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Walkability has plummeted. It's too dangerous for me to even walk from my house to the gas station about a mile away because there are no sidewalks and cars come hurtling down the road I would have to walk down.
I live in a small city/large town now. I used to live in L.A. and, unlike a lot of people, I walked all the time. And took the trains. I miss being able to walk to the supermarket or down to the donut shop for breakfast and coffee.
As someone not from the US, the idea of non-walkable cities is so alien to me.
Before learning to speak English and reading about the US, I wouldn’t even imagine it’s a thing.
Yeah basically the country was blowing up in birth rates and suburban expansion post WW2 at the same time the car was becoming a big thing and people were able to afford them. So auto companies lobbied and campaigned heavily to make everything very car-centric in the US and now this is the result. It really fucking sucks.
Also doesn't help that the country is so damn big, but that's a poor excuse for the lack of proper transit at the metro area level.
I’d say it’s more the influence of the industrialist class and the oil barons tbh.
Like for example, modern medicine is also extremely based on petroleum and it’s extremely dependent on the oil industry. This is a manufactured end caused by the oil barons (you can google “How Big Oil Conquered The World James Corbett” for more details).
But for transport, the early automobile corporations literally bought the streetcars in all the major cities and just dismantled them. They lobbied to stop existing subway projects, and all future projects that came to be for rail etc. For a modern example see Elon Musk and his Hyperloop almost killing California’s high-speed rail project.
All in all, the US has been controlled by old-money, big industrialists and Wall Street since forever. If you want to know why something happens, just follow the money. Everything has happened according to their interests.
The town I grew up in was very walkable, and I'd like to move back there one day if housing ever gets cheaper, but until then I'm stuck in this town where they want us all to drive everywhere.
It's frustrating because so many of the older city and town centers actually have decent walkability, even if growth made things a little more complicated. It's mostly the later development surrounding the cities where the only thought during planning was how the cars get from point A to point B and then park, and now the barriers to fix that situation are enormous. Some of them will update their ordinances to require sidewalk construction during new development, but it's not all that helpful when you end up with sidewalk stubs connected to nothing. It also doesn't fix the existing arrangement of buildings and drives that makes everything so hostile to pedestrians.
I feel like I live in the least walkable city in the US. I live 2 miles away from work and I've walked it a few times and here's the annoyances I have to deal with:
Basically you have to walk in the road most of the trip.
But fuckin' hell, we need to increase taxes to pay for that new jail! I really hate my town.
This would be funny if it wasn't so relatable.
My kids have friends about a block away, and both ways to get there have massive spots of missing sidewalk with almost no space on the edge of the roadway. My neighborhood has decent sidewalks, but we're a little island surrounded by areas with huge gaps in the sidewalks. In some areas you can stay on the sidewalk if you keep switching sides of the road though...
It's like whoever designed the roads forgot that people live in residential areas...
I live in a midwest city (not even a small one), and it's so frustrating that sidewalks will just end suddenly. There are no obstacles, it just ends. Or the sidewalk stops on one side of the road and literally picks back up on the other side of the road. But the road is a 4 lane road with a 45mph limit (so everyone does 55+) so it's too dangerous to cross.
Last year there was a bunch of construction near me to build a brand new sidewalk down a long stretch of road. ...and they just ended it a half block away from the next light so you have to walk in the grass.
Between stupid garbage like that and bad bike infrastructure (which here is actually not the worst I've seen), you definitely feel like US cities hate their citizens.
I live in a very walkable part of the world with great public transportation, and still people don't seem to walk anymore. It's electric scooters and these weird electric mopets.
I was in the city the other day and walked in between some people. There was a tram arriving and most people around me started to pick up because they had to catch it. They looked like they were running, but were barely faster than me walking, and some of them were slower, because they had to catch their breath on that epick 100m sprint. I think wall-e wasn't too far off.
You could be right.
https://ourworldindata.org/obesity
To be fair, BMI is kind of a bullshit measure, but I think there is definitely an obesity epidemic and, while it is especially bad in the United States, it is global.
For population-level studies, particularly over time, BMI is perfectly fine. It's not as if the general population of America suddenly all became big boned or extremely muscular.
Most people i know have a bit of a skewed idea of what is overweight and what is not. A lot of people i know grew up with dads who got fatter and fatter when they got older and a lot see it as some sort of normal progression. My friends were all really fit in their 20es and now even my old skinny roommate got a good old belly. One of the guys from back then doubled in size and he keeps saying that he's married now and it doesn't matter har har har. I heard all my life that i should eat more, like you know, the thing old people say. I know that BMI is'ln't the end all be all, but my BMI is and has always be 20. I do not want any more weight, i don't see the point at all. I see my dad who is morbidity obese and he doesn't see a problem. He walks like a penguin and gets out of breath when he gets into a car. I'll never feel bad for him or other people like him. He always tells funny stories how he's gonna end up with a nice young nurse who takes care of him. Yeah you gonna lay in tour own shit for a few hours because the poor nurse can't wash his fat ass alone.
My sister is "normal" according to her. And yeah she's not fat, but it's like she's 15 years older than despite only being a year older.