181–190 of 226 posts
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>"So much space is wasted on parking lots for vehicles that stand empty most of the day" Don't forget that these stretches of black asphalt act as giant heat accumulators, soaking up the sun during the day and keeping temperatures uncomfortably high after the sun goes down.
That can be fixed with some trees (or better yet: captalized upon with solar panels). Parking garages are another option for more space-efficient parking
The best option would be to make neighborhoods walkable/bikeable, implement good public transit as much as possible, and offer an affordable delivery service for bigger items. Going further, it would be beneficial to abolish megastores and return to more human-sized retail outlets.
The sidewalks are also deliberately designed to be unpleasant, if they're present at all.
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Having lived in 2 cities in the US and in Europe in bad neighborhoods, you'd not catch me walking around past 11pm especially in the summer. Don't assume that everyone can live a life of privilege in an upscale urban area.
I’ve done that as a small woman living alone in an opposite-of-upscale neighborhood, across the street from a public housing project. Really not a big deal. I don’t know what neighborhoods you were living in, but my experience is that for every dangerous urban neighborhood there’s an equally affordable one that isn’t dangerous if you know where to look. And it’s not like everyone can afford the privilege of a car eit…
Says someone who has never experienced being beat up by a group of young men because of my race in just such a neighborhood as you described.
Growing up in a bad neighborhood, I didn't exactly have a choice to leave (until my parents bought a house in a better neighborhood in my late teen years.) I remember vividly the frozen blood on the concrete sidewalk across the street from my childhood home when leaving to walk to school - someone had been bludgeoned the death in the middle of the night.
Before I had a car, my girlfriend at the time lived in an even worse neighborhood (where shootings were a common/daily occurrence) the anxiety I experienced walking to the bus stop from her house, then waiting downtown for a transfer at a bus stop across the street from public housing, etc - that feeling is so vivid in my memory even though it's been 20 years. Not everyone shares the same experiences, and thus have the same values & priorities. Even after getting a car my troubles weren't quite over. I was nearly carjacked after dropping off the same girlfriend at her house at 11pm on a Friday night - he managed to open the car door, but not before I did a 180 in reverse and sped off.) Because I hadn't learned my lesson, I also had to change a flat tire in the same neighborhood at 3am one night. There's nothing like the threat of being shot or beat up to force you to learn to change a tire in a few minutes.
I'm happy in my suburb with a big backyard and a big dog and my truck (and yes firearms (gasp!)) It's fine if that isn't your cup of tea, just don't judge me for it.
My commute is 30 miles one way. Luckily, I go against all the traffic, so it's a rather relaxing commute. It's one of the few times I get 30-40 minutes to myself a day.
We spend many weekends at my in-laws' place on the lake. Even though it's in the same state, it's a completely different view, weather, and life style. It's about a 200 mile drive and many great conversations have happened on that commute.
I went to college in a completely different state about an 8 or 9 hour drive. It was perfect because I wanted to be away from everyone I knew. I wanted to be self-sufficient. When I was too poor to afford a plane ticket, I could always afford the 3 tanks of gas it took round-trip to drive home whenever I wanted; at any pace I wanted. The reflecting time I had on that commute was pivotal to my career and life choices.
Plenty of out-of-state family vacations have been haphazardly planned over long weekends and a few days of PTO. We never need to worry about leave time, TSA security checkpoints, our fluid bottles being too large, my guitars I bring with me, or anything else. We just get in the car and go.
One of my bucket-list items is as-complete-as-possible trip down Route 66. I want to see America as it was, before vast interstates took you through nowhere to get where you were going.
Roads (and therefore cars) are an integral part to understanding the vastness of the United States. If you haven't experienced it, I highly recommend it.
Lastly, our rental properties all require handyman work. Access to a truck bed most weekends out of the year has saved me countless hours and money renting and borrowing.
I only wish electric vehicles were more available, absolutely no other qualms about the Americans-and-Cars debate.
