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How the Car Keeps Americans Apart

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Re: How the Car Keeps Americans Apart

#191

Post by GiorgioG »

dionidium wrote: post #187
GiorgioG wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Respectfully, you've misunderstood what they mean by urbanization in those articles and completely missed their point, which is about the growth of urban areas (which includes suburbs ) in general: " 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…

So now your opinion is that cities are equally bad...great so we've come full circle - we should all go live on a farm - got it. Farmers need pickup trucks so I guess I'm good to go (I happen to live within spitting distance of several farms so it's even more convenient.)

People on HN needs to get over themselves. Smart yes, able to see other's perspectives...hardly.

Re: How the Car Keeps Americans Apart

#192

Post by dionidium »

tjr225 wrote: post #190
mcny wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The entire KC metro is offensively anti pedestrian and anti cyclist. It is one of the reasons I decided to leave. 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

I don't strongly disagree with your point here, but like all city statistics that aren't normalized for area and density (e.g. by using the MSA/CSA or some equivalent), this one is potentially quite misleading. Kansas City draws its borders around an awful lot of rural land that wouldn't be (indeed, isn't) counted inside the borders of most cities. This is all well within the city limits, for example:

https://goo.gl/maps/Dm76roteRbx

All of which is just to say: political borders are drawn differently in every city, so you can't meaningfully compare cities using political borders.

Does Kansas City (as a region) actually have more highways than most equivalent cities? Maybe. I don't know. That table doesn't tell us that.

Re: How the Car Keeps Americans Apart

#193

Post by couchand »

ryanhuff wrote: post #43
eysquared wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Seattle with a 2 year old and one more on the way. I can't believe I ever considered leaving the city to have kids. I can walk to a coffee shop 3 blocks away without taking 15 minutes to strap my kid in a car seat and the amount of parks we have access to in a short walk in incredible. We take the bus to the zoo and aquarium and my son loves seeing all the people and looking out the window. Being out and ab…

I suspect when your kids become older, your life will become more dictated by your kids activities that you don’t control as much. Sports practices and games, school, etc. These will be unlikely be centered around walking distance from home. And, then, I will welcome you back to the fold of parent indenturedness. :)

Well, the elementary school is two blocks away, the middle school is two blocks the other way, and there is a high school about four blocks away (though by high school the neighborhood school isn't as relevant, at least in NYC). There are little league soccer and baseball teams that practice & play games at the small park a block and a half away and the larger park three blocks away. I'm pretty sure that neither of those particular developments require a car.

We do frequently use a car (when leaving the city, for instance), but we don't have any reason to own a car. And more critically, we aren't chained to it in the way that so many friends and family are, by virtue of every necessity lying well beyond walking distance tucked inside a giant parking lot.

Re: How the Car Keeps Americans Apart

#194

Post by couchand »

zjaffee wrote: post #96
couchand wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a parent to a one-and-a-half year old in New York City, and I grew up in a mid-sized midwestern city. I'm obviously biased, but I think we've got it much better off here. A block and a half away is one of the best playgrounds in the city, and three blocks the other direction is another fine playground. Both of them are packed with kids at all hours of the day. When we go visit family in the midwest, we make a poi…

I grew up in manhattan, and I really just think this is a situation of people wanting something different than what they previously had. The ability to drive instead of being jam packed on highly congested trains was something that I enjoyed when living in other cities, traffic does suck, but at least you're in a temperature controlled place where you can control the radio and what not. Additionally, point to point t…

I don't think it's as simple as rebelling against your parents -- plenty of my schoolmates are perfectly content to be slaves to their cars, and a good number of my city friends grew up here.

We, at least, do have the option of driving if we need to: we just walk a few blocks to the car share and off we go.

Re: How the Car Keeps Americans Apart

#195

Post by lev99 »

GiorgioG wrote: post #160
lev99 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat. > We were at the hospital in 15 minutes thanks to the modern automobile. If you live within 3 minutes of a Walmart (3 minutes traveling there, 3 minutes checking out, and 3 minutes returning) and 15 minutes of a hospital you are significantly better located than the average suburbanite. Most walkable urban areas will have 24 hour convenien…

> Most walkable urban areas will have 24 hour convenience stores every few blocks. This is only true in very large cities (NYC, LA, Paris, etc.) In smaller cities my experience is quite the opposite, shops close early and they are far and few between. I'm talking between 200-500k population (my sample size is small, but one city is in the US the other in France, neither had pharmacies within walking distance that wer…

> I'm talking between 200-500k population

Are there many walkable cities with populations in that range?

> I'm not sure where you're getting your $250 figure from.

Including getting the script.

