It's not a bad thing that people take trains rather than drive or that economic incentives favor living in cities.
Those are, in fact, things a country can want - for a multitude of reasons. Environmental impact, cultural centers, oil politics, etc. The fact that car-centric suburban culture is difficult to attain may be feature, not a bug.
Or... maybe it's not about you! Maybe it's about the fact that people in the US and Canada who do want a suburban lifestyle already have a continent full of car-centric developments to choose from, whereas people who would prefer a "car-less urban paradise", if they could find one, generally can't get it; they have to settle for something they are less happy with, because 20th century urban planning re-engineered almost all cities around the automobile.
Yeah, I understand it's not a good pattern of development for huge metro areas. But someone managed to get the laws on the books to basically require the US to develop in this way, and people aren't fighting _too_ hard to change it. It's not hard to imagine, then, that there might be some competitive advantages to a car-centric lifestyle for individuals to live in that situation even if it's worse for the collective.
The dependence on cars creates very unhealthy political climate (wars, climate change denial) and creates obesity. Unwillingness to comprehend the issues, created by cars is actually a cultural defect of the nation. OTOH, preference for suburban lifestyle is also a purely cultural phenomenon, and is caused by the fact people prefer living arrangements the grew up in. I grew up, for example in a dense Soviet city, and find big house with a yard absolutely repulsive.
The dependence on cars creates very unhealthy political climate (wars, climate change denial) and creates obesity. Unwillingness to comprehend the issues, created by cars is actually a cultural defect of the nation. OTOH, preference for suburban lifestyle is also a purely cultural phenomenon, and is caused by the fact people prefer living arrangements the grew up in. I grew up, for example in a dense Soviet city, and find big house with a yard absolutely repulsive.
On the surface car culture exists because public transport isn't affordable or entirely absent.
A few train routes can relieve thousands of cars off the road. A bus carries the equivalent of dozens of cars.
In almost all situations public transport is safer and more environmentally friendly.
The situation in US is that public transport doesn't reach suburbs/exurbs, because the routes are generally low in passengers due lower population density - thus not profitable. There are of course more reasons why people choose living without public transport.
The psychology of suburbs/exurbs is against public or shared utility like public transport,
because it forces social cohesion and interaction will all of society layers(while private transport is segregated by location and limited to those who have vehicles). Its ingrained in US culture that personal homes, cars and guns are symbols of independent life - a certain brand of lifestyle that diametrically opposite to city life.
People should understand this lifestyle has costs and inefficiencies that exist solely due spreading the population too thin to support services such as public transport.
Any business or organization will naturally form to service large concentrations of users, focusing on cities-first, because this simplifies logistics and transport.
People complain often that their area is only serviced by one company(e.g. internet) or even none. They don't really understand why there isn't competition or diversity of service providers for their needs. Their lifestyle teaches them its normal and everything else must accommodate it.
If car centric suburban development gave people what they want, it would be cheaper than the very few places in the US thay allow one to survive by taxi and car share.
Maybe you are right, but I would challenge the assumption that the overwhelming majority of people want cars and want to live in the suburbs. Many lament having to live there, but have little choice due to factors such as cost, schools, crime, etc. It is interesting to see how many American's choose for vacation, a high density hotel, condos, cruises, etc. Maybe Americans prefer living in villages and higher density communities more than people realize.
While it is true that Americans rely a bit too much on their cars, and have built infrastructure based on it instead of public transportation, it's hard to envision a world where individual transportation is no longer needed.
Look at Japan, they have a great train network but still use cars a lot. Because while train works well in cities, you still need people living in the country side to grow your food.
I think one of the issues is that once you start designing places around driving, cars become non-optional for day to day living, whereas many places designed around transit generally do not expect people to use transit for every single outing.
For example: most car oriented American suburbs simply require a car for anything other than visiting a neighbor, whereas in a transit oriented city you might use transit to commute to work, but be able to walk to some local shops and services.
I think many people who are familiar only with car dependent lifestyles make the mistake of imagining a car-free lifestyle that involves replacing all of the car trips they make one-to-one with bus or train trips, which would indeed be really cumbersome, but isn’t really how things work (at least in my experience growing up in a rural small town in the US and having lived in a couple of European cities and NYC).
Renting cars when you need them, buses, trains? How do you think old people who can't drive anymore get around in Europe?
Cars are obviously useful for the country side, but that's not really the issue. The issue is that cities in America are designed with cars in mind first, the whole idea of the suburbs is a car-centric city design. Reducing the need for cars is a huge ordeal that doesn't just touch transportation but housing and jobs as well.
I think it's pretty conceited to think we can have both sustainability and car-centric design at the same time. But it is possible to transition, I mean, the city I live in (Melbourne, Australia) has lots of suburbs but you can get anywhere by tram, train or bus and this obviously includes residential suburbs and the city center. It's a little crazy to me when you say people don't live five minutes away from bus stops, I just can't imagine how you'd get around such a living situation. I mean, what do you do when you go out drinking? How do you get home? I guess you rely on ubers and taxis?
