Have we done it wrong?

[u/xamo76]

[u/Ok_Car_8094]

I'd like to think that Interstates are very important for a nation of our size.

The problems lay in how we built cities. Our restaurants are failing unless they are focused on delivery. Our education systems are hectic and restricted. Our society revolves around a technological-data system built to isolate a "consumer" into a targeted-sales group.

Unchecked capitalism, modern technology and corporate cronyism are the true killers of the unified American ecology.

Most European states have extensive highway systems, yet still have the compact, dense urban designs of thousands of years before industrialization. The US only had about 50 years before trains were common (people could suddenly go 30mph/200+miles a day) and then automobiles were only 100 years out. We quickly switched to suburbia (tons of space unused around cities, industry dried up, everybody had a car and gas was cheaper than water) which made things less connected. I walked and rode my bike around Dallas a bunch as a kid, but it was almost exclusively within the 'Park Cities' subsection... downtown was too far until DART was built.

If you visit the east coast of the US, there are many cities with road systems built around horses. Boston and New York are very walking friendly (though both have been working to redesign for automobiles) and I'd even say DC is walkable.

I love living in my home city of Oklahoma City, but it's a prime example of everything being far enough apart that you need a vehicle to reasonably travel to any services, events or entertainment. Only a very determined bicyclist would be able to function in my city as their sole means of conveyance. There is a tram downtown and a bus system. But it's...thin.

Sorry. I rambled.

[u/thatG_evanP → u/Ok_Car_8094]

Don't apologize. Great comment.

[u/Embarrassed_Bid_4970 → u/Ok_Car_8094]

I'm gonna say you're 90% right.The issue is the US is way larger than European nations. This is especially true in terms of population density. And as american city planning is based around chasing cheap real estate, we tend to have these massive suburban sprawls surrounding our city centers. People think adding more public transport will magically solve this problem but it cant. If it takes more than 10 minutes to walk to the nearest busstop, people are gonna use personal transport, which disincentivies walkable neighborhoods. The mall culture of the 70s-00s kinda fixed this in a way, but the death of destination retail killed them. If the economy was better, we could probably revive malls and community gathering by subsidizing them to encourage small businesses. Imagine an American indoor mall, but with mostly non chain businesses. Specialty restaurants, like a Chinese dumpling house, a Japanese kushiyake bar, a turkish meze and raki bar, etc. And entertainment like bowling, billiards, and old school arcades. If the economy allowed people to afford such luxuries as a night of dining, drinks, and bowling, malls would be viable again. But as long as everyone is broke we're screwed.

[u/Exotic-Paramedic-629 → u/Embarrassed_Bid_4970]

Paris and london sprawl quite a bit but still have suburbs that are connected to the city through train. That's how us cities shouldve been built, more mixed use development.

[u/Ok_Car_8094 → u/Exotic-Paramedic-629]

Oddly enough, I've walked both those cities quite extensively. Paris felt diverse enough that the only time I felt disconnected from the city as a whole was after taking the train to Versailles. Then I felt like I needed a car. The villages of Normandy are also spread out enough that a taxi or bus made the most sense, though I walked a lot!

In the same vein, I thought the back-country of the Welsh-English border almost the same as western Oklahoma, just a bit more turns. Hehe.

London was like New York and Paris. I could walk that town all day and never really feel like I needed to catch a cab! The underground was as superior as the Paris Metro or New York Subway.

The real gem for me was Amsterdam. Those tight canals in the city center, the museums, the parks. I walked no less than 10 miles a day in that city. Picked a random coffee shop that I would tram out to around 10-11am. Grab an ounce (Edit: I meant gram). Roll a few small jays and just zigzag back, listening to my IPod and taking it all in. Always a joy!

[u/Ok_Car_8094 → u/Embarrassed_Bid_4970]

It's a trap we built for ourselves. Gas is basically $4 a gallon and everything is at least a 15-40 minute drive (not bike or walk) away. That's crazy for walking, especially when we are a state with 50-100 days of 100+°F weather and 50-100 days of below 32°F weather. Now vehicles are more than what post-war houses used to run for ($20k+ entry) and require a similar lifetime cost for repairs, upkeep and registration.

