This is very true. Unfortunately such places are almost all very expensive these days. So if you’re not already into late retirement age (and you moved there 40 years ago when it was affordable), then it’s not economically feasible for most people to get in now.

Visit any rural diner between 8:00 and 9:00 (or urban diner between 9:00 and 11:00) when it's otherwise quiet. I'll bet you will find a cluster or two of elderly people swapping lies.

Indoor malls used to be similar gathering places for people who wanted to walk without being in the weather.

Basically, look anywhere the 20- or 30-somethings aren't.

Yeah, or any McDonalds in the Midwest around that time. I always feel out of place if I happen to stop at one during that time on vacation.

I find it amusing when Americans tell stories about malls being ghost towns. In Australia they are almost reaching the limits of how many people can fit inside the buildings and the whole road and public transport systems are based around the locations of them.

I have no idea what the difference between here and America is. Amazon is not super big here like it seems to be in America.

I just did some googling and arrived at some (very rough) numbers (total population / approximate number of malls).

In the U.S., there are ~2,827 people per mall.

In Australia, there are ~15,337 people per mall.

There are probably just way too many malls in the U.S. given a population that's moving to online shopping.

where I live desirable malls are always packed and there is a steep cutoff to ghost town. in fact the ghost towns have existed for so long most are demolished or in the process of.

There's lots of small towns across America that are cheap to live in close to a couple shops and restaurants. It might not be New York where you have a billion options but its enough to have a place to walk where you can get to know the regulars.

Places can change. There's nothing stopping suburbia from becoming more walkable and friendly to the elderly other than choices we made.

There's actually a lot stopping it. First and foremost, reams of zoning and other regulations that are not easy to repeal. Second, the entire physical environment poured in concrete which is expensive and difficult to retrofit well. The street patterns of suburbia are hostile to walkability because they intentionally increase the distance between points with poor connectivity and dendritic routing. This is why the majority of suburban areas decline after the first generation of development and never revitalize.

Places CAN change, but there is a lot stopping suburbia from becoming more walkable.

In the case of American suburbs, places will need to change by basically tearing everything down and rebuilding differently, either a piece at a time or all at once.

We can't mix together residential and commercial properties in the US (anymore) due to zoning laws, so walkable cities are effectively on life support and are only going to get more and more rare as time goes on. Each time a mixed-use building is demolished, another piece of a walkable city dies that likely won't ever come back. Suburbs and unaffordable metropolises are poised to kill off the ability to live without a car.

> We can't mix together residential and commercial properties in the US (anymore) due to zoning laws

You make this statement like there are national zoning laws. Doing exactly this is common in northeastern New Jersey, and the result is pretty dense and walkable suburban areas. That said, much of this is due to momentum; many of the suburbs were platted before car ownership was widespread and the later ones continued similar, familiar patterns.

Actually the rise of suburbs was subsidized by the federal government.

Separately a lot of state and local legislation that is contentious can be copy pasted and sent along by lobbying groups.

The very definition of suburbia prevents it from becoming elderly and walking friendly: large lots for houses with garages and multi car wide driveways, 6+ lane road crossings, parking lots spacing everything out.

I can’t imagine any elderly person with mobility issues being able to cross any road with more than a 25mph speed limit, especially the main roads that are 4 to 8 lanes wide at intersections with 40mph speed limits.

In NZ lockdown really changed my perspective. With very little traffic the roads became the footpath and were heavily used by kids on bikes and families walking. Birds became were more numerous and it was very quiet.

I’m not sure how you get to this without literally shutting down the country, but that aspect was nice.

Arguably the country was shut down by cars decades ago. You experienced it reopening, in a sense. Hate that we call it "closing the street" when we stop letting drivers terrorize people walking on them.

Mobility, flexibility of schedule, and portable privacy+storage are far too beneficial to just give up. If there's a problem with the current way those goals are achieved, then we need to solve that, not abandon all our technological progress.

