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Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection

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Re: Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection

#191

Post by jimmaswell »

happymellon wrote: post #146
jimmaswell wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work from home. I'd still rather drive most of the time than rely on transit and live anywhere more dense. E-biking is nice and I do it for exercise often, but I wouldn't want to do it in the snow or rain, even with perfect separate bike lanes, no matter how much Netherlanders insist it's no big deal. My car has a comfortable seat, good sound system, a lot of my stuff in it, climate control, and no drug addicts acc…

Is your city really that bad that you are afraid of a bus because it might have a drug addict on it?

"My city" would be NYC I guess, so sure. I live in a ruralish town though.

Re: Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection

#192

Post by mekoka »

It's not even that they're built for cars. They're simply just not built for humans to walk around.

If you've ever been in a situation where you're visiting a friend in an unfamiliar neighborhood and the map is telling you that your destination is physically just "right behind this house", a mere 50m away, but the front street you're currently in is a long crescent without cross access to the back street where you're trying to get to, you've experienced the frustration of modern planning with no afterthought for human access.

I'm no expert, but I've done my fair share of traveling. One thing that's always been very noticeable to me is the strong correlation between highly cohesive communities and the many seemingly disorderly pedestrian paths crisscrossing their neighborhoods.

Re: Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection

#193

Post by stormbrew »

falcolas wrote: post #158
AlwaysRock wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the hardest parts about buying a home, apart from all the stuff that isnt fun about buying a home, is finding somewhere that is walkable to... anything. I've rented my whole life and spent my entire adult life in cities. The idea of having to get in the car to get milk or something from the corner store, or have to drive to ANY restaurant, or not have some type of walking/running path within a few blocks of my…

> One of the hardest parts about buying a home, apart from all the stuff that isnt fun about buying a home, is finding somewhere that is walkable to... anything. That's because if you want an individual home, you're giving up the customer density required to make those amenities viable. In a world with the internet, at-home delivery, and yes, cars, it's simply not economically viable to create a grocery store that on…

This just isn't at all true unless you define "house" as exclusively large lot single family homes with big back and front yards. Most dense and walkable places in the world are not full of high rises, they're a mix of high density houses and low to medium density apartments.

This mix is really rare in North America, at least and especially north of Mexico, but it does exist.

Re: Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection

#194

Post by prophesi »

navbaker wrote: post #175
Invictus0 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think that most Americans have not traveled enough to realize there is a better way. Only 30% of Americans even have a passport.

Do you realize how massively big the US is and how incredibly diverse of an experience you can have just traveling to the next state over? Having a passport/leaving the country isn't a requirement to see that there is a better or different way to live.

The entire US is built around cars so I don't think you'd be exposed to a different way of living in that aspect, unless you're a brave American tourist visiting Chicago/NYC willing to learn and use the subway.

Re: Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection

#195

Post by goodpoint »

warning26 wrote: post #64
datadata wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you tie housing costs to cars?

Easy, supply and demand. Before cars, dense housing was the norm, but cars popularized spreading everything out as much as possible so you have room for wide roads and lots of parking. Less density -> less housing overall -> decreased supply -> increased prices

> Less density -> less housing overall -> decreased supply -> increased prices

The arrows (logical implication) might be questionable, but it's still true that housing and road infrastructure compete for space.

Re: Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection

#196

Post by dont__panic »

atwood22 wrote: post #155
dont__panic wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans don't have a choice. Why are cars and phones giant these days? Is it because nobody wants smaller ones, or because perverse market incentives have distorted offerings in a chase for product growth? Why is the USA unbearably car centric? Is it because nobody wants to get around any other way, or because perverse market incentives have distorted the world around us in a chase for GDP growth? Some people…

> Why are cars and phones giant these days? Is it because nobody wants smaller ones, or because perverse market incentives have distorted offerings in a chase for product growth? Do you have kids? If you did, you’d know that many people want bigger cars. I drive one of the smallest cars you can buy in the U.S. Now that I have a kid, I’m going to buy a big SUV. Kids require a lot of stuff. Taking them on public transp…

Those big cars are the kind of "perverse market incentive" I'm talking about.

