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The thing is we (as an American society) really don’t want a shift to walking. We like the idea of walking more but won’t actually do it. Instead we’ll make up

The thing is we (as an American society) really don’t want a shift to walking. We like the idea of walking more but won’t actually do it. Instead we’ll make up a million excuses about why we just can’t walk. I say this as someone who at 40 years old has never learned to drive and who has walked/bicycled/taken the bus virtually everywhere I’ve needed to go. And I’ve lived in very rural and very suburban areas, as well as mid-size and bigger cities. I know it’s possible. It’s just that the vast majority of people don’t want to do it. And if you show them it can be done they’ll just make up a new excuse and keep on driving.

psunavy03 3y ago
> I say this as someone who at 40 years old has never learned to drive and who has walked/bicycled/taken the bus virtually everywhere I’ve needed to go. I say this with no mockery or disrespect, just description . . . you are not normal. I mean in a statistical sense. Not only are you part of (maybe the last) generation who salivated over the thought of getting a driver's license at 16 and getting away from Mom and Dad, for the vast majority of Americans, this is a totally unrealistic ask for day-to-day life. Either because of urban design or else living somewhere rural enough where it's infeasible. Urban solutions do not always work across a country as vast, huge, and diverse as the US.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Most people in the US live in an urban area, where urban solutions work. Only a small minority live in a rural area, though many living in suburbs like to pretend they are in a rural area.
  - snovymgodym 3y ago
    I agree that the "US is a rural country" thing isn't true, but the way most US cities are built make walking either very inconvenient or outright dangerous. Posting this channel in this sort of thread is basically a meme, but this take on the topic is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
  - rufus_foreman 3y ago
    >> Most people in the US live in an urban area, where urban solutions work The word "urban" in the US means different things to different people and in different contexts. For the US census bureau, you can find their up-to-date list of US urban areas at https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural.html https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g..., and it includes areas such as the New York City metro area, at a population of 19,426,449, and Munds Park, Arizona, at a population of 773, and 2,643 other urban areas in between. By that definition of urban, most people in the US live in an urban area, but that does not mean that the same solutions work for all people in the US living in urban areas. Population densities of 600 people per square mile across a small area require different solutions than population densities of 6,000 people per square mile across a large area. The wall map version of the list of census bureau urban areas is at https://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/DC2020/UA20/UA_2020_WallMap.pdf https://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/DC2020/UA20/UA_2020_WallMap....
    - bluGill 3y ago
      Those small towns don't add up to much population. Most Americans live in an urban area of more than 100,000 people.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > many living in suburbs like to pretend they are in a rural area Suburbs are not rural, but they're not urban either. The population density in most suburbs is too low to support the kind of walk-everywhere infrastructure that a true high density urban area can (and should) provide. The real issue is that many people fail to realize that there is no problem with that. Having different areas for people to live with vastly different population densities, and different solutions for how people get around, is a feature, not a bug. People have very different preferences, and urban, suburban, and rural areas exist so that people's very different preferences for how they want to live can all be accommodated.
    - danny_codes 3y ago
      https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growt... There is a huge problem with that. It turns out that offering urban-level services at suburban density isn't sustainable. It turns out urban areas are subsidizing suburbs quite extensively. Now, if suburbanite were willing to pay their own way, perhaps we could discuss that. But another issue is that car-dependent suburbanites demand access to urban areas. For example, people living in Palo Alto want vehicle access to San Francisco. This degrades the city significantly, far outweighing any benefit from having suburban influx. Now, non-car-dependent suburbs do seem to work. Street-car suburbs, for example, seem to work reasonably well. They seem to be more dense than car-hell suburbs, but not urban like a city. So I think there is a way forward for people wanting suburban life.
      - pdonis 3y ago
