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I agree with you that car dependency is not the only problem that young people are facing. But it definitely exacerbates the other problems they’re facing.

Financial insecurity, and needing to spend 30 mins and 2 gallons of gas just to see a friend, means that it is prohibitively expensive and hard to see people.

Community has become fractured in many ways, like what’s specifically referenced in the article, but the requirement to drive just to meet up with anyone just compounds the issue further.

I had this same problem when I lived in the US as a young millennial. You could never just accidentally run into your friends, you all had to plan and commit to a whole drive just to see each other.

I moved to Europe, and now I can just ride my bike over to a friends place in 10 mins, or take an approximately free tram/bus. I think this would greatly help those in the US as well

From early 20th century until the 1970s people lived in very walkable neighborhoods and took the subways and street cars to work. Read this post of excerpts from a memoir of growing up in West Philadelphia circa 1968 -- https://devinhelton.com/lost-world-of-west-philadelphia Or better yet, read the book: https://www.amazon.com/Philly-War-Zone-Growing-Battleground-...

Here is a small quote:

Around this time of day, I’d be taking my time walking home with my friends from Most Blessed Sacrament School, or “MBS” as everyone called it. Once home, I’d quickly get out of my school clothes, put on my play clothes, and be on my way to my favorite place in the world, Myers playground.

I always felt so safe on Cecil Street. On warm summer nights, lots of adults would sit on soft cushions on the top step of the four concrete steps that led from the edge of our front porches down to the sidewalk. Neighbors would sit out for hours, talking with other neighbors, many of them enjoying a cold beer or some other cold drink. At least one neighbor would have the Phillies game blasting on their transistor radio. So we’d be able to keep track of the Phillies game while we were running up and down the street having fun. I knew everybody on Cecil Street, and they all knew me. In fact, I knew almost everybody in our section of the neighborhood. And I felt safe no matter where I went. All us kids knew that most parents around here looked out for all the kids, not just their own.

The way I heard it: right after I was born, Dad simply didn’t renew his license, sold his big black Chevy, and never drove again.

Years later, when I asked Dad about it, he said, “Kev, I could take the “13” trolley on Chester Avenue to work. I could walk to the grocery store. I could walk to the bar. And I was tired of driving your mom and Nonna all over the city. What the hell did I need a car for?”

I have heard personal anecdotes from family relating similar stories.

> Having your own car is objectively better in every meaningful way.

I'm honestly curious: Have you ever spent much time traveling or talking with friends in Europe or other places with much lower car ownership, about this particular point?

I have met while traveling or known socially or through work quite a few people who, sure, they would gladly accept a nice free car (who doesn't want $50k for free...), but would still prefer to walk or ride their bike or take the train most days, because it is actually a lot more convenient than lugging around a vehicle while going about their daily business.

Even in the US, there are tons of wealthy people in our cities who don't own a car (or keep it in the garage nearly all the time), not because they can't afford one, but because it just isn't as convenient.

I disagree, having properly densely designed cities means you don’t need that car. I stayed in a slum in Paris for a week, I was able to walk to the grocer and take the bus to the train station to go into downtown Paris. Car ownership doesn’t work in Paris because it’s designed to be walkable which necessitates less parking lots. Parking lots and parking spaces are things you have to walk past/through and are a big reason car dependent cities in America don’t work.

i have lived in san diego, los angeles and auckland for the greater part of a year each, without a car, and i didn't live downtown in any of those places. before i moved to san diego i thought this is it, i'd have to get a car now. but no, i was able to arrange my life around public transport and avoid a car.

a car is not objectively better. the greatest pain point from my perspective: parking.

do you know how ridiculously expensive parking is in los angeles? it's insane.

public transport, even as bad as it was in those cities gave me a lot more freedom to go to the places that i wanted to go to within the city at least.

the only benefit for a car would have been to go on road trips, explore the rural areas, etc, but that's not something i'd have wanted to do on my own anyways.

Now try it with a spouse and multiple small children who can't walk long distances.

fair point, but i don't see much difference. we still have to pick a location with some public transport, shopping and ideally work nearby.

The best part about building our neighborhoods at human scale is that you don't have to constantly act as a taxi for your children and family members. They can just walk to where they want to go. It's also much friendlier for disabled folks because they don't have to worry about getting destroyed by a Mercedes while crossing the street in a mobility scooter.

> Do you think that cities used to be less "car dependent"?

Absolutely, yes.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/2/20/the-history-of...

> Having your own car is objectively better in every meaningful way.

Only if it's free. Also, consider the tragedy of the commons. Maybe it's great for the one person getting a free Tesla, but not so much for the taxpayers that pay for the road, the parking, the noise, and the danger to others.

The 1920s?

The cities of the 1920s where absolutely horrific places to live. They were filthy and polluted. People fled them to the suburbs for a reason: because they were terrible.

