Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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What the fuck, such a ridiculous bunch of bullshit. You must have no concept of the massive variety and depth of the massive landscape that makes up the USA.
My house is brick, built about 5 decades ago, I own it along with multiple acres of forested land. I get along with my neighbors fine, and we help each other out occasionally, and we have enough distance and room from each other that I can piss in my yard any hour of any day that I want with privacy. The crime rate here is so low that we have about 1 murder per decade on average. I pretty much do whatever I want all the time here in the USA and I wouldn't trade it to live anywhere else (unless someone paid me millions of dollars to)
Good for you... But your taxes paid on property and gasoline don't support the infrastructure you are using even more then
Fuxking parasites got to comfortable they don't know they leeching 🤡
Also many houses are "brick" is woodgrame with brick decor that is lol
For reference, here’s a Not Just Bikes video about how suburban property taxes do not cover the costs of infrastructure, with numbers: https://youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI?si=mVDdJNfGXV0g-W65
as in they don't cover sufficiently or they are not even used for infra purpose?
A block of suburban homes generates less tax revenue than the cost of maintaining the infrastructure it requires.
Alright correct, this is strong towns original research
You have nothing to contribute but hatred for those you envy. Sorry that your life is not how you want it to be.
For the record, I pay more individual taxes than the majority of American households do to our Federal government, and more than the vast majority of households to my state so you are completely wrong about that "parasite" garbage.
Suburban and rural development tax base does not support the infrastructure they require to live a modern life.
I am happy that you make good income, good for you but your "income taxes" don't go to fund infrastructure, at least not directly.
Consider educating yourself on the topic.
Yeah just make up whatever makes you feel better about being trapped in the prison of city life. You make a lot of assumptions about things that you don't have the ability to quantify.
The facts you're ignoring are that rural areas support the agriculture and industry necessary to sustain city life, and cities could not exist without them, aside from some hellish Soylent Green type of artificial subsistence.
Rural areas support agriculture? How? By taking up space that could be use for farmland? Or do rural people somehow buy more from farmers than city people?
So everyone should have acres of land? And drive literally tens or hundreds of miles to buy a gallon of milk? How does that scale?
Do you seriously think that people are driving HUNDREDS of miles to get necessities?
What about options? I don't want an apartment. I have a modest home on less than a quarter acre of property. My neighbor's house is 16ft from mine. Some people have bigger. Some people like apartments. Just options, you know? Or should everyone need to live in sense, urban areas? And I say this, the town I live in has about 5500 people/square mile, which is pretty dense. If I drive 10m south it's farms. There's a real variety.
So everyone should assume that every comment on Lemmy is an absolute prescription for how every other person should live their life?
Most folks online seem to only know cheap HOA Florida style neighborhoods with zero places to walk, cheap construction and 10 ft between houses.
Everyone makes assumptions of what "dense apartment living" , "suburban living" etc looks like, and folks are generally wrong on both sides of the perspective.
At its best, suburban living is great. I'm biased because I have an awesome suburb home I bought for cheap many years ago, and have awesome neighbors and no need for an HOA. I can access public transportation easily and use it often. Many other great things, including privacy and quiet. I can access the city center in about 20 minutes or great outdoor spaces in say 30. By bike. That's not normal for lots of folks
But again, I'm biased. My experience is not universal.
suburb you described is pretty much the exception and these are expansive generally as any city.
South or West US style burbs is just the same corporate ghetto except this one does not produce sufficient tax base to support its existence without "growth"
I clarified my bias, but fyi my suburb is in the "west US". As I said, everyone here is making assumptions. Reducing whole regions of the country to a described "corporate ghetto" isn't a realistic reflection
Southern US has been development 70-80% post WW2 entire fucking region is corporate ghetto from poorly designed urban cores to the shiti mcmansion burbs 30 miles out.
Sure there are good places near the urban core with 2 million dollar house. That shit is great but kinda not accessible.
No need to argue, we (edit spelling) agree many bad neighborhoods exist. but that's the exact generalization I'm talking about: not all neighborhoods are alike. My house is nowhere close to 2mil.
Point being broad generalizations exist on both sides of the conversation, and a more nuanced perspective (and a tighter scope of discussion) will better serve this topic, and aid meaningful discussion. Else we end up with this thread.
Using globals, and the biases that come with them is always weaker than focusing on specific areas and the needs therein.
Like I wouldn't want to assume that all European apartment blocks are Soviet era shoeboxes. That would be a poor understanding of the very different dense housing in Europe.
I don't know about great.
If it's not walkable, it's not good. I want to cover my basics without a car or long trip. Where I am now there's maybe 5 groceries of various sizes and a couple dozen restaurants and bars within a short walk. Plus other stuff like hardware stores, pharmacies, etc.
This isn't a fancy or expensive neighborhood. It's just regular Brooklyn. I wouldn't trade this for the suburbs.
Even if you had a "suburb" that was walkable, you're just not going to have as much stuff. Like if you lived right by "main Street" where my parents lived, there's just fewer options. Like, I don't think they had a single Thai restaurant when I was growing up.
If you accept the premise that a wider variety of options is better, suburbs really can't compete on that metric. Someone might prefer the "there's one diner in this town" model but that sounds dull to me.
But mostly it's the car-first nature of most suburbs I can't stand. It's antisocial, it's dangerous, it pollutes the environment. My parents take a 10 minute drive to get groceries and that's incredibly wasteful.
My suburb as described does allow for much walkabilty, and bikability with sidewalks and tree lined gravel trails that go all the way to the city center. I can walk to 2 groceries, and a host of other stores in about 15 minutes one way. Bars, coffee shops, restaurants too. All on sidewalk or trail, sidewalks along slow speed neighborhood roads
On the trail, or via the neighborhood bus line, I can be downtown with a large variety of shops or or restaurants of every type.
Moreover, my point isnt to get kudos for luckily living in a nice neighborhood. It's to highlight that generalizations are pointless.
You have a perspective of a suburban neighborhood is "not great", and that's fine, in a lot of places it's true.
I have an opinion that most apartments suck, but that's obviously not universal.
Your suburb sounds exceptional. As in, the exception to the norm. But as it is the exception, adopting policy decisions on it would be foolish.
You wouldn't point to one docile bear and be like "Living among bears is great. Look how friendly he is."
Absolutely agree. Adjacent to that is that discussion on this topic should be tighter grained...to allow/avoid for biases everyone involved has.
Edit to bring it.back from above, sunzu2 said American construction is shit, (paraphrase). It's simply not true, universally, and speaks to a lack of understanding. (Which isn't an attack, everyone has lacks of understanding). Many, many homes.in America are of quality construction, and or are on lots with sufficient free space between structures to allow privacy.
Like I said in another comment, I'm sure it's the case that European apartments aren't all Soviet era shoeboxes. I'm sure there's very nice apartments with reasonable space.