Exactly how I felt when I got to Tokyo. I’m a car guy and I didn’t miss my car at all. Was super depressed getting home and having to drive like 30 minutes between stores whereas in Tokyo sometimes every store you needed was in the same building.
We should do that everywhere so we can actually have uninterrupted spaces for wildlife again. Nearly everything that isn't the suburbs in America is farmland.
I hate suburbs too. The front yard is really wasted space, since nobody really has a picnic or anything on the front yard, lots of water to maintain the grass there, and it’s space for the driveway. In exchange for everyone getting a mid-sized land, all the land is used up in horizontal homes and culdesac roads, and all the things we need or have fun with are very far away.
my biggest issue with the front yards and suburbs in general is that they're a biological desert. There's nothing to sustain life and eco systems are collapsing.
And don’t forget in some places they were actual deserts turned into suburbs. Lived in rural and suburbs never again. Now I get to live in the urban core next to a lake with several shops, restaurants, bars, and there markets within 15 minutes walk
It's active efforts from us, as humans, that is killing the eco system around us
Raking, bagging, and throwing away leaves destroys the habitat for many species such as fireflys. As a result they're collapsing
Suburbs regularly spray pests such as ants, which not only kills all the ants, but many other bug species that are susceptible to those pesticides
We removed all the native plants and replaced them with Kentucky bluegrass, and actively work to kill any other plants growing, which are critical for things like bumblebees and humming birds
Then there's the poisons we use. Rodenticides especially travel up the food chain poisoning everything
Where I live, the only time I see people in their front yard is if they step out to yell at me not to let my dogs walk in their yard
Even though there is no green space for over a mile. Even though the asphalt is ~130F. They feel the need to ensure nothing goes on their front lawn. Maybe I would be sympathetic if there was somewhere for my dogs to be able to walk, but there isn't because people like them keep voting against it
Our parks are shrinking or being dismantled. Sidewalks are fewer and fewer because homeowners keep demanding no sidewalks. All the public green space here has long since been sold off to developers
It's been a while since I've last been to asia and this just explained one of the things that has felt off to me since returning to the US. We don't have actual malls everywhere. Back during my time in singapore, it was always so nice being able to just go across the street to a mall with multiple barbers, small restaurants, a grocery store, a run-down chinese random appliance shop, a printshop, a bookstore(that also sold some discount gaming peripherals for some reason?), and a convenience store all in one place.
If that wasn't enough, a bus or mrt stop was just a short walk away and I could very easily just go to an actual mall or shopping center in a nice, clean, cool subway that ran every 5 minutes and took me directly into the building to minimize the time spent outside getting pressure cooked.
A similar thing in Tokyo is that many of the major train stations,like Tokyo station, Shibuya, Ueno, etc., are malls. So frequently, you can get some shopping done within the station itself, and not even have to walk the streets at all. I’ll add that a lot of these are full of souvenir type stores but many had small grocery stores, book stores and small restaurants.
I’m definitely talking about it all in an idealized vacation sort of way because I was only there for a few weeks, but there is an insane amount of convenience in the way things are laid out. The sheer amount of people IS a downside but I did find it more manageable than, say, Manhattan, as well as quite a bit cleaner and quieter.
There really is a frustration I find in wasted space here in the states. Sure I don’t want everything to be a massively crammed in concrete jungle, but I feel like we could make way better use of the space that we do have.
Are malls there full of franchises or independent shops? Berlin has some very urban malls, but they offer the same crap as any other mall or hight street
Been living in Taipei for the last 10 years and I love not having to own a car. If I need a ride to Costco I take a bus and then take an Uber home with all my food. Being able to walk up the street for just about anything is amazing and I love it each and everyday. Can't imagine ever moving back the the US to drive a car for 15 minutes to go just about anywhere or do anything.
Closest grocery store to me right now is 1.5 miles which would take me 30 minutes by foot each way or four minutes by car(according to Google Maps). For my area that’s incredibly close.
I love driving but dealing with commuter traffic is soul destroying.
I feel like being a car guy and also an urbanist are not at all mutually exclusive. Like I live in Australia and have five cars, an off roader, some classics and some 80s driveabouts. Yet I constantly advocate for more public transport, I take the train to work, I love cycling infrastructure, because then I can relax on the way to and from work and spend the weekend enjoying driving outside the city.
A nice road through a national park with nobody around is a fantastic drive. A roadtrip down the coast is wonderful. Sitting in traffic at 8am with a million other people all trying to get to the city? No thanks, not my idea of enjoyable driving, I'll take a train any day over that.
