Lack of Walkability in the US is destroying mental health
makeamericawalkable.com
makeamericawalkable.com
For those that are interested in learning more about the topic, I highly highly recommend the City Nerd youtube channel, https://www.youtube.com/@CityNerd.
I find a lot of arguments for for walkability tend to be emotional or needlessly hostile towards car owners. City Nerd takes a much more analytical approach and shares the data he uses for his videos, I think that's something most of HackerNews can appreciate.
I think it's somewhat of an optics issue, but it is very hard to find walkability communities online that aren't using terms like "car-brain". I know that these terms are targeted at a certain type of car owner, but without being familiar with the car-free community this is not always clear and can be a turn-off to car-owners who may be curious about learning more.
Hostility towards anyone who owns a car is rather more rare from walkability proponents. Not totally unheard of, but hardly mainstream.
For example, r/fuckcars is massive. A large subreddit might not be considered mainstream, but it does have massive reach. A lot of people see this as one of their first exposures to car-free communities and do not feel welcomed by it.
I think it's somewhat of an optics issue, but it is very hard to find walkability communities online that aren't using terms like "car-brain". I know that these terms are targeted at a certain type of car owner, but without being familiar with the car-free community this is not always clear and can be a turn-off to car-owners who may be curious about learning more.
And maybe unavoidable: the US in particular is SO slanted towards absolute car dominance in most areas, that you end up with this sort of rhetorical whiplash just by favoring movement towards transportation balance. I've never heard the term "car brain" before you just said it, and yet I know exactly what you're talking about, and that for many people it will be entirely accurate.
Feels like NYC is the only place, and it's great, just expensive to live in.
There's actually a lot of walkable areas of many American cities or alternatively smaller rural towns. Generally, the older the city the easier these neighborhoods are to find. even LA has walkable neighborhoods (even though you'll still need a car to get around in general). But yes... expensive.
I hope the rising popularity of e-bikes makes some lower density cities more navigable without a car. Pretty much all "stroads" should be converted to 2 car lanes and a turning lane in the middle, which would leave room for protected bike lanes.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that I'm pretty sure I have hearing loss from walking next to trucks that make an unbelievable amount of noise. Garbage trucks are the worst offenders in my experience.
It's definitely gotten to the point where I have to find alternative routes from the main streets for my own safety.
And isn't Seattle supposed to be one of the most walkable cities in the US?
source: am canadian.
I recall getting good, quick care when I worked in the US and had a good HMO.
The whole 'american healthcare bad/unaffordable' argument is something that I hear quite a bit on the internet, but pretty much never do in real life.
Like in many other things, the US is a country of extremes. At its best, the US health system is better than Canada's. At its worst, it's worse.
So it's pretty much down to whether you are a have or a have-not.
Insurance can be contingent on different things:
> Where can I receive care?
> If a provider is not in a plan’s network, the insurance company may not pay for the service(s) provided or may pay a smaller portion than it would for in-network care. This means the enrollee who goes outside of the network for care may be required to pay a much higher share of the cost. This is an important concept to understand, especially if you are not originally from the local Stanford area.
* https://vaden.stanford.edu/insurance-referral-office/health-...
If you happen to be in a car crash, make sure your ambulance drive takes you to an in-network hospital.
What bubble are you in? For some of us, we make enough money that paying 400/month for insurance while our employer does the same isn't a big deal. For us software engineers, it's no big deal. For the 50% of people making under 60k a year, that's a large chunk of their income.
I hear it constantly from friends nationwide (I have a very large extended circle for a few reasons), media, and my wife, who is a healthcare worker and deals with insurance constantly (as does anyone in healthcare in the US) or my mother (also in healthcare). And of course, we have lots of friends who are in healthcare. And I hear it from my parents, who, as aging people, have more healthcare needs. Your insurance company gets to delay or prevent access to prescriptions, surgeries, or physical therapy as long as they desire.
I'm in Philadelphia, which is one of the biggest cities in the US and where healthcare makes up a much larger than usual portion of our local economy [0]. You can find numerous other sources to support this, Philly is a huge biomedical / healthcare hub. It's almost like being in LA for film or SF for tech.
