If we want a shift to walking, we need to prioritize dignity
strongtowns.org
strongtowns.org
It took me a couple awkward minutes to realize that I'm the only one standing on my feet and not sitting in a car wherever I was looking. I apologized (???) and told them I was heading to a museum, bc I'm a visitor here and that's what we do right? I added a colleague's address and assured them that I'm not "confused", and will take an Uber now.
This was simply unbelievable in my world; for the next week I observed my colleague, whenever they took me out, or went to somewhere: we never walked outside. From the building to the parking lot, from the destination parking lot to the resto and vice versa.
Today, of course, I know that there are walkable cities too, I enjoy walking from my Chicago hotel to the office building :-) every single time I enjoy my US visits, but after a couple weeks I can't wait to get back to my 98% car free European life.
I would love more walkable infra but I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to walk in Houston.
> "I would love more walkable infra but I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to walk in Houston."
But the relevant part is people who do want to, but can't.
Here in Tokyo, it's also quite hot, and extremely humid during the summer. Rain is very common during the summer as well, and we have typhoons too. Even so, everyone walks here, and lots of people (including moms with little kids) ride bicycles too, rain or shine.
I'm not saying I get why people would not want to walk. Only that it's common to do so anyway.
I don't think anyone stopping to genuinely help is a "bad" thing, or robs one of their dignity. If you do, maybe that is a comment on your internal worldview instead of on that of the person stopping.
Dense cities where passersby ignore you wantonly are decried as impersonal, lacking community, etc and now we are saying we WANT MORE of that? That it brings DIGNITY?
Nor am I, but a constitutional test used to cost about $250,000 or so over a decade ago (does inflation affect these things?). For someone who can't afford a car, that's a tough bill to eat.
Using a bus in a ski resort is higher status than a car in a large city.
Great city to ride around! Surprisingly good facilities.
I think either an older colleague (I was not old enough to rent a car, this is a long time ago) ferried me across or maybe the hotel took pity and sent me in their minibus ? There was no practical way to walk that short distance, the infrastructure is designed only for cars.
I mainly remember that mall because I found a (possibly mislabelled) copy of the version of Tori Amos' "Under The Pink" which is actually 2CDs, so "More Pink" is inside the case too but it was the same price as the regular album, and that was an amazing bargain for teenage me. But yeah, it was staggering to me that these Americans just expected to drive everywhere. I have grown up in an English village where I walked everywhere, to school, to the shops. to a friend's house, everywhere. I guess I was old enough to realise that most English villages aren't also served by the London Underground, but the choice to build only car infrastructure seemed very strange indeed.
I also did not own a car for years, commuting only by bicycle, and never had a problem.
Indeed, Austin's core is only about 5 square miles (the entirety of the East Side to the Greenbelt, Hyde Park down to far South Congress, say). Fairly compact.
It is no New York or London but it is walkable and bikeable.
Your European life might be car free but, I was surprised when a friend who lives in Brussels, where I've been 4 times now and walked all over, told me he loved his time in Japan because it was the first time he could live car free. I was like WAT? You live in Brussels! It seems to have reasonably good public transportation. He was like, I live in the suburbs and have to drive to/from work every day.
I certainly love living in a walkable city, but I also realize that can be somewhat rare, even in Europe. Friends live in Solingen (home to Henckels knives and Haribo Gummies). AFAICT it's not walkable. Düsseldorf is though.
But yes most people I work with seem to drive into work for their commute with only the occasional person getting the train. The office in central Brussels even has a load of free parking spaces they can book on their day in the office (company is hybrid one day/week in the office).
And the idea of commuting more than 30 minutes is utterly horrifying to them, which as a Londoner I found an interesting perspective - a 30 minute commute to the financial district in London would still put me in an inner London suburb with incredibly high housing costs so my commute is way longer than that.
Except for the very hottest of summer days, I see a lot of pedestrians in downtown Austin.
I don't know if this is true of Austin, but trying to convince people to get off the street in the afternoon can be part of the city's heat management plan in some parts of Texas.
they really do act like it whenever the USA plans a city or a neighborhood. why wouldn't everybody have a car? except we actually have plenty of reasons now that we didn't before
Cars made more sense in the industrial age, when people needed to commute to a factory for work. But, in the age of knowledge work and especially remote work, we aren't commuting as much. So, walkable neighborhoods become far more important and impactful.
To be walkable a city needs to be quick to walk between destinations and pleasant to do so.
Most US cities are too spaced out, require waiting at each block, or are not all that pleasant for walking.
But I note that you're saying "Near" downtown Austin so I guess it depends where you were maybe?
However, I do remember a night, when we went out with colleagues, and from one place we were to switch to another, it was less than a mile away. We stepped outside, and one of the colleagues were looking for a taxi / checking Lyft already; we, the visitors, didn't understand; are we really gonna wait and then squeeze in a car, instead of walking 10 minutes?!
We eventually walked, and it was perfectly safe (and lively) at that time of the night.
...It just waited to run out until after I got home to my "safe", car-centric suburb for the summer, and decided to walk to a nearby gym. "A lot of areas can look OK," for certain.
It's important to pace and hydrate oneself and people from hot climates know that because they deal with it all the time.
I confess that I have been one of those people (I didn't live quite there)--but when meeting with friends for a run. My preference was always to lace on the sneakers, walk to the end of the block, and run.
Even at 3 AM, I'm not the only person out walking. I have never once been stopped by police. I go through "dangerous" neighborhood, through places near homeless encampments. I tweaked my groin while running a few weeks ago when I was 8 miles from my house and walked all the way back from Highland Park, though Uptown, Downtown, and the Cedars to get back to my house.
To be clear, walking in Dallas sucks. Sidewalks randomly end. There is construction everywhere. Oak Lawn this morning had both sidewalks closed, each with a sign saying to use the other sidewalk. Drivers pay absolutely no attention and never look for pedestrians. But it is nonetheless possible and feasible to walk around and no one has ever looked at me funny for doing it. Yes, it is also often triple digit fahrenheit heat in the afternoons, but that is well within the human survivable zone, and as long as you aren't going somewhere that you can't be covered in sweat, you'll be fine.
Also, I live about two miles from the main museum district in Dallas, and I walk whenever I go to a museum, and the streets there are completely filled with pedestrians. Even if you drive from out of the area, you're still not gonna park right next to the entrance. Some have their own parking lots. Some don't. The parks in the area do not. Plenty of drivers still park pretty far away. So it's particularly weird that someone would stop you on your way to a museum.
85 and humid here is worse than -00 and dry in Phoenix. It’s so humid your sweat can’t evaporate because the air is already saturated. It’s beyond miserable, and actively unhealthy to many.
Also I would love to see more covered bikeways.
I visited London a long time ago and the public transportation is amazing and it I did want to walk to see the city, which I did. But I imagine even living there, I would want my own car to be in control of my life.
