Image transcript:
Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes) sitting at a lemonade stand, smiling, with a sign that reads, “Trains and micromobility are inevitably the future of urban transportation, whether society wants it or not. CHANGE MY MIND.”
In the United States, I don’t know how you’d accomplish this. It would be impossible for almost all rural neighborhoods unless we’re going to build a grocery store within walking distance of most homes.
This is one of those liberal (I rarely leave my home) notions whose heart is in the right place but is ultimately stupid.
You actually should have a grocery store in walking distance. And a pharmacy, a dentist, a doctor, bars and restaurants, a kindergarten,… That’s how you get wrid of cars, indeed.
But then it wouldn’t be rural. The whole point of living in the country, which gasp some people really like, is to not be so close to other people.
That’s a valid point. And I don’t see any problem with that. You live further form the city? You pay more for drinking water, electricity, etc… Because society has to invest more to bring those basic needs out there. I also feel like road taxes are supposed to be calculated on the distance you travel yearly.
I live in a very densely populated country and to live isolated is quite uncommon but people that build houses more rural are obliged to make some extra investments.
Gas heating is common over here and not so long ago the goal was to provide every house with gas. They changed that and now you have to be mor e self sufficient if you decide to build a house away outside of city limits. Same for sewage. You’ll have to invest in your own filtration. And so on…
You could just put yourself in a coma and get fed by a tube. But yes, you can order from online stores. And if we all confine ourself to Amazon and then in the near future they would be governing us because they would be talking care of our basic needs.
You need small businesses. They are a cornerstone of society. Your food that is gron locally has to be sold locally. Otherwise you lose efficiency.
There should most definitely be a grocery store within walking distance of most homes.
This comment seems to be based on the false presumption that cities and settlements cannot be transformed, however they can
They can, but it’s a multi trillion dollar century plus endeavor that well require eminent domain millions of properties in order to make enough space for the conversion. Infrastructure still needs to go some place, and you need to replace millions of sfh with apartments. My city doesn’t even have any land left to build more train lines. It’s just 30 miles of gridded small lots.
We already bulldozed and rebuilt our cities once, less than a hundred years ago. See Cincinnati below:
Further, policy-wise, we don’t need eminent domain. We don’t need to forcefully destroy everything. We just need to abolish the restrictive zoning and parking minimums that are stopping the invisible hand of the free market from providing us with density, walkability, and transit-oriented development.
Note the picture says “urban”, not rural neighborhoods. There’s no reason to think we can’t have train infrastructure connecting to rural areas though. The point would be to make our infrastructure human centered and supplement it with appropriate public transportation based on density. It can be done by rethinking how we zone and getting away from designing everything with cars and space for cars in mind. Not saying we do away with cars because they definitely serve a purpose the way we have things now, but gradually build up the non-car infrastructure so that cars are less needed over time. If we can imagine it in a way that works, we can accomplish it.
The Netherlands has rural bike infrastructure which could work in the United States as well.
Yeah, but am I incorrect that the Netherlands is a fairly temperate place, if not on the cooler side? I don’t think you’ll convince most people to bike to work in the south, in the country, in 95+ degrees fahrenheit heat.
![[meme] Trains -- not driverless cars -- are the future of transportation(lemmy.world)](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f6468af5-8151-4b4c-b339-2fa0b0373c3a.webp){kind=link}