Re: How the Car Keeps Americans Apart

#196

Post by volkl48 »

skrause wrote: post #156
dionidium wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's precisely because I have kids that I prioritize a walkable place. Because kids can't drive! This point is tragically under-appreciated. Kids who live in car-dependent suburbs are in a very real sense alienated from the larger society. A twelve-year-old should be able to visit the library, stop by the park, grab a sandwich at a lunch counter, mail a letter, and wander back home all by themselves in an afternoon…

Don't children have bicycles anymore?

That only works if things are within a reasonable enough distance to bike to and if the roads are setup in a way that someone can safely bike at all.

If you're talking an older grid-style suburb with corner stores and the like, it's probably something kids can do.

On the other hand, in many of the exurbs/modern suburbs, there's large distances between things and very strict segregation of residential/commercial areas. Car-centric layouts don't help either, with routes between

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Even older suburban areas can have their own problems.

For a personal anecdote, I grew up in a part of NJ that has been settled since 1700s and is rather hilly. (Watchung Mountains). Most of the main roads date from that time and resemble English country lanes in terms of width/geometry more than they resemble typical American roads. Speed limits are 35-45mph, traffic does at least 5 over.

It is absurdly dangerous to walk or bike on any of those roads, and there aren't really any practical solutions to that. They studied adding sidewalks and it was going to cost huge sums of money and require destroying hundreds upon hundreds of mature trees (the roads are thickly lined with forest, and there isn't even an inch of shoulder).

Cutting the speed limit is impractical because they're main roads that people drive 5-20 miles on, that's a significant time hit.

Re: How the Car Keeps Americans Apart

#197

Post by orbitur »

skrause wrote: post #156
dionidium wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's precisely because I have kids that I prioritize a walkable place. Because kids can't drive! This point is tragically under-appreciated. Kids who live in car-dependent suburbs are in a very real sense alienated from the larger society. A twelve-year-old should be able to visit the library, stop by the park, grab a sandwich at a lunch counter, mail a letter, and wander back home all by themselves in an afternoon…

Don't children have bicycles anymore?

I don't know about your neighborhood, but in ours, there are no sidewalks and a bunch of teens drive as fast as they possibly can.

Re: How the Car Keeps Americans Apart

#198

Post by orbitur »

couchand wrote: post #22
roymurdock wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if/when you have kids. I’ve seen many people biking around Amsterdam with their kids in protective bike high seats. But this is unheard of in many US cities. Minivans are the usual solution. Would you teach them to take public transport or try to live within walking distance of everything? Obvs doesn’t apply if u don’t plan on it, but curious if anyone has found a solution in US cities.

I'm a parent to a one-and-a-half year old in New York City, and I grew up in a mid-sized midwestern city. I'm obviously biased, but I think we've got it much better off here. A block and a half away is one of the best playgrounds in the city, and three blocks the other direction is another fine playground. Both of them are packed with kids at all hours of the day. When we go visit family in the midwest, we make a poi…

Out of curiosity, what neighborhood/borough do you live in? Is it a middle class area?

Re: How the Car Keeps Americans Apart

#199

Post by GiorgioG »

lev99 wrote: post #195
GiorgioG wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most walkable urban areas will have 24 hour convenience stores every few blocks. This is only true in very large cities (NYC, LA, Paris, etc.) In smaller cities my experience is quite the opposite, shops close early and they are far and few between. I'm talking between 200-500k population (my sample size is small, but one city is in the US the other in France, neither had pharmacies within walking distance that wer…

> I'm talking between 200-500k population Are there many walkable cities with populations in that range? > I'm not sure where you're getting your $250 figure from. Including getting the script.

My wife needed a Z-Pack (antibiotic) last week and it cost us $0.11 all-in.

If you don't have health insurance, you're on your own (sadly.)

Re: How the Car Keeps Americans Apart

#200

Post by maerF0x0 »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #134
maerF0x0 wrote: post #77

I find there are a number of things I cannot do without someone having a car. 1) Go hiking, snowboarding, mountain biking 2) Drive fast on road courses 3) Come home from the airport after midnight 4) Purchase more than 2 bags of groceries (including TP, laundry detergent et al) 5) Go on road trips 6) Isolate myself from the mentally ill or obnoxious behaviors and smells I'm surrounded by, including their fecal matter…

I live without a car, and yet I manage to do all[1] of the things you mention by biking, using public transit and rental cars/vans/trucks on occasion. I thought it would be really annoying to live without a car, but it's actually quite nice, and I save so much money on fuel and maintenance. [1] aside from the road courses. I race gocarts for fun instead.

I agree that gocarts are hella fun!

My posting said > without someone having a car.

Care to share how you go snowboarding, #3 and #5-8 ?

I have read mr money mustache write a lot about what can be accomplished by a bicycle + trailer. But even he still has a low cost car.

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