Where insurance really starts to suck is if you and your healthcare providers think you need care, but the insurance company says no. My wife experiences rejections from her patient's insurance companies daily. Happens with Medicare too.
0. https://www.besthealthdegrees.com/careers/the-top-10-cities-...
You pay your taxes and you gets your health care.
As opposed to the US where even if you pay your premiums you may not get coverage if you go to the "wrong" (out of network) hospital, or the "wrong" (OON) doctor even if in the right hospital. Be sure to inform your ambulance driver of your in-network hospitals so you get taken to the "correct" hospital after a car crash.
When my father had to get new heart valves the most that had to be paid was hospital parking.
source: am canadian.
Source: Am USian.
(Also worth noting that you can add private health care to your menu. If you balk at the cost, welcome to the US model)
It takes a single search to find many different studies and meta-studies about correlations between noise, air pollution and mental illness, cardiovascular health, life expectancy and others.
I encourage you to look for studies about a metropolitan area near you:
Car traffic is not harmless. Noise is not harmless. It's just that those who contribute the most to pollution anr noise usually don't experience it every day for hours on end, or even during their sleep.
If you prefer esoteric subjects to obvious ones, I'd recommend this study:
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/5/467
If you are looking for proofs for the obvious (living at a busy road makes you sick), there are plenty of studies about this subject as well.
Cancer rates rise, IQ drops, life expectancy drops, all in clear correlation to your immediate environment.
As a German, also the pedestrian's and cyclist's utopia that Europe is painted as on US media also sickens me.
It's purely a matter of money and inheritance.
Good luck finding a non-toxic place to live in a big city with an average wage and *without owning a car*.
Possible, but exceptional.
Probably because you're on vacation?
Why is there nothing that walkable city enthusiasts will claim walkable cities won't fix?
In America, "going to the mall" is almost always a trip you get into your car for, even if you live in a big city! You can't just drop in to get something as you walk around.
How do you plan on proving your hypothesis? What evidence do you have to support it? Who have you spoken to who agrees and can support - who disagrees? What will the viewer learn from your documentary that they will not from elsewhere? Is it a documentary that the viewer will get excited about to see? If I disagree with you completely, might I watch it and have my mind changed? - These are questions I would want answered from such a site.
I'm afraid the website looks more like a political campaign, collecting cash from those who agree with you. Or a merch store with a catchy slogan.
Honestly I wish you well, I've supported indie docs before - these are just my first impressions from this site.
It's spammy to bait-and-switch with a submission that says one thing and then takes me to a page that tries to sell me a hat and make a donation - and utterly fails to provide any substance to back up the claim.
There's no quicker way to get me to close a tab, aside from maybe just invoking window.close() yourself
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_...
Also, people forget - walkable doesn't just mean "somewhere you can walk" - I means you can walk to activities of daily living (groceries, pharmacy, gym, job, friends places, etc).
And this may just be me but I feel that the reason I liked being among people is because it creates the illusion of possibilities. Possibilities of friendships, a date, an interesting person, a job opportunity etc. This was reaffirmed when I chatted with utter strangers for hours at the airport.
I wouldn't say it's an illusion.
> People who live on heavily trafficked streets, which cater mostly to motorists, count on average about one friend. People who live on walkable streets, however, count three—and twice as many acquaintances, to boot. If your neighbors are within walking distance, and it’s easy for you to walk, it’s much more likely that you’ll bump into them, strike up a conversation, get to know them a little.
https://qz.com/1421323/for-the-good-of-all-humankind-make-yo...
If you're interested in a more informative discussion of city design and its effect on lived experience, I recommend Not Just Bikes [1].
Regardless, you still haven't answered my question. Why is making a multi-year, feature-length documentary better than a series of videos on YouTube? Why do you think that your chosen medium will be more effective or persuasive than previous works? In other words, why do you think you deserve donations?
One of my family members is clearly desperate for social outlets. And they thrive and gush over anywhere they travel to that inevitably is walkable and has tangible community.
Idk how people do it.
