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What about the choice of an individual to get an F150 which has an unnecessarily large V8 engine roaring and idling when no one is using it for what it was designed for? I am in a city surrounded by cars that are far too large for their designated duties. People choose, like you mention, and yet it's the children with asthma and my mother with asthma who pays the price for the ridiculously oversized and smog-producing vehicles that are everywhere in society. I'm all for pickup trucks and minivans and buses, but only in the right application. At other times, which is probably 80-90% of the large vehicles I see, your choice to go alone in the car hurts all of our lungs and our planet.

> I'm all for pickup trucks and minivans and buses, but only in the right application.

I'm glad I don't live in a place where it's ok to limit people's choices based on someone's opinion on what is or isn't the 'right application.'

I'm sorry about your mother's asthma; my 6 year old son is a type 1 diabetic - that doesn't make it ok for me to go chastising society's choice to put sugar in practically EVERYTHING we eat or to try force society to change because of my son's misfortune.

Unless someone is forcing your kid to eat food with sugar in it, it's not a good comparison.

Your neighbors don't really have a choice as to whether or not they enjoy "hearing its V8 roar from inside the house through several walls/doors" or breathe the extra pollution that some (but not all) large trucks create.

> When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat.

I'm sure your neighbors will love being woken up in the middle of the night. Perhaps some of them would be glad to live in a society where there are reasonable limits on what situations other people can force you into for their own pleasure.

Please note that this comment isn't really directed at you specifically - you might not have close neighbors or they might be truck enthusiasts as well. It's directed at all owners of obnoxiously loud trucks who don't care how it affects other people, which may or may not be you.

> Your neighbors don't really have a choice as to whether or not they enjoy "hearing its V8 roar..."

You're right, they don't - but since many of them have a truck, it really isn't an issue. I'm honestly not a 'truck enthusiast', but I'd wanted one for the longest time and I'm happy with my choice. It makes trips to Home Depot / Lowes / etc a dream. Going to the mountains on vacation with it has been great as well - having gone up the side of a mountain up a single lane dirt road to a house we rented a couple of years ago (you never know what kind of infrastructure exists when you rent a place on VRBO/HomeAway/etc.) in our minivan was an experience let me tell you. This year we rented another place up in the mountains and having a truck was a godsend.

I don't remote start my truck at night (because I'd like to think I'm not an inconsiderate A-hole) - I only start the truck remotely during the day for a few minutes to get the A/C started since it's over 100 degrees (F) in summertime here. I let my non-truck owning neighbors/friend borrow my truck when they need it - so on the contrary, our neighbors love us.

Personally my experiences living in a city have been far louder and had much ruder neighbors than I could dream of than in our current situation (people blaring music at all hours of the night and early morning, driving cars with seemingly no mufflers or motorcyclists whose sole purpose seems to be to irritate everyone sleeping, domestic disputes between deaf people (otherwise why would I have been able to hear them from several houses over, etc.)

The problem is libertarian viewpoints which espouse individual choice must also account for negative externalities of one's activity. If I produce a bunch of pollution on my land or on public lands, I should pay for whatever costs that pollution incurs on others. I don't fault you personally, nor anyone driving their Cadillac Escalada to the grocery store solo, however I do fault politicians and the populace at large for not enacting sensible pollution taxes which recompense innocent bystanders to your choices. For you, I'm glad you can utilize that vehicle when you feel you need to, and I think it's only fair that you pay a tax for the increased cost to society that that choice incurs.

> The problem is libertarian viewpoints which espouse individual choice must also account for negative externalities of one's activity.

Well, no, they are quite able to not account for those. “Should”, not “must”.

> Have kids? When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat.

I can cycle to mine in 5 minutes, taxi, uber, run, walk, etc..

Or use one of the car share services near me.

> I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat.

> We were at the hospital in 15 minutes thanks to the modern automobile.

If you live within 3 minutes of a Walmart (3 minutes traveling there, 3 minutes checking out, and 3 minutes returning) and 15 minutes of a hospital you are significantly better located than the average suburbanite.

Most walkable urban areas will have 24 hour convenience stores every few blocks. Most walkable urban areas will have many options for quick travel to medical facilities (Zipcar like services, uber like services, frequent emergency clinics, ambulances).

I think cities have better access to medical care than suburban areas. There are more medical facilities. There are more options in choosing primary care. There are more specialist. There are more alternative treatment options. Try getting antibiotics for strep throat at 2am for less than $250 cash in less than ninety minutes in a suburb.