So, visiting a place is good for walking. But living in a place is not. At least that's my experience.
I haven't owned a car for more than 15 years now. I have city year bus pass but I also frequently just walk to wherever I'm going, there's lots of paths and shortcuts for pedestrians, but if the weather is a bit rubbish, there's bus stop outside my flat that runs every 5-10 mins.
I'm a member of the mobility car share for the rare times hen I do need a car, usually to pick up or move something heavy, or take a bunch of stuff to the decheterie.
Maybe sometimes after a night on the town, I might grab a taxi home, but I do not miss having a car.
I used lime scooters considerably more than ubahn when I was in berlin
I’m 40+ years old now and have never needed or wanted to have a driving license. I simply hated America when I had to visit and use taxi or someone else’s help to get anywhere. In Berlin even with a child the need of a car is so rare — sometimes it’s even more pleasant to walk an hour to a museum or a club than use public transportation.
I lived in Germany for years without driving as well, because I could afford to live by the city center. But over half my colleagues drove because that's all they could afford to do, and you should try stepping out of your bubble and understand the pressures that force Germans to drive. They're not all just wanting to spend more time in their Audis.
This is a common Internet meme -- the American tourist that goes to Europe and loves their experience of walking around nice, dense cities designed at a human scale and functioning public transit. Then they return to their life of highways and parking lots and strip malls, which, to me, is dystopia.
Well yes, the US transportation system is utter trash, even in California
> but it also sounds terrible in the sense that you can't just get in your car, go some place, park in a parking lot, go shopping, and then head back home, all on your own terms.
In Europe I have three supermarkets in a 800m radius around my place, the closest shopping center/mall/whatever you call it is a 30min walk away (10min by public transport, 8min by bicycle). I can walk to the closest supermarket without even leaving the private ground of my block of buildings and its park, no street to cross, no cars in sight
> I would want my own car to be in control of my life.
Are you working for these fine gentlemen ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_lobby
When I finally did get a car, it was a massive QoL upgrade. I can go anywhere, at any time, usually considerably faster than PT, and carry an order of magnitude more than before. I didn't enjoy having to go to the supermarket multiple times a week, but I had to when I could only carry maybe 4 bags (fewer if heavy) in one trip. I still do use buses and trains where it makes sense, e.g. visiting other cities or the centre of mine
(Actually I tried both lives. I used to have a car in the past. Still prefer being car free)
no thanks
Walkable/bikeable places exist in some cities, but are reserved for the rich.
As for the costs of owning a car - these are real, but the cost of not owning a car is much greater. As electric cars filter down to the used market cost of car ownership will also drop a fair amount.
Adding a 2nd mechanical maintenacnce isn't as bad as dealing with the flesh skin version.
I've never been, but from what I understand Austin (esp downtown) is one of the more walkable cities in Texas.
I looked around now on Google Street View, but can't recognize the slight hill I was walking on (it happened around 10y ago). Funnily enough, also street view shows streets with no pedestrians anywhere :-)
It's perfect that way. I hate driving.
I wouldn't let the cops bully me into taking an Uber though. Afaik it's still legal to walk in the US?
Now, back to my regressive tendencies...
South Florida and the north suburbs of Detroit are #2 and #3 in my direct experience.
The south is very well suited to the e-bike. It will probably take the total die off of the boomers before anything really changed though
They also said if I kept throwing a football in Central Park there would be trouble, and yelled at me for lying on a bench in a train station.
As a 22 year old kid I was a bit taker aback
Also downtown austin is disgusting; maybe they were just stunned someone would be there on purpose before the sun goes down.
Hope you enjoyed the museum/trip though
I don't think we should be trying to get away from cars altogether by any means, but I think we should seriously consider banning them almost entirely from city centres. There's still a need for emergency vehicles and goods to be transported within the city, so we would still need some roads, but we could eliminate a considerable number of lanes.
If you look at space taken up length-wise in a lane the length of the average car in the US is 14.7 ft. For a person standing on a sidewalk the average person's foot size is ~10 inches. Let's hand wave the math and say cars are 10x longer.
Very loosely our built environment scales 10x to match that new scale. Roads need to be 10x bigger, parking lots take up even more space.
The ultimate result is not that there are far more unique destinations available to the average person, but that they are further away, bigger, and costs are far higher.
Before car usage approached 100% it would have been a tremendous gain to be one of the early car owners. The environment would have been built for a smaller scale and you would have been able to traverse it rapidly. For day to day life in well-populated areas that advantage has substantially eroded.
It's a clear example of the tragedy of the commons.
Actually, no. The early car owners had it terrible, not only were they expensive and broke down often, the roads were often little more than mud-drenched dirt tracks, with impassable bridges and cities choked with animal and pedestrian traffic. No stoplights or traffic laws, extreme chaos and very slow going. You can read some of the early coast-to-coast stories for how challenging it was.
The excellent vehicular infrastructure we have in the USA today is due precisely to the car usage being 80%+. With the mass adoption came freeways, stoplights, graded roads, drainage, bridges, all of it.
So in practice it's worse than 10x.
The streets in downtown Salt Lake City were famously designed to be able to turn a horse-drawn wagon around. That width turned out to be pretty good for cars when they came - no additional scaling needed.
I live in London, UK. I can use my car to get to places, it just costs more, through congestion charges, parking, and time.
The car hugely, hugely increases my exploration radius vs. walking and public transport.
There is also a value in things being bigger. I remember going to a random grungy arcade bar in LA that had fifty pinball machines. We don't have the space for that, at least, not unless it's an Experience(tm) with a corporate backer .
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3321579,-122.0298439,567m/da...
I get the total area to be 131351 m2 and the area inside the "Infinite loop" road to be 58029 m2, i.e. only 44% of the total area.
So cars waste half of the area. https://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-area-calculat...
Just look at Houston: https://www.google.com/maps/@29.7561945,-95.3646105,681m/dat...
Half the city is parking
Along a similar vein, I'd be interested in the correlation between car use and economic growth is between similarly developed territories is. I know that the US and EU were roughly equal in economic size when I was in school and now it's more like a 3:2 ratio. China has also aggressively adopted cars over the past 3 decades while passing many other countries in per capita GDP.
A nice thing about electric bikes is that it seems to be making bikes more common. It really needs to be normalized that a person doesn't have to be in a car to use or cross the road.
If I had a grocery store I could walk to now, I don’t know that I would because it would be an extra trip all on its own. So unless I’m making that walk each day on principle, it’s inconvenient and I don’t know I would.
And yes, that is absolutely because of the car-centric suburb I now live in. When circumstances allow it, I look forward to moving back to some walkable, urban neighborhood again.
I'm afraid I don't have a source for this. The Youtube channel Not Just Bikes might have said this.
