Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Infrastructure Week

Probably been awhile since I've been on my soapbox about this, so indulge me.

A built environment that requires the majority of people to make essentially all trips by car is absurd. It is also absurd that even in cities in the US where this is not true - much of NYC, San Francisco, Philadelphia, parts of many other cities - so much priority is given to cars, particularly for suburbanites to drive in/drive out.

You don't need "Manhattan" or even "South Philadelphia" to have a walkable environment, where many, if not all, of life's regular daily activities can be walked to, and many more facilitated by decent bus service. Versions of suburbs everywhere in Europe, for example, but few places that are incompatible with walking and public transit. People still own cars, of course, but not necessarily one per driving age household member, and they don't need them for every single trip they take.

I prefer fairly large dense cities, but none of this even incompatible with smallish areas that are largely detached single family homes, just with somewhat different land use patterns.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.