[ericmay]

> The economic impact of pulling people OUT OF A CAR and INTO THEIR environment is perhaps under-appreciated.

All you have to do is stop and take a look at pictures where you see lots of people riding bikes or walking near businesses and then contrast that with a 4-lane road to get an idea of how much more economic activity is generated locally for a business.

If you don't have an automobile industry (and even if you do) you are pillaging your own economic well-being by taking thousands of dollars from families and forcing them to send it to far away places that make cars and oil and gas when they could be spending it in their own neighborhoods and towns.

It's fucking crazy that we do this. I don't know how much more emphasis I can put on it. Requiring people to drive a car 20 miles, 40 minutes, whatever to just live their lives is so stupid it defies belief. That's not to say you can't have a car (or two). It's to say that we shouldn't design all of our towns and cities around moving cars around instead of people. We're literally making ourselves poor trying to do this.

[rland]

This is how I think of this.

Think of the median income of a country that you might imagine is a "nice" place to live. I found a source that lists them all (in fictitious "international dollars", not USD). So here's a few:

* USA: $19,300

----

* France: $16,300

* Japan: $14,200

* Israel: $10,800

* UK: $14,800

* Spain: $11,800

Wow, we are so much richer than those guys. Our quality of life must be higher, right? This extra 30% money for everyone(!) must translate to a higher standard of living. Maybe we work more than people in those countries, but it translates to: less air pollution, quieter streets, less time spent commuting, more pleasant built environments, more beautiful cities, better health, more civil services, better parks and public facilities ...

Nope. All that money just goes to cars. We make an extra 30% -- and then turn around and burn it, literally, in cars, making everyone poorer, more atomized, more depressed, more unhealthy. For an unlucky hundreds of thousands of us per year, we are physically hurt; for 35,000 of us, we are killed!

For what?

[nick_]

Won't somebody please think of the oil and car companies!

[rob74]

We don't have to think of them, the politicians already do (at least here in Germany)...

[rayiner]

Oil and car companies just sell a product that people want to buy. Toyota didn’t hold a gun to my head to get me to buy an SUV that gets 15 miles a gallon. Attacking them is an out to avoid confronting the real issue, which is that you don’t like the life choices most other Americans are making.

[stephen_g]

There’s actually some interesting history about how over decades and decades the oil and car companies have done a lot of things beyond just strongly lobbying for planning laws that were extremely good for car drivers and not good for other modes of transport, but even did stuff many years ago like buying up trolly bus and streetcar lines in many cities, ripping up the rails and wires and replacing them with diesel busses. So it’s not quite as consumer-led as you say, the way cities have been designed and have evolved (including in a lot of ways many people now acknowledge is pretty crappy) has actually been affected quite significantly by people who want to sell you cars and gasoline.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp... for example.

[rayiner]

That's the one example people always trot out, and even that one is questionable: https://la.curbed.com/2017/9/20/16340038/los-angeles-streetc.... The streetcar system was already in dire financial straits when those companies bought it.

> But Bianco points out that this plan wouldn’t have been feasible if the streetcar companies National City Lines purchased weren’t already struggling.

> By the 1930s, LA’s streetcars had become wildly unprofitable and were quickly losing riders. In Transport of Delight, Jonathan Richmond points out that the Pacific Electric company managed to turn a profit in only one year between 1913 and the beginning of World War II.

More importantly, much of the country was developed post-1945, and all followed the same car-dependent model. Atlanta isn't a car-dependent city because of conspiracies. It's because it's unpleasant to do physical activity outside for much of the year between the heat, humidity, and bugs.

[drewcoo]

Social benefit and profit are different things. Profit is actually private benefit, usually at society's expense, both in subsidies and in externalized costs.

And a for-profit system that's not pulling in enough money will let its service, sanitation, and safety degrade, causing a downward spiral of profitability and ridership.

[rayiner]

Public benefit and profit are different, but related. For example, say that it costs Ford $100 make an SUV. They sell it for $200. It generates $10 of negative environmental externalities. And someone buys it for $300.