But reducing the need for cars of course means increasing the means people for people to go places in different methods of transporation and changing the way our cities are structured. To me, starting to invest in public transporation is the right way of moving forward, rather than subsidies to electrify cars.
The author is asking us to think beyond cars is very relevant out site America. America can afford its suburbia because it was a sparsely populated land when the Europeans started settling. This is a luxury densely populated parts of the developing world cannot afford. A post-automobile era is surely a welcome thought when we plan future human settlements.
The average American likely doesn't want a life without cars. That seems to be an HN obsession seemingly (my perception) fueled by people who have lived and stayed in very dense urban areas.
Creating larger spaces that aren't made for cars is great, but people will still need long-range individual transportation.
Without cars these people would have lived near public transport or in cities where their companies are - potentially forming high-creativity groups of people that interact more often and are thus more creative.
I find it very weird how people in USA are blind to all the negative consequences of suburbanization.
The only reason why we were able to live the car oriented lifestyle we have is because we decided to subsidize and build roads for mass market cars. This doesn't preclude the existence of streetcar suburbs with walkable neighborhoods, and it isn't so bad once you realize that cars generate a whole lot of noise, especially the faster they run.
Long distance journey can be facilitated by interurban rails and railroads.
Do people actually enjoy car-centric living, or are alternatives just not available or something the average American has much exposure to? If you want to live somewhere in America that's walkable/bikeable/good public transit, your choices are a lot more limited than if you're willing to live somewhere where you need to drive everywhere. And those limited choices tend to be more expensive, which I think says something about their popularity.
Interestingly though, it seems like there is a trend to expand car alternative options, at least in some areas of the country. There's not much you can do about an exurban bedroom community because density is so low and nothing besides other houses is remotely within a convenient non-car distance. But in places that could be less car-centric, you're starting to see expanded public transit and bicycle infrastructure. And even in what would normally be a suburban area, I've started to see more mixed use development with higher density housing options. And of course more high-end condo type housing in large cities themselves. The fact these all tend to be relatively expensive places to rent or buy a home suggests to me that demand is fairly high, so clearly not everyone loves the car-centric choice.
I also think there is a segment of Americans who love the idea of low-density, car-centric, single family development in theory, but they're running into the reality that trying to build that for everyone means that people are going to have to live increasingly far away from anywhere they want to go. Even if you don't mind driving everywhere, car-centric becomes a lot less fun when everything is a 30+ minute drive away and gas is becoming more expensive.
> This lifestyle can't work for people outside of cities, though.
Exactly. Which means that, if cities are designed sanely, they will be more attractive to people who don't want cars (when I lived in a city during college, I never had a car and never missed having one), and suburbs and rural areas will be more attractive to people who do (as I do now since I like having a detached house and an actual yard).
Those are of course true at face value, but (other than the furniture example) they highlight the deeper problem with American urbanism.
A train is not necessarily a substitute for a car. For example, I have never needed a train to go food-shopping, because in all 7 different locations in which I have lived I have always lived at most a 10-minute-walk away from a supermarket (often significantly less). This was in different towns and cities in Spain, France and the UK.
Regarding going to school, my parents never needed to drive me to school. That's because I lived 5/10 minutes walking distance from my primary school and my high school (to which some of my classmates came by train, metro or bus). This was in Madrid.
And when I need to go door-to-door with no direct route, I virtually always have a trivial train/metro/bus combination available which at rush hour is faster than a car. This is in a town outside of Barcelona.
I'm not saying that all America's cities (let alone its suburbs) just need more public transport and less restrictive zoning as a magical solution. The overall residential density and cultural expectations are what they are. However, the very reason that this solution appears unfeasible is part of a self-reinforcing spiral that makes even minor gradual improvements less likely to be effective, thus less likely to be implemented, thus making other minor improvements less likely to be effective... and so it goes.
Cars aren't the terrible thing that many pro urban folk here seem to make them out to be, and I suspect most people prefer driving them to cycling or using public transport.
Similarly, the whole idea of automated driving becoming the default and humans not being able to drive is something I'm 100% against, since it'd be both a privacy nightmare and take away a lot of people's freedom.
The problem is really more that some places are designed to only be usable in a car, and that's what's poorly designed.
Speaking of which, also that suburbs aren't a bad thing. Again, it feels like people take the car focused design common in the US, and assume that's how these have to be. Thousands of identical houses in the middle of nowhere with everything interesting a 30 minute drive away.
But that's not necessarily true, and (as seen in most of the world), suburbs can be quite nice places to live in. A walkable one (like many in Europe) can be just as valid a place to live as a dense city neighborhood or rural area.
Those are, in fact, things a country can want - for a multitude of reasons. Environmental impact, cultural centers, oil politics, etc. The fact that car-centric suburban culture is difficult to attain may be feature, not a bug.
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