        > It turns out that offering urban-level services at suburban density isn't sustainable. What do you mean by "urban-level services"? If you mean urban-style mass transit, then yes, I agree--and I don't want such services in the suburbs. If I'm going to live in the suburbs, I'm going to own a car and that's how I'm going to expect to get around in the suburbs. If I wanted to live in a place where I could walk or use mass transit to get around for all of my daily activities, I'd live in the city, not the suburbs. > It turns out urban areas are subsidizing suburbs quite extensively. No, it turns out that politicians and ideologues who think everybody should live a certain way, are trying to impose that way of living in areas where it makes no sense, and using our tax money to do it. That's not a "subsidy", it's just incompetent leadership. Living in the suburbs, I get zero value from all the public expenditure on mass transit in areas which are too low density for it to make sense. So I would be fine with all those expenditures just stopping altogether. In fact, such expenditures can have negative value to the very people they are supposed to be helping. In one suburb I lived in, I could drive for about 15 minutes to a commuter parking area and catch a bus that took a half hour to get to a stop within walking distance of my workplace. Then the urban planners decided that it would make more sense to spend public money to extend the subway out to that area and outlaw the bus--meaning that from the same commuter parking area, I would now have an hour's trip to the same stop within walking distance of my workplace, during which I would have to change trains, at a higher per-trip cost than the bus was. Which meant it no longer made sense for me to take mass transit to work. > car-dependent suburbanites demand access to urban areas What kind of access? I'm fine with using, say, a train to go into the city if I need to do that. Or parking somewhere on the outskirts of the city and using mass transit to get in further. > non-car-dependent suburbs do seem to work. Again, I think this depends on what you call a "suburb". To me, if you're living in an area that has a high enough population density to make street-cars, for example, workable, you're living in a city, not a suburb. If I want more space than such a place can provide me, I'm going to live in a less dense area where mass transit is not workable, and as above, I'm going to own a car.
- jrockway 3y ago
  As someone else who is not normal, I have to say I'm a little tired of having my taxes subsidize the roads and sewers for someone who lives in the middle of nowhere and commutes 40 miles each way by car. "But my kids NEED a backyard!" Fair enough, but afford it on your own without a handout from the government.
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    Too bad. You got outvoted in a democracy. Because most people do not hold this view.
    - danny_codes 3y ago
      Tyranny of the majority eh. Also this isn't accurate. Car-dependency in urban environments was fought by the majority of people who lived there. In the beginning, cars were toys for the rich, and they (the rich) pushed for car-friendly design. Since they had influence as elites, they were able to crush the protesting masses and destroy the pre-existing urban fabric. Then the feds misunderstood the German highway system and thought you were supposed to highway through cities, instead of between them. At this point, the momentum seems to have carried itself forward, spawning the urban design disaster in most US cities. So I would say it's more that some groups of wealthy industrialists managed to coop urban planning at a critical time, and propaganda their way through the opposition to fuck over the urban masses. They did make a lot of money though, some some would argue it was worth it.
    - TulliusCicero 3y ago
      No, most people don't even realize that urban areas tend to subsidize less dense areas. Usually when they're initially presented with this info, they immediately go into an obvious denial mode where they try to find some logic to explain why it isn't true.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - goatlover 3y ago
- rewmie 3y ago
  > (...) salivated over the thought of getting a driver's license at 16 and getting away from Mom and Dad (...) I'm afraid this mindset needs context. If you find yourself living in a place where everything is located tens of km away, and short drives are assessed in how many hours you spend in a car, and this is further compounded by the utter lack of a public transportation infrastructure, then gaining access to a car is a basic necessary condition for autonomy. Contrast this with some European urban centers such as the Netherlands' Randstad, where a two hour train ride from your doorstep can get you anywhere everywhere, and can actually be an international trip.
- pharmakom 3y ago
  > Urban solutions do not always work across a country as vast, huge, and diverse as the US. US is a huge country, but people aren’t travelling across it on a regular basis.
  - justajot 3y ago
    Yes, and the highway system was originally intended as defense infrastructure to more easily move equipment across the country. A great idea, but a design that was not originally intended to plow right through cities. This has been a big contributor to the mess that we are in when it comes to urban / suburban design and the extreme lack of walkability.
    - standyro 3y ago
      Not true. They were definitely intended to plow right through cities. That’s why they built highways/freeways right through urban cores, or planned entire metro regions around them.
      - fnimick 3y ago
        Specifically, right through minority neighborhoods in cities. You can't ignore the explicitly racist history of urban "renewal" when discussing freeway planning.
- evandale 3y ago
  You really don't need a car. Bikes are awesome. You can ride them with backpacks. Friends have trucks. Money pays for delivery. Source: a normal 38 year old that never had a license
