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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Fuck Cars
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Imagine thinking all people outside urban areas can exist with a bike and public transportation. Ignorance is bliss, eh?
Well that's not what I think.
What I think is the majority of people on this planet live in urban areas. In wealthy countries like in Europe, North America, and Oceania, the share that lives in cities is an overwhelming majority. In those areas, who represent the vast majority of the population, we have often systematically gatekeeped access to schools, jobs, and groceries behind a massive paywall that is the ownership and operation of heavy machinery. Urban areas absolutely do not need car-dependency. Rural areas are obviously different, and fixing car-dependency for 80% of the population will actually improve things for rural folks: less suburban sprawl means less encroachment of suburbia into the countryside.
I respect your point but fundamentally disagree with it. Your utopia of having sprawling public transportation networks is not achievable in any realistic timeframe due to many factors, nature being top of the list. You're also clearly biased in your urban belief. Population growth drives expansion, and you ignored the sections of the planet still booming, lacking proper infrastructure, and growing rapidly in and out of urban areas.
Would this work in Europe,? Sure, but that doesn't make you correct in applying it world wide.
Most growth in the world is in urban areas. There's a reason most projections expect the largest cities in the world by the end of the century to be places like Kinshasa, DRC. Much like London grew precipitously during its industrialization, like Shanghai and Beijing grew during their industrialization, now growing stupendously are the cities of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The fact of the matter is most growth globally is occurring in cities.
And yes, poor infrastructure is an issue. When NYC and London industrialized, they built massive subway systems. And if you want to grow with car-dependence, it still requires infrastructure. Instead of railroads, roads. Instead of trains, parking lots. Instead of depots, gas stations and charging stations.
And yes, I agree it will be a massive challenge to rebuild our cities in places like North America, but we already did it once, only about 60 years ago. Our urban freeways were built by demolishing entire neighborhoods. Our urban parking lots came from demolishing dense, historic buildings. Our urban roads came from tearing up massive tram networks. For example, Melbourne Australia has the largest tram network on the entire planet. Why? Because they were the one city that didn't tear up their system with the advent of the automobile. Before cars, basically all cities in US/Canada/Australia/etc. were built on truly massive public transit networks.
But the beautiful thing about fixing car dependency is it will actually be easier. Instead of demolishing neighborhoods, the main thing we have to demolish is parking lots. The land values in city centers are absolutely insane, and housing will get built if just legally allow it (just look at Santa Monica, where new California housing law saw a historic flurry of housing project proposals). We currently make it literally illegal to do so across the vast majority of our urban land.
Edit: For reference, I was born and raised in American suburban sprawl, so it's not like I'm some holier-than-though, out-of-touch European who has never set foot outside a transit-rich city. Further, the current model of car-dependent suburban sprawl is inherently financially unsustainable, and it will come to an end sooner or later. We might as well save ourselves the pain of a slow, excruciating collapse like Detroit and choose to go in the direction of a more environmentally and fiscally sustainable model. We genuinely don't really have a choice.
I was under the impression that most growth was in SUB-urban areas and urban and rural have been shrinking. The sub-urban category is largely made up of small towns and bedroom communities. Even in the best laid out small town the best public transit is a bus with limited stops, since the reason people are leaving bigger cities is mostly cost and ratepayers are unwilling to pony up for real transportation.
Yeah wow the 15% of people who don't live in cities should really be our highest priority to keep in mind at all times when designing cities.