Why do you need a big car to transport your children? Because:

- you can't walk anywhere useful with your kids (so you must get in a car)

- public transportation is inconvenient or expensive

- biking is dangerous

- the big car makes you feel safer because all of the other cars are big

Why are those things the way that they are? Because people chose to drive cars, live far from useful things in the suburbs, and that eroded the ability to bike or provide useful and affordable public transportation.

I grew up in a car-centric place. The "big SUV" as your only gateway to the outside world is effectively a prison. You can't do things on your own. You don't build a mental map of the world you live in. You don't get to do things outside unless it's in your yard or at some structured activity accessed by car. Why do you think the "teenagers hate the suburbs" trope is so common?

I know raising a kid is difficult, even though I have not raised one myself. I know that they require all kinds of stuff to take out into the world. But somehow in NYC people get around with a single stroller and a backpack with kids, frequently taking public transit.

> Taking them on public transport is a huge pain. Even if you don’t have kids, I’m sure you’ve been annoyed by a stroller on the subway.

Maybe at rush hour. But I largely just appreciate the fact that a parent is trying to raise their kid to walk places and live in the world, instead of isolating them in a car in a suburban hellscape. Again -- perverse incentives have made the world this way. It doesn't have to be this way.

Re: Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection

#197

Post by adamsmith143 »

>Selfishly, I really want the USA to bring city centers back to livable levels by banning most cars and redesigning them for humans.

Sadly though this doesn't help the millions of people who also aren't within walking distance of said city centers. We'd need to rebuild our public transport as well which is also desperately needed.

Re: Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection

#198

Post by trgn »

tmh88j wrote: post #136
oldnetguy wrote: post #62

I lived in New York City my entire life and I am now wanting a house. I am tired of living in an apartment building. This idea that people live together communally within buildings or neighborhoods is very overrated. I have lived in multiple apartments and never has there been a real community there. The building has one holiday party and out of 144 apartments maybe 15 people show up. The posts on the chat board that…

> I lived in New York City my entire life and I am now wanting a house. I am tired of living in an apartment building. This idea that people live together communally within buildings or neighborhoods is very overrated. I feel the same way. I grew up in an urban environment, moved to rural areas, now back in an urban environment. I can't wait to get out of here. Too many people, too much noise and too much energy spen…

> too much noise and too much energy spent looking over your shoulder.

That's the bane of american cities. They're noisy, and sociopathy is tolerated by the authorities. Living abroad has shown me cities, significantly more dense than the US, that are neither noisy or unsafe. Walkable cities can be quiet, almost eerily so. America needs more urban environments like that.

Re: Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection

#199

Post by stormbrew »

dont__panic wrote: post #142
AlwaysRock wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the hardest parts about buying a home, apart from all the stuff that isnt fun about buying a home, is finding somewhere that is walkable to... anything. I've rented my whole life and spent my entire adult life in cities. The idea of having to get in the car to get milk or something from the corner store, or have to drive to ANY restaurant, or not have some type of walking/running path within a few blocks of my…

Any success filtering for walkability in the US when buying a home? As far as I can tell, "walkability" scores are borderline useless -- the small town I currently live in has extremely low "walkability," despite being able to walk or bike to everything I need, whereas the large city I just left has extremely high "walkability" -- despite the fact that walking around town was not pleasant due to high volumes of car t…

I mean, you just can't have a walkability score for an entire large city. There's a lot of variation. You have to look at specific neighborhoods.

This is especially true in north America where cities all went through a huge conglomeration effort in the second half of the 20th century and absorbed their suburbs.

Re: Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection

#200

Post by kuschku »

scelerat wrote: post #129
dont__panic wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have lived in multiple major US cities without a car. In NYC it's feasible, but impossible to visit family or friends who live in car-centric places. In most other cities you feel like a distant second-or-third class citizen. Swimming upstream gets tiring after a while.

> impossible to visit family or friends who live in car-centric places Traditional car rentals like Avis, Hertz, etc., as well as carshare services like Gig or Zipcar enable this if you don't already own a car. Many people I know in SF do this.

I live in Germany. I'm 26. I don't have a driver's license, and neither do many of my friends. It's never been necessary. Between transit and cycling, it's possible to reach everywhere, easily.

That's one of the issues with the US today.

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