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - goatlover 3y ago
    You're not representative of everyone else, though
- danny_codes 3y ago
  America being large is irrelevant. China is just as large and you don't see them struggling to figure out how to walk places. The fact is most of the US is practically empty. Connect the major urban hubs with rail and remove the cars (from urban centers) and we'll have fixed this.
- paulcole 3y ago
  > for the vast majority of Americans, this is a totally unrealistic ask for day-to-day life. Either because of urban design or else living somewhere rural enough where it's infeasible. They can convince themselves it’s infeasible, but it is very feasible. It’s just a matter of wanting it. I wanted it enough to make it work. They don’t. That’s 100% fine — I lie to myself about plenty of stuff to get through my day. Everybody does.
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    [flagged]
skrebbel 3y ago
Can you explain this to me? For example, my local supermarket is a 8 minute walk from my house. Driving there would take about 5 minutes, due to one way streets etc, so including the hassle of parking etc it takes about as long. Driving there seems positively insane to me, except if I’m shopping for a party or something and need to fill the trunk. Are you saying that Americans would choose the car here? Or that in America it’s a 5 minute drive vs a 25 minute walk? Cause tbh in the latter case I’d pick the car too, despite my Dutch habits.* I guess what I’m trying to ask is, are you sure it’s American psyche and not, mostly, the town layout as this article suggests? *) okok I’m Dutch so I’d bike but I kept that out to stick with the wall vs car topic
- bluGill 3y ago
  25 minute walk. And even if the supermarket is close enough to walk, it is setup for drivers. So you have to cut through someone's backyard, climb a fence, then walk all the way around to the door on the opposite side. Unless the backyard you cut across above is actually yours the real distance is not walkable, and if it is your yard the trip is not 'dignified'.
  - convolvatron 3y ago
    to be fair though its usually possible to find a hole in the fence, or a little path forced through the shrubs, or a plank across the drainage ditch. it always makes me wonder who else walking through this? kids? immigrant workers? homeless?
- snovymgodym 3y ago
  It's highly situational, but speaking broadly the US usually it's a "5 minute drive vs a 25 minute walk" situation. But even if you live 5-10 minutes from the supermarket many people will still drive because everything is designed around people driving. For example, it's very common to lack sidewalks and even when there are sidewalks, protected crossings can be sparse. So a 10 minute walk to the store can involve you having to walk in the street or in the mud and grass, cutting across the street where there's no crossing signal, and having to walk through a busy parking lot to actually get to the building. And even once you're in the store things are designed around cars. The size of packaging and the quantities that people normally buy in are based on the idea that Americans take their car to the grocery store once a week and fill their trunk space with groceries.
snovymgodym 3y ago
American cities, with a tiny number of exceptions, are not built for walking and biking. When neighborhoods, businesses, and infrastructure are built, their design is fundamentally based on the assumption that the users of it will have a personal motor vehicle. We're talking about what it would take to induce behavioral change on a societal level. I don't mean to be rude, but when someone comes into a discussion like this and says "well actually, if everyone lived like me it would be fine. Everyone else is just too lazy", it's essentially a non-sequitur and comes off as you trying to hold yourself in some kind of position of moral superiority. You're 40 years old, so I expect you to know this already, but I'll let you in on a little secret: you cannot rely on other people to the right thing on a mass scale. You can, however, rely on them doing the easy/comfortable thing. The challenge in sustainability is to align the good with the comfortable as much as possible. It is commendable that you've managed to live car-free so long in such a car-centric country, but we cannot rely on all 340 million people living their lives like you have. I live in the US, and have spent time in something like half a dozen European countries, and I can tell you that there's a clear reason why Europeans walk & bike more, and it's not because "Americans are too lazy not to drive" or something like that.
projektfu 3y ago
I've seen people lose their jobs because they weren't willing to walk a half mile. No car, but taking Uber for that trip. It turns out, Uber is not reliable transportation. But walking usually is.
mikenew 3y ago
This has not been my experience. I'm lucky to live in a very walkable part of a very walkable city, and almost every time someone comes to visit I find they've disappeared within 24 hours to "explore the area". These are people who virtually never walk anywhere unless they have to, but you put them in the right environment and they almost can't help it.
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  When I'm in a new city I love to go for an aimless walk with no destination in mind just to get lost, get a feel for the place and see what I discover. Then I visited the US and quickly realised that this is a terrible idea in pretty much any American city.
