Seriously, why is this idea being thrown around? It’s not based in reality, and just fuels into pessimism. I’m American, so I’ll mostly focus on what I’m seeing here.
There has been so much progress, even just over the past decade. I think the reason that it feels like not much is being done is because the United States is so Massive. Even just New York can contain Beligum, Switzerland and the netherlands.
Looking at the US on a macro scale could give someone a picture of a country eternally doomed to have shitty transit and suburban sprawl forever. Thankfully, we have a beautiful think called local government.
There are a good number of places that you can go in the US that are very walkable and have good transit. Sure, it’s not on the level of Europe, but it’s definitely a good starting point if we’re talking about progress. Especially if we’re talking about progress within our lifetimes.
There are a lot of cool projects going on in the US right now, such as new rail lines, rail extensions, new BRT lines, and work being done on density. And of course roped into that we can’t forget about the massive California High-Speed Rail project, which if successful could have major implications for rail in the United States at large.
Is this enough? No. But it is real progress, and a sign that we’re at the beginning of real change in this country for transit and walkability.
And if you still think the US is shit and you really feel inclined to move out of your current suburban hell hole, you don’t even have to leave the US to do so. There are cities where you can go today in the US where you don’t have to own a car and can get around by walking. Not everything is a 6 lane stroad with giant parking lots and dead strip malls. We have DC, Philly, Boston and NYC as prime examples, which may not seem like much but NYC alone has 8.8 million people and could sure as shit fit way more.
Sure, we may never live to see the whole US become the netherlands, but I don’t think it’s unrealistic to think that certain places in the US could be seriously be at that level within our lifetimes.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”
Also, vote.
Nationalize the rail system and give us interstate high speed rail dern it
I don’t think you understand the critique. The problem is all of the single-story and two-story construction. There’s no way to fix that quickly. It took a century to build it all. It’s going to take twice as long to migrate all of that low density into higher density construction and decrease the mileage required to live normal lives. Right now, the average suburbanite has to travel an insane number of total miles to do the basics of what they need to do for their families - food, healthcare, schooling, shelter, clothing, socializing, multi-generational relationships, work.
It’s not like local governments can build light rail or even busses to even 50% of the necessary things. Plus they’d have to change zoning codes against all the NIMBY pushback, plus it would take decades to consolidate those activities into higher density buildings.
No, the USA is fucked and it’s going to remain fucked for a long time.
I just don’t understand how any of this means the US is fucked. For example, in Georgia the majority of the population lives in small area of the state. Even if there’s a lot of suburban sprawl in the area, there are transit solutions that can accommodate for that, and we don’t have to tear up any suburbs to do it.
You’re right. We absolutely could build transit solutions, but people become dejected because we don’t. At least not in many places.
I’m in the SF Bay Area. It’s been dense here for a long time and there’s plenty of tax money sloshing around, but transit improvements move glacially slowly. I want to ride my bike to work. I want to take the bus to my kids pool. But I can’t. The infrastructure isn’t there, and there is no concerted regional effort to build it. Sure, we might have high speed rail in California decades from now, but meanwhile I have to keep driving literally everywhere. Unfortunately.
Yeah I hear you. Fortunately for CA HSR it seems like they’re pretty set on finishing up in about a decade, and I hope that remains the case and you get to see it and use it.
There’s no money for it, doing it requires obtaining rights of way the city doesn’t have, the belt highways are built specifically to prevent this, etc, etc, etc. The amount of time it would take to build these systems is its own problem. The only way to do it would be under socialist central planning, and it absolutely wouldn’t make any sense to build it into the suburban sprawl. Doing so would cement that sprawl by building additional infrastructure into a footprint that logistically is unsustainable anyway.
Hey I won’t probably live to see France be the Netherlands in biking, but we too move forwards!
I know all the enshittyfication/capitalism in social media pushes Trump(well you have a way choosing your presidents don’t you…) Police murdering minorities, conspiracy theories etc etc etc so people get dopamine locked to their feed. It’s quite infuriating to say the least.
Cheers for you!
A European friend.
I love how this entire post is written in a way that assumes that the US = North America.
In many ways, Canada is even more fucked than America. Many Canadian cities have been amalgamated with their surrounding suburbs in order to usurp urbanists from city governments.
Of course, there will always be a handful of awesome walkable neighborhoods, but they will continue rising in price until nobody can afford living in them. You can make arguments all you want at the local scale, but the macro scale says that we aren’t building enough dense housing to keep up with population growth (in Canada at least), which means we are still not on a good trajectory. Until some of those indicators start moving in a different direction, it’s reasonable to claim that North America is “doomed” in the sense that they aren’t actually addressing the problem, and the problem gets worse the longer it goes unaddressed.
