What you’re missing, in your relentless focus on mostly abstract economic measurements, is that the measures of individual success and happiness are going down. People on average, are less able to afford to buy homes, raise children and pay for health care.
I assure you I have no relentless focus on anything but trying to understand what's going on! There are many problems for sure but I don't understand how they can be solved with faulty explanations!
Many people seem convinced that the problems in society are caused by billionaires hoarding money, when they clearly aren't hoarding any relevant amounts of money. The problems with housing, healthcare and such are very obviously caused by other things (Home mortgages being a huge cornerstone of the entire economy for one, millions are placed in a situation where cheaper housing would be a catastrophe - including banks).
Maybe our parents, who were able to buy a house for like 5 years of a worker's salary, were just the luckiest generation? It sure hasn't been that easy to get a home before or after at any time in history.
Right now is one of the runner ups though, but we're comparing the situation with the best ever.
Clearly I'm not a lawyer either, but isn't accusing someone of doing something that is not true and that can have legal ramification a suable behavior in the US?
> you're in a city, what did you expect? If you want to spend time walking outside drive to one of the many National Parks
Is this a joke? I hope this is a joke and I’ve misunderstood it.
Cities are not synonymous with cars. There are lots of walkable cities in the world. Driving to a place where you can walk is a very strange inversion of the norm.
" Driving to a place where you can walk is a very strange inversion of the norm."
Can is a strong word here.
I am an avid walker with around 13 thousand steps daily on average (counted over last three years), but in my daily life, I generally take some form of transport if the expected walking time exceeds some 25 minutes. A tram or a bus, but I don't regularly walk 7 km to the centre of my city and back, even though I certainly can. It would simply take too long.
> Driving to a place where you can walk is a very strange inversion of the norm.
There's no way for that to be true; driving to a place where you can walk is a possibility. Walking to a place where you can drive would be useless, because you wouldn't have a car there.
> Walking to a place where you can drive would be useless
You could walk to a vehicle rental shop or (eg London with Zipcar) walk to where a vehicle you can rent is parked. But not a normal situation, definitely.
> or (eg London with Zipcar) walk to where a vehicle you can rent is parked.
I never got Zipcar. They made themselves completely pointless by charging you for time when you didn't need the car, inflating what appeared to be reasonable fees into ludicrous overcharges.
If I want to visit my family 90 minutes away over the weekend, I might pay for three hours of car rental. I'm obviously not going to pay for 48 hours of car rental. Who exactly is using Zipcar? Where did the model "like long-term car rental, but we'll lie about it" come from?
Former Zipcar employee. Nothing here is confidential afaik.
In London, they did have the one way concept for some time - I don't know if it's still there. They experimented with dedicated spaces as well as charging by the minute with approved parking areas. I don't think any of the competitors in that space are still using that model because it didn't work out financially. (Parking was a giant issue - our competitors and us could only negotiate for parking in some places. If the user parked outside of that, we got fined, and GPS was terrible in trying to make sure they were in the right area - the buildings were too close together. And users were frustrated if the area they were allowed to park was full.)
The fundamental problem is that the cars end up getting bunched up away from where people want to take them. Let's say you're driving to your parents for 90 minutes. Who is going to rent your car 90 minutes away? Are they going to go to your parents' house to use it when you don't have it? What if there's no car when you get back, because they put it somewhere else? How many places allow you to park a car for days without prior agreement?
Zipcar is meant and priced for shopping trips or other short errands on the order of a few hours. If you want multiple days for a longer trip, that's what traditional car rental exists for. If you're "obviously" not paying that, that's your choice and nothing to do with Zipcar.
You don't get to break down Zipcar's hourly pricing into just the hours you need to drive each way. In the interim inbetween then the Zipcar isn't at its spot and therefore unavailable for other use. Zipcar's hourly pricing includes the fact that it will be returned and immediately available for other customers.
TLDR: You may only use the Zipcar for a few hours, but it's out of its spot and unavailable for the entire trip, so that's what you're paying for.
> You don't get to break down Zipcar's hourly pricing into just the hours you need to drive each way.
This is how all other vehicle rental works. It's the only advantage of rental over ownership.
> In the interim inbetween then the Zipcar isn't at its spot and therefore unavailable for other use.
That's just logistical incompetence on the part of Zipcar. Why would the Zipcar be unusable when not at "its spot"? My car doesn't become unusable when it leaves my driveway. The Zipcar is usable as soon as I return it to Zipcar. Their choice to refuse my return is just their commitment to an unworkable business model.
I think they would like to pick up the car, drive somewhere else, and then leave the car parked somewhere for a weekend without paying for it in that time. Which is difficult to make work as a business (is anyone else going to rent it in that time? Would they be happy if all the cars were to be driven away somewhere else?) Even more traditional rental companies will often charge you extra to drop off a car one of their locations which isn't the one you picked it up from.
