100% in agreement. I live in Wisconsin and this entire area is fucked for improvement. Nevermind the endless zoning red tape, nevermind the horrible laws that would have to be changed in every municipality and the utilities that would have to be redone from scratch, most "Muricuns" don't want it.

I think he's partially right. It's a valid point of view for sure.

North America can probably be fixed but it's going to take a long time and meanwhile other regions are already much more advanced than we are in this regard. So it's only natural that some people would not want to wait for the change and just go live where life will be "better" for them.

It can even happen while staying in North America! I left my small town in rural Canada because I didn't want to drive a car. I went to the closest medium size city with public transit instead of waiting for my village to have a bus service back, a service that was cut in the 90ies and indeed never came back anyway. Eventually I moved to Montreal because it's just easier here. There's already an established public transit network, bike shares, a solid bike path network... I didn't want to have to advocate and wait for this to happen back where I lived. Nothing has changed there still! It's even worse than it was before. They cut even more bus services to other medium sized cities in the region.

And so for this path I've taken in my life, moving to Montreal, I've been called privileged for being able to live in a city that allows me to not to be threathened (or less) on the road when I walk or cycle around and that just makes my life easier. They would prefer that I stay in my region and fight to get even a hard shoulder on a provincial road between two villages, so that I can get "coaled" by pickup trucks while cycling there?! Sorry but I chose to live elsewhere instead.

You can take this to different degrees. I see it like people chosing to flee a country they don't feel welcome in, rather than try to change it. You have to chose your battles.

In 10-15 years, LA will have a very good bike system and connections to buses and transit. With good density around most transit.

He is completely wrong.

Sure it's not going to be as good as Amsterdam in our life, but it is the beginning of the process that we saw in Amsterdam 50 years ago.

Some parts and areas are already pretty nice and getting better.

The fact is, most our cities simply have to change now. It's not possible for them to keep going how they are

It really depends on where in the USA, but for the most part he's right.

Any growing communities like small towns and cities have the chance to change this, but it usually sounds too high risk for them.

Plus they already have to deal with the insane red tape and overhead in the US like poorly cascaded federal and state laws, lowest bidder stupidity, maximum annual budget spending, scam zoning laws, and slow as hell development time.

Like I would definitely throw in effort to try in the plenty of towns that surround metro areas.

Dearborn for example, which is technically metro Detroit, surprisingly has some walkable neighborhoods because the smallest roads are thinner and businesses are very close to residential areas. It's definitely not perfect because all the main roads (stroads) are still absolutely huge, but it's nice to see that it's not just typical suburbs with strict Zoning.

But after visiting Houston, I would just declare the entire state of Texas a lost cause.

Every time I meet an American tourist or visit America I’m flabbergasted at how stupid they can be. The vast majority of them have bought hook line and sinker into American propaganda. It’s frightening.

We aren’t much better in Canada, but the shit I see at a regular rate from people I meet in the states is straight fucked up. No wonder their country is going down the toilet.