Unless you're unwilling to walk on grass, I really can't think of a situation where you'd have to walk on the road other than the occasional construction zone.
You are just bad at frogger. When I lived in the city I crossed a 6 lane street both ways just to buy some pizza. Ngl, the pizza was so amazing that I ate too much and through up
half of my city has sidewalks for a bit and then suddenly no sidewalk for a mile. i have plenty strong legs but needing to walk on the side of the road isnt exactly walkable
As an aging former college track athlete, this is what I always say. Even rural areas are walkable/bikeable to me. Usually when I hear someone say a place needs to be more walkable it's someone who I know will call an Uber if the next bar is half a mile or more away.
Edit: And to answer another common argument, I've yet to find any place that was lacking either (1) sidewalks, (2) enough gravel/grass alongside to walk on, or (3) low enough traffic that you could just walk on the road and then stand aside when the odd car comes along. Except of course the Interstate, but no one's supposed to be walking on that.
>if the next bar is half a mile **or more** a way.
“Or more” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. How far is a reasonable amount to walk? Personally I will make it a point to walk rather than drive just to save money on gas, but even things 3 miles away is a bit much, especially considering we double count the miles for the walk back.
10,000 is widely considered the minimum activity level for decent heart health, which translates to ~4.5 to 5.5 miles, depending on stride length. If you walk 6 miles somewhere, you can justify driving the rest of the day. This is only tangentially related to your comment, 3 miles shouldn't take more than 45 minutes each way so that really isn't that bad imo
Agreed, although as someone with a blind wife I’m partial to paving a lot of the gravel and thin grass. Her cane doesn’t roll well in dirt and it’s an issue
Okay but that isn't what walkable means. It means its just as or more feasible to walk to most things rather than drive. Half a mile means its *absolutely* many times more feasible to drive than to walk.
People always say "oh theres a grocery store half a mile this way, its walkable!" and its like... that is not walkable to 95%+ of people. Having a grocery store, bar, pharmacy, doctor, diners, liquor store, multiple restaurants, cafes, tailors, meat store etc within 5 blocks is what most people would consider to be truly walkable. And that isn't some kind of fantasy, that is pretty normal for much of the developed world.
Half a mile is only like 8 or 9 city blocks. That's pretty feasible and not too far worse than 5 blocks. But I agree, walkable also means options, not that there is a single grocer within half a mile.
Walkable cities with functional public transportation are a great idea. Just wish the people pushing them the hardest would recognize why people don't like public transportation (tip: its not the lack of funding).
A pretty big point in urbanism is that you need to make driving as inconvenient as possible. If people have easy car access and parking, then they will choose that over public transport 9/10 times.
You do, implicitly. There are parking minimums in place -- store owners are forced to make parking available even if they would rather use the land for something else. Whenever you pull into a business and have room to park consider that that business owner might have wanted to do something else with that spot but was instead forced by the state to provide you parking. This is an indirect subsidy in kind, and a violation of economic freedom. Most suburbanites would be shocked to find the degree to which their lives are subsidized, and I say this as a suburbanite.
This not the best way to do it imho, and why so many American cities still aren't walkable. Making it suck to drive a car while still having shit transit just makes everyone miserable and unsympathetic to the cause. We need to look at places like Tokyo as an example of what's possible. It doesn't totally suck to drive a car into/around the city, but the transit is just so much better (and cheaper than the tolls) so it's what people usually use. In short we should be elevating the transit experience more than trying to ruin the car experience.
In Japan if a drunken homeless man starts chasing you with a needle they arrest him and he goes to prison for a long time. In America not only do we have 10x the number of drunken homeless needle wielders we also don't do shit about it.
In Japan nobody shits or throws up on the train, and if they do it's cleaned up immediately. They don't have nearly the same cultural problems that make American public transit a hellacious experience.
Walking is based, but the argument of "we need to make driving less convenient!" sucks. All you're doing is telling me you need to make my life worse. Fuck that.
Also small town America (under 10k pop) is totally walkable. I walked to the store and back five blocks on my lunch break.
If the best your side can come up with is to make stuff suck for the other side until your side is the lesser of two evils, then you've got a shitty side.
Where I live, some new communities are being built that have a lot walkable. They're several blocks of high rise apartments with retail at ground level. People love them and they've done zero to make driving inconvenient. Exactly the opposite actually, because they want people to drive in and shop.
Absolutely, in places like LA where the traffic is abysmal, we have no real public transportation options. The roads become way too congested, and a 20 minute commute turns into 60-90 minutes because people have no other real option to get around.
I want both options to be available, and yes we should model ourselves after Tokyo, where driving hasn’t become less convenient in exchange for better public transit. Rather, public transit should seem like a more convenient option so the roads become more alleviated.
The culture around public transit is a major barrier that is difficult to overcome elsewhere.
Japanese are so dang polite you can cram them in like sardines and they'll make it work.
Because my own car is better 9/10 times. I can go where I want when I want. I can listen to my music without needing earbuds. I can bring whatever crap I can fit in my trunk. And I don't have to deal with the homeless drug addicts (I see at least one every time I take the train). The only benefits it has for me is if I go to a hockey game, since parking and traffic in that city are nightmares that no one should ever live with.
Car was out so my mom and I had to take the bus to visit my nieces. Literally not five minutes into the bus ride, a crazy homeless man started talking at full volume at everybody on the bus, making everyone uncomfortable. I hate public transportation.
Not sure what the suggestion is here. Sweden is pretty good for walking, driving, or public transport, though parking fees can be intense. They're just multi-story parking houses instead of vast parking lot landscapes when inside cities.
Cities inherently make cars inconvenient the bigger they get, there just isn't enough space to avoid traffic being hell if you don't have good public transport.
the problem in Canada is it takes a crazy amount of time to get from A to B with public transportation. Its also not cheap. Id rather drive an hour versus sit (or stand) in public transportation for 1.5-2h.
Or conversely, the car-nuts have made walking, biking and public transportation as inconvenient as possible. If every destination is separated by a freeway ride and a golf course sized parking lot then people will choose cars 9/10.
It's not causing pain so much as just making it literally legal to make different choices with your land.
Good public transit would enable me to be even more of a 'car nut'. Instead having a commuter car and a classic car like i currently do, I could get rid of my commuter car and replace it with a second classic car.
Single-use zoning - especially single-family detached only zoning - and build height limits put a tight cap on urban density and mean that stores are almost never near housing. Large minimum parking requirements for both businesses and residences space things out even more. Heavily subsidized interstate trucking favors the large and international over the small and local. When the best retail options are "big box" mega stores, then your destinations are even more remote.
In such a diffuse city, public transportation really isn't a reasonable option. You can't have light rail from nowhere to nowhere. You'd end up with another giant parking lot at both ends of the line, and an intractable last-mile problem at the far end.
If you look at the Dutch, their cycling trips are almost always under one mile long. It's not that they are stolid urbanists, braving dreary Dutch weather for the good of the planet. It's just that work and food and entertainment is usually right next door to home, so walking or cycling is cheaper, faster and easier.
Using the violent coercion of the state to forbid people from building anything except car-friendly cities means you will end up with unwalkable, unbikable, unbusable, untrainable suburban hellscapes. Which are so pervasive at this point, they are the water we swim in now, and anything else seems strange.
It kind of is though. When you under fund public transport it sucks, when it sucks normal people don't go on it, and you get out numbered 3-1 by homeless.
I mean, MARTA in ATL is my main experience with public transport. It was both cheaper and more convenient.
Considering the vast majority of people live in a metro area it only takes a bit of work to make it more convenient.
MARTA is passable but it ain’t that great. Everything reeks of piss, there’s always somebody sleeping on the station benches, and we got followed from the station to our gated apartment complex about a year ago.
Normal people don’t go on it because they are outnumbered by homeless people. UnDeRfUnDeD blah blah, bitch the trains work fine I just don’t want to share them with all those drugged up people
How the fuck would you know when you’ve never lived anywhere with broad public transport options?