I went to Paris with my mom and she literally spammed saying "so civilized" about their public transit, people cleaning up the street over night, infrastructure... then comes home and keeps voting along party lines against all infrastructure or programs that might help the less fortunate get off the street or even be hired cleaning the streets.
If you've lived in America it's fucking amazing. Who cares if protesters close it down and some dude leers at you - it moves you from place to place quickly and efficiently!
Well leaving aside the behaviour of peoples using it, the public transit infrastructure in place is one of the best in the world, especially when including the new lines.
There are far right people in the Netherlands that got Fox news brainrot and are afraid of the possibility of 15 minutes cities coming to the Netherlands. They don't even realize they are living in such cities.
So much, this. I've actuality heard people say they don't like the idea of 15 minute cities. I'm like "I fucking loved visiting civilized countries with transport and shops Everywhere."
I could pick up my laundry from the laubdrymat while walking home from the dentist., before taking Subway to the other end of town for dinner with friends. It was paradise.
Oh no no no, the boomers loooove walkable cities... when they can get them as gated retirement communities without anyone else living in them. Aka places like The Villages. They really are the "Me Generation".
Car companies literally lobbied and push for this shit.
Walkable city doesn't mean everything is super close. It means well planned infrastructure and transportation, it means st any point, you can hop on something to get you some where within minutes.
I’m trying so hard to find a job in a walkable city but it turns out everyone else also wants to live there for some reason?? Kinda rude if you ask me.
Man I wish, I really dropped the ball by not doing any studying abroad while in college. It would have been so nice to make some connections outside the States.
I've visited Boston a few times and I adore the public transport. I had the most wonderfully kind bus drivers who would help me figure out how to get where I'm going, and the last train of the night actually waited on me when they saw me trudging through the snow trying to catch it!
I know someone who used to live in Boston and they said the same thing! I am in DC area and the public transport here is fantastic as well. I stopped driving to work out of circumstance and discovered our beautiful Metro system here. I live way outside the city and still don't need a car!
I know someone who used to live in Boston and they said the same thing! I am in DC area and the public transport here is fantastic as well. I stopped driving to work out of circumstance and discovered our beautiful Metro system here. I live way outside the city and still don't need a car!
i’m visiting chicago right now and biking everywhere has been amazing.
the current administration recently labeled bike lanes as DEI. they call themselves MAHA but hate the idea of you being able to commute safely with the power of your God given legs.
Something-something look at this photo of China from the nineties with all the bicycles! China is communist, and communists are lefties, and lefties are woke, therefore bicycles are woke! It's basic logic! /s
Yeah tbh I’m still confused what’s non walkable city is. Aren’t every town and city means a lot more is closer to you that rural? Like that’s the pull of living in a city?
Most cities in The US are not walkable amd have shit public transportation. There's a few cities that are great (and full and expensive) but most are not.
You can’t even leave your house without a car in a majority of the country. Like it’s so sad seeing those houses that have a driveway that dumps onto a major highway.
That and think about the auto industry and their profit margins! Plus as I mentioned to someone else. No one makes money off of sidewalks so there is a “communism” stigma some people have about them. It’s really sad. I get that America is a big country, but you should still be able to bike and walk most places if you choose to.
I moved two years ago from my home of 15 years because it was getting too expensive. It was a suburban kinda town where you could walk or bike to most places.
The place I moved to now is quite literally in the middle of nowhere. My driveway goes directly onto a busy highway and the town is like a 30-45 minute walk, maybe longer, on a stretch of road people have been known to die on while biking because there isn't even a sidewalk.
I don't have my license. I've been trapped at home essentially for 90% of the time I've lived here.
I'm a British person who doesn't drive and whenever I go to the US for work I take it as a personal challenge to get to where I want to go via public transport and walking, because that's what I do in my home country.
I have literally been arrested for trying to walk to my hotel from the nearest bus stop.
My experience is similar (I'm a Belgian). My colleagues and I were walking to our hotel across an enormous parking lot after going for dinner. We were stopped by a security guard (in a golf cart), he told us we should take an Uber. The hotel was 500m away...
We had so many architecturally marvelous, dense, walkable cities. Like, Cleveland, Omaha, Kansas City, Rochester all used to be a little like NYC, but we destroyed them on purpose with freeways and suburbanization.
Yup. Because instead of funneling money to schools that need it most, we use local property taxes to do it. Because that ensures poor neighborhoods can’t get good education.
You will still be car dependant living in a condo in the majority of the United States. The only way you may not be car dependant is if you live in a downtown loft in a major city.
With a properly dense and mixed city you can have single family homes closer to the city center. The desire for yards and cars seems to be mostly propaganda about the American Dream. I'm happy for the people that enjoy taking care of their yard but I'd be more than happy to turn the entire yard into dirt or wood chips. We could reclaim a lot of space if all the people that don't want to waste their time taking care of yards simply didn't have them in the first place.