The benefit generated by the car is $300 - $100 - $10. That amount is split between producer profit and consumer surplus. Note, the more value the buyer gets from the car, the bigger the total surplus, and the greater profit the producer can obtain. Profit and benefit aren’t the same thing, but they generally move in the same direction.

Generally when something is unprofitable, it’s because people don’t value it enough compared to what it costs to produce. Externalities can change that somewhat, but typically not by that much.

Externalized costs for vehicles is extremely well studied: https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/attachments/road-safety/18076.... For example, the externalized costs for my Toyota 4Runner are $0.13-0.21 per mile depending on whether you include crash costs or not. That’s at $50 per ton of CO2, which is probably too low. At $100 per ton that goes up to about $0.25/mile. That’s about $10 for the average 40 mile round trip commute. If you raised gas prices enough to fully internalize that cost, that would be like $200/month. Most 4Runner owners would probably just pay that. Some might get a slightly more fuel efficient car, or live a little closer to home. But those externalities aren’t so big that most people would give up the convenience of personal transit to use public transit instead.

[mike00632]

It should be mentioned that suburban road financing is currently in dire straights.

[ericmay]

> which is that you don’t like the life choices most other Americans are making

I think this is the fundamental problem. I don't have a bone to pick with oil and gas companies. It's a resource, we need to address climate change, w/e, but fossil fuels are useful and should be used within reason.

But I do have a bone to pick with this idea that Americans are making a choice because I think they're not making a choice with complete information, they're incentivized to make certain choices, and they don't have a good feedback loop to see how their choices affect them. This ranges from highway construction which displaces natural habitats and eventually bankrupts towns and cities as initial costs are subsidized by the federal government (inflation anyone?) to obesity, racism, to loss of local businesses and economies and many more.

[AlecSchueler]

And why would their choices be so different to their counterparts in Europe? Especially Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, France, UK etc? Their counterparts in China?

If the infrastructure is built for a certain vehicle then it's not really a choice is it?

[ericmay]

Is the Netherlands building 4 to 8 lane highways, tearing down buildings in major cities and building overpasses, and expanding streets so that they can easily fit and park Ford F-150 size trucks? Are there multi-acre shopping malls, Wal-Marts, and associated parking lots?

> If the infrastructure is built for a certain vehicle then it's not really a choice is it?

Right... that's why I don't agree that anybody is choosing here.

[rayiner]

I'm not familiar with the Netherlands, but "multi-acre shopping malls" and "associated parking lots" definitely exist in Germany. This is just outside Munich: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.3030026,11.633975,3a,75y,1.2...

This is just minutes from downtown Ulm: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.4025064,9.9727005,3a,75y,87....

[AlecSchueler]

I meant to support you argument, not deny it.

[sirmarksalot]

THEN WHY ARE WE YELLING?!!

I DON'T KNOW!

[rayiner]

Culture, history, and wealth. Americans are more individualistic and anti-social than Europeans, and much more so than Chinese. Some have theorized that the exodus of the most disagreeable 1/4 of the Swedish population to the U.S. in the 19th century laid the groundwork for the modern Swedish welfare state: https://slate.com/business/2019/01/scandinavian-socialism-mi....

This is a continuing phenomenon. The fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S. today is Asians. But when polled, only 7-8% of Asians in Asia would migrate if they had the opportunity: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-mi.... The ones that come here are the anti-social ones like my parents, who don't mind leaving behind their kin and ancestral ties to make their home in a foreign country. (They live in a suburb with no sidewalks and drive an SUV, of course.)

History: The American continent has been populated by migration. My wife's family landed on the east coast in the 1700s and kept moving west until they reached Oregon in the 1800s. This has both created a culture of valuing unrestricted mobility, and also as a practical matter meant that most development is greenfield. In Germany even tiny villages have been settled for hundreds of years--there are roads, old churches, etc., that force development into a particular pattern. My town in Maryland was mostly farmland just 50 years ago, and most of the stretch between here and DC is still farmland. The giant freeway connecting the two was built through 20 miles of nothing in the 1950s. But note that greenfield development happens in Europe too, and there's plenty of car-dependent suburbs in parts of Germany.

