Great that you like it. Your health, and the world's, however, does not. Shame about that.

If your implication is that suburbia is a blite on mine and the globe's health....

[C I T A T I O N N E E D E D]

I enjoy an hours walk with the dog daily, solid lifting program, about 20 miles a week of cardio, and a vegan diet.

Doctor thinks I'm the picture of health.

I don't understand how you can be so oblivious, but maybe you really just don't get it. Let me spell it out for you: Suburbia means that every trip out of the house will require a car.

This is a not a living style that we can afford for everyone. Great that you enjoy it, but enabling it for everyone is simply unsustainable.

Right now you are offloading it's cost externalities elsewhere:

Cost on Your Health: More driving = less walking = decreased life-expectancy. More driving = more air polution = decreased life-expectancy

Cost on the planet: More driving = more greenhouse gases = global warming.

If you want to learn more: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/812199726/why-sprawl-could-be... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reducing-street-s...

You make many terrible lifestyle assumptions and its insulting to me to call me 'oblivious' and frankly, it is unnecessary and below this forum.

More driving does not exclude a healthy walking routine.

More driving != equal more net green house gases. Yes the ICE generates greenhouse gases, but check out the carbon footprint of a battery supply chain for an EV sometime, or that of the MTA, MBTA, logistical supply chain of supplying the ENTIRE nyc 5 boroughs.

Bottom line, I'm willing to engage a deepdive discussion with critical eyes, not endure a superficial antisuburbia smear campaign while being namecalled.

We are not talking about your lifestyle. We are discussing effect of urban sprawl on the population and on the world. I was just so surprised that somebody on this forum could be able to miss the point so entirely, and be so ready to fight for whats clearly an indefensible position.

Walking More driving means your natural walking related to commute and errands goes to 0. There is a reason american states have a huge obesity problem compared to lots of european countries.

Cars Are you seriously comparing the carbon footprints of a personal car compared to the metro?

More driving means more green house gases. This is not about what vehicle you use, it's about the fact that urban sprawl requires a vehicle for even the most basic errands. This is unsustainable.

Not to mention do realize people can live in cities where they walk to work, walk to the grocery store, walk to gym, and walk to a restaurant?

>be so ready to fight for whats clearly an indefensible position

I really fail to see this as a reasonable expectation of dialogue and exchange of ideas if you're so cemented in your views.

> Suburbia means that every trip out of the house will require a car.

That is quite a generalization. Some suburbs can be like that, with houses for miles on end and nothing else. That seems like the exception though.

Plenty of suburban neighborhoods have walkable commerce nearby. I have never lived in a city. And yet, I've never lived in a place where I couldn't walk to at least a supermarket. Currently I live in very suburban (borderline rural, really) area and nearly everything I could need is within a 15 minute walk (multiple supermarkets & pharmacies, hardware store, clothing, restaurants, movies, medical, etc.)

Its not a generalization. This is what suburb sprawl means: https://www.treehugger.com/understanding-suburban-sprawl-409...

The no.1 factor is single-use zoning. This means people live in a certain zone, and commerce happens in another zone. No amount of personal anecdotes will affect this fact.

It is a generalization to assert "Suburbia means that every trip out of the house will require a car", when it is easy to show there are counterexamples where this is not true.

One could say "There are suburban areas where every trip requires a car" and that's a true statement. The generalization is not a true statement.

I think it’s pretty clear what the responder intended, but sure. Here’s a citation:

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...

No it really isn't clear what the responder intended, and the contextless data point about vehicle emissions says nothing about the implications of a suburban style city on the health of the planet.

But it is pretty sad for the rest of the world. In Latin-America our oldest cities are European-style cities, totally walkable. The new developments (say last 50-60) are mostly American-style suburban hell.

I think you are missing my point.

Beauty is in the eye if the beholder

Did you grow up with suburban car culture? How do you know your frame of reference isn't biased?

Did you grow up without it? Are you biased as a result of that? Bias is practically impossible to eliminate here.

(You could try to find people who moved from one place to another, and ideally limit it to those whose reason for moving had nothing to do with their preferences... and poll them. I don't know how possible that is. It likely also makes a difference at what age they moved.)

I grew up in a car-centric country with fairly poor public transport, and have since moved to London. Here it’s genuinely faster to take public transport to most places than it is to drive.

I occasionally wish I had a car (say for a weekend getaway) but it’s rare enough that I’m happy to live with rentals for those occasions.