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[return to "How to quit cars"]
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. thomas+BD1[view] [source] 2023-05-18 22:32:29
>>acabal+Zc
> What's depressing is visiting developing countries and seeing them start to ape the worst of American car life.

A lot of bad decisions were made in Europe stemming from American city planners after the second world war. Like David Jokinen's influence on Amsterdam and The Hague: https://viewpointvancouver.ca/2019/10/27/the-1960s-when-the-...

It's strange that people are so eager to export (and import) urbanism ideas around the world without much understanding of the cultural differences and needs.

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3. diggin+KF1[view] [source] 2023-05-18 22:43:01
>>thomas+BD1
Because it feels like prosperity. In a town with no public transportation and very few cars, getting a car would feel awesome. And it's just a lot easier for 1 well-off person to buy 1 car than for the entire town to get good public transit.
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4. thomas+kG1[view] [source] 2023-05-18 22:46:07
>>diggin+KF1
> it's just a lot easier for 1 well-off person to buy 1 car than for the entire town to get good public transit.

Sure, once the town is already built for cars. If it wasn't, having a car would be a pain with no parking and no space in the streets.

The question is why cities choose/chose to rebuild themselves for cars in the first place, and continuously in the third world as suggested by the OP and the book "Urbanism Imported or Exported: Native Aspirations and Foreign Plans" by Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait.

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5. bombca+rk2[view] [source] 2023-05-19 04:34:32
>>thomas+kG1
Even before cars existed, there was room for them; look how wide old streets in the USA are (because turning a team of horses takes some space!)

Or look how packed with cars Europe is, even in the tiny streets of Sienna they wedge little cars in everywhere.

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