I am glad there is a growing enthusiasm for walkable cities in the US. It's something I've become very passionate about lately.
For those that are interested in learning more about the topic, I highly highly recommend the City Nerd youtube channel, https://www.youtube.com/@CityNerd.
I find a lot of arguments for for walkability tend to be emotional or needlessly hostile towards car owners. City Nerd takes a much more analytical approach and shares the data he uses for his videos, I think that's something most of HackerNews can appreciate.
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 issue, but it is very hard to find walkability communities online that aren't using terms like "car-brain". I know that these terms are targeted at a certain type of car owner, but without being familiar with the car-free community this is not always clear and can be a turn-off to car-owners who may be curious about learning more.
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.
Are they hostile to car owners or is it the car dependency enforced via city planning / infrastructure? I almost always see the latter but hear the former as criticism which is laughable.
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 issue, but it is very hard to find walkability communities online that aren't using terms like "car-brain". I know that these terms are targeted at a certain type of car owner, but without being familiar with the car-free community this is not always clear and can be a turn-off to car-owners who may be curious about learning more.
Why do you feel better when you go to Europe, or even to Disneyland? Humans crave walkable neighborhoods. American and Canadian infrastructure is the main reason we have so many mental health problems.
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.
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.
In the US, you'll empty your bank account and still get terrible service - you've spent money but received terrible care. Maybe things change if you can afford your own full-time doctor for 500k / year. Canada ranks above the US in every healthcare measure.
How/where? Is this actually a 'solid insurance is hard to get problem'? Neither myself or family (extended included) have experienced problems and we certainly don't have private doctors.
The whole 'american healthcare bad/unaffordable' argument is something that I hear quite a bit on the internet, but pretty much never do in real life.
> The whole 'american healthcare bad/unaffordable' argument is something that I hear quite a bit on the internet, but pretty much never do in real life.
What bubble are you in? For some of us, we make enough money that paying 400/month for insurance while our employer does the same isn't a big deal. For us software engineers, it's no big deal. For the 50% of people making under 60k a year, that's a large chunk of their income.
I hear it constantly from friends nationwide (I have a very large extended circle for a few reasons), media, and my wife, who is a healthcare worker and deals with insurance constantly (as does anyone in healthcare in the US) or my mother (also in healthcare). And of course, we have lots of friends who are in healthcare. And I hear it from my parents, who, as aging people, have more healthcare needs. Your insurance company gets to delay or prevent access to prescriptions, surgeries, or physical therapy as long as they desire.
I'm in Philadelphia, which is one of the biggest cities in the US and where healthcare makes up a much larger than usual portion of our local economy [0]. You can find numerous other sources to support this, Philly is a huge biomedical / healthcare hub. It's almost like being in LA for film or SF for tech.
Where insurance really starts to suck is if you and your healthcare providers think you need care, but the insurance company says no. My wife experiences rejections from her patient's insurance companies daily. Happens with Medicare too.
> How/where? Is this actually a 'solid insurance is hard to get problem'?
Insurance can be contingent on different things:
> Where can I receive care?
> If a provider is not in a plan’s network, the insurance company may not pay for the service(s) provided or may pay a smaller portion than it would for in-network care. This means the enrollee who goes outside of the network for care may be required to pay a much higher share of the cost. This is an important concept to understand, especially if you are not originally from the local Stanford area.
Well thankfully in my case, cancer treatment in Canada has been both free and quite competent. But for lesser things, you might linger for an intolerable amount of time waiting for care.
I recall getting good, quick care when I worked in the US and had a good HMO.
I don't think it's hard to make this claim hold up at all.
Have you looked at local differences apart from comparing HUGE countries with each other; one of which has an extremely low population density? Since you are mentioning walkable "very similar" infrastructure, how do you quantidy actual walkability?
It takes a single search to find many different studies and meta-studies about correlations between noise, air pollution and mental illness, cardiovascular health, life expectancy and others.
I encourage you to look for studies about a metropolitan area near you:
Car traffic is not harmless. Noise is not harmless.
It's just that those who contribute the most to pollution anr noise usually don't experience it every day for hours on end, or even during their sleep.
If you prefer esoteric subjects to obvious ones, I'd recommend this study:
Walkability is good for physical health. Walking is a light exercise. Physical health improves mental health. But I'm not sure if walkability directly improves mental health.
This 1000%. I live in Seattle and I was lucky enough to find a 30min walkable commute to work but holy hell it is unbelievably stressful. Crazy drivers not respecting pedestrians, super loud trucks everywhere, constant road rage with blaring horns, sketchy looking sidewalks.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that I'm pretty sure I have hearing loss from walking next to trucks that make an unbelievable amount of noise. Garbage trucks are the worst offenders in my experience.