These complexes also were always roughly 50% parking by land-area. Converting some amount of it to new units would be so helpful. Or even something as simple as converting a one or two reserved parking spaces to one of these (https://i.pinimg.com/736x/56/42/1b/56421b53bcffe6b0c92369c44...) so that cyclists wouldn't have to lug their bicycles up 2 or 3 flights of stairs after every ride.
The "logic" of anti-pedestrian thinking is just a desire not to see anything at all change.
Even if we somehow managed to eliminate roads, I'm still not sure I get what you're imagining. Are we going to tear down all of the existing buildings and replace them with buildings that have 7 meter wider bases? That would take decades and render the city mostly unusable while it was happening. There would also need to be room for trucks to bring in construction material and remove waste.
Just making the paths nice and other stuff mentioned in this article isn't enough if there's nowhere to go. A lot of the time, this effort only worsens traffic.
Good example here is Salt Lake City - the streets were designed intentionally to be very wide everywhere.
- ~half a mile to a local taco stand. Could be closer but railroads are in the way and they run on the hour (and a big ditch also discourages that). kinda bad, but still on the verge of "walkable".
- now, the other direction about a mile away is a wal mart. But, half a mile of this walk is a vertical 200 foot climb. You'll be exhausted at worst and sweaty at best before you even get halfway there. But if you make the walk you got a plaza of whatever you need.
- And that's really all the "walkable" areas. The next closest plaza is 3 miles from the taco shack, a bit outside of "walkable" if you just need to grab some tools from Home Depot or wait for an order at In n Out (inside isn't much better than the drive-through). Buses do run here, but only every hour (and is next to the taco shack. so half a mile walk)
Those in EU places can find it hard to understand. But there's just so much dang land between everything if you're not downtown.
>I don't think we should be trying to get away from cars altogether by any means, but I think we should seriously consider banning them almost entirely from city centres.
If we had a better bus schedule, I wouldn't mind that. even if we just have to drive to a bus stop, it could be the start of this walkable city concept in downtown areas. But there's a lot of powers opposing that.
Outskirts of a smaller city, you are 0.5-1 mile from everything. A corner shop, a takeaway, anything.
Some Americans think that everywhere is like central London or Berlin or whatever. Most of it is like an American suburb but with poorer condition smaller houses.
About the only difference is that if you are poor and in a suburb you can probably take a slow bus that is infrequent. But no-one actually wants to do that if they can afford otherwise.
I understand that not everything will be packed in all of EU, but better public transportation makes up for that. The other annoying aspect of non-urban us cities tends to be geography. It's very hilly in the western US with little fertile land, and blazing hot and humid and the deep south. We'd absolutely need better bussing to overcome that.
My favourite places in the world tend to be much older and basically built at random by the people who lived there, like London’s Soho and Clerkenwell or Barcelona’s old town.
When they are well designed and well-maintained they allow for more green spaces than any alternative AND everything is closer together AND they aren't dehumanising like the 10+ story commieblock districts. All that without causing "concrete canyons" like medieval parts of cities or UK-style rows of detached houses with token lawns.
I mean sth like this - from before commie blocks were adapted to cars: https://maps.app.goo.gl/uGFKGntsHU85qwpu8
Any talk about walking or cycling that doesn't talk about cars is completely missing the main reason people don't want to do those things. The video talks about "motonormativity", a phenomenon where even people who don't drive will defend and justify car usage.
Cars need to get out of town centres. Roads need to be redesigned to put pedestrians first and motorists last. Unfortunately you can't just make big changes these days so any attempts use the boiling the frog approach. Tiny changes that will take decades to get anywhere. For example, in the UK now pedestrians have priority at T junctions. This is the law. Good luck exercising that priority, though. It would be much easier without the type of junction shown in that video.
This article is just making one argument that aligns with the broader idea of urbanism. It's not meant as a general introduction to the movement like the video.
Then you need to take the mental step of thinking about all the people who require a car for mobility. People with small babies, anyone with urgent medical needs, and the handicapped.
> cities need to be redesigned to slow down cars
A mode of accident that sometimes occurs is a car rolls down a hill then causes a fatality. We'll have to redesign cities to remove any elevation changes, and we should seriously consider just banning driving at night, as that's when the overwhelming majority of pedestrian fatalities occur.
Meanwhile, instead of punishing cars for simply existing and providing good utility to the city, why not just build better pedestrian infrastructure that's actually separate and protected from the road?
It's not about punishing cars for their existence: It's about the massive amount of space they take up. Did you actually watch the GCN video? Have a look again at the bit about the corners that allow cars to go faster but take away space from pedestrians.
Cars and their supporting infrastructure often take up a vast amount of space, which makes walking less attractive as all distances are greater as a result.
If you have 15 minutes to spare, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k
Related to car speed- at some point you have intersections of pedestrian and car infra and if the priority is to have a safer area, cars must drive slower, that's why lots of cities are implementing 30km areas+traffic calming like curbs, bollards and bumps and it works and heavily reduces the accidenta while avg speed remains paradoxically almost unchanged because less accidens/dangerous driving means less road blocks. Also, not all areas are wide enough to have everything separated, that's why the shared road concept exists- cars drive super slow and pedestrians and bikes have priority there, ppl can walk in the middle just like cars and cars will need to wait
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/07/ambulances-arent-slowed...
Perhaps you do believe cars are sentient and capable of receiving punishment. But if not, you might have been using “cars” as a de-personifying shorthand for “drivers”. In which case, yes, drivers should be punished — not for merely existing, no, but for the harm they have caused to non-drivers. From traffic fatalities to car-only infrastructure, drivers and their insistence on cars have been to the detriment of the rest of us.
99% of cars I see are occupied by a single person. If you get them out of the road (or car sharing at least) you can easily accommodate for the rest with a much smaller footprint
That's a rather odd edge case, and seems to be much more prevalent in the USA than in other developed countries, and probably exactly because everyone depends on a car that you end up having old shitboxes barely functioning because someone is 100% dependent on that shitbox to live their lives. A car rolling down a hill is probably less than 1% of all car-related accidents in your country.
> Meanwhile, instead of punishing cars for simply existing and providing good utility to the city, why not just build better pedestrian infrastructure that's actually separate and protected from the road?
Why do cars need to have fast lanes inside a city? Separate that traffic, get the cars out of the way from pedestrian streets, design streets sharing different transport modals so cars slow down. It works everywhere else, why is the USA so special that it won't work in American cities?
No one is talking about removing cars altogether, the discussion centers around making streets in cities safer for everyone, no driver wants to kill people, no one on a bike or on foot wants to be killed.
There's absolutely no need for cars to go over 30-40km/h in city streets, any need for higher speeds demand infrastructure separating transport modals.