Wealth: Americans are significantly richer than Europeans, and vastly richer than Chinese. Many, many Chinese people would love to have a house on an acre of land and drive around in an air conditioned car all day. And Americans can afford to actually do that.

[bombcar]

Europe has much older cities than the US, and larger amounts of land were already taken up, which has limited the amount of "freeway"-style development.

Arguably if it had NOT been for the interstate highway push in the US we'd have an America that would look more European.

[noahtallen]

I definitely agree with the latter paragraph. But it’s important to note that places like Amsterdam did invest heavily into car infrastructure as well. It’s not completely true that car dependency was staved off by existing road sizes.

Like you allude to, the US was bulldozed for the automobile. We didn’t develop around it. Amsterdam was following a similar path until mass protests in the 70s about people being slaughtered by cars. (https://inkspire.org/post/amsterdam-was-a-car-loving-city-in...)

And over the past several decades, they have made vast changes and redevelopments that we should have been following as well.

And now Amsterdam isn’t just amazing for cyclists and pedestrians… it’s also great for driving. ( https://youtu.be/d8RRE2rDw4k)

[rayiner]

My point is that consumer demand drives car production and fossil fuel use, not the other way around. If your theory is that people's buying choices are uninformed, that just means you need to focus on informing and persuading people. You're not going to get the results you want by attacking oil and car companies, who are simply selling highly commoditized products in enormously competitive industries.

[harryh]

From 2004-17 I lived in NYC and didn't own a car and very rarely rented one. From 2017-20 I lived in Chapel Hill, NC and (along with my wife) owned two cars. From 2021-now I've been back in NYC. We sold the cars and have no plans to ever buy new ones.

I've been roughly the same person the whole time. My change in buying behavior wasn't so much personal preference as much as it was the lifestyle that was enforced by the policy choices of the location I was living in.

[et-al]

This is largely due to policy.

For example jaywalking wasn't a crime until cars became the norm, then automakers lobbied police to be more aggressive against pedestrians: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history

The Section 179 of the US tax rules creates a perverse incentive for buying heavier cars for larger tax withholding: https://diminishedvalueofgeorgia.com/6000-pound-vehicles/

And one could argue our gas subsidies have just continued to enable America's car dependency.

[suture]

Your perspective ignores human nature and how easily influenced people are at scale. Toyota did not put a gun to your head but American society long ago evolved to the point where having a car is a necessity for the vast majority of adults. The real issue is that the negative externalities for those design decisions decades ago have resulted in a lot of harm with little benefit.

[vkou]

They sell a product that people have to buy because decisions that were made decades ago make my life incredibly shitty if I don't buy it. And it doesn't have to be that way. We could have made better decisions in the past. We can still make better decisions going forward.

It's one thing if cars were an optional convenience. It's absolutely insane that they are a necessity in so many North American cities.

[mdasen]

> Toyota didn’t hold a gun to my head to get me to buy an SUV

No, but lots of things push people to buy those vehicles.

As others buy giant vehicles, you might want to buy a giant vehicle so that you feel safer on the road. If everyone is riding around in a 4,000 pound (1,800 kg) SUV whose bumper is very tall, you don't want to be riding around in a 3,000 pound (1,350 kg) car whose bumper is low.

As we mandate parking minimums, we create stores that you can't walk to (because they have acres of parking separating you from every store) and we create neighborhoods you can't walk around (because we need enough storage space for all those cars and all those drivers want wide roads so they can get places "fast").

As we criminalized crossing the street (except in specified locations), we made walking slower and driving faster. As we changed our codes so that crosswalks were only mandated every half mile, we made it even harder to cross the street without a car. As our courts allowed drivers to strike and kill pedestrians with no repercussion, we made it easier for drivers to drive fast without fear of their actions; we made it easier for drivers to drive distracted without fear of their actions. That also made walking and biking more dangerous prospects.