  - mikenew 3y ago
    There are a few exceptions but yeah, it's bad. I remember visiting Houston and asking the hotel receptionist which way to walk to get to some restaurants a half mile away, and it was clear that no one had ever asked that before. And sure enough it was a terrible experience.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      I don't think it's possible to make Houston pleasant for walking outside, it's too hot and humid. Houston uses the same solution to avoid the weather that Toronto does -- tunnels connecting buildings. You can walk for 6 miles underground in Houston.
    - dalke 3y ago
      We had rented a car from San Francisco to San Diego. My wife was going to drop off the car at the airport. We asked at the hotel (by the harbor near Little Italy) how to get back. 'Uber'. We then looked at the map and realized it was about 0.5 miles away, with sidewalks the whole way. She walked. My Houston experience was when I wanted to go to a nearby salsa place. It was about 3 blocks away from the motel, as the crow flies, but the other side of the interstate. It required a car to get there.
lelanthran 3y ago
How do you get toddlers to daycare, preteens to soccer practice, etc.
- MattPalmer1086 3y ago
  I also live car free, in London. When we had a kid all my car owning friends were telling me that I would absolutely need one now. Nope, we just walk, or take the bus, or tube, or take an Uber if necessary. Really isn't as needed as most people think if you live in an urban area.
- danny_codes 3y ago
  Well in a well-designed city, you could just walk to all those things. From my house in Berkeley, CA, daycare is about 400 meters from my house. There are two fields of soccer-ing size, one about 10 minutes away and one 25 minutes by foot. The grocery store is a 4 minute walk, my hairdresser is a 1 minute walk, CVS is a 3 minute walk. I also have an amazing park with play structures, basketball courts, tennis courts, large gracy field, a creek, picnic areas, and such about a 1 minute walk away. I can bike to work in 20 minutes. This could be everywhere in the US. There's nothing special about where I live except that it's development predates the automobile.
  - balfirevic 3y ago
    > There's nothing special about where I live except that it's development predates the automobile. Seems like there is, and it's that it's very rich? Because something like this: > an amazing park with play structures, basketball courts, tennis courts, large gracy field, a creek, picnic areas, and such about a 1 minute walk away. doesn't exist in the entirety of my city, which also predates cars. Also, do you mean a detached house when you say "from my house"? How many customers within 5-10 minute walking distance does (for example) hairdresser serve in such place?
    - danny_codes 3y ago
      > doesn't exist in the entirety of my city, which also predates cars. Really? You have no parks in your entire city? How is that possible? I don't think that's a wealth problem, sounds more like a governance problem to me. I live in a quadplex on a mixed-density Street. I'd guess there's a 1000 housing units within a 5-10 minutes walk. I'm sure people come from further away as well though.
TulliusCicero 3y ago
> We like the idea of walking more but won’t actually do it. Wrong. The reason people don't walk is simply because walking mostly really sucks in like 95% of urban or suburban contexts in the states. Even crossing the street once can be a huge pain in the ass sometimes (e.g. strip mall to strip mall across two giant parking lots and an enormous stroad). It is astoundingly rare to find an actual nice, not-tiny area to walk in, in terms of urban design and points of interest. To a lot of Americans, "has sidewalks" means an area is walkable, which is just...so, so very wrong. I lived in Germany for five years, and during our annual summer trip back to the states, it was always so sad to see the pathetic state of walking and biking infrastructure everywhere we went. It's like we're not even trying...because, well, we're not. Walking here sucks because we choose to make it suck.
- paulcole 3y ago
  People can still do things that suck if they want to do those things enough. If you want to walk and have two legs that work, don’t whine about wishing walking didn’t suck. Get out and walk.
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    > People can still do things that suck if they want to do those things enough. Yes, but why would they when a thing is painful and unpleasant? There's other ways to get around or get exercise, people will default to things that are nice and convenient. > If you want to walk and have two legs that work, don’t whine about wishing walking didn’t suck. Get out and walk. Incredibly nonsensical dismissal. Let's see how silly your reasoning is: "Americans just don't wanna walk, no matter what." "People don't do X because it sucks, if it didn't suck more people would do it." "Doesn't matter, suck it up and do it anyway loser" Wow, we sure learned a lot there. Do you teach gym class maybe? We're talking about a systemic problem. Insulting people isn't gonna get the population to walk more, shockingly enough.
    - paulcole 3y ago
      I don’t think I called anyone a loser. It’s fine for people to say they want to do something and then not do it. I’m just saying that it can be done. Either do it or don’t. > Yes, but why would they when a thing is painful and unpleasant? Because sometimes things that are painful and unpleasant have benefits that outweigh the pain and unpleasantness?

