16 ms·

I've been railing against cars in the US for years and years. The thing is that today most people in the US under the age of 60 grew up in cars, usually in a su

by acabal 3y ago

I've been railing against cars in the US for years and years. The thing is that today most people in the US under the age of 60 grew up in cars, usually in a suburban environment, and it's actually impossible for them to imagine what life without a car might even look like. It's like trying to describe a color. If we can't even visualize an alternative, how are we supposed to achieve the alternative? Only by traveling to places that were developed before cars took a chokehold on the world can people realize how nice it is to live without them absolutely everywhere. Many Americans get a taste of that when they vacation to Europe. They often choose to leave their suburb and spend their 2 weeks in urban environments like Barcelona, London, Munich, Paris, Rome, etc., that where built for people and not cars, because it's so pleasant to live like that, and because letting cities develop for people first leads to cities that people actually want to be in, with car-free streets, plazas, promenades, etc. (Yes, today those places are also full of cars. But, unlike American cities, their skeletons are people-first and cars are the invasive element.) It could be argued that so many problems of American life - weight gain, loneliness, fracturing of the social fabric - stem from how we've isolated ourselves in unwalkable suburbs, where there's no spontaneous social interaction because everyone's always in a car, and where our only exercise is the walk from the parking lot to our desk. What's depressing is visiting developing countries and seeing them start to ape the worst of American car life. Places like Colombia, which I visit often, are building shopping malls, big-box stores, parking lots, suburbs, and freeways, while after almost 100 years of that type of car-first development in America we're only just starting to realize that actually it might not be that great.

