Hi, it's me again! Yesterday I watched this video and got really confused. It explains how in the USA there are zoning rules that don't allow mixing of different types of homes, or mixing of homes and retail, et cetera, like in most countries there are rules that disallow putting a factory in a residential area. Is this really true? It sounds crazy to me. What do you do when you need to get groceries, or want to get an ice cream, or need to get a haircut? Travel by bus or car? Of course in the Netherlands we have countryside, and if you live on a farm with nothing close, of course you have to bicycle for 20+ minutes or go by car if you want to go anywhere, but that's why I prefer living in a town or city. What's the point of living in a city if you still need to travel to do anything??
Yes. The closest grocery store to my house is about 10 minutes away, and there's a barber in that same shopping center. You can buy ice cream at the grocery store, or the closest dedicated ice cream parlor is about 20 minutes away. I live right in the middle of a city of about 70,000, though that number is over double that if you include suburbs, so it's not like I live in a rural area.
I live in the "mountain biking capital of the U.S.," and I hope there are plans to make it the biking capital of the U.S... but there are way too many "stroads" (I watch those YouTube videos) in this area. Too many people think the left lane is the fast lane, but there are turn lanes next to it. You have to slam on your brakes to turn from either lane. As for the zoning, it just needs to be approved. There are a bunch of new buildings near me that have businesses on the ground floor with apartments above them. In that YouTube video you linked, that guy talks about how the U.S. is car-dependent, so most traveling is done by car. You should see a day of work for me. I deliver food and groceries and stuff, and it all adds up to about 130 miles a day.
I live in Texas! Specifically a suburb south of Houston. It's 5 miles just to get out of the development (which is a maze of houses) onto the main road--everyone needs to have a car! Why not bike? Well, everyone drives horribly, and the sidewalks are extremely poorly planned. As in, you'll have a sidewalk going for a half mile, and then it just....stops. And picks up half a mile later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54 This video kind of shows that.
I might watch that video later! The guy has a lot of interesting videos, but I've only watched a handful. But... 5 miles! I just did some searching on the map, and I have 75 grocery stores within 5 miles from my house! Sometimes I do think that that's a bit much... but it certainly seems better than none.
It's funny you consider taking 20+ minutes on a bike to be a long distance with nothing close. I live in an extremely rural area of the states. It takes me that long on the highway to drive one way into town to get stuff like groceries, go to class, or do any of the other things mentioned. One thing about living in the U.S is you need a vehicle to properly get around. This includes both rural and urban areas. Public transportation and buses do not work well. (maybe with the exception of very large cities like D.C, New York, Chicago, LA).
As others have mentioned, the vast majority of the cities/towns/everything in the United States is designed around using cars to get around. That's part of the reason why so many people here are concerned about the higher gas prices as of late; if you can't afford to buy gas, then for almost everyone, there isn't an alternative way to get places; in order to go to work or get to the store, you need to have gas. Edit: 4:14-4:53 in the video does a great job of showing what driving around in the US outside of residential zones is like. Every non-residential area in this country that I've been to follows the same basic layout as the footage in that clip.
I live in the middle of Massachusetts and I can't walk to any stores. The closest grocery store is 15 minutes by car. There are only 4 grocery stores in this area that require at least 15 min of driving. 607, you live in an area that sounds like a great area. About 40 years ago this area was similar to how you describe yours. There was even an ice cream shop next to the butcher's shop right in the center of town, about 2.5 miles from my house. I wasn't in the area to witness that though. All those shops closed when the large stores moved into the area. One of the purposes of the zoning laws put in place was to keep the large shops away from the smaller ones. Since we are car dependent, people will drive the extra distance to get a better price so in the end the zoning didn't help. Currently the zoning laws are being used to keep large solar farms out of the limited farm land and to keep hemp growing facilities from being built in neighborhoods.
