I get it’s the practical answer given the state of how things are, but wanting to change the car instead of the infrastructure that forces the use of the car betrays a lack of imagination for how things could be.
I own a car, I’m not a “destroy all cars” guy. I just don’t want it to be the only option. The American suburban experiment has resulted in the least active, the least healthy, the most indebted, the most isolated, and the loneliest generation. Yes, of course there’s many other factors. But when you look at the studies of where people know the fewest neighbors by name, it’s in the little boxes on the hillside. Sprawl ain’t helping.
I get it, we all want plentiful cheap land after we’re done living with roommates. I do too. But there’s gotta be a better way than strip malls nestled between HOA-gated subdivisions, connected only by 45mph 6-lane stroads. There’s gotta be a way to build human-centric. Let’s talk about what the next suburban experiment will look like instead of perpetually adding more lanes, always straining to connect our increasingly disconnected subdivisions.
Walkable and bikable space tends to be urban, with high(er) density. Else you can't walk or bike to enough places for walking and biking to matter.
Either this, or a thick network of trains and buses in suburbia, which is hard and expensive to build, and is also noisy. Plentiful suburban trains mostly exist where they were built 100-150 years ago, and are seen as normal for a long time.
I live in Huddinge, Sweden, a suburban part of Stockholm some 15 km away from the city center.
I have many busses and a commuter train line as options to move around, I can bike as well given the many bike lanes connecting all the way from the city to even further away suburban areas.
It's not noisy at all, I hear the deers eating grass in my garden while the train station is some 800 meters away. Busses pass by the avenue a block away from the house and I never hear them.
Not sure what you'd consider noisy but I don't really experience that and have plenty of ways to go around without a car.
I own a car, I’m not a “destroy all cars” guy. I just don’t want it to be the only option. The American suburban experiment has resulted in the least active, the least healthy, the most indebted, the most isolated, and the loneliest generation. Yes, of course there’s many other factors. But when you look at the studies of where people know the fewest neighbors by name, it’s in the little boxes on the hillside. Sprawl ain’t helping.
I get it, we all want plentiful cheap land after we’re done living with roommates. I do too. But there’s gotta be a better way than strip malls nestled between HOA-gated subdivisions, connected only by 45mph 6-lane stroads. There’s gotta be a way to build human-centric. Let’s talk about what the next suburban experiment will look like instead of perpetually adding more lanes, always straining to connect our increasingly disconnected subdivisions.