91–100 of 120 posts
There’s nothing at this site except a hat that’s for sale and a claim that it’s raising money for a documentary?
Had a fun conversation about language learning with an American friend who's learning German. She asked me what "walkable" is in German. Then it hit me, we don't have this word because in Germany this concept is unknown. Funny how societal factors have such an imprint in language.
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Not living in the suburbs improves mental health.
My favorite places in the world are small walkable towns in nature. Sprawling car-centric suburbia has more asphalt than trees. It sucks.
It's the cause of so many issues in America (physical, mental, social). A great book on the utterly broken build environment in North America is "The Geography of Nowhere": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_... Also, people forget - walkable doesn't just mean "somewhere you can walk" - I means you can walk to activities of daily living (groceries, pharmacy, gym, job, friends places, etc).
While it might cause other issues, I think the root is somewhere else and harder to solve (even if the solution is obvious).
IMHO we're going to look back historically at single-family-detached-suburban-sprawl as not just the fulcrum in destroying the environment, but also actively harmful to the people that live there, especially children. Its easy for it to feel "normal" or even aspirational to us now, but its basically only ~3 generations old, and the first generation raised in suburbs was usually larger families in closer-in suburbs, p…
> ... IMHO we're going to look back historically at single-family-detached-suburban-sprawl as not just the fulcrum in destroying the environment As opposed to packing people like ants in high-rises in cities, which is the most environmentally friendly?
As an example, check out the map of the boston-washington/east-coast-corridor of the US here: https://coolclimate.org/maps
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I see arguments that are hostile towards a certain type of car owner -- the entitled sort that can't stand anything less than absolute car dominance of the roads. The kind who's opposed to new housing or badly needed bike or bus lanes because it might impact public street parking. Hostility towards anyone who owns a car is rather more rare from walkability proponents. Not totally unheard of, but hardly mainstream.
Hostility may have been too strong of a choice of word. It's less the arguments or sentiments of anti-car advocates but more the language used online. For example, r/fuckcars is massive. A large subreddit might not be considered mainstream, but it does have massive reach. A lot of people see this as one of their first exposures to car-free communities and do not feel welcomed by it. I think it's somewhat of an optics…
And maybe unavoidable: the US in particular is SO slanted towards absolute car dominance in most areas, that you end up with this sort of rhetorical whiplash just by favoring movement towards transportation balance. I've never heard the term "car brain" before you just said it, and yet I know exactly what you're talking about, and that for many people it will be entirely accurate.
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I buy the value of walkable neighborhoods, but it's hard to make this epidemiological claim hold up; Canada and the US have broadly similar infrastructure but sharply different rates of mental illness; similarly, mental illness rates don't appear to track walkability in Europe.
Canada also has free healthcare. There are an infinite number of cultural differences that could affect the mental health rates in EU/CA more positively than in the US.
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The places with low rates of car ownership in the US are cities like D.C., NYC, SF, Boston, and Chicago. These aren't heavily polluted places, NYC in fact has great air quality most of the time due to prevailing winds. The ten worst cities for Air pollution have 0 overlap with the bottom 10 cities in car ownership.
Averaging air pollution (noise pollution is just as bad, btw) over a huge metropolitan area is not a meaningful metric though, I think.
Also, noise pollution DEFINITELY isn't just as bad as air pollution. No doubt it CAN cause stress and CAN disrupt sleep, but air pollution is clearly a far bigger problem in general.
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Canada also has free healthcare. There are an infinite number of cultural differences that could affect the mental health rates in EU/CA more positively than in the US.
"free", but you often get what you pay for. source: am canadian.
You pay your taxes and you gets your health care.
As opposed to the US where even if you pay your premiums you may not get coverage if you go to the "wrong" (out of network) hospital, or the "wrong" (OON) doctor even if in the right hospital. Be sure to inform your ambulance driver of your in-network hospitals so you get taken to the "correct" hospital after a car crash.
When my father had to get new heart valves the most that had to be paid was hospital parking.
source: am canadian.