It's definitely gotten to the point where I have to find alternative routes from the main streets for my own safety.
And isn't Seattle supposed to be one of the most walkable cities in the US?
I'm not a fan of the condescending tone of a lot of NotJustBikes' videos, but he made a solid piece about the sheer sound impact of vehicles in cities:
Whereabouts are you? I remember in 2008 I visited and it seemed like the whole continent stank of diesel but it's much better now, or my sense of smell has weakened. I'm in the Netherlands and there's not too many cars on the road compared to many other places, though.
Yeah, visited a few smaller cities in Spain and they were all very nice and walkable, at least in the areas I was at. Made me kinda sad to think about how we miss the mark on this.
Feels like NYC is the only place, and it's great, just expensive to live in.
> Feels like NYC is the only place, and it's great, just expensive to live in.
There's actually a lot of walkable areas of many American cities or alternatively smaller rural towns. Generally, the older the city the easier these neighborhoods are to find. even LA has walkable neighborhoods (even though you'll still need a car to get around in general). But yes... expensive.
Boston and San Francisco are walkable, too, but on a much smaller scale. There are small cities, mainly in the eastern US that are walkable.
I hope the rising popularity of e-bikes makes some lower density cities more navigable without a car. Pretty much all "stroads" should be converted to 2 car lanes and a turning lane in the middle, which would leave room for protected bike lanes.
Modern America reserves walkability for college campuses (which explains some of the nostalgia that attaches to them); golf courses and shopping malls -- which may explain part of their popularity.
Great points here. Walkability is the main reason people enjoy their college experience so much. Imagine having to drive from your dorm, to class, then to hang out with friends, then back. It would be a nightmare. Unfortunately, this is the everyday experience for most Americans.
Actually, American shopping malls are a great example of UNwalkability, because they are usually out in the middle of nowhere with respect to the closest population center, mostly to fit giant parking lots but also because American Malls were a weird result of a certain retail and real estate situation.
In America, "going to the mall" is almost always a trip you get into your car for, even if you live in a big city! You can't just drop in to get something as you walk around.
But what I'm saying is: they're privatizing and selling walkability, as long as you get inside them. So walkability is no longer part of the commons. Agree with you that the parking lots contribute to sprawl, and in general v sad about it.
Expected a study, got an ad. Literally the "above-the-fold" piece is an ad to buy a MAWA hat and then a beg for a documentary that isn't yet produced. Ugh.
It's an honourable goal - but the page needs to tell us why you're the right person to make this documentary!
How do you plan on proving your hypothesis? What evidence do you have to support it? Who have you spoken to who agrees and can support - who disagrees? What will the viewer learn from your documentary that they will not from elsewhere? Is it a documentary that the viewer will get excited about to see? If I disagree with you completely, might I watch it and have my mind changed? - These are questions I would want answered from such a site.
I'm afraid the website looks more like a political campaign, collecting cash from those who agree with you. Or a merch store with a catchy slogan.
Honestly I wish you well, I've supported indie docs before - these are just my first impressions from this site.
That's a nice goal, but the site doesn't deliver the promise of the headline. You don't cite a single study or back up that headline on the site. The site title doesn't match the headline.
It's spammy to bait-and-switch with a submission that says one thing and then takes me to a page that tries to sell me a hat and make a donation - and utterly fails to provide any substance to back up the claim.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to include studies and useful facts on the website. Although it's more of a landing page from social media than an info destination
There are other factors which contribute more to mental health but this is like justifying what the authors want using mental health as a reason. Making cities more walkable would be better for other reason but I doubt if mental health would significantly increase if we make cities more walkable. San Francisco is very much walkable but has highest mental health issues.
What would you like to see on the site? The main purpose is to raise funds for the walkability doc. The doc will cover why the US became car-centric (corporate lobbying, etc), benefits of walkable infrastructure and it will compare US cities to walkable Euro cities.
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":
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).
Walkable communities would get people actually talking to each other, for a start - just from the serendipitous encounters with other people irl (like what happens in Europe).
The main reason I like walking is just to feel like I am among people, even if I am not actively interacting with them. In the Bay area, my favorite place used to be the airport, because that's the only place I could see people other than my coworkers.
And this may just be me but I feel that the reason I liked being among people is because it creates the illusion of possibilities. Possibilities of friendships, a date, an interesting person, a job opportunity etc. This was reaffirmed when I chatted with utter strangers for hours at the airport.
> People who live on heavily trafficked streets, which cater mostly to motorists, count on average about one friend. People who live on walkable streets, however, count three—and twice as many acquaintances, to boot. If your neighbors are within walking distance, and it’s easy for you to walk, it’s much more likely that you’ll bump into them, strike up a conversation, get to know them a little.