psunavy03 3y ago

> I say this as someone who at 40 years old has never learned to drive and who has walked/bicycled/taken the bus virtually everywhere I’ve needed to go. I say this with no mockery or disrespect, just description . . . you are not normal. I mean in a statistical sense. Not only are you part of (maybe the last) generation who salivated over the thought of getting a driver's license at 16 and getting away from Mom and Dad, for the vast majority of Americans, this is a totally unrealistic ask for day-to-day life. Either because of urban design or else living somewhere rural enough where it's infeasible. Urban solutions do not always work across a country as vast, huge, and diverse as the US.

bluGill 3y ago
Most people in the US live in an urban area, where urban solutions work. Only a small minority live in a rural area, though many living in suburbs like to pretend they are in a rural area.
- snovymgodym 3y ago
  I agree that the "US is a rural country" thing isn't true, but the way most US cities are built make walking either very inconvenient or outright dangerous. Posting this channel in this sort of thread is basically a meme, but this take on the topic is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
- rufus_foreman 3y ago
  >> Most people in the US live in an urban area, where urban solutions work The word "urban" in the US means different things to different people and in different contexts. For the US census bureau, you can find their up-to-date list of US urban areas at https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural.html https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g..., and it includes areas such as the New York City metro area, at a population of 19,426,449, and Munds Park, Arizona, at a population of 773, and 2,643 other urban areas in between. By that definition of urban, most people in the US live in an urban area, but that does not mean that the same solutions work for all people in the US living in urban areas. Population densities of 600 people per square mile across a small area require different solutions than population densities of 6,000 people per square mile across a large area. The wall map version of the list of census bureau urban areas is at https://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/DC2020/UA20/UA_2020_WallMap.pdf https://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/DC2020/UA20/UA_2020_WallMap....
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Those small towns don't add up to much population. Most Americans live in an urban area of more than 100,000 people.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > many living in suburbs like to pretend they are in a rural area Suburbs are not rural, but they're not urban either. The population density in most suburbs is too low to support the kind of walk-everywhere infrastructure that a true high density urban area can (and should) provide. The real issue is that many people fail to realize that there is no problem with that. Having different areas for people to live with vastly different population densities, and different solutions for how people get around, is a feature, not a bug. People have very different preferences, and urban, suburban, and rural areas exist so that people's very different preferences for how they want to live can all be accommodated.
  - danny_codes 3y ago
    https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growt... There is a huge problem with that. It turns out that offering urban-level services at suburban density isn't sustainable. It turns out urban areas are subsidizing suburbs quite extensively. Now, if suburbanite were willing to pay their own way, perhaps we could discuss that. But another issue is that car-dependent suburbanites demand access to urban areas. For example, people living in Palo Alto want vehicle access to San Francisco. This degrades the city significantly, far outweighing any benefit from having suburban influx. Now, non-car-dependent suburbs do seem to work. Street-car suburbs, for example, seem to work reasonably well. They seem to be more dense than car-hell suburbs, but not urban like a city. So I think there is a way forward for people wanting suburban life.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      > It turns out that offering urban-level services at suburban density isn't sustainable. What do you mean by "urban-level services"? If you mean urban-style mass transit, then yes, I agree--and I don't want such services in the suburbs. If I'm going to live in the suburbs, I'm going to own a car and that's how I'm going to expect to get around in the suburbs. If I wanted to live in a place where I could walk or use mass transit to get around for all of my daily activities, I'd live in the city, not the suburbs. > It turns out urban areas are subsidizing suburbs quite extensively. No, it turns out that politicians and ideologues who think everybody should live a certain way, are trying to impose that way of living in areas where it makes no sense, and using our tax money to do it. That's not a "subsidy", it's just incompetent leadership. Living in the suburbs, I get zero value from all the public expenditure on mass transit in areas which are too low density for it to make sense. So I would be fine with all those expenditures just stopping altogether. In fact, such expenditures can have negative value to the very people they are supposed to be helping. In one suburb I lived in, I could drive for about 15 minutes to a commuter parking area and catch a bus that took a half hour to get to a stop