Tade0 3y ago
> Many Americans get a taste of that when they vacation to Europe. What I don't like about this is that people (even urbanist bloggers) tend to form their opinions on their experience as tourists, while reality is much more nuanced and full of tradeoffs. Case in point: I once visited my friend in Bilbao and the one thing I couldn't get over was that despite this being a beautiful, walkable, full of life city jobs were hard to come by and low-paid. Youth unemployment in particular in Spain stands at a whopping 46%.
- karmelapple 3y ago
  Were jobs hard to come by in that city because it was walkable, beautiful, and full of life? I'm guessing not, and there are other factors causing that. NYC is beautiful, walkable, full of life, and you sure can find a job there. Same with the Boston area. I've lived in both walkable and car-dependent areas for years. I am one of the people who grew up in a car-dependent small city who couldn't imagine not owning a car 10 years ago. Now that I've lived in both, sure, there might be tradeoffs living in a walkable neighborhood, but if you build a neighborhood with the amenities you need, walking for most things is simply amazing. Having a car is useful for getting out, but it now becomes a "once in awhile" thing, almost a luxury, if you have a nice market and some restaurants nearby. And then you can do things like ZipCar or other options for the rare times you need to drive.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    And pretty much all the people I know in Boston also own cars because they visit friends outside of the city, go out of town for weekend activities that often involve transporting a lot of gear, etc. So, yeah, you can get by day to day but people I know also want a car.
    - Karrot_Kream 3y ago
      There's nothing wrong with that either. The Dutch, known for their bike and ped friendly streets and great transit, are also known to love their summer trips where they drive around and tow camping trailers. Japanese families in less urban areas frequently have a car for family trips or for shopping for home goods. There's no way transit will ever completely displace the car, the economics will never pencil out. Having the option to drive when there's copious amounts of transit is empowering. It lets you go hiking into the mountains where it wouldn't be economical to run even a bus at greater than 1 hr headways or haul your ski and snowboarding equipment to the slopes. It lets you ferry around your aging parents who are starting to have cognitive issues. It means when your children are still very young you can keep them from being a nuisance on the bus. Being forced to drive because there's no transit and you know your brake pads are shot and scraping against your rotors but you don't have the money or time to fix your car is dreadful.
bluGill 3y ago
There are walk-able tourist areas in the US as well that people enjoy, but couldn't imagine living in. The reality in Europe is cars are still the dominate mode of transport for most people. Even if the best walk/bike/transit cities cars have a very large mode share.
- scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
  As a European and as an American… I agree! Sort of - there really are far more walk-able spaces here in the EU in cities. But if anything, Europe is too car centric as well. The consumer upper middle class and child bearing families still seek out suburbs unfortunately. I always talk about this but live in a utopian dystopian socialist modernist neighborhood complex from the 1960’s. There is a health clinic downstairs, schools, library, market-shops, park areas all 5 minute elevator ride down. Most residents still have cars unfortunately - the parking area is packed with them.
- digging 3y ago
  > There are walk-able tourist areas in the US as well that people enjoy, but couldn't imagine living in. Like Disneyland? Of course nobody could live there. But actual walkable neighborhoods tend to be prohibitively expensive because they're extremely desirable.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Door county Wisconsin would be an example of a place where people live. The locals all have cars, but tourists often spend time walking around the town (they drive to the towns)
lotsoweiners 3y ago
I dunno. I’ve been to all of those European cities and they were nice to visit for a week as a tourist but the density along with everything that goes with it: noise, smells, crowds etc were always a reminder that I only want to be there on a brief visit. I’m my suburban city, I simply hop in my vehicle and can be anywhere I want in 3-15 minutes.
- bertil 3y ago
  > noise, smells, crowds Those are caused mainly by cars. Take away the cars and there’s a lot more space and fresh air for everyone.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    I visit Amsterdam periodically for business. In the city center, where there are very few cars, there is far more noise, smells, and crowds than I would care to live with everyday. Density of people brings those three annoyances, cars or no cars.
    - cpursley 3y ago
      That’s Amsterdam. Go visit some less touristy cities in The Netherlands.
      - eythian 3y ago
        Not even that. I live a little outside the centre of Amsterdam (I could walk to De Wallen in probably 30 minutes comfortably.) Most residents don't go into the centre because it's a mass of tourists who haven't learnt how to walk outside of bike lanes. In my neighbourhood, there still aren't that many cars, the footpaths and bike paths are wider, and it's generally calm and quiet, and I sit on a moderately busy road, a small street off it will be much quieter still. There're a few cafes that I go to that are a bit more central, but it's still mostly outside the really busy area. I think most people's - even a lot of Dutch people's - experience is getting off at Centraal and walking to some bar in the centre, or going through the shopping areas, and then extrapolating that to everywhere else in the city so all they imagine is that busyness.
pyuser583 3y ago
I live in a city which has horrible public transit. It’s the result of faddish idea after faddish idea. The reforms and improvements have consistently made things worse. Now the city is completely changing bus routes. Maybe you’ll have a ride to work. Maybe not. Maybe it will be quick. Maybe not. People’s entire lives are being rearranged. The folks at the lowest level of importantance are folks who send their kids to private schools. The municipality is like “not our problem - public schools offer free transit. You’re chosing to send your kid to a private school, you drive them yourself.” Note how the city is telling people to use cars, not public transit, because the city doesnt endorse what they’re using it for. And if you want to take a bus to church Sunday morning? Hahahahahah! There would probably be a lawsuit from church/state people. Etc. I simply don’t have confidence public transit will be there when I need it.
- myroon5 3y ago
