| You assume that the places I go are close to where I could live. Work from home so no travel there, supermarket is a mile away but I can't bike there because the roads are shit and the only time I go is usually after hours before the store closes and biking the dark is even more dangerous. Everything else I go to in my life is not very often and at least a 20 minute drive away. My walking is to get me away from urban noise and people. My recreation takes me to places like get away from urban noise and people. I find your travel time report interesting. I believe it that for where you go, it works. But I did a test with places I would go to in the Chicago area and none of them accessible by public transit and are typically an hour to an hour and 1/2 drive away (state parks). I test travel time by Google maps and driving is almost always significantly faster. Yes I am glad that parts of Chicago were spared the insanity of interstate highways into urban spaces. It makes no sense doing that. Interstates should bypass urban centers. Although we should probably look at history as to what might happen. I suggest looking at what happened to urban centers that lost the competition for rail lines back in the late 1800s. Another interesting experiment would be to map out the impact of replacing highways with train lines and full switching yards etc. that carry the same load of passengers and freight in the same timeframe. I agree with you that we do need to work out a way to minimize costs of human existence both suburban and urban. We also need to fully account for all the externalities for both living spaces. We also need to reckon with there are country mice and city mice. We have very different values and very different physical tolerances in our living space. We also need to look beyond the dichotomy of driving or walking but instead consider neighborhood delivery services for food and other ordered goods. see: https://www.businessinsider.com/lifvs-grocery-store-sweden-u.... I found this article interesting because I got a chance to see firsthand urban and rural Sweden and Finland this summer. Both places have food deserts of a sort. I don't fully grok it yet but it looks like people are comfortable with having only one or two vendors for a given item in a small store with a relatively small selection. There didn't seem to be the same "obsession" we have with getting a better price. |
You're correct, people generally aren't too bothered if there are only a couple of choices, either of shops (e.g. two supermarkets) or products (two types of cereal bar).
I wouldn't in any way call it a food desert though. All the normal food for the region is available, the rest is just luxuries.
(And to the general point, people owning cars but mostly using them for recreation would still be a huge reduction in traffic, noise and pollution. That's not unusual for European city-dwellers, who often own one car and use it once or twice a week.)