[gfs78]

But then, are some of these things really needed? I don't have a car, I have a basic smartphone, and old basic laptop, not much in terms of clothes, and I don't travel abroad for holidays (all this because I cannot afford something better without getting into debt) and I get by fine (and I'm 40). Most millenials have at least a car (even a cheap one) or nice phones with nice data plans, or clothes, or travel to nice places at least once a year. Most of their debt is self-chosen.

[bobthepanda]

Most Americans do not live in areas where you could reasonably live without a car, and transit-rich, walkable areas have much higher rents.

[gfs78]

Would you mind putting in concrete examples the sentence "most Americans do not live in areas where you could reasonably live without a car". It's not a critique, I'm not american so I don't understand how could this be, given the level of development of the country and the proliferation of cities that you are supposed to have.

[bobthepanda]

Most Americans live in metropolitan areas, but the vast majority of these metropolitan areas are extremely low-density, single-use suburbs.

* The roads are long, winding, and poorly connected (so walking distances are excessive). This leads to ridiculous scenarios like https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/02/28/sprawl-madness-two-ho...

* The stores are generally large big-box stores that is often kilometers from ones' house; there are no small corner shops and restaurants, because they are illegal.

* If you're still determined to walk, you probably need to cross large, high-speed roads with short crossing times, and your origin and destination are probably separated from the road by a large parking lot. And you may not even have sidewalks or crossing facilities. Example: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Panera+Bread,+143+Alexander+...

* Public transit in American suburbs is a joke. Because it's so hard to walk around, ridership is very low, making frequency hard to justify, causing even lower ridership. And this is before you consider that

Americans are anti-tax

American suburbs have an associated history with white flight post-segregation, so people often object to transit because it'll let "criminals" in

So you wind up with situations like this Detroit man who walked 21 miles every day because he didn't have a car. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2015...