Please, spend some time in a nice walkable city (some time = weeks to months). The difference is absurd. I'm originally from São Paulo, a city that follows the exact playbook from American cities, it's fucking hell with traffic, moving to Europe and experiencing how nice cities can be made me a hard advocate for changing, I like cars but they shouldn't have priority over everyone else inside a city...
Barcelona takes it a step further than just being high density with wide pedestrian streets lined with trees and outdoor seating at the expense of roads used for cars/trucks. At the end of every block on a rambla is a roundabout where people sit and hang out, with more trees. It really feels like cars are 2nd class citizens here.
The mental tax of having to get into a car, navigate bad traffic and other drivers, finding parking, etc is hugely underrated. When I describe the above to people, it's easy to brush off as "not that big of a deal", but it is a big deal on general mood and wellbeing compared to what it could be if you remove those 'micro' stresses from your life.
And finally, if you need to get somewhere quick, there are taxis everywhere, and the underground metro is pretty decent.
It changed my life to realize how much better life is when you can accomplish everything within walking distance. It impacts absolutely everything.
You even lose weight when you can walk to the store to buy a can of beans and one avocado for lunch instead of having to drive to the grocer once a week and store tens of thousands of calories in your house at all times for you to graze on.
It also impacted my social life because I would run into friends while walking around. Or I'd see friends in a bar while walking home and go join them.
I refuse to settle down somewhere where I can't walk to live. Unfortunately this rules out almost all of the US.
The total land area is also irrelevant: Spain has a pretty low total population density, but that's because most of it is empty. The people live close to each other anyway. You can have a house 20 minutes by car anyway, and thus live 20 minutes away from the hospital instead of 3 minutes if you really like yards that much, but barely anyone does, because the car life is expensive and a hassle
But walkable cities can be both 1M population or 10k population. What applies to a footpath in a city of 1M applies to a footpath in a city of 10k too.
Truly rural areas usually aren’t the topic of these discussions nor sites like strongtowns. For obvious reasons.
It's not a utopia. It's about prioritizing people over traffic. Prioritizing the experience of being in the city over the convenience of getting there or driving through.
And it doesn't even have to be a city. The same idea also applies to suburbs. You can have good transit connections to the city, apartment buildings and local services in the core, single-family homes a bit further away, and large parks and forests within walking distance. Suburbs like this are typically more sparsely built but more densely populated than American suburbs. They also tend to be nicer once you leave your home.
At the end of the day, there's a lot of people that are fundamentally anti-progress. If it makes things better, they don't want it. Doesn't matter what it is past that. Their solutions to our problems are either that the problems don't exist, or if they do, we should do nothing and they'll solve themselves.
Look, nobody is looking for a utopia. Nobody expects that. But making small steps in a better direction is a good thing.
Look around you at your cities. Is this the best it could possibly get? Do you truly believe this is the apex of human society? I know you don't. Why, then, do you (and others) feel so ideologically opposed to making some amount of change? I just don't get it.
I grew up in a commie block in a region of Europe where cities are fairly sparsely populated (approximately half the density of Amsterdam and close to 1/8th that of Paris proper).
I see it as a good middle ground that while still walkable, doesn't have the aforementioned downsides of dense city living, like:
-Noise, or actually the contortions you have to go through to keep it at acceptable levels. The inverse square law really does a number on people who live in a densely populated area with a night life or renovations going on (there's always renovations going on).
-Garbage disposal. I remember spending a mostly sleepless night in Bilbao because guess when is the only time a garbage truck can actually pass and collect refuse in a timely manner? Modern humans produce way more garbage than their 19th century counterparts.
-General tidyness. I want to see Tokyo one day because it appears to be the only large, densely populated area in the world which isn't filthy. I'm not even talking about trash. It's the puddles of animal (and human) urine scattered here and there.
-Lack of green spaces. Land is precious in densely populated cities, so you can't have this sort of stuff. Meanwhile when a dog has to go, they have to go, hence the previously mentioned puddles.
-Cost. Did I mention land is precious? The other day my friend showed me the sort of palace he can buy by selling his two bedroom in a commie block. Especially in recent years cost alone has pushed many people out of cities.
-Cost (of living). My car-oriented hellhole of a suburban mall where I sometimes do shopping has more stuff and at prices 30% lower than all those neat corner shops. The reason is that everything, from rent to logistics is expensive in a densely-populated area.
I could go on, but this is the gist. You couldn't pay me to live in a place with more than 5000 inhabitants per square kilometre.
Further, a bunch of these examples seem like cases where the resources for the better design would not have been out of reach. The case where there are only crosswalks on 3 sides of an intersection so pedestrians need to walk the long way around (and wait for the light to change multiple times) would be straight-forward to have done right. The example in the "convenience" section where the path forces pedestrians to take a longer path, would have taken only a modest amount of additional concrete to address. Examples where there's too little demarcation between the sidewalk and street often have a green strip on the other side of the sidewalk. The same amount of space could have been used with the sidewalk shifted over and a green strip with trees placed between the street and sidewalk. None of these are "idealism run afoul".
So yeah, I understand your argument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopkins,_Minnesota
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northfield,_Minnesota
None of those are rural, they're suburban.
And frankly, even your rural non-homestead areas could use some redesigning. Now you make it unsafe walk in what are basically villages, the quintessential walkable settlements that we've invented back in prehistory.
Everyone in Yukons and F150s are already using, at least in their minds, what they think is a dignified mode of transportation. Excluding cities for the wealthy (there's no dignity for the poor anyway), most cities in the US are not livable without a car. Affording a car, particularly a new one, earns one some degree of dignity. Furthermore, drivers living in poorly planned-cities spend lots of time in their cars and have chosen larger cars where they feel comfortable and safe.
Larger cars do have a higher chance of roll-over and are much more dangerous to pedestrians (especially children due to a enormous blind spot near the front of the car) and drivers in smaller cars.
Driving what is essentially a consumer tank and calling it comfortable and safe is a dangerous line of thinking, and the casualty numbers show it.
Honestly, no.
I live in a medium sized city in southern Ontario, about a 3 1/2 - 4 hour drive from Toronto. I just came back from spending a week in Toronto and although everything was walking distance, and we did walk everywhere, the week-long stay was not at all enjoyable.
There are people who love big cities. They love being able to walk everywhere, they love the "excitement" and the ability to experience a wide and diverse range of activities and food etc.
And then there are us introverts who find it extremely uncomfortable to be in places that are so crowded.
I enjoy walking as a solitary activity. I'm not lazy, I'm not averse to doing physical activity. But I really really really dislike walking anywhere that has a sizeable population density. I've heard that in the USA / Canada, the average "personal space bubble" that people find comfortable is around 1.5 feet. For me it's closer to 6 feet. I find that trying to navigate busy sidewalks is overwhelming and anxiety-inducing.
