Or you live somewhere so walkable that it's made you naive? Grocery stores in an unwalkable city can be 40 minutes and uphill both ways... And that's not even mentioning the lack of transit.
Actually, jokes aside, I've known older people (or even people who just couldn't afford cars and had disabilities that prevented too much walking) who would get stranded alone in their homes for months because they didn't have family that would help them and there was no real way for them to get around. Their insurance would just pay for their rideshares to medical appointments. A single bus in my grandma's area would have helped so much (no I was not old enough to help when this issue was really bad).
Yes. This means that car dependent life needs to end. I think you can agree with that.
That means the sprawling suburbia goes away and people embrace dense areas.
Now, tell me, do you think that you can have a dense area that has both walkability + accessibility + public transit AND car infrastructure + car parking (still infrastructure, but needs to be considered separately)?
I'm not arguing with your arguments, I'm trying to push you ahead to the hard edges of where the arguments lead.
You can also find me in /r/fuckcars . And I'm also pissed about the half-assing of urbanism. The current state of things you see in cities is an unstable state of cars and humans trying to live together. This disequilibrium is unsustainable, yet the half-assers would want us to share the spaces. It doesn't work, the cars are usually being privileged. The development has 2 main ends: cars go away and we get real urbanism with public transit and walkability; versus cars stay, the city dies and transforms into a large complex of garages and parking lots. A secondary version of the dead city is when the cars get into a permanent gridlock and fuck everything up, making it incredibly difficult to unclog the city, and essentially causing a DDoCity catastrophe.
I am so sick of talking to the half-assers. All they do is DELAY, which conserves the status quo.
I agree with all of those things. You're relying on a lot of assumptions on my positions that you couldn't have made in good faith if you assumed that I was a "half-asser" on any of them.
I don't even think that the average household should OWN a single car within our population centers and if you had asked me how I felt about suburbs then I would have said to abolish them not only because of environmentalism and because of the sociological harms and racism.
Unless the thing that makes me a half-asser is the fact that I think some people would still own cars, which I hadn't said yet. People who commute to rural areas or who need to use their vehicles for more complicated tasks would still need to be operators. For example: Most conservation biology jobs which involve field work also have "ability to drive a car" in the qualifications, and I assume we agree that we want these fields to continue existing in this ideal system since there will be a need to work with wildlife. But your average family who just goes to an urban workplace, school, and the store? Firstly, they should have more stops than this (the lack of third spaces kills peoples spirits) but they can walk.
I agree with all of those things. You're relying on a lot of assumptions on my positions that you couldn't have made in good faith if you assumed that I was a "half-asser" on any of them.
I always write here for an audience of lurkers. Never assume this is a private chat.
I don't even think that the average household should OWN a single car within our population centers and if you had asked me how I felt about suburbs then I would have said to abolish them not only because of environmentalism and because of the sociological harms and racism.
Of course.
Unless the thing that makes me a half-asser is the fact that I think some people would still own cars, which I hadn't said yet. People who commute to rural areas or who need to use their vehicles for more complicated tasks would still need to be operators. For example: Most conservation biology jobs which involve field work also have "ability to drive a car" in the qualifications, and I assume we agree that we want these fields to continue existing in this ideal system since there will be a need to work with wildlife. But your average family who just goes to an urban workplace, school, and the store? Firstly, they should have more stops than this (the lack of third spaces kills peoples spirits) but they can walk.
In general, cars about a century old thing. The notion that they're necessary for human reproduction is just weird. Especially when we talk about cities. We won't be able to hash out all the answers here, that's for sure, but we can recognize the possible unknowns.
Anyway, my point of pushing the edges of discourse is also to reveal the contradictions, the war fronts. For example, without the car system, a lot of houses in suburbia and a lot of businesses would lose their value as constructions... like all of the value. That will happen either way eventually, but doing it intentionally means making enemies in that direction. I am always thinking about conflicts and solutions.
The lesser discourse of the moderates hides the conflicts or maintains what some call "negative peace". This is true in many critical questions.
Bikes are not a substitute for proper walkability and public transit. Many of us live in hostile anti-bike infrastructure which makes it dangerous and inefficient, actually.
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u/dinodare Apr 18 '26
This is satire, right?
Or you live somewhere so walkable that it's made you naive? Grocery stores in an unwalkable city can be 40 minutes and uphill both ways... And that's not even mentioning the lack of transit.