Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
I agree. It blew my mind when I spent a summer as a student working in a tier-2 Chinese city some years back... that city went way beyond anything I had seen in North America in terms of being designed in such a way that owning an automobile would be completely superfluous. It was a huge eye opener (although I'm sure things have changed drastically in that city over the past decade and some).
By contrast, all of the alternatives to car ownership in North American cities are generally a compromise whose extent simply varies by city. A legitimate rapid transit system goes a long way toward alleviating the difficulties of life without a car, but in virtually every city in Canada or the US except for maybe NYC, not owning a car means missing out.
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It's just population density. But the horse is already out of the barn in this and most other North American cities. Unless you are going to quadruple the population in this city overnight and demand that everybody live within close proximity, you don't have the denominator required to divide the services out on a reasonably cost effective basis.
Our city is growing through immigration. Albeit slowly, but nevertheless. And we are generally relying upon people who come from places that are 'dense' by any North American standard. But the really interesting thing about this is that these people overwhelmingly choose to settle in the suburbs! And they may do it by putting 7 people in a house, but they are really most interested in living a different way than what they were accustomed to because living on top of one another is really a poor way to live if you can help it.
So I really don't even know how you solve this problem given that part of what makes us so attractive is the space that we can provide.
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