I've heard a lot of city-loving younger people talk about the pains of owning a vehicle. I didn't get my driver's license until my early to mid 20s. At the time I had a young family of 4 (my wife and I plus two small children) and, although I might be biased because I live in a built-for-cars North American city, getting our first vehicle gave us so much freedom and independence that it was life-changing in a positive way. I realize that if all amenities had been within walking distance then maybe not having a car wouldn't have been such a hindrance, but when I think back to being in downtown Toronto recently, I couldn't imagine navigating that population density nightmare while also pushing a double-stroller.
To me, and maybe this is more psychological / emotional than logical ... but a car is my personal isolation bubble that gives me much needed personal space while travelling. Though I also must admit that leaving the house is a special occasion for me. So yeah, I'm not typical and city-life is just not for me.
And rest assured, you won't see much action or social interactions on the way
Though you mentioned banks as something that is still pretty far away. A few years ago I was self-employed, collecting old-fashioned checks (it was slow moving to digital) and I had to frequent a bank once every week, two weeks at most since I had to deposit checks that were in USD and my bank in here Canada couldn't yet do that via an ATM. My nearest branch was walking distance but I still chose to drive because it was a 20m walk, 5 - 10m bike ride or 1 - 2m drive. Since it was such a big chore to have to go there in person, I opted for a car more often than walking or biking.
I think that at least some of what drives these discussions is congestion and parking in major cities. I can't stand driving in downtown Toronto. But in my mid-sized city I really don't mind driving 5 - 10 minutes vs having to double or triple that to walk or bike there. Add the benefit of personal space and a trunk to carry groceries in and I can't see any benefit (beyond maybe environmental impact) to a "15 minute" city in a medium-sized city where traffic congestion is not really a thing and a short car ride will halve your 20 - 30m round trip.
City advocates claim that North American suburb existence requires you to plan your grocery trips and buy lots at a time, vs the "benefit" of city life where you can run to the store to grab milk if you're out of it. The idea of going to a crowded grocery store is such a chore that I welcome any strategy that gets me going there once a month or even less if at all possible. The idea of running to a grocery store, even if it were a block away, for a single item or two is nightmare fuel given that the trip could be avoided all together with the smallest bit of planning, whether walking or driving. So how do I accomplish buying a month's worth of groceries if I have to walk there? Whereas, if I have the choice to drive or walk, I can decide how much to buy at a time and how often I want to go. Big win for cars.
Another drawback to the "15 minute city", from an extreme introvert's perspective, is that the closer things are to your home, the closer PEOPLE are to your home. It actually bothers me if I'm sitting on my couch reading a book and I can hear people walking by on the sidewalk. When everything is close by, so are people. I really like living as far away from people as I reasonably can. A vehicle becomes a necessity with remote living.
When I think about walkable vacation spots, I don't only think of cities either. I think of small beach towns where even though it isn't populous, things are close enough together to explore on foot.
So I guess one question I'd pose is: if you could have that personal space without the car, would you still prefer the car and why? And given the negative externalities of the car, are there other ways those needs could be solved?
That depends on context. I would say that I would prefer to always have the ability to drive a car even if I were to choose to walk more often than not. Reasons for this: bad weather, needing to get somewhere while ill, feeling anti-social and not wanting to risk running into anyone, needing to get around with a minor injury, needing to transport a large or heavy items.
I know that we're talking about walking vs driving, but public transportation will inevitably enter the picture when it comes to physical or mobility issues. I would like to travel to Europe one day because what I hear from Europeans is that their cities are night and day compared to North American cities when it comes to not only walkability but public transport. Here in North America, I would rather walk on a crowded sidewalk than use public transportation for no other reason than being in what feels like a "tin can" full of strangers is nightmare fuel for me. At least on a crowded sidewalk I am outdoors.
> And given the negative externalities of the car, are there other ways those needs could be solved?
Sure. To the extent that "negative externalities" are something that we need to care about, let's use technology to reduce those negative externalities without having to give up the things that make our lives better.
"comfortable" is a stretch. But yes, I won't think much of an unassuming person 2 feet away from me. School desks are about that much spaced out when reaching behind or in front of you (close enough to tap the back of the person in front of you), so I suppose that's how we form our bubbles.
I envy you. Unless there is an obvious reason that more space is impractical / impossible, my thought in such a situation is "Why do you need to stand so close? Please get away from me."
And still, you can't find yourself anywhere in downtown Toronto where you're not trying to dodge people or get one second to yourself without having people constantly around you anywhere that you look. Though my definition of "crowded" likely differs from people who don't mind being around people as much I as do. Our friends told us that we would despise New York given how bothered we were by the amount of people in Toronto.
So I'm skeptical that there is some high-population-density major urban centre where crowds would not exist on a level that makes me feel uncomfortable. At the same time, I'm happy to say that cities, in general, just aren't for me. Fine to visit from time to time when there's some special occasion (comic-con, concert, trip to Vegas or what-have-you). But not a place that I would want to live no matter how "walkable" they are. For my preferred, secluded & remote lifestyle, a vehicle is a necessity.
How does one move to Europe? Or how does one begin the process? I’m an average engineer and only speak English. Clearly I’m not the type of immigrant counties would love to welcome in. Where does one start?
For clarity, countries like Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Estonia highly appeal to me.
That gives you a visa linked to your job. But keep unbroken employment in that country for 4-5 years and you will get permanent residence (pre citizenship), which frees you up immensely but requires you to not spent more than 1-2 years at a time outside that country.
If you get that far, you’ve done the hard work and citizenship is yours if you want it just by settling there longer.
English is the primary language in Ireland, and I think as a developer you’d qualify for a “critical skills” visa. Can read more here https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving-country/working...
I imagine most countries have similarly helpful “moving to x” websites.
Amsterdam has way better infrastructure, more bike and pedestrian friendly (by a long, long way) and you can get by with just English to start.
But first maybe visit some places!
The easiest way is finding a job, moving here wasn't hard at all with a job, the bureaucracy was taken care by the company, when I moved you'd get a 2 years work visa attached to the job you got, the visa renewal after 2 years frees you to move jobs without the new company having to sponsor you. After 4 years I got a permanent residency and after 5 I got my citizenship.
You will likely be limited to working only with the largest banks, as they're the only ones that are usually willing to file the FinCEN reports back to the US.
I still recommend doing it. Yes, you'll likely take a hit financially (lower salaries, certain consumer items being a lot pricier, a big PITA tax situation), but I think it's worth it to see how it is to live in a place that is much better designed. It's also great to be able to experience how it is to trade off the "grindset mentality" in the US for much better WLB. I literally had colleagues whose OOF messages that said "I'm bikepacking through Norway and will be offline for all of August" meanwhile back in the US, I've had colleagues join conference calls on their phone while recovering from surgery (not because of a lack of PTO, but because unfortunately industry research labs are highly competitive).