Ill-health, loneliness, road deaths, pollution, ultra-expensive infrastructure: if 'technological progress' is the city designed around the car, I want none of it.

Technological progress is the ability to go where you want, when you want, even if it's 2AM, without having to worry about catching something or being stabbed on a train, and all of your things are with you when you get there. If you don't find a way to provide that benefit, you will never upend the car.

People regularly getting stabbed in trains doesn't feel like a technological problem.

Seems like there are two attractors in the mass transit space:

Attractor 1: The mass transit is safe and clean. Everyone uses it, because it is convenient. Because everyone uses it, people care about keeping it safe, clean, and convenient.

Attractor 2: The mass transit is dirty and dangerous. Only poor people use it, because they have no other choice; all middle-class people use cars. Because no one important uses mass transit, no one really cares about making it less dirty and less dangerous.

From what I heard, the former attractor seems more frequent in Europe, the latter in USA.

There are also other things involved in the attractors, such as width of roads, sizes of blocks, whether sidewalks exist or not, etc. These would be even more resistant to change.

I'm not that interested in 'upending' the car, in the sense of getting rid of it, but creating much more balanced systems and urban design as seen in countries like the Netherlands - where you have the choice of multiple ways to achieve every goal, and where you don't have to drive to have a safe commute. The city designed around the car is just poor urban design for any goal other than the convenience of the car.

Cars are really, really, handy. I love mine! But I also think helicopters are cool. Both should be severely restricted within the city.

Letting me go where I want, when I want, means I can't let my kids go anywhere, ever.

Reducing or removing cars isn’t ‘abandoning all our technological progress’. There have been several good links on HN about cities that have reduced car usage and the effects. Here are two on Pontevedra.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18014283

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21267283

"more walkable and friendly to the elderly" are very separate things, usually in conflict. The elderly face disability like arthritis, poor body temperature control, uncertainty about lower leg position or pavement contact, bad vision, bad hearing, confusion, and numerous other troubles. No normal or reasonable amount of "more walkable" is going to work.

They need family members who care. The family members need parking spaces. The fewer steps from bedroom to car, the better. A nice goal would be to have less than 50 feet from bedroom to car.

Personal mobility devices like walkers, wheelchairs and scooters mix well with pedestrian traffic, not so much with vehicular traffic.

My grandma was very feeble at the end of her life and the biggest pain point for her was getting her in and out of the car. If we could get her in her wheelchair and just roll her down the street for brunch, she would have gone out so much more. Instead we had to get her to the car, then pick her up to get into the car, buckle her down, fold up her wheelchair, drive somewhere, then do everything in reverse. Then do it two more times on the way home. She disliked the entire process so much she usually didn't want to bother leaving the house.

From what I've seen with older relatives, if you're able to stay mobile, you'll stay mobile longer and have a better quality of life. I don't think it's impossible to have housing and shops together and still have parking within a reasonable distance -- for example a town center with parking lots a couple blocks from the main street.

This is how we got where we are now. Making things more difficult for cars seems to increase the quality of the experience for those not using cars. Making things easier for cars increases the problems cars cause.

It’s a huge subsidy that society pays to have cars around. There is a huge cost due to the space dedicated to cars, parking them, driving them and keeping them from killing people.

I have seen something similar in China. Old people socializing outside a lot, playing games, chatting, exercising (in old person kind of way) and dancing.

When I visited Beijing I mistakenly referred to the exercise grounds in a park as kid's playgrounds... turns out they're actually there for seniors to use and they sure do... crowded every day. Sidewalk food vendors along every street also promote socializing.

Chinese friends of mine would like to bring their parents from China, but they're having nothing to do with it. They don't want to lose the active social network they have at home.

Every evening when it's warm enough to not wear a thick coat, every park has people of all ages dancing, but mostly old people. In the cities I've been to, there are parks in every neighborhood. They have exercise equipment and places to gather and play games or do shared hobbies (kicking a shuttlecock, whip-cracking, etc). Being old in China is incredibly lucky.