  Feels like you're taking reasonable prioritization personally. Over 90 percent of students attend public school: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55 And private school attendance is mostly higher income families: https://www.educationnext.org/who-goes-private-school-long-term-enrollment-trends-family-income/ https://www.educationnext.org/who-goes-private-school-long-t... Unfortunately public transportation resources are limited, but prioritizing the vast majority of lower income public school routes over the vast minority of higher income private school routes makes sense
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pyuser583 3y ago
    Schools, public and private, generally employ their own bus drivers. So it’s not like the anybody at the city transit office is saying “let’s divert resources from public schools to private schools.” They’re saying “we don’t do schools at all, because the only schools we would be providing services for are private, and we don’t want to encourage people to go to private school.” Wealthy private schools often have their own buses. Less well off ones, don’t. So it isn’t even about benefiting the poor over the wealthy. Catholic schools generally have their own buses, while schools affiliated with historically black churches don’t. Regarding why I take it personally, the condescending and hostile attitude of city officials make it clear it is personal. This is specific to where I live now. I’ve lived in places like the Bay Area and New York, and this attitude doesn’t seem to exist.
User23 3y ago
It's easy for extraurban people to imagine what life without a car is like because the Amish are a thing. And most people don't want that lifestyle.
thomasahle 3y ago
> What's depressing is visiting developing countries and seeing them start to ape the worst of American car life. A lot of bad decisions were made in Europe stemming from American city planners after the second world war. Like David Jokinen's influence on Amsterdam and The Hague: https://viewpointvancouver.ca/2019/10/27/the-1960s-when-the-dutch-imported-american-planners https://viewpointvancouver.ca/2019/10/27/the-1960s-when-the-... It's strange that people are so eager to export (and import) urbanism ideas around the world without much understanding of the cultural differences and needs.
- digging 3y ago
  Because it feels like prosperity. In a town with no public transportation and very few cars, getting a car would feel awesome. And it's just a lot easier for 1 well-off person to buy 1 car than for the entire town to get good public transit.
  - thomasahle 3y ago
    > it's just a lot easier for 1 well-off person to buy 1 car than for the entire town to get good public transit. Sure, once the town is already built for cars. If it wasn't, having a car would be a pain with no parking and no space in the streets. The question is why cities choose/chose to rebuild themselves for cars in the first place, and continuously in the third world as suggested by the OP and the book "Urbanism Imported or Exported: Native Aspirations and Foreign Plans" by Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Even before cars existed, there was room for them; look how wide old streets in the USA are (because turning a team of horses takes some space!) Or look how packed with cars Europe is, even in the tiny streets of Sienna they wedge little cars in everywhere.
- milkytron 3y ago
  > It's strange that people are so eager to export (and import) urbanism ideas around the world without much understanding of the cultural differences and needs. It's not even just cultural differences and needs. It's the lack of questioning in decisions and groupthink. Tax per acre used to be a metric that was used in urban planning decisions. That was mostly thrown away when people started to want cars. A primary metric then became level of service. LOS was a way to measure traffic volume but didn't necessarily mean increased net economic output, although it was nearly used as one. It doesn't paint the picture correctly for municipal urban planning in a financial sense. For sustained economic vitality in a very simplistic form, the infrastructure and municipal services costs should be subtracted from the amount of tax revenue gained from the land. Basically, is this land making the city money or is it costing the city money. This info can be used to adjust taxes, plan better built environments, amongst other things. If that was regularly being measured throughout the last 100 years and acted upon, I imagine much of the car dependent areas of the world would look a lot different. If you talk to urban planners today about this (which I have), many still don't use it at all.
cpursley 3y ago
You are spot on - I have a thesis that most of Americas issue stem from its poorly thought out build environment. Recommended reading: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_Nowhere https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_...
thefourthchime 3y ago
As someone who's lived in Manhattan, it's not all a panacea you make it out to be. Taking the subway is a pain in the butt. If you try to come home when it's after 11pm, you get to wait 30+ min for a train. When you want to get the groceries, you have to somehow shuffle all that stuff home, either with a cart or just have your hands suffer in the cold, and then have a four-story walk-up. Sure, it's charming, but living there takes some real grit. By the way, those places are all expensive comparatively.
- progrus 3y ago
  And for women, the subway is not just a 24/7 whimsical, wild, and grimy place, like it is for me…
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    Uber and taxi are still around.
    - rad_gruchalski 3y ago
      So you still need to have cars and a city designed for them to operate. Edit: What about ambulances, police, fire service, deliveries, postal services…, public transportation…?
      - mixmastamyk 3y ago
        A lot fewer. Many folks like to read these pieces from an extreme viewpoint, that they want to eliminate all cars everywhere. A few moments thinking and you realize it would only be practical in downtowns, and alleys would still exist. Visit Wash.DC or London if still unsure. Street maps a cheap substitute.
        rad_gruchalski 3y ago
        I lived in London. You have streets everywhere exactly for that odd moment when any of those services need access.
cal5k 3y ago
> What's depressing is visiting developing countries and seeing them start to ape the worst of American car life. What a patronizing take. Cars are freedom - you can go where you like, when you like, with whom you like, and you can do it without dealing with crowded, noisy, sometimes dangerous buses/trams/subways. It's as true in the developing world as it is here. As for such things happening in Colombia, it turns out that Colombians like the same things as Americans - they just previously didn't have the money to afford them. Like, what's the alternative? Developing economies go from grinding poverty to bicycle-centric urban planning utopia by... top-down fiat? How do you propose to stop Colombians from voting with their wallets when they choose to eat at chain restaurants, shop at big box stores and then take the freeway back to their air-conditioned 2000 sq ft houses in the suburbs? "Sorry Mr. Middle Class Colombian, I know you really like McDonalds... but trust us, we're saving you from your own bad choices."
- acabal 3y ago