In my neighborhood I can walk, bike, or take the public transit almost anywhere I need to go (20 min bike ride to my office). There are shops, restaurants, a nice movie theater nearby. I live in a rowhouse surrounded mostly by other rowhouses and 2-3 family buildings, so I do know most of my neighbors. I grew up in a suburb and wouldn't go back for anything.
I am fully on-board with walkable cities, it's something I feel very strongly about. This link, however, is not to an article supporting the lofty claim of the title (currently "Lack of Walkability in the US is destroying mental health"), but rather to a shop where you can buy red Trump-style "Make America Walkable Again" hats.... for what end exactly? Not clear. The site is collecting donations, but they don't say what they plan to do with them. All of this smells very fishy. (As an aside, I'd guess the number of US residents who support walkable cities AND who are willing to wear a hat that is designed to be mistaken at first glance for one supporting the former president is very small.)
If you're interested in a more informative discussion of city design and its effect on lived experience, I recommend Not Just Bikes [1].
If you want to make a documentary, I would like to know why your documentary will be better than what is already available, such as Not Just Bikes, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, or any other prior art.
Do you already have an agreement to sell it for a big streaming service, or is that merely your aspiration? If you've already sold it, why do you need additional money? If you haven't already sold it, then you shouldn't speak about it as if doing so were a certainty.
Regardless, you still haven't answered my question. Why is making a multi-year, feature-length documentary better than a series of videos on YouTube? Why do you think that your chosen medium will be more effective or persuasive than previous works? In other words, why do you think you deserve donations?
The closest I've come to slipping back into clinical depression is when I moved home for a few months to KS where the weather is brutalizing and on top of it, they live in the "country" where civilization is 20 minutes away.
One of my family members is clearly desperate for social outlets. And they thrive and gush over anywhere they travel to that inevitably is walkable and has tangible community.
It's easy to find US cities with plenty of sidewalks that are hideously unwalkable, as well as many streets in Japan with no sidewalks that are still highly walkable.
Unless there are separate streets for pedestrians (which is basically non existent in US most of the time), not sure how you can have any city walkable without sidewalks.
Mainly by making motorists responsible for killing pedestrians. Instead, in America you mostly don't even get fined for running over a pedestrian, as "it's just an unfortunate accident", even when you have chosen to purchase a vehicle that makes it harder to safely navigate around pedestrians.
Consider: Do other countries even have the concept of "Jaywalking", which was explicitly an attempt by vehicle manufacturers to blame pedestrian deaths on pedestrians.
I'm not talking about all streets in a given city obviously. Specifically in Japan, narrow streets with no sidewalks are omnipresent in neighborhoods, and they're still far more walkable than a typical US neighborhood street with sidewalks.
Yes, that definitely helps. It's a chicken and egg situation though. If the roads are wide then of course many will buy huge cars, and then urban planners feel they have to accommodate those with wider roads, etc.
Here's a meta analysis[1] from 2012 showing that walking has a strong positive effect on depression. Here's one showing that biking and walking for commuting were associated with improved physical/mental health[2]. Here's a newer study showing benefits to the elderly from walking in urban green spaces[3].
These studies just shows that exercise improves mental health. I doubt anyone disputes that. The question is — are there benefits from walking directly, benefits that you can't get by say going to the gym. The claim of urban density advocates is that just being around thousands of strangers improves mental health.
Walking is basically free, and if you live in a walkable place trivial to build into a daily routine. Even if you exercise regularly but are otherwise sedentary you'll have improved outcomes from adding some walking. These seem to me to be obvious claims.
> just being around thousands of strangers
The nit I would pick here is that you aren't around thousands of strangers per se, but a large number of acquaintances in addition to those strangers. I see neighbors, local business owners, and the folks that work at shops and cafes nearby every time I leave my house in the city. I'm on a first name basis with many of them and we greet each other on the street. If I drove places I would miss out on the exercise and those small social interactions.
I am a massive hermit. I still benefit from living right in our city, because now instead of getting in my car to go get takeout, I walk from my apartment to the restaurant to get takeout. This is regular exercise I never had before.
Sure, I'm not out clubbing every night, but I am still better off in a walkable environment than I was before.
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.
You aren't going to see meaningfully different air pollution levels in micro areas most of the time unless there's something like a highway or large source of smoke. If you look at AQI measurements around NYC they're all within about 10 points, excluding 1 sensor that's right by a huge bus depot, and it's 20 points higher than the minimum, but maybe 10-15 above the average.
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.
Lack of walkability in the US is destroying mental health…and that is great for for health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, as well “mental-health” tech entrepreneurs and ChatGPT.
