Before life got in the way, I wanted a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Resource Management as a foundation for a Master's in Urban Planning. I currently run r/UrbanForestry for the same reason:
I don't think it makes sense to see human settlements as separate from nature. I think of nature as the fabric within which such configurations occur.
It isn't inevitable that human development must be a concrete jungle. You can include plants, permeable surfaces, etc in your plans so people can live more lightly and less intrusively on the land.
I also think America has a lot of room for adding back walkable mixed-use neighborhoods where at least some people can live, work and shop in the same neighborhood. Or at least live and shop if they are retirees, teens, or similar groups who aren't seeking a job or who already work at home or from home in some capacity.
Studies suggest this leads to greater wealth in such neighborhoods (such as more sales) and we know vehicle traffic is a significant burden wrt human-caused climate change. Making it possible to skip the long commute makes for a better quality of life and less pollution adding to this issue.
We currently frame this issue as a painful choice between short-term gratification and current high quality of life with a long-term cost of global disaster versus short-term sacrifice for slim hope of assuaging our guilt with no guarantee of real improvement in the future. I don't think that's necessary.
I've lived without a car in the US for more than a decade. I think you can live that way and live well. I think we can design and build a world that provides a high quality of life for people and doesn't destroy the environment in the process.
I live in the Japanese countryside and I absolutely need a car for living, but it makes me sad to realize that it would take almost nothing for me to get rid of the car. I spend my driving time 90% on a single road where all the places I need are. I spend 9% on another similar big axis. I occasionally go to Tokyo but to do so I park my car at the free parking on the highway bus station.
A regular bus on the two axis I use would allow me to totally get rig of a car. I am pretty sure we could automate such a bus given today's tech.
e-bikes dont drive by themselves, are slow, dangerous (the roads are very narrow with no sidewalk) open to the rain and have shit carrying capacity. And I say that as a fan of e-bikes.
I mean, are you intending to carry a ton of stuff on the bus? If cargo is that big a deal you can also look for a cargo bike. And buses aren't exactly known for being super duper speedy, when I ride my normal bike around Tokyo I'm generally faster from point A to B than actual personal cars (to be fair its super dense and slow here for cars). Agreed that it does suck in the rain though, and maybe people drive faster out where you live (I personally prefer biking on the road here in Tokyo, way more hazardous weaving through people on the sidewalks).
> A regular bus on the two axis I use would allow me to totally get rig of a car.
Not if you need to carry a lot of stuff like groceries for a whole family. Unless you decide to do a bus trip every single day, losing time while waiting for the next bus the arrive.
Lots of people all over the world do shopping for multiple days of groceries without having a car. It's not that hard - a large bag for veg, a somewhat smaller bag for protein, maybe a third bag for miscellaneous. Especially if you eat a reasonably traditional Japanese diet, it'd be easy - rice and miso you only buy once a month or so depending.
Groceries in the West take up so much space because they are all prepackaged. A couple boxes of cereal and a loaf of bread takes up as much space as a week worth of veg. Using dishclothes and a washlet instead of paper towels or (most) toilet paper and you've got another couple volumetrically huge items off your shopping list
The other thing that happens is that as you walk more and get healthier, it gets easier over time to carry the groceries and you tend to eat less. I experienced this firsthand when I gave up my car: Over time, I had more strength and stamina and also less appetite.
America has an epidemic of obesity and I think for some people that fact makes it unimaginable to live without a car. But I think cause and effect run the other way: So many Americans are overweight and frustrated with their lives in part because we have made it so hard in this country to run errands on foot.
It has become a vicious cycle.
You reverse it by just starting. Let some people run errands on foot and by car. Target the low-hanging fruit, the people (like lv) who say "I could do that if I only had this small bit of help."
Let them take the leap. Take the gains you can access instead of quibbling about "But that doesn't work for everyone!"
Nothing works for everyone and ruining our planet is working for no one.
Not everyone lives in pleasant climates for walking around on foot and doing errands. Sure, maybe in the Bay Area or New England it’s fine, but you do not want to go run errands outside in the sweltering heat of the south. And do you even know what the Midwest is? Young and restless.
I was born and raised in Georgia. I am a former military wife. I have lived in Kansas, Texas, Germany, California and Washington state.
I currently live without a car in an area that gets 76 inches of rain annually. I typically describe it as biblical flood levels of rain. It's a lot of rain.
I routinely go outside in a t-shirt and sweatpants in all kinds of weather, including freezing temps and snow.
Weather is intimidating to people who spend almost all their time indoors and in a vehicle. If you actually spend time outside, you know how to stay warm enough, how to mitigate exposure to wind, rain, etc.
And I'm seriously handicapped by a condition that is known to negatively impact my ability to effectively modulate my body temperature. So I'm not especially impressed by such arguments. I don't think they have much, if any, merit.
Though I would like to see more awnings in the downtown area where I live. I would appreciate that as a means to limit my exposure to rain and I think it's very doable.
I live in Greece and our weather ranges from 40 C to -20 C. We walk to get groceries in all kinds of weather. Sure, you won't go in the middle of the day during a heat wave, but after the sun is set is not bad.
