I'm from Europe but I would be very careful with claiming it's just a few cities or neighborhoods in the US. I made a list of places I could move to eventually, and it's at least two dozen, and that's just because I was focused on cities with significant tech/business scene.
No, I don't. Thank you.
I don't really think soccer moms are a thing outside of the US
Of course, part of the situation was we were in a mostly-residential city, so most kids lived less than a twenty minutes' walk away. But those who didn't mostly came by car.
That's in the city, though. I don't know what things are like in the countryside. From what my friends tell me, they had to take a lot of public bus to go to school and places. I think soccer moms were more of a thing there, because you had a hard time getting anywhere without a car. Less hard than the US, but still.
This sounds terrible. I would much prefer driving 10 minutes to my suburban sports complex.
Now this setting sounds familiar... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
I’m not sure where Americans get the idea Europeans don’t commute by car.
And at least in the Netherlands, sample size of my office (around 300 people) maybe a dozen people max commute by car because they live ~2 hours away or in tiny villages where the trains are only hourly rather than every 10 minutes. I'd assume that metric varies a lot depending on the country you're looking at, and if we're talking about how kids go to school/practice/wherever, I'm willing to bet even in car-heavy European countries that the vast majority of kids take public transport or their bikes.
I have friends with kids in the (rural) North of the Netherlands, and their kid's school is ~15km away from their house. The kids bike that every day, to quote my friend, "they've got legs and wheels, why would I chauffeur them around?"
And you'd take that 1.5hr each way (three hours of commute to go to swim practice, every day??) over having a parent (or a family friend carpooling) spend maybe 10-15 minutes driving you each way?
They actually don't. I mean I do. My wife does, and one or two of our friends do. But almost everyone else we know aren't at all interested in having a walkable city. They love their cars and garages. US cities are the way they are because a great majority of Americans want them that way.
It 100% bums me out, but that's where we are at. Americans that want to walk are a small minority.
A child can walk to say a cornerstore in the US many places no problem but the parents will be placed under arrest for negligence. Most any other place they'd like to go is most practical with public transit involving a long wait or driving by what appears to the child as a private car chartered at his convenience.
I take the local transit when I need to get deeper into the city and take the bus to the city parks around me with my kids. People think I'm a bit of a nut for doing so, seriously wondering why I wouldn't just drive.
I've met people that grew up in Dallas and didn't even know there was light rail. Most people don't have a clue how it works and don't care to spend a minute figuring it out. They don't even bat an eye at the thought of moving further and further out into the burbs, into developments that take ten minutes of driving just to leave one neighborhood.
Have you considered, then, that many people do not actually want this?
>So many cities outside the US manage to do this on a fraction of the budget.
Young yuppies with their Silicon Valley salaries get to spend time in European city AirBnbs and wonder "why can't America be like this?"
If so, the European city planning wouldn’t be popular within the US, but it’s the opposite. The few European style cities are incredibly attractive to live in.
> Young yuppies with their Silicon Valley salaries get to spend time in European city AirBnbs and wonder "why can't America be like this?"
Right.. and? They’re not representative? Or it’s unrealistic? That’s a perfectly reasonable question to ask for those that do get the opportunity to see functional dense urban areas in other places, especially as they don’t require anywhere near SV salaries yet are still lively and safe.
I don’t think the US will drop car centrism, partly because of the perpetual lower class social issues that make it dangerous to share public space with strangers, but you can get pretty far if you mix in high volume public transit like in NYC (or even SF BART for a smaller example), which greatly reduces the dead spaces that prevent walkability.
I never quite figured out why the US is so allergic to enforcing the public order laws already on the books with any degree of vigour
The concept of supply & demand shows people obviously do want this, given that the cost of living in that walkable city and in walkable places is so high.
The real reason? Americans become infatuated with the latest technological marvel too easily. For a while, this was the car. And unfortunately, rolling back all these car subsidies takes a while and is heavily fought against because people hate the feeling of having something taken from them.
It is a great tragedy that the US with all its money and diversity of geography and people has only really managed to produce a single walkable city and a scattered handful of “I don’t always use my car” neighborhoods, which are always the most expensive places to live. So many cities outside the US manage to do this on a fraction of the budget.