Another demonstration of how NYC is the only real city in America and anywhere else is a suburb larping as a metropolis.
You can’t call yourself a metropolis unless half the population uses public transit: change my view.
Ok! As per the marriam-webster definition of a metropolis:
the chief or capital city of a country, state, or region,
the city or state of origin of a colony (as of ancient Greece),
a city regarded as a center of a specified activity,
a large important city.
As per Cambridge:
a very large city, often the most important city in a large area or country.
Collins:
A metropolis is the largest, busiest, and most important city in a country or region.
Britannica:
a very large or important city — usually singular
Oxford:
A very large urban settlement usually with accompanying suburbs. No precise parameters of size or population density have been established. The structural, functional, and hierarchical evolution of global metropolises is rooted as much in the past as in the present: modern information and communications technology may be more advanced than the 19th-century telegraph, but the processes and outcomes are much the same (Daniels (2002) PHG 26). ‘[Berlin’s] wealth of facilities, as well as their scatter across the metropolis, can be understood only in the light of the city’s history and, paradoxically, its troubles.
Longman:
a very large city that is the most important city in a country or area
You:
NYC but only if half the people use public transit
All those definitions use “city”. Does the definition of city require the kind of density that would make relying mostly on self-owned cars impossible? Depends, in america no, in other countries maybe.
Does the definition of city require the kind of density that would make relying mostly on self-owned cars impossible?
Ooooo, self-moving goalposts, nice!
No. “City” is a legal designation for an inhabited area. Some legal frameworks place a minimum population requirement for designation as a city but none (AFAIK) require a population density value.
For example, Oklahoma City is the largest city in the US by land area (or it was a few years ago) because the city limits were drawn that way. Population density was and is very low but it’s still a city.
not OP, but according to some of those definitions (cambridge, collins, longman), NYC would be the only metropolis in the US, as it is the US’ largest, busiest, and most important city.
It goes by region. LA, San Diego, Chicago, Sacramento, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Detroit, Charlotte, Tulsa, San Antonio, Dallas, Atlanta, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Denver, etc… all fall under the definitions of a metropolis. And the most important city in US is not NYC, it’s Washington DC. NYC is just the most populated and industrialized, DC trump’s it in significance because that’s the epicenter of trade, labor, and industry policies
Nah buddy I grew up in Atlanta you can’t convince me it’s a metropolis.
There’s a nice little downtown core and then 99% suburban sprawl. Fuck that
I don’t think they were being literal or looking for a dictionary definition. I think they were saying the definition of a real city should hinge on the use of mass transit.
Personally I think anywhere that’s car dependent isn’t somewhere I’d want to live.
change my view.
Me and the Sullivan twins would like to have a conversation with you and a few baseball bats in the alley out back if you’re seriously arguing that Boston isn’t a metropolis… and don’t you dare fucking insult the Red Sox, Dunkin’ or the Bruins (actually, we care more if you bad mouth our college hockey teams) unless you’d like to qualify for Medicare early.
What are u people smoking, cars are awesome.
NYC metro is bankrupt and unmaintained. They can’t even build a link to JFK.
The state should give the city the metro instead of raiding it to save ski resorts upstate.
Also you should either block this community yourself or be banned for it. Fuck off car shill.
Driving is more fun when there are more viable alternatives. I don’t like driving, but it’s my only real choice where I live so I do it begrudgingly, and you have to share the road with me. Think of all the people who don’t want to drive (on account of it being dangerous, costly and/or mentally taxing) suddenly not being in cars, and how much traffic that would free up for you to zip around instead!
Also, calling a public service “bankrupt” is really weird to me. How many tax dollars are we spending on public highways and freeways again? Do suburbs, which are designed to be car-dependent, provide a net gain or net cost in tax revenue to cities?
Sorry it’s a fact
https://gothamist.com/news/a-48-billion-debt-is-crushing-the-mta-paying-it-off-could-disrupt-the-future-of-nyc-transit
I’m not arguing that in better world this should not be the case. But in current capitalist reality it is the case.
They are legally not allowed to file for bankruptcy
In Amsterdam the mode share for all trips is like 30% for biking and for walking and like 20% for driving and for transit
Why isn’t public transport popular in the US? It’s cheaper, it’s cleaner, it saves time, it’s overall better if done right.
Well part of it is this conspiracy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
But mostly you can blame Eisenhower for wanting to make US cities harder to nuke, racism for making suburbs appealing for segregationists etc.
50% of Boston’s workforce commutes using the T every day, but it doesn’t show up on the map. I’m assuming because most of those stops are in outlying towns and, therefore, only make up a minority of the commuting workforce in each area. According to the federal government, the T is the third best public transit system in the US due to it being the fastest average commute out of any by at least half an hour, only outclassed by the quality of DC and Seattle (I believe, might be Portland that’s #1? I’d have to look again).
I grew up with public transport and now drive the car daily. Car is so much more convenient.
I don’t understand what’s all the fuss is about. Like it’s impossible to haul a lot of groceries in the bus and u have to wait in the cold for the bus to come. And sometimes there are a lot of people and u are like sardines there.
Cars don’t scale.
As soon as there is real traffic, cars become inefficient trains.
If you’re somewhere that doesn’t have much traffic yet, it’ll seem fine, but that doesn’t always last.
If you can make a bicycle work, that’s much healthier and cheaper to own and operate for all those people that can’t afford a car, or don’t want to be indentured to it. Cargo bikes even work fine for groceries, depending on your family size.