  > Like, what's the alternative? This is, of course, the inability to visualize a different life that I referred to in my original post. There are many alternatives to car-oriented life, as cities that grew before cars plainly evidence. Those are the cities that people want to spend their vacations in. Instead of building shopping malls with parking lots, Colombia could relax zoning to allow chain restaurants and McDonalds near housing, and build dedicated bike lanes to get to them. Instead of building suburbs and freeways, it could build more public space like open pedestrian plazas to give people a feeling of space, and metros/bus rapid transit to make it easy to get around. Colombians who want to live a quiet suburban-style life can still do that in a rural home, which could be connected by rail when traveling to a city is required - but their choice to live a suburban life should not require those of us in cities to give up our space for wide roads to fit their cars and endless free car storage, at the expense of our way of life. These options aren't the only alternatives Colombians could have, nor are they a fantasy - they exist today in places like Europe and parts of Asia. Cars are not a requirement for human flourishing. We only designed our lives to make them that way.
  - thaumaturgy 3y ago
    Colombia has some astonishingly beautiful natural settings. Surely you're not suffering from an inability to visualize vacationing outside of a city?
mixmastamyk 3y ago
Washington DC is a cheaper alternative if already in North America.
UncleOxidant 3y ago
> The thing is that today most people in the US under the age of 60 grew up in cars Most of the people in the US under the age of 100 grew up in cars.
cscurmudgeon 3y ago
> It could be argued that so many problems of American life - weight gain, loneliness, fracturing of the social fabric - stem from how we've isolated ourselves in unwalkable suburbs, where there's no spontaneous social interaction because everyone's always in a car, and where our only exercise is the walk from the parking lot to our desk. It can be argued but would be false as other societies have more of those but have less car users.
phpisthebest 3y ago
>>and it's actually impossible for them to imagine what life without a car might even look like. I can visualize it just fine... High Density, people stacked onto of each other vertically, small dwellings where you need to shop for food every day or every few days, extreme cold or extreme heat is a problem, as is rain... Instead i look out to my 3/4 acre homestead, lined with mature tree's and limited density... and say... yes I prefer this. I prefer going to to store every 1 or 2 weeks, I prefer not having an upstairs neighbor stomping around, I prefer not having to deal with stairs or neighbors only separated by a wall...
- kalenx 3y ago
  You know, that's the funny thing, it doesn't have to be like a Judge Dredd world. I live in what we can describe as a suburb: large streets with parking on both sides, 2000 m² single-family properties, ample space for trees, etc. But at the same time, school is less than 200 meters away. Drugstore on the street corner. Grocery store (a large one) 300 meters away. Public library less than a kilometer away. _Sidewalks_ on both sides of the street. Cycle paths. Buses on the avenues (avenues are large transit streets, streets are smaller and do not go through, so close to zero traffic). The same way it is unreasonable to think that less car centric cities would solve all our issues, it's just silly to equate "non car-centric environment" to "dystopian cities where people die on the street whenever there is a bit of cold".
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    The problem here also is that assume everyone in the area would want to shop at THE grocery store.. and send thier kids to THE school... I dont shop at the closest store to my home because I prefer the layout and selection of one that is further away, i know people that take their kids to schools across town because they are better than the one closest to me. (in my area schools are not assigned geographically, we have open enrollment at all public schools) Cars give you that option, with out it you have THE store, and THE school... sorry but count me out of that
    - 3y ago
odessacubbage 3y ago
i would say bike autists equally struggle to imagine what it is like to live anywhere besides the most population-dense, infrastructurally developed 15 square miles on the face of the earth. i have a very good sense of what it is like to live without a car as i did so for 20 years and it fucking sucks. i have no desire to have to bike 10 miles in 80+ degree heat with a saxophone in one hand and a guitar in the other ever again. i have no desire to experience the vibrant living of being packed into an 11pm vomit comet ever again. i have no desire to have to pad every commute & outing with an extra 45 to 60 minutes of stops ever again.
- Karrot_Kream 3y ago
  Sure and that's your choice. But if I, a bike autist, want to live somewhere with density, where do I go? How many open units of housing are available for bike autists? If there was plenty of space for dense and sparse living then people would self-select, based on preferences and time in their life (maybe choosing a suburb when their child is very young and needs a lot of support but moving out once their children need autonomy.) Right now in America, the vast majority of housing is hostile to bike autists. That's why the title of this piece is "How to quit cars" because we've mandated car centric development in the US for almost a century.
johnwalkr 3y ago
The replies are full of people that can't imagine life without cars. I grew up in a suburb of Edmonton, I know what it's like to just "know" that cars are freedom and a way to get to ever conceivable place. I left that place 20 years ago and I could make a long reply about what it's like to live in various sized cities in Japan and Europe but let me just say that not needing a car to get from your house in a town to restaurants, grocery stores, shops, parks, etc offers much more freedom than needing a car to get to such things. And there are a lot of places where you can live in a town, even on an acreage and still be in the town and able to get to a train station to get to a nearby city, if your argument is that you can't stand cities and need your space. Car-people can't imagine a town instead of a suburb and can't imagine that you can get from a town to a city by train or bus. Or that you don't need to travel to some far-off place with a huge car to get a ton of groceries because you can walk a few blocks and pick up the ingredients for dinner.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I love being able to walk a block to the grocery store (though it now closes at 9 PM instead of 11 before Covid, ah well), and I've done that walk during literal national-weather-service-says-you-all-gonna-die blizzards, because walking through snow drifts is easier than trying to drive through them. But the car adds to that.
fooker 3y ago
I have grown up in a country with excellent public transport and not much personal car ownership. I currently live in US and completely disagree with your take on cars.

