That's trivially easy in most cities, on foot or bike, because we're talking about 12 square miles of city.
Add in reasonable public transportation between places, and we're talking more like within 5-10 miles.
I simply don't believe that there's an area anywhere around an urban center where you can't find all of that within ~75-300 square miles, as most urban areas simply aren't that big.
If you channel them to be somewhat more linear, commuter rail can work okay for suburbs. Copenhagen took that approach, with a goal that even quite far out suburbs should be in reasonable biking or bus distance to an S-train station: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_Plan
Then you're just arguing for one way of life over another. I like living in the suburbs. I don't want to feel like a sardine packed into a can.
You (or whoever is arguing for it) would rather not live in a world that has tainted nature with roads and automobiles.
Why does it have to be one way or another? In the present, there are plenty of places to go and see nature that hasn't been tainted by cars and roads.
Many of the people in this thread write as if cars are manifestly obviously bad, and that we should go to great lengths to remove or drastically reduce them from society.
You're welcome to live in whatever kind of place you want. I think what people object to is the massive subsidies slathered on the suburban lifestyle under american policies.
Look at this thread. Most of what I see are people advocating "sin taxes" and the like. Or, increasing subsidies to shape a world more fitting of what they want.
Thanks for the insult saraid216! Is there anything else about me that you'd care to attack? (If not, feel free to take a look at my comment history. I'm sure you can find something. If it'll make you feel better, I'm all ears.)
Do you care to elaborate on the "sigh" with any actual discussion?
It seems you're trying to portray any detractors of suburbs as radical tree-huggers, whilst ignoring the fact that the kind of suburban sprawl happening today has a ton of other downsides, and fails to even meet your own standards for a nice neighborhood.
Edit: To give you some context, I live on the opposite side of town from the neighborhood I linked to. My neighborhood is much lower-density than that one, but while still unquestionably suburban, has schools and a large variety of shops within walking distance and safely accessible by foot and greenways and bike routes leading toward the city centers. My neighborhood was built in the 1970s. There are similar neighborhoods in the area covering a broad range of density and property values. We don't even have a mass-transit system worth mentioning, but it's still a much better place for getting around without a car. Yes, suburbs can be done well. But at least in my area, the new residential development is mostly comically tragic, and it's affecting what people mean by suburban sprawl.
The "sigh" was because it seems my point was missed. The particulars of what I happen to enjoy as a living arrangement are borderline irrelevant. The point I was making is that a bunch of people are pushing their way of life on to others (through sin taxes and policy changes and the like) based on the premise that their way of life is obviously superior.
I'm saying the dual of "my way of life is better."
Someone else brought up that there are subsidies supporting my way of life though. I'm fine with removing those. But I personally haven't seen that position advocated in this thread. So I didn't account for it.
> radical tree-huggers
Radical tree huggers? Come now. No need for the flamebait. I love nature. I frequent it whenever I get the chance. But I don't feel entitled to it wherever I happen to be.
> whilst ignoring the fact that the kind of suburban sprawl happening today has a ton of other downsides, and fails to even meet your own standards for a nice neighborhood.
I didn't ignore anything. I never said suburbs were always the best. I didn't even say that I prefer every suburb to any city. I didn't speak with exact precision because the details of "my way of life" weren't crucial to my point.
I didn't say any of this because I never argued that suburbs were, in any way, shape or form better than cities. I merely stated that I prefer them. And that's enough.
You're making a false dichotomy, between the urban no-car life you don't want, and the suburbs that make it impossible to get anywhere without a car. A happy middle ground is possible and exists in many places, and can be done without much extra effort, but it requires some. Zoning regulations and the like have proven to be insufficient for preventing developers from throwing down several square miles of cookie-cutter homes at a time embedded in a fractal maze of cul-de-sacs with no room for commercial development, meaning those neighborhoods end up car-mandatory and impossible to service with mass transit even when they're very dense. There are plenty of sound public policy reasons for wanting alternative forms of transportation to be viable, so even if it feels like someone shoving their way of life down your throat, it'll still probably save you tax money in the long run even if it has to be achieved through blunt means like "sin taxes".