As you said, you just learn to handle the weather. Walking to the super market is a very everyday thing for us.
Unrelated but where in Greece does it routinely get to -20c?
I'm wondering because was born and raised in Israel (similar climate to Greece) and even at the mountain tops -20c would be very rare (and there are generally no settlements of significant size at the peak of the tallest mountains, most people live in the valleys or coasts).
Even in Germany where we live now (1000s of kilometers further north) -20c is very rare.
It routinely goes to -20 C every winter in my hometown, near Florina. Granted, that's in the night, but we do walk around in that kind of weather. Luckily, it's not very humid, or it would have been extremely hard to go out.
AFAIK Israel is quite a bit warmer than Greece, since you guys are much closer to Cyprus (and Cyprus has a noticeably warmer climate than us), no?
I think on the greek coasts the climate would be quite similar to both Cyprus and (coastal) Israel. And either way closer to that than where I now live (northern Germany)!
In general, Cyprus has much warmer summers than even Crete, for example, and much warmer seas. This is all anecdotal, but everyone I've heard (and from when I've traveled there), they're always having more and longer heat waves than us, and everyone comments about how warm the sea there is.
I looked it up and it seems you're right! The summer highs in Nicosia[0] really are significantly warmer than in Heraklion[1]. I assumed it will be the same as Crete and Cyprus are at the same latitude and both are islands but there must be some other effects in play.
In Germany in comparison you can go almost 1000km from south to north and the only difference in climate would be if you're on a mountain or the coast (two German cities at the same altitude will have more or less the same climate even if they are 100s of kilometers apart on the south-north axis).
The best way to gain support is to extrapolate from your own situation. /s
Don't get me wrong: I believe your case, and I believe it's roughly on the path to reducing the effect we have on the planet. But you are missing few practical considerations.
The immediate case that you are obviously ignoring is parents with babies. Babies are known not to regulate their body temperature well, nor to have strong immune systems, nor can they walk long distances on their own. So what do parents do? Move between places with temperate climate and clean(er) air (home with AC/heating, cars, malls...). How do they do that? Driving cars (you've also got your mobile "locker" where you can put a stroller or any other necessities in).
At the same time, parents with small children (as a category) probably spend the most time outdoors walking in our society today, but that's usually walking "without a purpose." When they live in non-walkable areas, they'll drive to a walkable area first.
(Sure, we could subject our babies to all the extremes, but we'll have a higher infant/child mortality rate. We've long stopped subscribing to the "only the fittest survive" mantra.)
Since having a baby is a big investment today, if you are at the same time investing in a house, you'll look for (slightly) cheaper housing options. So, walkable neighbourhoods — I can't imagine anyone not wanting to live in one — are usually priced out of their range.
You are right that this is a loop: parents can't tell when they can stop being so vigilant, especially as children (and parents) are now unused to extreme climates, so they easily fall sick (parents included). And if they've invested in a home outside a walkable area, it's costly to move.
While you say breaking that loop is easy, I don't think it is. Moving places is hard and expensive (and harder and more expensive with children). Accepting higher sickness rates while your kids and you develop your immune and cardiovascular (to better manage body heat) systems is costly too (leave from work, paid help...). You should consider yourself privileged to have been able to do so!
This points at a number of problems: financial incentives for home builders are misplaced, missing regulatory requirements... and sure, insufficiently motivated people. And this is only when constrained with one thing (having a baby): there are plenty other constraints people might have (job availability, care availability, friends proximity...). Basically, people might have to compromise a lot.
If you only focus on insufficient motivation, I don't think you'll get many to "sign up".
The immediate point that you are obviously ignoring is that no one you are replying to has even suggested anything that you seem to be arguing against.
It looks like you are responding to someone saying "ban all cars, anyone living somewhere unwalkable just has to suck it up, regardless of any extenuating circumstances"
What was actually said was "LET people run errands by foot and by car", and "I'd like more awnings"
Basically - make places more walkable. "Low hanging fruit" meaning focus on making nearly walkable places into very walkable places.
I am a parent with small children. We walk to school. With a baby, I would walk to the supermarket, no one got ill any more than the occasional sniffle. Combining a pram and a backpack meant I could easily bring home the weekly shop, much easier than I can now that I have to carry everything.
It's also about places that are wantonly and deliberately hostile to pedestrians. Don't make people drive between adjacent destinations, don't force people to walk 2 miles to get somewhere half a mile away.
If you live in a village with a baby and an elderly parent and your nearest city is Timbuktu or Nuuk, this is not about you.
I also don't buy that "once you have kids you need a car". I have 2 little kids and neither me nor my wife ever had a driver's license. We use transit and bicycle. When our kids were smaller we used a cargo bike, now they each have their own bicycle (kids here start cycling at age 3-4). We also walk a lot. It works out fine.
That's not all they were saying in either this or their other comments.
The comment I replied to had this in response to someone's question about walking in "sweltering heat":
> (talks a lot about personal experiences and hardships and then concludes with...) So I'm not especially impressed by such arguments. I don't think they have much, if any, merit.
