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While I like that sentiment and personally I fit into your lifestyle, I think it's worth considering the tradeoffs. Europe does the above because they have too

While I like that sentiment and personally I fit into your lifestyle, I think it's worth considering the tradeoffs. Europe does the above because they have too -- their population density is huge and they historically hit the max humans / land ratio (given historic food production technology at the time). This is eminently not true for the Americas and much of Oceania. The massive amounts of land in the latter areas are probably one of a few primary factors in why there is so much sprawl there. In particular, I think many people fundamentally enjoy single family homes with a lawn, or having more space even within a city. Once you have a region (e.g. Bay Area) with enough people with single family homes, the road network has a network effect and a phase transition that suddenly favors car.

lonelyasacloud 4y ago
> In particular, I think many people fundamentally enjoy single family homes with a lawn, or having more space even within a city. In that case surely it's better not to fill what land we have with roads and car parks?
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  Other than rush hour traffic I don’t have problems with cars i suburbs - they work really well if you work from home. I am pro bike lines and public transport tho which would do nothing to my weekly drive to get groceries.
goosedragons 4y ago
The problem is that we've been subsidizing single family homes to an insane degree. It takes a lot more infrastructure to support single family homes vs. more dense forms of housing. You need more sewer pipe, more wiring, more sidewalks, more streets, more plowing, etc. So cities in North America have been doing this unsustainable Ponzi scheme where they pack on more debt to do all this extra maintenance.
- metacritic12 4y ago
  I can see the subsidy in some areas, like USPS mail (which has the same retail cost all over the USA, but is definitely lowest for the government to service in cities, thus providing a nationwide subsidy to rural areas). But for items like sewer pipes, wiring, sidewalk, that seems to be serviced on a town level, so if you live in a more rural town, the property taxes per unit of house should be more. This means the above costs should be internalized pretty well.
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    But the tax bases in subdivisions AREN'T high enough to cover the maintenance costs. This causes towns to chase new development to attract more tax payers and the whole cycle repeats. There just isn't enough tax base in a subdivision to cover the maintenance burden when the time comes. You should check out the book Strong Towns.

lonelyasacloud 4y ago

> In particular, I think many people fundamentally enjoy single family homes with a lawn, or having more space even within a city. In that case surely it's better not to fill what land we have with roads and car parks?

dzhiurgis 4y ago
Other than rush hour traffic I don’t have problems with cars i suburbs - they work really well if you work from home. I am pro bike lines and public transport tho which would do nothing to my weekly drive to get groceries.

goosedragons 4y ago

The problem is that we've been subsidizing single family homes to an insane degree. It takes a lot more infrastructure to support single family homes vs. more dense forms of housing. You need more sewer pipe, more wiring, more sidewalks, more streets, more plowing, etc. So cities in North America have been doing this unsustainable Ponzi scheme where they pack on more debt to do all this extra maintenance.

metacritic12 4y ago
I can see the subsidy in some areas, like USPS mail (which has the same retail cost all over the USA, but is definitely lowest for the government to service in cities, thus providing a nationwide subsidy to rural areas). But for items like sewer pipes, wiring, sidewalk, that seems to be serviced on a town level, so if you live in a more rural town, the property taxes per unit of house should be more. This means the above costs should be internalized pretty well.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  But the tax bases in subdivisions AREN'T high enough to cover the maintenance costs. This causes towns to chase new development to attract more tax payers and the whole cycle repeats. There just isn't enough tax base in a subdivision to cover the maintenance burden when the time comes. You should check out the book Strong Towns.