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It’s time for Americans to embrace small cars
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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If those tasks aren't daily occurrences, get a fucking rental.
You don't need a monster truck in your driveway because one day you might have to move a couch or a fridge.
If cities weren't designed around cars, you wouldn't need them to go to the shops.
If zoning laws weren't so fucking retarded you could have stores that weren't forced to have ridiculous parking spaces next to them and could have actual city centers.
Cars are an aberration, we shouldn't have to rely on them to live.
But I'm not too interested in walking place to place in negative degree or triple degree weather or paying thousands of dollars every year for a rental. Maybe if they made rentals more affordable, it'd make more sense for more people.
For a family of 5, a station wagon is more practical than an SUV or a truck. For a family of 6+, a minivan is the better choice. For people who need to haul a lot of stuff, a van is the best option. Americans just have an unhealthy obsession with massive vehicles and trucks. The only time an SUV or truck is the better option is when driving off-road. And that only applies to SUVs and trucks that are actually designed to be driven off-road, which is a small minority.
l/ShitAmericansSay
Imagine a world where the value of an investment is more important than the quality of life. Would make a nice Orwell story. /s
Do you ever visited an european City?
This is truly THE cliché answer from an us citizen who has never seen another part of this world.
Just for your information: Europ has 700 million inhabitants on round about the same size of land as the USA, has round about 50 countries (each with their own states) with nearly as much different languages and religions/confessions.
But that doesn't really matter on that issue. What matters is how one percieves a city that has a huge impact on the quality of live.
First. How save is it to navigate through the city, not just by car but also on foot, on bike and on public transport. To give you an idea. It is quite common and normal that kids walk themselves to school, by foot, by bike and by public transport up from elementary school (there are no yellow buses like in the us, because they are not necessary).
Second thing is how close everyday things are. Can I walk to a shop, to my gym, to my favourite bakery and café, to my local park... The closer everything is, the less "friction" there is to use these services and this they can flourish. And you know what creates huge distances? Parking lots. The less cars there are, the closer and saver it is and with less friction.
Third thing is the diversity. The grater the segregation between upper and lowe income neighbourhoods, the greater is the tension within the whole city. Thus, a greater diversity reduces the tension within the city and makes it therefore more save, which enables walkability. You see where I am going.
Everything is hugely connected and no zoning law can accommodate everything and also hinders the natural developmen and evolution t of cities.
But if you have never experienced such walkable city for a longer period of time, youl never know what you are missing. But I can assure you, it was very obvious to me when I visited the US.
Walkability is king and smaller cars are far from enough to solve this huge issue north America inherited from the car and oil lobby.
I'm not saying the other guy is entirely right here, but this is a pretty disingenuous argument. Both Europe and USA are around 4 million square miles in landmass (Europe is slightly bigger, US is around 3.8), but 1.5 million of that is Russia, where the population is highly clustered around a few cities. Russia having 40% of the total landmass but only 15% of the population of Europe makes it seem like the population density might be similar, but it isn't once you take Russia out of the equation. Population density is just way higher in Europe on average.
The point is that the USA has a ton of land, and cities and towns are spread very far apart. Yes, Europe has plenty of stretches of land that look similar, but most of the US is wide open space. Is that a great thing? Not really, but it's a consequence of history and a problem we just have to deal with.
I'd love to ditch cars and use public transportation and have walkable cities, but with the population so spread out it really isn't feasible in much of the country. Saying someone is giving "THE cliché answer from an us citizen who has never seen another part of this world" and then giving a statistic that is inherently flawed to prove your argument isn't going to get others to agree with you, it'll just make you sound like a dick. It is a real problem that US cities and towns are very wide and built very far apart, we can't just tear down those towns and build towns with a higher population density in their place to increase walkability. (Only within the town, mind you, this would increase reliance on cars if you need to go outside of your town)
You aren't travelling across the country to go to work or the grocery store. It's the city design that matters. We can have cities better made for public transit.
We can if we tear up most of the cities and small towns that exist today, like I said.
The cost-benefit of doing so.... takes a long time to pay off (if ever) and forcefully dislocating people like that generally isn't popular. Public transit would be great, but the argument needs to be a lot more realistic to how we retrofit public transit for our existing cities, and focusing future growth on making it compatible with public transit. It's not realistic to say "We just need more public transit, Europe has it figured out" when our cities and towns are laid out way differently. Obviously re-zoning certain areas and moving businesses closer to suburbs is a start, but it isn't going to be as simple as "build cities like Europe" because the cities are already built.
Lol no you don't have to tear up the city to add bus routes. You are being dramatic.
Guess what? We have bus routes in Canada. And even LRT! No we didn't have to tear up entire cities lol.
Should I bring up bike paths? OoOo.