> Most walkable urban areas will have 24 hour convenience stores every few blocks.

This is only true in very large cities (NYC, LA, Paris, etc.) In smaller cities my experience is quite the opposite, shops close early and they are far and few between. I'm talking between 200-500k population (my sample size is small, but one city is in the US the other in France, neither had pharmacies within walking distance that were open past 9pm.)

> Try getting antibiotics for strep throat at 2am for less than $250 cash in less than ninety minutes in a suburb

Never been a problem here with a local 24/7 pharmacy that takes insurance so I'm not sure where you're getting your $250 figure from.

> I'm talking between 200-500k population

Are there many walkable cities with populations in that range?

> I'm not sure where you're getting your $250 figure from.

Including getting the script.

My wife needed a Z-Pack (antibiotic) last week and it cost us $0.11 all-in.

If you don't have health insurance, you're on your own (sadly.)

> When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do?

I could hit 3 bodegas from my front steps with a rock. I don't need to start a truck to get Ibuprofen.

I’m happy for you but not everyone lives in such a place that has that many options within spitting distance.

Sure, but the point is that nothing in your post was made possible by the automobile. People in walkable cities do everything you mention and they did all those things before the invention of the automobile.

If you build a suburb so that you need a car, then, sure, I guess you'll need a car. But that's not because any of those activities require a car. It's just that your town was built to require it!

If we put a dome over your town and sucked out all the oxygen, then you'd also need spacesuit to perform all those tasks, too. But it wouldn't be because any of those tasks require a space suit. You'd need the space suit because we sucked out all the oxygen.

> If you build a suburb

I didn't build a suburb - it was already here, just like you didn't build the city you live in. I drove to the suburb to begin with of my own free will because I didn't like living in a city (having already done so, Buffalo & Boston.) I'd already made the choice to live a lifestyle that is automobile-inclusive ;)

You don't get to judge or decide for me what is right for me and vice-versa. We all have a choices to make and do the best we can with what we have.

It's interesting that for all the intelligent people on HN, there's a lack of empathy and understanding that everyone has their own perception of reality. What's 'right' and 'real' in your mind may 1) not actually be reality 2) be neither 'right' nor 'wrong', but just a personal preference/opinion. I got a taste of this myself when I stumbled upon this book (and it's second part) https://www.amazon.com/DAY-Through-German-Eyes-Hidden-ebook/... (D-Day through German Eyes.) It's been eye-opening for me because I'd always assumed the Germans troops were evil men who were all bent on conquering Europe.

Unfortunately, this live-and-let-live account of history simply isn’t true. The suburbs were made possible via massive government subsidies, both in infrastructure and incentives for suburban homeownership.

Also, exclusionary zoning played an enormous role in deciding what those places looked like and they did it in large part to control who got to live there.

Finally, your lifestyle choices have externalities, from the immediately obvious 30k deaths a year, to more dangerous streets for people who choose not to drive, to environmental damage, to cities clogged with the cars of suburban commuters twice a day.

Your urban lifestyle choices have externalities as well, you just choose to ignore (or not look for them.)

http://science.time.com/2012/09/18/urban-planet-how-growing-...

https://www.prb.org/urbanizationanenvironmentalforcetobereck...

Respectfully, you've misunderstood what they mean by urbanization in those articles and completely missed their point, which is about the growth of urban areas (which includes suburbs) in general:

"It’s true that as people in developing nations move from the countryside to the city, the shift may reduce the pressure on land, which could in turn be good for the environment. This is especially so in desperately poor countries like Madagascar, where residents in the countryside slash and burn forests each growing season to clear space for farming. But the real difference is that in developing nations, the move from rural areas to cities often leads to an accompanying increase in income — and that increase in income leads to an increase in the consumption of food and energy, which in turns produces an uptick in carbon emissions."

In other words, wealthier people living in urban areas -- in both city cores and in the suburbs -- are worse for the environment than rural poor folks, and as developing nations urbanize, we can expect to see an increase in these impacts.

So now your opinion is that cities are equally bad...great so we've come full circle - we should all go live on a farm - got it. Farmers need pickup trucks so I guess I'm good to go (I happen to live within spitting distance of several farms so it's even more convenient.)

People on HN needs to get over themselves. Smart yes, able to see other's perspectives...hardly.