by acabal 3y ago

Tade0 3y ago

> Many Americans get a taste of that when they vacation to Europe. What I don't like about this is that people (even urbanist bloggers) tend to form their opinions on their experience as tourists, while reality is much more nuanced and full of tradeoffs. Case in point: I once visited my friend in Bilbao and the one thing I couldn't get over was that despite this being a beautiful, walkable, full of life city jobs were hard to come by and low-paid. Youth unemployment in particular in Spain stands at a whopping 46%.

karmelapple 3y ago
Were jobs hard to come by in that city because it was walkable, beautiful, and full of life? I'm guessing not, and there are other factors causing that. NYC is beautiful, walkable, full of life, and you sure can find a job there. Same with the Boston area. I've lived in both walkable and car-dependent areas for years. I am one of the people who grew up in a car-dependent small city who couldn't imagine not owning a car 10 years ago. Now that I've lived in both, sure, there might be tradeoffs living in a walkable neighborhood, but if you build a neighborhood with the amenities you need, walking for most things is simply amazing. Having a car is useful for getting out, but it now becomes a "once in awhile" thing, almost a luxury, if you have a nice market and some restaurants nearby. And then you can do things like ZipCar or other options for the rare times you need to drive.
- ghaff 3y ago
  And pretty much all the people I know in Boston also own cars because they visit friends outside of the city, go out of town for weekend activities that often involve transporting a lot of gear, etc. So, yeah, you can get by day to day but people I know also want a car.
  - Karrot_Kream 3y ago
    There's nothing wrong with that either. The Dutch, known for their bike and ped friendly streets and great transit, are also known to love their summer trips where they drive around and tow camping trailers. Japanese families in less urban areas frequently have a car for family trips or for shopping for home goods. There's no way transit will ever completely displace the car, the economics will never pencil out. Having the option to drive when there's copious amounts of transit is empowering. It lets you go hiking into the mountains where it wouldn't be economical to run even a bus at greater than 1 hr headways or haul your ski and snowboarding equipment to the slopes. It lets you ferry around your aging parents who are starting to have cognitive issues. It means when your children are still very young you can keep them from being a nuisance on the bus. Being forced to drive because there's no transit and you know your brake pads are shot and scraping against your rotors but you don't have the money or time to fix your car is dreadful.

bluGill 3y ago

There are walk-able tourist areas in the US as well that people enjoy, but couldn't imagine living in. The reality in Europe is cars are still the dominate mode of transport for most people. Even if the best walk/bike/transit cities cars have a very large mode share.

scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
As a European and as an American… I agree! Sort of - there really are far more walk-able spaces here in the EU in cities. But if anything, Europe is too car centric as well. The consumer upper middle class and child bearing families still seek out suburbs unfortunately. I always talk about this but live in a utopian dystopian socialist modernist neighborhood complex from the 1960’s. There is a health clinic downstairs, schools, library, market-shops, park areas all 5 minute elevator ride down. Most residents still have cars unfortunately - the parking area is packed with them.
digging 3y ago
> There are walk-able tourist areas in the US as well that people enjoy, but couldn't imagine living in. Like Disneyland? Of course nobody could live there. But actual walkable neighborhoods tend to be prohibitively expensive because they're extremely desirable.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Door county Wisconsin would be an example of a place where people live. The locals all have cars, but tourists often spend time walking around the town (they drive to the towns)

lotsoweiners 3y ago

I dunno. I’ve been to all of those European cities and they were nice to visit for a week as a tourist but the density along with everything that goes with it: noise, smells, crowds etc were always a reminder that I only want to be there on a brief visit. I’m my suburban city, I simply hop in my vehicle and can be anywhere I want in 3-15 minutes.