The entire tone of the comment is "if I can do it, anyone can". While it's not as strong as "anyone living somewhere unwalkable just has to suck it up", there is definitely an implication of something along those lines.
The "sweltering heat" comment was, itself, a bad-faith "Ha! you didn't think about this edge condition" kind of comment, in response to a comment saying this:
> Take the gains you can access instead of quibbling about "But that doesn't work for everyone!"
The tone of that you describe as "if I can do it, anyone can", I read as "yes I did think of that, because this is my relevant experience, and people living somewhere hot isn't the massive 'gotcha' you think it is"
But the point still stands, this is about reducing car use by making places more walkable, and your reaction read as a response to reducing car use by banning cars.
Many places in North America are actively and unnaturally hostile to pedestrians, so that even those who want to walk end up driving. This is what needs to change first.
Moaning that Oklahoma gets so hot so you can't possibly install pedestrian facilities in suburban Philadelphia, or that some people need to drive along this road, so you can't possibly provide a way for pedestrians to get across it is ridiculous.
Improving walkability also improves drivability, because it reduces traffic and parking demand.
Quibbling about not working for everyone is precisely what you and the "sweltering heat" comment are doing. Take the easy steps and the harder ones can follow.
Moreover, I don't think you are really considering the reality of getting around with small children, just trying to win another gotcha. My kids hated getting into the car as babies. A pram ride along a nice tree-shaded, low-traffic Street would be far more preferable in all but the most ridiculous summertime-midday-in-the-outback heat.
I am very specifically highlighting how it's not all in the motivation (I said as much in my very first comment), but that instead we need to work on developing walkable areas at the same time. You might have an argument that the GP was not saying that, but then you continue to argue something I didn't say either (if you disregard my point of motivation not being the only issue for people to drop cars, the rest of my comment doesn't follow).
As with everyone else here saying they've got kids and no cars, it's obvious you are already living in walkable areas.
You are instead taking my comment in bad faith: nowhere did I mention banning of cars. It seems it's fine to consider individual cases in support of your view as proof of it, whereas counter examples are "edge cases".
I've got small kids, and my baby hates both the car and a pram. If I want to get somewhere nice, it's faster with a car.
> Sure, maybe in the Bay Area or New England it’s fine, but you do not want to go run errands outside in the sweltering heat of the south. And do you even know what the Midwest is?
This thread was talking (in part) about the weather in Japan. Atlanta would be a similar climate to Fukuoka or Kagoshima - even Tokyo isn't too far off, it routinely gets into the high 30s with 75% humidity, yet somehow everyone still manages to get around just fine without a car.
The only thing that makes a car seem so mandatory in north america is because we've built whole cities around the assumption that everyone has one and it's the only way to get around - this damage will take decades to fix.
You're greatly overestimating the difficulty of living car-less in a city designed for it. Even in all the places you are discussing, people used to do this all the time in the times before AC was invented. It's true that there are places like Phoenix, AZ, where it's not really possible to survive (or at least thrive) without constant AC, but this is currently the exception even in the South.
I shop more than once a week (it's part of my morning walk/routine), and I concur that it's perfectly doable without a car, so I agree with you on the general point.
But: why would a loaf of bread take up much space? The "packaging" there is just a bit of paper, and it has much higher density than most vegetables, I think?
I.e. a loaf is enough bread for 4 people for a couple days, the equivalent amount of "non-compressed" vegetables like fennel/lettuce/zucchini would be much larger. Only some crucifers or large pumpkins would be comparable, and potatoes/yams.
Maybe it's a US thing about packaged bread? I live in the EU, so I might be thinkinf of something else.
> But: why would a loaf of bread take up much space? The "packaging" there is just a bit of paper, and it has much higher density than most vegetables, I think?
I dont think vegetables are an accurate comparison. By listing bread and cereal, I was thinking specifically of common north american breakfast/lunch foods which are largely starch-based, and quite low density. As comparators I was thinking of dried rice and pasta, which are quite dense when transporting home from the grocery store.
> I.e. a loaf is enough bread for 4 people for a couple days,
I clearly eat a lot more bread than you :) I eat two or three (smallish) loaves a week for just me (often toast+peanut butter for breakfast, sandwich of some variety for lunch, and maybe another slice at some point for a snack)
When you live in a walkable area your grocery bags become smaller and your trips more frequent. You go to smaller neighborhood markets for your day to day things like milk, meat, and produce. You get dry goods a little at a time during your other more frequent trips.
You make bus trips to get to work or do stuff anyway so it’s just a stop on your way home, not a big deal.
Grocery delivery has been a great help, and I think probably makes more sense in general, but definitely so in cities/downtowns.
Still, I can get most, if not all, shopping for one done with a backpack and two feet. I don’t think it would be that different with a small family, and you can reasonably recruit family members to help. Growing up, my mom would take me shopping and I was always desperate to help (or “help” in the case of wanting to push the carriage). I think most kids at least start out this way and would be happy to carry a few bags assuming the journey isn’t too arduous, and it will make them healthier than spending that time with the PlayStation.