She asked me what "walkable" is in German. Then it hit me, we don't have this word because in Germany this concept is unknown.
Funny how societal factors have such an imprint in language.
I haven't heard this before and can only find online usage from official institutions and city departments though, so maybe it's a more official term?
It's easy to find US cities with plenty of sidewalks that are hideously unwalkable, as well as many streets in Japan with no sidewalks that are still highly walkable.
Consider: Do other countries even have the concept of "Jaywalking", which was explicitly an attempt by vehicle manufacturers to blame pedestrian deaths on pedestrians.
The novelty wears off after a few years and with kids it becomes more of an annoyance than anything else.
Sure, I'm not out clubbing every night, but I am still better off in a walkable environment than I was before.
Also, noise pollution DEFINITELY isn't just as bad as air pollution. No doubt it CAN cause stress and CAN disrupt sleep, but air pollution is clearly a far bigger problem in general.
Seems like a well supported idea.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S17552...
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01604...
[3] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.5759...
no need to book 2 additional hours every few days and overcome that inner demon to go to the gym :)
> just being around thousands of strangers
The nit I would pick here is that you aren't around thousands of strangers per se, but a large number of acquaintances in addition to those strangers. I see neighbors, local business owners, and the folks that work at shops and cafes nearby every time I leave my house in the city. I'm on a first name basis with many of them and we greet each other on the street. If I drove places I would miss out on the exercise and those small social interactions.
It's up to each individual person to decide how or if they want to spend time outdoors, be it a run, walk, or a bike ride.
My quite small yard in the burbs is my oasis with fruit trees, a garden, place for my dog to run, and a lovely place to sit and listen to birds. On top of this, we can walk to amenities and greet our neighbors on the sidewalk.
If I lived in a soulless apartment block my mental health by contrast would be in the pits.
The US is really bad at apartment complexes. I commonly saw way nicer, less depressing ones while living in the outskirts of Munich.
I think American's would be served better by not stereotyping alternative lifestyles and environments and actually explore those alternatives more thoughtfully.
Spicy take. I grew up in a neighborhood that would've been considered "suburban" I guess. I had no problems because there were 20 kids who lived there and we all played together. We also went to the same schools. Never had any problem with that though the fact my family moved for work did distance us from our relatives. I was never "extremely isolated". Ever. Bullied, perhaps, but never isolated.
I think the terminally online always connected culture of today is doing far more damage. Compound that with people having less children, housing being transient due to a rental economy, etc and you have the destruction you're looking for. I don't think the implied solution here, giant multi-story multi-family housing, is the solution either. Packing people in like sardines is not effective. You only need to look at Asia to see what happens when you let this form of housing reach its natural conclusion. It sure is nice having my own 4 walls, a garage, etc. It's a space I control and I would fight to keep it. I do wish my area was more walkable. However, I will take what I can get. There's a park about 10 minutes from me and a few coffee shops.
I am simply not a fan of this anti-car, anti-natalist, anti-detatched-housing trifecta that seems to be polluting more progressive social media. I don't understand it. I don't think I ever will.
As opposed to packing people like ants in high-rises in cities, which is the most environmentally friendly?
As an example, check out the map of the boston-washington/east-coast-corridor of the US here: https://coolclimate.org/maps
I would say the stress of completing day to day errands and activities here having recently moved to a “walkable neighborhood” has been detrimental to my mental health, since moving out of the car centric western side of SF.
It’s a fact that most of the commercial corridors here are at the bottom of the hill, which means climbing home. It only seems walkable here until you have to climb up 200 feet+ in elevation to get home with your groceries, and panhandled along the way.
And at night, the situation is worse. I have learned that PCP is the most popular drug of choice for the encampment that exists between my walk from Whole Foods to home, and that explains the insanity that comes from it with an almost nightly occurrence.
And even then, options for completing all of my errands locally are limited; for example we lack a full line grocery store in walking distance, among other needed businesses (like Walgreens) that have closed.
I have found that getting what I need without a car in SF is 10x more complicated than having a car, so I keep mine.
When talking about walkable cities, I would leave this off the list.