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I love how Americans insist that systems not designed around cars won’t work to the people who are happily living in the systems not designed around cars.
by richk449 4y ago
I love how Americans insist that systems not designed around cars won’t work to the people who are happily living in the systems not designed around cars.
- rjbwork 4y agoI think it's more an argument about how to refactor from one to the other. If you think of the current state of US vs European cities, you can think of it it as a long series of decisions in a tree, where largely EU has taken one path, and US has taken quite another divergent path. It's somewhat obvious how to go from village, to hamlet, to town, to city with horses, to city with trams, to cities with a modern multi-facted public transit system. It's also pretty obvious how to go from horses to car dependent hellscape. It's not quite so obvious how to go from an extremely car-dependent hellscape like Houston or Atlanta or LA, to a walkable and bikable city with a modern public transit system like Amsterdam or London or Berlin. I'm kind of overselling the thesis here some, because from one perspective, the Netherlands did go from quite car dependent to its current state in the past 50 years...on the other, the Atlanta and Houston metros each have 1/3 the population of the entire Netherlands and LA has 2/3. Anyway, point being, the disbelief is in refactoring from Houston/Atlanta/LA to non-car designed cities, not so much in understanding how they can exist in the first place.