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Comment by freediver | Hacker News Reader

A counter argument is that US has a very developed suburban living culture with families living in houses. And while obviously this is comfortable living, you then need a car to get to the city center.

Having said that, I agree that nothing beats the walkability of European cities, quality of living wise. US has a lot to learn from that.

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This type of urban design is unsustainable. It is the reason why the US is number one at producing greenhouse gases.

The US is neither the largest producer of greenhouse gases nor the largest producer per capita.

My bad, number 2 largest producer of greenhouse gases per capita. Right behind Australia which basically has the same type of suburban city design centered around cars.

> It is the reason why the US is number one at producing greenhouse gases.

This is incorrect. China currently holds this spot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...

per capita is the more accurate measure. Yeah I note my mistake in another reply.

Even so, the US historically took the number one spot for both total greenhouse gases and greenhouse gases per capita. If you look at it from a perspective of a longer timespan, the US is basically number one.

It is only in recent times does the US now currently take the number two spots for both categories.

Indeed. Here is an animation of the cumulative emissions starting 1750:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx85qK1ztAc

The US come in first, my home country Germany takes the fourth spot.

Yeah this is because the USA has offloaded making all its stuff to China. With this in mind the USA CO2 number is even worse than it first appears.

Are you saying that emissions shouldn't be attributed to the country they're generated in? If so, that's certainly an interesting perspective.

The attribution is much more grey with the advent of so much globalization. As humans we like to pin the blame on a singular entity but the real world is far more complicated.

Technically it shdnt. Just imagine you send your oil to another country to produce stuff for you, should the carbon emission for that be counted for country A or B? I think clearly country A. Now what if the oil doesn't come from country A but is bought from the money for the goods from country C. Well, technically you shdnt attribute it to country B. Either A or C.

You wouldn't need a car if there was good public transport :)

Good public transportation systems require a certain level of density to be practical, roughly on par with where European cities are at. This is why places like New York have fairly decent public transportation systems compared to the rest of the country.

You're not wrong, but your plan involves either uprooting people or sending out so many buses that it would create an ecological catastrophe far greater than we have now (assuming you want to cover all of the suburbs mentioned by the op).

I thought a lot of people also live in houses in and around Tokyo.

Japanese houses are quite different from US ones. My in-laws live in a house in suburban Chiba well outside Tokyo, but it has literally no garden space and the neighborhood is so densely packed a taxi can't even pull into the little laneway it's in. Within a 100 meter radius there's a grocery, a drugstore, several restaurants and more, and everybody gets around on foot, by bicycle or by bus.

tbh a yard seems less necessary when you can walk everywhere

And kids can actually walk places by themselves, have social lives and develop some independence instead of being stuck in the backyard.

I want this for my kids (stuck in US suburbia), but have instead opted for them to grow up close to their grandparents. I’m not always sure that I’m making the right trade off, and it annoys me that I even have to make such a choice.

Anyway, it’s been over 20 years since I visited Tokyo, and I’ve been to many major cities since. Tokyo remains my favorite.

If you haven't seen it already, the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes has a great video making the other decision (ie. moving to the Netherlands) with some compelling reasoning: https://youtu.be/ul_xzyCDT98

They do, Tokyo is full of detached homes, and the people living in them don't need a car. (some have cars, some don't, but a car is not needed, and even those who have one, chances are they can't use them for things like grocery shopping etc even if they wanted to)

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