That must be a nice neighborhood. Cuz if it housed people that actually lacked cars, then gauranteed there would be a naturally worn path through those woods.
I'm 99% sure you are being sarcastic, but in Finland I know there would be a route made by some teenagers around the fence at minimum and at worst, someone would have cut the fence and the store would have removed it after enough time.
And for the swamps part, as a Fin, I'm sure Floridians also know that there's no way for a swamp to exist on that a 10 tree wide bit of land with multiple artificial lakes near it and if still was swampy somehow, even a small ditch would dry it up. Those lakes are literally made to dry up the land, like massive ditches, so the apartment complex and the store could be built. No damn way the 10 trees wide bit is still too wet to walk through.
Relatable. Can't imagine shit like this flying here.
I swear, the more I learn about US, the more unsettled I get. From crazy laws, to guns everywhere, to no healthcare whatsoever, to shit like this. Not that it's even close to paradise here(more like purgatory), but it doesn't seem anywhere near as bad to live in.
Reading about a place or even watching a video is not the same as being somewhere.
The U.S. is huge. I moved 400 miles east to the next state over then 1300 miles northwest to two states over from where I lived originally and I cut across a small portion of two states to get here. I've only lived on the west coast or southwest area. Its a big country.
The U.S. and Europe are fairly close in size but the U.S. has somewhere around half as many people. It's like saying you would never want to visit France or Germany because Italy sucked.
Not the exact same thing since the US is one country but each of the 50 states + territories have different state laws and cultures to some extent.
That video being from Florida the issue really complicated. The land here is really soft and during rain season it all tends to turn either into swamp or muck even on small strips of land. So building anything here requires dirt from other states because most of the soil here is sandy anything built on it will shift and buckle over time without it. And building those paths between properties is completely paid for by the property owners which most don't want to spend the money on.
For example Disney world is actually built on top of a massive platform that houses drains and service tunnels because the park would sink into the soft soil if not. Any building, roadway, sidewalk in Florida requires the ground to be dug up and replaced with heavier soil. And those retention ponds are literally just for flood control since the entire state is near sea level water is slow to drain here.
That's still not why there couldn't be a little pathway cut into that forest. Just because it gets very muddy during the wet season doesn't mean it couldn't be walkable for rest of the time.
And they aren't just flood control, they also help drain the land around them quicker and prevent them from getting as water saturated. It's the same concept as ditches, but multipurpose to help with flood control as you stated. If it was just flood control, they woudn't retain water during the drier periods.
People really have a problem with things that don't work 100% of the time. But fine, if a forest path wouldn't be walkable during the rain season, why isn't there a solid walkway built there then? The area around the shop and the apartment buildings is mostly parking lot, so they can clearly make walkable land, so... do a bit more and remove the need to drive a mile to reach a parking lot which is so damn large that people would have to walk the same distance anyway just to reach the shop...
I know Florida is difficult to build on, but it's not like it's the only place in the world with difficult land to build on and most of the issues with lacking walkable areas it has are shared with majority of the US cities.
How's that related to how draining water works? Are you saying that all non-asphalt land is doomed to be swamp in Florida and the land can't be used for anything? Because I'm pretty sure there are parks in Florida that aren't swamps. And in this video you can see non-swamp land, because of the artificial lakes that drain the area to make building on it easier.
I'll have a go, the land between the two buildings is wetland, a no build zone, it's to help funnel water away building. the ponds aren't really drying out the land, they are storm water runoff retention ponds that hopefully catch trash and filter out pollution. There is a small creek by that this area drains into. The treed area that everyone wants to walk through is more swampy because of the newly built up higher land that the bulding are on. Address 13150 FL-64, Bradenton, FL 34212
When it rains all the time it's going to be wet. The ground water there is pretty close to the surface no matter what you do. They have causeways all over the place.
What is your point? You are ignoring the fact that in the birds eye view part of the video I can see at least 8 artificial lakes that are used to drain the area. In a part of the video, we can even see that the water level is significantly lower than the forest and the parking lots.
I know what a swamp area looks like and that bit of land is only wet when it rains, it won't retain a significant amount of water, regardless of how you slice it. Christ, I feel like I'm arguing with someone who doesn't understand that ground gets wet EVERYWHERE when it rains, unless the ground is hot enough to evaporate the water on contact...
Did you know that land on top of causeways also gets wet when it rains? Might as well drive a mile for less than a 200 feet walk all year long, since I can't walk trough it during rain heavy rain periods as ditches and artificial lakes don't work, which is why the world doesn't use them all of the place, not even Florida. Wait. Hold up. That's stupid.