> you don’t like the life choices most other Americans are making

People don't make life choices in a vacuum. People look at the world and make choices based on the reality that exists. If you lived in a city where parking was taxed at $1,000/mo, I bet you wouldn't make the choice of buying a car. If we changed our laws to say that killing a pedestrian would involve 1 year in prison and a permanent loss of license, you'd be a lot less likely to check your phone while driving.

Ok, you think those are contrived examples. Let's talk about giving Americans actual choice.

1) Remove all parking minimums. If the market will sell houses without parking (if Americans will make that life choice), we should let them, right? Or do we need to have laws propping up the oil and gas industry and not letting Americans make that choice? If stores think they don't need as much parking, let them build other stores on parts of their parking lots. Or do we need to mandate that stores accommodate cars rather than letting Americans make free choices? If Americans don't like that a store doesn't have a lot of parking, they'll vote with their feet/dollars and go elsewhere. If Americans don't like a home without parking, they'll vote with their feet/dollars and buy other housing. This is the easiest one to say to any skeptic because it's the free market. People will build, buy, and patronize what they feel fits their lifestyle.

2) Remove all road subsidies. Right now, drivers pay for around half of their state/local road usage (https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/, it varies by state). That doesn't even include the huge amount the federal government spends subsidizing highways. We should make drivers pay for what they're using - and if it's too high a price, they'll look for other modes of transportation. Instead, by making road usage cheaper than it actually is, we encourage people to use them more than they naturally would.

3) Remove parking subsidies. The US allows you to deduct parking costs from your taxes. If we're talking about letting people make free choices, let's not offer people money for being car-centric.

4) Explicitly allow accident victims to sue drivers due to their choice of dangerous vehicles. Trucks and SUVs have been exploding in size and raising their bumpers a lot - and that is leading to a lot more pedestrian deaths. Drivers of those vehicles should face the liability of their choice - including the negligence of their choice in protecting pedestrian safety. They should face higher insurance premiums to cover that negligence. Again, this is about people making free choices rather than being protected from the consequences of their actions. If you drive a car that's safer for pedestrians, that's a better choice. If you drive a car that's more dangerous for pedestrians, that's a worse choice - but you don't face any consequence for that.

5) Disallow car parking on public property without paying market rate. Many places offer free car parking on public property and many other places offer cheap car parking on public property. Why should we offer public property to drivers for free? Again, this is about making drivers face the real costs of their actions. By giving drivers so much free parking, we're subsidizing people to buy a car rather than giving them a free choice.

6) Make people pay for pollution/emissions. Drivers should have to pay for the pollution/emissions that their vehicles create. Otherwise, we're not giving people a free choice. If everyone else is polluting for free and you're not, then you're paying for and suffering from their pollution. By making drivers pay for their pollution and emissions, we make sure that we give people a free choice of what they want to pay for.

Others are harder to do completely independently. Building more public transit means making a choice that influences others choices. Building more or fewer roads means making a choice that influences other choices. Making roads safer for pedestrians might make cars a tad slower influencing people's choices.

Oil and car companies don't "just sell a product that people want to buy." We've created a whole system that makes it hard to live without that product while insulating drivers from the costs of their driving. Drivers always think "I pay so much" and it's nowhere near the cost of their driving. Would you support the 6 things I outlined above? Or is your freely made life choice only a choice you'd make as long as the government subsidizes a huge amount of the cost and protects you from the consequences of your actions?

[sokoloff]

> The US allows you to deduct parking costs from your taxes.

Parking costs in furtherance of a business, yes. Same as the US allowing me to deduct the cost of taking the subway to a business meeting or the utility bills required to air condition my office building.

[bombcar]

The "oh it's deductible" is way WAY overplayed and I suspect people use it as a fig-leaf for otherwise dubious purchases.