Also, it's a good idea to make great efforts to learn the local language or you'll end up in an Anglo bubble and you'll end up feeling like an alien on a foreign planet.
You start on the foreign country's website and supplement with community groups eg on Facebook. Average engineer might be fine but you need above average drive to navigate the process.
https://www.simplegermany.com/opportunity-card-germany/
Good luck!
In Western Europe at least, English-only in day to day life will be a moderate challenge but not a critical one (many people speak at least basic English, you get good at pointing effectively, you learn essentials much faster than you think), you'll find people & services targeted at expats to solve exactly this problem, you meet many many other foreigners in the same situation, and with a little time you really can learn a language even if you've never done it before (and doing so is genuinely an interesting and meaningful project that many people enjoy).
I moved to Spain with no Spanish. First year or so is tricky but manageable and definitely not boring, and then from there on it's relatively smooth sailing. Quite a few years later now, worked out great, best decision I ever made.
right now you only speak english, but you can surely allocate some time to start learning the local language. it's long-term marathon, not a sprint.
In Sweden at least practically everyone speaks English and it should be common among engineers to mainly speak English (at least that's the case for software engineers).
Ofc, salary comparisons are hard to make vs. the US, but you can live comfortably on an engineer's salary in Sweden.
Some of the biggest "modern" companies include DICE, Klarna and Spotify. More traditional ones are Ericsson, Scania and Volvo.
Hiring is a bit slow right now though, so that has to be kept in mind.
> I’m an average engineer and only speak English. Clearly I’m not the type of immigrant counties would love to welcome in.
This helps way less than one would hope. Bureaucracy trumps common sense unfortunately.
It shouldn't matter but it does.
Now I live in a very walkable neighbourhood in Vancouver, and constantly see older people going throughout their days. And I would want the same for myself when I reach their age, rather than live in a suburban zone with no ability to see life outside of my 500m radius.
I would never give up my car, but I use it only for stuff where walking is not practical (visiting countryside, buying lots of groceries from a big market located in less dense area). Suburbs that have apartments with enough parking slots AND adequate public transport / cycling roads to city centre work perfectly for me.
A police car stopped to ask me what was going on. They were surprised I went for a walk (despite the fact that there was a sidewalk, although empty).
It was a semi industrial (company buildings), semi hotel, semi mall, semi houses kind of place.
And, suddenly, the pavement stopped without any reason.
In a city, the space between buildings can be auctioned, and the owner of that space is responsible for cleaning and policing a section of elevated plaza. The second story of each building can then be used as a storefront and events can be held in between buildings.
If even a few blocks in the center of a city can be walkable above the traffic, I think it could create a popular tourist hub where people can explore the city, see events and spend money.
Who foots the bill for construction, maintenance, and inspections which ought to be thorough and frequent, that’s another question I hope somebody who knows politics can answer.
In my adult life I have always lived in dense urban centers (precisely because I like to walk for coffee, quart of milk, etc., and have a choice of restaurants)
When I return from travel after renting a car, I gush about how cool it was that I got to shop at a mall and stop at two other strip malls on my way home and load the car up with bags of supplies I never could have carried :)
if people on holiday bought mayo and all they need to go with it at Costco, they might have a different memory of their walking tour. grass. greener.
Lets handwave that concern away though; if everyone walked around that much normally it wouldn't be an issue right?
There are still roads, but they're mostly divided from pedestrian movement ways. Mass transit systems connect between the pedestrian optimized blocks. In at least that respect I think Disney World DID become the 'city of the future' example. That's the logical direction to move things.
Oh can we also ban all the noisy cars to underground passages except between 10am and 10pm and emergency use?
It's spot-on.
However, I submit that, as software/hardware/tech engineers, it behooves us to add User Dignity as a fairly important axis; just as important as Security and Usability. Lot more difficult to define, though.
For me, and the software that I write, it's absolutely crucial, and I will spend many hours, refining what appears to be perfectly functional UI, to enhance the Dignity of those using it; especially technophobes.
In my case, I write software for my Community, and I deal with the users of my software on a daily basis. Very few of them have the slightest inkling of what I do. It's "Some stuff with iPhones. I dunno."
To be fair, they often don't offer me, or my work, too much Dignity, but that's not their job. It is mine.
A perfect example is error handling.
Microsoft Windows is notorious for its obscure, jargonistic error messages. Many users quake in fear at triggering one of them.
I have found that the best way to give the users some Dignity, when an error occurs, is to make sure that the error doesn't occur, in the first place.
That can be a tough ask, but good affordance design, doing things like disabling UI paths that won't result in success, smoothly failing (as opposed to crashing, or triggering an error alert that isn't actually necessary to anyone but the IT HelpDesk person), and avoiding the use of jargon, in our displays, are a good way to get this.
I just went through a year and a half of wrestling with a designer, on an app that has been shipping since January. A lot of the stuff that I wanted, wrt to usability, affordances, etc., didn't make the cut.
Some of my concerns were probably overblown, but a number were not. The users are having difficulty in exactly the places I thought they would. They are also surprising me.
Help screens and whatnot, are pretty much worthless. I have a feature in the app, where, if you long-press on any element, a popover appears, with the accessibility label as the title, and the accessibility hint, as the text. You basically get focused, directly-relevant help, for any element of the screen, and it also helps us to make sure that vision-impaired accessibility is handled.
No one uses it.
Ah, well...
I actually have a great deal of love and Respect for the users of my software. I do my best to make sure that the software I write helps them to solve their problems, achieve their goals, and not impact their self-respect and Dignity.
Some of this is direct from land use regulations. Some of this is from political influence of Fire depts.
It's only recently that people are waking up to how the regulatory requirements of staircase design in multi-family buildings for the ostensible purpose of evacuation impact the look and feel of US cities.
Same for street widths. You will rarely find support from fire depts. for compact and connected streets.
I will always take any opportunity to shit on buy america and how it hamstrings infrastructure projects for the sake of running a jobs program for flyover towns
What surprised me is that you literally cannot walk away from the airport without (probably) breaking some law by the highway.
I guess this night sound strange to some but it felt a bit oppressive.
If SUVs are speeding along at 54 MPH right next to the sidewalk, their wind hits you, their noise hits you, and some asshole drivers intentionally drive over puddles in an attempt to splash pedestrians.
- everyone lives close to their ideal, well-paid job.
- everyone lives close to an excellent school for their kids.
- everyone lives close to inexpensive, well-stocked organic produce store.
- everyone lives close to acres of green park space.
- everyone lives close to amenities for all imaginable interests.
Otherwise, some people are just gonna hop in their cars and collect their pieces of the puzzle from here and there.
I also see six lane roads through residential neighbourhoods.
As much as transportation experts talk about dignity, EDI, engineering safe environments, if we build it they will come. I think what's missing is land use planning.
