Tuesday, May 24, 2011

True Freedom

The first commenter on this article neatly expresses how a lot of people see the world.
True Freedom at 4:27 PM May 16, 2011

I'd like to see us quit building high density condos and cramming more and more people into each of our little cities. This only exacerbates the problem.. more traffic, more congestion, more pollution..

As I've tried to get across many times, a lot of people have experienced development which is too-dense-but-not-quite-dense-enough and without sufficient alternative transit options. In this world, our friend True Freedom is correct. But if you have alternative transit, and you have sufficient population for walkable neighborhoods with retail and other amenities, then it stops being the case that more people exacerbate the problem. More people don't have to equal more traffic and more congestion. The problem isn't too many people, it's too many cars.