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You seem rather less informed on the topic than you think.

To start, as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_city will verify, the switch in the USA to car-centric cities began in the 1920s. By the 1930s, about half of American households had cars. And American cities were being reshaped by this. After the war, the automobile industry did conspire to remove public transit to improve profits. However this was on top of a giant car-centric housing boom, and already wide existing infrastructure changes. Which all contributed.

The American experience stands in stark contrast to Europe. In pre-war Europe, cars were only a luxury item for the rich. Germany's early success came in part because it was more mechanized than the rest of Europe. But even so, about 80% of all of Nazi German logistics was by horse. They were absolutely unprepared for what happened after the USA converted car manufacture over to tanks and airplanes. With the result that the USA quickly outproduced the rest of the planet combined. (Though, to correct a common American misconception, the most important military use of American equipment was by Soviet soldiers.)

After WW 2, Europe's manufacturing increased rapidly. And yes, cities did become more "car centric". Including Amsterdam. But even "car centric" Amsterdam was nowhere comparable to the average US city. By the time the 70s rolled around, car ownership was still well behind the USA. Yes, new construction was planned for cars, but there was a lot less of that than in the USA. And the core of various cities, including Amsterdam, was still built to the old scale.

The scale that the core of a city is built at, matters. Even in the USA it matters. The USA has many cities that were highly populated before cars. Particularly Manhattan. By and large, they remain walkable today.

But cities that were constructed almost entirely after cars, such as Los Angeles, are car-centric to an extent that simply never has existed anywhere in Europe. No, not even in the bad old days of "car centric" Amsterdam.

And so, I stand by my point. I'm someone who has visited multiple countries, and has lived in a variety of cities. I've lived both with and without a car for various stretches of my life.

Take any city in the world that is an example of a good place for living by mass transit and bicycling. At no point in its history was it anywhere near as car centric as the average US city. And that is true whether you compare to how car centric the US city is today, or to how car centric it was back when the other city had more cars.

So lay off on "car centric Amsterdam". It's an argument based on comparing apples and oranges. It was never even remotely comparable to the average US city.

I think we are talking about pretty much about the same phenomenon, but you are using the difference is the scale as a justification for its effects. I don't get why.

> And American cities were being reshaped by this.

It's one thing to have cities building infrastructure in their existing areas to make room for cars. It's another to have suburban sprawl of the post-war, where cities would grow exclusively by spreading to the outskirt and building single-zoning areas.

> The USA has many cities that were highly populated before cars. Particularly Manhattan.

And there were also many big, developed cities which had their downtowns destroyed in favor of highways. Manhattan being an island protected it from this fate, but lots of cities in the Midwest or Texas had walkable areas.

You guys are talking past each other.

One of you is pointing out that cars are a necessity for some in the current reality. The other is pointing out that we could change that reality like other places have.

You are both right.

I am very against the continuation of car primacy in urban design, but I live in a place where that is the current reality, so for all practical reasons I need at least one car in my household. I advocate for the changes so that isn't true and see that it is possible to live otherwise, but it isn't reality right now, so I own a car. Me owning a car isn't to "rationalize [my] bad choices and poor capacity for civic organization." I do it because the housing that I can afford, in the country that I live in is in an area where that is necessary. In the meantime I advocate for better transit and other options, but I am not omnipotent, and even those with tremendous amounts of power cannot make these changes happen quickly given the 75+ years of infrastructure and urban design.

You are tremendously mean-spirited and un-empathetic in proclaiming that those that don't agree with you are 'lazy' and 'not willing to sacrifice their own convenience for some communal benefit'.

Try understanding where people are coming from. Many believe as strongly as you do, and can provide just as many backing youtube videos, that cars are an unalloyed good. If you come at them this aggressively telling them that the places they live are just plain wrong, you will not convince them of anything.

As an aside, the Dutch aren't nearly as car free as you are presenting. They are in the top 25% for per capita car ownership worldwide, and have higher rates of car ownership rates than Denmark, Sweden, Greece and Croatia which isn't even all of the countries in Europe with lower rates of car ownership. Hell, they have more than double the rate of car ownership of Saudi Arabia, a country that subsidizes fuel prices to encourage car use.

The Dutch have a lot of cars because they are rich.

