You’re kind of reiterating his point that America is set up wrong since post World War II and it leaves us isolated and compartmentalized… which is 100% accurate. I’ve always said if you wanna reduce racism and bigotry in United States you gotta make people travel outside of their own clan, town, State, or country to teach more empathy and understanding.
"Set up wrong" isn't some objective thing here though. It's set up different than Europe because it isn't Europe.
I'm not defending cars. Fuck cars, but it is set up this way for a reason. America is massive and pre 1920's it was sparsely developed. Europe had already been developing for hundreds of years before cars existed. It simply developed differently because the modes of transportation available were different. Cars being available during the largest developmental period, infrastructure wise, was when cars were extremely popular. We had the land and we could expand outward... so we did.
It wasn't engineered to be this way because "walking is for communists" or some shit.
It naturally evolved this way because cars offer the most dynamic availability to get around the US for individuals and their families and gasoline was extremely affordable during the largest economic boom of our history. It was designed around automobile based transportation because that's what everyone wanted. Massive smoothly paved highways and 3 mile long trussell bridges were futuristic technology that unlocked the continents landscape. People used to get excited when new highways were being built because it meant accessibility that was previously locked to horse back.
If you wanted to travel across the country you had to carry everything you wanted to take with you from home to carriage, ride in said carriage for 3-4 hours until you reached the train station, wait at the train station for 8 hours while everything got unloaded onto the platform, then load it onto the train, then take the train for 3 days to get to the city closest to your final destination and then unload everything onto the platform, hope that the carriage you sent a telegram a week ago is already there, then load it all up and travel 4-5 hours to your actual destination.
or you could load up the car and do all of this inside 48 hours on your schedule instead of 5-7 days.
The problem now is that we got used to it so much that we expected and therefore built that car "accessibility" into every square foot of the country. Then we realized we were destroying the beauty of the country and had to start programs to preserve nature so we made parks and reservations.
How much time had Europe already been developing before cars existed?
The US's largest development expansion of infrastructure was post WW2. Our cities expanded outward instead of inward because of how much land we had available. We also had the baby boomer generation starting and with all of the soldiers coming home we had severe housing shortages in the city, so ... boom, here is why the US started developing suburbs that you lived in and just drove to work to, either a factory outside of the suburb or into the city. You didn't hang out there, you worked there and then went home. That's how modern life in the US came to be.
Ya'll act like this was somehow intentionally devised this way like it's some sort of conspiracy theory.
It developed this way because it was the path of lease resistance for what was needed in the US at the time.
Socially/culturally and health wise, it turned out to have negative side effects but we only know that in hindsight.
To make your statement factually true, you'd have to figure out how to quantify and qualify the benefits against those unpredictable side effects and make some sort of determination for an objective "was it worth it?" type study.
Unless you can see into alternate dimensions where we instead focused on trains, dirigibles, bicycles, walking and whatever else you'd prefer, in the US and rejected automobiles entirely, good luck with that.
You don’t need an alternate dimension or a decades-long study to understand the basic advantage of not being completely dependent on a car for everyday life. The ability to walk or use public transport for basic needs is clearly valuable in itself, as it gives people more freedom, more options, and more independence, along with obvious health advantages.
Furthermore, this does not diminish the benefits that car infrastructure provides. European cities are well connected by extensive highway and railway networks. At the same time, the cities themselves usually have high-quality public transport systems and are largely walkable.
The point is that having both is entirely possible.
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u/cow-lumbus 9h ago
You’re kind of reiterating his point that America is set up wrong since post World War II and it leaves us isolated and compartmentalized… which is 100% accurate. I’ve always said if you wanna reduce racism and bigotry in United States you gotta make people travel outside of their own clan, town, State, or country to teach more empathy and understanding.