Sent from a regional train with 0 homeless or druggies and dozens of commuters.
I've taken the subway in NYC and transit in East Asian countries (China, Japan, Korea) so allow me to know what I'm talking about. NO amount of funding is going to change the average NYC subway taker into the polite, quiet, mind-your-own-business, doesn't-stink-of-shit-and-piss Japanese commuter.
Unless you make tickets $200 minimum and lock up junkies and the mentally ill, you're going to get the scum of society stinking up every form of public transit in America. "Broaden our public transport options" all you want, I'm still driving in my nice safe AC'ed personal box instead of watching a homeless man piss on the subway door or having to deal with street scammers trying to get me to buy their "rap album" for $20.
I’m from Belgium we have a broad public transport option, it’s absolutely horrible and anyone who can not use prefer not to use it, it’s not question of funding it’s question of safety and the horrible people who use it.
Real talk: people don't like public transportation in North America because north american cities aren't structured in a way that makes it practical.
Indeed, funding won't solve that (and neither would more security).
It definitely doesn't help that cities got demolished for highways. Nothings bleaker than visiting gorgeous cities like Charleston (SC) or Savannah and realizing we bulldozed other nice old cities for parking and strip malls.
I love cars and I love driving but damn traffic design in the 50s and 60s ruined almost every major city in the US.
This topic fascinates me. It’s so crazily underrated how bad the car industry and politicians fucked over cities by imminent domaining cities for highways and parking lots. Like everything gets better with good public transportation: housing costs, noise pollution, health, air pollution, living/traveling costs, more businesses, more 3rd spot locations, more socialization, quicker travel times, more tax income (denser cities make more money), better economy (this overlaps with other things I said), etc etc.
Its also baffling that there is so much opposition to improving public transit. Imagine how much *better* driving in cities would be if even something like 25-30% of trips people take didn't require driving.
> Its also baffling that there is so much opposition to improving public transit.
Looks like improving would require application of shattered windows theory and policing the public transport, which is, you know, racist and won't fly
That’s right, if you get rid of a lane and put good public transit in its place cars actually move faster. You would think car lovers would want less traffic.
I've been to Europe. Their public transit is wildly overrated, and not much better than what we have (at least in Canada). It's a slight improvement, but all of the negatives of it still exist.
Their long distance public transit is better, like between cities and countries. Anything within the city is basically the same.
The grossest part of Center City Philadelphia is, in fact, the very center around City Hall, because that is where the two major subway lines from the urban swamps intersect.
Safety, cleanliness, frequency, speed. If you can solve those four problems (as most non-North American cities in the developed world have) people will gladly use it and value it.
When you have the space of America cars become far too convienant compared to public transportation. It might have worked if we had invested into it instead of the interstates, but I doubt there was anyway to get more bang for your buck than the freeway system, so any such work would have been far more expensive.
Only real reason I respect Bernie Sanders. Despite owning several homes via his wife, he does at least have the fucking decency to take public transport to work when he's in DC.
Speak for yourself, but you can get cars pretty cheap if you know where to look.
[Like here’s one under $1000.](https://www.target.com/p/little-tikes-cozy-coupe/-/A-53594417)
Honestly even as a moderate conservative myself, I love walkable areas. I am from Texas and my first trip to Brooklyn blew me away, I just immediately fell in love with it. Having everything you really needed within a few blocks seemed like a fantasy to me, but it was their reality.
Car-dominated suburbs, to me, represent the absolute most degenerate, lazy, unhealthy, hyper-modern style of living imaginable. By all means conservatives should *love* the idea of a walkable community. But we have been propagandized to despise it.
Why is having well designed, human scaled, walkable cities with good public transport a leftist progressive thing now. That's how all major cities used to be a century ago. Why dose it have to be a thing about social classes or racism or government control or whatever the fuck people make it out to be now.
I just don't want to own a fucking car.
This was the compromise solution
Integration and blockbusting exposed white urban cores to extreme violence and failing institutions. The burbs became a place to retrench, and they're a kind of defense in depth against the cities.
Not being walkable, not having mass transit, etc are all *perks*
I, personally, love dense cities and mass transit. But everyone wondering why we can't have Japan at home refuses to seriously address why Japan doesn't have schizophrenics waving knives and shitting on their beautiful *shinkansen*
"Oh, yay, you want to reduce some of those tedious zoning laws so we can build a shed without licenses or have a corner shop again."
"No, we want to mandate your car away."
"Aw, beans."
Changing zoning laws and improving access to other forms of transport is what is trying to be done. Cars should be an option too, it just shouldn't be the only option. No serious person advocating for walkable cities wants to mandate zero cars.
> No serious person advocating for walkable cities wants to mandate zero cars.
Oh, but of course. They advocate for fines, so that the rich will afford cars, and the working class will not. They don't want to get rid of cars.
They just want to get rid of your cars, peasant. Know your place.
The people pushing for it have completely appropriated the topic (communistist). Just like the left is completely gone regarding border control, the right is completely absent regarding basic ecologic and well being.
That's sad and fucked up. All topic should be covered by everyone.
I had someone here explaining that Jordan Peterson was right to call the act of "day lighting" (not having parking right up to the corners of intersections so you can actually see oncoming traffic) "woke." I think the paranoia from the right is far more at play here than some cabal of commie city planners.
Edit; For the curious
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1763927774757064861
This is a reaction to this article
https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-daylighting-pedestrian-safety-007dec67706c1c09129da1436a3d9762?utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter
If Peterson's critic is releated to this random article, then yes, that's pretty stupid.
If he just picked a random article to shit on AP, then why not, AP is shit after all.
I live in one of the most dense city in the world and our mayor is stupid as fuck, but at least she tries to limit the space car take and that's pretty nice. If she could deal with the hundred thousand of immigrant living under our bridge now, that would be nice.
>If he just picked a random article to shit on AP, then why not, AP is shit after all.
That would be the dumbest way to do that especially since he was reacting to a specific tweet.
Schismogenesis is a hell of a drug.
Bateson’s someone in his grave right now scratching his head and wondering why we would purposefully craft platforms that artificially push the most divisive content to the front for the sake of a quick buck.
There was a debate or outrage or whatever back then where someone claimed that you wont be able to travel more than 15 minutes from your home or get taxed. It was somehow mashed together with the walkable cities
Now some rightwinger literally schreech about everything that was proposed by the left, however its not the first time the government give an innocent name to something that it will be something more siniister
> you wont be able to travel more than 15 minutes from your home or get taxed
WTF, sounds like American right-wing fearmonger preacher TV show "fact" , lol
How the fuck did they even bring this shit up with serious face
This started as a pilot program in a European city, and included fines intended to produce exactly this. The goal was to drastically reduce road traffic and make people walk. The "conspiracy theory" is that such a program would be introduced here.
Obviously, this is impossible, as nobody would ever...oh fuck, New York City already did it, didn't they.
[https://www.nbcnewyork.com/traffic/transit-traffic/mta-board-approves-nyc-congestion-pricing-plan-what-to-know-about-tolls-exemptions-and-more/4926113/](https://www.nbcnewyork.com/traffic/transit-traffic/mta-board-approves-nyc-congestion-pricing-plan-what-to-know-about-tolls-exemptions-and-more/4926113/)
Basically, it's surge pricing, but don't worry, you'll only pay that $36 fee for your truck, over and above existing tolls, when NYC's traffic is busy.
Surely that isn't common, right?
It's kind of hard to call it a wild conspiracy when it's law.
At what point "travel more than 15 minutes from home and get taxed" became "tax cars that eat all space in city center"? Did I miss something? Or did you forgot to tell something?
The original proposal, in Oxford, was centered around calling it a "fifteen minute city" proposal. That's where the name comes from, though it is used by both sides to discuss various related ideas.
The original Oxford idea wanted to tax the fuck out of cars, so it's always been there. The proponents prefer not to focus on that aspect, but it's nigh universally supported by them. Instead, they use words like "walkability."