That doesn't have anything to do with transportation though. You could also die of a kidney stone in the 1920s, but it isn't relevant to the public transportation that existed.

All of the reasons cities sucked are relevant to the decisions people made to leave cities as soon as cars made it practical for them to live outside of cities.

Housing was a lot denser in cities back then. Lots of low rise appartenant buildings, tall skinny houses built right next to each other, and trams running on the major boulevards. Appently modern fire codes killed those building designs though? And lobbyists killed the trams.

Quite literally all cities before the 1950s.

Los Angeles, now a car-dependent hellscape, once had a robust and far-reaching street car network.

Post-WW2 we went full car-dependent suburbs. Why? Racism has a lot to do with it.

Can you give some examples of this pre 1950s los angeles that you wish you lived in?

I'm trying to find photos or accounts, but most of them seem to be people talking about or showing off how happy they are about having their own cars.

Los Angeles has busses that go absolutely everywhere, and even has a subway system, and yet people happily pay tens of thousands of dollars to own their own car so that they can go wherever they want.

I've never heard of somebody intentionally selling their car to take public transportation instead, certainly not in an American city. People take public transportation because they can't afford a car.

A friend of mine who lives in los angeles made a sad laugh when I complained "ugh, my subways are 12 mins apart". So I suspect public transport in los angeles forces people into cars because the other options suck.

So there is some non existent idealized theoretical public transportation system you are imagining that is better than having my own transportation system that takes me wherever i want whenever i want and with whoever i want?

Yeah, actually. I want to be able to read, study, catch up on work, get wasted with friends, nap, and not worry about insurance, parking, or killing anyone. All for cheaper than gas, repairs, tires, etc.

Yes that sounds great. Maybe each of us could have our own dedicated self driving waymo?

As it exists now, however: public transportation is terrible, and having a personal vehicle to take you where you want safely is universally preferable.

I didn't want to make assumptions, but as I've read more of your comments, I've found it increasingly implausible that you have ever traveled outside the US. If that's right, you really should do that sometime! It is useful to have a broader perspective on how the world lives.

Hey man if you wanna compare passports let’s go for it!

In the meantime: google image search photos of some of the Indian commuter trains I’ve ridden on and ask yourself why everybody with even a tiny bit of money hired a private driver.

Your comment about “broader perspective” is insulting, and I guarantee you that my perspective is quite a bit broader than “traveled to some glorified Disney land parks in Western Europe.”

These things that you call Disney land parks, are where I’ve been living for the last year. It’s not Disneyland at all, though, since there is a bustling and productive economy (that I work in), even in the cities with minimal tourism.

Actually some of the nicest walkable neighborhoods that I’ve visited since moving here, I was the only tourist that I saw.

If you’re genuinely curious, I’d love to give you more information about my city (as an American that moved to Europe). Let me know.

But I have 5 grocery stores within a quarter mile of my home, I take public transit and bike for all of my daily errands, and haven’t driven a car once since moving here. I see my friends whenever I want, often by either walking or taking transit depending on distance.

Just last weekend, I took a train to another city to buy a new racing bike, and took the train most of the way home before riding it the last mile or two. It was easy, and I went all the way to a neighboring town to shop for it (since they had a model that I wanted to try).

You can minimize it by calling it a glorified Disneyland park, but then you’re basically just skipping over the hundreds of millions of people who work non-tourism jobs (engineering, law, business, farming, medicine) and live within these generally well designed places.

It might be insulting, but it still seems accurate based on all your comments here. Your perspective seems incredibly narrow to me, which is why I - rather gently - suggested that traveling to more places might broaden it. But sometimes things are unflattering to people and there isn't really a way to point that out without the person feeling insulted. :shrug:

Sorry that my comment above was peevish. I was peeved by the tone of your comments, but I regret that now.

You're right, of course, that unpleasant public transportation is very common worldwide. But it's not universal, which, to me, suggests that it's possible to learn from those success stories.

Public transportation can be good or bad, depending on execution, unlike car-centric infrastructure which never scales and becomes more expensive and results in more deaths from everyday distractions, drunk drivers, etc. If I could live in the infrastructure of large Japanese cities, that would be awesome, because it means I could live out in the quiet of the burbs and still get smashed deep in Tokyo and go home at 4 am asleep with my suit tie wrapped around my forehead without a single concern.

Just because you haven't experienced it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist; in much of the world outside of America, public transport is not unpopular.

And your own transportation system is vastly inefficient in the task of getting you and thousands of other people where they need to go. In a world where people's destinations are wildly divergent and travellers are few, cars make more sense. But when you see a clogged interstate filled with cars all mostly going to the same or similar destinations, whose occupants could easily fit into a couple of buses, you start to see the logic behind public transportation.

> Can you give some examples of this pre 1950s los angeles that you wish you lived in?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Electric

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Railway