• HardlightCereal@lemmy.worldOP
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    11 months ago

    America used to have these things called streetcar suburbs, and they’re awesome. The entire suburb is built around a tram station, it’s walking distance from everyone and it goes on to the nearby suburbs and eventually the city. Modern zoning laws make streetcar suburbs illegal to build, but a few of them still exist, and people love living in them. The rent prices in streetcar suburbs have been raised greatly due to the high demand. If we started building streetcar suburbs instead of car suburbs, everyone would be able to afford to live in one. They’re also cheaper to build in terms of land, plumbing, and utilities. The road upkeep is cheaper and the people in them are happier.

    • dub@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      So essentially buses. That works if you live within a few miles of your destination city. But things are so spread out nowadays that there’s just no way that you could have a single system of buses or streetcar. Whatever to make use of everybody’s time.

      I grew up in suburban America where even on bike it would take me 20 minutes to get to the nearest urban development or business. Let alone trying to get to the nearest city. And now with everybody so spread apart of where they work and how they get there. There’s just no feasible way to make the system for everybody.

      People used to live within a few miles of where they worked, but nowadays everything has been built for cars and to undo that would be an almost impossible effort