[adrianN]

Car dominance is cemented by decades of car centric planning which made cars indispensable in some areas. That is a well known fact, but planning can be changed. If you prioritize other forms of transport in a few decades cars can be a lot less important.

[p_ing]

The place I live in was founded in the 1880s and incorporated a few years before the Model T debuted. Prior to the 1880s, Native Americans resided here. How is that car centric planning? And exactly how can one afford to live in a city where rent is $2500+ for a two bedroom or $1m+ for a SFH? That’s not going to happen on a McSalary. Those folks instead commute 1+ hours from affordable urban or more likely rural areas.

[1over137]

Being founded in 1880s doesn’t mean that all the planning since hasn’t been all auto-centric.

[p_ing]

Except the dirt roads then were as wide as the paved roads are now with the same grid-style layout.

Feel free to keep arguing how things radically changed just for cars. But they didn't.

[frosted-flakes]

It's not the width of the roads. It's about

- parking mandates that push everything very far apart because parking takes up a lot of space

- zoning restrictions that necessitate distant travel because your home is in a different sector of the city as your place of work, the grocery store, and places of leisure

- the disassembly of public transport systems after the war

- street design that makes it simply dangerous to travel on foot or on a bicycle, and extremely slow, because cars receive priority at all junctions

etc. etc.

[p_ing]

No parking mandates here. It's rural. Zoning restrictions are everywhere (except Huston where you have oil refineries next to housing), it's almost all residential. No real public transportation to speak of around that time frame. In-town speed limit is 25Mph and there is about 90-95% coverage for sidewalks. I walk daily anywhere from 3 - 5 miles around this town, I don't feel unsafe.

etc. etc.

You and others in this thread are arguing about _where I live_. Don't you find that a tad silly? I haven't even named the town, you have no ability to research it, and the historical docs are all located at the local library and history museum.

This is a great place to be a ped and driving is a requirement. Maybe this is the golden holy land of mixed-use roads, or something.

[amanaplanacanal]

If your city is like every other in the US, they changed drastically. Find a city map from pre WWII and compare it to today.

[adrianN]

I’m pretty sure that in the 1880s it was less than eight miles to the nearest shop and people didn’t need to commute dozens of miles per day to get to work.

[p_ing]

You'd be correct on both accounts. There was a small general store which supported a few hundred people just fine (along with farms and fishing) and a gold mine which employed most people -- of course a small general store doesn't support 5K individuals and the gold mine is closed.

It's a bedroom community, there are approximately 1000 jobs in total most of which reside within the school district. The purpose of the town as it stands is to raise kids and retire. Commuting to work is a requirement.

Times change, requirements change, and needs change. This isn't the 1880s, but the physical layout of the town is largely the same with the same roads. There was no "planning" for the Model T [cars] as you're attempting to argue -- it was already laid out like it is for the horse, cart, and carriage.