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Agreed with you and MJN. The US is in desperate need of investment in public transportation. Europeans have absolutely mastered the art of urban design and publ

Agreed with you and MJN. The US is in desperate need of investment in public transportation. Europeans have absolutely mastered the art of urban design and public transportation, and I wish we'd learn from their example. But try telling 99% of the US that 1) their shitty sprawled real estate is effectively worthless, 2) their obese asses will have to give up their cars, and 3) we've spent 70 years of infrastructure investment supporting the dumbest possible lifestyle choice.

cageface 14y ago
The problem is that the U.S. is huge compared to Europe. I agree that we need more mass transit but it's a different problem here.
- gobbluth 14y ago
  Just because I don't want to spam with the same message, please see my response to Spullera. The argument you're using may be intuitive, but it's very incorrect.
briandon 14y ago
I don't disagree with you per se, but I have spent nearly a decade living in a city which has amazingly great public transport, very dense living arrangements (30-story highrises are the norm), and people walk constantly. Are you ready to go grocery shopping pretty much every single day or every other day? Or can you manage to be at home during a 6-hour window for the grocery delivery if you want to shop once a week for that stuff? Would you get stressed waiting, at least twice a day (leaving from your floor and returning from the lobby), for elevators in a 30-story building? Remember that people in wheelchairs, kids taking their bikes downstairs to ride, workmen w/materials/tools, people moving house, etc. are all going to be using the elevators. If you're out somewhere and buy anything (in my case, yesterday, it was a new electric toothbrush) that's not groceries or something large, like an air conditioner, you're going to have to lug it around with you until you go home, even if you have several other stops to make or errands to do. There's no such thing as going to your car and putting something in the trunk until later. Are you ready for even short trips to take much longer? You'll need to get out of your highrise, walk for some time until you get to the public transport pick-up point (bus stop, train platform, etc.), wait a while, ride the public transport (which usually moves slower than a car even if it weren't making a bunch of other stops between your home and ultimate destination's drop-off point), and then, finally, you'll have to walk some more to reach wherever it was that you wanted to go. If you already live in a highrise, use public transportation exclusively, and don't own a car, then I'm glad that the experience hasn't soured you on high-density living and public transportation.
- hollerith 14y ago
  Please tell us which city you just described.
  - briandon 14y ago
    I live in Hong Kong.
    - bane 14y ago
      It's not much different than in Seoul, Manhattan and central Paris.
- kiwidrew 14y ago
  Except that's not the only style of living that HK offers. Some people do opt for the arrangement you've just described, living in e.g. the "Lake Silver" high rises way out at the very end of the Ma On Shan metro line. Most of them don't seem to mind it, even though it means long rides on the bus or MTR to go anywhere. But it's just as easy to live a few stops from work, in an older neighbourhood like Sa Ying Poon or Prince Edward with smaller buildings, where you have three different supermarkets within a five-minute walk and are surrounded by shops selling everythinng imaginable. I mean, how many cities have two overlapping and completely independent public transport networks? HK has the "official" bus and metro system, but the red minibuses are essentially a rogue invisible-hand-of-the-market creation that just sprung up organically. And unlike most American cities, where the public transport struggles to even survive, both of these HK networks are thriving...
  - briandon 14y ago
    The overwhelming majority of people in HK live in highrises, virtually all new housing being built here (unless your uncle is a village chief and/or you're a male who can prove that he is of villager stock and has a right to build a village house) consists of giant highrises, and most of the existing housing stock consists of the same. So, while you're correct in saying that highrise living is not the only choice, it is the reality that most people here are living in highrises and that the small percentage of people living in smaller buildings will continue to dwindle over time. Regarding older, low-rise, buildings, those low-rise residential buildings that do exist and which aren't out in the boonies are being gradually "redeveloped", as you may already know. The government or a developer buys a certain percentage of the flats and compels the holdouts to sell, usually at a price that won't permit the residents to buy a newer flat in the same neighborhood, demolishes the building(s), and erects a huge tower block. Regarding the minibuses, a car or