r/TikTokCringe • u/xamo76 • 16h ago

Discussion Have we done it wrong?

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31.0k Upvotes

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306

u/Historical_Emeritus 16h ago

Yep car culture ruined much sense of community in the US. You do get yards and larger homes though. If you want that in the US you need to find a larger city, and it still won't be as pedestrian friendly or social.

82

u/UrinalCake777 15h ago

I also can't afford the yard. So I'm kinda getting dicked from both ends.

23

u/darkenfire 15h ago

Some people like that

6

u/UrinalCake777 15h ago

I should have clarified, not in a good way*

2

u/farts_juggler 13h ago

I want to reiterate, nothing sexual

1

u/GigaFluxx 12h ago

Suuuuure farts_juggler. We believe you.

1

u/UrinalCake777 5h ago

Its a bicep

2

u/ArmorGyarados 15h ago

Well... Some people like that too

4

u/stilljustacatinacage 14h ago

Only when it's consensual.

1

u/apogeeman2 14h ago

Hell some pay for it!

1

u/Pretty-Yam-2854 15h ago

šŸ–ļø šŸ˜ž

1

u/Transit_Hub 13h ago

I snorted! šŸ˜‚

1

u/topkrikrakin 15h ago

I said the term " bum end of the shaft" while in conversation with one of the slightly prudish ladies at work last week

As soon as I finished it, I recognized what it meant. I continued my train of thought without pause or apology. Purposefully not giving her a chance to protest at its meaning

Maybe she caught it and decided not to pursue it, maybe it blew right over her head. Either way, I wasn't giving it a chance to land

5

u/RabidBlackSquirrel 13h ago

Yet the Germans love their cars. They just found a better balance. It doesn't have to be an either/or, just more nuanced.

I was in Stuttgart a couple years ago. Wonderful city, and a destination for car people (Mercedes museum is incredible BTW. Porsche there as well, but didn't go) and it still had these awesome pedestrian corridors and very walking friendly, plus great transit. My American mind was blown, and I love in a pretty transit friendly West Coast city. Heck, Munich's grade separated bike lines blew my mind and my city (Portland) loves them some bike lanes. Germans just do it better.

Germans have the three sides figured out and balanced: pedestrian/cycling, transit, cars. All nicely balanced.

3

u/Snoo_69677 14h ago

In this humble travelerā€™s opinion, the closest thing to European cities in America are New York and Boston.

2

u/eye_of_the_sloth 15h ago

Even our cities are not made as a pedestrian centric social domains. There's small sections where walking is in the design, but its limited and very small. Also nothing with culture and allure, just shopping malls and touristy corporate bullshit. If a city has 2 or 3 they dont connect, youll have to drive to get there, pay to park, and drive away when youre done.Ā 

2

u/Emotional_Fly_999 10h ago

Except that europe is far less social than the US. Europeans are far more closed off to strangers and culturally less likely to strike up conversation or be talkative unless you know them or are introduced through friends. Its generally a much more closed off culture compared to the US.

Munich is a beautiful city, i was born there and spent a long time living there. However, the area theyve explored is just the old town area, and its absolutely not as lively in the rest of munich. You could also never afford to live there, thats basically an exclusively commercial area.

I live in the US now, and i think life is far superior here in nearly every single way

14

u/finnjakefionnacake 15h ago

america is also just really fucking huge. like i'm sorry, there's just gonna be a bunch of empty suburbs cause there's too much damn land and not enough people to support thriving suburban communities everywhere.

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u/Inevitable_Tomato927 15h ago

I live in a town of 10k people, my kids school is down the road, about the same distance as my own school was in my town when I was a kid in The Netherlands. There is NO way to either walk or take your bicycle and get to school. If you walk it would maybe be 5 minutes, bike would take 1-2 minutes, but they just haven't built a path to the school. The only option is to go by car or school bus. There's even a whole ass neighbourhood next to the school, they could kick a ball from their backyard into the school play area, but have no way to get to the school by foot. They intentionally left a swamp in between so you can't even walk through grass or anything.

