I’m reluctant to litigate something unpopular on the internet for the purpose of collecting downvotes, and I think there’s low probability we’ll agree on the issue, but I’ll explain my rationale:

I lived in NYC. NYC is not exactly designed for walking or bikes, but there’s a strong case to be made that it has become a city in which cars are much less feasible than transit, walking, or biking. The sidewalks are all double-wide. If you order take-out, the delivery guy is on a bike. Nobody I knew owned a car, and none of us would have been able to afford the parking if we had. We walked to get groceries. The subways run 24/7/365. In terms of density, NYC should be a best-case scenario for public transit.

The fact remains that if you wanted to LEAVE the city and go somewhere green with the ability to get away from people, it was 3x as long by public transit than it would have been by car. Minimum. And those places are far away. It’s a place designed to keep you there. And that’s just my point: I don’t want to feel like a sardine in a city packed with people, I want to get out into nature where I can be the only person for miles around.

This is probably impossible in the Netherlands, which is 92% urban and has an average population density of 1/2 NYC across the entire country. By comparison, the US is 0.6% as densely populated as the Netherlands.

Amsterdam is the city I see cited most often as being the model for a /c/fuckcars-approved world, but my basic thesis is that living in a place with 13,670 people per square mile, greatly diminished personal space (densified housing), and greatly diminished personal autonomy (the ability to leave), is approximately my definition of urban hell.

I submit that the population density of the Northeast Megalopolis (containing NYC, DC, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore) is the stuff of dystopian hellscapes. And while that’s a matter of personal preference, I see a feverish, unrelenting push by the younger generations, who didn’t grow up with cars-as-personal-freedom like the Boomers/GenX/Xennials did. In the US, young Millennials, gen Z, and beyond have decided that ultradense cities are great and cars are evil. I understand how they got to that conclusion, but to me it just looks like Eco-Austerity derived from the lack of liberating personal-vehicular-experiences as a late teen and early adult.

Hell, I believe so much in personal vehicles and the autonomy they enable, I obtained a pilot’s license – something that is overwhelmingly difficult and expensive to do in Europe, but for the time being still remains something you can achieve as a middle-class American in some places.

Single-family homes is a topic for another time, but suffice it to say that it was the yardstick of middle-class wealth in postwar America. And now thanks to perpetually swelling city populations, the younger generations are idolizing what amounts to apartment living. Personally, I couldn’t get away from apartments fast enough once my income allowed it. I still don’t know whether I’ll ever own a house, but if I never share a wall with someone again, it will be too soon. I’m frustrated by this newfound need to do away with the tools of our personal independence, and at some level, I fundamentally can’t understand it.