I feel like the US's problem with transportation is more than just a lack of public transportation--zoning laws also make it nigh impossible to have a grocery store down the street that you could walk to, too. I feel like an ideal world would have housing and primary facilities like grocery stores (and i don't mean supermarkets, i mean small stores that sell the essentials. not living next door to a walmart, living down the street from a mom-and-pop grocery store) intermingled
-F
@Felthry oh yeah zoning is a part of it for sure. dunno how big a part, but definitely a part.
@Felthry yeah, it's a whole bunch of compounding factors - not having adequate public transit, the issues with zoning laws you mentioned, poor road layouts that can dramatically lengthen trips, bad road *design* that makes walking unsafe in many places... just, bad decisions on top of bad decisions
yt links, re: zoning laws
Exactly this. US zoning laws are so bass-ackwards that it makes walkable cities all but impossible. It may have made sense at the time, but now it just makes owning a car a non-negotiable requirement.
If you're up for a rabbit hole, I'd recommend City Beautiful and Not Just Bikes. Here's a good starting point for each, respectively. Be warned, the deeper you go, the more likely you are to get pissed.
@Felthry yeah that's normal in most of the world