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[–] KnobJockey [S] 0 points 6 points (+6|-0) ago 

That's exactly as it is here, except basically every where has a walking culture.

I guess America could build cities around cars since its such a young country.

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[–] ChanceofRain 0 points 7 points (+7|-0) ago 

That is a very interesting field of study. There is some great reading on how Paris was transformed to accommodate modern vehicles. Entire historical neighborhoods were removed in the process. Check out the book How Cities Are Saved by Herbert Lottman (1976) if you can.

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[–] frailsnail 0 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago 

It was Georges-Eugène Haussmann, yeah? Napoleon basically chose him to knock everything down and rebuild from the ground. Contemporary Paris is basically his work! Will check that book out once I get the chance.

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[–] frailsnail 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

Yeah! And, those cities are just old enough to be born from the car age. More modern cities have a focus on walking now, thank god.

Question: where are you from?

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[–] KnobJockey [S] 0 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago 

I'm from jolly ol England.

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[–] UnspeakableMe ago  (edited ago)

It's not that our major cities were necessarily built around cars, it's that the world frequently misunderstands the importance of the Interstate Highway System and the changes it brought to American life after World War 2. The Eisenhower Interstate Highway Project was arguably the largest public works expenditure in the history of all of mankind costing over 450 BILLION dollars in today's money. It fundamentally altered the nature of living in America and introduced the inevitable downfall of American city life of the time. Large cities that had been artfully and intelligently designed around public transportation found entire neighborhoods destroyed and all their plans overridden as the new megahighways stretched to connect the major manufacturing and economic centers that the United States might need to defend in case of invasion from abroad. As their internal transportation networks and walking communities were destroyed the ability to move outside of the congestion and "just down the highway" led to the massive outflow of upper class tax bases to an ever expanding outer ring of suburbs. These new suburbs, having been born from upper class people with cars to drive in to their high-paying city jobs, were always designed with the car as the main form of transport.

Combine this with the nature of American life being fundamentally shifted to focus on consumption and you have the recipe for disaster we're in. Instead of getting together to do things we get together to watch things. Instead of going for a walk in the park we go for a walk in the mall. Instead of banding together to help raise a barn we band together to help support charity drives for medical expenses. We're living off the last vestiges of the largest windfall in human history that was ours to collect after the devastation of World War 2 left every other country on the face of the Earth ravaged and rebuilding, and sooner than we think the vaults will be empty.