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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
They probably assumed this is like a theme park or something and not an actual city that people actually live in year round. Cities having nice, people friendly places away from cars? Who’s ever heard of that?
Where would we walk? Most places are not set up for that.
Some people go on walks around their neighborhood for the sake of walking. But unless you live in the right area of the right city you can’t just walk half a mile to get a muffin. The store is a 10 minute drive away.
I don’t want to sound flippant, but there are places to live in the US where you can walk to things. People choose to live outside cities and old town areas because it’s cheaper and bigger.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that this isn’t some nebulous countrywide “It’s everyone else’s fault” thing. People can and do choose to live close to things. We choose what we want.
You didn’t come off as flippant, but perhaps as sheltered… people live with the choices available to them. If you want to have kids, you have to choose a well funded school district or living in the suburbs driving everywhere. The “choice” to live in a wealthy walkable district, or to buy a bigger house in the city, or to pay tuition to send your kid to a private school, is not a choice that everyone can make.
Perhaps you can consider growing up in suburban America and then raising your own family there a choice. I wouldn’t, in the same way I wouldn’t consider wearing mainstream clothing a choice. It’s what’s visible and available to the vast majority of people, and you’d have to decide one day that the stuff everyone else in your life wears just isn’t working for you, and then work hard and pay a premium to find alternatives.
Never at any time in history in any part of the world has there been affordable spacious housing in a city. This isn’t something unique to the modern US nor is it the result of government.
If the average person wants to live in a walkable area, they live in a small place. That’s how it works. It’s a city. People can even raise a family there. The option exists. It sounds like you don’t like that option. That’s not anyone else’s decision being forced on you.
Stupid comment. Converted loft spaces were unbelievable deals connected to public transit and there’s a chance you’re even from the generation that lived in them. That’s recent history in a country known for having like five whole cities that weren’t completely gutted for automobiles. I live in a small house in a walkable neighborhood, so that’s bad luck on the guess, but it’s a bad and very deliberate choice in your part to claim that people are never forced to make housing decisions??
People did not choose to exclussively zone for single family homes with no commercial uses mixed in. Government bodies decided that and people bought the homes because they need somewhere to live.
Single family zoning can exist, but it should not be the only or the majority of the zoning for a city and it should be taxed fairly compared to rest of the city (instead of subsidized like the vast majority of suburbia).