All fair, but the USA is so large it basically HAS to be a car based society. Have room, so we use it.
I think smaller mixed use neighborhoods would be great, but there’s literally no way to get there because it seems people don’t want to live on top of each other in biking distance unless they have to.
No scenario are you not shipping broccoli all over the world. Redesigning society seems to only prevent the last mile wastes.
>USA is so large it basically HAS to be a car based society.
No it does not. Infrastructure that accommodates cars is extremely expensive. We subsidize car lifestyles to an extreme degree, at great financial and environmental cost. If you assure that rural locations will have near-equal (or superior) access to broadband and medical facilities, use funds from the entire state to subsidize expensive roads and bus drivers for those rural and suburban places, focus all services on highways rather than in productive places, shielding consumers from all those costs, it should not surprise anyone that people will normally respond to financial incentives rather than choosing more pleasant and sustainable lifestyles.
>Interesting point that EVs reinforce this.
Absolutely. EVs as a solution are green-washing, and self driving cars as a solution are pretending that there is no component of transportation problems that revolves around physical space.
Thanks - the only thing I'd say is that as I'm currently living in the 'burbs (close to my spouse's work so she didn't have a commute when we were in-office) I don't feel like I'm more on top of people than I did living in a mixed-use neighborhood that I could bike over to the coffee shop, wine store, or grocery store.
In Columbus we have this place called German Village [1]. I'd like to see all of America built more like this (not exactly necessarily, but more like it).
I think smaller mixed use neighborhoods would be great, but there’s literally no way to get there because it seems people don’t want to live on top of each other in biking distance unless they have to.
No scenario are you not shipping broccoli all over the world. Redesigning society seems to only prevent the last mile wastes.
Interesting point that EVs reinforce this.