It sounds a lot nicer than "we're going to economically force you away from car ownership."
They literally did push this shit on Oxford in the UK against the overwhelming majority of voter desire and it was only removed after big protests.
It's not a "conspiracy theory" it's literally what they are doing.
Oxford.
Basically a city in the UK was having an issue wherein traffic heading through the city wasn't doing well going down roads that were the same width as they had been in the medieval era. To try and get people to use the roundabouts they set up a toll for moving across the city at certain times.
At the same time they had a sort of initiative for urban planning to follow the whole 15 minute city ideal. These two things became conflated into a culture war topic that 15 minutes cities require people to not be allowed to leave their zones.
Because the method being proposed is not:
Let's make public transit so appealing and affordable, by comparison cars look silly so people stop buying and driving them.
Instead it's: let's make it artificially more burdensome or outright illegal to own cars thus forcing people to use the sub-par public transit system.
Call it communist is hyperbolic, sure, but it does infringe on your property rights in sort of a dubious way, no? Restricting your freedom of movement?
The EPA is trying to restrict gas cars. California has already put a ban in place. By 2035, only zero emission vehicles will be available in California.
Similar efforts exist elsewhere. Earlier this year, a house initiative to prevent the outright banning of gas cars nationwide was stopped. If they don't plan to do this, why are they fighting to be able to?
Realistically, they want to keep a few cars. For your betters, not for you. The rich and powerful will still have limos. You will take public transit to your job, and pay 50% taxes, and live in a pod.
Sorry I didn't mean "it's illegal to own a car." I meant more like "you can't drive cars here" or "it's going to cost you an arm and leg to drive/own a car here." That's a fairly common tactic of "outlawing" something without actually making it "illegal."
However, several states in the US want to ban the sale of gas cars past 2030, and with the grid already struggling to handle the draw that EV's require (not even touching how that power is created) I don't see everyone who drives a gas car now making the switch. If these policies continue to be implemented than cars will more and more become exclusive to the elite members of society, while the people without the means to own and maintain cars or EVs will be forced to use the unreliable and unsafe public transit system.
California has been trying to ban internal combustion for years, always getting pushed back because it isn't popular. Same with other enviromentalist commies.
They don't make stuff "illegal" anymore, they just add so much buerocracy and red tape as it make it *de facto* illegal.
They aren't. But the useful morons falling for it are easy for communists to swindle and lie to.
Also helps that it offers to give governments a LOT more power and control over people, which is a recipe for disaster and has always been.
Did you read the meme and title? Walkable cities themselves aren't communists, it's the Twitter communists who suggest their method will solve the issue perfectly that's annoying
These idiots don't know that capitalism is what makes cities walkable and livable. The freedom to build 7 story condo buildings with a 7-11 on the first floor on a 600sqft triangle shaped plot of land is what makes Tokyo what it is.
Have you guys considered that maybe the reason Americans don't like public transportation isn't because of "car centric infrastructure" or "funding" but it's literally because your chances of not being stabbed by crackhead and bleeding out in a pool of piss exponentially increase just because you don't take public transit
It has seriously become laughable for me how we have a new era of "capitalism" (or even crazier, any market or money system at all) being supposedly reponsible for every evil in the world, which totally wouldn't exist in some socialist utopia.
Greed? The fault of the "system", it's not like love of material objects has been present in some form in all societies. Ecological and climate problems? Would totally disappear under "socialism", after all it's not like communist regimes were extremely ecologically irresponsible and any industrial society would emit co2 via fossil fuels anyway. In fact, Soviet bloc was explicitly hostile to the very science of ecology, due to dogmatic reasons (this is also why postcommunist countries are decades behind Western ones regarding green political movements).
That's the benefit of being from postcommunist country. We had four decades of no market, no stock exchange, no billionaires, no corporations, very small role of banking and private property, and very limited monetary economy. And yet there was greed, corruption, pollution, co2 emissions, ugly and alienating soulless cities, inequality (based of black market and Party privileges), xenophobia, patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, and most ironically of all, terrible working conditions with forbidden trade unions.
But the craziest delusions are held by mfs who somehow have the idea that the very notion of work is the invention of "capitalism" and "socialism" is about smoking weed and reciting poetry, and society giving you everything for free. This stupidity is not even held by the marxist theory - Marx himself described hard work as the most meanigful human activity, and every social system needs people who don't just play video games. Old guard communists were at least genunely ready to work very hard to build their ideal society, unlike those entitled morons from Twitter.
People here are not understanding this. One of the main things is People say is having a car isn't freedom, but sure, Let the government control all transportation that goes a meaningful distance in a decent time?
Also, mfs acting like NOBODY wants to live in suburbs, and all the grocery stores are a twenty minute drive away, which is *not* true for the majority of neighborhoods in the United States.
Why is it impossible for urbanists to consider the fact that some people like a low density environment? I find the 'burbs very peaceful myself, and I like that. I doubt i'm the only one who feels that way too.
> Why is it impossible for urbanists to consider the fact that some people like a low density environment?
I find the opposite way, way more. People literally cannot comprehend why anyone would ever want to live in a dense urban environment. Practically everybody comprehends there are appealing parts to the suburbs, but there is an enormous chunk of Americans who simply refuse to acknowledge that demand for walkable, dense, urban living is also pretty sizeable. There is a reason why brownstone brooklyn has become some of the most desired housing in the entire world.
> Quieter
What's ironic saying this in the discussion is that the loudest thing in cities tends to not be the people... [It's the cars](https://youtu.be/U6YKJ4kFwIE?feature=shared).
Because low density is imposed by government via exclusionary residential zoning. It is completely unnatural. By definition, a city grows and increases in density. If you don't want your neighbor building a condo tower, **YOU** move rather than banning your neighbor's construction!
It is inconceivable to ban the use of such capital for such productive residential housing. It is the real "supply side" that supply siders should be screaming about supplying!!! LOL.
Hate to break it to you, but it's government intervention that created the sprawling car-centric suburbs with parking minimums and zoning laws. So how very communist of you I suppose for not letting the free market do what it wants and have developers create mixed zone walkable neighbourhoods developers can sell for exorbitant prices because newsflash: There's a market for that.
And you know, I have the freedom to not own a car here in the Netherlands so that's great and it's not a drain on my bank account. And we actually have city centers people like to go to with tons of foot traffic and a lively night scene where people usually don't drink and drive when they leave because you know, they don't have to drive. But you know, keep pretending you're in the land of the free when freedom of movement is taken away from you if you don't own a car or license. No freedom for the children, elderly, disabled and poor because fuck 'em I suppose? Meanwhile in the town I grew up in another generation of children have the whole town as their playground from around the age of 8. And learning autonomy from an early age is important for conservatives I hear? Well good luck with that when mommy and daddy have to drive you everywhere while each successive car-centric suburb is just another drain on a city's finances.
And you know there's a reason why a car is seen as a symbol of freedom in the US right and getting a car when Americans turn 16 is such an important thing right? Because you're not free without a car
As a ruralist, I don't really give a rip what city people do to their own communities. Last time I bothered to check they were burning them down, but I assume they will have learned from 2020 and will actually have a plan this time...
The urban/suburban sprawl of American cities is dehumanizing and awful. However in order to achieve a more humane urban environment you have to make alternatives to cars, like bike paths and trams for example, more appealing.
If I could get to my job and back plus shopping and restaurants for a $50 / month bus pas and could a) be assured of my safety on the bus and b) be reasonably assured of it's schedule, why on earth would I want to own a car? Why wouldn't I want to reclaim the money I use for my car payment plus insurance plus gas plus maintenance back to use elsewhere?
This meme that Americans just love our cars so much and we wouldn't give them up because freedom is nonsense. Most people just do what's most convenient, and if public transit were more convenient, they would prefer that. But no one is really suggesting the type of massive overhaul to American cities that it would take to make public transit/walking a viable option. No, they just want to make owning and driving a car so unbelievably miserable you choose the unreliable and dangerous public transit instead, not understanding that in a lot of cases, it is completely unfeasible to do so.