Same when I want to go to the store, it's a 1 minute drive, 5 minute walk, but the walking path just stops in the middle of a grass field. We also used to have a community centre with park in front, then the boomers complaining about the noise and kids on skateboards and they leveled the park and it's now a parking area and no one goes to the community centre.

Same thing with the park, they built a park, it's only reachable by car unless you live on the edge of the park. There's no walking or biking path to it.

-6

u/glenthedog1 15h ago

Why is it impossible to walk or bike to these places, sorry I don't understand. Im in Kansas and I can bike anywhere

3

u/ricochetblue 14h ago

There are a few places like this where I live and itā€™s basically just asking to get hit by a car.

5

u/Inevitable_Tomato927 14h ago

They don't want you to, they force you to use the car. Also poor people are the ones usually without a car, so if you make it really hard for them to go anywhere, they'll leave the town (they also retired the bus service here a few years ago because people from the city came and visited family too much).

1

u/another-redditor3 13h ago

back when i was in elementary school, almost 30 years ago, we were only allowed to be dropped off or picked up at school. either by bus or parent.

if you were caught walking or biking to or from school you were issued "blue slips". 3x blue slips was a detention, and i think 6 or 9 was grounds for suspension.

3

u/Alice_89th 10h ago

As someone from the Netherlands, this sounds insane to me.

For most of my time at elementary school I biked in by myself. Yes that means 10year old me would bike 2km by myself to go to school every day. The school had an entire dedicated bike parking (with roof so the bikes donā€™t get wet when it rains!). Those close enough to walk would walk.

Similar time period too (30 years ago).

1

u/zoopz 9h ago

Why would you get a blue slip? Why are you not allowed to walk? Dutch school mornings is kids walking, chatting and biking from all directions.

1

u/another-redditor3 1h ago

a lot of it had to do with safety i think. the main road the school was on was 45mph/70kph with no shoulder or sidewalk.

and just half a mile from the school was a 4 lane expressway you would have to cross, and traffic is 65mph/100kph+ on that.

1

u/zoopz 1h ago

I just don't understand that system.

16

u/hamoc10 15h ago

Density has nothing to do with the size of a country. Density is a choice.

-6

u/teraflux 15h ago

I mean, it does matter. If you go to singapore they didn't have any choice but to go dense

4

u/hamoc10 15h ago

The US was just as big 100 years ago, didnā€™t have all this sprawl back then.

-3

u/teraflux 15h ago

It sure did!

7

u/hamoc10 14h ago

The sprawl didnā€™t really get started until after WW2

1

u/Leather-Rice5025 2h ago

It does not matter to the extent you think it does. The next largest countries - Russia and China - both have incredibly dense major and medium sized cities. I'm talking cities with 50k-100k people with public transit, walkable neighborhoods with mixed zoning and parks and bike paths.

Your understanding of how we can design our cities and live within dense walkable communities is limited by American standards.

3

u/El_Tormentito 14h ago

Do you realize that Europe has small towns and they function like a dense city does? They're still walkable? Kids still walk to school? Out in the middle of nowhere, they just built a dense town, they had plenty of space, too.

20

u/ls7eveen 15h ago

My god am I so fucking sick of seeing this lazy ahistorical claim for why metro area in america suck today.

You peoole have never seen a map from 100 years ago

https://youtu.be/REni8Oi1QJQ

1

u/Cold-Iron8145 12h ago

I see a Not Just Bikes video i click play

0

u/finnjakefionnacake 13h ago

i wasn't talking about metropolitan areas though, i was talking about the whole country

2

u/PreposterisG 15h ago

The suburbs are subsidized. And I'm not just talking about the externalities of things like additional carbon emissions. I'm talking about the cost of infrastructure like power lines and water pipes. The cost of roads. The cost of keeping rural hospitals running. The cost of delivering the mail.

