Edit: of course this is satire. The power of the reading comprehension devil grows every day :/

  • altphoto@lemmy.today
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    9 hours ago

    4 blocks is walkable distance. Build 20 houses then leave space for a park and a stores. It doesn’t take a genius!

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    Satire and on point.

    Walking is alien to the vast majority of suburbanites and rural people. Walking ~6 miles round trip is a little over 2 hours at a modest pace.

  • Taleya@aussie.zone
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    13 hours ago

    "Why does everyone want to live in pre-existing postwar suburbs? what is the magical x factor that makes people want them?? "

    • PresidentCamacho@lemm.ee
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      11 hours ago

      I think it is a few things and mostly centered on raising a family. I also think its lame but these are the reasons as I see them.

      • They tend to have good schools

      • They have front/back yards for children to play

      • The buildings are physically separated so the chance you hear your neighbors is low

      • The neighborhoods are much more quite

      • The neighborhoods have low crime

      • Taleya@aussie.zone
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        11 hours ago

        Did i really need to add an /s? I thought the quotation marks were a clear enough indicator.

        People want older suburbs because they’re planned to be walkable

        • PresidentCamacho@lemm.ee
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          11 hours ago

          Asking a very regular question, getting an answer, and then being sassy and saying “that was sarcasm”

          Lol, your head just disappeared up your own ass.

          • Taleya@aussie.zone
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            10 hours ago

            You know you can just say “i misread that comment”. You’re allowed to do that.

            You don’t have to abuse people. That’s a choice you made

            • EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com
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              5 hours ago

              Yeah, their response was unnecessarily caustic. Your reply was reasonable and I understood the intention of the original comment from the quotation marks.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    When I played The Sims 2, the first thing I’d do is create a small public lot where everyone could get all their needs met and buy food and a cell phone (since starting characters didn’t have one). There were some oddities, since Sims get dirty quickly, I’d replace sinks with showers, and would make sure coffee was available everywhere.

    Eventually, sims could walk from their home, rather than investing in a garage and a car or taking a cab.

  • zebidiah@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    And bring local pubs to America! Turn one of those shitty little McMansions into an Alehouse every eight square blocks and you’ve just solved drunk driving!

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Ok. I live in a car centric city but never have lived where I couldn’t walk to a corner store. Even out in the suburbs when I was a kid, we could walk to the store, the library too.

    Not to say there aren’t house farms in the exurbs, ringed by impossibly wide and fast roads. But it’s not so prevalent that you can’t avoid it.

    I agree on zoning - there’s an empty lot a couple houses down, and another on the river, wouldn’t it be nice if I could build a pub so people didn’t drive to the bar? But truly, there are 3 gas stations/corner stores within a mile of our house, 4 barbershops, restaurants, 2 laundromats, a tattoo shop, a pharmacy, all without crossing any road with more than 2 lanes and 25mph speed limit. We just got a taqueria too, it’s so good! I just want a neighborhood bar because I hate hate driving somewhere for a drink!

  • 21Cabbage@lemmynsfw.com
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    2 days ago

    I’m neighbors with my gas station/liquor store combo but the bus service makes almost the whole town in my reach… Furthermore I can’t think of a single place that isn’t walkable if you’re willing to cover the distance at least here. City limits hit and pedestrian access stop.

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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      1 day ago

      Furthermore I can’t think of a single place that isn’t walkable if you’re willing to cover the distance at least here. City limits hit and pedestrian access stop.

      You can walk on dirt, can’t you? You don’t need a sidewalk. Just be willing to walk 30 miles in the dirt. 🤷🏻‍♂️

  • andybytes@programming.dev
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    2 days ago

    America is such a living hell that like I don’t even want to participate in a revolution. It’s just going to be a libturd or right-wing-hog revolution anyways. I really think a lot of my social ills, anxiety and depression just comes from the world I live in. I truly believe I am a product of my environment. I would leave the United States in a heartbeat with just the clothes on my back. The only time I’ve ever been happy is when I was able to commute on my bicycle. Ever since COVID, people have been driving like fucking jackasses. And now I live in an area that I can’t ride my bike no more. I have never been so depressed in my whole fucking miserable life. Like a scientist, I want to see if it’s me or my environment. I think America causes physical and mental illness. I sometimes think if it were up to me and I wasn’t allowed to leave the United States, but I could die in a nuclear explosion and just completely wipe off USA from the face of the earth. I say to myself, I would push that fucking button for future generations, for the world. The world is capitalistic and the Yankee has a lot of leverage, a lot of places in Europe start adopting the Yankee way. It terrifies me, knowing that American culture like the disease that it is Spreads like a plus-filled rash. I am very unhappy. These feelings compile over time. And you’re in such agony. You try to figure out why. And then eventually it clicks. America is a piece of shit.

    • Tiger@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      You can move out of America, try. I’m an American living abroad for decades now, and left with nearly zero cash and made a great life abroad.

      Plot twist though, everywhere still has problems, just different ones, and the US’ bullcrap affects everyone everywhere including you no matter where you are. (Have why I still care and pay attention to it).

      On the subject of this post, I live in a super walkable city, Shanghai, and do everything by bike (amazing, world class bike lanes), walking, subway, taxi, bus etc. and don’t have or need a car, it’s awesome.

  • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    This has clearly got to be satire, but the issue with “walkable communities” is the zoning. You need commerce close to those houses - a coffee shop, a bakery, small supermarket, dry cleaner, small doctor’s office, a couple of restaurants, etc.

    Not a huge strip of stores, just a few every other block.

    Ditch the school buses, and instead create actual bus routes that the kids, but also everyone else, can hop on and off to get around.