The ugly truth (for public transit zealots like the parent poster) is that there is no amount of investment that can make a person with the ability to afford a car willingly choose public transit, unless they live and work in a place with extremely high population density.

They keep ranting about how cars are a luxury, and they are right, but basically want to change human nature to suit their preferences IMO.

That's a bit too far in the other direction.

I know plenty of people who choose transit even though they own a car.

My in-laws live in Rotterdam, and cycle and transit for most day to day stuff. But they also own and use a car, when appropriate (they do have big box stores and suburbs in - gasp - bike crazy Rotterdam).

People will use transit if it is pleasant, fast, and affordable. When I lived in Vancouver, you would be nuts to commute by car if there was a train line near you. It was cheaper and faster to take transit, especially during the working hours.

But as you stated, most people who can afford a car do end up with one, even if it isn't their primary mode of transit.

> That's a bit too far in the other direction.

I don't think so, but partially because the person I responded to is off the charts in the anti-car direction.

> I know plenty of people who choose transit even though they own a car.

Most people choose what makes sense for them, myself included. I drive most of the time, but have no problem taking public transit when it makes sense.

> People will use transit if it is pleasant, fast, and affordable. When I lived in Vancouver, you would be nuts to commute by car if there was a train line near you. It was cheaper and faster to take transit, especially during the working hours.

The issue is that there are very few places where it's cheaper and faster to take public transit.

The solutions most transit advocates come up with involve kneecapping car usage so public transit can compete or insisting people live at density levels most find unacceptable, neither of which are practically feasible.

> there is no amount of investment that can make a person with the ability to afford a car willingly choose public transit

But also:

> Most people choose what makes sense for them, myself included. I drive most of the time, but have no problem taking public transit when it makes sense.

I apologize for taking your word as literal. The first quote is what I was really responding to.

There is a middle ground, it just sounded like you didn't know it existed.

I’m wealthy and live in the Netherlands. I find cars kind of annoying. I bike and take the train for 99% of trips, and use occasional hourly car rental otherwise.

Running costs of a car sure buy a lot of rentals or even taxi rides if you do the math. I noticed that a long ago.

Good for you. You're in the minority, both in your own country and globally.

Indeed, I would love for more people to be able to enjoy this flexibility!

Dutch person with a car here: Like many people, I own one because they can be very useful to transport heavy stuff, and there are several low density areas where it's a pain to get by train, like visiting family in nearby Belgium. But for most of my trips biking or public transport is just quicker. I drive maybe twice a month.

> You guys are talking past each other.

Agreed.

> but it isn't reality right now, so I own a car.

This means that you at least consider a possibility of living without a car. You at least understand that there is nothing about the US making it impossible to work towards car independence. I have no reason to argue with you or people who share this sentiment.

I do get upset at the people who think that this situation is static and that it can not be changed, ever. But I get more upset at the people who complain at the North American reality only when they are directly suffering from it, and act like when the systemic problem doesn't exist anymore just because they manage to "solve the issue" for themselves.

> As an aside, the Dutch aren't nearly as car free as you are presenting.

They have high rates of car ownership, but they are not car dependent. Even the people who have to drive for work use cars only for longer distance trips, and walk/bike/use public transport for shorter ones. In Greece, much like in the US, people assume that you have to have a car to do anything.

I agree.

But I'm also pointing to the fact that this is easier to change in some places than others. It doesn't just take will to change. It takes more will in some places than others. Because you have to fight against the layout and built up infrastructure of the area.

Conversely, the other person is pointing to how friendly Amsterdam is to not having a car. The fact that lots of people there have cars doesn't take away from the fact that it is easy to live there and not have a car. Just like the number of TVs in America don't take away from the fact that it is easy to live in America and not own a TV. (Case in point. I live in America, and haven't owned a TV in 20 years.)

> As an aside, the Dutch aren't nearly as car free as you are presenting. They are in the top 25% for per capita car ownership worldwide, and have higher rates of car ownership rates than Denmark, Sweden, Greece and Croatia which isn't even all of the countries in Europe with lower rates of car ownership. Hell, they have more than double the rate of car ownership of Saudi Arabia, a country that subsidizes fuel prices to encourage car use.

Wrong usage of statistics. The rate of car ownership is not the metric to look at, but rather the % of trips taken by car vs bike.

