The vast majority of people in the US do not live in places that are at all comparable to Berlin, or NYC for that matter.
> Shopping should be local,
Which means that you're limited to what's popular enough in your local area. And, it usually leads to small stores, which are inherently less efficient and thus more expensive.
> The US model of consolidating all schools into superschools and the move them deep into the subburbs surounded by parking lots is literally the worst.
Suburbs have schools because suburbs have lots of kids. FWIW, there is a tendency for folks to move from cities to suburbs when they have kids.
That said, city kids go to city schools. Yes, there is some "city schools are so horrible that we'll let some city kids go elsewhere" but it's [1] in the noise and [2] caused by crappy city schools/govts, not urban design.
Crappy city govts cause lots of problems, not just crappy schools, but if those govts could be easily fixed, it would have happened. (FWIW, almost all of those crappy city govts have been super-majority Democrat for decades.)
> Sightseeing, how else would you go sightseeing if not with the train. I dont get it. Would any place you want to go to be just full of parking lots?
No.
You're assuming that every place you go sightseeing has lots of people. That might be true in Europe, but it's not true in the US.
> The vast majority of people in the US do not live in places that are at all comparable to Berlin, or NYC for that matter.
I was illustrating that trains can stop in multiple places.
And this is true in lower density places too. For example here in Switzerland you have mountains, and trains go along the valley.
There are plenty of good examples of train in lower density areas. And they use many of the same principles. I used to live next to a Unisco World Heritage site that has a train threw it and the train stopped at most villages many that only have a few 1000 people.
> Which means that you're limited to what's popular enough in your local area. And, it usually leads to small stores, which are inherently less efficient and thus more expensive.
Yeah because US supermarkets are famous for their wide selection of very diverse products from all over the world. Its not like what those stores are actually full of are like 500 different breakfast cereals from the same 2 companies.
Small stores being less efficient is only true if you only look at the store itself. If you look at the overall system they are more efficient. The lower prices some of these super stores offer are because they just externalize to costs to local infrastructure and local government.
The reality is taking in more people from a large amounts of subburbs isn't going to radically derisive the product portfolio.
The reality is 95%+ of your daily needs can easily be served from a reasonably sized local market. Here those kinds of small stores have their own cheese, meat, fish and fresh bread section. I rather go to such a store here then these superstores that I have been to in the US.
> Suburbs have schools because suburbs have lots of kids. FWIW, there is a tendency for folks to move from cities to suburbs when they have kids.
I'm not against school in the subburbs. My point was, and this is a historical fact. School got massively bigger and less local. You can have many smaller schools in the subburbs as well. But because of 'efficiency' things were consolidated into these mega schools. Meaning the avg travel distance to schools went up a huge amount, meaning far fewer kids could walk or cycle.
And because of that it was also incredibly dangerous for kids to do that so it basically forced everybody to take the car.
Its a complete desaster in terms of everything from efficiency to health. And it has not actually made providing education cheaper or better.
Cities aren't load, cars are loud. It being loud is literally an urban design issue.
> [2] caused by crappy city schools/govts
They are crappy partly because of the general attitude towards city and how transportation funding and school financing works in the US. Again that is an urban design issue.
> Crappy city govts cause lots of problems, not just crappy schools, but if those govts could be easily fixed, it would have happened.
What a great attitude to have. Society can never ever improve. If it could improve it would have already improved. We are all doomed. The West is going to shit. Balblabla.
There are lots of places in the US where things are improving as well.
> No.
> You're assuming that every place you go sightseeing has lots of people. That might be true in Europe, but it's not true in the US.
You simply can't deny that lots of places that are famous for sightseeing have lots of cars and lots of parking. Sure not every place has it, but plenty do. And guess what, its the places that actually have the most people going to.
I'm sure you can go to some place in Alaska that is beautiful, but that that not where most people actually go on vacation. And its not where most ultra individualistic US car users drive their cars too.
Where people actually drive too, is almost always a well prepared place connected to a highway with lots of parking provided.
Its a simple fact that lots of beautiful places that we currently reach with trains or bus would be much, much worse if there was no public transport to it.
But you need to force people go to the same destination. And quit shopping or getting their children to school or do sightseeing.