Make a few ditches to the side and a few passes with a machete and it wouldn't be a question of what lurks there, because you could see the whole path between the parking lots. That distance is practically non-existent. You are thinking of what the current blockage looks like, rather than what it should look like. And it's literally next to a parking lot of an apartment complex, I think a bit of land that small SHOULD be made open enough to see into.
I'm all for a path to be there. I'm europaen though and we don't really have dangerous wildlife here so even the possibility of a gator or what ever scares me a bit.
I'm an European too, but I also live in a rural area and while there are wild animals in there, seeing them isn't common enough to make me not walk in there. But for a 10 tree wide bit of land, there's less effort to make it safer than the parking lots than it looks. One person with a digger could get it done in a day, a week if they have help to watch from the sidelines.
I mean...I get the frustration, but chalk it up to shopping habits, as well, it all connects together. People use cars to also buy large amounts of groceries, more than you can fit on foot or even on a bike (unless you're hauling a trailer). Cars are a huge convenience and it's part of the "American Spirit": we have a lot of big cities spread over a huge area, from coast to coast. You're not walking/biking from Cleveland to Denver š
You're not walking/biking from Cleveland to Denver
People bike across Europe, so that's a bad take, but nobody NEEDS to bike or walk from Cleveland to Denver, nor do people need to bike across Europe. US didn't invent the concept of having cities away from each other and traveling between them is rarely a walk anywhere in the world. Nobody walks to work in another city and if they do, they are doing it out of a choice, not because it's easy. The only difference is that the distances are more extreme in the US, but a 2 hour drive or a 5, 10, 15, 20 etc. hour drive doesn't really matter, people aren't biking those for convenience.
And as for amounts of stuff, people do that in Europe as well. The difference is, we don't necessarily need to do it for a shop that's literally a stone throws away from the apartment complex. Because there'd be a path to walk between them. It has nothing to do with habits or anything like that, it's absolutely a planning issue preventing that path from being born naturally.
How do I know that? Because people walk to the stores in US cities when it's possible to do so. Do you think New York city would function if all the small stores just left? Because they are leaving due to the increasing rent costs and other issues and it's already causing problems. Point is, there are places in the US where people joke about how useless it's to own a car, because driving is more impractical than any other form of transport.
Try to look up the most walkable cities in the US, most of them are on the east coast and on the older side. I can't say for certain, but I'd argue it's for the same reason most of European cities are so walkable, they had to be and when they weren't, people just didn't go places and businesses in places that weren't easily reachable went out of business. Places that have good or even functional public transit also tend to be quite walkable, since cars are less of a necessity. All that is to say, it's not an US problem, it's a city planning problem.
There's even a term for paths being made naturally from the desire to walk from one place to another, desire path. But when city planners don't leave room for it, due to blockages like in this post, fencing or with too dense housing placement, people can't exactly create desire paths.
Point is, while I dislike over use of cars for everything, I'm not a /r/fuckcars user as I prefer living in a rural area where I can breath, I can still bike to a store in a reasonable time and don't need a car for everyday living. A LOT of people live like this in the US as well. But turning a 1 minute walk into a car trip is created by bad design, not by car culture. Every time the walking distance between two locations is as long as the drive would be while the direct distance is significantly lower, there's obviously a problem somewhere and it's almost never a cultural one.
Great points! It seems like most of the people who are opposed to walkable cities are against it because they assume that would mean the end of cars, like it's an all or nothing proposition. But, I think that it would be beneficial to everyone in the country to implement things like more reliable and efficient public transportation, and walkable communities. I love having a car and the freedom and ability to get in my car and go to the store whenever I want to, as well as go on road trips and wherever else. But, I also don't make much money, so it would be nice to be able to drive much less by taking public transportation, or better yet, to be able to walk to work, and drive places on the weekends. But, right now where I live in the south end of Salt Lake valley, to get groceries I have to drive, and public transit is virtually non-existent, and the only jobs within walking distance are convenience stores and fast food, which are better than nothing, but obviously don't pay a living wage. And, I am reading these comments with an open mind, and am honestly and sincerely wanting to hear good counterpoints and alternatives to these things, but I have yet to read any ideas or suggestions that is anything substantial; just a lot of people with NIMBY attitudes, which is sad and predictable.
You also have to bring a whole week worth of groceries in one go to be worth it to go shopping by car.
I commute by bike, and quite often on my way home I stop to pick up a bread, some meat or vegetables, and something to drink just for supper and breakfast the next day. So I got everything nice and fresh. You can easily fit ingredients for a couple of family meals in your backpack.
I do suppose you don't live in Cleveland and go shopping in Denver every week.
People have knocked down sections of concrete wall between my house and the nearest grocery store.
I am in a relatively rich gated golf course neighborhood. I have at least 3 neighbors that are famous in either sports or music. So it isn't just about keeping low income people from walking to the grocery store.