within walking distance of my workplace. Then the urban planners decided that it would make more sense to spend public money to extend the subway out to that area and outlaw the bus--meaning that from the same commuter parking area, I would now have an hour's trip to the same stop within walking distance of my workplace, during which I would have to change trains, at a higher per-trip cost than the bus was. Which meant it no longer made sense for me to take mass transit to work. > car-dependent suburbanites demand access to urban areas What kind of access? I'm fine with using, say, a train to go into the city if I need to do that. Or parking somewhere on the outskirts of the city and using mass transit to get in further. > non-car-dependent suburbs do seem to work. Again, I think this depends on what you call a "suburb". To me, if you're living in an area that has a high enough population density to make street-cars, for example, workable, you're living in a city, not a suburb. If I want more space than such a place can provide me, I'm going to live in a less dense area where mass transit is not workable, and as above, I'm going to own a car.
jrockway 3y ago
As someone else who is not normal, I have to say I'm a little tired of having my taxes subsidize the roads and sewers for someone who lives in the middle of nowhere and commutes 40 miles each way by car. "But my kids NEED a backyard!" Fair enough, but afford it on your own without a handout from the government.
- psunavy03 3y ago
  Too bad. You got outvoted in a democracy. Because most people do not hold this view.
  - danny_codes 3y ago
    Tyranny of the majority eh. Also this isn't accurate. Car-dependency in urban environments was fought by the majority of people who lived there. In the beginning, cars were toys for the rich, and they (the rich) pushed for car-friendly design. Since they had influence as elites, they were able to crush the protesting masses and destroy the pre-existing urban fabric. Then the feds misunderstood the German highway system and thought you were supposed to highway through cities, instead of between them. At this point, the momentum seems to have carried itself forward, spawning the urban design disaster in most US cities. So I would say it's more that some groups of wealthy industrialists managed to coop urban planning at a critical time, and propaganda their way through the opposition to fuck over the urban masses. They did make a lot of money though, some some would argue it was worth it.
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    No, most people don't even realize that urban areas tend to subsidize less dense areas. Usually when they're initially presented with this info, they immediately go into an obvious denial mode where they try to find some logic to explain why it isn't true.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- goatlover 3y ago
rewmie 3y ago
> (...) salivated over the thought of getting a driver's license at 16 and getting away from Mom and Dad (...) I'm afraid this mindset needs context. If you find yourself living in a place where everything is located tens of km away, and short drives are assessed in how many hours you spend in a car, and this is further compounded by the utter lack of a public transportation infrastructure, then gaining access to a car is a basic necessary condition for autonomy. Contrast this with some European urban centers such as the Netherlands' Randstad, where a two hour train ride from your doorstep can get you anywhere everywhere, and can actually be an international trip.
pharmakom 3y ago
> Urban solutions do not always work across a country as vast, huge, and diverse as the US. US is a huge country, but people aren’t travelling across it on a regular basis.
- justajot 3y ago
  Yes, and the highway system was originally intended as defense infrastructure to more easily move equipment across the country. A great idea, but a design that was not originally intended to plow right through cities. This has been a big contributor to the mess that we are in when it comes to urban / suburban design and the extreme lack of walkability.
  - standyro 3y ago
    Not true. They were definitely intended to plow right through cities. That’s why they built highways/freeways right through urban cores, or planned entire metro regions around them.
    - fnimick 3y ago
      Specifically, right through minority neighborhoods in cities. You can't ignore the explicitly racist history of urban "renewal" when discussing freeway planning.
evandale 3y ago
You really don't need a car. Bikes are awesome. You can ride them with backpacks. Friends have trucks. Money pays for delivery. Source: a normal 38 year old that never had a license
- psunavy03 3y ago
  [flagged]
- goatlover 3y ago
  You're not representative of everyone else, though
danny_codes 3y ago
America being large is irrelevant. China is just as large and you don't see them struggling to figure out how to walk places. The fact is most of the US is practically empty. Connect the major urban hubs with rail and remove the cars (from urban centers) and we'll have fixed this.
paulcole 3y ago
> for the vast majority of Americans, this is a totally unrealistic ask for day-to-day life. Either because of urban design or else living somewhere rural enough where it's infeasible. They can convince themselves it’s infeasible, but it is very feasible. It’s just a matter of wanting it. I wanted it enough to make it work. They don’t. That’s 100% fine — I lie to myself about plenty of stuff to get through my day. Everybody does.
- psunavy03 3y ago
  [flagged]

