> Cars are pretty popular ways of getting about in the suburbs and rural areas.
But how much are cars needed on a day-to-day basis for day-to-day errands? I don't think any is saying that they are not useful (at times), but you can have them be less necessary.
Errands? I guess you could get by without a car. But then, you could get by without leaving the house for the most part, with groceries and other stuff delivered to your door.
Still, the average number of cars per household is more than 1 in the suburbs. And that's no surprise really, because work is not in the suburbs. Especially not the jobs that pay enough to live in suburbia.
If you're lucky the one bus line or tram line in your suburb goes to near your job. More commonly, it doesn't.
Look, people use cars because they are practical. They are fucking expensive, so anyone who reasonably can do without, will. People in inner cities do not use cars that often, because a car is a heavier burden there. Parking is expensive and difficult in the city.
I'm Dutch and I want to push back against the glorification of our infrastructure. To comment on that video specifically:
Yes, fully on board with the narrower streets, "hiding" parking, having some shared public space like playgrounds. These are all good things.
But there's a flip side to this coin. This isn't necessarily a desired "way of life", it's what naturally evolved due to severe space constraints.
I specifically take offense at high cost dense suburbia. You pay through the nose but still are not in some cool city. You have a tiny house and possibly noisy neighbors as well as less privacy.
Suburbia can be denser but than it must be cheap. Dense expensive suburbia is the worst of all worlds.
> I'm Dutch and I want to push back against the glorification of our infrastructure.
The same channel (Oh the Urbanity) just came out with another video yesterday explaining why we should try to use more examples than just Amsterdam and/or The Netherlands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIcwzqRlZ68
The funny thing is I think they address your point about density. Many places (in NL) are less dense and still have infrastructure, and other places are more dense (in other countries) and could support the biking infrastructure but don't.
I'm also dutch. Housing is indeed expensive here. There are many factors, but it's not because of walkable neighbourhoods, biking infrastructure and public transport (the things that are promoted). I'd argue that without these policies housing and transport will be 10x more expensive and inconvenient.
> But there's a flip side to this coin. This isn't necessarily a desired "way of life", it's what naturally evolved due to severe space constraints.
There is nothing 'natural' about the evolution of NL cities as demonstrated by the fact that (e.g.) Amsterdam started to go down the car-centric route:
It was a policy choice to not go in that direction—or rather to stop and turn away—as opposed to some kind of physical law of the universe. Not Just Bikes uses Rotterdam as an example of how even in NL† policy can go in other directions:
In the early 1990s there used to be strawberries fields across the street, and now the entire area is filled with generic suburb strip malls. Perhaps agriculture would have gone away eventually, but there's no reason why it had car-centric, low-density development that replaced it. How close is agriculture to some NL cities?
> Suburbia can be denser but than it must be cheap. Dense expensive suburbia is the worst of all worlds.
No: low-density expensive suburbia is the worst of all worlds because it necessitates cars, which has leads to all sorts of externality costs. The total OpEx is also much more expensive with low densities:
I mean these type of developments are "natural" in the sense that the Netherlands is one of the densest countries in the world, 15 times denser than the US.
I can ensure you that the typical Dutch person would love to have a US style suburbian home.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nImFJ7KKjAo
> Cars are pretty popular ways of getting about in the suburbs and rural areas.
But how much are cars needed on a day-to-day basis for day-to-day errands? I don't think any is saying that they are not useful (at times), but you can have them be less necessary.