Meanwhile, things like making the electric car tax rebate an actual refundable credit can't be done because that might actually help poorer people!

[nick_]

Preach!

[giraffe_lady]

You know I usually try to consider this sort of thing as like, groups of people responding to large-scale constraints and complex incentives rather than an issue of individual moral virtue and "life choices."

But now that you've pushed it yes absolutely I think making that choice in the face of currently happening climate change crisis is wicked. I don't like it or respect it and don't see why I would be expected to.

I fail to see how this is "the real issue" though. At least as big a problem is we've been encouraged to believe our personal choices have no effect on other people and so there is no particular weight, meaning or consequence to them. It's not true though. Your decision affects other people negatively and you suck for not caring about that.

[ir123]

How come europe is not that car dependent?

[rayiner]

Europe has lots of car companies and oil companies too, so that framing would seem to support the idea that they’re not the cause.

What’s different about Europe is virtually everything else. See my sibling post on this issue. In a nutshell, an immigrant nation with a long tradition of migration for opportunity and to get away from others places a higher value on unrestricted mobility. Culture is extremely sticky.

Additionally, Europe is very old and that affects patterns of development. Even rural Germany is dotted with towns that are hundreds of years old, and mid-sized cities that anchor regions, like Ulm, are over a thousand years old. Meanwhile, the vast majority of America was developed during the railroad age (leading to cities that are far apart) or the car age (leading to low-density residential development).

Then there’s population growth. Germany’s population only grew about 20% since 1939. That means that the housing areas for most of the population were already built up by the car age. The US population has increased by 150% since 1939. That’s 200 million more people that needed residential areas built for them during the car age.

[bombcar]

Also, America has other, darker, undercurrents that occurred around the same time - the racial aspect of car culture can't be entirely dismissed (even if race is/was a proxy for "poor") - Europe seems much more comfortable with poor and rich living near each other (where rich is some variation of "middle to upper-middle class +").

[8note]

The racial aspect is strong - it's "development" that actually killed black wallstreet, rather than the firebombings

[notacoward]

Two basic explanations come to mind.

(1) Most of Europe had less of a population boom during the time that the auto/highway build-out happened. Part of the reason, ironically, is that there was a lot of migration from Europe to the US. Many descendants of Europeans are stuck in car culture in the US, while their cousins who stayed home are not.

(2) There's a strong correlation between the ability of governments to "spend for the future" on things like transportation and the existence of decent transit infrastructure. It's no accident that Europe's infrastructure is better, Japan's and China's better still, while in hyper-individualist government-hating US it's the worst.

These two factors reinforce each other as well. Most of the "developed" world got out in front on this issue, while we veered off into insanity (thanks lobbyists!) and are now stuck with the near-impossible task of retrofitting The Right Thing onto a well entrenched Wrong Thing.

[rufus_foreman]

At the outbreak of World War 2, close to 50% of US households owned a car. By 1960, around 80%. What were the numbers for Europe?

[uoaei]

This ignores an entire history of market manipulation and public propaganda and influence campaigns exercised by the auto industry.

[notacoward]

> taking thousands of dollars from families and forcing them to send it to far away places

Not sure if it's what you meant, but that phrasing reverses cause and effect. The arrangement of homes, offices, and retail precedes most individual housing choices. In other words, people chose to live in places, already knowing what the transport implications would be. They weren't yanked out of their car-free utopia and forced to live a car-centric lifestyle.

I agree that the car-centric way we do transit and urban planning is absolutely disastrous and needs to change, but part of making that happen is not simply dismissing people's revealed preferences as something imposed from above. It's the solution that's likely to be imposed from above, and I'm OK with that personally, but in the political real world it pits a whole bunch of noble principles against the hyper-individualist anti-government attitudes prevalent especially in the US. That's how you end up with "ban all cars" on one side and "rolling coal" on the other. The trick is to understand and accommodate the reasons why people choose to live as they do, while still moving toward a better future.

