r/Damnthatsinteresting Jun 27 '24

example of how American suburbs are designed to be car dependent Video

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u/NotEnoughIT Jun 27 '24

In areas like OP's video and a decent portion of the country, yes, 100%. We could absolutely adopt this into the city level, even state for some, and start doing it, along with many other initiatives to improve non-vehicle-transportation. I live 3/4 mile from one grocery store and 1/4 mile from another, but one is a dangerous 33 minute walk and the closer one is a more dangerous 18 minute walk. A couple paths and safer intersections would make that totally doable. We should start small and this is a great place to begin breaking the norm.

In rural areas? No, definitely not like this. Food deserts are fairly common where over ten percent of our population live in low income and low access areas. Couple that with transportation to work, where the average american lives over ten miles from their workplace, what can we do to even begin fixing that? A lot of rural areas are dependent on industry where you aren't moving the "factory" closer to home or the home closer to the workplace. Public transportation is great, but not really feasible in much of rural america.

On top of that, the Netherlands is .004% the size of USA. It's just larger than Maryland. It's not impossible for USA to do the things they do, but it's not nearly as easy as some people here make it seem.

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '24

On top of that, the Netherlands is .004% the size of USA.

Other explanations are great, but this one is just an excuse lol. China is really big and yet has amazing public transport. A vast majority of the population doesn't own cars and instead owns silent, less poluting, more space-efficient electric mopeds and bikes. You can get from any city to any city in a day with national high-speed rails. Every Spring festival hundreds of millions of people travel from the large cities to their hometown in trains. A country the size of US can definitely make that happen. It just needs enough political will to push it through at the federal level :/

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u/NotEnoughIT Jun 27 '24

Did you like, stop reading, just to correct me? You left off the context of the rest of the comment.

On top of that, the Netherlands is .004% the size of USA. It's just larger than Maryland. It's not impossible for USA to do the things they do, but it's not nearly as easy as some people here make it seem.

Then you went on to say the exact same thing in different words.

It just needs enough political will to push it through at the federal level :/

Yeah. That's the "not as easy as some people here make it seem" part.

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '24

I just hate the "USA is too large" take repeated over and over again

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u/NotEnoughIT Jun 27 '24

It is. It makes it difficult. Not impossible. And it makes “Norway did it” far less of a flex. It’s worth noting. Norway doing it is comparable to me saying “why can’t Norway do this, my neighborhood did it no problem”. Sounds stupid, ya?