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I don't think that's true at all, especially thinking about bicycling (or e-bikes or electric scooters or whatever). Biking can get you long enough distances e

I don't think that's true at all, especially thinking about bicycling (or e-bikes or electric scooters or whatever). Biking can get you long enough distances easily enough that you don't need a city to be super dense or ultra mixed use for biking to be a practical mode of transportation. I live in a fairly suburban fairly mid-sized city and there are tons of destinations within a couple of miles of my house. The reason my city isn't more bikable isn't zoning or parking or density or whatever, it's that there is literally no safe way to reach many of those destinations by bike because the only route there is on streets with high speed limits designed exclusively for cars. I think this is the case for a lot of mid-sized cities in the US if you really look at the distances involved. In fact my city is slowly improving things by turning sidewalks into mixed use paths that make it much easier to get places without using a car, so it's clearly doable. Sure, a lot of exurban bedroom community type places are never going to be anything but car dependent without totally rebuilding them, but alternatives like biking are definitely not only possible in the densest American cities.

digdugdirk 3y ago
Sounds like we're in complete agreement then. The hierarchy starts with walking (which it sounds like your city is too spread out to be a useful means of transport) then biking, then public transport. Unless your city also has a public transit system that is sufficient enough in coverage and timing to replace the need for anyone in your city to own a car, in which case... Please send me a direct message with the city name, I don't want the secret to get out before I move there. Also, don't discount the impact that zoning and parking requirements can have on the ability to have communities like this. Does your city have a collection of parking lots occupying valuable real estate in your downtown? Land that could be used to build a valuable business or multi-unit housing? Yep - that's mandatory parking requirements. Does your city have a lack of neighbourhood businesses and restaurants, leading to the necessity to travel by car to big box stores in a spread out car-centric shopping center away from any other part of the community? Yeah, that's because of zoning laws. These laws can be changed, but cities have already been built entirely around the automobile in most of the US - there has to be a specific push to enable alternate lifestyles to be a possibility. Otherwise, the only viable lifestyle revolves around four wheels and two tons of steel.
- rainsford 3y ago
  The point I'm trying to make is that my city does indeed have many of those problems you mention...it's not all that different from many American cities. I think it's better than average in that zoning seems to have allowed a little more neighborhood type shopping options, some multi-use paths, a mixed-use downtown, and multi-family dwellings, but it's not Manhattan. Public transit is nearly non-existent, plenty of big box stores, shopping centers, downtown parking lots, etc. Living here without owning a car at all would be extremely limiting. And yet, biking could be a perfectly viable transit option without changing most of those factors if there was just more bike infrastructure. You wouldn't get the full hierarchy, as you said, but you could very realistically have more options than just driving.

digdugdirk 3y ago

Sounds like we're in complete agreement then. The hierarchy starts with walking (which it sounds like your city is too spread out to be a useful means of transport) then biking, then public transport. Unless your city also has a public transit system that is sufficient enough in coverage and timing to replace the need for anyone in your city to own a car, in which case... Please send me a direct message with the city name, I don't want the secret to get out before I move there. Also, don't discount the impact that zoning and parking requirements can have on the ability to have communities like this. Does your city have a collection of parking lots occupying valuable real estate in your downtown? Land that could be used to build a valuable business or multi-unit housing? Yep - that's mandatory parking requirements. Does your city have a lack of neighbourhood businesses and restaurants, leading to the necessity to travel by car to big box stores in a spread out car-centric shopping center away from any other part of the community? Yeah, that's because of zoning laws. These laws can be changed, but cities have already been built entirely around the automobile in most of the US - there has to be a specific push to enable alternate lifestyles to be a possibility. Otherwise, the only viable lifestyle revolves around four wheels and two tons of steel.

rainsford 3y ago
The point I'm trying to make is that my city does indeed have many of those problems you mention...it's not all that different from many American cities. I think it's better than average in that zoning seems to have allowed a little more neighborhood type shopping options, some multi-use paths, a mixed-use downtown, and multi-family dwellings, but it's not Manhattan. Public transit is nearly non-existent, plenty of big box stores, shopping centers, downtown parking lots, etc. Living here without owning a car at all would be extremely limiting. And yet, biking could be a perfectly viable transit option without changing most of those factors if there was just more bike infrastructure. You wouldn't get the full hierarchy, as you said, but you could very realistically have more options than just driving.