zlacker

i would say bike autists equally struggle to imagine what it is like to live anywhere besides the most population-dense, infrastructurally developed 15 square miles on the face of the earth. i have a very good sense of what it is like to live without a car as i did so for 20 years and it fucking sucks. i have no desire to have to bike 10 miles in 80+ degree heat with a saxophone in one hand and a guitar in the other ever again. i have no desire to experience the vibrant living of being packed into an 11pm vomit comet ever again. i have no desire to have to pad every commute & outing with an extra 45 to 60 minutes of stops ever again.

>>odessa+(OP)
Sure and that's your choice. But if I, a bike autist, want to live somewhere with density, where do I go? How many open units of housing are available for bike autists? If there was plenty of space for dense and sparse living then people would self-select, based on preferences and time in their life (maybe choosing a suburb when their child is very young and needs a lot of support but moving out once their children need autonomy.) Right now in America, the vast majority of housing is hostile to bike autists. That's why the title of this piece is "How to quit cars" because we've mandated car centric development in the US for almost a century.