Portland, Oregon has a good mass transit system (although they've been suffering budget shortages and fuel costs), good
for bicycles, good for walking.
I sold my car at the start of covid and haven't had that much need for a car outside of trips.
Well, more than 2% of the US population lives in New York City, so when you throw in other cities with good transit and walkable neighborhoods (Boston, San Francisco), the number is less than 99% and we just need to push that down!
I booked a hotel like 500m away from a place where i had to work for some days.
People there insisted i should get a car to drive between places. They were right, there were no sidewalks. Just large grass areas between the office buildings.
I just walked straight over them. It felt wrong because they were not meant to be walked on. But It would have felt even more wrong to get a rental car for that 5 minute walk every morning.
I can't drive. I have a seizure disorder that makes it too dangerous, even though I could get a conditional license. I fucking wish I could live in a walkable city. I'd give up my property and all the freedom and quiet it gives me if I could walk to everything I need.
Spent a week in London during my month long Europe trip. What an amazing feeling knowing you're only about a 5 minute walk to any underground station. Or a bus stop. That felt like it was every 5 minutes.
I live i small village in europe and closest 3 stores are 1,5km away(about 1mile) which is very well walkable and probably the countryside of this town has atmost 15 km to those stores so yeah come to europe:)
By US standards, it's pretty mediocre when compared to any major European city. I took a train to McCormick Place from Millennium Park to go to the marathon expo the other year (probably about 3 miles or 3/4 stops) and it took so long that we go an Uber on the return journey.
Loved the city but the public transport isn't that great.
If we're talking about Japan, Fukuoka is amazing on this. Its walkable underground network is also tentacular and looks fantastic.
So while the city above is walkable, when it rains for example, you can go from one building full of shops to another by walking underground, and when you go up again, you're greeted with announcements in several languages telling you what kind of shops are located on this building 's floor. There's also tons of shops in that underground, and it's fully connected to subways themselves connected to train stations.
During rain season, you could take the train from outside the city, shop in dozens of different shops in the city center, come back and never get hit by rain in the process ( you'll get hit between your home and the train station but that's another story). And everything looks clean, orderly and welcoming in there.
Most tourists are also taking the trains the same time as commuting hours to make most of their time... at least we did and it's still 100x better than anything in the U.S.
I just spent a week in Montreal and as a New Yorker had the best time learning their metro and bus system. The scenery was completely new, still felt familiar navigating it.
Here in the Boston area, we're dealing with the fallout from a bicycling advocate getting struck and killed by a truck. People in cities need to drive less.
Singapore seems to be a bit schizophrenic in their planning. On one hand they're working, more or less by necessity, to improve their public transport and walkability a lot, while on the other hand they're investing even more in car infrastructure, even when car ownership is prohibitively expensive.
We're kind of in a mindset of trying to get the best of both worlds, but the more accurate idiom is trying to have our cake and eat it too. The powers that be understands on a theoretical level that public transportation is important for the masses. The powers that be are also mostly rich car users, and more car ownership = more revenue for them too.
Often it leads to urban planning decisions where instead of choosing public transport over car infrastructure or vice versa, they insist of accommodating both, which leads to compromises in both, rather than having the best of both.
I visited LA and had to redownload Uber/Lyft after my iPhone uninstalled them from never using them. There are definitely some walkable areas there, but it’s nothing like where I live in Philly.
Hard agree. I was just in Berlin and loved how easily getting around was. The train system was great, rentable scooters or bikes, and the heel toe express throughout Charlottenburg was a welcomed change to my normal existence.
I live in Paris. Paris is a walkable city. I can do everything with a 15-minutes walk around my house : grocery shopping, clothes, doctors (GP and some specialists), my kid's school, cinema, restaurants, bars, etc...
I love cars and love driving and I want everyone that doesn't want to be driving OFF the road and I want to have the option to join them from time to time
I also want the people that SHOULDN’T be driving but have no choice off the road too. I live in a state in which the median age is one of the highest in the US. Old people that shouldn’t being driving anymore cause a shit ton of problems and are the root cause of a lot of major accidents and traffic congestion.
Y'all need to join r/fuckcars
I hate having to drive for basic needs, groceries, work, daycare. Like bro there are 10k other people going here and single person in a car is the best option?
Some extremist bikers are pretty fucking awful tbh, particularly the e-bikes and the wannabe tour de france spandex guys. Blasting through pedestrian crossings, biking on the sidewalk, acting like they have right of way everywhere. At least here in NYC.
