Part of why I moved to the city was wanting to escape the car based nightmare of the suburbs. Couldn’t do much of anything without a car or an extremely risky walk.
I could have walked a mile to the train station with no sidewalks , and then paid $20 for a ticket into the city on a train that stops at like 10pm, but all of that sucks. I stayed inside and played a lot of video games.
I looked it up, it’s $15 currently. Suburban NJ to Manhattan.
$15 is still kind of a lot when you’re a kid
Damn, I feel blessed then. Australia’s a pretty high cost of living, but our trains (+ the other modes of public transport) are like half that price in Melbourne Australia, and you can travel as much as you like. All day. Almost anywhere in the state where trains, busses and trams go.
(Or at leat most routes)
We are still very car centric though, by international standards.
I hate when nature is absent. It’s not just urban centers. Large suburban parking lots with no trees are a kind of hell for me.
In the US, compare a city like Houston, TX to a city like Portland, OR. Seems like two different planets.
You don’t need to even travel. Compare downtown to Katy. Houston has plenty of nice parts with tons of nature, they just also have 50 square mile cookie cutter ranch house subdivisions.
I like urban centers even when they’re relatively devoid of nature. What I don’t like is when nature is pointlessly absent. A bunch of tall buildings providing living, working and recreational space efficiently to lots of people? Excellent. Asphalt to the horizon so that people can drive to Walmart and then drive to Applebee’s? Soul-crushing.
Awww that’s so sad. Having to be in a parking lot without trees sounds like the worst hell on earth there possibly could ever be 😭
After going to Japan and seeing what is possible with proper city planning… Yes, the American parking lots really are one of the worst offenders when it comes to our infrastructure. They’re an incredible waste of space.
This is why I want to move to the netherlands. Beautiful countryside, walkable cities. Shit, I could bike to nearby cities there if I wanted to.
I’ll never be able to afford to leave the hellhole known as the usa, but damnit I’ll dream.
I live in Norway. Growing up, some days in school were reserved for diverse activities. Some of my friends and I decided to bike to the swimming park in the city ~20 miles away. We didn’t have to bike on car roads at all to get there, as bike lanes and good side paths lead us the whole way. Being able to get anywhere with a bike at the age of 14 is an amazing level of freedom.
Growing up in the 90s in the usa, movies and tv always showed kids riding around on their bikes and not coming home until dark. Where the hell did they go? To get from the suburbs into town would be 10-20 miles riding on the edge of the highway almost wherever you live. No shoulder, no bike lane, no nothing (I did this to get to work for about a year. it sucked, got hit by a truck twice in that time.)
Norway sounds great.
I could stare at the streets and walkways in a typical netherlands city for hours. I love good brickwork. Sometimes I get on google maps and just digitally walk though places. I don’t want to point at amsterdam, because everyone knows amsterdam. Try lelystad, built on land that was underwater not that long ago but reclaimed by modern dutch engineering.
I’d gush about how beautiful their streets are, or I could link a video that does a much better job than I ever could.
i know a place that looks extremely similar to that
Yeah, it’s called america. Unless you zoom in on a liscense plate, you don’t know WHAT state that is.
Well…I guess it’s not Hawaii. Besides that though…
You’re not wrong, but if not for the massive billboards and the american branded vehicles- ive been to a number of cities in Europe and the UK that look like this or worse, with more traffic and more, much larger buildings….(i currently live in Germany…) Also, places in Hawaii do look like this, too, unfortunately…mostly Maui and Hawai’i where there’s this much space, but Ohau’s south shore has been bad far a long time 😕
I’d put down money on Southern California but those medians and a few other things are off.
Reverse image search is yielding Colerain, Ohio. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/10/24/the-talisman-of-colerain
I’m surprised it’s not Breezewood, but close enough lol.
If it came up in Geoguessr I’d say Mexico. But that’s probably just because it looks a bit of a shithole. I’d wager there’s plenty of the US like that too.
Stroads are the worst thing america ever invented.
What the fuck is a stroad? Why is there a distinction between a street and a road?
Summary:
Street = Has businesses, houses, shops and sidewalks. Designed for humans.
Road = Higher speed limit than streets, generally no businesses or sidewalks, as it’s just there to connect areas. Designed for cars.
Stroad = A connection between areas that also has businesses. You have higher speed limits, minimal sidewalks and it’s dangerous/impossible to cross on foot. The only way to get around to different businesses along a stroad is by car.
Seems like people decided to back out a new definition, I don’t think those words mean those things, but whatever.
What comes to mind from the picture is US-1 or 441, both of which were built as highways prior to highways existing and were major east coast routes up and down the coast. They do indeed suck, but it’s mostly due to their historical use as The major highway for the area. The same is true of El Camino real over in San Francisco, real shitty.
That having been said, at least with the first two examples the majority of businesses are indeed car focused. Things like auto dealers, mechanics, Costco, furniture, and other shops you would never go without a vehicle. It seems weird to complain that this type of street exists when it clearly serves a purpose (first as a pre-eisenhower highway, then as a shopping mall for vehicle-oriented purposes). Isn’t it better to keep cars in their own area?
What seems more likely is that the guy in the pic dropped off his car for an oil change and was wandering around waiting (I’ve done this) or that there’s a major gap in public transit (very likely).
If you go to any old town in Europe there are a lot of roads with practically no cars. You can just walk along this wide road through the town fit for dozens of people. The problem is not that there aren’t enough pedestrian sidewalks, the problem is everything in modern infrastructure is being made for cars, and roads are seen as both meant for pedestrians AND cars.