taxi is still faster than taking a minibus for the same reasons that a car or taxi are faster than the MTR: no walking/waiting/walking and you're going to your destination directly rather than following a route and making lots of stops at places that you don't want to go and then. This is a separate issue, but haven't you noticed that most of the drivers are visibly impoverished (raggy-looking clothing, many missing/black teeth, etc.) and many are senior citizens? The minibuses, especially the red ones, also tend to speed and get into lots of accidents. Rarely does more than a day or two pass without a report of a minibus ramming into something and most of the passengers being injured, or two minibuses t-boning each other and two minibus-fulls of passengers being injured, etc. Also, you do know that most of the red minibuses are under triad control, that the drivers have to pay a huge lump sum when they start driving and then "parking fees" every month thereafter?
spullara 14y ago
You really can't compare Europe to the US. They are tiny. For example, one of the largest countries in Europe is France: slightly less than the size of Texas. It's metropolitan population is 65m. Texas is only 28m. Other countries there are even more lopsided. Just as with cellphone networks, smaller area is easier.
- gobbluth 14y ago
  That's not actually true. The US is 3,794,101 sq mi. Europe is 3,930,520 sq miles However, Europe is almost entirely concentrated in walkable, urban areas -- even beyond the major cities, small towns are accessible by train, navigable by foot, and have excellent support in the form of public transportation. If people do have "cars," they tend to be tiny or Vespas. There's no reason we can't have the same system here, except that we absolutely suck at infrastructure investment. It's really not that hard to build an urban environment, and it's overwhelmingly popular with people who can afford it. The exurbs of Las Vegas and Miami are completely worthless, and will be even more so in a future with higher fuel costs, water scarcity, and resettlement in urban environments.
  - spullara 14y ago
    It really is true. Population of Europe: 738,199,000 Population of US: 311,591,917 If the US were double density, it would have more walkable, urban areas, etc.
    - gobbluth 14y ago
      I'm sorry, but that's not how urban design works. We're not forced to develop proportionate to land mass. Your argument is seriously that the existence of the Dakotas prevents us from building decent cities? Are there so many people in Wyoming that we just don't have the population to build decent subways in Seattle? We're trapped by a car-centric lifestyle, and it's absolutely poisonous.
      - spullara 14y ago
hollerith 14y ago
Europeans tolerate more onerous restrictions on individual liberty than Americans do. The combination of high degrees of individual liberty and high population density tends to produce a less predictable, sometimes disheartening and sometimes dangerous environment that wealthy people in the U.S. tend to prefer not to live in (at least after their young adulthoods). The point is that there are good reasons why most Americans with the ability to do so choose to live in areas low enough in density that cars work better than public transportation and that America cannot simply copy Europe's urban planning without also copying some of Europe's laws and attitudes regarding individual liberty. (And laws and attitudes are hard to change.)
- gobbluth 14y ago
  I'm sorry, but you're associating liberty with cars, and that's just not true. If you live in Nowhere, Indiana, then you're completely dependent on your car to get ANYWHERE, including to buy food, get to work, or see your mother in the hospital. If it breaks down and you can't afford the repair? How free are you to travel now? You're not completely incorrect, insofar as European cities (and any worthwhile city) are forced to infringe to some extent on fundamentalist interpretations of property rights for urban planning. But you might as well throw up your arms and complain about building codes and zoning restrictions anywhere else if such things are such "onerous restrictions on individual liberty." The reason why so many Americans have settled in exurban developments is because we've artificially subsidized those lifestyle with federally-funded freeways, artificially cheap gasoline, and destructive corporate attacks on public transportation systems (especially in the 1950s, check out the GM attack in Los Angeles as an example). Exurbs didn't develop organically, nor are they in any way models of efficiency, cost, or sustainability.
  - briandon 14y ago
    Cars really do give individuals more liberty. Replace cars with, for example, private refrigerators and public transport with communal refrigerators and think it through. Any time that you smoosh people together and force or nudge them into using shared or communal facilities rather than their own, personal freedom of action is being curtailed. We can argue that whatever we're getting in return is worthwhile but we can't pretend that we're not giving anything up.