Edit: Many of the subsidies the car-only lifestyle gets are really negative externalities the burden of which is shared by everyone: the public health nightmare of obesity, pollution in the form of smog and runoff, political downsides of dependence on oil. How could those be dealt with in a way that doesn't feel to you like an unjust sin tax or someone forcing their way of life on you?
> Edit: Many of the subsidies the car-only lifestyle gets are really negative externalities the burden of which is shared by everyone: the public health nightmare of obesity, pollution in the form of smog and runoff, political downsides of dependence on oil. How could those be dealt with in a way that doesn't feel to you like an unjust sin tax or someone forcing their way of life on you?
I don't want subsidies. I don't want any of them. Get rid of them. Car subsidies are just as much an imposition as sin taxes are.
There's no such thing as a free lunch. Automobiles, and in general, industrialization, come with a cost. Externalities (positive or negative) that are a result of hundreds of millions of people acting cannot be eliminated without coercion. And of course, coercion introduces its own form of externality.
There's no such thing as a free lunch. I'd rather we all plead our case to persuade others than shove it down everyone else's throats.
"Oh but that would be great if only people weren't idiots..."
I'm sorry I gave you the impression that I think there are only two options. I don't think that. I don't think my way of life is better. I don't think yours is. I just want people to stop saying their way of life is obviously better (even if it is some sort of middle ground), and that because of that, we should just start taxing people for doing things they don't happen to like.
If you feel the desire to press me more for my view on taxes (because you perceive some inconsistency), and in general, government, then I implore you not to. It's a waste of time, and in all probability, we will vehemently disagree.
When I've been saying "better" here, I'm using it in the sense of Pareto efficiency - more preferred even by people with different preferences. I'm not imposing a single linear scale along which to rank things.
If you don't think taxation or other government intervention are justified in order to achieve a Pareto improvement that the free market demonstrably cannot achieve on its own, then yeah, talking government with you is a waste of time.
> that the free market demonstrably cannot achieve on its own
Are you referring to the free market that caused suburbs to become a thing only "due to the subsidization of the automobile infrastructure"?[1]
So somehow, people are blaming sprawl on the subsidization of automobiles---which, let's not kid ourselves, is done only by government and corporations in bed with government---but you, you, are saying that this is really a demonstrable failure of a free market? (Which, of course, you proclaim because it doesn't meet some arbitrary standard that seems impossible to measure. Which apparently---and conveniently---seems to line up with what you happen to like as a way of life.)
Have I got that right? Or are you referencing some other failure?
The market failure to which I was referring is the ongoing situation where demand for housing does not lead to communities being built, only housing developments that force a car-only lifestyle with all its negative externalities. As I've said, suburbs can be done right, but that's not what's getting built. This should surprise nobody, because the housing market hits pretty much all of the exceptions under which free-market capitalism isn't even theoretically optimal.
But yeah, in my area the cost of upgrading the road network is mostly not borne by the people moving to the area and necessitating the new and wider roads. That's one of the reasons our new housing developments are too big.
> "Which apparently---and conveniently---seems to line up with what you happen to like as a way of life."
This is not a coincidence, suspicious or otherwise. It is part of the definition of Pareto efficiency.
I truthfully don't see anything to disagree with you there. I think it'd be fantastic to live in a small town with good public transit (even if only good bike paths). There are unfortunately few of them where I live (central Massachusetts). Hell, I love a good bike path. I've been on the one up in Burlington, VT. It's awesome. Same with paths in Amherst and around Cambridge.
But the fact that I can walk/bike/scooter down to the corner pub in my little town has very very little to do with why I have a car. For example, my parents live about 25 minutes away. Some of my good friends live 35 minutes away. When I visit, it's common for me to lug stuff back and forth (whether it be food or other various items). My job is about 45-60 minutes away in the city. (That's by car. Want to know how long it'd take with public transit? Over two hours. And it's just as expensive as owning a car!)
There's just no viable way for me to do that with anything other than a car. And some day, when kids get added to the mix, I fret to think of how much more difficult it would be without a car. Hell, I even live in walking distance to the T! (That's the commuter rail that goes from Worcester to Boston.)
Add in reasonable public transportation between places, and we're talking more like within 5-10 miles.
I simply don't believe that there's an area anywhere around an urban center where you can't find all of that within ~75-300 square miles, as most urban areas simply aren't that big.