We can provide the safest space, build the best sidewalks, bike lanes, or whatever, but if it faster to drive, and it's more comfortable. That's exactly what people are going to do.
I use to be naive, judging people, for not cycling or walking more. Heck I use to bike through industrial parks against transport trucks, rain, wind, and snow thinking I was doing the world good. And I'm doing my part to show people this way of moving around is possible. You know what I missed, I was time rich during that period in my life. Those others weren't and they want to be comfortable.
If you want people to walk, bike, or not take a car, make the travel time on parity with taking the car, and you'll probably get a better result. Dignity - EDI, ugh.
So yes, if we want a shift, we need to reorganize the environment. And the traffic options will follow. Returning to the article, this would mean to bring back walking, biking and mass transit as priority options. Because it's clear from the infrastructure design that everything else besides cars are an afterthought.
Which works until people from opposite sides of town get married.
I just went back for a week to the city in which I was born (in the EU) and I was shocked to see that, in many neighborhoods, there was nobody walking on the streets anymore. The reason is not that they're taking the car more: the reason is safety.
But not safety as in "I fear for my life due to the risk of a car hitting me" (btw speed has been lowered to 30 km/h aka 18 mph in the city). No. Safety as in: "My city has become a hellhole and I feel I risk getting robbed or raped if I get out at night".
There are many who state dense 15'-cities are eco-friendly because people move without polluting, but no considerations seems to exists about how many others pollute much to supply anything needed by the eco-friendly pedestrians and IMVHO and experience (as a former big city resident now living on mountains) the answer is WAY TOO MUCH, meaning the "eco friendly walkable cities" are not eco friendly AT ALL and they are also unsustainable since they can't evolve without rebuild witch consume much more and demand much big effort than spread areas of small buildings who can be re-built and evolved one at a time issueless for all the others.
Strong Towns should start to consider that their model is not those of the modern cities but the one of the older villages, witch due to tech changes is now the model of spread areas. There is no strong-walkable-town possible in the modern world, only polluting monsters, modern Fordlandias doomed to fails like the original, take Neom, Arkadag, Innopolis, Prospera, Telosa, ... as good examples.
Than start to ask who profit from them, and you'll see the big financial capitalism behind the (dollar/stereotypical toxic waste leaking from rusty barrels) green fog.
This is absolutely inane. Destroying and rebuilding is the opposite of eco-friendly. Building to last is eco-friendly.
Those tightly-packed brick and stone buildings in dense walkable cities last longer and also tend to have less need for AC, since they were designed before that existed. And their use does evolve, from meeting places, to storefronts, to family housing, to condos... old buildings can do it all.
Cookie-cutter suburban homes are the exact opposite. Expendable, inefficient, and inflexible.
For example, a neighborhood in which most sidewalks are simply impassable for a wheelchair, even though it gets a high "walkability" score for Realtors to claim.
(And that tree cover "dignity" the article mentions? Someone tries to do that by taking a sidewalk just wide enough for two wheelchairs to pass each other, and puts in a tree well that won't even let one wheelchair scrape by. And often the roots eventually tip up the sidewalk into a tripping hazard. And extremely frequent parking-related sign posts along that stretch as additional obstacles. With overgrown landscaping on the other side, jutting into the sidewalk already too narrow. Occasionally with surprise poison ivy/oak, scraping across your hand, arm, leg, or face. And on the bigger streets, some street work gets done, and there's briefly enough space, then, bam, bike-sharing station, with garish advertising. Then winter comes, and if you walk heavily, even with traction aids and diligence, eventually you're going to get injured by a hazard that someone else managed to create beyond normal snow and ice.)
Suggestions:
1. Make the sidewalks passable. Including by wheelchairs.
2. Make traffic signals greatly increase the priority given to pedestrians. (Even consider a near-immediate Walk signal from button/sensor, with half-minute cooldown so cars can't be entirely DoS'd. If that will make traffic worse, then let traffic be worse.)
3. Eliminate dangerous noise pollution. (Like the "loud pipes save lives" modified motorcycles, one of which surprise blasted my eardrum a couple hours ago. Or a subset of the ambulance sirens, some of which I'm pretty sure are well into hearing damage decibel territory for people on the sidewalk, when the siren tries a little too hard to be heard by people sealed into cars and blasting music from their infotainment systems half a block away.)
4. Improve snow/ice management. (Don't plow streets up onto the sidewalk. If punting to property owners, actually enforce that. Also educate and enforce about not actively making surprise ice slicks on the sidewalk. Maybe, a bit like the city plows streets, also have city units go clear the numerous sidewalk stretches that property owners neglected, protecting pedestrians from crippling injury, and then later figure out the delicate politics of whether to fine/bill property owners.)
5. And only then -- after those basics of being able to move around, and not be maimed casually -- think about dignity like pleasing views, and sidewalk feng shui.
Hit me. You won't.
You might think this is a joke, but simply giving some idiots a middle finger is enough to lead to them shooting you (or your kid - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-man-killed-6...). Trying to be mr.tough guy with idiot drivers is a quick way to make yourself road kill.
The dumb-fucks with their emotional support trucks have won. We've paved over the whole fucking country and all of the road construction and automobile businesses are laughing their way to the bank.
Every time we try to fix something, the chuds start crying about "but muh traffic" and it gets canned. They don't want to actually pay their own fucking way, through tolls or gas taxes or taxes on their asinine vehicles. They want to take our money and use it on roads.
It's dead. The middle class is dead. The country is dead. Progress is dead. Try to enjoy yourself for the next 30 years before the Great American Desert reaches Chicago.
Something I've realized after moving to a walkable neighborhood is that you interact with your neighbors more because you run into them as you go about. Cars are isolating. Walking about builds community.
No car maintenance. No insurance. No gas.
You don't have to deal with traffic or parking
I still keep a car because it's the status quo but if I had to replace it I wouldn't
Plenty of people can't drive for medical reasons. My wife, for example. If she needs to be driven somewhere, I have to do it. That's a pain in the ass for both of us.
It might take longer to get somewhere by bus/train/etc in the absolute sense, but you know what I'm not doing while riding the bus? Driving! I can read a book, take a nap, daydream, catch up on work or social matters, watch a movie, or countless other things that you simply can't do while driving.
As a result, I actually have more time in the day to go about my life because I opt out of driving when possible. And I live in a mid-sized midwestern city with the middling public transit options you'd expect of such a place.
Then there's money. Insurance, gas, tires, brakes, oil, and routine maintenance add up to several thousands of dollars in yearly expenses if you drive regularly. Public transit is flat-out cheaper, even if you don't have a monthly car payment.
The point of all of this is that car ownership should be thought of as optional. The versatility is nice, and that's why I own a car. But, I don't use it much, because it's cheaper and more pleasant to walk or use public transit.