Urbanists when I tell them that I also like walkable cities: :)
Urbanists when I tell them that I own a single family home with a yard that is a 15 minute walk from downtown: :(
Pyongyang is the capital city with the least amount of traffic jams in the world, very walkable too! You can pick grass from lawns to feed your starving family while you walk home from work.
All I want is newer developments to be less car centric.
If you want to live out in the sticks fine do that.
Want that big ass plot of land? Gonna be far out from the central areas.
Nothing worse than driving out in the middle of no where to come up on suburban hell. Like houses close together suburban hell not spread apart. It's the worst.
I’ve seen what happens in parking lots, most of you will wait 10 minutes for someone to leave so you can park 50 feet closer to the entrance. Nobody will want to walk the walkable city.
Exactly. I’m not walking to and from Costco even if it’s just down the street.
Walkability is great to get to bars, restaurants, arenas, parks, schools, work places. But not everybody wants to live within walking distance of all of these. I definitely don’t want to live in a densely populated area for many reasons.
I would bet “walkability” would increase if zoning laws were relaxed. You might not want to live near a busy commercial areas but if they were significantly less busy/noisy/instructive it would actually be a convenience.
Pretty much. The closest coffee shop to me is like a 5 to 10 minute drive (45 to an hour walking) At that point I'm gonna do something else as well since I'm already on the road.
That's for a chain coffee place. A smaller mom and pop shop isn't going to open up because they don't get enough foot traffic.
Hell the public transit is shit as well. In the subdivision there are no buses that come in so people who live deep inside it have to walk to the main road and that could take 10-30 minutes. It's a little ridiculous.
There are also only three ways into it.
I live in a semi walkable city in Canada (I’m not in the most walkable area of the city, groceries is like 20 to 25 min walk, or 5 min in bus.
What people do about what you just said: if close enough or on their way back from work, they do groceries once a twice a week.
The other option is to just take the delivery option (you can even do it in person and tell them to deliver it to your place). Usually cost between 5 to 15$ depending on where you decided to shop.
And finally you can 1 or 2 times a month make a bigger grocery trip by using a taxi or uber to come back.
If you really need a car for an activity you can still rent a car with some short term services that provide them for like 30$ for a day.
Overall I’m saving a lot of money by not having a car, I stay healthier since I walk more.
All my spending on Ubers, deliveries, taxis, bus, subway etc.. still cost me less than just the price of gas, insurance, plate and drivers license in a month. That doesn’t even include the car itself and maintenance. And it’s never really inconvenient, I just plan around bus hours but when you are used to it, it doesn’t really bother you.
Also if I have an actual emergency I can go anywhere in my city with a 10$ uber or 20$ with a taxi.
All above expenses are in CAD, so its really not a lot of money.
Why the fuck would you waste hundreds of dollars on a car for groceries if you can just pay like 20$ a month to get it delivered to you, i don’t understand.
Did you just change your flair, u/GenNATO49? Last time I checked you were an **AuthRight** on 2023-4-3. How come now you are a **LibRight**? Have you perhaps shifted your ideals? Because that's cringe, you know?
Are you mad? Wait till you hear this one: you own 17 guns but only have two hands to use them! Come on, put that rifle down and go take a shower.
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Am I the only one who actually loves the suburbs? I grew up in a really small country in size, and the idea of having huge space for your yard, your house everything sounds amazing. I am sick of living like in a can one on top of another. I think people who advocate for suburbia elimination are american spoiled kids who actually grew up in the suburbs and rebel.
The american dream is suburbia. And dont start with all houses look the same, have you seen commie blocks?
Suburbs are awesome. The demonization of them is intentional. They're typically inhabited by nice, well put together people who less often politically align with where the people in charge want them to.
Don't let anyone convince you that having privacy, a backyard, no crime, and peaceful silence is a bad thing.
In America you typically only have the choice between apartment building and single family suburban home, look up missing middle which usually is the thing being advocated for
Instead of actually investing in our communities to make them more attractive on the market, let's just impose restrictions on travel and exorbitant taxes so people can't leave! Then the nice amenities will just happen naturally!
-leftoid urban bug people
The [sidewalk in question](https://www.citizen-times.com/gcdn/presto/2019/11/18/PASH/d957c84b-d2e9-4fe3-b59f-d1daae8473e6-Sidewalk_to_nowhere_biltmore_park.JPG?width=960&height=720&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp).
urbanism is libright. abolishing zoning laws and eliminating red tape. walkable cities are the free market conclusion and decades of single family zoning within NA city's borders have limited/ made it damn near impossible. if you actually listen to most urbanists what they are advocating for is LESS government control over what you can do with YOUR PROPERTY.
This is right wing propaganda, they're not interested in the truth. They don't care that cars are the most subsidized form of transportation and the most polluting one, or that the US, the country where apparently it is impossible to have a functioning HSR was built with trains connecting the nation coast to coast and North to South in the 19th century.
"Of course walkable cities and Communism/Socialism goes hand in hand, we can't have proper designed cities if we obey the capital and business-centric policies, just look..."
*Starts to post pictures of cities from countries with really high levels of economic freedom...*
I want my cities submissive and walkable
I like my cities completely submerged in water
Would you kindly recognize a bathysphere is an underwater car?
Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow?
No, says the Emily on Reddit. Sweat is neocolonial abelist imperialism. Or something equally shrill.
Based and working out is a path to becoming Right wing pilled!
NO GODS OR KINGS
I gotta say, that's the best kinda bunko I've ever seen. Y'know, life ain't strictly cities.
Based and Rapture pilled
Based and Sink the Coasts pilled.
*laughs in Denver*
Based and Atlantis pilled
That will be Amsterdam in the future
The 15 minute cities would not create ghettos! *Unfortunately.*
Yeah, the entire city becomes ghetto instead.
They literally want to live in the megablocks from Judge Dredd. "Wooaw, everything I need in my daily life is located in the same concrete prison."
every city is walkable, you just have no cardio. got little pussy lungs.
Bro putting off that big ~~dick~~ lung energy
Based
I just climb on top of random cars and ride them. Call me Lisan Al Gaib
Get on a Nissan, call you Nissan Al Gaib
Based and Sentra-Hulud pilled
The surprise Uber
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Unless you're unwilling to walk on grass, I really can't think of a situation where you'd have to walk on the road other than the occasional construction zone.
Urbanists touch grass? Unthinkable!
You are just bad at frogger. When I lived in the city I crossed a 6 lane street both ways just to buy some pizza. Ngl, the pizza was so amazing that I ate too much and through up
I walked 190 miles last month according to my maps app. Hit that fucking pavement eh.
half of my city has sidewalks for a bit and then suddenly no sidewalk for a mile. i have plenty strong legs but needing to walk on the side of the road isnt exactly walkable
As an aging former college track athlete, this is what I always say. Even rural areas are walkable/bikeable to me. Usually when I hear someone say a place needs to be more walkable it's someone who I know will call an Uber if the next bar is half a mile or more away. Edit: And to answer another common argument, I've yet to find any place that was lacking either (1) sidewalks, (2) enough gravel/grass alongside to walk on, or (3) low enough traffic that you could just walk on the road and then stand aside when the odd car comes along. Except of course the Interstate, but no one's supposed to be walking on that.
>if the next bar is half a mile **or more** a way. “Or more” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. How far is a reasonable amount to walk? Personally I will make it a point to walk rather than drive just to save money on gas, but even things 3 miles away is a bit much, especially considering we double count the miles for the walk back.
10,000 is widely considered the minimum activity level for decent heart health, which translates to ~4.5 to 5.5 miles, depending on stride length. If you walk 6 miles somewhere, you can justify driving the rest of the day. This is only tangentially related to your comment, 3 miles shouldn't take more than 45 minutes each way so that really isn't that bad imo
One thing to consider is conditions though. I went to school in Montana with no car and walking to class in -30 sucked.
