Driving Is Losing Its Allure for More Americans

Re:Driving Is Losing Its Allure for More Americans by rplst8 on Sunday February 07, 2016 @06:00PM (#11055406)

Not everyone feels this way though. I had a fairly rural upbringing in the northeast and I long for a less dense, no traffic, laid back way of life. Unfortunately, our culture has chosen to forget that way of life. However, one aspect of living a rural lifestyle is that life without a car is almost impossible in this day in age.

I personally think urbanization brings with it more problems that it solves. While they are more social perhaps, cities are anything but sustainable and aren't a natural way for humans to live with nature. Cities are a breeding ground for man made disaster and are IMHO one of the reason the fear of terrorism is winning out over personal freedom.

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Re:Driving Is Losing Its Allure for More Americans by bunderbunder on Sunday February 07, 2016 @06:26PM (#11055509)

I'm not sure why you'd say that cities are unsustainable. All the folks who research this stuff seem to agree that urban living is more sustainable; urbanites tend to use less resources every way you cut it. They drive less, their houses are smaller, their houses leak less energy because they typically have fewer surfaces exposed to the outside environment, they can rely more on common infrastructure for moving resources around instead of having to have everything moved around by truck, etc etc.

I'm also not convinced you can really blame urbanites for the fear of terrorism. Cities might be the preferred target for terrorist attacks, but at least in the USA people it's rural folks who tend to be more worried about terrorism while urbanites tend to take a more balanced view of the subject.

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Re:Driving Is Losing Its Allure for More Americans by abalashov on Sunday February 07, 2016 @07:10PM (#11055684)

Suburbs also make kids totally dependent on their parents to get to activities, friends, etc.

[Highly urban-oriented personality here, decidedly with you in general ...]

Here, a purely rationalistic and quantitative analysis might not back this up. It's not necessarily clear that there are fewer vehicle-miles travelled and fossil fuels expended in stocking every corner grocery in a dense urban metropolis vs. one 3000-mile salad backhauled to a Walmart SuperCenter to which everyone within a 10 mi radius has to drive. Pound for pound, the latter approach might actually be more cost and resource-efficient in a lot of cases.

But of course, there's more to life than robotic efficiency.

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