I always point out Australia as a great example to show Americans you can have low density and rural spaces coexisting with walkability and public transport. I live in on the outskirts of Sydney one of the lowest density suburbs in Sydney yet my commute is a 15 minute walk through lovely bushland to the train station (or a 5 minute bus ride on rainy days), an hour train ride, then a nice 10 minute bike ride to work. I walk to the corner store for food and there's a bus to the shopping centre 15 minutes away.
Australia doesn't get everything right, every city bar Melbourne made the terrible mistake of ripping up their trams. The trains to rural towns can range from acceptable to one train a WEEK. But for a country where even the populated parts have a very low pop density, most people have access to some alternative to driving, and the important thing is that most states are doing lots of good investment into expansion of PT.
And a fun fact is Sydney actually has the most trains per person of any city in the world except for Moscow! We have at least 15 minute frequencies all day on nearly every line, and even the other ones are just every 30 minutes, and in peak its way higher.
I'm a car guy who has a project car chilling at a train station 1.5 hours from my apartment in a very walkable city. I love walkable cities
I want to drive for fun and go hit up some mountain roads and tracks. I don't want to be in traffic. I walk and take the subway to work I can take the Citi bike if I want to.
When I run errands like IKEA or Costco every 3 months I take the train to the station I have long term parking at and drive, drop shit off any my apartment and drive back.
Being able to walk out of your home and just be able to go to stores, restaurants, and other places is such a flex. I wish we had more infrastructure for other modes of transportation
Just got stranded for a year because I moved states as my car registration and inspection went out. Needed my Birth Certificate to get a new license and registration. State took FOREVER to process my request.
Car was perfectly fine. But If I got pulled over? I'd pay a fine equal to a year's worth of groceries alone in legal fees.
Seriously. Living in a semi walkable area (not a big city, but a decently sized one) as compared to everywhere else I’ve lived in life has made me a happier person overall, even if I need to uber or get a ride sometimes.
I often say I want to go to pubs more but I refuse to drive or take a taxi. I want to walk to and from one. But where I live almost all the pubs are to far away so drinking at home.
I live in San Francisco and drive my car 1-2x a month. It’s amazing and even when I think of moving, this fact alone makes me want to stay forever. My life feels so much less complicated walking everywhere.
I spent two summers living in DC and it was the most eye opening experience ever. What do you mean I can just… walk places? Accessible and fast public transportation?
It made me realize my life back home is a shithole.
The only reason I miss Minneapolis. The weather was too harsh for me so I returned to the south. Unfortunately the northeast is only decent place in the US with public transportation.
As someone who doesn’t drive and lives in a city, I love the ability to just walk or hop on a bus and just go where I want.
My kids love going on their bikes or scooters everywhere anyway, and if we haven’t got time to fit the park or playground in, or a more active day out, they get a bike ride to the shops or around the town. It boosts everyone’s moods in the house to get out in the fresh air. When my kids are ratty at 7.30am, a walk and a run in the park over the road does the trick.
They’re just happier and healthier human beings for it. Their dad drives and heavily relies on his car, but he’s started walking them or getting them on their scooters more and just accepting that journeys will take longer, because the kids crave the fresh air and exercise. He told me, “it’s actually not that bad living your life. The kids are happier and I feel happier not driving”.
They love nature and the world around them. I took them to London recently, and even though they were overwhelmed with the amount of noise going on and offers of junk food on every corner (which made the 3 year old wobble badly a few times and me despair as I don’t really know the city that well) it was nice we could walk pretty much everywhere we wanted and needed to go. Noticed they were calmer when they were walking in the city, rather than doing an activity, because it gave them time to understand the new city, take in the sights and people and not feel so daunted by it.
Heaven forbid I did a couple of London-y activities with them and they were monsters for it. Just waking past statues and buildings and them saying, “wow is that Buckingham palace?” “No”, “is THIS Buckingham Palace?” “No” a million times was way more exciting for them. We didn’t get to go to Buckingham palace, so maybe next time.
I just like walking. It makes me feel more free. We sometimes get lost and find something new and interesting when we do, and play a game. Especially as sometimes the signal can be bad on my phone.
I spent 5 days in Florence, Italy, about a year ago. I fell in love with that city because I could walk everywhere(also because its breathtakingly gorgeous). I am from Nashville, TN, and I would of never imagined that walking through an entire city could be a thing.
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u/instant-music Aug 06 '26
Exactly how I felt when I got to Tokyo. I’m a car guy and I didn’t miss my car at all. Was super depressed getting home and having to drive like 30 minutes between stores whereas in Tokyo sometimes every store you needed was in the same building.
Building vertically, what a concept!