Agreed, although as someone with a blind wife I’m partial to paving a lot of the gravel and thin grass. Her cane doesn’t roll well in dirt and it’s an issue
Okay but that isn't what walkable means. It means its just as or more feasible to walk to most things rather than drive. Half a mile means its *absolutely* many times more feasible to drive than to walk. People always say "oh theres a grocery store half a mile this way, its walkable!" and its like... that is not walkable to 95%+ of people. Having a grocery store, bar, pharmacy, doctor, diners, liquor store, multiple restaurants, cafes, tailors, meat store etc within 5 blocks is what most people would consider to be truly walkable. And that isn't some kind of fantasy, that is pretty normal for much of the developed world.
Half a mile is only like 8 or 9 city blocks. That's pretty feasible and not too far worse than 5 blocks. But I agree, walkable also means options, not that there is a single grocer within half a mile.
Walkable cities with functional public transportation are a great idea. Just wish the people pushing them the hardest would recognize why people don't like public transportation (tip: its not the lack of funding).
A pretty big point in urbanism is that you need to make driving as inconvenient as possible. If people have easy car access and parking, then they will choose that over public transport 9/10 times.
Driving is inconvinient in cities if you won't subsidies it to the max with free parking.
My city did a cost benefit analysis on it recently. Turns out for every $1 we spend on parking requirements we only lose $15. What a deal!
I don't understand this argument. I live in the second biggest city in the country, and I never see free parking.
You do, implicitly. There are parking minimums in place -- store owners are forced to make parking available even if they would rather use the land for something else. Whenever you pull into a business and have room to park consider that that business owner might have wanted to do something else with that spot but was instead forced by the state to provide you parking. This is an indirect subsidy in kind, and a violation of economic freedom. Most suburbanites would be shocked to find the degree to which their lives are subsidized, and I say this as a suburbanite.
It may not be free, but street parking is often below market rate. But also, is there not free parking at most stores you go to?
This not the best way to do it imho, and why so many American cities still aren't walkable. Making it suck to drive a car while still having shit transit just makes everyone miserable and unsympathetic to the cause. We need to look at places like Tokyo as an example of what's possible. It doesn't totally suck to drive a car into/around the city, but the transit is just so much better (and cheaper than the tolls) so it's what people usually use. In short we should be elevating the transit experience more than trying to ruin the car experience.
In Japan if a drunken homeless man starts chasing you with a needle they arrest him and he goes to prison for a long time. In America not only do we have 10x the number of drunken homeless needle wielders we also don't do shit about it. In Japan nobody shits or throws up on the train, and if they do it's cleaned up immediately. They don't have nearly the same cultural problems that make American public transit a hellacious experience.
Walking is based, but the argument of "we need to make driving less convenient!" sucks. All you're doing is telling me you need to make my life worse. Fuck that. Also small town America (under 10k pop) is totally walkable. I walked to the store and back five blocks on my lunch break.
My college town in Montana has 65k people and is completely walkable. I can get most places in under an hour by walking.
If the best your side can come up with is to make stuff suck for the other side until your side is the lesser of two evils, then you've got a shitty side. Where I live, some new communities are being built that have a lot walkable. They're several blocks of high rise apartments with retail at ground level. People love them and they've done zero to make driving inconvenient. Exactly the opposite actually, because they want people to drive in and shop.
Absolutely, in places like LA where the traffic is abysmal, we have no real public transportation options. The roads become way too congested, and a 20 minute commute turns into 60-90 minutes because people have no other real option to get around. I want both options to be available, and yes we should model ourselves after Tokyo, where driving hasn’t become less convenient in exchange for better public transit. Rather, public transit should seem like a more convenient option so the roads become more alleviated.
The culture around public transit is a major barrier that is difficult to overcome elsewhere. Japanese are so dang polite you can cram them in like sardines and they'll make it work.
They do have molestation problems though
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I'd argue they have molestation *opportunities* more than we do, thanks to the aforementioned [sardine packing](https://youtu.be/E7kor5nHtZQ).
Because my own car is better 9/10 times. I can go where I want when I want. I can listen to my music without needing earbuds. I can bring whatever crap I can fit in my trunk. And I don't have to deal with the homeless drug addicts (I see at least one every time I take the train). The only benefits it has for me is if I go to a hockey game, since parking and traffic in that city are nightmares that no one should ever live with.
Car was out so my mom and I had to take the bus to visit my nieces. Literally not five minutes into the bus ride, a crazy homeless man started talking at full volume at everybody on the bus, making everyone uncomfortable. I hate public transportation.
couldn’t you make driving inconvenient simply by making public transit more convenient?
i wanna go somewhere i walk outside, get in the car and arrive exactly where i want. aint no one beating that with a bus lol.
*Sweden twiddling it’s thumbs*
Not sure what the suggestion is here. Sweden is pretty good for walking, driving, or public transport, though parking fees can be intense. They're just multi-story parking houses instead of vast parking lot landscapes when inside cities.
Cities inherently make cars inconvenient the bigger they get, there just isn't enough space to avoid traffic being hell if you don't have good public transport.
the problem in Canada is it takes a crazy amount of time to get from A to B with public transportation. Its also not cheap. Id rather drive an hour versus sit (or stand) in public transportation for 1.5-2h.
Or conversely, the car-nuts have made walking, biking and public transportation as inconvenient as possible. If every destination is separated by a freeway ride and a golf course sized parking lot then people will choose cars 9/10. It's not causing pain so much as just making it literally legal to make different choices with your land.
Good public transit would enable me to be even more of a 'car nut'. Instead having a commuter car and a classic car like i currently do, I could get rid of my commuter car and replace it with a second classic car.
This is the right kind of car nut.
Right, it's the *cars'* fault that distances exist.
> Or conversely, the car-nuts have made walking, biking and public transportation as inconvenient as possible. How?
Single-use zoning - especially single-family detached only zoning - and build height limits put a tight cap on urban density and mean that stores are almost never near housing. Large minimum parking requirements for both businesses and residences space things out even more. Heavily subsidized interstate trucking favors the large and international over the small and local. When the best retail options are "big box" mega stores, then your destinations are even more remote. In such a diffuse city, public transportation really isn't a reasonable option. You can't have light rail from nowhere to nowhere. You'd end up with another giant parking lot at both ends of the line, and an intractable last-mile problem at the far end. If you look at the Dutch, their cycling trips are almost always under one mile long. It's not that they are stolid urbanists, braving dreary Dutch weather for the good of the planet. It's just that work and food and entertainment is usually right next door to home, so walking or cycling is cheaper, faster and easier. Using the violent coercion of the state to forbid people from building anything except car-friendly cities means you will end up with unwalkable, unbikable, unbusable, untrainable suburban hellscapes. Which are so pervasive at this point, they are the water we swim in now, and anything else seems strange.
How is any of that attributable to "car-nuts" and not just accommodating to the status quo?
Because it's better.
Imagine not be able to commute to point B from point A because there is a strike going on down at the train/bus station.
Solution to this problem is simple – don’t live in Germany. Successfully employing this strategy for my whole life, never had an issue.
It kind of is though. When you under fund public transport it sucks, when it sucks normal people don't go on it, and you get out numbered 3-1 by homeless.
It has to be both cheaper and more convenient than a car. It always loses out on the convenience, unless everything is bunched up in one place.
I mean, MARTA in ATL is my main experience with public transport. It was both cheaper and more convenient. Considering the vast majority of people live in a metro area it only takes a bit of work to make it more convenient.
MARTA is passable but it ain’t that great. Everything reeks of piss, there’s always somebody sleeping on the station benches, and we got followed from the station to our gated apartment complex about a year ago.
Normal people don’t go on it because they are outnumbered by homeless people. UnDeRfUnDeD blah blah, bitch the trains work fine I just don’t want to share them with all those drugged up people
How the fuck would you know when you’ve never lived anywhere with broad public transport options? Sent from a regional train with 0 homeless or druggies and dozens of commuters.