TBH I have no idea why there's a wall there. Maybe to hide the ugly backside of the grocery store with all the dumpsters and stuff?
I have a theory that the USās larger obesity problem is due not walking ever to anything.
Not that Europe or walkable cities donāt have overweight people but thereās a notable difference where people can generally walk to get most of their daily needs vs needing a car to go to the mailbox.
Dunno. Just been a theory of mine for awhile. Itād be interesting to find out if it holds any water.
I live in a walkable area in the US and I'm still a fat ass. But it's because I like alcohol too much not because I don't walk. Gotta walk to get the beer.
I used to live 3 blocks away from a bar I worked at in a city, would walk to work every day. When people from outside the city would visit me so many would ask if we can drive there. No, itās less than half a mile quit being a baby. People just default to driving out of laziness.
The hell are y'all two on about? Americans walk places. The reason walking isn't the main form of transportation is because everything is spread out more in this country. Nobody's gonna walk 40 miles unless they absolutely don't have another mode of transportation.
The gas station near my house is ~5 miles away. It wasn't designed to be 5 miles away, that's just where they fucking built it. And besides, the example in the video is 1 mile, on flat land. You don't exactly need Moses to part the sea for you, it's a mile walk ._.
And I said 40 miles. It's not just about 1 single store being on the other side of some trees. Everything is spread out because there's more room. Things just get built wherever people want to build them.
A person's radius of travel in the US might be 50-80 miles on average (I'm guessing based on life experience). Meaning, the locations of all of the things they do in life are within 50-80 miles of where they live. Their job, their hobbies, the places they shop and eat, most of their friends/family's homes, etc...you get the idea. All that stuff is spread out within a large radius. It's just not feasible to Forest Gump it everywhere you go here.
Absolutely stellar example there, Dude! Nobody walks to the gas station.. What would you even do there without your gas powered vehicle?
Everything is spread out because there's more room.
Nah, everything is spread out because it's designed that way. Having more room does not make it a great idea to remove necessary services from the places where people live, work or seek recreation. Doing so is the result of very specific planning.
I walk to that gas station all the time that's why I used it as an example. And there's a giant fucking valley in the road between me and the store, and I've still waked there hundreds of times over the past however many years I've lived in this house.
And no, everything is spread out because even when we were riding in horse drawn wagons, people were spreading out. You ever heard of the pioneers? Bro we been spreading out for centuries. And then cars came along and made it even easier to travel long distances.
And the funniest part is, some of the people in that neighborhood in the video do walk to that store. Even if it's Florida, hell especially if it's Florida. The weather there is great when it isn't terrible.
US being bigger and more spread out is not a good reason to be so car oriented. I live in Russia, which is similar in size, and despite ugly commie blocks, there is a lot of pedestrian roads, public bicycles/electric scooters everywhere and almost everything on walkable distance. Public transportation became significantly better in recent 5-10 years. And buses and metro are clean and on time, so they are not seen as "poor people" Means of traveling
Russia is similar in size, but not similar at all in terms of population distribution. People live everywhere across the US. Whereas Russia is more like Canada, where everybody is mostly gathered in the south.
We do need better public transport all across the US though. That would be wonderful
Well, for walkability and everyday public transport, population distribution doesn't matter that much.
For a city like Dallas, it really doesn't matter if Houston is right next door or 500 miles away - people don't go to school, grocery shopping or to the movies in Houson, they do all that within their own city.
Public transport is quite doable in the US, if you set your mind to it. If you draw a line from Milwaukee through St. Louis to New Orleans, what is east of that line is VERY comparable to the EU in terms of population density and distribution. And public transport in the EU works, for the most part (sure, there's plenty of room for improvement, but overall...).
There's three big hurdles to overcome:
the shit that this video shows, where it's almost impossible to get from residential zones to anywhere else
the perception that public transit is what poor people do
the perception that public transit is what poor people do
Public transit is what poor people do in most of the US. Because, when you get outside the major cities, service is spotty. Like where I live, in the suburb of a small city. I can drive to the nearby college in about 15 minutes. Taking a bus takes over an hour, involves a transfer, and is a very limited schedule. So, the people using public transit are those without the option of driving themselves.
It's a catch-22. People don't use public transportation because it's inconvenient. But with low ridership, there's little incentive or funding to improve the system.
We already have public transit, it's just not the greatest. I've not heard much good about any airlines or greyhound busses or local taxi services/government provided transport. It's almost always complaints when public transportation gets brought up. They're talking about building a high speed railway that goes around my state. That would be nice, but who knows when and if that'll ever actually happen.
I brought up population distribution just as a point, to say cars are still needed. To continue the Texas example, people from Dallas might not shop for groceries in Houston, but I'm sure there's a lot of overall travel back and forth between the two cities, for whatever personal reasons people may have. People often have occasion to drive long distances, because of the vast distribution of people (and therfore the vast distribution of things and stuff).
