I really think there's something to this. I've been living in a dense urban area that does a poor job of traffic control (San Francisco), and of all the "city problems" that I find tearing most at my mental well-being is the poor urban design.

After a while you realize that there's no such thing as a stress-free, liberating walk. Traffic is so all-pervasive that everywhere you go, you're constantly negotiating your way around vehicular traffic, most of which believes that yielding to pedestrians is a distant second concern to getting around as quickly as possible at any cost. Every cross-walk you use you have to watch yourself for drivers turning left and right who aren't paying attention. Every four-way stop you have to look around and make sure that drivers are actually going to stop for you. Blocks are short, so this is all you're doing all the time.

The sheer volume of infrastructure that's built for cars means there's not much left over. The only places to get that that sense of liberation back besides distant parks or suburbs well outside the municipal core. Any parks of non-trivial size in the city are filled to the brim with roads, many of which actually act as throughfare shortcuts for standard traffic most of the time (e.g. JFK in Golden Gate Park), so you're facing all the car problems as any other street.

After a while it's hard not to be constantly on edge looking out for the next person who's about to do something dangerous to you, which is quite stressful and almost certainly has negative long-term mental effects. It really doesn't have to be the case though — contrast the car-first streets of San Francisco and other American cities to the pedestrian plazas and legitimately car-free urban parks of some cities and Europe, and it's a world of difference. We could be doing so much better.

This is why electric cars are so important. No exhaust, no noise. They're perfect for urban use.

Electric cars don't solve:

* kids being killed if they try to play in the street * urban centres being destroyed by parking lots * elderly people being terrified to cross the street * Dead cyclists etc...

They do solve allowing those of us who want to live in rural areas to do so in an environmentally friendly way. No cities please.

Then use the cars in rural areas where they have a place. They don't belong in cities, electric or not.

And one of the reasons that cities are better for the environment is less need of transportation.

But are cities better for people if you're cramming everyone into less space and want them to move about less? If research says no, we shouldn't be promoting cities, but ways of reducing environmental impact while also reducing density when zoning/land use planning.

"In fact, the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health estimates that city dwellers face a nearly 40 percent higher risk of depression, 20 percent higher chance of anxiety, and double the risk of schizophrenia than people living in rural areas."

I won’t get into the completely different discussion about mental health. You don’t state where your quote comes from, but it would be interesting to know if they say anything about what exactly living in a city makes people more depressed.

But your point about move about less: people living in cities actually move more. You’re much likely to walk or bicycle to shops or work when the distance is one and a half mile than when it’s ten.

Quote is directly from the linked article for this thread.

I don’t want to be restricted to shopping, work, or entertainment that is walking distance or possibly public transit if I’m feeling adventurous, which is what living in a city constrains you to.

I guess you are joking. Or are you seriously trying to say that you have more choices because you are living in a rural area and have to take the car whenever you want to go anywhere?

Just as an example, where I am sitting right now, I have more than 30 restaurants and cafés that I can reach within 5 minutes walk. If I don't mind walking a bit longer, or taking the subway a few stops, for a total traveltime of say 20 minutes, I can reach hundreds, most likely thousands, of restaurants. Shopping and entertainment are similar.

And this is far from a mega-city, but a city with around a million people.

Not joking at all. In the suburbs of a major Tier 2 city near Lake Michigan, via the interstate/toll system throughout said suburbs, I can cover ~60-80 miles per hour. How much can you cover in the city on foot, local roads, or public transit? I assure you, far less, having been exposed to Chicago Loop/West Loop/Bucktown/Ukrainian Village traffic and having to ride the L for a period of time (and occasional jaunts into SF and Manhattan). You might walk or subway it to a restaurant, while I decide to drive to Milwaukee or Naperville for dinner (in the comfort of a private electric vehicle, not a dreadful MTA subway or the BART, or trying to walk in inclement weather with a stroller and kids in tow).

I argue we have equal access to places of interest, and I need a car regardless for access to places public transit doesn't go; it's a net win for me versus inflated city housing and other costs associated with an urban lifestyle. (This ignores temporarily the argument that having access to hundreds or thousands of restaurants and places of shopping is necessary or significantly more valuable) Yes, I spend more time in transit, but the quality of life in transit is much higher than that of it in city life.

From my perspective, I personally cannot see a positive in living in the city now that I have a family. We lead a far better life than we could in an urban core (did I mention my backyard pool?). This is my argument against the stance "city == better!" people seem to take, even when evidence (see: this article) is demonstrating otherwise.

> I can cover ~60-80 miles per hour.

You are totally missing the point. I don't have to cover 60-80 miles per hour, because everything I need and want on a daily basis is close. Where I'm living (Europe) the streets are safe and comfortable to walk and the public transportation is usually nice. I let my two year old ride on my shoulders on the walk to dinner, and he loves riding both buses and trains. And while we do that, I talk with him instead of having him strapped in in a back seat.

And I've had long commutes before. And I absolutely hated to lose 90 minutes a day of the little time I have left after work, sleep and chores. I'd much rather spend that time with my child.

Then I perfectly well understand that city-life isn't for everyone. It's great that you can get a big yard without bankrupting yourself. I've never argued that city-life is better than rural living in all aspects.

But you tried to argue that you have better access to entertainment and shopping because you can drive so fast from where you are. Don't expect anyone to take that seriously.

80% of Americans live in cities. That means if they all moved to rural areas, the population density of rural areas would go up 5X. Would they still be rural then?

