I’ve lived in Austin since 1999. In 2012 I moved from a suburban area to downtown greatly in part because it would take me at least a thirty minute drive each way to get anything done. The moment I moved downtown, I rarely used my car. The best restaurants, coffee shops, and bars in the city are minutes away on foot or bike. Super markets, pharmacies, etc are really close. Anything I can’t I can order from Amazon and have it within hours or the next day. That’s one vehicle making multiple stops versus dozens of vehicles going to stores.
The quality of life dive my move is significantly higher now that I don’t have to battle traffic.
There are lots of places in the US like this. Most of us are too busy being out and doing shit to comment about it. I don’t have great transit options here, so it’s different from my years in Europe, but it’s sufficient.
I obviously cant get to every bar, venue, museum, and place with public transit. My access to gourmet foods and exceptional stuff is limited. The life I’m leading now is very low footprint and again it’s sufficient for me.
I sometimes can’t believe how we are ridiculed by people who have never even set foot outside of the EU or even watched a travel show. You are really really focusing on the wrong things.
Where I live down town has one grocery store and it is the expensive chain. A family could save money with a cheap used car.
I doubt it is enough to offset the cost of purchase, fuel, insurance, maintenance, registration, and in many areas property taxes. Driving even a cheap used car is rather expensive.
Not entirely, but cars are useful tools so a few other things as well. Don’t forget that large family implies lots of bus pases while the car has the.same cost.
I was today years old when I heard about the 15-minute city conspiracy theory on NPR. It’s quite a thing that after 30 years of continual assaults on reason like the ozone layer, George Bush, Iraq, global warming, Alaska Barbie, “I’m Not A Witch”, Jim Inhofe, Trump, COVID & Giuliani - Republicans are still capable of surprising me with their stupidity.
I was driving to a farm when I heard about that. Imagine being scared that public transit is going to make getting place to place harder
Democrats are just as deep in this stupidity. Humans are stupid ,the question is do you have the guts to admit this includes you.
I live in a village, popn ±2000, within 10 mins walk we have two schools, supermarket, railway station, music academy, dance hall, sports facilities, and within 15 mins by e-bike (next villages) a hospital, commune admin services, more shops etc. It helps that services cluster along the river valley, but the e-bike helps a lot to climb up the side.
In much of the world population is no longer rising, so we shouldn’t just assume growing cities, rather provide better services near to existing housing stock - much of that is rural.I’m loving this climate series. Wish they had this much coverage on these issues all the time.
Gawwwwwd.
Now people are against convience!? Just drive to a different town to use THEIR Walmart and McDonald’s if you think it’s such a big deal. I’m sure your corporate chain experience will be very different. 🙄
Less driving is good for you, me and the whole planet.
Srsly I hate u all…
The conspiracy theories, as per usual, are not actually based on any logic.
The one that my government keeps repeating (and no one believes them by the way) is that it would enable the local authority to essentially dictate where you live and where you work. That they would restrict you from leaving your zone.
Of course this makes absolutely no sense because nothing like that has ever been suggested and even if it were the case, unless every area of the country was upgraded into one of these zones you’d still have to have people legitimately travel in and out of the zones anyway. If only to ensure the businesses that were not fortunate enough to be located in the biggest cities, didn’t run out of employees.
Well technically, as demonstrated by some proposed anti-abortion laws, the right to travel is not enumerated and thus, according to some republicans, does not exist. Just like the right to privacy. So if you are already drinking the koolaid, travel restrictions are possible.
Maybe we can convince them with some entertainment? Have every zone select 2 tributes every year to compete in a death match Olympics of sorts.
Reeee they want to lock us into little boxes where everything we could ever want is at our fingertips.
God I hate reactionaries.
Climate change alone can’t get passed the same two…
15 minute cities are arguably easier to implement because they can be done on the local level instead of national. A lot of the uproar about this comes from out of town extremists who should be ignored in local decision making.