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> If you build a suburb I didn't build a suburb - it was already here, just like you didn't build the city you live in. I drove to the suburb to begin with of my own free will because I didn't like living in a city (having already done so, Buffalo & Boston.) I'd already made the choice to live a lifestyle that is automobile-inclusive ;) You don't get to judge or decide for me what is right for me and vice-versa. We a…
Unfortunately, this live-and-let-live account of history simply isn’t true. The suburbs were made possible via massive government subsidies, both in infrastructure and incentives for suburban homeownership. Also, exclusionary zoning played an enormous role in deciding what those places looked like and they did it in large part to control who got to live there. Finally, your lifestyle choices have externalities, from…
http://science.time.com/2012/09/18/urban-planet-how-growing-...
https://www.prb.org/urbanizationanenvironmentalforcetobereck...
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Unfortunately, this live-and-let-live account of history simply isn’t true. The suburbs were made possible via massive government subsidies, both in infrastructure and incentives for suburban homeownership. Also, exclusionary zoning played an enormous role in deciding what those places looked like and they did it in large part to control who got to live there. Finally, your lifestyle choices have externalities, from…
Your urban lifestyle choices have externalities as well, you just choose to ignore (or not look for them.) http://science.time.com/2012/09/18/urban-planet-how-growing-... https://www.prb.org/urbanizationanenvironmentalforcetobereck...
"It’s true that as people in developing nations move from the countryside to the city, the shift may reduce the pressure on land, which could in turn be good for the environment. This is especially so in desperately poor countries like Madagascar, where residents in the countryside slash and burn forests each growing season to clear space for farming. But the real difference is that in developing nations, the move from rural areas to cities often leads to an accompanying increase in income — and that increase in income leads to an increase in the consumption of food and energy, which in turns produces an uptick in carbon emissions."
In other words, wealthier people living in urban areas -- in both city cores and in the suburbs -- are worse for the environment than rural poor folks, and as developing nations urbanize, we can expect to see an increase in these impacts.
This whole article just seems like a thinly veiled "I ride a bike to work and I hate cars -- they probably all voted for Trump cause they're poor and uneducated. Why don't they just get rich and smart and then they can walk to work and we don't need cars anymore and we can all live next to parks?"
> “But it is increasingly clear that in addition to wasted time and productivity, reduced quality of life, and even fatalities, the automobile takes another toll. It may be that cars are not only the chief destroyer of our communities, but are tearing at the nation’s political and social fabric.”
I posit that cars allowed population expansion because resources across a larger area became accessible and that we would have less people in existence if Fordism never happened. So blaming that innovation for wealth inequality is like blaming mass food production for wealth inequality. Why doesn’t everyone just have their own garden with chickens and quinoa? Why would anyone ever eat fast food? Why would anyone eat processed foods?
> “The car and car-dominated infrastructure propelled suburbanization and white flight. They split our society into white, affluent suburbs and poor black and minority cities.” What? I’m pretty sure cities are segregated also, sometimes intentionally in history. This comes off as a pretty weak argument, but I could be convinced with more evidence.
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It's not forced - we choose to buy them ;)
Is it really a choice, when you have no practical alternative?
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"Suburb" is a pretty generic term. My hometown has older, inner-ring suburbs that are built more or less on a street grid, with local shops, connections to transit, and walkable corridors. It also has far-flung, residential-only, cul-de-sac communities where literally nothing is within safe walking distance. [0] We call both "suburbs," but they're very different places. [0] What would somebody who lives here walk to,…
Thank you. Moreover, it feels like suburbs (I’m calling the town of Overland Park, Kansas a suburb) can’t or don’t clean sidewalks and crosswalks as quickly (if at all) or worse use the sidewalk as a dumping ground for snow from the road. Even on a normal day, a walk to the post office and back home can easily take half an hour, probably closer to an hour if you’re walking. That being said, it feels cramped to live i…
Fun fact- there are more highway miles per capita in KC than any other city in the US: http://www.publicpurpose.com/hwy-tti99ratio.htm