lifetimes. Based on the track record of most of the demographics I see pushing for improvement I fear we'll wind up with some hellscape that combines the worst of both.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y agoI don't see why states are especially relevant. Europe on a whole is really big, but still has way better public transit than the US.
- kansface 4y agoI'd guess the vast majority of cities Netherlands predate cars by centuries. They were already "designed" without cars in mind. That is not true in the US, and doubly so for the post war, suburban construction boon.
- turtledove 4y agoThe US absolutely tore up cities to make them more car friendly. Redlining and slum clearing were used as justifications to knock down entire neighborhoods to put more roads in. Most old American cities started as port towns with streetcar suburbs, and then they tore the trains out. We don't have medieval cities, but saying cities were designed around the car is patently false. Yes, the fifties and sixties caused huge redesigns, but we can undo those.
- colejohnson66 4y ago> We don't have medieval cities, but saying cities were designed around the car is patently false. It's not. Cities have literally been created from nothing in the last few decades. Just because NYC, Atlanta, DC, etc. are old are have a history of redlining does not mean that every city does. Case in point: the cities around where I grew up were built in the last 3 decades. Those cities didn't have a choice but to have zoning laws and miles of road.
- turtledove 4y agoI mean, sure. Some places have become urban centers recently and that's fair. But coast to coast, our biggest population centers were all established and built up before car centric planning. I live in Seattle, for instance, which used to have a network of rails. They've all been torn out and we're just now putting them back.
- kansface 4y agoSeattle is geographically constrained. Most/all of the old cities (and metros) have sprawled to ungodly degrees like atlanta or la. How do you undo 70 years of development (ie, tens or hundreds of billions of dollars) spent on sprawling?