For me, the closest retail of any value is right around 3 miles each way. Not a convenient walk if wanting to buy more than a backpack's worth. I picked up an eBike, and now I can get there just as fast as if I had a car. I tried the grocery delivery for awhile. It was great at first until they all switched to Instacart, and now it's more expensive and less quality service. This was the main factor in deciding on getting an eBike to just stop using Instacart.
I admit that your point is valid in the scope of modern living. I do think this is reflective of some of what has been lost in the last century, however. With greater routine access to artisans, shops and grocers, the ability to obtain fresher, healthier ingredients in smaller quantities more frequently is a natural consequence. The sort of diets and lifestyles that we (American culture specifically) still sort of fetishizes through Food Network, A&E, and YouTube food entertainment series are enabled through the greater availability and access to Main Street shops that cater to narrower markets like bakers, delicatessens, butchers, farmers' markets, and general stores. Granted this isn't automatically a panacea, and may not necessarily scale to modern populaces effectively, but I am of the opinion that it's a component of a healthier and more sustainable way of living in areas that could support it.
I've always been able to buy groceries for a whole family while walking (back when going to a supermarket was still normal), what exactly do you see as the major roadblock for something like that? Bring bags or maybe a (large) backpack and some packing skills, you will be fine. You can even take one of those bag on wheels type things if you cannot or will not carry heavy weights - I certainly have if I knew I needed a lot of drinks for a party or something similar.
Getting your groceries delivered is quite normal here in NL. We like to order larger quantities of things in cans or dry stuff like legumes delivered, then still go to the neighborhood supermarket for fresh produce, either on foot or by bike.
I never owned a car and always saw it as a tremendous waste of money. But it can be handy sometimes and in such occasions i use car sharing services which have a similar level it convenience: i can reach 2 cars on foot and two more by bike within 5-7 minutes and while i need to reserve upfront, 99% of the time i decide i need one there will be one available. Worst case is i have to ride my bike a little further.
This is why it's so nice to have supermarkets at walking or at least short cycling distance from where people live. You don't need to get groceries for a week at a time then.
To minimize the size of the driveway at my house, but provide overflow parking, I decided to try "grasscrete". Grasscrete is essentially concrete blocks with holes in them so the grass can grow through. The concrete will support cars so they don't sink into the muck. After a while, enough grass grows through it to hide the whole thing and it looks like more lawn instead of more concrete.
I did something similar for my driveway, using some thin plastic honeycomb-shaped pavers in which I put dirt and grass seed. Unfortunately, for car traffic, they still needed a strong support underneath: crushed rock stabilized with concrete. This is not very permeable for either water or roots, so the grass is limited to the little dirt inside those honeycombs. That dirt dries out very fast too, so I have to water a lot in the summer.
It does look much better and is feels much cooler than pavement though.
Thank you for bringing this up. I didn't realize that an option like this existed; and I'll be considering it the next time I have to redo a parking area.
This is a curious idea, I’m wondering how that holds up since it would retain so much water. In cold areas, any water caught in the gaps would break up the concrete when it gets cold enough to ice over.
Right. They're put down like paving stones are. How much support they need underneath depends on the weight put on it, and the frequency of use. Mine is used for occasional parking of random cars, which isn't hard on the blocks.
I personally think that it's OK to view human development as separate from nature. I don't really care if the land within city limits is polluted or overexploited, so long as it's just the that city and the area outside of it is well preserved, and the city doesn't sprawl out like they do in the USA (suburbs...). Ultra dense city centers like Hong Kong are far more preferable to preserving the environment to sparse, but enormous settlements like Los Angeles, which are far more wasteful and harmful to the environment per-capita. While I agree it would be nice to have greener cities as a resident of a major city (Tokyo), it's not a requirement for a high quality of urban life, nor is it a requirement for preserving the environment.
I agree. I am also concerned about the way surbanism, and sprawl is conflated with being "eco-friendly", when it's the exact opposite: much more per-capita waste associated with suburban living then ultra-dense urban space.
I can't fathom how people grow up in cities with no access to nature, (the only nature available is hyper populated parks with dogshit and cigarette butts routinely cleaned up when the sanitation workers comb over the grounds). When the mind is developing, to have no access to real nature outside of cities,... how does it affect the mind, adhd, anxiety etc... seems like a no brainer to design heavy nature exposure into the cities of the future
> the only nature available is hyper populated parks with dogshit and cigarette butts
wow, that's a hyper negative view of cities. am I spoiled by knowing that there are large "parks" around me, ranging from 200 acres to 1300+ acres that are within walking or bus distance? hardly the dogshit and cigarette butt filled parks that some others are describing.
I grew up in SE Utah and have lived in DC/Maryland for some years of my adult life. To people like me, the 1300 acre parks a a very far cry from "nature". Probably just that perspective.