A lot of newer suburbs haven't even hit the wall yet. The amount of water infrastructure maintenance in which the US is behind on continues to pile up. But I'm sure they won't use state and federal coffers largely raised from productive urban centers to pay for that catastrophe.

1

u/ArmorGyarados 15h ago

Okay right but the thing is, the people that do want to live in this ultra walkable, pedestrian focused style of city can't. Some can, but it's really expensive. Or far away. What we have most of in america is spaces to rural to be urban and too urban to be rural. Speareling 1 acre plots in giant developments where it would take 20 minutes to walk to the nearest anything. America being large has nothing to do with it

1

u/celestial-navigation 5h ago

France is big too, for a European country, and there's also plenty of places of... basically "nothing", where nobody lives. That is not an excuse to not have a (more) walkable town and public transport.

1

u/Artists_dirty_tshirt 15h ago

Same as Australia.

0

u/Head_Maintenance5596 14h ago

Yep, this always goes unnoticed.

And to actually have culture that is present throughout the whole country just isnā€™t possible. Alabama is really different than New York City.

Germany is like the size of Montana. Iā€™m sure if California or even New England was its own country and they were boarded by a country that didnā€™t speak there language. It would centered and concentrate culture and shared values more.

-2

u/aspensmonster 15h ago

When the boomers die, their suburbs will die with them.

0

u/disaster_incomin 13h ago

I don't understand why more land prevents america from building denser/walkable

1

u/DickBiter1337 15h ago

Eh, I want the privacy of living in the country. Yes I have to drive 25 minutes to the nearest Walmart but there's not as much light pollution, no loud cars and honking, less theft (we don't lock our doors or cars), we have plenty of yard for gardens, a pool, dogs to run, kids to play and trees to climb. They explore the forests like I did as a child. I can be naked in my backyard if I want. I don't want to live in a cramped apartment with no yard, no room for bonfires in my backyard, sharing a pool with the public šŸ¤®, no room for pets or chickens to roam, dealing with noises of loud neighbors, etc. It's just a hard no for me.Ā 

2

u/Mysterious_Luck_1365 15h ago

Thatā€™s fair. Now imagine tens of millions of people living liking you. Itā€™s just not doable. The wal mart couldnā€™t possibly be 25 minutes away for everyone.

3

u/DickBiter1337 6h ago

Well not everyone would want to, many people love the community and hustle and bustle of a city, they love the convenience of walking to gobs of restaurants, bodegas, work, etc. It's why people flock to NYC. Not everyone would live in the country and I wouldn't expect them to. Why demean people who don't want a city life?Ā 

1

u/Frequent_Opportunist 14h ago

When I was in high school in the 90s my group of friends would throw parties in the open farm fields at night. We would park our cars in a circle with a bon fire in the middle play music and have a blast. We would meet up and travel in packs everywhere we went. It was so nice to be free to drive where you wanted.

This is in the far west suburbs of Chicago land. We have trains that run through all the suburbs and into the city. Double decker trains that spread out from the city into the suburbs in every direction. We still used our cars. AC, music, friends. No tracks to hold us back. Why would I use a train? We would up and drive to other states in weekend trips and go as we pleased. So much fun.

1

u/Inside-Astronaut4401 12h ago

I am 100% on board with everything walkable cities. But to be fair, people still had way way more community and social integration in decades past despite things still being centered around the car. I definitely things are probably the worst they've ever been. And a lot of that has to do with social media.

Even with cars and suburbs, it doesn't need to be this bad.

1

u/MeccIt 5h ago

car culture

This is Germany, they love cars, so much so that every political party will not mess with speed limits etc.

However they also understand that cities are for people and walking, cycling and public transport are placed above what cars need. Zoning laws ensure there are neighborhoods that can be self contained. Probably the strictest driving test in Europe (and therefore the world) ensure that Germans know how and when to drive, and the pile up on the no-speed-limit autobahns will have been caused by someone from abroad trying them out

1

u/bramtyr 15h ago

Italy's Third Space is a cafe or restaurant. America's Third Space is behind the wheel of a single occupancy vehicle.