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Just got around to reading this. Good blog.

One thing often overlooked in discussions of post-car utopias is the car as an instrument of leisure. We can design urban areas so groceries are always nearby and we can hope that remote work allows a larger percentage of the population to avoid a daily commute. But I think a *large* percentage of Americans will still cling to their cars as their means to escape cities for leisure.

I live in the Mountain West and hardly use my car during the week. But Yesterday I drove 2 hours each way over terrible roads to spend ten hours hiking in remote canyonlands. When I lived in D.C., I didn't need a car for groceries or work, but I happily paid for parking and insurance so that on the weekends I could escape that godforsaken place and drive to the Shenandoah mountains.

This particular use of the car can't be replaced by public transport because the whole point is to *avoid* the public. You can't just set-up a bus to a couple of points in the Shenandoahs because my goal is to drive to a spot in the Shenandoahs away from everyone else.

It's for that reason that I look forward to the adoption of clean, self-driving cars, rather than to the elimination of the car. Maybe a fleet of self-driving cars available for people who want to spend their weekends in the mountains.

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The individual car is popular for one basic reason: It allows a family to have a better life. The underlying economic fact which car haters deny is that Sprawl spreads society's wealth among those who produce it, while Density concentrates wealth in the hands of a few landowners.

The New Urbanism concentrates more wealth in the hands of a very few landowners and tends to turn the average American into a renter who accumulates no wealth over this life time since he has to shell out outrageous sums for rent. The main alternative is core density with workers living in far away bedroom communities. Again, it is the concentration of offices in the cores which causes traffic congestion. Cars do not cause traffic congestion.

If LA were still 72 suburbs looking for a city, Los Angeles would have not fallen from the nation's most favorable destination city to the least desirable. The LA concentrated density in Bunker Hill, DTLA, West LA and Hollywood, the poor Angelenos became until now LA has the worst nations' urban GINI Coefficient.

Had LA allowed all land uses to expand outwards, then offices would have been located through the entire area. Low rise garden type office buildings are extremely compatible with R-1 neighborhoods. They are quiet and generally closed when workers have family time, e.g. at night and weekend. Office complexes increase the local tax base and they often have security. When all land uses are spread through a huge geographic area, then there is no core to attract traffic congestion. Instead everyone is going for much shorter commutes which is far better for the environment since it uses less gasoline.

Mass intra-urban transit is a scam. Subways and fixed rail systems are horrendously expensive and are proposed solely because we allow a few land owners to concentrate density in few areas. If Century City did not exist, then thousands of commuters would not be trying to get down the 405 Freeway each morning. The most financially successful intra-urban mass transit is NYC. It had two options: Cut service by 40% or go BK. Disaster was averted due to the federal government bailout. If the best system in the nation can avoid total disaster only with a federal bailout, why would Los Angeles follow in NYC's footsteps? ANSWER: Hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars are funneled to contractors to construct and then maintain mass transit systems.

On the other hand, if we de-densified the cores, traffic congestion would decrease and the need for mass trans would decrease. What is worst for the politicos, a huge cash cow for bribes would disappear. When the cores de-densify, construction in the cores will cease and all the bribes tied to evading zoning restriction will be gone and of course all the corruption associated with mass construction projects will be gone.

So be prepared for more propaganda about the evils of car and hwow we all must crowd together in dense urban high rises so that we can all hae a grocery store in our own high rise prison.

So be pepred

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Just got around to reading this. Another great read Apex

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This is a very good article. It expresses ideas that I think a lot of us may be somewhat subconsciously aware of, but probably haven't specifically spent time thinking about. I have lived in cities and suburban areas before, and one of my favorite things about those areas was when they were walkable. I lived in Boston for several years, and it is a very walkable city, with good public transportation, which makes having a car not always necessary.

But you make a great point in how cars are now commonplace, a community no longer has to be walkable, so you see so many places -- cities even -- where walking is mostly just not done. L.A., for instance, is a very car-driven area, and the resulting traffic must truly be maddening. As you point out, the car is both our captor and our liberator. Very interesting dichotomy.

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cars separate us from nature and from each other (as if we need more dystopian influences in our lives) / the faster we go the farther we have to go - the net gain is zero / urban sprawl doesn't give us a better life it just enriches the developers / what is a better life anyways ?? in america it's generally related to money but imagine for a minute that you didn't have to make a 20 minute commute in your car twice a day / that in fact everything you needed was within a 20 minute bike ride - job groceries entertainment etc and and at the end of your 20 minute bike ride you felt exhilarated rather than stressed out looking for a parking spot / this is a little idyllic i acknowledge but we really need to think outside of the car / the evils of cars are many and have been duly noted / hey you don't need a 4,000 lb. vehicle to take one person to a predetermined location (e,g. grocery store) you don't need an expensive car sitting in your driveway all night / get it ?? you only need a 'car' when you're going somewhere / there are way more better ways of going somewhere than owning a car / it's mostly a status symbol and a freedom symbol as noted / i can jump on my horse i mean jump in my car and go anywhere i want at any time / FREEDOM / except you have to pay for the car / park the car / fuel the car worry about having an accident with the car while you ride around in the least efficient form of transportation ever invented / i can't wait for a carless society or atleast a society with less cars

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My planning philosophy is Peter Calthorpe/Fulton's Regionalism. It's basic New Urbanism (NU) but at the regional level, ie, How the many NU districts within a metropolitan 'region' connect. NU's main premise of "mixed-use, infill, transit-oriented development" at the regional level is focused on a 'diverse' mix of uses rather than density. Density without diversity makes traffic worse throughout the region. NU prescribes (re)building neighborhoods where most needs can be met walking or within walking distance of transit for needs met too far to walk. Thus, within entire metropolitan 'regions' are many dozens of walkable neighborhoods of mixed uses - housing, commercial corridors, institutional facilities, parks, natural areas, etc. When the focus is on high density housing in singularly central city districts, this reduces land areas that should be used for other purposes and makes them less walkable. Calthorpe's "The Regional City" should be required reading.

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All problems have solutions, and one way to get answers is to seek to learn from the best:

“Expose yourself to the best things that humans have done,

and then try to bring those things into what you are doing.”

– Steve Jobs

Six Films That Leave You Better Off

Life Lessons From Inspiring Documentaries

https://moviewise.substack.com/p/six-films-that-leave-you-better-off

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