Fuck Cars

I never compared cars and trains. I lived in a walkable neighborhood where a good 5-block range of people can walk to the grocery store and a couple other clothing/general stores, right off the main road which connects us through to the rest of the city. I honestly couldn't have grown up with a more exemplary distinction between walkable neighborhoods, suburban housing that requires 5-10 minutes of driving through the streets, and the wider city where it takes 25-35 minutes to get between towns - all connected via bus and train for commute.

The unfortunate reality of my area is exactly as I stated. Currently it has very little to do with transportation (cars), but circumstances surrounding housing and poor public service support which made it so that people keep to themselves. On a day to day basis very few people interact while waiting for the bus/train, or while walking to and from the grocery store. It doesn't matter that it's walkable, it matters that it doesn't feel safe for auntie's and abuela's.

But again, that's just those examples. They're the common daily examples, but still. Waiting for the train on a game day or a concert in town? You best believe you will be talking with everyone who passes by, because the air in the city is so much more vibrant and everyone is excited and on the same page. It's also crowded, compared to it just being a bit more "busy" on a typical day.

In my college town we had everything we needed right there and yet still people would go to do things over an hour away, even with Old Town right there with all sorts of vintage shops, clothes, food etc. It was a far larger town than back home and yet the streets had far fewer people out and about. That doesn't mean it wasn't social, we just weren't socializing while walking around, in and after class making plans to go on hikes, to the beach or to other cities.

At my local community college right around the corner from home people would walk to school and all the food&amenities were right there and it was far less sociable there because people had different priorities. For us here it doesn't matter that we can walk to school and go get lunch, we are trying to get there and back safely. We didn't get together outside of class and go on trips because we didn't have that privilege - completely unrelated to vehicles entirely (save for the people living in them). I was lucky and had a community college within a 15 minute walk from me, and I chose my college specifically because it was a good city for being a student without a car. Many others don't have the privilege and are stuck between cities.

I'm not pro-car. Quite the opposite and I do not care in the slightest about them or the culture surrounding them, though I appreciate that I have friends who appreciate them. In terms of functionality, I do think they have their place in our society - not to the point where every individual has them but with our current reality I do think 1 per household is reasonable, even if not ideal. A byproduct of growing up in this society, I suppose.

The issue comes down logistical space for us individuals and our desires. I work in performing arts, I travel between where my workplace is and between venues. We have thousands of pounds of equipment for lighting, audio. There's quite literally no feasible way for us to put on an event without a vehicle - which is totally fine. However, as an example just one of the people working for us lives over 3 cities away. He also works in that city there, and he can't move because he's taking care of his mother, and she can't move because we don't have a hospital that has what she needs, or takes her insurance I can't remember the exact reason. Basically, he can travel to us and get paid doing what he loves, or he could quit, work a dead-end job that he hates while he takes care of his mom. There's performing arts jobs out there for him, no school or theatre or concert hall. What is he supposed to do, not do what he loves? Go into something else?

In a carless society there is no way to solve that logistical issue. Every city and town needs every niche aspect for every individual? That seems impossible for so many different reasons I wouldn't even be sure where to start. A hypothetical carless world where they never existed and I didn't need to travel an hour to another town because all towns and cities have the exact same niche job for each individual already sounds like utopia, so sure why not, I bet people would talk more in public. In that same world I imagine that people living in their cars are provided a home via the support for public housing and social services for those not as able to do it on their own.

If that sounds too hopeful that's because I'm not sure how a carless society would inherently prevent those issues of safety and availability (job and business).

Is my coworkers situation created specifically because of a society centered around vehicular travel? Maybe so, though I also don't see how his situation is solved or avoided in the first place with a society where cars weren't put first and foremost. Barring the people living in their cars, the safety of the streets however are definitely not impacted by vehicles either, so unless we solve housing and addiction issues then walkable neighborhoods don't seem inherently any safer.

That is my point. I think the current state of my city comes down to this: the city infrastructure being designed for cars is irrelevant because our city's social infrastructure is junk, and because of how infeasible it seems to have each worker live in the same town/city as the business that exists there.