4 ms·
US is extremely car-dependent due commuting and infrastructure spread out in the suburbs, which in turn are caused by abandonment of cities for suburbs: i.e. t
by countWSS 3y ago
US is extremely car-dependent due commuting and
infrastructure spread out in the suburbs, which in turn
are caused by abandonment of cities for suburbs:
i.e. the conditions of life in suburbs outcompeted cities.
Fixing the root cause is fixing the cities Quality of Life
to compete with suburbs - going after symptoms(car-centric
culture) won't work.
- cpursley 3y agoSuburbs didn’t just outcompete cities, the federal government virtually subsidized them with cheap land (via federal interstate system) and mortgages.
- mrpopo 3y agoSubsidies for suburbs go deeper. Spread out houses means longer water pipes, electric lines, transformers, etc., paid and maintained by local governments. You might pay more taxes for owning more land, but nowhere near as much as what you owe your community. More details here : Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math [ST07] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
- cpursley 3y agoYep, “The Growth Ponzi Scheme” is a classic: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growt...
- xorfish 3y agoSuburbs are highly subsidized. The quality of life only seems to outcompete cities because the quality of life in cities is lowered by the car centric culture. If you want to know how good the QoL in a city can be, you need to visit a European city that is not car centric.
- slifin 3y agoParking minimums cause cities to turn over a large percentage of their productive land to parking You can't effectively build human centric attractive spaces without being hampered by the fact we've given the majority of public space to cars