DOT is half the problem, department of TRANSPORTATION but they only really care about roads or cars. It was also DOTs that ripped out peoples homes to pave highways into city centers. They caused a signifcant amount of this problem and they should be responsible for creating some solutions.

I think it’s a start. I’ve seen more and more from the feds and local governments about the infrastructure/walkability issue. It moves at a snail’s pace but that’s the government in general. My guess is that if you can align the people making federal policy to allocate federal money for public transit projects and high speed trains and such, you can incentivize local governments to use more dense mixed-use zoning laws and drum up local support for public transit projects where people aren’t stuck in a car all day.

I lived in Nashville when Barry proposed and mulled over their now doomed spoke and hub suburban train project between bang sessions with her security detail at the graveyard. It was frustrating that local businesses bitched and moaned and doomed the city to be another shitty Atlanta, so we have to understand the hurdles and the politics involved. Fortunately I have some faith that Buttigieg does but it’s admittedly frustrating when everything related to climate change is already too little too late and it’s moving so slowly to the point that we are only in the early stages.

So many cultural things have to change too. Penalizing big truck and SUV manufacturers is a start. Nobody needs one of those damn things.

That would be ideal, but my husband's office job just fired a bunch of people for resisting the end of work from home. The company's argument was "people aren't getting work done." Even though it was all getting done. Companies in general aren't going to give up their ability to own their employees without a fight.

I guess what I'm saying is this won't happen until the government forces the issue. IF the government forces the issue.

But you are 100% right. We saved so much on gas and car maintenance when work from home was a thing, and we started seeing a huge amount of lichens in our area that were once pretty rare during covid. Apparently that one species grows a lot more when air pollution is low.

Are you sure decoupling (alone) has the desired effect here? Given the 'Suburban Dream', society might sprawl even better, because there would be less constraints then.

In my understanding, suburbia might become cultural (ie. people don't arrange themselves with the sprawl longer, they embrace and dream of it) once a certain threshold of sprawl or its countermeasures is achieved.

So as a society, how do we

1. Encourage you to want to move somewhere walkable and with transit
2. Build more of those places

There’s no reason this needs to be an imposition on you. If done right, it can make your life much better

I think we're all lucky you're not one of the rich people.

Catch-22, don't build Suburbia (aka don't live in and pay for it) AND drive less. On a positive note, using public transit and sharing space has the opposite effect.

Wait, since when was lab grown meat the enemy? I thought one of the biggest selling points of it was that it was significantly more environmentally friendly than traditional cattle ranching.

We could do both by going after those and also building public transit for the average guy. Imagine if car ownership isn't required to work or socialize? You don't have to park it anywhere, pay for gas, maintaince and insurance, you could drink 5 beers and still go places without getting a DUI.

The american dream is half the problem. Most suburban neighbourhoods cost more to maintain and repair than they generate in taxs. They are unsustainable and simple rises in taxs would need to be too steep for most of them. Many cities repair an old neighbourhood with the profits from selling land/development fees for a new neighborhood, somewhat like a pyramid scheme. The american dream was doomed from the start because it was always unsustainable, from an environmental, economical, and social view.

Depends on where you live but making walkable/micromobility friendly cities more common is critical for sure. I'm fortunate enough that I can bike to work every day, same for groceries and general medical stuff.

I definitely don't like it at all, but I'm just a worthless underpaid factory schmuck so I have to live far from work because anything close is pretty much my entire paycheck just for rent...

The US really needs to find a better way to solve this issue, but since we're all "rugged individualists" things just get built where the owners want and nothing needs to make sense for anyone... Where I currently work most people have to drive an hour each way just to get here. Logistics for deliveries are horrendous. It makes no sense to have a factory where this is, but that's what the owner wanted...

My ride to work is a bike most days lol, lately I've been skateboarding though: Way more fun than a car, also exercise!