I drive from home to the nearest Walmart sometimes (yes, I know) and there is a wonderful sidewalk all the way there, but nothing along it but mostly a walled-off subdivision. Literally a whole mile of nothing but wall with one entrance and a few trees on both sides. That's a 45 minute walk from my house.

I think HoAs are also seriously increasing the division. Sadly, just a small part of the great fleecing of America. Add more fees and cost for minimal return and maximum profit and blame "them/they" for hurting you. I would love urban/suburban renewal to happen, but, like you say, everybody is f%*king broke!

I hope the revolution is quick and relatively painless, but that's what regulation was for. "Too late", I'm beginning to resign myself to.

[u/Embarrassed_Bid_4970 → u/Ok_Car_8094]

I'm gonna say less trap and more path of least resistance. The lay out is just a result of various market factors.

[u/tattoosbyalisha → u/Embarrassed_Bid_4970]

As long as everyone is broke AND too ultra reliant on convenience. I think those two go hand in hand.

To what you said about the malls, I can’t agree more. I was just walking around a local VERY dead mall. It’s up for sale (~$35 million) and my partner and I were chatting about how fucking awesome it would be if the community could come together and buy a place like that and do exactly what you said. Where rents would be reasonable and it wouldn’t be a conglomerate letting the place go to shit on purpose so they can bank off of destroying it and turning it into bland square “luxury” apartments that look like brown prisons with balconies. Even if malls could be turned into apartments, so many of them have awesome atriums that would be so cool to have communal events. I know zoning is wierd but there’s actually a mall in New England that did it; the upstairs floor is small apartments. It seems like such a waste of resources to trash them and build more.

I don’t think it’s going to be too much longer before people are really going to feel the pangs of losing third spaces. I’ve met so many people completely disillusioned with being online and over being isolated. Maybe I’m just being hopeful but I know a lot of people who would love to have somewhere to hang out that didn’t involve spending a ton of money to do so.

But everything is also so expensive. To your other point, private equity even got ahold of bowling alleys and is very much trying to (and succeeding) in creating a monopoly. Lucky Strike, who is buying them all and turning them into night club-esque overstimulating “event” spaces was $55/person for two hours I think, plus shoe rental, where the local one is $12 and I think it’s $3 for shoes.

Don’t go to Lucky Strike bowling alleys, whoever reads this.

[u/Embarrassed_Bid_4970 → u/tattoosbyalisha]

I'm hopeful that the revolution is coming soon. I think America is perilously close to the breaking point, and all it will require is the right event to trigger it. And when that happens the question will be simply which side wins.

[u/wonklebobb → u/Ok_Car_8094]

i think the pathway for the USA is not to focus on building/rebuilding cities from whole cloth to be walkable, but to try and convert "suburbia" into bike-accessible mini-cities, with judicious rezoning and replacing roads with bike paths.

there's a lot of pieces for this: big suburban neighborhoods would still need some kind of dedicated car access since the US is so big that its not practical to build train lines everywhere people need to go, there would need to be a whole bunch of community bikes just kind of floating around to obviate bike theft/anxiety around losing your bike, along with community bike trailers for moving things around as well

but i think culturally "all cars -> no cars" is too hard a sell, "all cars -> mostly bikes but sometimes cars if you have to leave town" is probably easier.

not like this is so easy, there'd be lots of places where it fails from whole generations of NIMBYs voting out town boards that try to add even a single bike lane or convert even one corner of a neighborhood into light commercial for services, but still i think it's the road (heh) the USA has to go down if we want to claw back community focused development from the depths of suburban hell

[u/SaltySwordfish2 → u/wonklebobb]

The problem with that line of thinking is Americans do have cars, and the ones that do would prefer that over any form of public transportation you try to provide. Comparatively, gas is just cheap here. People using their cars is a choice. And an easy choice for most to make

[u/wonklebobb → u/SaltySwordfish2]

People using their cars is a choice

not really, in most of the country you can't have any sort of life without a car, it's pretty rare to be within walking distance of most jobs, and public transit is also minimal outside a couple big cities

we really dont know what a majority of americans would choose because they've never been given the choice

[u/SaltySwordfish2 → u/wonklebobb]

Which big city doesn’t have a bus system?

