Small towns and suburbs don't have to be huge road/car hellscapes. I think most Americans don't realize how good it could be. Towns with good walking paths, p

Small towns and suburbs don't have to be huge road/car hellscapes. I think most Americans don't realize how good it could be. Towns with good walking paths, public transit, and, yes, safe bike paths are: 1. Cheaper for governments to maintain infrastructure - heavy road use leads to more requirements of maintenance. Road sizes in the US are also huge. Needlessly giant firetrucks keep building standards this way. 2. Cheaper for getting around - no gas/insurance/car required. 3. Cheaper for housing - car storage takes up a ton of space. 4. Much, much quieter - cars are the noisiest thing in any town. 5. Much more social and therefore more community oriented. This fosters a more trusting society - something we are in dire need of. 6. Easier to get around as things like grocery stores are built in walking distance to dwellings. 7. Just much more beautiful. It's not just big cities that can benefit from these things. Small towns in the Netherlands are much better than Amsterdam in this way, for example. A very small town can have a town square that you'll see your neighbours in as you buy groceries. The model we've made for ourselves is extremely expensive and literally dystopic hell. We don't need anything other than better organization to get to utopia here. We just lack imagination. Europe could learn a lot from America in economics. But here is where America needs to learn from Europe. Not just Bikes talks a lot about the subtle differences that make life so much more enjoyable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg