[barrystaes]

If you are from the US and wonder whats up with the bike hippies: All cities you know are car-centric infrastructure, and i'd have a hard time seeing the problem also.

Just watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg

Im dutch and despite being able to ride over in 5 minutes and park my beautiful car right behind the stores, i still prefer to use my bike for daily groceries to get there faster and easier. The cities are designed for this. A bike never has to cross a 4-lane road with homes nearby.

[leviathant]

Philadelphia reporting in: The core of my city was designed in the 17th century for horses, and grew short on money before that could be completely undone. As someone who used to put 20,000 miles on my car annually, living in the part of Philly where I do, I might drive twice a month.

That said, visiting Amsterdam was still quite the revelation. Having lived and worked in Philadelphia for over a decade, visiting other American cities often isn't as exciting as it used to be for me, and I pick up on patterns that used to be normal for me, like how everything is a fifteen minute drive to anything else.

I do still feel an odd appeal to American suburbia sometimes, but I don't think I'd go back to that kind of living if I didn't have to.