Yet so many people on forums like this live in metropolitan bubbles and have no idea why cars might be necessary. There’s a lot of ideological opposition to motorists at the moment and it needs to stop, because the proposed “solutions” to motoring are zero-sum and in some cases downright hostile
I hear these types of arguments all the time for all different things.
There are certainly low-cost ways of changing things and not-doing-dumb-stuff, but the list does contain some things like extra-streetlamps and maintained sidewalk trees and buildings with natural stone exteriors etc., which adds up.
Every new cookie cutter suburban subdivision requires tons of asphalt, miles of pipes for water and sewage, and the cost in most cases gets [subsided by the denser parts of the city]<https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/6/stop-subsidizin...>.
Suburbia is not only unhealthy, it's also insolvent.
Fortunately, small parts of the world, mostly centralised around anglophone North America and a few other "developing/developed rapidly in an age where cars seemed like the best thing since sliced bread, so everyone else was left behind" countries. And for the latter category, countries like Sri Lanka or Taiwan, it's still usually not as egregious as in anglophone North America because sometimes there are leftovers from before when everyone used to have to walk; not everything was bulldozed like it was in US and Canada. (Probably just because they had less time at destroying everything to remake it for cars).
But in a lot of the world, pedestrians are taken into account, and often even prioritised for.
Of course, there are car obsessed rich people who enjoy driving. I know some Swedish entrepreneurs who are like that, but I also know similarly successful people who never decided to get a driver's license and who lived in Gothenburg and take the tram everywhere.
I think the car is a middle class thing, but then peasants were upper middle class, but I assume that's not what you meant.
What is amazing about walking I have no idea. That sounds utterly horrible - to be in a place where everything is so close together that you can walk to everything?
Space, humans need space.
Ugh, I'm getting nauseated just thinking about it. And yes, I've been in places like that, I've tried them out, and they were as unpleasant as I expected.
I tested it, I went to NY using only public transportation, and it was the most horrible time I've ever had being away from home. Never again! Never!
My feet hurt, my back hurt, without a car I had nowhere to leave my stuff, so I had to carry everything with me, or make the long trek to my hotel (NY banned AirBNB, so hotels are far away from where I wanted to be).
It was truly an absolutely miserable experience, and sitting in traffic, or hunting for a parking space is a billion times better.
I've tried NY with a car before then, but I was told you don't need a car in NY - so I tried it! And they are wrong. Public transport is ALWAYS worse than a car, it's slower, much slower, it's less convenient because they only run during popular hours, it's more expensive than renting a car because you have to supplement with Uber.
I don't know why I keep trying this no-car stuff, but I did, I tried Washington DC with and without a car. (I went for 2 days, one without a car, the second day with.) A car is better. MUCH MUCH better, and cheaper too, even paying for parking.
Humans need to move, more than they need space.
> My feet hurt, my back hurt
see above
> I was told you don't need a car in NY - so I tried it! And they are wrong. Public transport is ALWAYS worse than a car, it's slower, much slower, it's less convenient because they only run during popular hours, it's more expensive than renting a car because you have to supplement with Uber.
Some town in NY state designed for cars? of course? In NYC everything about this sentence is provably false.
Well here's something odd. Just yesterday I was in a city crossing it from one side to the other, and it was so much faster by underground train than it would have been in a car. Yet your statement suggests that that real experience couldn't be true.
Perhaps it's more accurate to say that public transport is SOMETIMES worse than a car. What do you think? Might that be more accurate?
Also walking is the most natural thing to us humans, it shouldn't hurt and it won't if you do it regularly. I don't mean no offense, but have you considered that you drive too much or don't get exercise otherwise if walking hurts so bad?
Also, walking doesn't need to be the only alternative. For medium distances, a bike is better in every single way, both health-wise and otherwise. It's fast, cheap, good exercise, you can store it literally anywhere and even bring it onto the trains for the long-distance travels.
Isn't America the land of the free? Free market, land of opportunity, options galore?
Just remove enforced single family zoning for 70%+ of your built up areas and let the free market decide, right?
In most of the US right now you can decide to:
1. live in a single family home
2. live in a single family home
3. live in a single family home
...
98. live in a single family home
99. rent/buy a condo (if there are any in the area and you can afford it, because those areas are super expensive)
100. rent/buy a townhouse (if there are any in the area and you can afford it, because those areas are super expensive)
It might just not be for you, and that's okay. Your actual experience is more useful to you than anything I say below.
My personal point-of-view is that I live in lower Manhattan, commute by electric bike, and regularly take the subway, buses, ferries, and commuter rail. I very rarely rent a car for trips outside the city.
> I had nowhere to leave my stuff, so I had to carry everything with me
There's definitely a learning curve there. It's usually possible too get by with less then you think if you plan in advance, but I don't know your situation. I have a little mini backpack where I carry my water bottle, charger bank, sunglasses, hat, and a reusable grocery bag.
> or make the long trek to my hotel
If you don't mind me asking, which neighborhood did you stay in? Was this in Manhattan? I would expect an average of a 5 minute walk to the subway, plus a 5 minute wait time for the train to arrive, and you shouldn't need to return to the hotel during the day.
> I've tried NY with a car before then
I think a lot of people don't realize how well a car works in NYC, even in Manhattan. In the outer boroughs it's probably the most convenient option. The main issues are 1) parking, which you don't seem to mind, and 2) rush hour traffic. Cars work very well here late at night and early in the morning, and pretty well during the day. Robert Moses built quite a lot of highways here.
> Public transport is ... slower
This is often true even in NYC, unless there is traffic. My rule of thumb is that the subway has a higher average time but a much lower variance. An electric bike is faster than both options, which is why delivery drivers here use electric bikes.
In the tourist areas, there's usually traffic, so the subway is usually the better choice for visitors.
The subway is also usually the better choice for commuters, because they commute during rush hour.
> Public transport is ... less convenient because they only run during popular hours
The NYC subway and buses are 24 hours and work well even in the middle of the night, although I would not recommend taking them to the outer boroughs in the middle of the night for safety reasons.
> Public transport is ... more expensive than renting a car because you have to supplement with Uber
This may be true depending on your personal tolerance for walking and the kinds of trips that you make. You really have to be okay walking up to 10 minutes on each end for public transit to make sense. This is also why New Yorkers walk so quickly!
I haven't experienced almost any problem with smelly streets while walking or biking in Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Munich, Cologne, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Barcelona, Lisbon, Prague, and the list goes on. The worst I can think of is some smelly alley or higher traffic road in Berlin, or when I was in Milan when garbage collectors were on strike.
The worst cities I've ever smelled were São Paulo, Los Angeles, NYC, and San Francisco. Guess what these cities have lots and lots of? Cars.
You want to be in a car to avoid smelling cars? That problem would go away if there weren't cars in the places people walk, see also the article and prioritising dignity rather than (say) breathing car exhaust.