    • psud@aussie.zone
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      2 days ago

      In my Australian town of half a million people (Canberra) our public transport is practically all buses, the same buses do the school services. We’re pretty car based but still I have 3 commercial places within 20 minutes of walking, covering medical, groceries, two butchers, hairdressers, a few independent restaurants, a few chain takeaways. Our nearest pub closed years ago, taxes on alcohol got too high for people to meet a few times a week at a pub

    • towerful@programming.dev
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      2 days ago

      I presume US schools have to buy/rent busses and pay bus drivers? Specifically to drive kids to/from school?
      Instead of the council (or whatever) subsidising routes that connect new builds to schools, and giving under 16s free bus travel.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Very mixed. Just for my kids ….

        • walked to elementary school
        • car to middle school (because they classified it as walkable but it was very long plus had to cross two major streets)
        • car to high school - private school several towns away. School was Actually on the subway … the other direction
      • Soggy@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        It’s complicated and different districts do different things. Plenty of kids did take the city bus to my high school (there was a vastly reduced fee for minors and plenty of subsidized programs for free or cheap monthly passes).

      • Mike D.@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        Yes, in the smaller cities and towns where things tend to be more spread out. The is not reliable public transportation.

        Big cities like NYC and LA don’t normally bus children to school. They are usually close to the school and can walk or take public transit.

  • shneancy@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    hi European here!

    what the fuck?

    i’m here complaining how it’s hard to walk to a big shopping mall or an ikea and you’re out there without even a small grocery store around most corners? how do you lot do that? i’d seriously just starve to death if i couldn’t get up, walk for 5min, and buy food for a whole meal (or a frozen pizza)

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      As an American I need you to understand that what you’re saying sounds like a deep parody here. We have some major cities that are comfortable to live in without a car, but they’re few and far between.

      To us a grocery store is a place you go to rather than swing by real quick. Its changing in some cities, and I’ve even lived in a suburb with walkable groceries, but its really not the norm.

    • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
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      2 days ago

      This does exist in major US cities, especially the older (by US standards) one. I’m in San Francisco, in a “good” neighborhood, and restaurants, groceries, bars, and multiple forms of public transit are all a short walk away. This is very different in car centric suburbs/cities though.

      • MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works
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        18 hours ago

        The contrast between eg Manhattan and Los Angeles is wild. First time in LA I went out walking, looking for a restaurant. The footpath vanished and suddenly I was on the edge of what seemed like a freeway. Relatives in Santa Monica were horrified to learn that I had taken a bus from my hotel downtown to visit them (it was perfectly fine).

    • huppakee@feddit.nl
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      2 days ago

      They all want to live in a detached single home (is that how you call it?), so not enough density for a store to make profit. Glad I don’t live there tbh.

      • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Single family home is the common term here.

        I’m starting to think I need one myself because Americans are generally such loud fucking wankers that you need both a detached house and yards to get any peace.

        Another thing is that the US is so car brained that nearly all attached homes (even townhouses in the city) have a garage somewhere. In my current condo, there’s alleyways with garages that face each other. The amount of fucking noise coming from the garage alleys make it impossible to sleep for lighter sleepers.

        • huppakee@feddit.nl
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          23 hours ago

          Probably doesn’t help that a lot is wood and panels, instead of brick or concrete. If you live near a busy street with insulated windows you can almost completely block out the noise nowadays (Although you’re still stuck with the pollution and can’t really open the windows), but technology can really counter some of those problems. But i wouldn’t fight the system on my own, so I probably would do the same in your position.

    • frank@sopuli.xyz
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      2 days ago

      I live in the EU but used to live in the US. In a nice part, too!

      I lived like 400m from a small store. Never drove once. Insanely dangerous to walk on such a busy road with no sidewalks, no crossings, etc.

      I walk a ton and bike ~80-100km/week now and don’t think twice about it.

      • stinerman@midwest.social
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        2 days ago

        In a way that can’t really be described to Europeans. If you live in a suburban area, people think you’re weird if you do anything other than use your car to get anywhere for any reason. Almost everywhere in the US is designed around the idea that you have a car and you use it every day.

        This is about my city:

        [full article]

        And it’s absolutely true. Our buses are mostly useful for driving to a Park & Ride/Transit Center and then to work and back. That’s about it.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          Now depending on context from how old that post is, it’s really saying something.

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          Oh yeah I can confirk Columbus is a fucking nightmare for bus transit. Its kinda bikable in some parts, and by that I mean possibly safer than Kyiv. But I’ll say this about it, its definitely better than a lot of other places in America. I will never understand its resistance to light rail.

          There are parts of America that are reasonable. Cities like New York, D.C., and Seattle have people who can afford a car choosing not to own one. But then you’ve got places like Houston and most small cities where even Columbus looks walkable.

    • azimir@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      Nope. My city is both trying to make the old streetcar suburb neighborhoods walkable again while also annexing places that are miles of road with nothing but sterile housing along it.

      When develops buy some farmland, plunk a bunch of terribly build single family houses on it, sell it all off, and walk away the people who bought the houses find out that they’re not in a municipality. They wanted a house and low taxes and their own yard, but there’s no schools, fire dept, police, real water services, or road maintenance. So… They start begging to be annexed into the city to have the old downtown’s taxes pay for their services.

      It looks good on paper to add land and population, plus shiny new roads don’t cost much for about 15 years, which is longer than most city council members stay on the council. It’s someone else’s problem when the bills come due. Our city council have been pushovers for decades and just keep adding shithole tax burden neighborhoods to the city and it’s all starting to die fast.

      • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        The post is satirically calling this walking, not that the situation itself is satire.

    • andybytes@programming.dev
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      2 days ago

      If this is satire, well just know that this still exists in the United States… I’ve seen this nonsense. It’s like they don’t even bat an eye. Like car culture is so ingrained in our society that people look at us probably like we’re freaks. And it affects how we operate as people.