And the disabled, the elderly and the pregnant can just go sign up for MAID. I lived a decade in both NYC and LA and my quality of life, at a lower cost, was vastly better in LA, where I had to drive almost everywhere. People who want to live in restricted zones, like 15 minute cities where cars are banned and all options are limited, should certainly be free to do so. But these schemes are detrimental to the majority of the population.
This is not surprising in a capitalistic first-world country and always happens when everything around you is designed for you to always drive somewhere.
It's up to each individual person to decide how or if they want to spend time outdoors, be it a run, walk, or a bike ride.
The irony of your comment is American infrastructure in 2023 favors cars is less capitalistic and more corporate lobbying and the government siding with the car industry.
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, people that could still walk and bike to more-than-nothing and would be able to interact with extended family and cousins more frequently than just the holiday mega-travel. So really its only the children of baby boomers and their children that have exhibited the full force of the mental health and social development impacts of the extremely isolating environment.
My quite small yard in the burbs is my oasis with fruit trees, a garden, place for my dog to run, and a lovely place to sit and listen to birds. On top of this, we can walk to amenities and greet our neighbors on the sidewalk.
If I lived in a soulless apartment block my mental health by contrast would be in the pits.
'suburb' and 'soulless apartment block' aren't the only choices. It's entirely possible to build denser mixed-use neighborhoods with less car-dependence without making them urban warehouses. THough typically this is not what we build, neighborhoods like that exist here mainly in places where they've grown that way over time.
I agree that I proposed a false dichotomy. By the same token, I disagree with the GP poster that suburbs are inherently un-walkable, among other charges. That being said, mine predates the US Interstate Highway System (which I'll use as a proxy for car centric society) and with exceptions the most recent suburbs tend to be monotonous expansive, and unwalkable.
This, I live in DC, and there are neighborhoods that have density without feeling like concrete jungles. In my condo it is possible to go outside and enjoy the trees, greenery and also spend a few hours talking to a group of 5 or 6 neighbors all within 5 ft of my front door.
I think American's would be served better by not stereotyping alternative lifestyles and environments and actually explore those alternatives more thoughtfully.
> 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.
Spicy take. I grew up in a neighborhood that would've been considered "suburban" I guess. I had no problems because there were 20 kids who lived there and we all played together. We also went to the same schools. Never had any problem with that though the fact my family moved for work did distance us from our relatives. I was never "extremely isolated". Ever. Bullied, perhaps, but never isolated.
I think the terminally online always connected culture of today is doing far more damage. Compound that with people having less children, housing being transient due to a rental economy, etc and you have the destruction you're looking for. I don't think the implied solution here, giant multi-story multi-family housing, is the solution either. Packing people in like sardines is not effective. You only need to look at Asia to see what happens when you let this form of housing reach its natural conclusion. It sure is nice having my own 4 walls, a garage, etc. It's a space I control and I would fight to keep it. I do wish my area was more walkable. However, I will take what I can get. There's a park about 10 minutes from me and a few coffee shops.
I am simply not a fan of this anti-car, anti-natalist, anti-detatched-housing trifecta that seems to be polluting more progressive social media. I don't understand it. I don't think I ever will.
I hope we exist long enough to look back at it and see what harm it has done. As it stands, I'm pretty sure most of us will be dead and so will most life on the planet.
Unquestionably. The denser the housing the more environmentally friendly, they are nearly perfectly correlated. Shared walls share thermal mass, which helps on both the hot and cold end. Shared facilities reduce per-unit square footage, further saving on heating/cooling. Network-effects of density cause more things to be in walkable/bikeable distance. Substantial density is required to make public transit function.
As an example, check out the map of the boston-washington/east-coast-corridor of the US here: https://coolclimate.org/maps
I would say the stress of completing day to day errands and activities here having recently moved to a “walkable neighborhood” has been detrimental to my mental health, since moving out of the car centric western side of SF.
It’s a fact that most of the commercial corridors here are at the bottom of the hill, which means climbing home. It only seems walkable here until you have to climb up 200 feet+ in elevation to get home with your groceries, and panhandled along the way.
And at night, the situation is worse. I have learned that PCP is the most popular drug of choice for the encampment that exists between my walk from Whole Foods to home, and that explains the insanity that comes from it with an almost nightly occurrence.
And even then, options for completing all of my errands locally are limited; for example we lack a full line grocery store in walking distance, among other needed businesses (like Walgreens) that have closed.
I have found that getting what I need without a car in SF is 10x more complicated than having a car, so I keep mine.
When talking about walkable cities, I would leave this off the list.
For those that are interested in learning more about the topic, I highly highly recommend the City Nerd youtube channel, https://www.youtube.com/@CityNerd.
I find a lot of arguments for for walkability tend to be emotional or needlessly hostile towards car owners. City Nerd takes a much more analytical approach and shares the data he uses for his videos, I think that's something most of HackerNews can appreciate.