If you have a walkable town, you don't need a car for your basic you need to live. You just walk to the store. Also, because going to a store is not a car trip, you can do it every day, or every other day. You don't need a insanely large fridge and freezers that Americans seem to have. You can also take advantage of temporary price reductions.
Towns built around walkability, bikes and public transport are just superior in every way that we can measure, from health to water use and so on.
The US needs to fundamentally change its approach to cities and towns. You can't have poor people working in cities to provide services and then force them to live in some Cul-de-Sac cheap house 1-2h drive outside of the city.
I highly suggest people listen to Peter Calthorpe, who coined the turn Transit Oriented Development. Here some great videos that are worth checking out, one general, one about California:
This is a pipe dream. US cities will never be able to accommodate public transportation as a viable alternative to car ownership. Take a drive around Europe and take a drive around the US and it becomes very obvious, very quickly, why that’s the case. You can’t go back and relayout every American town and city. Just not gonna happen. Sorry. Find something else to pour your energy into.
Not to mention that many/most Americans don’t want to live in your utopia. I’ve lived in walkable, lively parts of cities. Now I live in a stand-alone house and drive everywhere and I much prefer it.
Car dependency and bad city planning.
This is literally the majority of the problem.
If you have a walkable town, you don't need a car for your basic you need to live. You just walk to the store. Also, because going to a store is not a car trip, you can do it every day, or every other day. You don't need a insanely large fridge and freezers that Americans seem to have. You can also take advantage of temporary price reductions.
Towns built around walkability, bikes and public transport are just superior in every way that we can measure, from health to water use and so on.
The US needs to fundamentally change its approach to cities and towns. You can't have poor people working in cities to provide services and then force them to live in some Cul-de-Sac cheap house 1-2h drive outside of the city.
I highly suggest people listen to Peter Calthorpe, who coined the turn Transit Oriented Development. Here some great videos that are worth checking out, one general, one about California:
- General/China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqldZhxl86I
- Cali: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUtdFbK4YG4
This article is missing the forest while talking about trees.
Not to mention that many/most Americans don’t want to live in your utopia. I’ve lived in walkable, lively parts of cities. Now I live in a stand-alone house and drive everywhere and I much prefer it.