this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026
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Automobile-centric infrastructure was such a colossal societal fuck-up.
Bad for personal health, physical safety, household finances, and the environment. Automobiles are not a symbol of freedom, they are a symbol of dependence.
While I agree about automobile centric structure, when rural living automobiles are absolutely the ticket to freedom. It's a shame more populace areas get designed around maintaining dependence on cars.
It's only a ticket to freedom because rural living is structured like ass. It's a bandaid on a bigger, festering issue of poor city planning.
This is true in many cases, but for very rural living (eg people living on farms) there's not much you can do about car-centric design
Except this is entirely false of a claim. Human society worked for thousands of years before the car. European countries prove it is possible as well with their rural public transit services. It is absolutely not a necessity. There is no reason to design our cities and towns around personal vehicles being the primary method of transportation.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that car centric urban design is a bad thing. Truly, I do. But in very rural places in North America, you either need a car or a horse and buggy, or something, and the car seems like an obvious upgrade. Just because they can do public transit in rural areas in Europe does not mean we can do it here. Because the size comparisons aren't even close. European countries with good rural transportation are dealing with significantly less landmass than North American rural communities are.
To put things in perspective, Denmark is 42,947km^2^, and Canada is 9,984,670 km^2^. That means that you could fit almost 232 and a half Denmarks in Canada. Despite this about half of the population of Canada in the Quebec City-Windsor corridor, which is only 1,150 km-long, and about 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border. That means that the vast majority of Canada is totally rural, and there are often vast distances between towns and First Nations. It is simply not economically feasible to build rail lines to connect all these places, let along sending out regular train services to these places.
To really hammer the point home, consider Nunavut, a territory in Canada. It is 2,093,190 km^2^. For perspective, Ukraine (the second-largest country in Europe after Russia) is 603,549km^2^. That means you could almost put three and a half Ukraine's in Nunavut (and again, Ukraine is the second-largest country in Europe!). And Nunavut is extremely rural, with a population of 36,858 (and Ukraine has 32283000 people, meaning that Nunavut has 875.87 times fewer people than Ukraine). The largest population centre in Nunavut is Iqaluit, which has only 7,429 people.
So putting aside, for a second, the extreme logistical challenges with creating railways in Nunavut (due to terrain, ice, etc), how can we possibly build public transit to connect the entire territory? When we are dealing with places this vast, and this rural, we simply not economically feasible to build rural public transit. Even reality wealthy countries like Canada cannot afford to fund megaprojects like that. And again, this is just Nunavut, 1 of 13 provinces / territories. When you look at the entirety of Canada, it is simply not realistic to have rural public transit servicing the entire country. I'm sure it's possible in small countries like Denmark, but not here.
But that doesn't change the fact that, within cities at least, we should of course do our best to get rid of car centric design.
Only because we have made society this way. There is ZERO material necessities that stipulate that it must be this way. None, absolutely nadda.
Other countries have done it. The size argument is bullshit, China is able to do it and has equivalent landmass. No excuses. The entire point of trains was to traverse these vast expanses. Trains are what drove the Westward expansion of American society. So arguing that trains can't handle those distances is absurd.
Also, public transit is more than just trains, it's also walkability and bus services. Cars can exist in society without them being the primary method of transportation.
"Economically feasible" is a bullshit excuse because we create the economy. If the economy can't meet the needs of people then the economy is what needs to change, not force people to go without BASIC SERVICES. Money is not a materially limiting factor.
Humanity existed without cars (or a horse and buggy since someone made that flippant response) for hundreds of years and we absolutely can restructure our societies to go back to being pedestrian centric in both urban AND rural locations. It is entirely possible and there is no legitimate excuse not to. Economically feasible as stated is not a legitimate excuse.
China has good rail service, but China still uses cars / transport trucks to get to many rural places. Source: I've been to rural China. I'm not against trains I just don't think we can make it the primary means of transportation between rural towns
I think the point is choice. Even those living in suburban and urban areas have a difficult time opting out of car-dependence.
If you choose to live rural, I would say that automobiles are part and parcel to that decision. It's just the nature of low population density.
Except for the thousands of years that humanity was able to exist in low population density towns and villages completely fine without the need for personal vehicles.
That statement just isn't true in the slightest. It's only part of rural living because that's how it has been designed in roughly the last century of human society.
There is no materially restrictive reason it has to be this way. It is entirely a problem that is artificially created.
Should we go back to the horse and buggy?
Love the quote, not the context. It’s a legitimate question. We got ride of horses in rural areas due to cars. In North America and Canada in particular the distances are so vast that rural public transportation is not really feasible
Entirely false claim.
People used horse and buggy to transport goods between towns. Inside of towns themselves, people just fucking walked places mate because we didn't needlessly build them so far apart in order to accommodate vehicular traffic.
We absolutely have the resources required to overcomes these distances and enact functional public transit with a restructuring of our towns and cities.
I'm over this conversation if you're just going to keep repeating that bs.
This is what I'm talking about. How do we do this without cars? I was discussing this with someone else in this thread so I'll just quote what I said there:
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for car free infrastructure within towns, but I just don't see how we can transport goods between rural towns without cars. Willing to have my mind changed tho
Transporting goods via car does not require structuring our entire society around them being the primary method of transportation. You can still transport goods via vehicle while having accessible public transit and cities/towns structured around pedestrians. Rural included.
Okay so I guess we're actually in agreement then
Glad we could settle that miscommunication then.
Except there is absolutely no reason it has to be like that in rural areas. Period. At all. Even a little. Look at China (or if you still believe the NED puts out legitimate stories, Denmark or Sweden or Norway) which has public transit to nearly all rural areas at least a couple times a week, and inter-village public transit in pretty much all villages that have more than a dozen people.
Busses are more efficient than independent vehicle ownership in all settings. All of them.
More efficient, sure, but their argument was about freedom, which is just a different dimension. In an extreme example, private jets provide more freedom than public transportation does, even though it's obvious which one is worse for the environment, more expensive, more intrusive, etc.
Except that's not freedom.
It is not freedom to have a, and this really isn't an exaggeration, more than 10,000x personal cost for transportation. It's freedom for the rich, but the rich aren't a part of society and cannot be generalized into society.
It is not freedom to have to personally rely on the US to do the right thing.
It is not freedom to take on the massive legal and financial risk that is driving a death machine.
It is only freedom in the most infantile, 'Anarkiddie' sense of the word freedom. The 'Hurr durr we'd all be more free if we had less laws' kind of idiocracy most humans abandon by the age of 15 when they learn about the concept of government.
Your point is good up until you start naively slandering Anarchism out of nowhere. Way to absolutely undermine yourself there.
That's what marxists do here. Note how he can't even say anything about it beyond his random slander.
Wanna bet he thinks anarchists need left unity too?
What anarchist supports car ownership bullshit in America?