It really depends on where you live. We do have what's known as "mixed use" properties in the United States. Like a bar or small shop that has an apartment above it. Again, it's really dependent on where you live and the laws in place, but I've seen plenty of blended home types, like a mobile home parked next to a two story victorian. XD
Makes sense. I've also heard a lot that public transit in the USA isn't viable for most things, as Decay_ed also points out. Personally, I don't miss having a car (or being able to drive) at all. I can bicycle to everything I need except study and work, and to those places I take the bus and/or train (okay, maybe I miss it sometimes because if you travel late you might have to wait a long time, or even miss the last train or bus if you travel after mid-night. I don't see myself driving after mid-night, though, anyway ). There is the issue that public transit is quite expensive in the Netherlands (not for students, however); then again, so is fuel. Still not so similar, as I have at least five within 2.5 miles from my house. If you are in a Dutch city and want to get an ice cream, it is very probable that if you look on Google Maps you will find one within walking distance. This might not hold if you are in a non-central area, what you might call suburbs, but these neighbourhoods do usually have a grocery store or two, and even often one or several primary schools. Edit: Speaking of, kids in the USA go to school by bus when they aren't brought by their parents, don't they?
That is correct. The school bus is paid for by town property taxes and it is very reliable. Even now when I see the buses pass by the house I know it is within a minute of 2:15 pm.
This is one reason I cannot live in the USA. It's something I've genuinely considered, even just as an 'extended holiday' type of thing, and it's one of the things that made me decide against it. When I need to go to the cinema, get a haircut, or buy whiskey I have to go to my town's shopping centre. That distance is about five minutes in the car or a thirty minute walk each way - I don't own a car, I don't plan to ever own a car at the minute (fuel shortages + prices since September 2021 have put me off it lmao), so I usually have to walk. But I also like walking - it's some time to myself, I can take detours and look at the scenery, and I don't have a <50bpm resting heart rate while several other members of my family suffer from cardiovascular problems for no reason. And best of all - I cross about two roads on the way there and for at least half of it I can't even hear cars (which I can in my residential area and it's as irritating as the tinnitus I get when my ears get blocked). The absolute bliss of finishing work at 4:00PM and doing an hour and a half walk home where I can avoid the noise of anything besides tree-rustling, wind and birds entirely is unmatched. It's like a peaceful purgatory between 'staring at the grey walls of a warehouse' and 'sitting in my silly little council house that sits amongst the putrid stench of a level of post-industrial decay that makes Soviet architecture look like Buckingham Palace'. Even when I take the train into Liverpool City Centre the roads there are meant for buses and people who drive through there always complain about how difficult it is to get around; I can walk anywhere I want. My favourite memory I've made this year is a date where we walked from the Catholic cathedral at one end of the city, along the docks, and to the Anglican cathedral at the other end while we were... not sober and were paying more attention to each other, yet crossing the road was still easy and I did what Americans call 'jay-walking' almost constantly without fear of some Land Rover driver called Chuck swerving into me and sending me flying through the nearest shop window. Every time I see people walk around in the US it's always chaos. There's just zero understanding for people who want to soak up some Vitamin D and get a walk/run in without eating a salmon fillet and hopping on a treadmill. I wouldn't be able to hack it.
How about bicycling? From what I've read online I wouldn't be surprised if it's hard and/or dangerous to get anywhere on bike anywhere except for in the Netherlands...
My town and most of the UK doesn't have many dedicated bike lanes anywhere. Footpaths are purely pedestrian territory, in that it's illegal to use a bike on one, so cyclists use the road - where they have things thrown at them by drivers and are quite often purposely rammed into with cars. I own a bike but I haven't actually used one in ten years now because there's nowhere to use it without getting into trouble and/or hurt lol My city, Liverpool, does actually have e-scooters and e-bikes available for public use and all the delivery 'drivers' cycle around the city. The footpaths are filled with people skateboarding everywhere and when I go out to the docks (in front of the Liver Building/Gotham City PD in the new Batman movie lol) it's pretty much skater central there. Bikes are still a complete no-go tho and people get annoyed at the e-bikes being on the road too