That's actually a good question... There is so much land, especially west of the Mississippi, that is almost completely unpeopled that I'm not sure that distributing the people concentrated in the most dense 1000 sq miles would make a significant increase.

We need a Randall Monroe What If?

Much of the land west of the Mississippi isn't arable land or livable in any way, unless you do what they did in Phoenix and pump the rivers dry. That isn't sustainable; it's an environmental disaster.

I live in a very rural area. On three sides of my acreage are cattle.

When I drive in to the city, which I do sometimes, I am imposing a cost on everyone living in that city because I chose to drive.

I still do it sometimes - if I'm going to Ikea I'm not carrying my stuff home on the train - but let's not pretend it isn't a burden on others.

The electric passenger vehicle most important to cities is actually... elevators.

Press a button to call a ride. Press a button to select a destination. 24-hour automated operation, and free-to-use for passengers with hand-carried items.

Compared with an elevator, a street-driven electric car is a bit of a nightmare. The closest horizontal analog is commuter trains on electrified rails, and even those are shaped by car culture.

If a city were planned like a building, and horizontal movement given over to externally-powered single-car on-demand vehicles that move exclusively on dedicated trackways, there wouldn't be so much space and energy wasted on cars.

Exhaust and noise is a problem certainly, but IMO a bigger problem is the ridiculous amount of space that gets reserved to support cars that could be used to support people instead.

If only residents went to planning meetings to complain about a lack of places for people to sleep, instead of for cars to sleep.

They are a sign of urban failure. If your city needs cars your city has failed. Go spend some time a city without cars - or sections of a city that don’t allow cars - I’ll wager you like it.

Unfortunately in the US many criticize such efforts as being like Disneyland - as if that is a bad a thing.

Do you guarantee that the legal items one would normally transport in a car will be allowed on public transportation?

I think most people agree there is _some_ use for automobiles in cities, just like there's _some_ use for helicopters in cities. It's _extremely_ limited though.

I actually think it's silly to allow guns in cars and not on public transport (way more drive-bys than bus-bys, after all) but that's definitely an edge case.

In some states, suburban and rural folks find out they like concentrated areas made for people, not cars, once every year. They love the state fair.

I believe it’s the urban planning involved in accommodating the physical traffic of vehicles the GP is getting at, not the emissions.

Electric vehicles do nothing to address roads occupying more space than sidewalks, for example.

Only when they are significantly smaller than current cars. It isn't just about the emissions, it's about the space that cars take and the speed they are moving.

Electric self driving cars are so important. Sitting in and navigating traffic are huge sources of stress for urbanites. White knuckling it at 70mph in bumper to bumper traffic, or spending 45 minutes in stop and go traffic twice a day, are certainly high stress situations.

That doesn't sound like a real city, tbh. Just a sprawling suburb. TBF 98% of what the US calls "cities" are just giant suburbs of themselves.

Strongly agreed. Nearly all of the major irritants and genuine dangers I face on a daily basis in an urban center are directly caused by cars.

When I was in Copenhagen 4 years ago, cars were pretty plentiful. (Not so much street parking.) I read that car ownership there is about 30%. Where were you thinking of?

As an American, outside of NYC and maybe Boston, 30% car ownership sounds incredibly low to me. I'm in SF, and while I know some who don't, the overwhelming majority of people that I know own a car. I take public transit daily — and I need a car to get to it.

Quick search indicates nowhere in the US is close to 30% car ownership, with NY coming at the lowest at 45% car ownership.

    New York, NY        45.6%
    Newark, NJ          59.7%
    Washington, DC      62.9%
    Jersey City, NJ     62.9%
    Cambridge, MA       63.2%
    Boston, MA          66.2%
    Paterson, NJ        67.0%
    Hartford, CT        67.4%
    San Francisco, CA   70.1%

NYC is a very large city, that really would make more sense being separated from NY state and turned into a separate city-state.

Manhattan alone is larger than many other cities, and it's only one "borough" in the city. If you look at Manhattan by itself, I'm sure you'll see very different numbers on car ownership. It's the people in Bronx, Queens, etc. that skew the numbers.

Just leaving this here: https://www.nycedc.com/blog-entry/new-yorkers-and-their-cars

Exactly, that proves my point. Thanks for the post. Manhattanites' car ownership rate is extremely low, while in places like Staten Island it's very high. (Staten Island is not like the rest of NYC, and has poor public transit. It's basically a suburb.)

Cars are indeed around - and Copenhagen was as car-choked as anywhere else as recently as the 70's. DK/NL cuture shifted in part because of protests saying "Stop using your car to kill children"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_the_Netherlands

I've driven in Amsterdam and paradoxically it's a hell of a lot nicer than driving in, say, LA.

I don't wish to conflate Denmark and the Netherlands but they've both made huge improvements in similar fashion with respect to livable cities. If career allows it I might still move because I want to live somewhere my child can ride a bike to school. Houten comes to mind.

For the average American that's like saying that "30% of the population of this city has legs". Sure that's a lot of people walking around, but if you look around and 70% of the population is in wheelchairs, thats pretty stunning. I've been to Copenhagen. It was lovely. I walked and took public transport everywhere. But the streets _were_ eerily deserted of motor vehicles as compared to any non-European city I've visited.

Fully agree with you, having been in Stuttgart, Germany for a Summer it was great to be able to get anywhere in public transportation

There's no qualifier you can put behind that first comma that makes your opening statement true in the general case.