Zipcar and co are generally aimed at daytrips, the kind of thing where you occasionally need a car or van for a day but no longer, not for longer distance trips where you are away for a few days.
I live in Zürich, in my experience the city with the best public transport system(Stockholm a close second, but Switzerland has much better public transportation overall).
In case I need a car in Switzerland I would simply rent one for the day using one of the many rental options.
Public transport for 95% of my trips, 3% cab, 2% rental.
It’s better for me, it’s better for the environment, the people around me. Reducing cars on the road also makes it so much more pleasant and nice just to be in the city.
I travel frequently to London and it’s unbelievable how big difference it makes to be in a city designed for pedestrians and not cars(and London is absolutely designed for cars first).
I travel world wide for work and my default option is always public transport, with the occasional cab ride for convenience. In some places it sadly doesn’t work out so then I end up renting a car.
I mean, walking from my home to the beach is almost as fast 70% of the time (the summer month make finding nearby parking spot really difficult and time consuming), and it's definitely better to come back walking too, as I don't like sand in my car. Going to the farmers' market by foot is faster (unless I go at 6am and find a free parking spot), and less alienating (I say 'hello' to a dozen persons on the way, another dozen on the way back, meet friends, flirt a little). The only exception is going to see my parents, It's definitely faster to drive around the small marsh than the 40 minutes it takes to cross it, but I usually cross it, and when I don't, I use my bike rather than my car.
And when I used to drink, I definitely walked to my bar rather than drove to it despite the free, often empty parking nearby and the 10 fewer minutes it took.
I honestly don't see situations where a walk is worse than a drive in my living area. At worse I take a bike? When I was alone, I managed with rentals only tbf (now it's a bit more difficult, also the windsurfs are easier to handle with a car, and are the primary reason we own one)
Yeah, but you have to find somewhere to park at both ends which is a hassle, you are limited in where you can go - couldn't stop and have a drink with friends either.
> You would prefer to walk around a city because it's that's dense as opposed to walking around nature that's specifically set aside for this type of enjoyment?
I've taken some very enjoyable walks in cities that I wouldn't rank either above or below some of my favorite hikes. It's just a completely different type of experience.
Rather than discovering interesting birds and plants, I can notice architecture, discover new restaurants and cafes and maybe check out their menu, window shop etc.
> I don't understand the complaint, here, other than "America is unlike Europe."
Even though America and Europe have developed differently, what's wrong with reevaluating some of the results of these developments in American cities, in particular with regards to whether they're meeting the needs of the people living there?
> Were they designed intentionally as such or this that an outcome of history?
Oh, it's definitely intentional. Sure, pre-industrial cities had narrow streets that were poorly suited for car traffic, so you could say that walkable cities were technically the default.
But a lot of those European cities were intentionally changed towards car transportation in the middle of the 20th century, when cars became widespread and a symbol of post-WW2 wealth, widening street and turning historical squares into parking lots.
And most of those cities were turned back into walkable (or bikable) cities since the '80s onwards, by banning cars and reusing the parking lots for other purposes.
Here's [0] an article about the Netherlands's intentional policy in that regards, and here's [1] a more recent effort in Spain. A lot of Reddit's popular "then and now" posts show this off [2].
> Were they designed intentionally as such or this that an outcome of history?
Both. And with different constraints at different time periods.
Aside, people in the past weren't stupid and they built cities purposefully. Just like cavemen weren't stupid, they just had less _stuff_, knowledge, tools, etc.
> In any case what value does this "norm" have?
Using less fuel. Enjoying a more healthy body and mind, enjoying life. Leaving a better world for its future inhabitants.
> You would prefer to walk around a city because it's that's dense as opposed to walking around nature that's specifically set aside for this type of enjoyment?
Strawman ("because it's that dense"). I like walking in cities AND nature. Both can be true.
Also, why should nature be "set aside"? What a weird notion. Why shouldn't we have more "nature" in our cities, in fact we know it's probably better to do exactly that, for a myriad of reasons that have been scientifically researched. Why should WE "set aside" nature, as if it was somehow external to us.
because, absent being set aside and reserved for nature, the land in the city is Very valuable and would be sold off to developers to be razed for buildings and parking lots.
> Were they designed intentionally as such or this that an outcome of history?
Amsterdam was re-designed for cars in the mid-20th century, it was not designed for cars and had been historically for walking. Then they realised the mistake in the 70s and started to re-design the city again prioritising walking, and biking, now we have Amsterdam as the poster child of a city designed for that.
You seem to forget that in the mid-20th century everywhere was being designed for cars, we are seeing a response to that after the failed experiment.