bertil 3y ago
> noise, smells, crowds Those are caused mainly by cars. Take away the cars and there’s a lot more space and fresh air for everyone.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  I visit Amsterdam periodically for business. In the city center, where there are very few cars, there is far more noise, smells, and crowds than I would care to live with everyday. Density of people brings those three annoyances, cars or no cars.
  - cpursley 3y ago
    That’s Amsterdam. Go visit some less touristy cities in The Netherlands.
    - eythian 3y ago
      Not even that. I live a little outside the centre of Amsterdam (I could walk to De Wallen in probably 30 minutes comfortably.) Most residents don't go into the centre because it's a mass of tourists who haven't learnt how to walk outside of bike lanes. In my neighbourhood, there still aren't that many cars, the footpaths and bike paths are wider, and it's generally calm and quiet, and I sit on a moderately busy road, a small street off it will be much quieter still. There're a few cafes that I go to that are a bit more central, but it's still mostly outside the really busy area. I think most people's - even a lot of Dutch people's - experience is getting off at Centraal and walking to some bar in the centre, or going through the shopping areas, and then extrapolating that to everywhere else in the city so all they imagine is that busyness.

pyuser583 3y ago

I live in a city which has horrible public transit. It’s the result of faddish idea after faddish idea. The reforms and improvements have consistently made things worse. Now the city is completely changing bus routes. Maybe you’ll have a ride to work. Maybe not. Maybe it will be quick. Maybe not. People’s entire lives are being rearranged. The folks at the lowest level of importantance are folks who send their kids to private schools. The municipality is like “not our problem - public schools offer free transit. You’re chosing to send your kid to a private school, you drive them yourself.” Note how the city is telling people to use cars, not public transit, because the city doesnt endorse what they’re using it for. And if you want to take a bus to church Sunday morning? Hahahahahah! There would probably be a lawsuit from church/state people. Etc. I simply don’t have confidence public transit will be there when I need it.

myroon5 3y ago
Feels like you're taking reasonable prioritization personally. Over 90 percent of students attend public school: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55 And private school attendance is mostly higher income families: https://www.educationnext.org/who-goes-private-school-long-term-enrollment-trends-family-income/ https://www.educationnext.org/who-goes-private-school-long-t... Unfortunately public transportation resources are limited, but prioritizing the vast majority of lower income public school routes over the vast minority of higher income private school routes makes sense
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pyuser583 3y ago
  Schools, public and private, generally employ their own bus drivers. So it’s not like the anybody at the city transit office is saying “let’s divert resources from public schools to private schools.” They’re saying “we don’t do schools at all, because the only schools we would be providing services for are private, and we don’t want to encourage people to go to private school.” Wealthy private schools often have their own buses. Less well off ones, don’t. So it isn’t even about benefiting the poor over the wealthy. Catholic schools generally have their own buses, while schools affiliated with historically black churches don’t. Regarding why I take it personally, the condescending and hostile attitude of city officials make it clear it is personal. This is specific to where I live now. I’ve lived in places like the Bay Area and New York, and this attitude doesn’t seem to exist.

User23 3y ago

It's easy for extraurban people to imagine what life without a car is like because the Amish are a thing. And most people don't want that lifestyle.

thomasahle 3y ago

> What's depressing is visiting developing countries and seeing them start to ape the worst of American car life. A lot of bad decisions were made in Europe stemming from American city planners after the second world war. Like David Jokinen's influence on Amsterdam and The Hague: https://viewpointvancouver.ca/2019/10/27/the-1960s-when-the-dutch-imported-american-planners https://viewpointvancouver.ca/2019/10/27/the-1960s-when-the-... It's strange that people are so eager to export (and import) urbanism ideas around the world without much understanding of the cultural differences and needs.