I grew up in the Midwest, experienced a lot of great nature and hiking around the US and Asia, but live in Tokyo and enjoy big cities. From my perspective—if the city is clean and quiet (my Apple watch says 95% of my neighborhood has an ambient noise level of 35dB, and I live near a popular central Tokyo station), and has enough nice parks near me (definitely don't need anywhere close to 1300 acres for that), that does the job—I don't feel any need whatsoever to live in immediate proximity to amazing natural amenities, and when I do go to them, a couple days is more than I need.
Personally I think that Americans just don't realize that it's not cities that suck, it's American cities that suck. Plenty of pleasant cities to live in in the world.
> Personally I think that Americans just don't realize that it's not cities that suck, it's American cities that suck. Plenty of pleasant cities to live in in the world.
The YouTube channel "Not just bikes" talks about this. In the USA, it is commonly seen that there are only two possible configurations for human settlements: sprawling suburbs, or Manhattan-style high-density towers. The medium-density style of city common across a lot of Europe and Asia is not very well known in the USA and Canada outside of a select few older cities which developed to a large enough size before the automobile took over.
I don't think that's negative at all. I find it pretty accurate. Cities are so desperate for parks, that they call concrete paved areas named as parks with a minimum amount of green. Parks !== nature. If your only experience with nature is a city park, then you haven't really experienced nature.
i've been to many cites, and many suburbs. in my city, we have suburbs that are full of trees and parks. i've even seen a kangaroo and a koala nesar the city.
then we in the same city have these car bound arid wastelands. both are true. australia and america have cities like this, all their cities have this wasteland.
travelling in europe, you see the medium cities. many trams, bike lanes and trains to get between the wastelands which still exist and the nice parks in the nice places. the european model ( i say this as a cyclist) is so much preferable.
> I can't fathom how people grow up in cities with no access to nature,
They don't, in general. compared to suburban or even heavily utilized rural areas. Neither farms nor manicured suburban parks are any more nature than cities are.
And cities can be as proximate to natural preserves as anything else can be.
If you don't mean actual nature, just green outdoor spaces, cities often incorporate and provide access to them.
Cities are great for preserving nature because the alternative is suburban sprawl. However, we definitely need greener cities and better car-free access to nature. Good train links with local buses are a proven solution.
Sort of... ultimately you can't provide access to nature and destroy nature. However, policy in most developed countries is exactly this. I am advocating a balanced approach where people have access to nature in a way that is less damaging.
I agree, and I think part of the answer is to have access to unmanaged (or very lightly managed) land. For a kid, a wildflower meadow is a thing of wonder. Related, how many US states have a "right to roam" ?
I don't think right to roam is encoded in law like it is in some European countries but it was common behavior in the 1970s growing up. Much less so in the 21st century.
Why oh why has it become some sort of a religion to deny yourself the comfort of having your own private space? The joy of taking care of your own garden. The discipline of maintaining your roof, driveway and a million other small things. The peacefulness of not hearing your neighbors talk when you are trying to fall asleep...
Humanity has found a way to split atom, to defeat the plague, to send people to the Moon, and now we cheerfully celebrate turning ourselves into caged animals.
I just don't get it, really. We have the smarts and the technology to make comfortable living eco-friendly. We see the birth rates decline, implying that people's satisfaction with their life quality is not worth sharing it with the next generation. And we stubbornly do everything we can to lower it further.
For common sense's sake, please look at the big picture. Your guilt is someone else's profit margin. You are being taught to hate yourself because this way you will settle for a lower salary and won't have a family to distract you from your work. Please, don't get yourself manipulated.
There's plenty of objective, and subjective reasons why people would prefer higher-density living. Higher density means easy access to higher-quality resourcs like jobs, diversity, jobs, public transportation, restaurants/other amenities; which just can't be achieved with low-density occupancy. Finally, it's important to recognize how harmful sprawl is to the environment. The high-occupancy dwellers are using a fraction of energy a typical surbanite is.
Well, it would work if the same rules applied to everyone.
But instead, we have a ruling class that owns the companies, lives in detached houses in gated communities, has multiple cars, flies first class to vacations. And we have the serfs working "jobs" in these companies, treated like shit by egomaniac bosses, and are constantly told to adopt the continuously lowering living standard in the name of rather abstract and unquantifiable goals. That also, coincidentally, prevents them from competing with the ruling class. Am I really the only one seeing massive hypocrisy here?
> I also think America has a lot of room for adding back walkable mixed-use neighborhoods
Euclid v Ambler was the wellspring of bad urban planning and a watershed of horrific outcomes. We need to return to people owning the property they own, and developing (and redeveloping) it in any way that doesn't hurt or endanger other people.
In Florida a new subdivision was put in that kept all the live oaks, used permeable paving stones for the road and the landscaping used all local plants, replicating the original ecosystem. The difference was amazing and quite beautiful. Yes, it was a fancier, more expensive subdivision but not so much so that the design was unfeasible to be replicated elsewhere. From the beginning it was a neighborhood in the woods, not some sterile, paved over monstrosity.
>I don't think it makes sense to see human settlements as separate from nature. I think of nature as the fabric within which such configurations occur.
