this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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Well, just being the change you want to see. Being vocal about building less car-dependent cities leads to more people being aware a car isn't necessarily critical to daily life which leads to people voting for people who share those same ideas. Sure it won't be tomorrow but as someone who hates driving I'm definitely making an effort to drive as little as possible and voting for that lifestyle.
But to answer op's question, Lemmy's population as a whole is probably very techy/urbany and young. Very conducive to living in a major city where it's possible to live without a car.
Personally I don't want to ever live in a major city like that. Rural or small town life is where it's at - I have multiple cars (paid off) and own my own house and land all for an affordable price on a middle class wage. Around these parts, you must have a car or be fit enough to walk long distances carrying stuff.
I'm curious to see how hot of a take this is on here. In my experience online it's an insane viewpoint to hold apparently.
Back home, I could own more than an acre of land, not be told what I can and can't build on it and pay less than what I bought my house for with .25 acre. I would have to drive an hour and 40 min to get to anything I'm personally interested in if I still lived there though which is why I moved to a city.
Growing up I was on a school bus for 45 min to 1hr each way and my parents drove 40+miles each way to work. Now my kid can walk to school or a park, we have non-white neighbors and it's a short distance to so many experiences. The opportunities here heavily out weighed having more land but as I get more in to cars, I can't help but wish we had a double lot for car storage
I think a lot of the "city people" are trapped in their City Life and they don't realize it, and have probably never known anything else. When you get set up with your whole life in one area, and build your routines around that familiar infrastructure, you probably just think that's how life is supposed to be.
I've spent enough time in several of America's largest cities to know that it's a massive pile of bullshit hassles. It's nice to visit a big city for a few days or a week to see new things, and enjoy the expensive conveniences. But before long it's enough of that, and I just want to be away from all the people and their bullshit systems and hierarchies and routines. Out here in Freedomland, I have room to breathe and I can do whatever I want.
My experience in US cities is that they are so poorly planned that I understand why people would view them negatively and think they're overrated.
Then when I graduated from college and moved overseas I got it because the design of cities was moreso for them to be livable spaces and communities than the mutated abomination that were the two US cities I spent most of my childhood in.
I mean I think it's just different strokes for different folks. There's a reason 9 million people live in NYC and 4 million in LA. I was in the military for a while and being stationed in very rural places were you could buy a mansion for like 200k was just depressing for me. You had to drive 20 mins to get anywhere, nothing "big" was ever happening in town, food options were lacking. I don't like guns or cars, which seemed like the biggest appeal for people to live out in the sticks. In the city I can walk 2 minutes to the grocery store, 5 mins to 10 different restaurants, 15 mins to downtown for big events. There's always something happening and I like knowing if I ever feel like randomly going out there's something random going on. And paradoxically I feel like living in the city you deal with people way less. No one talks to each other, everyone has something to do and we just ignore each other in pursuit of that. In small towns it was always a 10 minute exchange of pleasantries with the waiter before I could order a beer.
I'm glad options exist for everyone, I like to sample the culture of a big city but much prefer to avoid that rat race.