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Comment by IG_Semmelweiss | Hacker News Reader

If you live in a suburban house, with a yard, and drive a car, its likely poster is part of the problem.

Its easy to externalize blame and point fingers to something/someone else, when the reality is that people need to look inward.

The uncomfortable truth is these macro policy desires, are very much a case of "Do as I say, not as I do"

I speak this as someone that does not own a car, or have a yard, and drive a moped everywhere.

Yet, I don't want to restrict anyone in the future from owning a car (gas, if cost is an issue for the poor), or living in the suburbs.

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I have a suburban/rural house, with a yard, and drive a car.

I also put over 2000 miles a year on an ebike, which equates to about 30kWhr of electricity. That e-bike is designed to take a substantial amount of cargo, or two kids.

I can get to the post office, polling place, local deli, library, and a bar in about 5 minutes. The supermarket, pharmacy, pizza shops, restaurant, bank, hardware store etc in 15 minutes. A friend I visit regularly is 15 miles away which I consistently do in under 40 minutes versus about 25-30 in the car, even though the route I take to avoid a single-lane undivided highway is longer.

Yes, a lot of rural/suburban neighborhoods are isolated by wildly unsafe roads between them and services. But in many, it's very easy to get to many of the places you need to go, via bicycle.

I don't think you're wrong per se, but I hesitate to say that the problems we have are that everyone individually but also en masse decided to move to the suburbs and also drive big honkin' cars everywhere, all the time. I think it's more likely there were systems and incentives (both economic and cultural) that led to this. I think this is actually good news, because it means we can fix this with some (slow) cultural shifts and (less slow, hopefully) policy changes. If we really had to directly convince 10,000,000s of people to move into townhomes we'd have no hope.

(FWIW I've lived in lots of places, tiny apartments, townhomes, big apartments, single rooms, mcmansions, old houses. I've been lucky enough to more or less choose them--most people live wherever they can--and for the last ~10 years have chosen tiny apartment. I like the idea of living small, they're a lot more maintainable, cheaper, and I used to move a lot so having a ceiling on the amount of stuff I could have was real attractive)

I live in an apartment-style shared home, we have a shared front lawn (not our choice), and I do own a car. I think it's great that you live without a car, a yard, and drive a moped! I'm slowly transitioning to that life myself. I've talked with our landlord about getting rid of the grass and I rarely use my car now that I live in a walkable neighborhood. I'd love to get rid of it someday soon! I say all of this to let you know we're on the same "team".

I need to make myself clear though around this line "I don't want to restrict anyone in the future from owning a car".

I don't care if anyone owns a car, I don't think that's what really matters. What I do think is that we as a nation (I'm in the U.S.) need to stop cities from continuously _subsidizing_ car infrastructure through taxation. You mention cost issues for the poor. Please realize those poor people you speak of are forced through taxation to subsidize car infrastructure even though those same poorer people may not even own cars themselves. This is really where the system breaks down. Poor people who may live in city centers are paying a portion of their taxes for the rich people to have nice roads paved out to their spread-out suburbs. Those who choose to live in the suburbs should pay for the increased costs of infrastructure that they require. You should pay fewer taxes to live more efficiently in urban or shared housing.

A lot of the ideas I'm spouting off here are from organizations like StrongTowns. They and others like them have been doing a great job of putting words into action, but we need many more people to be in this movement and we shouldn't promote infighting on details. Individual change is great, but it will not change anything at scale. The same thing goes for climate and general social progress. We need to force change at the government level, and stopping the subsidization of car infrastructure is just one step in that long process.

Isn't it a bit audacious to assume the parent lives in a suburban home with a yard and drives a car? Many people don't. And it'd often a choice of values and principles. Of which the parent shared theirs.

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