For sure we are not. If we put a bubble(mars dome) around Toronto. Everyone dies in a very short period of time. Nature outside of Toronto is required for Toronto to survive. The more you push nature away by urban sprawl, the worse it becomes for the people living there.
>It isn't inevitable that human development must be a concrete jungle. You can include plants, permeable surfaces, etc in your plans so people can live more lightly and less intrusively on the land.
A requirement in the long run. I suppose my example of Toronto is a bad one because of the giant boreal forest to the north is mitigating the problem. Similarly oceanic cities like NYC are also mitigated.
>I also think America has a lot of room for adding back walkable mixed-use neighborhoods where at least some people can live, work and shop in the same neighborhood.
I understand but I doubt it'll happen.
>Studies suggest this leads to greater wealth in such neighborhoods (such as more sales) and we know vehicle traffic is a significant burden wrt human-caused climate change.
Let's not forget such a huge cost to society. We have how much debt and capital tied up in transportation which the majority of the time sits idle in a driveway? Let's not forget how transportation is one of our only high energy sinks. You can charge your phone off a wall outlet in 30 minutes but it takes days to charge a car off the same outlet.
The urban sprawl and death of small towns is because the cost of energy became so high and you cant compete. Naturally influencing why politicians then set policy to intentionally harm small towns.
I agree with all your points - but one thing I think about is: how do we fix what we have today? How do you fix the concrete jungles that most cities are today in the US. Or is it inevitable that more concrete will just be poured over time until some major natural disaster allows for a reset?
The Netherlands has reversed course from a car-centric culture to a more pedestrian- and bike-friendly culture. They did that very intentionally. As far as I can tell, there is no magic about it being The Netherlands -- except possibly the influence on the culture of the polder.
From what I gather, protecting the polder so everyone survives is so important that it has, at times, required people at war to cooperate in keeping the water out.
Today, globally, everyone knows we need solutions here or we are all doomed. We can stop quibbling about what various factions want for personal gain and start seeking answers that help some group live lighter on the land so we all benefit.
Rinse and repeat.
Start with low-hanging fruit. As that gets done, other things will become more reachable.
I think the Netherlands is still one of the more car-centric cultures in Europe though. And I've lived in several countries. Perhaps the inner cities aren't, but outside of them it's very hard to do without a car.
In many small villages/towns there is only a bus service during peak hours now. When I visit it's really a royal pain (and taxies are unaffordable as an alternative). And when you work in the Netherlands you're usually required to work nationwide which means countless hours in the car visiting clients. Public transport takes several times as long as car travel.
I really hated it when I worked there (I'm from there as you might have guessed). All these hours driving in frantic traffic were so stressful. I work in Barcelona now where public transport is much better (rural is still worse than inner-city but both are much better than the Netherlands' services). It's the first place I've lived where I genuinely don't need a car, it would only be a burden to me. Time between metros is counted in seconds and the network is so big. As well as that there's buses and trams and regional trains passing through that can be used to hop from one side of the city to the other.
The only thing that's genuinely better in the Netherlands is the bike lane network IMO :) That really is amazing. But I just don't see the feasibility of doing without a car completely there.
> I work in Barcelona now where public transport is much better...
Barcelona is one of the most stressful, if not the most stressful city, to use public transport in in Europe. If anything it should serve as an example for other cities as to what to not do. Public transports are full of thieves and scammers. It is simply beyond belief. It is known that if you ever dare to retaliate when you catch people stealing you, it can quickly degenerate very badly... For you.
I don't want to hear the typical: "If you look like a local and know what not to do, you'll be fine". I want public transports to be very safe otherwise I won't use them.
Several people mentioned Tokyo already: I spent close to a year there. Now that is a city with working and safe public transports.
Yes Barcelona has a big problem with pickpockets indeed. This is more of a legal issue: any theft of 400 euro or less is punishable by a fine only even if it's the 4000th time.
Because of this there's gangs of professional pickpockets. But they're trained to avoid conflict. Because any violence will incur serious charges. I've grabbed one once and pushed him against a wall when I felt him reaching for my phone and he literally was passive and relaxed. Just dropped the phone and strolled off. No way someone behaves like that unless they have trained it.
So yes they're an absolute plague but the risk of violence is low. And the cause does not have much to do with public transport (it happens on the street too) but with ignorant lawmakers :)
> Public transports are full of thieves and scammers
This is true in the overwhelming majority of public transport around the world.
> Several people mentioned Tokyo
Yes, Japan is one of the safest nations in this regard. That's cool, but definitely not achievable everywhere because it is due to a lot of environmental factors (like the culture and the incredible conviction rates).
I think your argument only strengthens mine. It sounds like you are saying "The Netherlands was kind of the America of Europe in terms of being crazy car-centric and they sucked so much worse than they do currently."
To which I say "So you're telling me if they can become the global poster child for doing this better, anyone can do this better -- even the US."
