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1. acabal+Zc[view] [source] 2023-05-18 15:44:13
>>amathe+(OP)
I've been railing against cars in the US for years and years. The thing is that today most people in the US under the age of 60 grew up in cars, usually in a suburban environment, and it's actually impossible for them to imagine what life without a car might even look like. It's like trying to describe a color. If we can't even visualize an alternative, how are we supposed to achieve the alternative?

Only by traveling to places that were developed before cars took a chokehold on the world can people realize how nice it is to live without them absolutely everywhere.

Many Americans get a taste of that when they vacation to Europe. They often choose to leave their suburb and spend their 2 weeks in urban environments like Barcelona, London, Munich, Paris, Rome, etc., that where built for people and not cars, because it's so pleasant to live like that, and because letting cities develop for people first leads to cities that people actually want to be in, with car-free streets, plazas, promenades, etc. (Yes, today those places are also full of cars. But, unlike American cities, their skeletons are people-first and cars are the invasive element.)

It could be argued that so many problems of American life - weight gain, loneliness, fracturing of the social fabric - stem from how we've isolated ourselves in unwalkable suburbs, where there's no spontaneous social interaction because everyone's always in a car, and where our only exercise is the walk from the parking lot to our desk.

What's depressing is visiting developing countries and seeing them start to ape the worst of American car life. Places like Colombia, which I visit often, are building shopping malls, big-box stores, parking lots, suburbs, and freeways, while after almost 100 years of that type of car-first development in America we're only just starting to realize that actually it might not be that great.

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2. johnwa+2V1[view] [source] 2023-05-19 00:19:09
>>acabal+Zc
The replies are full of people that can't imagine life without cars. I grew up in a suburb of Edmonton, I know what it's like to just "know" that cars are freedom and a way to get to ever conceivable place. I left that place 20 years ago and I could make a long reply about what it's like to live in various sized cities in Japan and Europe but let me just say that not needing a car to get from your house in a town to restaurants, grocery stores, shops, parks, etc offers much more freedom than needing a car to get to such things. And there are a lot of places where you can live in a town, even on an acreage and still be in the town and able to get to a train station to get to a nearby city, if your argument is that you can't stand cities and need your space.

Car-people can't imagine a town instead of a suburb and can't imagine that you can get from a town to a city by train or bus. Or that you don't need to travel to some far-off place with a huge car to get a ton of groceries because you can walk a few blocks and pick up the ingredients for dinner.

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