[bombcar]

This is one of the things that is so annoying about US public policy; mass transit needs to be built to where people are not yet so that it can support growth in those areas, trying to only shoehorn it in where "there's enough riders already" results in silly systems that don't do anything very effectively.

[notacoward]

> only shoehorn it in where "there's enough riders already" results in silly system

"Understand and accommodate" can cover a much broader and more ambitious range of actions than that. Look at the plain words. What I'm saying is that we should understand why people have made the decisions they have, what capabilities or benefits they expect, and trying to preserve those capabilities or benefits even if it's with a completely different kind of infrastructure. It's just basic requirements analysis.

You know what's truly silly, since you used the word? Ignoring others' knowledge, judgment, and agency. Pretending those things don't exist. "You're a dummy who has been duped, screw your feelings, ban cars tomorrow" is both un-empathetic and absolutely useless as a way to formulate policy, but I see it again and again and again from the extremists in these discussions.

[tablespoon]

> Requiring people to drive a car 20 miles, 40 minutes, whatever to just live their lives is so stupid it defies belief.

That's pretty misleading and tendentious framing. There's no law requiring people to drive that much: even in the most suburbanly zoned suburb, if you pick someplace close to your job, you have to drive far less than "20 miles, 40 minutes." If you have a more of a commute, it's probably due to optimizing for other priorities.

It'd be great if I could walk around the corner to the a coffee shop and a grocery store, but those businesses just wouldn't be viable at the density I also want to live in.

[aiisjustanif]

>> to just live their lives

> if you pick someplace close to your job, you have to drive far less than "20 miles, 40 minutes."

I’d make a good wager that “living their lives”, did not mean going to work. It’s going to the park or the “nice, bustling area” of town a.k.a. the walkable area like the farmers market.

> but those businesses just wouldn't be viable at the density I also want to live in.

The density you want to live in doesn’t sound like it promotes social interactions, drives economic inequality, and takes money from the community.

Also in Texas, California, and Seattle this is a real thing for white collar work. This is a very real thing for blue collar work in almost any state.

[tablespoon]

> I’d make a good wager that “living their lives”, did not mean going to work. It’s going to the park or the “nice, bustling area” of town a.k.a. the walkable area like the farmers market.

Did you know that suburbs also have parks, shopping, etc. right?

> The density you want to live in doesn’t sound like it promotes social interactions,

FYI, "promoting social interactions" does not require density.

Honestly, it seems you have the strange idea that a particular kind of urban living (that you probably prefer or idealize) is the only kind of good living, and therefore feel the need to take a piss on every other type.

[clint]

> Honestly, it seems you have the strange idea that a particular kind of urban living (that you probably prefer or idealize) is the only kind of good living, and therefore feel the need to take a piss on every other type.

That's odd I get the exact same vibe from you.

[tablespoon]

> That's odd I get the exact same vibe from you.

Then you're projecting. I never said urban living was bad or inferior, just that it's not for me and that a lot of the negative characterizations being thrown around about it are incorrect. If you want to live in an apartment block downtown and bike everywhere, more power to you. Just don't put down suburbanites as anti-social people who are "forced" to drive 20 miles to experience "parks" and the "'nice, bustling area' of town" (because I guess there's nothing good in wasteland suburbia).

[gernb]

getting rid of the car doesn't get rid of the commute. Plently of countries in the world where most people commute by train/bus/subway but it's still 40 minutes or more on average to commute.

[adgjlsfhk1]

There's a massive difference between a 40 minute commute by public transit and one where you're driving. If your commute is by car, you can't do anything else while commuting. If you are on a bus, you don't have to be focused on your commute the whole time.

[rufus_foreman]

The last place I lived where I rode the bus, when you commuted by bus you had to be focused on the other bus commuters the whole time.

No thanks, would rather drive.

[jader201]

> It's fucking crazy that we do this. I don't know how much more emphasis I can put on it.

I usually jump on a soapbox whenever I see so much support for getting rid of cars on HN, so here goes:

Not everyone lives in a city.

