> I want X, Y, Z and I can't live without A, B, C and also I really like 1, 2, 3

Well yeah sure... that's why we completely fucked up the world in less than 100 years. It doesn't really qualify as an answer though.

Plenty of places, and times, where people had kids and no cars, you only """need""" a car now because we built everything around them.

I understand this argument, but genuinely wonder how this works in European cities. Maybe it's because in cities most people just take the stroller on the subway?

The transport infrastructure very much determines this. If you live in a city with good public transport you don't need a car. I have two kids and live in the UK. When the kids we born we got a car but didn't need it much as many places were accessible by light rail, in a place with ok (but not great) public transport. Then we moved to a place that was badly connected and had two cars. Now we've moved to somewhere with better transport and the kids are old enough they can cycle just about anywhere they're interested in going. Going to sell one of the cars soon.

I'd love to have a light, inexpensive electric (or even ICE) I can use to transport kids. It would save my family thousands of dollars per year. I don't need the tons of metal.

A lot depends on the size of your kids, and the layout of your neighborhood, and your local climate. In my neighborhood (south side of Chicago) a lot of people schlepp their kids around on the back of bikes (electric or otherwise), either long bikes with a[n extra] seat on the back, or with a trailer, or both. Not sure how that stands safety-wise, but it sure is a lot lower-impact than even my Prius hybrid. Anecdata, but I feel like I'm seeing more of these families lately.

edit: add clarifying word

I mean why not get a used Corolla for something like 4k? Maybe 5k? I don't know how much you are spending, but an old Toyota will be reliable past 200 000 miles, easy and cheap to repair, and you can find one that was a one owner car, ideally a grandma or priest.

You might be interested in the Suzuki Mirage as well.

If you are stressed about reliability, don't worry. You need to do regular maintenance (oils, fluids, filters, tires) and you'll stay on the road longer than brand new cars. I had a Chevrolet Aveo that had the radiator blow up while leaving the dealer!

> you don’t have kids.

Or rich enough to live in walkable neighborhoods.

Walkable does not imply expensive. If it does, that's a (local government) policy choice.

To my constant dismay, that's the government choice in much of the US these days.

In the US walkable means either unsafe or very expensive or occasionally both.

Changing this would be very challenging because we have also decided that real estate should be an investment. This means it should always go up, which orients urban planning toward making housing unaffordable. The primary role of the car is driving further away to escape rent extraction, which is sharply at odds with making cities walkable.

The only way to have a walkable city that is affordable is to get those crime rates up. Maybe that’s what SF is trying to do. But even that doesn’t work if you have people like OpenAI locating there and making people work in the office and paying $300k+ entry level.

I'm eagerly awaiting the urban planning renaissance in Memphis, then (highest violent crime rate for a large city in the US). Though violent crime is dropping over time, there was a resurgence following COVID. I couldn't find any statistics on whether that is sustained or has since started to decline.

In CA it is.

I am not aware of a single walkable city or town in the US that is not expensive.