Driving these days is just being stuck in traffic for an hour at a time then wasting 20 minutes searching for a parking spot and being late for work.
You should move. I live in a rural area and I don’t know wtf would I do without vehicle
It has a bad reputation cause it isn’t well funded, I do agree buses aren’t perfect but in my city they come often enough and there is actually plenty of space to rest so it is not a traumatic experience
Besides the fact that underground trains take care of most transportation
It’s not “I want public transportation because public transportation is fun”, it’s “I want good public transportation because it’s better for the environment and society and urban planning and etc etc etc”
It’s not “I want public transportation because public transportation is fun”,
Public transportation is kinda fun though. It’s great to relax and read a book or social media instead of staring at the backs of cars and cursing.
Car is so much more convenient.
(Okay before you read this, this assumption is for Cities only. Rural areas do not apply at all lol. Suburbs are also still part of cities)
This is actually an effect of creating a car centric infrastructure and city planning revolving around roads and parking.
You have to imagine for a moment what an entire city would look like without cars as the core transportation method. For starters, suburbs wouldn’t be a thing, everything would be spaced about 4-8x closer, large supermarkets would be rare, especially grocery stores, pedestrian and cyclist traffic would be the most common form of transportation, and then busses/streetcars, and then trains.
You would likely be getting groceries more frequently, but it would be an average 7 minute walk to your local grocery store, and a flat 3 minute cycle if you don’t want to carry any groceries and put in even less effort than walking. Busses and trains would be reserved for mostly commercial traffic like traveling to work, city center, or other neighborhoods.
There are plenty of real life examples of cities and entire countries that are developed like this. Netherlands is always brought up, but places like Sydney follow this planning despite also having a lot of cars. Even several US cities were like this in the early 1900-1940s.
The reason busses and trains absolutely suck in the USA, is that it is treated as secondary transport. Busses are rarely running with enough frequency to make them viable, and they have to travel the same distance and use the same roads as cars, because every neighborhood was designed to accommodate cars first. There should be almost no need to get on a Bus to do grocery shopping.
Same logic applies to trains. Lots of people drive first to take the train, which makes it much less effective. Also the USA hasn’t properly invested into rail for like 70 years, so every system you see is slow as hell and never on time.
You’re the first person I’ve seen on the various fuck cars communities I see to actually acknowledge rural areas exist, good job. We can’t all just walk everywhere.
Yeah one of the reasons I brought up Sydney is because there’s an entire massive rural area of Australia with people living in practically the middle of nowhere.
Which is why they have their infamous truck trains that drive for days just to transport supplies around.
But when you hit the city, the landscape instantly changes. It’s almost cool going from seeing outback trucks to JDM wrx and evos everywhere, lol. I assume it’s because only gear heads and enthusiasts keep cars around because they have metro, busses, and a water ferry that takes you around.
Walkable cities are even better. I used to drive daily and then I moved close enough to walk to work with conveniently located grocery stores. Didn’t drive much at all for years and THAT was convenient. Never sit in traffic and just stop in the store and pick up a few things on your way home from work. As long as I have to be working that is as close to livin’ the dream as possible for me.
See there are some problems here.
I can’t get to my doctor, or dentist, or grocery store, or pharmacy, or bowling alley, or friend’s house, or closest pond, or my parents, or the airport without driving to each of those places.
The only way this gets solved is if there is a huge network of buses going to every neighborhood at tight intervals then each business Park and public attraction, etc at tight intervals. In a town of what 150k-200k?
Outside of metro areas, this doesn’t work. At all.
This is because a lot of well-built towns (or cities) have been bulldozed and rebuilt for cars instead of people. Or some built directly with only cars in mind (I wonder if car and oil companies had a role in this…, they did). This is why one of the key points (maybe the first step and the most important one) is to allow, invest in and develop better urban areas: allow two or more stories buildings, so not only areas are denser, thus it makes sense to serve them with transit, but also your doctor is allowed to have their office there; so your dentist; so are stores and pharmacies (that can only thrive in an environment where people live, not a suburban sprawl of cars and megastores). Cities built like this always have fast and efficient transit to the airports, to recreational areas (parks and your pond) and most likely to your parents.
Banning cars where you are FORCED to use a car to do anything doesn’t make sense. Building fake “bike-lanes” that lead to nowhere in zero-density areas with no point of interest (a store, your doctor, a station…) also doesn’t make sense.
What you can and should do is advocate for the abolishment of outdated zoning laws and the proposal of new transit projects. Change in those areas takes the most because it’s like starting to cultivate strawberries on a desert.
Buses can go all of those places. A system of regional light rails in buses would probably work. Urban sprawl makes it difficult.
It can work well though. My city of about 60k is a great example.
- As a city built out hundreds of years ago, it’s more centralized than most American cities, with a town square, offices, library, post office, etc in a tight walking radius.
- As a bedroom community of a major city, we have a couple train stations.
- As a city dedicated to quality of life and transit oriented growth, we grew the train station into a transit hub for buses, cycling, taxi, ride share, rail trail and micro mobility. It’s all surrounded by higher density housing - bigger apartment and condo complexes than elsewhere
- As a city watching its business interests, that walkable town center is a center of shops and restaurants from many culture
As someone in a neighborhood of single family homes, I have frequent buses stopping at my corner. However I frequently walk to the town center, to see a movie, enjoy a restaurant, etc.
Yes, transit can work well in medium and even small towns, depending non how they’re set up and run
Honest question. Does everyone in this instance live in a major city?
Reform alone will not be enough. It needs a new revolution.