digging 3y ago
Because it feels like prosperity. In a town with no public transportation and very few cars, getting a car would feel awesome. And it's just a lot easier for 1 well-off person to buy 1 car than for the entire town to get good public transit.
- thomasahle 3y ago
  > it's just a lot easier for 1 well-off person to buy 1 car than for the entire town to get good public transit. Sure, once the town is already built for cars. If it wasn't, having a car would be a pain with no parking and no space in the streets. The question is why cities choose/chose to rebuild themselves for cars in the first place, and continuously in the third world as suggested by the OP and the book "Urbanism Imported or Exported: Native Aspirations and Foreign Plans" by Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Even before cars existed, there was room for them; look how wide old streets in the USA are (because turning a team of horses takes some space!) Or look how packed with cars Europe is, even in the tiny streets of Sienna they wedge little cars in everywhere.
milkytron 3y ago
> It's strange that people are so eager to export (and import) urbanism ideas around the world without much understanding of the cultural differences and needs. It's not even just cultural differences and needs. It's the lack of questioning in decisions and groupthink. Tax per acre used to be a metric that was used in urban planning decisions. That was mostly thrown away when people started to want cars. A primary metric then became level of service. LOS was a way to measure traffic volume but didn't necessarily mean increased net economic output, although it was nearly used as one. It doesn't paint the picture correctly for municipal urban planning in a financial sense. For sustained economic vitality in a very simplistic form, the infrastructure and municipal services costs should be subtracted from the amount of tax revenue gained from the land. Basically, is this land making the city money or is it costing the city money. This info can be used to adjust taxes, plan better built environments, amongst other things. If that was regularly being measured throughout the last 100 years and acted upon, I imagine much of the car dependent areas of the world would look a lot different. If you talk to urban planners today about this (which I have), many still don't use it at all.

cpursley 3y ago

You are spot on - I have a thesis that most of Americas issue stem from its poorly thought out build environment. Recommended reading: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_Nowhere https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_...

thefourthchime 3y ago

As someone who's lived in Manhattan, it's not all a panacea you make it out to be. Taking the subway is a pain in the butt. If you try to come home when it's after 11pm, you get to wait 30+ min for a train. When you want to get the groceries, you have to somehow shuffle all that stuff home, either with a cart or just have your hands suffer in the cold, and then have a four-story walk-up. Sure, it's charming, but living there takes some real grit. By the way, those places are all expensive comparatively.

progrus 3y ago
And for women, the subway is not just a 24/7 whimsical, wild, and grimy place, like it is for me…
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  Uber and taxi are still around.
  - rad_gruchalski 3y ago
    So you still need to have cars and a city designed for them to operate. Edit: What about ambulances, police, fire service, deliveries, postal services…, public transportation…?
    - mixmastamyk 3y ago
      A lot fewer. Many folks like to read these pieces from an extreme viewpoint, that they want to eliminate all cars everywhere. A few moments thinking and you realize it would only be practical in downtowns, and alleys would still exist. Visit Wash.DC or London if still unsure. Street maps a cheap substitute.
      - rad_gruchalski 3y ago
        I lived in London. You have streets everywhere exactly for that odd moment when any of those services need access.

cal5k 3y ago

> What's depressing is visiting developing countries and seeing them start to ape the worst of American car life. What a patronizing take. Cars are freedom - you can go where you like, when you like, with whom you like, and you can do it without dealing with crowded, noisy, sometimes dangerous buses/trams/subways. It's as true in the developing world as it is here. As for such things happening in Colombia, it turns out that Colombians like the same things as Americans - they just previously didn't have the money to afford them. Like, what's the alternative? Developing economies go from grinding poverty to bicycle-centric urban planning utopia by... top-down fiat? How do you propose to stop Colombians from voting with their wallets when they choose to eat at chain restaurants, shop at big box stores and then take the freeway back to their air-conditioned 2000 sq ft houses in the suburbs? "Sorry Mr. Middle Class Colombian, I know you really like McDonalds... but trust us, we're saving you from your own bad choices."

acabal 3y ago
> Like, what's the alternative? This is, of course, the inability to visualize a different life that I referred to in my original post. There are many alternatives to car-oriented life, as cities that grew before cars plainly evidence. Those are the cities that people want to spend their vacations in. Instead of building shopping malls with parking lots, Colombia could relax zoning to allow chain restaurants and McDonalds near housing, and build dedicated bike lanes to get to them. Instead of building suburbs and freeways, it could build more public space like open pedestrian plazas to give people a feeling of space, and metros/bus rapid transit to make it easy to get around. Colombians who want to live a quiet suburban-style life can still do that in a rural home, which could be connected by rail when traveling to a city is required - but their choice to live a suburban life should not require those of us in cities to give up our space for wide roads to fit their cars and endless free car storage, at the expense of our way of life. These options aren't the only alternatives Colombians could have, nor are they a fantasy - they exist today in places like Europe and parts of Asia. Cars are not a requirement for human flourishing. We only designed our lives to make them that way.
- thaumaturgy 3y ago
  Colombia has some astonishingly beautiful natural settings. Surely you're not suffering from an inability to visualize vacationing outside of a city?

mixmastamyk 3y ago

Washington DC is a cheaper alternative if already in North America.

