this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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I'm not saying the other guy is entirely right here, but this is a pretty disingenuous argument. Both Europe and USA are around 4 million square miles in landmass (Europe is slightly bigger, US is around 3.8), but 1.5 million of that is Russia, where the population is highly clustered around a few cities. Russia having 40% of the total landmass but only 15% of the population of Europe makes it seem like the population density might be similar, but it isn't once you take Russia out of the equation. Population density is just way higher in Europe on average.
The point is that the USA has a ton of land, and cities and towns are spread very far apart. Yes, Europe has plenty of stretches of land that look similar, but most of the US is wide open space. Is that a great thing? Not really, but it's a consequence of history and a problem we just have to deal with.
I'd love to ditch cars and use public transportation and have walkable cities, but with the population so spread out it really isn't feasible in much of the country. Saying someone is giving "THE cliché answer from an us citizen who has never seen another part of this world" and then giving a statistic that is inherently flawed to prove your argument isn't going to get others to agree with you, it'll just make you sound like a dick. It is a real problem that US cities and towns are very wide and built very far apart, we can't just tear down those towns and build towns with a higher population density in their place to increase walkability. (Only within the town, mind you, this would increase reliance on cars if you need to go outside of your town)
You aren't travelling across the country to go to work or the grocery store. It's the city design that matters. We can have cities better made for public transit.
We can if we tear up most of the cities and small towns that exist today, like I said.
The cost-benefit of doing so.... takes a long time to pay off (if ever) and forcefully dislocating people like that generally isn't popular. Public transit would be great, but the argument needs to be a lot more realistic to how we retrofit public transit for our existing cities, and focusing future growth on making it compatible with public transit. It's not realistic to say "We just need more public transit, Europe has it figured out" when our cities and towns are laid out way differently. Obviously re-zoning certain areas and moving businesses closer to suburbs is a start, but it isn't going to be as simple as "build cities like Europe" because the cities are already built.
Lol no you don't have to tear up the city to add bus routes. You are being dramatic.
Guess what? We have bus routes in Canada. And even LRT! No we didn't have to tear up entire cities lol.
Should I bring up bike paths? OoOo.