I’m 100% in agreement for all of these arguments, with the precondition that you live in the city.

But many prefer and enjoy distance from neighbors, commerce/industry, and enjoy being surrounded by a more natural environment.

And many of these comments seem to completely ignore folks that prefer a quieter lifestyle over being surrounded by everything.

This is especially true as we move more towards remote work — if people are able to work out of their home, a percentage of those will want their home -- where they spend a large majority of their life -- to have some privacy and pleasant surroundings. Which means distance. Which means cars.

[closeparen]

Almost no one is actually surrounded by a natural environment. The suburbia that pervades in America is surrounded by deeply un-natural roadway, parking, gas stations, strip malls, and big box stores. For most people, any time you're outside your home you're in a thoroughly human-crafted world. The question is to what ends that craft is directed. Too many places are optimized for the convenient operation of cars above all other concerns. In an increasingly remote world, we should be less willing to sacrifice other goods on the altar of transportation.

Even supposing that your surroundings are already very pleasant to you, wouldn't you be better able to revel in their pleasantness without the enclosure of a car or the urgency of a highway?

[tablespoon]

>> But many prefer and enjoy distance from neighbors, commerce/industry, and enjoy being surrounded by a more natural environment.

> Almost no one is actually surrounded by a natural environment.

He didn't say "a natural environment." He said a "more natural environment," which I hazard to guess means stuff like more grass and trees and less concrete outside the window.

Oh, and BTW: I live in surburbia and actually have a patch of legitimate forest in my backyard.

[closeparen]

>more grass and trees and less concrete

I would challenge the degree to which contemporary suburban sprawl developments actually deliver on this promise: wander around any of them, your field of view is going to be dominated by a wide road making a sweeping curve, huge driveways, imposing garage doors, and (maybe, if any houses are visible behind the garages) giant masses of vinyl siding. There's at least as much inorganic material in the vista as in any Manhattan streetscape, it's just the ugly and utilitarian kind, designed to facilitate efficient through-travel and car storage instead of something designed to be pleasant or inviting to people in itself.

You can have a nice patch of nature privately in your backyard, and perhaps in dedicated parks and preserves, but the connective tissue between all that stuff is remarkably hostile to any mode of engagement besides passing through at speed.

[snerbles]

It's interesting that your first assumption is suburbia and not an actually rural setting.

[rland]

It's a valid assumption to make. Most people live in suburbia, relatively few are truly rural. A little less than one in five, according to [1]

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2017/08/rural-america...

[closeparen]

In a rural setting, you surroundings would normally be working farmland. Nothing particularly natural about vast rectangles of genetically engineered crops dotted with heavy equipment and industrial buildings. Better to look at landscaping designed for one's aesthetic enjoyment than for economic production.

[Cederfjard]

As we figure out how to live sustainably with ten billion people (or wherever the population will cap out) with higher and higher standards, perhaps certain people’s preferences isn’t what we should optimize for. Maybe if you want to live far away from others, you’ll have to bear the true cost of the externalities associated with that. So yes, you can live in the sticks, but running that car of yours is going to cost you. If you won’t or can’t pay for that, stay in the city with everyone else and live efficiently.

[s0rce]

I'm tired of subsidizing rural people, the communities are unsutainable, particularly in the west where they have extreme fire risk.

[bliteben]

Where did you get this insane idea that subsidizing actual farming and agriculture is a bad idea? Do you not like eating or being alive? I agree the subsidies are probably not 100% efficient but the intent is to keep you alive in times of famine or worldwide catastrophe.

We don't live in a planned society and many many people have made mistakes about where to farm / raise livestock in the US. The good news is they usually eventually give up if the place is unsuitable, sometimes there are outsize subsidies that allow bad practices to go on forever, but in general it does correct itself. That land eventually (especially in non desert areas) returns back to its norm, where badly planned cities will take a much longer timescale to return back to nature.

[s0rce]

I guess that was overly broad. Many rural residents (most?) are not farmers...