Well, I don't know how much they suck now as I've left 10 years ago, but I know pre-corona there were many cases of the largest traffic jams ever reported in the news, almost weekly :)
When I was there these numbers were much lower despite the A2 being a horrible ever-changing construction site. And it was already so frustrating I once broke my teeth just from grinding it :(
At the same time even the frequent train routes were apparently really overcrowded. Everything is different now with Corona of course but that's worldwide.
It also helps that the country is old enough to have developed before the automobile. Kinda hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube when you've designed entire cities around support the automobile.
>It also helps that the country is old enough to have developed before the automobile. Kinda hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube when you've designed entire cities around support the automobile.
I think this is a misconception for sure - the netherlands used to have much more car-oriented development but saw the issues with it and started retrofitting their built environments.
The same goes for the U.S in reverse, actually, with a lot of cities not having been designed with the car in mind and then subsequently having been demolished and retrofitted for the car. The transition is totally possible to do in both directions.
> how do we fix what we have today? How do you fix the concrete jungles that most cities are today in the US.
Elbow grease. Break the concrete and plant shit, pay people to maintain these things every once in a while. I mean most amenity planting is low maintenance and only needs looking after once or twice a year to avoid it growing wild.
The US has the solutions already - a lot of money, and a lot of people looking for a steady job. All it takes is for people to stop hoarding said money and Decide to solve the issue.
Somerville, Massachusetts had a large Italian population a generation or two back and it seems damn near all of them considered "making it" covering every square inch of their land with concrete. Then putting up a 2 foot high brick wall topped with a few-feet-tall wrought iron fence.
The city has been working to undo it by providing financial incentives for removal, and partnering with an informal group of volunteers to make it cheap to do. They put out a call for public volunteers to have a sort of reverse-barn-raising. A big bunch of people show up and help rip apart and load up the concrete.
Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood in Boston, used to have a group of volunteers that worked with local nurseries to plant a tree and take care of the initial critical care (watering regularly) for free. All you had to do was email them, and then point when the crew showed up.
How do you think extended family housing complexes fit into this story? It's a norm in many cultures and for much or human history but an oddity in the US. Of course you can use as loose a definition of family as you like.
I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about that though I would like to figure out where that fits.
Our current housing crisis is rooted in building housing designed for our standard nuclear family with a breadwinner father, homemaker mother and 2.5 minor kids. This became our standard post-WW2 with the birth of the suburbs and was avidly embraced because it worked to solve our housing crisis at that time.
That was never the majority of the US population but it was a larger percentage of the population than it is currently and there were other housing options available if you were single. We have torn down a million SROs and largely eliminated the practice of boarding houses. Now we see such things as aimed at homeless people who can't make their lives work. At one time, that was normal housing for normal people.
We have a higher percentage of households with one to three people and we mostly don't build housing for such households. This has driven an interest in alternatives like Tiny Homes, RV living and trailer courts.
We really need to focus on building Missing Middle Housing and SROs. That would include duplexes which are a potential sensible option for living with extended family in some cases.
Agreed - a beautiful part of living in Tokyo is that if you're a single young person, you can rent a <$500/mo, 20m2 or smaller apartment in the heart of the city; and if you need more house you can rent/buy more house. People typically live in small living spaces, so public spaces become that much more vibrant, since people are mostly out of the home. The USA has next to no choice for those sorts of tradeoffs.
I don't think that's all that important. There has been a general trend for a long time globally towards people leaving rural areas and moving to cities and suburbs. It is sometime in the past thirty years that I heard the announcement that global populations officially passed the fifty percent mark for human populations inhabiting cities more than rural areas for the first time in human history.
Suburbs got thrown up at breathtaking speed in part because it was greenfield development, which lowered some barriers to development. There is some saying about "Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick two."
At the time that they were carpeting the US at high speed, they were seen as good, cheap and fast. We are now seeing what the myriad hidden costs were, from cutting out lower income people to forcing people to be dependent on cars to cutting out people of color and also having environmental costs that were not factored in at the time.
The birth of the suburb predates the environmental movement.
The birth of the suburb is generally traced to Levittown in the late 1940s-early 1950s. The environmental movement is generally traced to the publication of a book called Silent Spring in 1962.
For continental US, I believe it was around the 1920's[0] while globally, yes it wasn't until 2007 or thereabouts. From an admittedly superficial review, it has been Africa, India and perhaps(?) China that have been undergoing the most urbanization over the last 100 years. Then again, perhaps it's not urbanization per se, maybe it's more total population size. Homeostasis will find a balance point (if one exists).
You have a very good point. Cars give people a lot of personal autonomy.
Yes, cities could be built with better/smarter public transport options, but even Londoners and New Yorkers (two cities with very good public transport) will say they need cars from time to time. And I suspect pre-COVID-level jam-packed public transport will find few takers in a post-COVID world.
Outside cities, even in suburban areas, the need for cars is a no-brainer.
But I'd still like to know how the parent poster manages.
Living without a car is a privilege of those who live in cities or some suburbs. I've never actually seen real plans or ideas to extend this stuff to the country side. Mostly just folks shrugging their shoulders and hoping that end of the problem will go away.