cageface 14y ago

The problem is that the U.S. is huge compared to Europe. I agree that we need more mass transit but it's a different problem here.

gobbluth 14y ago
Just because I don't want to spam with the same message, please see my response to Spullera. The argument you're using may be intuitive, but it's very incorrect.

briandon 14y ago

I don't disagree with you per se, but I have spent nearly a decade living in a city which has amazingly great public transport, very dense living arrangements (30-story highrises are the norm), and people walk constantly. Are you ready to go grocery shopping pretty much every single day or every other day? Or can you manage to be at home during a 6-hour window for the grocery delivery if you want to shop once a week for that stuff? Would you get stressed waiting, at least twice a day (leaving from your floor and returning from the lobby), for elevators in a 30-story building? Remember that people in wheelchairs, kids taking their bikes downstairs to ride, workmen w/materials/tools, people moving house, etc. are all going to be using the elevators. If you're out somewhere and buy anything (in my case, yesterday, it was a new electric toothbrush) that's not groceries or something large, like an air conditioner, you're going to have to lug it around with you until you go home, even if you have several other stops to make or errands to do. There's no such thing as going to your car and putting something in the trunk until later. Are you ready for even short trips to take much longer? You'll need to get out of your highrise, walk for some time until you get to the public transport pick-up point (bus stop, train platform, etc.), wait a while, ride the public transport (which usually moves slower than a car even if it weren't making a bunch of other stops between your home and ultimate destination's drop-off point), and then, finally, you'll have to walk some more to reach wherever it was that you wanted to go. If you already live in a highrise, use public transportation exclusively, and don't own a car, then I'm glad that the experience hasn't soured you on high-density living and public transportation.

hollerith 14y ago
Please tell us which city you just described.
- briandon 14y ago
  I live in Hong Kong.
  - bane 14y ago
    It's not much different than in Seoul, Manhattan and central Paris.
kiwidrew 14y ago
Except that's not the only style of living that HK offers. Some people do opt for the arrangement you've just described, living in e.g. the "Lake Silver" high rises way out at the very end of the Ma On Shan metro line. Most of them don't seem to mind it, even though it means long rides on the bus or MTR to go anywhere. But it's just as easy to live a few stops from work, in an older neighbourhood like Sa Ying Poon or Prince Edward with smaller buildings, where you have three different supermarkets within a five-minute walk and are surrounded by shops selling everythinng imaginable. I mean, how many cities have two overlapping and completely independent public transport networks? HK has the "official" bus and metro system, but the red minibuses are essentially a rogue invisible-hand-of-the-market creation that just sprung up organically. And unlike most American cities, where the public transport struggles to even survive, both of these HK networks are thriving...
- briandon 14y ago
  The overwhelming majority of people in HK live in highrises, virtually all new housing being built here (unless your uncle is a village chief and/or you're a male who can prove that he is of villager stock and has a right to build a village house) consists of giant highrises, and most of the existing housing stock consists of the same. So, while you're correct in saying that highrise living is not the only choice, it is the reality that most people here are living in highrises and that the small percentage of people living in smaller buildings will continue to dwindle over time. Regarding older, low-rise, buildings, those low-rise residential buildings that do exist and which aren't out in the boonies are being gradually "redeveloped", as you may already know. The government or a developer buys a certain percentage of the flats and compels the holdouts to sell, usually at a price that won't permit the residents to buy a newer flat in the same neighborhood, demolishes the building(s), and erects a huge tower block. Regarding the minibuses, a car or taxi is still faster than taking a minibus for the same reasons that a car or taxi are faster than the MTR: no walking/waiting/walking and you're going to your destination directly rather than following a route and making lots of stops at places that you don't want to go and then. This is a separate issue, but haven't you noticed that most of the drivers are visibly impoverished (raggy-looking clothing, many missing/black teeth, etc.) and many are senior citizens? The minibuses, especially the red ones, also tend to speed and get into lots of accidents. Rarely does more than a day or two pass without a report of a minibus ramming into something and most of the passengers being injured, or two minibuses t-boning each other and two minibus-fulls of passengers being injured, etc. Also, you do know that most of the red minibuses are under triad control, that the drivers have to pay a huge lump sum when they start driving and then "parking fees" every month thereafter?