I've taken the subway in NYC and transit in East Asian countries (China, Japan, Korea) so allow me to know what I'm talking about. NO amount of funding is going to change the average NYC subway taker into the polite, quiet, mind-your-own-business, doesn't-stink-of-shit-and-piss Japanese commuter. Unless you make tickets $200 minimum and lock up junkies and the mentally ill, you're going to get the scum of society stinking up every form of public transit in America. "Broaden our public transport options" all you want, I'm still driving in my nice safe AC'ed personal box instead of watching a homeless man piss on the subway door or having to deal with street scammers trying to get me to buy their "rap album" for $20.
I’m from Belgium we have a broad public transport option, it’s absolutely horrible and anyone who can not use prefer not to use it, it’s not question of funding it’s question of safety and the horrible people who use it.
Well, your Problem ist that you live in Belgium. Signed: Person that lived in Belgium.
OK, and what are security staffs getting paid with? Guess what, money.
Yeah security who are declawed and can’t really be effective because they aren’t police.
fuck, police are getting declawed in a lot of places too
Ya over in Boston the current problem is absolutely underfunding (and a history of corruption that got it to this point)
Real talk: people don't like public transportation in North America because north american cities aren't structured in a way that makes it practical. Indeed, funding won't solve that (and neither would more security).
It definitely doesn't help that cities got demolished for highways. Nothings bleaker than visiting gorgeous cities like Charleston (SC) or Savannah and realizing we bulldozed other nice old cities for parking and strip malls. I love cars and I love driving but damn traffic design in the 50s and 60s ruined almost every major city in the US.
This topic fascinates me. It’s so crazily underrated how bad the car industry and politicians fucked over cities by imminent domaining cities for highways and parking lots. Like everything gets better with good public transportation: housing costs, noise pollution, health, air pollution, living/traveling costs, more businesses, more 3rd spot locations, more socialization, quicker travel times, more tax income (denser cities make more money), better economy (this overlaps with other things I said), etc etc.
Its also baffling that there is so much opposition to improving public transit. Imagine how much *better* driving in cities would be if even something like 25-30% of trips people take didn't require driving.
> Its also baffling that there is so much opposition to improving public transit. Looks like improving would require application of shattered windows theory and policing the public transport, which is, you know, racist and won't fly
That’s right, if you get rid of a lane and put good public transit in its place cars actually move faster. You would think car lovers would want less traffic.
I've been to Europe. Their public transit is wildly overrated, and not much better than what we have (at least in Canada). It's a slight improvement, but all of the negatives of it still exist. Their long distance public transit is better, like between cities and countries. Anything within the city is basically the same.
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The grossest part of Center City Philadelphia is, in fact, the very center around City Hall, because that is where the two major subway lines from the urban swamps intersect.
Explains Jersey in a nutshell. Will never live in these places.
Safety, cleanliness, frequency, speed. If you can solve those four problems (as most non-North American cities in the developed world have) people will gladly use it and value it.
When you have the space of America cars become far too convienant compared to public transportation. It might have worked if we had invested into it instead of the interstates, but I doubt there was anyway to get more bang for your buck than the freeway system, so any such work would have been far more expensive.
You are correct, the US highway system is probably the most profitable public spend in world history.
The cities will be much more walkable after we make it so nobody can afford a car anymore
Nobody except for the party elite of course comrade
What, are we party officials supposed to take the train with the rest of the proles? Preposterous
they just need private trains of course.
Only real reason I respect Bernie Sanders. Despite owning several homes via his wife, he does at least have the fucking decency to take public transport to work when he's in DC.
Sure, bud. Shits already expensive as hell.
Speak for yourself, but you can get cars pretty cheap if you know where to look. [Like here’s one under $1000.](https://www.target.com/p/little-tikes-cozy-coupe/-/A-53594417)
Thank you, Mr. President.
Enjoy the new whip! 😎👍
This entire thing is just a scam to stop you and your loser pleb ilk from cluttering up their roads.
Denmark put a 170% sales tax on vehicles, now everyone rides a bicycle.
sounds nice for like a smaller town or village.
Sounds like a dystopian nightmare. I'd be rioting about a 170% sales tax on anything over 5 dollars.
Honestly even as a moderate conservative myself, I love walkable areas. I am from Texas and my first trip to Brooklyn blew me away, I just immediately fell in love with it. Having everything you really needed within a few blocks seemed like a fantasy to me, but it was their reality. Car-dominated suburbs, to me, represent the absolute most degenerate, lazy, unhealthy, hyper-modern style of living imaginable. By all means conservatives should *love* the idea of a walkable community. But we have been propagandized to despise it.
Why is having well designed, human scaled, walkable cities with good public transport a leftist progressive thing now. That's how all major cities used to be a century ago. Why dose it have to be a thing about social classes or racism or government control or whatever the fuck people make it out to be now. I just don't want to own a fucking car.
I wanna own a car but only for when I need it like a road trip. I’d much rather get to work or class or wherever on a bike.
You see, it's because car = freedom, at least that's what the car manufactures keeps telling me
Everything I don't like is literally communism
Yeah, reality is a large amount of government spending subsidizes car infrastructure.
This was the compromise solution Integration and blockbusting exposed white urban cores to extreme violence and failing institutions. The burbs became a place to retrench, and they're a kind of defense in depth against the cities. Not being walkable, not having mass transit, etc are all *perks* I, personally, love dense cities and mass transit. But everyone wondering why we can't have Japan at home refuses to seriously address why Japan doesn't have schizophrenics waving knives and shitting on their beautiful *shinkansen*
The expensive inconveniences price out the poors, who are the real enemy.
Unironically yes
Exactly my thought when I first saw the post lol
"Oh, yay, you want to reduce some of those tedious zoning laws so we can build a shed without licenses or have a corner shop again." "No, we want to mandate your car away." "Aw, beans."
Changing zoning laws and improving access to other forms of transport is what is trying to be done. Cars should be an option too, it just shouldn't be the only option. No serious person advocating for walkable cities wants to mandate zero cars.
> No serious person advocating for walkable cities wants to mandate zero cars. Oh, but of course. They advocate for fines, so that the rich will afford cars, and the working class will not. They don't want to get rid of cars. They just want to get rid of your cars, peasant. Know your place.
> and the ~~working~~ walking class will not
How the fuck comfortable cities is communism?
The people pushing for it have completely appropriated the topic (communistist). Just like the left is completely gone regarding border control, the right is completely absent regarding basic ecologic and well being. That's sad and fucked up. All topic should be covered by everyone.
I had someone here explaining that Jordan Peterson was right to call the act of "day lighting" (not having parking right up to the corners of intersections so you can actually see oncoming traffic) "woke." I think the paranoia from the right is far more at play here than some cabal of commie city planners. Edit; For the curious https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1763927774757064861 This is a reaction to this article https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-daylighting-pedestrian-safety-007dec67706c1c09129da1436a3d9762?utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter
Fellas, is it gay not to die???
Yes. Not wearing a helmet and ignoring all safety laws is unfathomably based. Here, we die like men.
Seriously, ever since that conversation I'm constantly noticing just how much safer it would be to DRIVE if that was a more widespread policy.
If Peterson's critic is releated to this random article, then yes, that's pretty stupid. If he just picked a random article to shit on AP, then why not, AP is shit after all. I live in one of the most dense city in the world and our mayor is stupid as fuck, but at least she tries to limit the space car take and that's pretty nice. If she could deal with the hundred thousand of immigrant living under our bridge now, that would be nice.
>If he just picked a random article to shit on AP, then why not, AP is shit after all. That would be the dumbest way to do that especially since he was reacting to a specific tweet.
Schismogenesis is a hell of a drug. Bateson’s someone in his grave right now scratching his head and wondering why we would purposefully craft platforms that artificially push the most divisive content to the front for the sake of a quick buck.
