You all do realize that suburbs existed before the invention of the car right? American infrastructure is bad but it’s not irredeemable, the assumption that we can’t provide public transportation to these places because of a lack of resources is malthusian. And sure some places like the American Southwest and Florida are legitimately over human population carrying capacity due to climate change but in general the earth as a whole isn’t, and cities like Amsterdam are just as unsustainable as Miami since even though has one of those le epic reddit notjustbikes cityskylines approved infrastructure, both are below the sea level.
I think in general our message should be abolish the need to own the automobile, any measures meant to limit car use should target the rich before the poor. And that trains are good, and that a high speed train across the United States would be a rather popular project in the eyes of even the chuds. And by god stop calling for the suburbs to be razed, stop trying to be zoomer Robert Moses.
The internet really does seem to have an issue with acting like ‘suburb’ is synonymous with ‘American-style suburb built in or after the 20th century’. I get that a lot of the discussions kinda revolve around the US because it’s where a lot of people are from, but even then I think it’s important to show that there are other ways of doing things that don’t have to be so bad.
This feels like such a strawman. The fact of the matter is American suburbs are so low density that it’s really hard to actually reasonably serve people. Like it or not, areas with low populations within a reasonable distance of possible transit routes are just not going to be as high a priority as those that that can serve more people.
TIL that sustainability is determined by elevation
New Hexbear approved urbanism: build transit into the richest areas only
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i mean, one of the easiest ways to get people to move out of those suburbs is for the cities they are attached to to stop subsidising every part of their infrastructure. I’m pretty sure it’s one of the main recommendations that Strong Towns make, at least as far as NotJustBikes has presented it, since the suburbs are insanely expensive infrastructure wise. So if you just begin actually pricing in all the externalities that are currently being forced upon the places with active economies, then the problem will likely revert with decent speed.