Whatthewhat? Such a privilege postion to be able to say that. Owning a car is a luxury that not all can afford. The fact that you think living without a car is a privilege shows how backwards we've gotten.
Okay -- but tell that to the people living within the system today.
I'm from a smaller American city with abysmal public transportation. Cars are how you get to work, end of sentence. They are required for life.
Yes, the city should be doing more to make that better. Yes, the system is backwards. But the woman driving to work in a beat-up 2009 Civic that she bought for $1500 certainly doesn't feel luxurious or privileged.
In many places in America, the ability to live without a car implies 1) the ability to work from home 2) a greater amount of time to devote to travel 3) the ability to have someone else take care of "car-required" things 4) the ability to get access to a car if you really need one.
You can see where I'm going with this. Privilege is a factor of the system, and that system is a car-based one for most people.
>In many places in America, the ability to live without a car implies
These are not necessarily true. 1)There are plenty of people that have low paying jobs that barely allows for food/rent, so a car+insurance is just out of the question. 2)I don't know what not having a car has to do with devoting to travel. If you can't afford a car, how are they going to afford traveling? 3) again, just not true for a large number of people. 4)Not sure what you are implying here. Stealing a car?
It really sounds like you're not appreciating the situation of very low income situations.
> It really sounds like you're not appreciating the situation of very low income situations.
There are low income folks in both cities and the countryside. Mass transit will mostly serve the ones in the city. I gave France as an example because their situation is likely what will happen here with similarly proposed taxes. It's not really a revolutionary thought to try to provide for the poor. What we end up having to deal with is people who only want to solve problems for themselves. Finding a solution that works for both people in the city and people in the countryside is imperative.
Agreed, it's not like transit riders have to pay tens of thousands of dollars up front + hundreds more every month to ride the train or bus, for a minimum wage job in an expensive city that they felt compelled to move to because their hometown was economically (and culturally) unproductive. The only reason suburbs and towns require cars is because they're designed extraordinarily poorly, for the interests of car/oil corporations, with their residents constantly demanding the government to subsidize their incredibly wasteful lifestyles.
Yes. What folks that champion less cars often include as an incentive is a punishment for using cars. That punishment would likely be a tax that would disproportionately affect folks in the countryside, so any benefits made for cities would need to scale there as well. The total amount of cars is a red herring, it's the importance of vehicles. The story of what happened in France was very telling.
That doesn't necessarily follow, though. Congestion pricing, for example, can penalise car use where it's causing the problems like traffic and where alternatives exist (assuming good public transport, cycling infrastructure, etc., which you need to make any of this work), but not where it's less avoidable and not causing the same kind of issues and alternatives aren't there, like in the countryside.
That is my point. Having the right taxes and the right stop gaps that scale is the imperative. The problem is that you're among a crowd (as am I) who, some portion of, just want to see rural areas fail. As a result, I do my part in reminding them who this will impact. As another commenter so gleefully put it, they're "economically and culturally unproductive". It's not my first time reading disgusting rhetoric like that when people talking about these kinds of solutions get asked how they plan on dealing with the rest of America.
Do people within the country side travel to cities often? In any case, trains still exist and if that doesn't work, the interstate roads probably aren't going away because trucks still need to make trips.
It's fine for people to also work on that but the reality is that our car-centric design means seniors, handicapped people, minors too young to drive and poor people are still sidelined unnecessarily. As we live longer and continue to actively create a world that unnecessarily hampers our elderly, we actively flush resources down the drain unnecessarily.
We cut people out of being productive members of society and turn them into a burden that has to be tended to and we actively interfere with them maintaining their physical mobility and ability to participate and contribute.
I'm handicapped. I live without a car because I can't drive. Walking has helped rehabilitate my defective body. America being so car-centric unnecessarily interferes with people like me making an adequate living and making their lives work and turns us into a burden on society when we don't have to be.
I'm not remotely the only one negatively impacted by our general lack of walkable mixed-use development, but I'm reluctant to start talking about other people I know who may not want their stories and their opinions being publicized.
I don't think it makes sense to see human settlements as separate from nature. I think of nature as the fabric within which such configurations occur.
It isn't inevitable that human development must be a concrete jungle. You can include plants, permeable surfaces, etc in your plans so people can live more lightly and less intrusively on the land.
I also think America has a lot of room for adding back walkable mixed-use neighborhoods where at least some people can live, work and shop in the same neighborhood. Or at least live and shop if they are retirees, teens, or similar groups who aren't seeking a job or who already work at home or from home in some capacity.
Studies suggest this leads to greater wealth in such neighborhoods (such as more sales) and we know vehicle traffic is a significant burden wrt human-caused climate change. Making it possible to skip the long commute makes for a better quality of life and less pollution adding to this issue.
We currently frame this issue as a painful choice between short-term gratification and current high quality of life with a long-term cost of global disaster versus short-term sacrifice for slim hope of assuaging our guilt with no guarantee of real improvement in the future. I don't think that's necessary.
I've lived without a car in the US for more than a decade. I think you can live that way and live well. I think we can design and build a world that provides a high quality of life for people and doesn't destroy the environment in the process.