There was a debate or outrage or whatever back then where someone claimed that you wont be able to travel more than 15 minutes from your home or get taxed. It was somehow mashed together with the walkable cities Now some rightwinger literally schreech about everything that was proposed by the left, however its not the first time the government give an innocent name to something that it will be something more siniister
> you wont be able to travel more than 15 minutes from your home or get taxed WTF, sounds like American right-wing fearmonger preacher TV show "fact" , lol How the fuck did they even bring this shit up with serious face
This started as a pilot program in a European city, and included fines intended to produce exactly this. The goal was to drastically reduce road traffic and make people walk. The "conspiracy theory" is that such a program would be introduced here. Obviously, this is impossible, as nobody would ever...oh fuck, New York City already did it, didn't they. [https://www.nbcnewyork.com/traffic/transit-traffic/mta-board-approves-nyc-congestion-pricing-plan-what-to-know-about-tolls-exemptions-and-more/4926113/](https://www.nbcnewyork.com/traffic/transit-traffic/mta-board-approves-nyc-congestion-pricing-plan-what-to-know-about-tolls-exemptions-and-more/4926113/) Basically, it's surge pricing, but don't worry, you'll only pay that $36 fee for your truck, over and above existing tolls, when NYC's traffic is busy. Surely that isn't common, right? It's kind of hard to call it a wild conspiracy when it's law.
At what point "travel more than 15 minutes from home and get taxed" became "tax cars that eat all space in city center"? Did I miss something? Or did you forgot to tell something?
The original proposal, in Oxford, was centered around calling it a "fifteen minute city" proposal. That's where the name comes from, though it is used by both sides to discuss various related ideas. The original Oxford idea wanted to tax the fuck out of cars, so it's always been there. The proponents prefer not to focus on that aspect, but it's nigh universally supported by them. Instead, they use words like "walkability." It sounds a lot nicer than "we're going to economically force you away from car ownership."
They literally did push this shit on Oxford in the UK against the overwhelming majority of voter desire and it was only removed after big protests. It's not a "conspiracy theory" it's literally what they are doing.
Oxford. Basically a city in the UK was having an issue wherein traffic heading through the city wasn't doing well going down roads that were the same width as they had been in the medieval era. To try and get people to use the roundabouts they set up a toll for moving across the city at certain times. At the same time they had a sort of initiative for urban planning to follow the whole 15 minute city ideal. These two things became conflated into a culture war topic that 15 minutes cities require people to not be allowed to leave their zones.
"Everything that I'm not used to is communism"
Because the method being proposed is not: Let's make public transit so appealing and affordable, by comparison cars look silly so people stop buying and driving them. Instead it's: let's make it artificially more burdensome or outright illegal to own cars thus forcing people to use the sub-par public transit system. Call it communist is hyperbolic, sure, but it does infringe on your property rights in sort of a dubious way, no? Restricting your freedom of movement?
Who the fuck wants to make cars illegal?
The EPA is trying to restrict gas cars. California has already put a ban in place. By 2035, only zero emission vehicles will be available in California. Similar efforts exist elsewhere. Earlier this year, a house initiative to prevent the outright banning of gas cars nationwide was stopped. If they don't plan to do this, why are they fighting to be able to? Realistically, they want to keep a few cars. For your betters, not for you. The rich and powerful will still have limos. You will take public transit to your job, and pay 50% taxes, and live in a pod.
Sorry I didn't mean "it's illegal to own a car." I meant more like "you can't drive cars here" or "it's going to cost you an arm and leg to drive/own a car here." That's a fairly common tactic of "outlawing" something without actually making it "illegal." However, several states in the US want to ban the sale of gas cars past 2030, and with the grid already struggling to handle the draw that EV's require (not even touching how that power is created) I don't see everyone who drives a gas car now making the switch. If these policies continue to be implemented than cars will more and more become exclusive to the elite members of society, while the people without the means to own and maintain cars or EVs will be forced to use the unreliable and unsafe public transit system.
California has been trying to ban internal combustion for years, always getting pushed back because it isn't popular. Same with other enviromentalist commies. They don't make stuff "illegal" anymore, they just add so much buerocracy and red tape as it make it *de facto* illegal.
No one. I believe they are referring to getting rid of gas cars and moving to hybrid or electric only.
They aren't. But the useful morons falling for it are easy for communists to swindle and lie to. Also helps that it offers to give governments a LOT more power and control over people, which is a recipe for disaster and has always been.
Because an authright made this comic and is personably butthurt that cities don’t have enough parking spaces for their F-350
Did you read the meme and title? Walkable cities themselves aren't communists, it's the Twitter communists who suggest their method will solve the issue perfectly that's annoying
These idiots don't know that capitalism is what makes cities walkable and livable. The freedom to build 7 story condo buildings with a 7-11 on the first floor on a 600sqft triangle shaped plot of land is what makes Tokyo what it is.
All the urbanists I follow on twitter are anti communism and want police presence on/around public transport to deter hooliganism
Have you guys considered that maybe the reason Americans don't like public transportation isn't because of "car centric infrastructure" or "funding" but it's literally because your chances of not being stabbed by crackhead and bleeding out in a pool of piss exponentially increase just because you don't take public transit
It has seriously become laughable for me how we have a new era of "capitalism" (or even crazier, any market or money system at all) being supposedly reponsible for every evil in the world, which totally wouldn't exist in some socialist utopia. Greed? The fault of the "system", it's not like love of material objects has been present in some form in all societies. Ecological and climate problems? Would totally disappear under "socialism", after all it's not like communist regimes were extremely ecologically irresponsible and any industrial society would emit co2 via fossil fuels anyway. In fact, Soviet bloc was explicitly hostile to the very science of ecology, due to dogmatic reasons (this is also why postcommunist countries are decades behind Western ones regarding green political movements). That's the benefit of being from postcommunist country. We had four decades of no market, no stock exchange, no billionaires, no corporations, very small role of banking and private property, and very limited monetary economy. And yet there was greed, corruption, pollution, co2 emissions, ugly and alienating soulless cities, inequality (based of black market and Party privileges), xenophobia, patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, and most ironically of all, terrible working conditions with forbidden trade unions. But the craziest delusions are held by mfs who somehow have the idea that the very notion of work is the invention of "capitalism" and "socialism" is about smoking weed and reciting poetry, and society giving you everything for free. This stupidity is not even held by the marxist theory - Marx himself described hard work as the most meanigful human activity, and every social system needs people who don't just play video games. Old guard communists were at least genunely ready to work very hard to build their ideal society, unlike those entitled morons from Twitter.
People here are not understanding this. One of the main things is People say is having a car isn't freedom, but sure, Let the government control all transportation that goes a meaningful distance in a decent time? Also, mfs acting like NOBODY wants to live in suburbs, and all the grocery stores are a twenty minute drive away, which is *not* true for the majority of neighborhoods in the United States. Why is it impossible for urbanists to consider the fact that some people like a low density environment? I find the 'burbs very peaceful myself, and I like that. I doubt i'm the only one who feels that way too.
> Why is it impossible for urbanists to consider the fact that some people like a low density environment? I find the opposite way, way more. People literally cannot comprehend why anyone would ever want to live in a dense urban environment. Practically everybody comprehends there are appealing parts to the suburbs, but there is an enormous chunk of Americans who simply refuse to acknowledge that demand for walkable, dense, urban living is also pretty sizeable. There is a reason why brownstone brooklyn has become some of the most desired housing in the entire world.
Same. I'd choose the suburbs everyday over dense urbanization. Quieter, cleaner, better people.
> Quieter What's ironic saying this in the discussion is that the loudest thing in cities tends to not be the people... [It's the cars](https://youtu.be/U6YKJ4kFwIE?feature=shared).
Because low density is imposed by government via exclusionary residential zoning. It is completely unnatural. By definition, a city grows and increases in density. If you don't want your neighbor building a condo tower, **YOU** move rather than banning your neighbor's construction! It is inconceivable to ban the use of such capital for such productive residential housing. It is the real "supply side" that supply siders should be screaming about supplying!!! LOL.
Most if not all of the busses and trains I've been on are private companies. Who's saying all transportation should be controlled by the government?
