A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
The answer is yes!
Our north American minds can't comprehend walking past ten or fifteen outdoor patios in the span of ten minutes on the same street, but we call it normal to spend 1 or 2 hours driving to a restaurants.
How often do I find myself driving between two stores within the same plaza/parking lot.
When you live in a area where everything is within walking distance of everything else, going out is trivial.
As someone who doesn’t like going out or meeting people, we’ve also ruined my experience. If I can’t walk everywhere in a city I at least want stars and bugs and birds and trees.
But the suburbs don’t have those things either. Literally the worst of all possible worlds.
Tree suburbs used to be very common, but now most new suburbs don't even have these either.
Most stuff just looks like this now
Even then there’s hardly any stars.
Yeah suburbs from before cars were invented are typically quite nice. I live in one and I quite enjoy it. And they were probably much better when the countryside was a short walk away and a network of streetcars connected the whole city.
I think Whittleton Creek in Hitman is a perfect image of one, but that’s also a game where NPCs can only walk, not drive.
Let me guess, too much work to maintain the tree and keep the street "clean"?
You're probably not to far off.
Really upset me to drive past where new suburban developments are happening and seeing the field cleared off all the existing trees first before a single house goes in.
I just did that and I'm in Canada. It's not impossible, just generally limited to bigger cities right now.
Yes. The American suburb model is probably the worst of all options. And people who haven't really lived other ways might not even realize how bad it is.
I never want to live somewhere car-first.
Remember that comic that shows two people riding bikes through a nice area, and one of them says like "if anyone proposed building this where I live I would kill them"?
We found this even within Canada. We were in Southern Ontario where its car centric and planners and developers just built roads and homes by pulling all the trees out and putting grass in. We often drove down to a coffee shop a few blocks away because the walk was dull.
Moved to Vancouver area and there is a transit system, and walkable cities. While its not like the endless plaza shown in the video, being able to walk everywhere and with beautifully landscaped areas (not to mention the natural beauty) gets us outdoors and enjoying it.
Vancouver is so awesome in this regard. We live in the west end of TO and it's alright but Vancouver is something else. I feel like Montreal is better as well. We've gone city-vacationing to both a few times now.
Montreal for sure
Yeah, I can walk to everything I need in ten to fifteen minutes. The main boulevard most large boroughs is closed to cars and it's a boon for local business as pedestrians actually stop in on random businesses where motorist do not, it has the added benefit of royally pissing off the car-brains from the cookie-cutter suburbs. Montreal needs to take bigger steps to expand its public transport and its winter culture as it acts like people don't need a walkable city when it starts to snow, but it definitely beats every alternative in North America.
I'm in a small English city and it's the proverbial 15-minute city. It's very walkable (with a few glaring exceptions) and there's very little need to drive. I only keep the car to go on European road trips and to visit country pubs where the buses don't run often enough.
Vancouver's definitely nice, though affordability is a major problem.
Yep, American-style suburbs are a cancer. If you want to create car dependency, anomie, isolation and despair, well, suburbs are very effective.
Yes, America did it wrong. Car focused culture by definition puts humans and animals and all other things as secondary. The result is isolating people first into cities then into suburbs and then into blocks before COVID kept us in our own homes. Alone. It's nice to see the rest of the world doing well as America is fading.
I remember how in some of the towns I lived in there'd be these old closed down diners in residential areas, usually near schools and fields/playgrounds. Small corner stores, too.
The old infrastructure is still there in places. Just hollowed out and left to decay.
Fucking obviously, yes.
He’ll yah, we the people some how let rich ppl and companies prioritize themselves over the individual families and communities. If you want to blame anyone RIGHT Fn NOW. Do so to your congressman, senators, mayors, your god dang elected leaders whom should be responsible by representing your community. Tell them by voting, tell them by creating new policies, tell them with your epidermis sticking out during town hall meetings..
...didnt ONLY voting get us into these types of problems in the first place?....
No, most people didn't even vote
but voting is practicallt useless since they only let a select few group of candidates run.
PArties like the PSL were banned from some usa states' elections despite running a candidate in those states.
These same ommissions happen in othrler countries too
I moved to Munich from South Africa after having spent 3 months in New Jersey.
Munich has too many cars on the roads, but you don't need a car to get around here. I've lived here since 2013 and I have needed to drive only when moving or when I've bought furniture. A few times for work as well.
It's marvelous!