spullara 14y ago

You really can't compare Europe to the US. They are tiny. For example, one of the largest countries in Europe is France: slightly less than the size of Texas. It's metropolitan population is 65m. Texas is only 28m. Other countries there are even more lopsided. Just as with cellphone networks, smaller area is easier.

gobbluth 14y ago
That's not actually true. The US is 3,794,101 sq mi. Europe is 3,930,520 sq miles However, Europe is almost entirely concentrated in walkable, urban areas -- even beyond the major cities, small towns are accessible by train, navigable by foot, and have excellent support in the form of public transportation. If people do have "cars," they tend to be tiny or Vespas. There's no reason we can't have the same system here, except that we absolutely suck at infrastructure investment. It's really not that hard to build an urban environment, and it's overwhelmingly popular with people who can afford it. The exurbs of Las Vegas and Miami are completely worthless, and will be even more so in a future with higher fuel costs, water scarcity, and resettlement in urban environments.
- spullara 14y ago
  It really is true. Population of Europe: 738,199,000 Population of US: 311,591,917 If the US were double density, it would have more walkable, urban areas, etc.
  - gobbluth 14y ago
    I'm sorry, but that's not how urban design works. We're not forced to develop proportionate to land mass. Your argument is seriously that the existence of the Dakotas prevents us from building decent cities? Are there so many people in Wyoming that we just don't have the population to build decent subways in Seattle? We're trapped by a car-centric lifestyle, and it's absolutely poisonous.
    - spullara 14y ago

hollerith 14y ago

Europeans tolerate more onerous restrictions on individual liberty than Americans do. The combination of high degrees of individual liberty and high population density tends to produce a less predictable, sometimes disheartening and sometimes dangerous environment that wealthy people in the U.S. tend to prefer not to live in (at least after their young adulthoods). The point is that there are good reasons why most Americans with the ability to do so choose to live in areas low enough in density that cars work better than public transportation and that America cannot simply copy Europe's urban planning without also copying some of Europe's laws and attitudes regarding individual liberty. (And laws and attitudes are hard to change.)

gobbluth 14y ago
I'm sorry, but you're associating liberty with cars, and that's just not true. If you live in Nowhere, Indiana, then you're completely dependent on your car to get ANYWHERE, including to buy food, get to work, or see your mother in the hospital. If it breaks down and you can't afford the repair? How free are you to travel now? You're not completely incorrect, insofar as European cities (and any worthwhile city) are forced to infringe to some extent on fundamentalist interpretations of property rights for urban planning. But you might as well throw up your arms and complain about building codes and zoning restrictions anywhere else if such things are such "onerous restrictions on individual liberty." The reason why so many Americans have settled in exurban developments is because we've artificially subsidized those lifestyle with federally-funded freeways, artificially cheap gasoline, and destructive corporate attacks on public transportation systems (especially in the 1950s, check out the GM attack in Los Angeles as an example). Exurbs didn't develop organically, nor are they in any way models of efficiency, cost, or sustainability.
- briandon 14y ago
  Cars really do give individuals more liberty. Replace cars with, for example, private refrigerators and public transport with communal refrigerators and think it through. Any time that you smoosh people together and force or nudge them into using shared or communal facilities rather than their own, personal freedom of action is being curtailed. We can argue that whatever we're getting in return is worthwhile but we can't pretend that we're not giving anything up.