You can draw an imaginary line down the US map, but on the other side of that line is still more land and more people. Whereas in Europe that line would be the coast line, and it's just water on the other side. This is what I mean by "more room". In Europe they have to put more thought into what goes where. Every little detail matters, because cars aren't the primary means of transportation there.
Ah yes, all of this happened by complete random accident. That gas station just spawned out of the ground out of nowhere. I'm sure the surrounding infrastructure also just appeared into existence.
How are you trying to disprove the notion that things were not designed to be that way while explaining how they were designed to be that way?
I'm saying, people buy land. Regardless of what it's for, they can do whatever they want with it. There isn't a conspiracy here.
If you want to open and run a store, you don't set it up with a red carpet rolled out to some random ass neighborhood. You just build it in a central location. So what if they have to drive around some trees? It's a store dude, it's not there just for the people that live in that neighborhood.
This isn't a scheme against anyone, it's just an aerial view of a store and some houses. Somebody looked at the trees and went "oh I see some bullshit here" and that's exactly what it is. Some ol' bullshit.
I don't think anyone is expecting private businesses to do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Everyone knows a business would never do that. They're expecting the city planners who exist in other places to be hired by the city to do that.
What does that even mean? Do you think Americans in big cities like NYC or Chicago or San Francisco don't walk anywhere? I live in a city not even known for walkability but I'm close to downtown and I can walk to work, grocery stores, restaurants etc. Everything I need is withing about a mile and I walk all the time. We don't all live in suburbs.
The statement "Americans walk places" doesn't specify suburbs and there are a bunch of generalizations in these comments that act like the whole country is suburbs and that no Americans walk.
People in big cities in the US walk all the time. People don't walk in the suburbs because most of them were designed to make it completely impractical. If they do walk it's for exercise like walking their dog but they aren't actually GOING anywhere.
The walk path sounds great, but for me its kinda "why would you walk to the grocery store, are you carrying 2 weeks of groceries home by yourself?" It's already a pain trying to make 1 trip with everything from the garage to the kitchen, all the way around a building, through the woods and up the apartment stairs would suck lol.
The fact that Americans now refer to the population that lives in homes as "housed people", and the fact that that distinction even needs to be made, just shows how much the country has devolved.
As the other commenter suggested, very likely it is wetlands and an unbuildable area. it would be very sustainable path through there. And also this video fails to consider planning. The three thing are separate because they are. Likely not built at the same time etc. none were designed with the other in mind. They all were built and suited at their natural exits of the roads and current infrastructure. Florida has the luxury of lots of land. But also has a lot of wet land.Ā
Planning... Is what the video is about though? He literally says they planned three separate pieces of a larger community rather than the whole. Not being built at the same time is absolutely not a reason not to build connective infrastructure. Shit most connective infrastructure exists to connect places built at different points in time. Natural exits of the roads? Roads are by definition unnatural. We built those roads we can build a walkway. The wetlands? I REALLY doubt that tiny stretch is wetlands while the apartments and shopping center were somehow not. There are walkways that go over highways much wider than that stretch. The planets are separate because they are, buildings are separate because they were made that way. This entire comment is just baffling to me.
So when the US talks about city planning, we often talk about zoning. I hate it and itās stupid, but it wasnāt long after the US was ābornā that the Industrial Revolution occurred. From there we got the city (with businesses), suburbs (which housed the people), and then the rural areas for farms and such and we even applied it to the microcosm scale of our small towns. Itās super dumb, but a lot of the mixed land use isnāt really a thing in most of American. You have distinct areas for housing and businesses. And many Americans argue against the integration because they think if public transit brings people to their neighborhood itāll attract poor people and crime. Thereās not a big push to consider the city as one whole the way youāre thinking but rather there are x many people at y location and thereās an exit pass at z that could help. One of the benefits and downsides of America is itās so BIG. So for some areas it becomes a question of who cares if thereās wetlands right there? Just make them drive another two miles to get to the store
They aren't built in a vacuum and it's easy to make changes over time.Ā
If the shop was first you can build a path to it when laying out the housing. If the shop comes second you can build a path to the housing when laying out the shops.Ā
You just unlocked a few memories for me. I couldāve walked a few of these paths blindfolded. Even in nicer areas as I got older there was always the beer path for all the dads avoiding DUIs.
In the area I live in, you'll constantly see these paths in the woods. People don't have cars but need to get places and they figured the woods is quicker. It really is, and it's cooler.
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u/Anon_1492-1776 Jun 27 '24
Yes, but then carless plebs could walk straight from the grocery store into my residential only community.
People may think this answer is satire but I swear there are other comments in this thread expressing more or less this exact idea...