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It is not that cars are not useful. It's that people want to live in nice cities and too much car infrastructure ruin cities. You can't have both. You can't enjoy a nice terras next to a busy road. Or kids cannot safely cycle with their friends if there are many cars driving around.

People should not forget that Europe has tons of car friendly towns and suburbs and many people live there. You can choose your lifestyle.

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I fear it often cuts a different way. Everyone wants it so that they can have the benefits of the car, along with the benefits of nobody using a car. A friend I was talking with called it the "main character syndome."

It is a lot like people wanting city life to look a lot like college life. Without wanting to live in dormitories where people are also raising kids.

Do people raise kids in college dormitories?

Not to my knowledge. My point is that that is probably closer to what is needed for a lot of the dream cities than people acknowledge.

Granted, college dormitory is a hyperbolic. More realistic, will be your standard smaller apartment blocks.

Car commercials always feature completely empty streets, no red lights, and no speed limits.

To be fair, videos of ideal walkable cities always have an absurd amount of active space. :)

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