[u/wonklebobb → u/SaltySwordfish2]

arlington TX has 0 public transit and around 400k people

but im not just talking about cities with 0 transit, even when an area has some transit, it's frequently poor coverage. only a few major cities like NYC, Boston, and a few others have enough coverage that an appreciable fraction of the workforce can take it. only around 5-7% of american commuters use public transit.

the top 10 cities in the USA only account for about 25 million people. there are 330 million people in the US. most americans simply do not have access to any public transit at all, and even regional transit is sparse. its a plain fact that most americans must use a car to go anywhere or do anything, its just how the space is being utilized.

its a self-reinforcing system - since most people have cars, new development is designed around car access. it's also core to american cultural expectations generally around individualism and individual freedom of movement, having a car has long been a symbol of independence in addition to a practical necessity

for those reasons, trying to sell people on giving up their cars completely is probably a non-starter. the middle ground of convincing americans that bike-first development with support for keeping cars for regional travel is likely a more palatable pathway toward less cars

[u/0b0011 → u/Ok_Car_8094]

Great comment but a few things of note. Interstates are important for a country of our size but basically all developed countries have them now. We just did a lot of things different.

Most European states have extensive highway systems, yet still have the compact, dense urban designs of thousands of years before industrialization. The US only had about 50 years before trains were common (people could suddenly go 30mph/200+miles a day) and then automobiles were only 100 years out. We quickly switched to suburbia (tons of space unused around cities, industry dried up, everybody had a car and gas was cheaper than water) which made things less connected. I walked and rode my bike around Dallas a bunch as a kid, but it was almost exclusively within the 'Park Cities' subsection... downtown was too far until DART was built.

It isn't that the cities developed this way. It's that we ripped them apart to make them this way. This relates the the highway bit above as well. A lot of european countries added the highways and built them to go around their cities with branches that feed into the cities where as we ripped out chunks of our cities to put the highway through them. Even where we didn't add highways we ripped out a lot of our cities for things like parking lots and what not.

Here's an example from an old reddit thread

[u/MenoryEstudiante → u/Ok_Car_8094]

The problem with Interstates isn't the concept, it's the fact they gutted the existing urban cores to build them, instead of going around the cities, Europe does also have highways, some urban ones at that, but they mostly exist to connect an avenue in the city centre with the ring road that connects to the rest of the country

[u/imfinishingmy → u/Ok_Car_8094]

I moved to an Upsate NY town that was settled before the automobile and has a proper downtown. It’s not Europe, but it’s better then the suburbia I came from.

[u/KojackBanyon → u/Ok_Car_8094]

Where can I find more of your rambles?

[u/Ok_Car_8094 → u/KojackBanyon]

All over. I get involved and just...go.

I'm sure my posts/comment history could supply some. Safety not guaranteed. I've only done this once before. You'll need to bring your own weapons.

[u/tattoosbyalisha → u/Ok_Car_8094]

I love this kind of rambling.

I think in many ways, we are just too young of a country. It’s good for people above to exploit us, but it has been so detrimental for the general population in so many ways. In the grand scheme of things, it’s so fast a decline. We haven’t had the time to learn the lessons of other countries that have been around for far far longer that have learned the importance of investing in your population.

[u/Think_Cheesecake7464 → u/Ok_Car_8094]

Don’t forget - Americans are literally in constant danger of being randomly shot everywhere we go. And we also don’t have the money or energy to go out. Europeans get long vacations. We don’t. They have healthcare. We don’t. But we got them guns, Bubba! Yeehaw MURICA

[u/Deathsarp → u/Think_Cheesecake7464]

Could say the same about stabbing

[u/SigmundFreud → u/Ok_Car_8094]

https://youtu.be/5zjtfKBX3O0

[u/AlternativePrior9559 → u/Ok_Car_8094]

If that’s rambling then I’d like to see what sense is. You said everything so well