UncleOxidant 3y ago

> The thing is that today most people in the US under the age of 60 grew up in cars Most of the people in the US under the age of 100 grew up in cars.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago

> It could be argued that so many problems of American life - weight gain, loneliness, fracturing of the social fabric - stem from how we've isolated ourselves in unwalkable suburbs, where there's no spontaneous social interaction because everyone's always in a car, and where our only exercise is the walk from the parking lot to our desk. It can be argued but would be false as other societies have more of those but have less car users.

phpisthebest 3y ago

>>and it's actually impossible for them to imagine what life without a car might even look like. I can visualize it just fine... High Density, people stacked onto of each other vertically, small dwellings where you need to shop for food every day or every few days, extreme cold or extreme heat is a problem, as is rain... Instead i look out to my 3/4 acre homestead, lined with mature tree's and limited density... and say... yes I prefer this. I prefer going to to store every 1 or 2 weeks, I prefer not having an upstairs neighbor stomping around, I prefer not having to deal with stairs or neighbors only separated by a wall...

kalenx 3y ago
You know, that's the funny thing, it doesn't have to be like a Judge Dredd world. I live in what we can describe as a suburb: large streets with parking on both sides, 2000 m² single-family properties, ample space for trees, etc. But at the same time, school is less than 200 meters away. Drugstore on the street corner. Grocery store (a large one) 300 meters away. Public library less than a kilometer away. _Sidewalks_ on both sides of the street. Cycle paths. Buses on the avenues (avenues are large transit streets, streets are smaller and do not go through, so close to zero traffic). The same way it is unreasonable to think that less car centric cities would solve all our issues, it's just silly to equate "non car-centric environment" to "dystopian cities where people die on the street whenever there is a bit of cold".
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  The problem here also is that assume everyone in the area would want to shop at THE grocery store.. and send thier kids to THE school... I dont shop at the closest store to my home because I prefer the layout and selection of one that is further away, i know people that take their kids to schools across town because they are better than the one closest to me. (in my area schools are not assigned geographically, we have open enrollment at all public schools) Cars give you that option, with out it you have THE store, and THE school... sorry but count me out of that
  - 3y ago

odessacubbage 3y ago

i would say bike autists equally struggle to imagine what it is like to live anywhere besides the most population-dense, infrastructurally developed 15 square miles on the face of the earth. i have a very good sense of what it is like to live without a car as i did so for 20 years and it fucking sucks. i have no desire to have to bike 10 miles in 80+ degree heat with a saxophone in one hand and a guitar in the other ever again. i have no desire to experience the vibrant living of being packed into an 11pm vomit comet ever again. i have no desire to have to pad every commute & outing with an extra 45 to 60 minutes of stops ever again.

Karrot_Kream 3y ago
Sure and that's your choice. But if I, a bike autist, want to live somewhere with density, where do I go? How many open units of housing are available for bike autists? If there was plenty of space for dense and sparse living then people would self-select, based on preferences and time in their life (maybe choosing a suburb when their child is very young and needs a lot of support but moving out once their children need autonomy.) Right now in America, the vast majority of housing is hostile to bike autists. That's why the title of this piece is "How to quit cars" because we've mandated car centric development in the US for almost a century.

johnwalkr 3y ago

The replies are full of people that can't imagine life without cars. I grew up in a suburb of Edmonton, I know what it's like to just "know" that cars are freedom and a way to get to ever conceivable place. I left that place 20 years ago and I could make a long reply about what it's like to live in various sized cities in Japan and Europe but let me just say that not needing a car to get from your house in a town to restaurants, grocery stores, shops, parks, etc offers much more freedom than needing a car to get to such things. And there are a lot of places where you can live in a town, even on an acreage and still be in the town and able to get to a train station to get to a nearby city, if your argument is that you can't stand cities and need your space. Car-people can't imagine a town instead of a suburb and can't imagine that you can get from a town to a city by train or bus. Or that you don't need to travel to some far-off place with a huge car to get a ton of groceries because you can walk a few blocks and pick up the ingredients for dinner.

bombcar 3y ago
I love being able to walk a block to the grocery store (though it now closes at 9 PM instead of 11 before Covid, ah well), and I've done that walk during literal national-weather-service-says-you-all-gonna-die blizzards, because walking through snow drifts is easier than trying to drive through them. But the car adds to that.

fooker 3y ago

I have grown up in a country with excellent public transport and not much personal car ownership. I currently live in US and completely disagree with your take on cars.