So your argument is that you need your car because you don't live in a place that is designed for humans, so we shouldn't change cities to be less car dependent?

Flipside is suburban areas have more land attached to the house (for a given $) and bigger parks etc. That's more humane than inner cities.

Not if it means no convenience stores in walking/biking distance, forcing you to buy a car for basic necessities.

It's not forced - we choose to buy them ;)

Is it really a choice, when you have no practical alternative?

I have a choice, I can live in a walkable place, but it involves tradeoffs that I don't care to make - because I don't see car ownership (or driving) as a negative thing, unlike this echo chamber.

Depends. Most suburbs and towns have convenience stores at least where I have lived. USA might be different. Delivery is another option.

> designed for humans

That's such a nonsensical argument. Suburbs weren't designed for elephants, they were created for humans, just like cities. You want to alleviate the dependence on cars in cities, make public transportation as convenient and flexible as having a car. Oh wait, you can't. People have cars because they do provide a perceived benefit, otherwise people would choose the alternative in droves.

Maybe you all should create a pedestrian-only city and live happily ever after.

Suburbs are designed for automobiles to move humans between places, not for humans to move themselves.

There is no choice but to build cities in this car-dependent way. Cities are forced to do so by our legal system that has been influenced by the automobile manufacturers and other industries.

Instead of me digging up some citations, just go watch Roger Rabbit. This has been the story for many years.

Tiny villages in Mexico have these kinds of options. It's not an amazing achievement.

I'm happy for the Mexicans - not sure why that's relevant.

Our zoning regulations enforce the automobile's hegemony, increasing distances and exposing pedestrians to the elements as well as dangerous traffic.

Without being forced to build in this financially insolvent manner, [1] no community would choose to isolate people from each other in the way that we do now in the United States.

Our neighboring country, Mexico, (among many others) shows that a costly design is not required for urban and suburban environments to work for humans.

The impending arrival self-driving car gives hope that the gigantic proportion of land devoted to car storage can be radically reduced, giving space for more buildings and habitable spaces between the buildings we have already constructed. This is a good sign for the future but we sure took an expensive, circuitous route to get there, all the while losing local power over our communities to industrial interests.

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/4/19/the-sprawl-con...

This satire right?

> what are you going to do?

err, take a taxi? Or have ibuprofen always at home?

Do you all live in huge cities like NYC/LA/SF/etc?

Not everyone can/does live in a city where you're tripping over Taxi/Uber at all hours of the night.

Ibuprofen at 3am? Go downstairs and walk around the corner to the bodega or 24-hour pharmacy.

Having lived in 2 cities in the US and in Europe in bad neighborhoods, you'd not catch me walking around past 11pm especially in the summer.

Don't assume that everyone can live a life of privilege in an upscale urban area.

I’ve done that as a small woman living alone in an opposite-of-upscale neighborhood, across the street from a public housing project. Really not a big deal.

I don’t know what neighborhoods you were living in, but my experience is that for every dangerous urban neighborhood there’s an equally affordable one that isn’t dangerous if you know where to look.

And it’s not like everyone can afford the privilege of a car either.

> Really not a big deal.

Says someone who has never experienced being beat up by a group of young men because of my race in just such a neighborhood as you described.

Growing up in a bad neighborhood, I didn't exactly have a choice to leave (until my parents bought a house in a better neighborhood in my late teen years.) I remember vividly the frozen blood on the concrete sidewalk across the street from my childhood home when leaving to walk to school - someone had been bludgeoned the death in the middle of the night.

Before I had a car, my girlfriend at the time lived in an even worse neighborhood (where shootings were a common/daily occurrence) the anxiety I experienced walking to the bus stop from her house, then waiting downtown for a transfer at a bus stop across the street from public housing, etc - that feeling is so vivid in my memory even though it's been 20 years. Not everyone shares the same experiences, and thus have the same values & priorities. Even after getting a car my troubles weren't quite over. I was nearly carjacked after dropping off the same girlfriend at her house at 11pm on a Friday night - he managed to open the car door, but not before I did a 180 in reverse and sped off.) Because I hadn't learned my lesson, I also had to change a flat tire in the same neighborhood at 3am one night. There's nothing like the threat of being shot or beat up to force you to learn to change a tire in a few minutes.

I'm happy in my suburb with a big backyard and a big dog and my truck (and yes firearms (gasp!)) It's fine if that isn't your cup of tea, just don't judge me for it.