skrebbel 3y ago

Can you explain this to me? For example, my local supermarket is a 8 minute walk from my house. Driving there would take about 5 minutes, due to one way streets etc, so including the hassle of parking etc it takes about as long. Driving there seems positively insane to me, except if I’m shopping for a party or something and need to fill the trunk. Are you saying that Americans would choose the car here? Or that in America it’s a 5 minute drive vs a 25 minute walk? Cause tbh in the latter case I’d pick the car too, despite my Dutch habits.* I guess what I’m trying to ask is, are you sure it’s American psyche and not, mostly, the town layout as this article suggests? *) okok I’m Dutch so I’d bike but I kept that out to stick with the wall vs car topic

bluGill 3y ago
25 minute walk. And even if the supermarket is close enough to walk, it is setup for drivers. So you have to cut through someone's backyard, climb a fence, then walk all the way around to the door on the opposite side. Unless the backyard you cut across above is actually yours the real distance is not walkable, and if it is your yard the trip is not 'dignified'.
- convolvatron 3y ago
  to be fair though its usually possible to find a hole in the fence, or a little path forced through the shrubs, or a plank across the drainage ditch. it always makes me wonder who else walking through this? kids? immigrant workers? homeless?
snovymgodym 3y ago
It's highly situational, but speaking broadly the US usually it's a "5 minute drive vs a 25 minute walk" situation. But even if you live 5-10 minutes from the supermarket many people will still drive because everything is designed around people driving. For example, it's very common to lack sidewalks and even when there are sidewalks, protected crossings can be sparse. So a 10 minute walk to the store can involve you having to walk in the street or in the mud and grass, cutting across the street where there's no crossing signal, and having to walk through a busy parking lot to actually get to the building. And even once you're in the store things are designed around cars. The size of packaging and the quantities that people normally buy in are based on the idea that Americans take their car to the grocery store once a week and fill their trunk space with groceries.

snovymgodym 3y ago

American cities, with a tiny number of exceptions, are not built for walking and biking. When neighborhoods, businesses, and infrastructure are built, their design is fundamentally based on the assumption that the users of it will have a personal motor vehicle. We're talking about what it would take to induce behavioral change on a societal level. I don't mean to be rude, but when someone comes into a discussion like this and says "well actually, if everyone lived like me it would be fine. Everyone else is just too lazy", it's essentially a non-sequitur and comes off as you trying to hold yourself in some kind of position of moral superiority. You're 40 years old, so I expect you to know this already, but I'll let you in on a little secret: you cannot rely on other people to the right thing on a mass scale. You can, however, rely on them doing the easy/comfortable thing. The challenge in sustainability is to align the good with the comfortable as much as possible. It is commendable that you've managed to live car-free so long in such a car-centric country, but we cannot rely on all 340 million people living their lives like you have. I live in the US, and have spent time in something like half a dozen European countries, and I can tell you that there's a clear reason why Europeans walk & bike more, and it's not because "Americans are too lazy not to drive" or something like that.

projektfu 3y ago

I've seen people lose their jobs because they weren't willing to walk a half mile. No car, but taking Uber for that trip. It turns out, Uber is not reliable transportation. But walking usually is.

mikenew 3y ago

This has not been my experience. I'm lucky to live in a very walkable part of a very walkable city, and almost every time someone comes to visit I find they've disappeared within 24 hours to "explore the area". These are people who virtually never walk anywhere unless they have to, but you put them in the right environment and they almost can't help it.