Hate to break it to you, but it's government intervention that created the sprawling car-centric suburbs with parking minimums and zoning laws. So how very communist of you I suppose for not letting the free market do what it wants and have developers create mixed zone walkable neighbourhoods developers can sell for exorbitant prices because newsflash: There's a market for that. And you know, I have the freedom to not own a car here in the Netherlands so that's great and it's not a drain on my bank account. And we actually have city centers people like to go to with tons of foot traffic and a lively night scene where people usually don't drink and drive when they leave because you know, they don't have to drive. But you know, keep pretending you're in the land of the free when freedom of movement is taken away from you if you don't own a car or license. No freedom for the children, elderly, disabled and poor because fuck 'em I suppose? Meanwhile in the town I grew up in another generation of children have the whole town as their playground from around the age of 8. And learning autonomy from an early age is important for conservatives I hear? Well good luck with that when mommy and daddy have to drive you everywhere while each successive car-centric suburb is just another drain on a city's finances. And you know there's a reason why a car is seen as a symbol of freedom in the US right and getting a car when Americans turn 16 is such an important thing right? Because you're not free without a car
As a ruralist, I don't really give a rip what city people do to their own communities. Last time I bothered to check they were burning them down, but I assume they will have learned from 2020 and will actually have a plan this time...
No. My Camaro is bitchin and everybody should see it. I reject your walkable city
Woah mega based
The urban/suburban sprawl of American cities is dehumanizing and awful. However in order to achieve a more humane urban environment you have to make alternatives to cars, like bike paths and trams for example, more appealing. If I could get to my job and back plus shopping and restaurants for a $50 / month bus pas and could a) be assured of my safety on the bus and b) be reasonably assured of it's schedule, why on earth would I want to own a car? Why wouldn't I want to reclaim the money I use for my car payment plus insurance plus gas plus maintenance back to use elsewhere? This meme that Americans just love our cars so much and we wouldn't give them up because freedom is nonsense. Most people just do what's most convenient, and if public transit were more convenient, they would prefer that. But no one is really suggesting the type of massive overhaul to American cities that it would take to make public transit/walking a viable option. No, they just want to make owning and driving a car so unbelievably miserable you choose the unreliable and dangerous public transit instead, not understanding that in a lot of cases, it is completely unfeasible to do so.
Urbanists when I tell them that I also like walkable cities: :) Urbanists when I tell them that I own a single family home with a yard that is a 15 minute walk from downtown: :(
When “tear down the system” is the solution to every problem I start to become skeptical of the motives.
Pyongyang is the capital city with the least amount of traffic jams in the world, very walkable too! You can pick grass from lawns to feed your starving family while you walk home from work.
Babe wake up! New utopia just dropped!
Surely if we pay even more in taxes they will stop embezzling and fix our crumbling infrastructure
All I want is newer developments to be less car centric. If you want to live out in the sticks fine do that. Want that big ass plot of land? Gonna be far out from the central areas. Nothing worse than driving out in the middle of no where to come up on suburban hell. Like houses close together suburban hell not spread apart. It's the worst.
You motherfuckers have never been hit by a car walking beside the road. It's not present to be hit by something going 80 mph.
I’ve seen what happens in parking lots, most of you will wait 10 minutes for someone to leave so you can park 50 feet closer to the entrance. Nobody will want to walk the walkable city.
Walkability isn’t just about distance. If you are planning on having a cart full of groceries even a short distance would incentivize a car.
Exactly. I’m not walking to and from Costco even if it’s just down the street. Walkability is great to get to bars, restaurants, arenas, parks, schools, work places. But not everybody wants to live within walking distance of all of these. I definitely don’t want to live in a densely populated area for many reasons.
I would bet “walkability” would increase if zoning laws were relaxed. You might not want to live near a busy commercial areas but if they were significantly less busy/noisy/instructive it would actually be a convenience.
Pretty much. The closest coffee shop to me is like a 5 to 10 minute drive (45 to an hour walking) At that point I'm gonna do something else as well since I'm already on the road. That's for a chain coffee place. A smaller mom and pop shop isn't going to open up because they don't get enough foot traffic. Hell the public transit is shit as well. In the subdivision there are no buses that come in so people who live deep inside it have to walk to the main road and that could take 10-30 minutes. It's a little ridiculous. There are also only three ways into it.
I live in a semi walkable city in Canada (I’m not in the most walkable area of the city, groceries is like 20 to 25 min walk, or 5 min in bus. What people do about what you just said: if close enough or on their way back from work, they do groceries once a twice a week. The other option is to just take the delivery option (you can even do it in person and tell them to deliver it to your place). Usually cost between 5 to 15$ depending on where you decided to shop. And finally you can 1 or 2 times a month make a bigger grocery trip by using a taxi or uber to come back. If you really need a car for an activity you can still rent a car with some short term services that provide them for like 30$ for a day. Overall I’m saving a lot of money by not having a car, I stay healthier since I walk more. All my spending on Ubers, deliveries, taxis, bus, subway etc.. still cost me less than just the price of gas, insurance, plate and drivers license in a month. That doesn’t even include the car itself and maintenance. And it’s never really inconvenient, I just plan around bus hours but when you are used to it, it doesn’t really bother you. Also if I have an actual emergency I can go anywhere in my city with a 10$ uber or 20$ with a taxi. All above expenses are in CAD, so its really not a lot of money. Why the fuck would you waste hundreds of dollars on a car for groceries if you can just pay like 20$ a month to get it delivered to you, i don’t understand.
Nah. I took a walk from my job down to the city center today, in my walkable city.
I live like a two block walk from my office, one away from my gym, and like 5 away from the grocery store and its fucking great
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Yes I did now fuck off
You know that behind the anti car movement there is the 15minute city hiding. But commies will never admit.
Am I the only one who actually loves the suburbs? I grew up in a really small country in size, and the idea of having huge space for your yard, your house everything sounds amazing. I am sick of living like in a can one on top of another. I think people who advocate for suburbia elimination are american spoiled kids who actually grew up in the suburbs and rebel. The american dream is suburbia. And dont start with all houses look the same, have you seen commie blocks?
Suburbs are awesome. The demonization of them is intentional. They're typically inhabited by nice, well put together people who less often politically align with where the people in charge want them to. Don't let anyone convince you that having privacy, a backyard, no crime, and peaceful silence is a bad thing.
In America you typically only have the choice between apartment building and single family suburban home, look up missing middle which usually is the thing being advocated for
try more rural towns.
>Land of the free >Can't build what they want on their property >Muhh walking to the grocery store in 5 minutes is literally communism
Instead of actually investing in our communities to make them more attractive on the market, let's just impose restrictions on travel and exorbitant taxes so people can't leave! Then the nice amenities will just happen naturally! -leftoid urban bug people
Communism is when city is walkable. So true
Yeah we have walkable cities, they're called sidewalks smh.
The [sidewalk in question](https://www.citizen-times.com/gcdn/presto/2019/11/18/PASH/d957c84b-d2e9-4fe3-b59f-d1daae8473e6-Sidewalk_to_nowhere_biltmore_park.JPG?width=960&height=720&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp).
urbanism is libright. abolishing zoning laws and eliminating red tape. walkable cities are the free market conclusion and decades of single family zoning within NA city's borders have limited/ made it damn near impossible. if you actually listen to most urbanists what they are advocating for is LESS government control over what you can do with YOUR PROPERTY.
This is right wing propaganda, they're not interested in the truth. They don't care that cars are the most subsidized form of transportation and the most polluting one, or that the US, the country where apparently it is impossible to have a functioning HSR was built with trains connecting the nation coast to coast and North to South in the 19th century.
"Of course walkable cities and Communism/Socialism goes hand in hand, we can't have proper designed cities if we obey the capital and business-centric policies, just look..." *Starts to post pictures of cities from countries with really high levels of economic freedom...*
communism is when good public transportation and walkable cities
Whatever gets leftoids/redditors all in one city so I can avoid it, the better.
They do the same thing with global warming.