More people in the same or less space leads to less freedom. Walking doesn't have that much to do with it.
I still don't get what the grandparent is on about though. I live in Boston, and it's pretty great. I feel free to live my life the way I want here, as opposed to being forced into owning a car and drive it everywhere.
(Not talking about the train top speed, but the average speed, including stops and acceleration, along the whole line.)
[1] For the Green line: http://walkingbostonian.blogspot.com/2015/01/taking-look-at-...
[2] https://www.nyctransitforums.com/topic/17313-subway-system-a...
[3] https://ggwash.org/view/4524/average-schedule-speed-how-does...
The red line e.g. runs at 20 mph[1]. The problem with the red line are the age of the rolling stock and signal equipment and their tendency to catch on fire.
The average annual cost of owning and operating a private vehicle is about $8,500[1].
The median personal income in the US is about $31,000[2].
Clearly, for a large part of the population, a good proportion of their working hours are spent paying for transportation. They are "paying huge sums of time".
If you are only bringing in the median income, not being obliged to run a car is a massive advantage. Yes, of course you will miss out on some things such as going camping on the weekend but if this were really important to you then hiring a car specifically for this purpose would be a good option.
[1] https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...
If you have access to 10 identical Chuck E. Cheese's restaurants with a 10 minutes drive, you have less access than if you have access to 10 very different restaurants with a 10 min walk as it's typically the case in a dense city center.
I agree that the relevant metric is time. In a dense environment, you typically have access to more and more diverse things than in a less dense, car dependent suburban environment, in the same amount of time.
Population density is the dominant term in the freedom equation. I think wealth is more dominant than walk-ability Walk-ability is in there too but it on becomes something worth caring about when density and wealth are controlled for. Walk-ability can be the deciding factor when comparing freedom in place A to place B only if and B are of similar density and wealth.
If you have two cities that are very similiar except one is more walkable the walkable one will have more freedom because owing a car in either of those places is going to be so burdensome (cost of ownership, time spent going out of your way to comply with some car related law, e.g. moving it for street sweeping, finding parking, etc) as to be a net decrease in personal freedom compared to walking.
To get to a high enough density where walk-ability becomes a serious concern you've already given up a lot of freedom in other ways.
For example, in a city that's less dense than Boston, like Worcester (a couple hours outside Boston depending on traffic, I'm picking a city in the same state to control for outside variables) you don't need to be in the 90% income percentile to buy a house. Owning your own house/property increases your freedom because you don't have a landlord. You can remodel the place, paint it funny colors, smoke inside, have pets, etc. If you reduce density to the point where you have off street parking you get even more freedom. You can have a motorcycle and a commuter car. You can have a little trailer you use to buy stuff at home depot (or wherever). Someone who's handy can use that freedom to be much more efficient with their money. Instead of paying someone you can go buy and install a shower insert (or whatever) and remodel that bathroom yourself. Yes, I know you could rend a Uhaul or whatever but that adds friction and cost.
Even still, in the city you probably don't have the freedom to throw parties or restore an old sailboat under a carport because people will complain. That can be solved by moving a little further out to the suburbs but this is where wealth starts entering the equation. If you move to a "nicer" (wealthier) suburb you still won't be allowed to do those things. HOAs, community standards, bylaws, etc will prevent you from or add significant friction that makes it more expensive (time, money or $other, choose any metric, you can convert them all to each other on some level) what you want on your own personal property or within your own home. Solution: pick a "less nice" suburb where nobody will blink twice at parties or a partially restored boat under a car port or move even further out. Even in an area that's borderline rural/suburb there's things you can't do without a high likelihood of causing yourself trouble. If riding ATVs hunting, target shooting or anything else that makes a heck of a lot of noise is your thing you really aren't free to do those things unless you live way, way out in the boondocks.
Lower density and "less nice" neigborhoods have trade-offs. Less density, fewer jobs (potentially less economic freedom), fewer services (you need to spend your time/money making up for that, e.g. taking your trash to the dump), fewer choices on where to buy groceries, more time spent traveling, etc etc. In a less nice neighborhood you might be able to throw a party but you might have to put up with listening to the police break up someone else's party at 1am.
With regard to walkability specifically, as density goes down the cost of owning a car goes down (e.g typical cost of/time spent looking for of parking in Houlton, ME:$0, 0min, Miami, FL: >$0, >0min) so depending on one's personal values/priorities there's a point (for most people it's probably on street vs off street parking) where a car becomes a net increase in freedom as opposed to a net decrease in freedom. The bigger the cost of a car the more walk-ability and other transit matters.
If you want to be a city mouse and going to bars, museums, buying fancy ethnic food from a local grocer, etc is you thing that's fine but equating lots of local options for those activities (regardless of the mode of transportation you use to get to them) with freedom is a really, really narrow view of what personal freedom is. You're also ignoring (or not aware of) a lot of stuff that you are trading off when living somewhere densely populated (partly because those tradeoffs do not affect you ability to pursue your interests) that other people with other priorities would see as a reduction of personal freedom.
For people who want to spend their free time doing something that can't be done easily/cheaply/well in the city walk-ability is not something that has a large impact on their perceived level of personal freedom.
If your personal preferences line up in a way that causes walk-ability to make your life better then you will perceive it as increasing freedom. To get to that point at all you're living somewhere dense enough that you have made trade-offs in your living style that other people with other preferences would call a decrease in freedom.
Walk-ability is a positive to some and inconsequential to others.
This is kind of a rant but oh well, making it much more cohesive than it is is beyond the point of diminishing returns.