arrowsmith 3y ago
When I'm in a new city I love to go for an aimless walk with no destination in mind just to get lost, get a feel for the place and see what I discover. Then I visited the US and quickly realised that this is a terrible idea in pretty much any American city.
- mikenew 3y ago
  There are a few exceptions but yeah, it's bad. I remember visiting Houston and asking the hotel receptionist which way to walk to get to some restaurants a half mile away, and it was clear that no one had ever asked that before. And sure enough it was a terrible experience.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    I don't think it's possible to make Houston pleasant for walking outside, it's too hot and humid. Houston uses the same solution to avoid the weather that Toronto does -- tunnels connecting buildings. You can walk for 6 miles underground in Houston.
  - dalke 3y ago
    We had rented a car from San Francisco to San Diego. My wife was going to drop off the car at the airport. We asked at the hotel (by the harbor near Little Italy) how to get back. 'Uber'. We then looked at the map and realized it was about 0.5 miles away, with sidewalks the whole way. She walked. My Houston experience was when I wanted to go to a nearby salsa place. It was about 3 blocks away from the motel, as the crow flies, but the other side of the interstate. It required a car to get there.

lelanthran 3y ago

How do you get toddlers to daycare, preteens to soccer practice, etc.

MattPalmer1086 3y ago
I also live car free, in London. When we had a kid all my car owning friends were telling me that I would absolutely need one now. Nope, we just walk, or take the bus, or tube, or take an Uber if necessary. Really isn't as needed as most people think if you live in an urban area.
danny_codes 3y ago
Well in a well-designed city, you could just walk to all those things. From my house in Berkeley, CA, daycare is about 400 meters from my house. There are two fields of soccer-ing size, one about 10 minutes away and one 25 minutes by foot. The grocery store is a 4 minute walk, my hairdresser is a 1 minute walk, CVS is a 3 minute walk. I also have an amazing park with play structures, basketball courts, tennis courts, large gracy field, a creek, picnic areas, and such about a 1 minute walk away. I can bike to work in 20 minutes. This could be everywhere in the US. There's nothing special about where I live except that it's development predates the automobile.
- balfirevic 3y ago
  > There's nothing special about where I live except that it's development predates the automobile. Seems like there is, and it's that it's very rich? Because something like this: > an amazing park with play structures, basketball courts, tennis courts, large gracy field, a creek, picnic areas, and such about a 1 minute walk away. doesn't exist in the entirety of my city, which also predates cars. Also, do you mean a detached house when you say "from my house"? How many customers within 5-10 minute walking distance does (for example) hairdresser serve in such place?
  - danny_codes 3y ago
    > doesn't exist in the entirety of my city, which also predates cars. Really? You have no parks in your entire city? How is that possible? I don't think that's a wealth problem, sounds more like a governance problem to me. I live in a quadplex on a mixed-density Street. I'd guess there's a 1000 housing units within a 5-10 minutes walk. I'm sure people come from further away as well though.

TulliusCicero 3y ago

> We like the idea of walking more but won’t actually do it. Wrong. The reason people don't walk is simply because walking mostly really sucks in like 95% of urban or suburban contexts in the states. Even crossing the street once can be a huge pain in the ass sometimes (e.g. strip mall to strip mall across two giant parking lots and an enormous stroad). It is astoundingly rare to find an actual nice, not-tiny area to walk in, in terms of urban design and points of interest. To a lot of Americans, "has sidewalks" means an area is walkable, which is just...so, so very wrong. I lived in Germany for five years, and during our annual summer trip back to the states, it was always so sad to see the pathetic state of walking and biking infrastructure everywhere we went. It's like we're not even trying...because, well, we're not. Walking here sucks because we choose to make it suck.

paulcole 3y ago
People can still do things that suck if they want to do those things enough. If you want to walk and have two legs that work, don’t whine about wishing walking didn’t suck. Get out and walk.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  > People can still do things that suck if they want to do those things enough. Yes, but why would they when a thing is painful and unpleasant? There's other ways to get around or get exercise, people will default to things that are nice and convenient. > If you want to walk and have two legs that work, don’t whine about wishing walking didn’t suck. Get out and walk. Incredibly nonsensical dismissal. Let's see how silly your reasoning is: "Americans just don't wanna walk, no matter what." "People don't do X because it sucks, if it didn't suck more people would do it." "Doesn't matter, suck it up and do it anyway loser" Wow, we sure learned a lot there. Do you teach gym class maybe? We're talking about a systemic problem. Insulting people isn't gonna get the population to walk more, shockingly enough.
  - paulcole 3y ago
    I don’t think I called anyone a loser. It’s fine for people to say they want to do something and then not do it. I’m just saying that it can be done. Either do it or don’t. > Yes, but why would they when a thing is painful and unpleasant? Because sometimes things that are painful and unpleasant have benefits that outweigh the pain and unpleasantness?