[flaviut]

I see nothing wrong with that.

But it's exactly how you said:

> want their home -- where they spend a large majority of their lives -- to have some privacy and pleasant surroundings

This applies to people living in cities too. I don't want to have to be afraid of death or serious injury whenever I cross the street.

Please leave your car at the park-and-ride outside.

[Bukhmanizer]

I think most people, including the person you replied to would agree with this. The key is that people shouldn’t be required to have a car to go everywhere.

By increasing density in some places, we would decrease density in other places, allowing people to have a choice in how they want to live. But in huge swaths of America, there is basically no diversity in density. You literally can’t live somewhere that’s walkable or bike-able to grocery stores and restaurants, and you can’t live somewhere that’s more rural than a suburb (because it’s all suburbs).

Even in non-cities I’ve lived in places where it’s perfectly fine to walk or bike to do my daily chores, but to have a car for longer trips. But if the only options are a Walmart 10 miles away, and a Home Depot 15 miles away from the Walmart, it’s just not possible.

[bombcar]

I really wonder what people mean by "rural" but I suspect what most people are saying is "suburbs are where I want to live, but I want everything as close as it is in the city.

Because in my "town" which is something like 10k, we're 30 miles from the nearest "bigger town" and 45 from the nearest international airport, but I can walk to Walmart in 30m or walk to Ace Hardware in about the same (though in a different direction).

So they do exist, they just don't exist where people want them to.

To me "rural" is mile long dirt driveway at the end of a gravel road that is ten miles from the nearest paved road, let alone the nearest services.

[cpursley]

Nobody is suggesting we prevent people from living away from cities. People are talking about making North American cities human-friendly instead of car-centric. Also, the more people live in cities, the more the countryside is left wide open - for people who want to live there.

If you want to see how you can have your cake and eat it too, watch some of this guys videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQE_5MFCekg

[jyounker]

Small towns are great places for bike paths and bike infrastructure. If you don't believe so, then I suggest visiting the Dutch countryside.

[bjustin]

Large networks of large roads are not financially sustainable [1]. I can only assume this is more the case the more rural you get. Asking for more of the current American style of car infrastructure may not even work, depending on the specifics.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

[bombcar]

Rural areas are actually cheaper because they do NOT have paved roads every 500 feet or so. The local county pays for all of the rural roads (maintenance, plowing, etc) and the little town pays for the roads in town; federal funds are only used for the interstate and some connecting ramps, etc.

What may not be sustainable is city-like road patterns with suburban densities.

[thegrim33]

"We're literally making ourselves poor trying to do this." I guess you'd need to explain why we've had this infrastructure for the entire history of our country, and it didn't "make us poor" before. You're implying it so obviously doesn't work, yet it's been the default setup for every city in the country for a long time now. It very obviously has worked in the past.

[hnaccount141]

This series from Strong Towns does a good job of explaining the idea (with case studies). The gist is that the specific pattern of infrastructure design we've been using since WWII (car-dependent sprawl) isn't financially sustainable without relying on future growth. We got away with it for a while due to the rapid growth seen in the 2nd half of the 20th century, but as growth has slowed, we're finding ourselves falling behind.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/28/the-growth-pon...

[uoaei]

It has been making us poor the whole time, but city budgets are good at hiding the burden we carry. Every municipality you stepped foot in today is probably one that carries significant debt because the rate of return on development of the current style (sprawl-oriented) is terrible. Compare this to higher-density options where people are pedestrians who are free to walk into shops along a boulevard, with no need for parking spaces and drive-thrus, which are shown to be more prosperous for cities and foster more productive and sustainable sources of tax revenue in downtowns and public centers more generally.

[adgjlsfhk1]

We really haven't. The interstate system is only 70 years old (and was built at a time the US was incredibly rich)

[btreesOfSpring]

The Strong Town series by Not Just Bikes on YouTube is often linked on HN but the third video[0] in the series covers your question. Take a look if you are curious about where the "making ourselves poor" point of view is hatched.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0