There is a major difference between Western Europe and the US: The former has a population density of 184 people per sq km, whereas in the continental US it's 43 per sq km. Moreover, the major cities in the US have more distance between them.

The result is that even if you increase the density in some US city, the people in the surrounding areas will still need cars, and then will come to the city in their cars because it's the only city within reasonable distance of them.

The subset of the US where that isn't the case is basically the New York Metro Area.

If you draw a 250 mile radius around Rotterdam, it contains Paris, London, Frankfurt and the entire countries of Belgium and Luxembourg. If you draw a 250 mile radius around Portland, Oregon, the only major city is Seattle some 175 miles away and mostly it contains a lot of trees. And then even though they're the sort of people who like mass transit and build it, the large majority of people there still don't use it.

> There is a major difference between Western Europe and the US: The former has a population density of 184 people per sq km, whereas in the continental US it's 43 per sq km.

Wrong, the population density of a country is irrelevant. People aren't uniformly distributed over an entire country's area. A low density usually means a country is big and has a lot of nearly deserted areas, which is true of the US.

> Moreover, the major cities in the US have more distance between them.

Yet another simple average that has no bearing on anything relevant. NYC is far away from San Francisco? No shit.

> The result is that even if you increase the density in some US city, the people in the surrounding areas will still need cars, and then will come to the city in their cars because it's the only city within reasonable distance of them.

Yeah, that's literally the same everywhere else in the world. Therefore, the argument is moot.

> The subset of the US where that isn't the case is basically the New York Metro Area.

Obviously untrue.

> If you draw a 250 mile radius around Rotterdam, it contains Paris, London, Frankfurt and the entire countries of Belgium and Luxembourg. If you draw a 250 mile radius around Portland, Oregon, the only major city is Seattle some 175 miles away and mostly it contains a lot of trees.

Yay, cherry picking! In any case, now explain why despite sufficient density existing in a lot of places in the US there's 0 investment into mass transit there either? It's almost like density is not relevant at all when it comes to the US, weird.

> And then even though they're the sort of people who like mass transit and build it, the large majority of people there still don't use it.

Uhuh, "the sort of people". Let me make one thing clear. There is no place in the US that has any sort of a half workable mass transit solution, with maaaybe NYC as the sole exception as something that can maaaaybe aspire to be half as good as your average European city. So if you're telling me Portland, Oregon built mass transit, then your idea of mass transit is very different from what that actually means.

I see this attitude from far too many people who push for better cities. It’s not that it’s wrong, it’s that it doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter how correct you are, and how good your reasoning is - being smug, self-righteous, and insulting does not convince people.

I badly want better urban design in the US, focused on walking, biking, and public transit - but we have to understand and deal with the fact that good people are raised in a very different environment, and that it truly is quite difficult in a great many places that people live to simply change your lifestyle to one without a car. You have to meet people where they are. Show them a better way, and be understanding when they resist and say it won’t work, because they have only known a different way.

I have seen many people who are receptive to these ideas, but have been so put off by the insulting attitude of many notable proponents (like NotJustBikes) that they are wary of engaging with it.

You are justified in your anger at the situation. I get angry all the time at the risk, pollution, expense, and lack of amenities that I must bear due to the car-centric design of America. Still, that does not make hostility an effective strategy. We will make change by showing a better way, not by denigrating and insulting.

I agree that the tone of arguments of many proponents is not helpful. That obscures the fact there are relatively easy things that can be copied from the Netherlands to make a city more walkable that are not expensive. Chiefly: start making a division between "streets" and "roads", where one is just for destination traffic with shops and houses, and the other is a through way to get from one neighborhood to another with as few traffic lights as possible.

People love to get rid of traffic along their house so it's easy to get buy-in from the public to convert their area to a neighborhood without through traffic, even when that means they have to navigate a few blocks to get in and out of their neighborhood. This results in more traffic pressure in the surrounding area, but that's not as bad as you think because you can remove a lot of traffic lights if there are fewer roads in and out of a neighborhood. Slowly build up to more and more of these areas.

If the only cars in a neighborhood street are from people who live there then traffic intensity is low enough that no bike lanes are needed there and kids can play in the street. Finally, if all that works, you can start stringing neighborhoods together with dedicated bike lanes, away from streets with cars. Bike lanes that are not part of a road are surprisingly cheap because road wear scales with the third power of vehicle weight so those rarely need resurfacing.